Cartoonist (2 page)

Alfie pulled himself up into the attic and, as he always did, turned his head to the rafters. There were his drawings. They hung from every beam, every board. He never looked up without feeling better. No matter how low he was, looking up at his drawings always made his spirits rise.

He eased into his chair and turned over his papers. He looked at “Super Caterpillar” and “Super Bird” to see if they were as good as he remembered. He smiled. They were. He leaned “Super Bird” against a jar of pencils so he could glance at it as he worked.

He took a fresh sheet of paper and started on another super strip. He had it all planned. The idea had come to him when he had seen his mother painting her fingernails at the supper table.

He might have missed it if Alma hadn’t said, “Mom, don’t polish your nails at the table. This isn’t a beauty parlor.”

“I’m almost through.” She finished the last nail and held out her hands. “How’s that? It’s a new shade called Tahiti Pearl.”

“I
know
it’s a new shade. I bought it,” Alma said. She glanced at her mother critically. “And put the top back on tight.” At some point, Alfie thought, Alma had become the parent; his mother, the child. Alma was the one who was stern, who never gave in. Alma was the one who bossed him, who told him what to do.

It was the pearl nail polish that gave Alfie his idea. In the first square a girl would be painting her fingernails Pearl. In the second she would be painting her hands Pearl. In the third she would be painting her arms Pearl. In the fourth she would be painting her whole self Pearl. In the last square a giant would appear, pick her up, and set her in a tacky ring.

He would call it “Super Ring,” and he knew just how the girl’s face would look in that last square as she sat yoga fashion in the tacky ring.

As soon as he got the idea, he wanted to tell everybody at the table about it. He looked up. His mom was waving her fingers in the air to dry them. Pap was picking suspicious-looking things from his Sloppy Joe. Alma was reading a book beside her plate.

Alfie decided to keep this idea to himself. No one would think it funny, especially his mom. He had only made her laugh once that he could remember.

His brother, Bubba, had been able to make her laugh all the time. Everything Bubba did seemed funny to her. Alfie remembered how she had laughed the time Bubba sat Dexter Wilkins on the water fountain at school and turned on the water. She had laughed at that until tears ran down her cheeks.

“You mean Dexter Wilkins whose dad owns Wilkins Hardware? I knew him in high school.”

“Yeah, and he had on a pair of new pants.”

“What kind?”

“Green double knit.”

At that, his mom had leaned back on the sofa, holding her sides, laughing as if she would never stop. Even the fact that she had to go to the principal’s office with Bubba the next day had not dimmed her enjoyment. In the principal’s office she burst into laughter again—she had not meant to—she just couldn’t help it. Every time the principal mentioned water fountain or Dexter Wilkins or green double-knit pants, she had laughed. She had tried to pretend she was coughing—she told them this when she got home—but she couldn’t, and in the end the principal got disgusted and dismissed them both. Before they left the building, his mom made Bubba show her the water fountain.

Alfie ruled his paper into five squares. He drew the lines carefully because he had to save paper. A man at Logan’s Printers and Binders had given him a box of old paper, and it was already half gone. Some of the sheets had printing on one side or smudges or letterheads, but Alfie had learned to use whatever he had. Before he discovered this friend at Logan’s Printers and Binders, he had gotten so desperate for paper that he had torn the front and back pages out of all his school books.

The drawing went well. In the first square the girl looked as if she were really painting her fingernails. Then he skipped to the last square. He wanted to draw that one while it was still clear in his mind.

“Alfie?” his mother called from downstairs.

He jerked, making a line across his paper. Carefully he erased it and blew away the scraps of eraser. “What?” he called back.

“Are you
still
studying?”

“Yes.”

“Well, come on down and keep Pap and me company.”

“I will in a minute.” He bent back over his work. His pale straight hair fell over his forehead.

He sketched in the giant, looked at what he had drawn, and erased it. The card table wobbled every time he erased. He wiped the scraps away. He tried again, erased that. He grimaced as he regarded his work. His mother had broken his concentration.

He twirled the pencil, batonlike, in his fingers. His thin fingers handled the pencil skillfully, and he began to draw again. He sketched lightly this time.

“Alfie!”

“In a
minute.”

“Right
now.”

Suddenly the light went out in the attic. Alfie knew what had happened. His mother had pulled the extension cord out of the wall below.

“Mom!”
he protested.

“Well, I want you to come down here,” she said.

“Mom, plug my light back in.”

Silence.

Alfie sat in the dark. A patch of light slanted up from the living room. “Mom, plug my light back in,” he said in a sterner voice. He sounded like Alma. “You want me to fail Science?”

“I’ll give you—” she paused “—five more minutes—no, I’ll give you till the next commercial.” His mom didn’t have a watch. She told time by television.

“Ten minutes,” he bargained.

Silence.

He waited in the darkness. “All right,” he sighed, “till the next commercial.”

The light went on, and Alfie began to draw with renewed intensity. But he was in a hurry now, trying to finish before the next commercial. And when he tried too hard, he never did anything right.

He drew the giant’s face. It looked distorted. The giant’s nose looked like a three-leaf clover. He erased it. The last square was getting a gray, used look. “I’ll have to do this whole thing over,” he muttered.

Below he heard the strains of a Diet Pepsi commercial. Abruptly his mom turned the volume up so he couldn’t miss it. The light in the attic went off and on, off and on.

“I’m
coming,”
he said.

He turned his paper face down on the table. He got up. To lift his spirits he held “Super Bird” to the light and looked at it one more time. Then he glanced up at the ceiling where his drawings hung. He began to climb down the ladder.

“Well, it’s about time,” his mother said. She turned down the television. “And I hope you’re going to be better company than Pap.” She crossed to the overstuffed sofa and sat.

Pap was sitting in a straight-backed chair. He looked and was unhappy. He had not gotten to discuss politics with the Governor because the Governor’s wife, Bena, had a sinus headache. He sighed with discontent and indigestion.

He said, “TV’s not as good as radio used to be.”

Alfie sat down on the sofa by his mom. The springs were broken, and Alfie got the bad cushion. He sank deep. He didn’t glance at his grandfather, because he knew what was coming and he didn’t want to encourage it by appearing interested.

Pap said, “I was on the radio one time. Did I ever tell you about it?”

“Only one hundred and fifty thousand times,” Alfie’s mother snapped.

Pap went on as if she had not spoken. “It was the
Major Bowes Amateur Hour.
I did eleven bird calls and ended up whistling ‘Listen to the Mockingbird.’ I got more applause than anybody.”

“Why didn’t you win then?” Alfie asked in spite of himself.

“Because a little girl that looked like Shirley Temple did a toe-tap to ‘God Bless America.’”

“Oh.”

“Her relatives sent in more than two thousand cards and letters. If it hadn’t been for her, I would have won, either me or the boy that played ‘Lady of Spain’ on the accordion.”

Alfie glanced at his grandfather, then back at the television. That was the story of his family’s life, he thought. Almost. Almost winning the
Amateur Hour.
Bubba almost getting a football scholarship to W.V.U. His mom almost getting the job at Moore’s Jewelry Store. Alfie wanted to be different. He wanted to be more than almost.

“Let me see if I can still remember some of my bird calls,” Pap said thoughtfully.

“Oh, Pap, not tonight,” Alfie’s mother moaned. “If I have to hear the purple-breasted sapsucker, I’ll start screaming.”

“All right, then, which one
do
you want to hear?”

“None of them. I’m trying to watch Dr. Welby, all right?”

“How about the bobolink? That was always your favorite when you was a girl.”

“How about the loon? At least that would be appropriate,” she said.

“Well, here’s the bobolink for anyone who wants to listen.”

“Pap, have mercy! You know whistling sets my teeth on edge.” She put her hands over her ears, but carefully so as not to disturb her hairdo.

Unconcerned, Pap whistled the bobolink call. He ended, paused, and said, “Wait a minute, let me try that again. I’m getting rusty—haven’t done my calls in a good while.”

“In a good while! Pap, you did them last night! We sat right in this room and had our television disrupted for forty-five minutes while you whistled your head off. Isn’t that right, Alfie?” She patted her hair. It was a new shade—golden wheat—and she was proud of it.

“Yes.”

“Well, let me do just one more to make sure I remember. How about the whippoorwill?”

“Pap!”

As the call of the whippoorwill filled the small crooked room, Alfie’s mom got up and crossed to the television. She turned the volume up loud. Then she came back and flopped angrily on the sofa. The springs protested.

Alfie sat between the two noises—the television and the bird calls. He closed his eyes. In his mind he went over the drawing of the giant. Suddenly he knew what he had done wrong—he had tried to show too much of the giant. Just the head would be enough, with the ring held right at the front of the picture.

He smiled to himself. Tomorrow …

“H
EY, LIZABETH!” TREE PARKER
yelled. “Take my picture. Take a picture of me and Alfie.”

Alfie said, “Oh, come on, Tree, will you? I got to get home. I got to study.” It was after school, and Alfie was eager to get to his drawing.

“Well, can’t you wait just one minute? I want Lizabeth to take our picture. Oh, Liz-a-beth!”

Alfie and Tree were standing on the sidewalk in front of Elizabeth Elner’s house. Elizabeth was posing her cat on the front steps. The cat had on a doll hat and sweater. Elizabeth was spending a lot of time getting the angle of the hat just right. She ignored Alfie and Tree.

“All right, Lizabeth, we’re going to leave,” Tree warned. “This is your last chance to take our pictures.” Tree loved to have his picture taken. The people he envied most in the world were the people at football games who managed to jump up in front of the TV camera and wave.

Elizabeth stepped back and took a long critical look at the cat. “Now, don’t you move,” she warned. She looked through the lens of the camera and got the cat in focus.

“Watch this,” Tree whispered to Alfie. He began sneaking up the front walk.

Tree had gotten his nickname in second grade when he had taken the part of a weeping willow in an ecology play. Not until the class saw him standing there, wrapped in brown paper, artificial leaves in his hair, did they realize how much like a tree he was. Now no one—not even the teacher—called him anything else.

Slowly, his long arms and legs angling out, glancing back to see if Alfie was watching, Tree moved closer to Elizabeth and the cat.

Apparently unaware, Elizabeth said, “Because if this picture comes out, I’m going to enter it in the Purina cat contest.”

Tree slipped closer to the steps. Then just as Elizabeth was ready to snap the picture, he jumped forward, arms out, and said, “Scat!” He was like a bundle of sticks in motion.

The startled cat jumped to the sidewalk and disappeared in the bushes.

Elizabeth spun around. Her face was red.
“Now
look what you’ve done, Tree. If that cat snags my sister’s good doll sweater, you’re going to get it.”

“Oh, am I scared,” Tree said. His limbs trembled.

“I mean it, Tree Parker.”

“Come on, Tree,” Alfie said. “I got to get home.”

Elizabeth advanced. “If that cat comes back without his outfit—my sister only let me use it because I promised nothing would happen to it—and if he comes home without it, Tree …”

“What you going to do?”

“Let’s
go
,” Alfie said.

“Well, I want to find out what she’s going to do. What you going to do, Lizabeth?”

“Just wait and see.”

“Come
on.”
Alfie grabbed Tree by the sleeve and pulled him away. Reluctantly Tree began to walk down the sidewalk.

“I wouldn’t let her take my picture now if she got down on her knees and begged,” he said. He spun around. “You’re not taking my picture now, Lizabeth,” he said.

“Then quit posing,” she called back.

“I wasn’t posing! Alfie, you saw me. Was I posing?”

“No,” Alfie lied.

“Anyway, why didn’t you help me? You never want to do anything anymore.”

“She wasn’t going to take your picture, Tree.”

“I know, but if you’d have helped, we could have got the camera away from her and taken pictures of each other and of her trying to get the camera away from us. It would have been fun. Listen, let’s go back and I’ll distract her while you grab the—”

“I got to get home,” Alfie said.

“I know. You got to
study.
” The way he said the word showed what he thought of studying. “If you want my opinion you’d do better not to study so much. Look at me. I never study and I get all A’s and B’s.” He broke off and turned to Alfie, smiling. “Hey, did I ever tell you about Lizabeth in kindergarten?”

“Tell me while we walk.”

“You’ll love this, Alfie. Her mom sends her to this special kindergarten, see, so she could get into first grade early—her birthday’s in February. And in this kindergarten they have red day and yellow day and purple day and orange day and green day. And on red day, Alfie, you get red Kool-Aid and red stars for good work. On yellow days it’s yellow Kool-Aid and yellow stars. So Lizabeth takes this test, see, to find out if she’s ready for first grade, and the first question they ask is to name the days of the week. Lizabeth knows that. It’s the one thing she’s really sure of. ‘The days of the week,’ she says—you know how important her voice gets when she knows the answer—‘The days of the week,’ she says, ‘are red, yellow, purple, orange, and green!’ That’s why she flunked the test, Alfie, and ended up in our grade. That’s why—Hey, let’s double back and ask her what day it is. I’ll say—”