Inside the Cater Inn the finalists continue to congregate in
elbow-shaped triangles and limp right angles. There is girl whose hair looks
like she blow-dried it in the shower this morning while touching the nearest
socket who was sitting in the Journal Star lobby spends the majority of the
time engaging in a perfunctory conversation with the pasty-faced girl with the
braces and beautiful straight blonde hair. Several lads have facial hair and are older.
The DM’s congregate and sip coffee. Adam and I stand next to
each other, are hands in our pockets.
We smile and we nod and we sip our punch.
The students who are in high school are interfacing more
successfully with the students who purportedly are cross town rivals. The
judges arrive independently and begin to interface with diverse candidates. The
lanky newspaper carrier with the pencil lead moustache seems exceedingly
competent, shaking the hands of each of the arrived dignitaries as if they were
running for congress.
We interface. We socialize. We are
adorned in our Sunday best. I talk with Mario. I speak with a boy named Kevin
whose DM goes to my church and sings in the choir my aunt directs. One winner
is from Bartonville and claims to have been a personal friend of Josh Smith’s
last year’s winner. Several of the finalist carry on conversation in French,
just to appear to be showing off. There
is a lad in a seventies suit and a boy with very straight hair who looks like
he has the flu.
The lady in charge says its time to
be seated.
First we will have our lunch. Then
we will give our speech in front of a panel of judged of local renown. Then we
will be ferried back to the Journal Star for a field trip tour of the building
before being lead into the conference room where the winner revealed.
The meal begins. Soup and salad is brought out in
individualized garnished fine china. Kelli Rude, the MC for the event offers a
few plenary remarks congratulating us—noting that out of 500 eligible carriers
in the city of Peoria, we are the crème de la crème 15 finalists, and although
only one of us will be eligible to go to France, we should all be extremely
individually proud of our accomplishment. She then introduces the judges at
each of the local tables who stand, offer out a palm of acknowledgement as the
groomed finalists perform rote actions with their hands. Peter Korn is the City manager of Peoria
sits at my table. One of the judges is a
female and is a formal Young Columbus winner herself.
I stare at the alumni. The woman who has been awarded the
voyage. She is in her late twenties. She presents herself in the fashion of
someone who has traveled and seen things. Her all expense paid for peregrinations.
I picture her in Europe, cultures,
exploring the world, coming back somehow different coming back somehow changed.
I am seated at the table with Adam D’amico, We are served Swiss steak.
“You know
what they call this in France?” The city manager of Peoria looks at me,
inquiring. I have no clue and remained staid lipped,
“Hahm-burger.”
He says, a slight nasal hush to his voice as he laughs at his own cultural
malapropism. I smile. The kid with the moustache at our table is named Scott
and seems entirely confident. When asked about if he caught the recent
basketball game between central and Manual he digresses and says that he
believes he missed that game because he was monopolized icing out the finishing
touches on his speech.
“So,” The city manager says, looking at D’amico, “What makes
you want to go to France?”
“My
heritage.” D’amico responds without hesitation, although in a rather laconic
fashion, before the dual clefts of his chin judders twice and he lets out an
elongated oval lipped “oh,” which seems to change pitch with the length of his
perched expression before he segues into a long cocktailesque narrative about
the time he saw the Rhine river in Germany, which for some reason, has
something to do with Adam’s genealogy.
Al is situated two tables north of where Adam and myself are
seated. Twice he has gotten up to check on us, inquiring if us boys are staying
out of trouble.
“They’re
both fine young men.” Peter Korn, the city manager replies, before offering a
palm in the direction of Scott Painter, as if he is presenting him in a
vaudeville act, “And so is this guy right here.” Scott Painter immediately
stands up as if on stilts while lancing out his hand in the direction of Al.
Adam and I continue to sit next to each other. Sporadically I exhume my note
cards from my side pocket, mentally rehearsing over the parts of the speech I
have slaved over for the past month. Al seems less interested in the list of
personal accolades Scott is reciting for him and more interested in the
identification of Scott’s district Manager.
“He’s a
good guy.” Al says, referring to Scott’s manager. “His carrier won this whole
thing a couple of years ago.”
A basket of rolls begins to circulate counter-clockwise
followed by the diminutive platter of
butter. This wasn’t at all how I imagined it. It feels more like we are at a
sit-down wedding ceremony dinner.
Seated directly behind me is the lady who won the Young Columbus contest.
I can’t take my eyes off her. I can’t take my eyes off the
girl with the paper bag slung on the back her chair whose name I will later
learn is Karen Christmas and who I will learn goes to the rival Lutheran grade
school in town.
Karen Christmas.
A pretty, pretty name.
I look out the window.
Clods of dirty snow are being
shoved into heaping banks, allowing cars access into the parking lots.
Three tables over, next to the long table adorned with a
ruffled veil, the table the judges will review our dossiers as we make our presentations.
Kelli Rude steps up to the microphone. The judges take their places at a finely-linened judging table.
It is time for the speeches to begin.
***
Several speeches convene with the
recipients popping a linguistic no-handed foreign language wheelie with their
tongue while spilling out several indecipherable stanzas of junior high French,
translating in English, usually afterwards, what they just said was some sort
of international greeting. This seems to be rote with the first three
contestants. My name is further down the list, almost last, one ahead of the
girl with the attractive late eighties electrocuted shocked hair. Kevin begins
his speech in French offering something to the crowd about how the itinerary of
the trip coalesces with his 14th birthday present that would be if
hew could spend it in France. Adam D’amico seems a tad nonplussed that the
previous Finalist usurped his intro. Attending the gifted school in Peoria, his
French is far superior than anyone else in the room, and, just as he made it a
point to go home and change into his suit and tie, he seems to harbor this
insight with him. The clapping after each speech seems to correlate perfectly
with the flecks of snow scraping outside—the day, dismal, overcast, an earl
grey feeling soaked into the overhead clouds, coating the earth with a
melancholy mist that is somehow pensive and lulling the way looking over the
Russian tundra while meditatively smoking something tightly rolled might be relaxing.
The hummel-cheeked eyed altar boy
haircut lad who is a personal friend of last years recipient gives a speech
sounding like an infomercial on why he is the best candidate to go to
France—saying that he is willing to do all the little things, all the quote
“extra” things, that make his speech sound so bloated one of the judges looks
like he has to fart. The constant during
the speeches is the clapping and the butchered French idioms inserted into
speech for cultural spotlight and affect. Brent Ellison holds the note card
close to his glasses as he reads, a tad nerve-addled, informing the judges how
having a paper route has helped him mature and has even helped finance several
Yugos. Midway through the warbled French and odd parlance of the speeches it
occurs to me that I have a chance at winning this. The one I picked to win the
speech based on his parlance and social skills, Waylon, steps up to the podium
and unfurls his speech out on a piece of paper, making a joke to the white-eyed
judges not to worry. That it’s not as long as it looks. It seems that reading
the speech instead of taking the time out to work out the memorization kinks
will inevitably dock points from his overall performance—the judges seem to
realize this as well. Scott Painter, the sandpaper moustache half-mullet
impeccably groomed prince, the titan from cross town central who is seated at
our table is on deck. My head has been
oscillating like a periscope the entire dinner, tilting in subtle rotations
During the dinner portion Scott sold
himself to the table Now, it’s like he
doesn’t know what he is doing. Somehow I can’t fathom him being a proficient
paperboy in the slightest.
When they call Mario’s name he
waddles up to the microphone in stereotypical gangsta pimp looking like he has
just been recently shot in his left knee-cap. Again I ponder what would happen
if somehow he would win this thing. He seems to look down. He has notecards but
he’s not looking directly at the, It is the first time in my life that I have
ever seen Mario Rutherford look as if he is uncomfortable.
He stutters through his speech
without saying anything. After being ruthlessly tormented by the classroom
bully from the past two years I still feel sorry for him as the perfunctory
post-speech claps resume.
Once he regains his power in Superman 50 a virile Clark Kent
has a sort of mid-life catharsis, and stuttering, proposes to Lois Lane.
She accepts still being oblivious after 50 years that he dresses up in boots and
tights and knows how to fly.
***
The speeches proceed. The high school boy who sounds like he is sea sick
and has the flu makes an icebreaker about having to go through his father first
before he gets the route which garner chuckles, but other than that his speech
is forgettable. The girl with the crimp 80’s hair could be doing a
late-night infomercial on tampons. There are three left. I rehearse the mechanics
and meter of my speech in the IMAX of my 7th grade skull. The girl
who goes before me is Karen Christmas. She brings up the carrier bag that was
straddled behind her chair during the banquet portion of the ceremony. Unlike
56 percent of the participants the
preamble of her speech is not in French. After a minute in it is obvious that
she is employing the news carrier bag as some sort of visual. From inside the bag she brings out long slips
of paper with words like responsibility and character. It is ingenious. There
is an eye-fluttering scowl breezing above the foreheads of the fellow
finalists. The hummel-boy cheeky lad turn’s to his DM and says something like I
didn’t know we could use visuals, I would have brought in actual customers.
There is a smattering garland of applause after Karnes gives
her speech.
My speech is nowhere as good as Karen Christmas.
Not even in the ball
park area-code close.
Still I am next.
I stand up. I seldom look down into
my notecard. I make eye contact. The preamble to the speech my mother wrote me
I continue to thank everyone, sounding somehow as if I am an incumbent delegate
running for some sort of office. Sans visuals I talk about the character building and ethics the route has indubitably instilled.
I talk about the rapport I have made with my customers and “in these dire
times” the importance of reliability when it comes to disseminating the daily
news.
I have rehearsed my speech
something like fifty times if not more.
I don’t stumble.
I talk about France. I mention the Champs-Elysses and the
Eiffel tower and the centre Pompideau. My remedial French is transparent. It
sounds like I’m ordering escargot through a drive-in outside of West Jersey. When my speech ends
there is applause. Everyone is looking
back at me with smiles, with the exception of Karen Christmas, she is looking
down, into the carpet, not clapping at all.
Kelli Rude steps up to the microphone and states that this
concludes the speech portion of the program. She then asks for two rounds of
applause for the judges and contestants as a whole.
***
There is something about not being
able to fly that makes one feel like they are madly in love to commit to
something greater than being young and immortal.
***
“Every year there’s one like the kid who stuttered and just sort of stood there. What’s his name.” The driver, AL, looks at me, inquiring about my classmate.
“Mario.” Adam Damico answers.
We are en route to the Star in the Snow to find out which of us will be going to Paris in twelve weeks of chartered time.
Somehow the tour of the Journal Star seems cursory and none
of the finalists really care about seeing much of it. The tour is split into
two groups. There is a collective restlessness amongst the boys—walking stiff
clad in their Sunday attire for what has perhaps seemed like forever.
I think about the girl with the golden hair and how clever
her speech was. Fittingly she attends the rival Lutheran grade school here in
town.
Scott Painter had nothing. Mario was pathetic. If I were the
judge I would award it to her.
I think about the
girl with the golden hair and how clever her speech was. Pulling a Psalm 23, it
seems that God had just furnished a banquet at the table with my enemies and my
cup is overflowing with a half-in-half shot of anxiety and envy.
.
The Hummel-eyed kid who does all the little extra things to
sate his customers won’t quit asking questions to the tour guide, as if his
unerring interest in how much percent of the daily paper is recycled on a per
capita basis and how often the ink in the printing press needs to be changed
will alter the ordained outcome of his expired oration. I stand next to Adam.
There is common thread amongst each of us to congratulate fellow candidates.
The slit eyed hummel dwarf has already declared at least three different
presentations being the best. Mentally, hands down, I have Karen Christmas for
her visuals. Perhaps the kid who paper route was enough money to afford the
Yugos is also up there. Kevin’s speech was also solid although he had the
misfortune of being the rabbit based solely on the first letter of his last
name alone. D’amico’s wasn’t bad either. In the box seats of my mind I was
right up there—at least in the top three.
It’s like a Remington with one round left. I still have a
shot.
We walk
through the offices at the Journal Star. The sound of typewriter keys slinging
ink into the unfurling scroll of a fresh page. Kelli makes it a point not to take
us to the area of the docks where the Playboy centerfolds were strewn. We pass
through a room that is humid with towering rolls of papers that look like
silos. That these are the rolls that are fed into the jaws of the printing
press
The press itself is seems to take up a warehouse all of its
own. It looks like the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the name I more than likely
butchered when I gave my speech.
I stand next to D’amico as we continue to walk through the
Journal Starr. Kelli looks at the tour
guide. The last tome I was at the Journal star was a filed trip in fifth grade
and they gave us a tour and we had variegated hats and via the smudgy ingenuity of pubescent origami, made them look like Pope hats and started walking around like we were at a Vatican-themed amusement park.
Inside the conference room the
plaques are placed center in the table like a sacrificial altar pending the
spiritual ablution names scribed on them in advance. The candidates which have
already been ushered through the tour of the News Paper they ferry every day
are already seated in the swivel chairs around the reflective shackle of their
attire.
Lyle Andrews is the head of circulation. He walks
up in front of the table like he is about ready to serve communion. Each of the
finalists receive plaques with our names already scribed on them. The winner of
the Young Columbus 35 is announced last. Again we are reminded by Kelli Rude
that just being here is quite an accomplishment but there can only be one
winner to represent the Journal with 125 kids his age overseas in two and a
half months.
Each of the finalist is announced
followed by applause. I look at Karen Christmas The Hummel-eyed kid is pogoing
up and down like he needs to pee. Mario looks completely incongruous.
Karen Christmas continues to look
into the carpet. She must have left her newspaper carrier visual in the car.
There are more claps after each customary plaque is presented..
The pattering of palms used to scroll the daily news resembling rain drops on
the sidewalks abutting the Champs-elysses.
There is a moment of silence.
There is one oversized plaque left facing down.
It belongs to the winner of Yong Columbus 35.
When Lyle announces the name of the winner he has trouble
pronouncing his last name, it sounds like
his palette and tongue is stuttering over a track hurtle. After trying
tour guide Kelli with an “I” intervenes and pronounces paperboy Kelly with a y last name correctly.
It doesn’t seem like they are announcing the winner.
It is the boy who appeared that he was sick whose speech was
somewhat forgettable.
His name is Kelly He know has a smile on his face and is
pumping his fist up and down like he just made a hail mary mother of god three
point shot at the buzzer.
He seems to be the only one in the room with a smile.
The kid with the altar boy haircut is the first to shake Kelly’s
hand before turning to the person next to him and inquiring aloud that he
wonder s who got second place just in case the winner here gets sick from food
poisoning or something before he goes.
A photographer appears. The nasal smirked etched into cheekbones in the black and white rectangular visage that will appear in the Journal star I will fold up and deliver tomorrow morning makes him look like he is being fellated by the camera men below the lens.
The name of the recipient has been
imprinted on the front of the winners’ plaque like a fossil. His plaque is
twice as large as everyone else’s in the room.
Kelly continues to pump his fist, he is escorted into an enjoining room with a news reporter while the rest of the Yong Columbus finalists say goodbye.
There are some driving alterations. We are all holding are
plaques. I look at Karen Christmas with her blonde hair and she exits the door.
“Here,
I’ll drive Adam home. You go with Mr Grebe.” Al says. I shake his hand and tell
him its been a pleasure.
” Once again we pass the
centerfolds on the loading dock. Mr. Grebe goes to my church. I am something
like a fourth distant cousin removed. I enter the back of Mr. Grebe’s car. His top
carrier, Kevin, who gave first sits in front.
The District Manager proceeds to
chat with his top carry, Kevin, reinforcing him about how great of a job he did
and how there is always next year. I sit in the back of the vehicle as the car,
thinking about how I vaguely remembered Kelly’s speech—how I’ve never met
anybody with a penis who went by that name. The current of pekowski colored clouds skiing past overhead
seem to correlate perfectly with the abutted banks of dirty snow.
“Do you
want me to drop you off back at Christ Lutheran or back at your place?” Mr.
Grebe inquires. It is two-thirty in the afternoon. I have spent the entire day
looking at my reflection in the side passenger windows of various cars.
“Home,” I say, in one breath.
“I want to be dropped off back at home.”
***
A tear of sunlight begins to drip
from the dirty nickel colored clouds as I anticipate what to tell my parents.
As I anticipate the incumbent failure they must surely discern as I tell them
that I will not be traveling anywhere this April. That I will remain in Peoria,
following the routine I have been following everyday for my life. That I will
be waking up as dawn squints its pastel hue into the terminal of the west
ferrying papery scrolls of ink, ferrying what people discern and nod and grouse
is the news.
By the time I get home I grapple my
tie and unravel it completely, unbuttoning the top of my white shirt so that
the stump of my neck can breathe. There is a moment of silence as I unlock the
door to the only house I have ever known, the snow outside, still banked
heavily along the earth in little mountain ranges, I swallow and feel an almost
overwhelming urge of failure looming over my head. Like I have failed. Like I
some how failed to achieve what was expected of me. I think of Kelly’s face,
his knuckles curved into a finger-shaped gavel as he pumps it up and down when
the guy from the journal star said and the winner is and then had trouble
pronouncing his last name. Out of the five possible winners I mentally
tabulated in my head, his name was no where near the finalist podium.
I don’t feel like talking to anyone.
I don’t feel like telling them that I struck out. I don’t feel like telling
them that the carrier who won seriously sounded as if he had a malodorous nasal
drip and was taking a non-alcoholic hot toady to bring his fever down. I just
want to be alone, in my room, by myself, occasionally looking out of my bedroom
window at the dirty snow in the back yard and the aluminum ribs and metallic
rungs of the swing set dad planted into our backyard more than a decade ago. I
just want to be alone, trying not to look at the HELLO PARIS sign Dad’s fourth
graders designed for me, wishing me luck, alone, trying not to think about the essay
my youngest sister Jenn wrote about her older brother in her third grade class.
Mom has been fasting and praying all
day. The entire family seemed excited—
I want to somehow convey to them
how alone I felt up in front of the microphone, shuffling the notes to my
speech like a black jack dealer whose patron has just requested an additional
hit. I want to tell them how foolish I felt my speech fraught with key signatures of gratitude and
thanksgiving sounded.
Years later I will learn that there
are well-groom coifed boys on the north side of town who are accustomed to
family ski outings and watching the sprinkle of neon tears splattered across
the umbrella of night on the fourth of July on their parents yachts—boys who
will find new convertibles in their drive-way when the dawn screeches the
manicured lawn on the genesis of their sixteenth year on this planet we share.
Even good boys, who don’t smoke and
drink and who love their variation of God.
Boys who don’t have to worry about
waking up at four-thirty in the morning on winter days. Boys who will have
internships with their fathers firm.
Rich boys who have been holding the
slightly Young Columbus plaque their entire life simply by being born in the right area code.
Boys who will get a trip to Europe
simply as a fifteenth birthday present. Boys who will marry the girl of your
dreams simply by asking for her hand.
I’m not one of those boys.
Outside I hear the muffled gags of
my father’s late-70’soldsmobile pulling up.My father, parking the car on the
street because we don’t have a driveway, my father with his curly hair and
loving smirk that aches with kindness and generosity and a love for his Jesus.
My father who doesn’t curse who is benevolent and puts other people’s wants
ahead of his own.
But in a way I just want to be by
myself. I look at the mirror that rises above the horizon of the dining room
buffet, the mirror, where, if you are seated on the opposite side of the table,
it is possible to watch yourself masticate and swallow during dinner. There is
a permeating silence seemingly aching through the mahogany pillars and wood of
the entire house. A late January hushed reticent. A stillness. A pain—a
curiosity and a wonder about where everything in life is headed. I think about
the Eiffel tower, about the arc de triumphe—about the museum and the sights
that I felt was to be steered into my immediate vision this pending spring. I
look at the phone and think about the Jassman, holding the phone up to his
earlobe, calling his parents to tell them the news. I mull over the wallowing
disappointment I have somehow become to those on my route who have encouraged
me and to the letters of recommendation I received weeks before. I think about
the fourth grade essay my sister Jenn composed two weeks ago for an in class
assignment where she said she is proud of her brother and hopes that he wins
the contest to France, written in a very
Phobe Caulfield like parlance.
I look out and see that no cars are
in front of my house. What I mistook for my father’s vehicle was a snow-plower
ruffling past.
I look at the paper from the
morning. I think about how Kelly was friends with the county winner whose name
is also David. He also runs track and
cross- country and is a straight-A student. He also serves his jesus. He has a
twin.
I try not to think about everything the duet is planning.
About the itinerary and the places they are discussing that they would liole to
see. I try not to look at the thoroughly shuffled notecards and the sign that
my father student’s made me and the fact that it seems like somehow I have left
them all down. I try not to think about how everyone will ask me what happen
and how come I didn’t seed higher and
about the essay my sister wrote in her fourth grade class about how she is
excited at the possibility that her older brother might be granted the
opportunity of a lifetime to go see France.
I try not to think about the black haired girls from the
north side of Chicago hustling through the reflective linoleum of O’hare en route
to France in the beginning of Home Alone.
I try not to think about the L’ouvere or the Arc de Triumph
or the Eiffel Tower.
I think about how Kelly sounded congested and how he looked
like he was talking about the taking the proper precautions to thwart the
pending flu-virus in a vix cough drop commercial.
I am in seventh grade and have had a nocturnal emission only
once not knowing what it was, falling
asleep on my living room coach last summer, dreaming about entering the floury
torso of my baby sitter on the bench she taught me piano chords, drilling the
center midriff of my entire anatomy into her, waking up exploding. Aching,
yearning, a spilled jam dripping down the off-drywall white interior of my
thighs, wondering what I did. Wondering what I feel this way. Going back to my
bedroom and kneeling as a shepherd in a nativity scene and inexplicably asking
the only deity I have ever known for some sort of forgiveness. Wondering what
happen. Wondering what my body, after twelve elliptical jaunts around the bulb
of the sin, wondering what I did . Removing the band of my underwear like an
upsidedown helmet and placing them in a Thompsons garbage bag that my mother
has saved to gather the accumulated recycling and depositing the undergarments
and going out back behind the garage and, after swiping my chin shoulder from
shoulder, depositing the bag.
Both Kelly and David are four years older. We will ever be
in high school at the same time.
I take down the picture of the eiffle tower that dad has his
fourth graders draw for me with the words HELLO PARIS fonted on the top like a
steeple bannered Journal star headline. I take the story that my youngest
sister Jenny wrote for her third grade class about her older brother and how he
hopes to go to Paris and place it in the center. I keep thinking about Kelly
calling his friend of my same name and discussing the details about there trip.
It is cold outside. It is always cold.
I turn on BET and wait for my parents to arrive home. On the television Mariah Carey is chortling on about Someday.
I refuse to sing along
I turn on BET and wait for my parents to arrive home. On the television Mariah Carey is chortling on about Someday.
I refuse to sing along
Later that night, after I have imparted the news to my parents, after dad sat me down on the lip of my bed informing me to look at this as a positive experience, I can hear one of my siblings ask my
mother why I lost.
“Because I guess God just didn’t want him to win.” Mom
says. Dad responds by saying that it
just wasn’t his time yet.
That his time is coming.
That I guess his time is as yet to come.
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