Will Not Attend: Lively Stories of Detachment and Isolation Read Free Page B

School. All the kids loved Booker. He was the only adult in the entire school who didn’t treat us like assholes. He did cool things like let us help him get the ladder from the storage closet to get the kickball off the roof or inspect the dead mouse lodged in the motor of the cafeteria milk machine. When we dragged him into the girls’ locker room after school one day to find out what the hell was inside that powder blue vending machine on the wall, his answer—“Supplies for the teachers”—was so dull and honest that we promptly lost interest. Man, did we love the guy. The fact that he was colored made him even cooler. We hung on his every word and gesture. And, boy, could he whistle! Booker belonged on television.
    “You gotta give him a ride, Dad!” we implored. “He’s a nice guy!”
    My father didn’t hesitate. He made a screechy Jack Webb U-turn and a moment later the big Delta 88 was pulling up alongside Booker.
    “Hey there, Booker,” my dad called out as the electric window lowered. “Need a lift?”
    “Well, if you don’t mind, thank you,” came the reply.
    Mike and I were delirious, cheering from the back of the car as our hero slid into the passenger seat next to my father. This was the kind of thing you dreamed about.
    “Where can we take you, Booker?” we shrieked. “We’ll take you anywhere! You wanna get ice cream? You wanna go bowling? You wanna come to our house?” My dad shot us a look in the rearview mirror.
    Booker rubbed the back of his neck and said, “Well, I was hopin’ to get downtown to the hospital to see my sister.” Harrisburg Hospital was far in the opposite direction, so I wasn’t sure how Merv would respond.
    “Don’t worry, we’ll get you there,” my father assured him, clearly satisfied with the boundaries of the mission. He turned up “Java” and we were on our way. It was seamless.
    As we negotiated the anemic landscape of Susquehanna Township, Merv talked of his own sister—my aunt Lucy—who, he said, had also been hospitalized recently with a condition that required her to consume two and a half gallons of water a day:
    “I’d visit her a few times a week, Booker, like clockwork. That can be better than all the water in the world. Don’t let these doctors bullshit you.” Booker nodded.
    “How’s everything with your sister?” Merv asked. “Nothing serious, I hope.”
    Booker replied, “Oh, she jus’ work in the lunchroom.”
    My father solemnly knocked on the vinyl dashboard a few times and said, “God bless her. Let’s keep it that way.”
    Mike and I were getting a little annoyed that Merv was hogging Booker. We had a few things to talk about ourselves—urgent topics that came tumbling from our mouths as we gripped the headrests and leaned into the front seat.
    “Hey, Booker, remember the time you needed that bucket? And you asked us to get it for you? And we went and got it, and then you gave us some candy from the teachers’ lounge?”
    Merv disliked rapid, unfocused chatter. Like most things, it made him tense.
    “And the time the praying mantis was on the wall in the art room, and Mr. Dunn tried to get it off with a hanger, but it jumped down and you caught it in that mayonnaise jar, but its head fell off—”
    “Okay,” Merv said, “we understand.”
    “—and the time Mrs. Weihbrecht asked you to wash her car? And you made that face, and she said, ‘Don’t make that face at me,’ and you said something back to her, and she turned all red and tried to get you fired?”
    “Boys—drop it.”
    “And what about the time Matt Strohecker took a shit in the bathroom sink! And you chased him out with a mop! And he fell and hit his head on the—”
    “Shut
the
fuck
up!”
    The entire car shuddered as if we’d encountered a wind shear. “The man’s off work—let him enjoy his weekend, for Christ’s sake!”
    He turned to our passenger. “Sorry, Booker.”
    Booker just chuckled and said, “Aw, them’s good boys.