Regular Guy (2 page)

T
he only normal thing about Robert Smith is his name. Everything else about the guy is off. In kindergarten he was the kid who ate paste and didn't talk. In first grade he brought in his dead parakeet for show-and-tell. His pants are always too short, he's got major cowlicks, he picks his nose, talks to himself constantly, and on top of all of that, he smells fishy. Over the years he's managed to distinguish himself as the weirdest, craziest, most unappealing character in the whole class. His name never seemed to fit him, so we dubbed him Bob-o early on. Even the teachers call him Bob-o. And this was the guy who shared my birthday.

“He was the only July birthday in the whole bunch other than me,” I told Buzz as we took the shortcut through the field and headed for my house.

“Was it the fourteenth?” Buzz asked.

I nodded.

“Now, don't panic or anything. We could still be barking up the wrong tree. Just because he was born on July fourteenth doesn't mean he was born in the same hospital and that you and Bob-o were switched at birth. Maybe he moved here from some other place.”

“Or some other planet,” I suggested.

“We've got to do a little more digging.”

My mother was out shopping, but she'd left a note saying there were cookies in the cookie jar and some kind of punch she'd whipped up in the fridge. The punch was a strange-looking brown mixture with a thick skin on top, so I poured us a couple of glasses of milk. We grabbed some cookies and went up to my room.

“What hospital were you born in, anyway?” Buzz asked.

“Saint Matthew's,” I answered.

“Gimme the phone,” said Buzz.

I handed him the portable and he punched in three numbers.

“Yes, can I please have the number of Bob-o, I mean
Robert
, Smith?” he said into the receiver.

I grabbed the phone away from him and turned it off.

“He's not listed himself, pea-brain. The number's probably under his father's name.”

“Oh, right. What's his father's name?”

“Like I know,” I said.

“Like maybe you
should
know considering the gentleman might be your own flesh and blood, weasel-brain.”

I pulled the Cedar Springs Middle School directory off the shelf and looked up Bob-o's number. His parents were listed as John and Marie Smith, on North Maple Street. I handed the book to Buzz and watched as he dialed.

“Hello, is this Mrs. Smith?” he said in a phony deep voice. “Wonderful, well this is Mr.—” he looked around the room for inspiration until his eyes settled on my bulletin board—“uh, Mr. Pushpin, I'm calling from Saint Matthew's hospital…. uh huh…. We're updating our files here at Saint Matt's, and we just need to double-check a couple of things with you, okay?…Great, Mrs. Smith. According to our records you gave birth to a son here on July 14, 1986, is that correct?…uh huh…Robert Louis Smith…uh huh, I see.” Buzz rolled his eyes at me and gave a thumbs-up sign. “And during the time you were in our hospital was your baby ever out of your sight, say, wrapped up in a little blue blanket in the nursery with a lot of other boy babies that looked
exactly
like him? Huh, what? Pushpin, Mr. Pushpin, whoops, sorry, um, uh—” Buzz grabbed a pencil and began tapping on the receiver with it. “I'm afraid I can't hear you, Mrs. Smith! I'm sorry, but we seem to have a bad connection here! I,
I really have to run now! Thank you
so
much, bye-bye now!” Buzz hung up quickly.

“
Mr. Pushpin?
” I said.

“It did the trick, didn't it? You and Bob-o were definitely born in the same place, Guy.”

“Did she answer the part about taking her eyes off the baby?” I asked.

“No, that's when she got suspicious and I had to hang up.”

We sat there in silence for a minute looking at each other. Could it be true? Was I really Bob-o and Bob-o was actually me?

“I need some air,” I said.

“Yeah, let's go to the fort.”

We pulled on our jackets and left.

B
uzz and I built the fort the first summer after we met. We were both eight then, and our carpentry skills were not exactly well honed, but it had held up remarkably well. We'd used scraps of plywood from under his porch, plus a bunch of carpet samples and shingles that had been lying around in my basement. My father had also given us a pile of old records he didn't want anymore, so we nailed those up all over the place too. Over the years it had developed a coating of green moss and a very distinctive odor, but it was a home away from home for both of us. We'd added various comfort features along the way, a couple of beat-up chairs, an orange
crate for a table, and a busted TV that we kept in the corner because we both thought it made it feel more homey. Sometimes we slept out in the fort, but mostly we went there for a few hours at a time to talk, or pout, or blow off steam, depending on what was going on with us.

“So, what are you going to do now?” Buzz asked me once we were sitting in the fort with our feet up on the table.

“Man, it reeks in here, doesn't it?” I said, avoiding the question.

“Smells like feet,” Buzz said.

“Yours, maybe.”

Buzz looked at me.

“Okay, so let me rephrase the question, Guy Wire: What are you going to do after you finish insulting my feet?”

“I don't know,” I said, staring at the blank screen on the old TV. “I just don't know.”

“Well, I know what I'd do if I was you,” Buzz said. “I'd go take a look at Mr. and Mrs. Smith and see if they looked like me.”

“Yeah, I guess I could do that.”

“Want me to go with you?” Buzz asked.

“Yeah, but not today. I need some time to let it all sink in, you know?”

“Sure. We can go tomorrow if you want. It's Saturday, so they might be out in their yard raking leaves or something.”

“Okay. Let's meet on North Maple at ten.”

“You want me to bring my binoculars?”

“Whatever.”

 

I didn't sleep well that night. I tossed around for hours and when I finally did drift off, I had a weird dream about trying to comb my hair in the bathroom and not being able to see my reflection in the mirror. I woke up in a sweat and just lay in my bed until it was almost time to go meet Buzz.

“Hey, sleepyhead!” my mother called out to me from her workroom when she heard me pouring a bowl of cereal in the kitchen.

“Hey,” I called back.

“Come see what your clever old mom's been up to out here, sweetie. You're going to
love
it.”

I carried my bowl of granola out to her room, and what I saw made me furious. There on her workbench was my old baseball-card collection. She'd taken the cards out of the little plastic sleeves and was in the process of gluing them onto a lamp shade.

“Won't this be adorable in your room, Guy?”

She was just starting to squeeze glue onto my Reggie Jackson. I'd spent weeks convincing Buzz to trade that card to me. I snatched it out of my mother's hand and fought back the tears that had sprung up in my eyes.

“Did it ever occur to you, Mom, to ask before you go destroying my private property?” I said through clenched teeth.

She looked genuinely surprised.

“I'm not destroying them, honey, I'm preserving them forever. As art.”

“Baseball cards aren't
art
, Mom. They're
baseball
cards. You preserve them by keeping them in albums, which is what I was doing until you went and messed everything up. I want my cards in an album, not on a lamp shade.”

“But this way you can see them more—”

“If I want to see them I open up my album and look at them just like a regular person!” I yelled. “But you wouldn't understand that, would you? You don't have any idea what
regular
is, do you? I can't take this anymore. This time you've gone too far!”

“Boy, somebody got up on the wrong side of the bed,” my father said from the doorway.

“Wrong side of the
bed?
Try
wrong
side of the
wrong
bed in the
wrong
house in the
wrong family!
” I shouted as I pushed past my father and ran out of the house.

I grabbed my bike out of the garage, skidded down the driveway, and rode off in a fury toward North Maple.

B
uzz wasn't there yet. I parked my bike on the corner and sat down on the curb to wait. Lawn mowers were buzzing, and I could hear the high pitched squeal of one of those weed choppers going nearby. It was a family block, lots of kids out on tricycles and a basketball hoop in almost every driveway. A real normal street.

The Smiths lived at 2120 North Maple, which I figured was probably the last house on the corner on the left-hand side. I was too far away to tell whether they were out in the yard, but I wanted to wait for Buzz before I moved in for a closer look. Just then he pedaled up to me and jumped off while his bike
was still moving. He had his binoculars hanging around his neck.

“Sorry I'm late,” he panted.

“You're not. I was early,” I said.

“Did you see anything yet?”

“Nope. Their house is down the block on the left. I think it's the white one with the green fence in front.”

“So, how do you want to do this?” Buzz asked.

“Well, maybe we should start by riding by and seeing if anybody's outside.”

“Good plan.”

We pedaled down the block trying to look like we were minding our own business. When we got to the white house with the green fence we were both surprised to see Bob-o out in front on his hands and knees messing with a big pile of wet gray stuff. We kept going until we'd rounded the corner and were out of Bob-o's sight.

“What the heck was he doing?” I asked.

“Maybe he's building a spacecraft to carry
him back to his people.”

“I think there's a good chance ‘his people' might be hanging out at my house decorating lamp shades,” I said. “In which case all he'll need is a bike.”

“Did you see Mr. and Mrs. Smith anywhere?” Buzz asked.

“I think I might have heard the mower going in the backyard, but I didn't see anybody.”

“Let's go by there again.”

“What if Bob-o notices?” I said.

“When has Bob-o ever taken an interest in anything other than getting his knuckles up his nose?” Buzz said with disgust.

“Well, just to be safe why don't we cut over a block and check it out from the back,” I suggested.

We bypassed North Maple and rode over to Sycamore. I could see the top of the Smiths' house through a bunch of trees. Buzz and I left our bikes on the sidewalk and pushed our way through some shrubs to the
edge of Bob-o's backyard. There was Mr. Smith, pushing the mower, and standing on the steps watering a hanging plant was Bob-o's mother. We crouched down and watched.

“Want the binoculars?” Buzz whispered in my ear.

“We're practically on top of them already. I don't want to look at their earwax, pith-brain, just shut up,” I said, my eyes glued to the two people who might actually be my parents.

“Don't be such a turkey,” Buzz said, and punched me in the arm.

“Ow!” It didn't hurt that much, but it startled me because I was completely engrossed in scrutinizing the Smiths.

“This is not my idea of a fun way to spend a Saturday morning, you know,” Buzz muttered. His feelings were clearly hurt, but I couldn't be bothered with that right now. “I could have gone fishing,” he grumbled.

“Shut up, will you,” I hissed at him.

“Bite me,” Buzz said, and he started to stand up to leave.

At the same moment Buzz stood up, I decided maybe the binoculars might not be such a bad idea, and I reached over to take them. My hand got tangled in the strap and the two of us bumped heads. Buzz lost his balance, and we both tumbled out of the bushes right into the Smiths' backyard.

“Hey, what's going on here?” yelled Mr. Smith as he headed across the yard to where Buzz and I lay sprawled, gasping.

“Think fast,” I whispered.

“Uh, hello. We're looking for Bob-o, uh, Robert. Is this his house?”

“It's okay, Marie,” Mr. Smith shouted to his wife, who was standing on the steps with her watering can poised in midair. “They're friends of Bobby's.”

Buzz and I stood up and brushed ourselves off.

“Yeah, we're friends of Bobby's,” Buzz said, nodding a little too enthusiastically.

“I think he's around in the front,” said Mr. Smith. “Why don't you go look for him there. I'm sure he'll be delighted to see you two.”

Buzz and I headed around the side of the house. As we passed Mrs. Smith she smiled and said, “You're here to see Bobby? Well, isn't that just lovely.”

As soon we were out of earshot Buzz said to me, “Yeah, Guy, isn't this just
lovely?
”

B
ob-o was still busy with the pile of wet gray stuff on his front lawn. In fact, he was so engrossed that he didn't notice us even though we were practically on top of him. We stood and watched him for a minute, and then Buzz cleared his throat.

“Ahem.” Bob-o didn't look up. “A
hem
. Hey there, Bob-o, what are you up to, anyway?”

Bob-o looked up. His curly red hair was matted with the gray stuff, and his glasses were so gunked up that he had to squint to make out who was talking to him. He looked at us for a minute with his mouth hanging
open and then, without a word, he plunged his hands back into the wet mass and began squeezing it between his fingers. Buzz looked at me and shrugged.

“No point in hanging around here, Guy. He's not talking, and he's disgusting to look at all covered with that glop. I say we am-scray.”

“Wait a second, will you?” I said. I looked around. Under a nearby bush I saw a large cardboard box.
BUILD YOUR OWN VOLCANO
! it said in bright red letters across the front. “So, you're building a volcano, huh, Bob-o?”

Bob-o muttered something unintelligible under his breath and kept mushing his hands around in the glop.

“Well, I like volcanoes as much as the next guy, I guess. Buzz likes 'em too, don't you, Buzzard?”

“Yeah, I like volcanoes. But that looks more like rotten oatmeal than hot lava,” said Buzz.

“I don't think that's the lava, Buzz. I think he's trying to build the mountain,” I said.

“Looks more like a swamp than a mountain,” Buzz offered.

“Too much water,” said Bob-o under his breath.

“So, why don't you add more plaster?” I asked.

Bob-o didn't answer me, but he picked up the empty plaster bag and shook it fruitlessly over the soggy mess.

“How about adding dirt?” suggested Buzz.

Bob-o looked at me and tried to wipe his glasses on his sleeve without taking them off. He ended up making them even dirtier than they'd been before.

“Gimme that bucket,” said Buzz, taking charge.

He ran over and scooped a pailful of black dirt out of Mrs. Smith's flower bed and brought it over to Bob-o, who dumped it into the mix and began to work it in with his hands.

“Needs more,” Buzz said, and handed the bucket to me.

It took four more loads of dirt to attain the perfect consistency to build the mountain. By that time Buzz and I were up to our elbows squishing and squeezing the disgusting but irresistible stuff right along with Bob-o. Despite the fact that Bob-o didn't say a word and there was a pronounced smell of fish coming from his direction, we worked hard together for an hour, ending up with an impressive mottled mound that rose about three feet off the ground. It was not as perfectly formed as the mountain in the picture on the box, but we all agreed that the dirt made it look far more authentic. When we'd packed on the last handful of dirty plaster, Bob-o inserted a long plastic tube into the center of the mound and smoothed over the edges so it didn't show at the top.

“Mount Bob-o!” declared Buzz as we proudly surveyed our handiwork. “When will she blow?”

“It says here that it's supposed to dry for
three days and then you can make it erupt,” I said, reading the instructions on the back of the box.

Just then Mrs. Smith came around the side of the house.

She didn't comment on our volcano at all, but she gave us a nice big smile before going to work pulling up a large dandelion with a gardening claw.

Without a word Bob-o stood up, walked into the house, and closed the door behind him. Buzz looked at me and shrugged.

Mrs. Smith finally conquered the stubborn weed and moved across the yard in search of her next victim. Suddenly I remembered the whole reason I was there to begin with. I watched Mrs. Smith chopping away with her claw, and I took a quick inventory. Brown hair, straight as a board. Just like mine. Green eyes. Like mine. Navy-blue sweat pants and a plain white T-shirt My favorite color combination. Then I noticed she was holding the gardening claw in her left hand. I gasped.

“Are you a lefty, Mrs. Smith?” I called out to her.

“A lefty? Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I am,” she said.

“Sheesh, Guy. Just like you,” said Buzz softly.

“Yeah, just like me,” I said.

 

We rinsed off our hands with the garden hose. Bob-o never came back out. I wanted to check out Mr. Smith more closely—I thought I might have noticed a dimple in his chin that looked like mine—but he must have gone inside too. Mrs. Smith finished pulling dandelions and headed around to the back again.

“I know who you are now,” she said, looking at me with her head tipped to the side. “You're the Strang boy, aren't you?”

“Yeah, I'm Guy,” I said.

“Isn't that lovely,” she said sort of absent-mindedly as she disappeared around the corner of the house.

“Seems like a very nice lady,” said Buzz.

“Uh huh,” I said.

“I don't suppose you're in the mood for double fries and a dog,” said Buzz.

“I'm not hungry,” I said.

“I don't blame you,” said Buzz as he patted my shoulder. “I guess you noticed, she looks just like you. And the left-handed thing. Sheesh.”

We hopped on our bikes and rode in silence until we reached my corner.

“Sure you don't want a dog?” asked Buzz. “My treat.”

I shook my head, waved, and turned up the street. As I neared my house, I could not believe my eyes.