Authors: Peter Hedges
So Jerry Magill carefully set the moon cake in a box, taped it shut, then wrapped it in a white sack.
On the drive home, the cake box sat in Scotty’s lap. He wanted to open it but he knew better than to ask. He had to wait.
Scotty put his hand on the stick shift so that when Joan needed to change gears, her hand would wrap around his and they would shift together.
In the distance, east of town, lightning flashed.
“Let’s go down Buffalo Road!” Scotty shouted.
Buffalo Road was an unpaved back road that had as its highlight a bump. Whenever Joan sped over the bump at full speed, Scotty would lift off his seat several inches.
“Go fast, Mom.”
“Not today.”
“Pretty please,” Scotty begged. He knew she was the only mother who would speed over the bump on Buffalo Road.
“Honey,” Joan said, “I have to take it slow.”
“No!” he demanded. “Take it fast!”
Joan simply pointed to the cake box resting on Scotty’s lap, the cake box that covered up two thirds of her boy.
Lightning flashed closer and a rumble of thunder followed.
Scotty looked down. “Let’s go slow,” he said.
As Joan Ocean drove slowly, winding and curving as the road dictated, Scotty studied the cake box. He wanted to open it, to prove what he suspected to be true. But he needed no proof, for he knew from his mother’s expression when she came outside, he knew from the triumphant manner in which she lit her cigarette, he knew that in his lap was the cake of his dreams.
(4)
“I don’t remember,” Maggie Ocean said, after biting into a corn muffin. “Uhm. Much about. Seven was the year I got to…”
“Maggie, chew before speaking,” the Judge said.
“Okay, uhm…”
“Swallow.”
They waited for Maggie.
At ten, her blond hair was shoulder length; her bangs were cut like Scotty’s, a wedge across the forehead. She had a few large freckles. Tall for her age, skinny, narrow shoulders, she was all bone and eyes.
Finished swallowing, Maggie said, “Okay! Seven was good, I think? I think it was good?”
“Is it a question, Maggie?”
“No, Daddy, it was good.”
The Judge turned to Claire, who wiped her mouth with a napkin before speaking. “Seven was a year of tremendous change. The Vietnam War accelerated, Martin Luther King gave the ‘I have a dream’ speech—”
Joan interrupted, “Honey, that was 1966.”
“Yes, but Maggie was seven for much of 1966. I was speaking for Maggie.”
“That’s correct,” the Judge said.
“I thought you meant you were seven…”
Claire smiled at her mother. “No, it would have been 1963 for me. Two weeks after Kennedy’s assassination. How could I forget that?”
“I stand corrected,” Joan said. “But let Maggie speak for Maggie, and you speak for yourself.”
Without missing a beat, Claire said, “Seven was a great year for me. Boys weren’t an issue, they were still smaller than the girls, and it was the year I began to read real books. So I remember liking seven.”
Scotty stared at Claire, who at twelve looked like her mother. She wore her hair in the same style, straight, bangs behind the ears, and her mouth had the same thick lips.
“Uhm, you know what I think?” Maggie said. “I think…” She paused as she struggled for the right words.
Tired of waiting for Maggie to finish her thought, Scotty clinked his glass with his salad fork. His family turned to him as he shouted, “Me. Me, me, me!”
And it was then that the Scotty stories began.
The Judge told about a much younger Scotty trying to revive the dead rabbit. Claire remembered when on his fourth birthday Scotty tried to direct the traffic on Ashworth Road using a plastic police whistle. Joan recounted the time Scotty came home from kindergarten, packed a suitcase, and ran away. Later, when he was returned home, Joan opened the suitcase to find one side filled with his favorite toys. On the other side—and this was the detail that got them all to laughing—he’d packed only one thing: a large photograph of himself.
(5)
Their favorite Scotty story had taken place the previous February, when Scotty, a first grader, stepped outside during a sleet
storm. His two sisters watched from the living room picture window. Bundled up in his winter jacket, a tasseled stocking cap, and his wool mittens, Scotty leaned over and licked the mailbox. His wet tongue fused with the cold metal. He could not move.
Claire and Maggie knew right away they hadn’t thought it through, for they had dared him, and if he didn’t get loose before their parents returned home, they would be blamed.
In moments the sisters were outside. Claire tried to uproot the mailbox. As she pulled at the wooden base, grunting and sputtering, she explained her thinking: “If we can get the box inside, his tongue will thaw.” But even with Maggie helping, the mailbox was not to be moved. The previous summer the mailbox base had been set in concrete.
While the girls shouted frantically, Scotty struggled to be understood. “It’s cold” is what he tried to say. But with his tongue stuck, it sounded like “ooosss koohhhd.”
Joan and the Judge had gone to a Sunday brunch with friends. They would be home shortly, in good spirits probably, unless of course they saw their boy frozen to the mailbox.
So Claire and Maggie had no choice. They each grabbed a shoulder and hooked under an elbow and yanked suddenly without warning. Scotty brought his hands quickly to his mouth. All three stood quietly staring at the miniature pink circle of flesh still stuck on the mailbox.
“It looks like a little pizza,” said Maggie without thinking.
As Scotty’s eyes filled and his skin flushed bright red, he began to jump about in the slush. He fell on his knees in a remaining patch of snow.
Later, while wrapped in blankets, Scotty lay on the kitchen floor, his hand crammed in his mouth squeezing the tongue.
He breathed in short, quick spurts, and didn’t move. A steady stream of tears ran down his face.
Claire checked the cabinet that contained medicines and Band-Aids. She removed a medicine bottle and said, “Mom uses this on cuts.”
Maggie said, “Let’s try it.”
So they propped Scotty up.
Claire opened the medicine called tincture of Merthiolate. It came in a dropper. Its smell brought with it the memory of every bike crash and knee scrape. It would leave an orange stain but it would sterilize. And Claire thought it was important to sterilize.
But when she dropped the Merthiolate onto Scotty’s outstretched tongue, he jerked back, stood up, and began to slap at his mouth. He ran around the house. His face turned purple and he finally dropped to the floor and thrashed about wildly.
As Maggie begged him to calm down—“PLEASE, PLEASE”—Claire knew she had no choice. She dialed the operator.
***
When the Judge turned his Dodge Dart at the bottom of the street, he was the first to see the flashing lights. Then Joan noticed and knew immediately who was hurt. “Scotty,” she said.
Two paramedics were loading him into the ambulance as the Ocean car pulled into the driveway. Claire and Maggie began to cry the minute they saw the car. The girls tried to explain, they apologized, in desperation they lied and said it was Scotty’s idea; Claire finished the explanation by recalling a
TV show where the kid didn’t get stuck. Even TV was to blame.
The Judge told everyone to calm down. “The body knows how to heal,” he said. “The body knows best and we’ve got to get out of its way.”
Joan rode in the ambulance while the Judge stayed home. She kept her eyes on Scotty, who stared back at her. The ambulance worker had wrapped Scotty’s tongue with gauze. Joan said sweetly, “This is one time you can stick it out and not get in trouble.”
***
Later that day, after dressing in a parka and matching scarf, the Judge stepped outside. It was time for him to do his part. Since the incident, the weather hadn’t cooperated. The sleet turned to a hard falling snow that had begun to blanket car windshields and sidewalks and the street. The Judge found the bad weather fitting. It felt Shakespearean, Greek.
Brushing away the accumulated snow with his gloved hand, the Judge stared at the mailbox, studying for a moment the sliver of Scotty’s tongue. Then he prayed without kneeling (for his knees would get wet), but he prayed all the same: Please make this the deepest pain my boy will ever feel.
Back inside the house, the Judge boiled water. Using his gloves as potholders, he carried the pan out the front door and poured the hot water over the mailbox. Steam rose. He waited a moment and then using the pancake spatula, he scraped the mailbox clean.
The girls had gone to their rooms where they waited for news of their brother.
At the hospital, Scotty lay on a stretcher. As an overhead light blurred his eyesight, as a nurse with several tiny black hairs
on her chin poked around in his mouth, as the intercom called for a certain doctor to go to a certain room and another doctor to go to another room, Scotty made a gesture that no one saw. He wanted his mother.
Joan had gone to the pay phone outside of the emergency room. Digging around the bottom of her purse, she found a nickel, put it in the coin slot, and dialed.
“Judge Ocean speaking.”
Joan said, her voice shaky, “The doctors want to keep Scotty a little longer. It’s more procedural than anything.”
“Oh,” the Judge said. It was silent on the other end. Neither of them knew what to say. Then the Judge spoke: “I disposed of the tongue.”
There was another uncomfortable silence. Then Joan said, “Would you like to say something to Scotty?”
The Judge said, “No.” He thought it was better for Scotty to rest. But before hanging up, the Judge said, “Tell him
Bonanza
is on tonight.”
The Judge wrote the girls’ orders down on a napkin and went to McDonald’s. He didn’t cook, and the girls loved McDonald’s, and it would be his way to help begin the healing. For in the Ocean household, when one child hurt, everyone suffered in their own way.
It was during
Bonanza
, however, that the Judge felt a rush of regret. After all, Scotty’s tongue had been torn up, not his ears—Scotty could hear. The Judge, angry at himself, wished he had said something to Scotty.
During a commercial he dialed the hospital and the operator put the call through to Scotty’s room.
“Let me talk to Scotty.”
“You can’t,” Joan said.
“Please let me talk to him.”
“He’s asleep now.”
“Oh,” the Judge said. “Damn.” The Judge paused. “When Scotty wakes up, tell him
Bonanza
wasn’t much this week. Tell him he didn’t miss a thing.”
After hanging up, the Judge hurried back to the television. It was the best
Bonanza
episode he could remember—the best one in years.
***
When word spread the following day at Clover Hills Elementary, a pack of boys—third and fourth graders mainly—made a pilgrimage after school. They sent Scotty’s best friends, Dan Burkhett and Jimmy Lamson, ahead. The boys reported back that the mailbox had no tongue on it. This news noted, the gang of boys scattered and headed to their respective homes, disappointed.
***
Even though his doctor said he could resume talking immediately, Scotty said nothing for days. The only time he opened his mouth was to insert the straw used to drink his vitamin milk shakes. For the time being all his meals were to be liquid.
Scotty’s first grade teacher, Mrs. Marilyn Sands, felt sorry for Scotty and only asked him yes or no questions. And even though he frequently gave the wrong answer, he was at least nodding and shaking—he was trying.
His classmates left him alone. They knew he had suffered in unthinkable ways, and that one day they, too, might lose a portion of their tongue on a mailbox.
That Wednesday, however, Mary Beth Swift came to school with her arm in a sling. She had broken her wrist the
day before while roller-skating. Sympathies quickly switched to Mary Beth, who offered her classmates a choice of different-colored markers with which to sign her plaster cast.
On Thursday morning when Joan woke Scotty, he made a face like he didn’t feel well. “Then you’d better stay home,” she said.
She worked for his trust. Gaining it, she thought, he would confide in her—he would eventually speak. So she took him on secret trips. They drove all over West Glen and Windsor Heights playing the car radio loud. They drove to the liquor store and bought extra six-packs of beer. She hid them in the basement in suitcases.
That Thursday night Scotty sat silently at dinner, slurping at his liquid diet. The girls hated the constant attention he was receiving. Any kindness showed Scotty felt like a slap at them, punishment for daring him to lick the mailbox, punishment for being beautiful and smart and clever and popular. As the girls battled for attention, they began talking faster at dinner, fabricating stories. The meal became chaos.
The Judge said dinner was over and that the next night there would be a constructive discussion about the future. He asked his children to think about what they wanted to be when they grew up. He excused the girls, who began to clear the table.
That Friday, Scotty went with his mother to her studio. He watched her squeeze out the oil paints. He liked watching her mix colors, the big thick globs of paint stirred into every color imaginable. Joan set him up with a miniature easel and several containers of finger paints. When she finished a painting, Scotty hurried to finish one, too. They hung their work side by side. She explained why his paintings were brilliant. “The color,” she would say. “The feeling underneath.”
That afternoon, while Joan talked on the phone, Scotty put his nose up to her palette of oil paints and inhaled deeply. He loved the smell so he breathed in several times fast. He grew dizzy. He danced a bit. He thought sentences but said nothing. This was the closest he’d come to saying words.
At dinner the Judge asked his children the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Maggie said a model. Claire had many goals, numerous interests. Joan said it would take three lifetimes to do all that Claire wanted.
Then the Judge spoke again: “And you know what?”