The Canals of Mars: A Memoir

Look Both Ways

T he next spring, a boy named Jimmy Scharf dropped a pop-uploftedinaneasyarcbetweenfirstandsecondbase during a recess softball game. “Butterfingers,” Charles Trout burbled, happy to be standing safely on first base instead of trudging back toward teammates who were anxiously listening, down two runs, for the bell that would say they’d lost. CharlesTroutdidn’tsayanythingelse,butJimmyScharfpicked up the ball, got a running start, and threw it as hard as he could, fromtenfeetaway,atCharlesTrout,slamminghiminthestomach. NotoneofusaskedCharlesTroutifhewasOKorbentdownto help him as he sat in the infield between home plate and first base. Jimmy Scharf had started running, and we all chased him—twelve other sixth-grade boys trying to make up the fifty-foot head start he had. Jimmy Scharf wasn’t the fastest runner, but he had the endurance of the truly frightened. All twelve of us fanned out like cavalry, but he wasn’t slowing down for the pain in the side or the struggle for breath, and Jimmy Scharf reached the woods beyond center field and darted among the trees like he’d been raised by wolves. Pretty soon our posse trickled out into the sunshine and walked back toward Charles Trout, who was up and sitting on the bench near the backstop. We were late for class, and Charles Trout was waiting for us so wecouldallwalkintogether,thirteenboysfilinginwithoutJimmy Scharf.WesatatourdeskswhileMrs.Sowersaskedforexplanations. When nobody volunteered a word, she started in with moralizing and judgment, and we were safe in collective guilt. Until we heard, from a girl in the back, that Jimmy Scharf was sitting on the railroad tracks that ran along the highway by the school. All of the girls, the two boys who didn’t play softball, and the teacher went to the window; the rest of us sat at our desks. We were finished with Jimmy Scharf. If he let himself be run over by a train, it didn’t have anything to do with us. Charles Trout wasn’t hurt; we weren’t chasing him anymore—yet there he was trying to Look Both Ways 40 ■ b e g i n n i n g s make the story a morality tale, creating a lie. The truth was that none of us, not even Charles Trout, cared anymore. We’d reacted; he’d seen us react. Anything else was fabricated. Eventually, without any of us getting out of our desks, Jimmy Scharf came back to class. It was two days later, but we knew he’d gotten off the tracks as soon as he heard the whistle that meant the train was a half mile away. He’d been standing on the other side of the crossing after the train had passed, Mrs. Sowers facing him across the emptied double set of tracks. He just sat down two rows from me and got out his spelling book. Twice a week, first thing after the Lord’s Prayer, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and the Pledge of Allegiance, we copied twenty words. Jimmy Scharf knew the routine. Jimmy Scharf took his turn at bat at recess. He caught a fly ball that Charles Trout lofted into right field, and he moved to Indiana three months later, six years before we graduated from high school and twelve years before I was told that Charles Trout was dead, with no other details. But by that time neither one of them was somebody I knew, and all I could say, when I heard about Charles Trout, was “Oh,” and “Christ,” and “Damn,” like anybody would who was even half listening. That same week, my mother, after the last PTA meeting she would ever attend, announced, “Mr. Bell has cancer of the spine.” In six weeks I would be finishedwithsixthgradeandmoveontojuniorhighschool,wheremothersbegan to specialize, becoming band boosters, football fanatics, or cheerleader chums. Mr. Bell was the music teacher. He had a raspy voice and used a small, round tuner he blew into to get us searching for the correct pitch, twice a week when he visited our room while Mrs. Sowers disappeared for forty minutes. We sang “Dixie” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “The Marine CorpsHymn”fromthestapledbookfullofupliftingsongswestoredinourdesks. Mr. Bell told us we were all blessed to be born under a fortunate flag. For our first music exam in October, he’d listened to us sing, one by one, “The Star-Spangled Banner” from memory, placing us exactly under the flag for our performances. There was more to it than moving our mouths, he’d explained, showing us the...