City Kid

“Well,” she said, “what did you paint?”

Luke shrugged.

“See,” Lisa said. “That’s all he ever does.” She hunched her own shoulders in imitation.

“I’ll ask you once more, Luke. What did you paint?”

Luke kept his eyes on the floor.

“All right. All right. I give up. Go on with Mary.” She shook her head at me. “Maybe you can get something out of him.”

Lisa turned to the class as Luke and I headed for the door.

“Get out your phonic workbooks.” The class groaned and then shouted its objections as Luke and I left.

I walked down the hall toward the music room with Luke beside me, not talking, wanting only to give him some space to let the humiliation dissolve a little.

When we got to the music room, Luke crawled up onto the same metal chair of the day before. I sat beside him, turning a box of crayons in my fingers.

After a while I said, “I thought maybe you might be tired of drawing or painting. I wasn’t sure, but I thought maybe we could read a little.”

Luke’s expression never changed, his eyes stared straight ahead. He had yet to speak to me today. Still, I might as well try; there certainly was nothing to lose.

I pulled the file folder toward us and turned it over.

“I made this while you were painting. The cover isn’t too good, because I made it very quickly. You can make another one sometime, if you want.”

“Luke’s Book,” Luke said.

You are wonderful, Lucas Brauer, I wanted to say, remembering my other children and how it often took months to get a single spoken word. You talk. You read. But I’m sure you startle easily. I kept myself silent, my body still, not even turning the cover.

Luke looked at me and reached for the book at the same time.

“Luke’s Book?” This time it was a question and there was surprise in his voice.

“Mm-hm. Remember how you drew the lions yesterday?”

Good! He can’t resist. Luke opened the cover, then turned the book sideways to study the lions. Then he looked at me. “I can make better lions,” he said. “Do you want me to make better ones?”

“I like these,” I said. “But you can make more if you want.” Will he look at the story? Can he read more than his name?

Luke turned the book back and easily, as easily as anything, he read, “‘The lions. There were four lions …’” When he’d finished he said, “You forgot to say they were lying down.” He said it softly, without accusation.

“Yes,” I answered. “I thought that was all right because anybody who looked at the picture could see they were lying down.”

Luke turned the book around again and studied the picture.

“I guess,” he said. “But next time put in about how they’re lying down.”

Next time! There was going to be a next time. Luke might set fires and lie and cheat and steal, but there was no doubt that he could be reached.

Now I was the one who leaned back and stared out across the room, wanting the moment to last a little longer. Where was the arsonist and thief of the file folder? Where was the rebellious truant? It didn’t make sense.

Luke squirmed beside me and rubbed his nose, leaving new smears of red paint across his face.

There was a sink in the back of the room and I nodded toward it and smiled at Luke.

“How about washing up? You’ve got red paint from here to here.” I touched my own face to show him.

I turned the faucets back and forth – hot, cold, a little more hot. Making it the right warmth, as I had for my own children.

“Okay,” I said. “Here’s a piece of soap.” I wanted to mix the soap between his hands, wash his face, but I knew better. I moved back and sat on the table, watching him from across the room.

Luke rewarded me with a question.

“Know how I got so much paint?”

“Unh-unh. How?”

“From the kangaroo. I made him all red.”

“The kangaroo you made during art?”

“Yup. I could tell a story about it, but you write it down so you don’t forget stuff this time. It’s called ‘The Kangaroo.’”

There was a long pause. Then Luke said, “How’ll I start?”

“Lots of good stories begin ‘once upon a time.’” If pretending made it easier for him to talk, it was okay with me.

“Okay. Once upon a time there was a kangaroo, and he hopped very high. He was funny and he was a boxing kangaroo. One day he hopped into a bucket of red paint. That was bad. The kangaroo was sad. A zoo keeper put a fence around him. But then he remembered how high he could hop and he hopped right over the fence.”

Luke stopped. “Do you think a kangaroo could hop that high?”

I nodded, still writing. “A good young boxing kangaroo could definitely hop that high,” I said.

Luke nodded. “Write ‘The End by Luke Brauer.’”

Friday night Cal and I drove up to the country. The snow was gone, but there had evidently been a heavy windstorm and broken branches lay across the road and path into the house.

Before breakfast the next morning, Cal was out prowling around, inspecting the damage.

“There’ll be a lot of clean-up work to do in the spring. A couple of big trees are down in the meadow. Must have had a wet snow before the wind.”

I poured our coffee and Cal talked to me as I cooked the eggs.

“You know, my father used to tell a story about President Roosevelt. After he had finished his first term in office, he went to register to vote. In those days you had to write down your occupation. You know what he wrote? ‘Tree Grower.’ I was thinking about that this morning. When I’m here in this place, I think if I couldn’t describe myself as engineer or inventor, I’d say ‘grower of trees.’ Not very good trees, maybe, but certainly lots of them.”

I put our eggs on the table and climbed in on the bench next to the stone wall. “Yes,” I said. “I can see that. You are a grower.”