We filed off the bus into the Beatty Middle School parking lot. I had Spanish on my mind then, not a plane ticket. I ran Spanish phrases across my brain in preparation for my last-period Spanish quiz.
| Dar un paseo | To take a walk |
| Ganar la carrera | To win the race |
Part of the quiz involved reading and translating sentences out loud. Sandy was also in my Spanish class. I risked being a dork in another language.
“Do you want to study at lunch?” Sandy asked me as we headed through the school doors.
“Sí,” I said. “Eres muy bonita.” I’d thought maybe if I complimented Sandy in another language, it wouldn’t be weird.
“What?” she asked, smiling at me.
“Nothing.” It was weird. My neck turned hot and red. Even though it was an actual fact that Sandy was very pretty. Maybe I’ve mentioned this a time or ten.
“Later, Wayne,” she said.
At lunch, I scanned the cafeteria for Sandy. She was nowhere to be seen. I figured she’d ditched me. But then I found her at my lunch table, where I sit with the studiers and two girls I know, Mysti and Rama. I shot them a look.
Say nothing.
They knew all about Sandy. They had coached me on what to say to her. But I needed their silence now. I put my lunch and books down. They giggled.
“Why did I even sign up for Spanish?” Sandy asked.
“Did you know that Spanish is second only to English as the most spoken language in the world? So you’ll know two of the most popular languages.”
Sandy smiled. “Bueno.”
“See, you’re a pro already.”
“Okay, first question,” Sandy said. She pulled out a neat stack of note cards. “Me permite ir al baño, por favor?”
“‘May I go to the bathroom, please?’”
“Good.”
“Okay, your turn. Puedo tener otro taco?”
“‘May I have another taco?’”
“Sí,” I said. “Do you think Señora Wilson meant that phrase to come before or after the bathroom question?”
“Very funny, Wayne,” Sandy said.
It was great. We laughed and practiced until the bell rang. It was getting easier to be around Sandy. Was it possible that I could feel chilled out around her more often? That I wouldn’t have to sweat facts every time I saw her? I liked that idea a lot. By the time Spanish class rolled around, I saw myself traveling to Mexico, ordering tacos and asking permission to go to the bathroom.
Señora Wilson called out each student’s name as she put a piece of paper on the overhead projector. She unveiled three phrases at a time. Uno, dos, tres.
“Señor Kovok.” The teacher called my name.
I stood up and translated my three phrases.
And then it was Sandy’s turn. We smiled at each other when it was over. I drew in my notebook and let my thoughts float. I sat back in my chair and thought of the weekend.
“Señor Kovok?”
“Sí, Señora—?” I looked up.
The school counselor, Ms. Peet, stood in the doorway of my Spanish class. She was flanked by Mom and Grandpa.
You know how your stomach senses bad news before your ears hear it?
“Señora Wilson,” the counselor said. “May we please see Mr. Kovok out in the hallway?”
My stomach rumbled.
I turned to look back at the class. Maybe everyone was staring at me. I only looked at Sandy. I caught her smile before I slipped out into the hallway.
“Wayne,” Mom said. I could tell she was biting her lip and trying not to tear up. The sad face. Grandpa hugged me to his chest. My grandfather is a retired army drill sergeant. He is not a hugger.
Something was seriously wrong.
Grandpa pushed me away from his chest. He stared me down like I’d done something wrong. Like the hug had been my idea.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Mom?” I thought of something I could say to change her face.
Did you know that your average tree consumes fifty to one hundred gallons of water per day?
Grandpa read my mind. “Exercise restraint, son.”
I restrained.
Grandpa pushed his hands into his pockets. “Your uncle Reed has died in the line of duty.”
Mom swayed and trembled like a new branch.
“Wait. What? What are you saying?”
“You have an agile mind, son,” Grandpa said. “Don’t make me repeat the words.”
Sometimes bad news doesn’t stick in my agile mind. I have to hear it twice. Plus, it was all wrong. Grandpa standing in my school hallway? It was out of context. Right behind him there was a giant bin of deodorants and soaps for the school hygiene drive, along with a poster that read AFRAID OF B.O.? DONATE SOME DEO!
I could have been dreaming.
“Maybe you’d like to come to my office?” Ms. Peet suggested. “Sign Wayne out for the day?”
I’d forgotten she was still standing there with us.
Grandpa said, “Wayne, why don’t you be of use and gather your things on the double!”
I gathered my things on the double. It was something to do.
The bad news followed us home. I heard the sad story of how the casualty officers came to Grandpa’s house.
“They read the news to me and then handed me the printed paper they’d read from,” Grandpa said.
Casualty officers read the news and give you a copy of the sad news, too. They do this so that their message will be clear and they won’t have to repeat it.
I’d looked it up later.
Grandpa held a coffee mug in one hand and told Mom and me this story while he looked up at a picture of his own father. RB Dalton, army captain. My great-grandfather’s picture hung on the hallway wall.
Did you know my mother bought this house for a wall?
Yep, she did.
When I was eight and my dad wasn’t looking, Mom and I moved to this house. It was a neighborhood that wanted to be a forest. At least that was how Mom sold it to me.
“Every street here is named for a tree,” she said, a little too excited.
Our house on Cedar Drive was like every other house on the block. Small, brick, and brown. Eight windows and four tiny bedrooms. Chain-link fence. And bonus feature: a hulking white water tower that loomed over our backyard.
“Well, we always said we wanted a view of the water,” Mom joked. “Now we’ve got it! Come inside and see the best part of this house!”
The house was small. You could pretty much stand in the living room and give someone a tour just by looking left to right. Hallway with bedrooms to your left. Kitchen and dining room to your right. Garage to the back.
To her, the best part of the house was the long white wall that ran the length of the hallway.
“Would you just look at this wall?” Mom said. “It’s perfect!”
I was fine with the tree-named streets and the “water” view. But when Mom fell in love with a wall, I thought she was nuts.
“I don’t get it,” I said.
“You will, honey.”
So Mom bought the plain brown house in the shadow of a water tower in the wannabe-forest neighborhood for the perfect wall.
True story.
Before we’d unpacked a single dish on Cedar Drive, Mom hung a collage of framed photographs on that bright, perfect white wall. The Wall of Honor, she called it. It had been her dream to have all our dead military ancestors gathered in one place. My dad had nixed that idea before. He said it was stupid to hang photos of old dead people on the wall. Mom got the sad face when he said that. Around that time, Mom began referring to my dad as the Flee. (She thought I didn’t know. I knew.)
It’s been four years now.
But the main thing to know about the house is that Mom still loves that wall. I guess it’s grown on me, too. I sometimes lined up my face in the eight-by-ten-inch photo with the shiny glass that featured my great-grandfather. I didn’t see any connection between us, even though Mom liked to say I looked a little like him.
I knew one thing for sure: Not a single one of the photos was or ever would be a Kovok like me.
Because you had to have four qualities to be featured on that wall.
Be brave. Be patriotic. Be dead. And carry the last name Dalton. Now Uncle Reed had all four.
My whole life, I never thought the photos on the wall would mean anything to me. They could have been strangers or people in history books. Do you want to know something? It makes a difference when you can look at a picture of someone and remember you’d once shared a cheeseburger and fries. A huge difference.
When our doomed plane made its rapid descent from the sky, I thought about the last conversation I’d had with Uncle Reed. I would have done it differently. Not talked about poinsettias. But I couldn’t. You don’t get a do-over. And thinking about it will make you feel stupid. Helpless. You have to force yourself to do something else.
So I adjusted the frames on the wall to make them straight. Straighter.