Sticks (14 page)

*   *   *

Arlen stays for dinner so we can work on our science fair project. Mom is at night school, Camille is at the dress rehearsal for her play. Poppy makes us macaroni and cheese, which her mother used to make for her when she was pushing on a homework assignment. Poppy says her mother’s macaroni and
cheese has special brain-enlarging calories that have never failed her yet, which is why she’s such an intelligent fireball to this day.

We’re leaning over the dining room table; Arlen just finished drawing the sheet that shows about angles—the angles the ball makes off the rail, and the angles where the cue ball hits the object ball.

I say pool is cooler than volcanoes.

“If we just had something that
explodes
,” Arlen says.

We walk down the long hall to the living room and find the creakiest place in our floor. If you step just right it makes a creepy wailing sound:
Weeeeeeeaaaaaaaaccccchhhhh
. When Camille has her friend Olivia over, Arlen and I rock back and forth on the place and creep Olivia out bad. Poppy put a little hooked rug over the spot, but that just makes it easier to find.

Weeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaccccccccchhhhhhh
.

We go into the living room. Mom’s palm tree by the window is dying. Poppy says we don’t get enough sunlight in the living room. All the sun hits the back of the house, which is why Poppy’s geraniums bloom three seasons in the kitchen. Sunlight isn’t a big deal for me. Pool halls stay pretty much the same, day or night.

Arlen and I are waiting for his mother to pick him up and I put on the video of my dad playing pool. Arlen never minds watching it. I put it on once when Petie Pencastle was here and he wanted to watch cartoons.

Poppy sits down to watch with us, even though it’s hard for her. The tape’s choppy, but I don’t care. Dad’s wearing a blue shirt. He shoots some awesome shots and the video cuts to me as a baby, sitting in a high chair picking my nose. “Eight ball in the side,” Dad says to me, and I stop picking and watch. Dad makes the shot and I clap my pudgy little hands. I’m just watching the memories I don’t
remember spill out. Poppy wipes away a tear. Dad’s bending over the table, shooting ball after ball.

Bam
.

Pow
.

In they go.

“He said he could sometimes see a line going from the cue ball through the object ball right into the pocket,” Poppy says softly.

Arlen and I sit up. “What kind of line?” we say together.

“I don’t know. He said it was like a line showing him the way.”

Arlen looks up to heaven and closes his eyes. He does this when he’s getting math ideas. He gets out graph paper and starts drawing a pool table and a ball with lines shooting through it. His mother comes to the front door, which doesn’t interest him much.

“He had an idea,” I tell Mrs. Pepper.

She plops down. “We could be here all night.”

Arlen’s drawing like mad, measuring lines, drawing angles. “This,” he declares, “is unbelievable!”

“Arlen,” pleads his mother, “math will wait. Your father will not. We have to go!”

Arlen turns toward his mother. “Mom, do you know what Galileo said?”

Arlen’s bringing out the big guns. Galileo is a dead scientist who used math a lot. He’s one of Arlen’s heroes. Arlen puts his hand over his heart.

“Galileo said, ‘The universe stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth.’”

A labyrinth is like a maze. Arlen has this quotation on the Galileo poster in his room.

“Fifteen minutes,” says Mrs. Pepper, and takes out her knitting. She’s making a pink sweater.

Arlen draws a ball on a piece of paper and another ball with a line through it heading for a pocket.

“A vector,” he says, “is a line that takes you from one place to the next. That means your father was using vectors to make his shots. He could see the lines going from the balls to the pockets like they were drawn on the table. He didn’t have math as a language so he couldn’t tell it to anyone else. His language was his stick. He could only show it.”

My heart’s pounding.

Arlen turns to Poppy. “Can you remember anything more that Mr. Vernon said about seeing the line?”

Poppy’s thinking. “He just said it kind of shot through his eye, went through the cue ball, and he could see the table and what he was supposed to do.”

“See the table,” Arlen repeated.

“That’s what he said.”

“See the table!” Arlen shouts. “Have you ever seen those lines when you shoot, Mickey?”

“No, I can do the angles, but—”

“
I need string!
” Arlen yells.

Mrs. Pepper holds up her pink yarn.

“Yes, yarn is perfect!” Arlen shouts. “We have to go downstairs! We have to see the table!”

*   *   *

Arlen’s just scattered nine balls on table eight and is cutting the pink yarn in pieces. He lays a piece of yarn from each ball to its closest pocket until table eight looks like a diagram.

“I think that’s how your father saw it, except the lines weren’t pink.” He makes a face.

I look at the table. It’s one of those simple answers you don’t think about.

“But each time a ball moves the lines will be different,” I say.

“You’ve got to train your mind to see them,” says Arlen. “Your dad did it naturally.”

“And then there’s English,” I say. “You’ve got to be able to hit the balls just right to line up your next shot.”

“Geometry doesn’t explain the way you have to hit the ball,” Arlen explains. “That’s calculus.”

“As I live and breathe,” says Poppy, “I think this will work.”

*   *   *

I think if Poppy hadn’t seen it for herself she wouldn’t have talked Mom into letting me stay up late and try the experiment. Mrs. Pepper drags Arlen halfway home and then they come back to get his jacket.

“This shouldn’t count!” Arlen pleads to his mother as he retrieves his coat. “I was helping a friend in need! Be merciful!”

He throws me another drawing.

The pink yarn is junking up the table, so I have to take it off, brush the matt, and use string instead. I cut different lengths, placing them on the table. Then I memorize the line that goes from the ball into the pocket and try the shot using the bridge.

I make most of the shots.

Poppy tries some, too. “Well, I’ll be!” she shouts.

I want to tear the bandage off my hand and start playing for real.

My left hand’s doing good.

Mom makes me go to bed. I curl up in my green quilt and listen to the
click, click
of pool balls in the hall below. I study Arlen’s drawing and put it under my pillow. I close my eyes and try to imagine table eight in a big geometric pattern—the balls lying there, breaking apart, moving, and those lines going right through the balls, into the pockets, and slamming through Buck Pender’s dirty rotten heart.

*   *   *

In school I keep seeing the table. Long shots. Short shots. Bank shots. Vectors.

I’m seeing geometry everywhere—diamond-shaped ball fields, birds flying in V formation. I have grapes for lunch and think about circles. Then I ram the grapes across my tray with my straw.

Wham
.

Two grapes in the corner.

It’s all connected.

Mrs. Riggles gives us extra time to work on our soldier letters, which are due tomorrow. Arlen and I are in our favorite corner in the school library, sitting in the soft brown chairs, tucked behind the science fiction section. I just finished my letter.

Arlen finished his letter too. He had to use his calculator. He figured how many potatoes, barrels of sauerkraut, and pounds of meat each man needed to survive for three months plus how many wagons it would take to deliver the supplies. The sauerkraut had loads of vitamin C to help fight diseases like scurvy. Arlen decided that his soldier came from a rich, brave farming family who could bring the food to Valley Forge and change the course of history. Arlen said his letter would probably get his soldier promoted from private first class to at least master sergeant.

My doctor’s appointment is tomorrow.