The Committee's Letter

There was an envelope on the desk at the front of the homeroom beside the roll book.

Mr Abernathy did not mention it. He sat down and opened the roll book and took out his pen and read the roll at the usual speed, Abrams, Bello, Castañeda, and at Hartigan the pause after the name was exactly the same as after every other name, and at the end he closed the book and put the pen away and picked up the envelope and held it out, without looking, towards the back of the room by the window.

“Hartigan.”

Theo looked at it.

“For you,” said Mr Abernathy. “It came to the office. Addressed to the school.” He held it a moment longer. “I’m told it’s not from a committee.”

Theo got up and went to the front and took it.

“Radiators are fixed,” said Mr Abernathy. “Don’t touch them. The end.”

---

It was a plain white envelope, long, cheap, the kind you buy in a packet at a chemist’s, and on the front, in capitals, in black ballpoint pressed so hard it had dented the paper:

THEO HARTIGAN THE BOY WITH THE RED BOOK ELLICOTT HIGH SCHOOL NEW WESTMINSTER

And a Santa Monica postmark, from the Thursday before.

Theo sat down at his desk by the window with it in his hands and did not open it.

“Who’s it from?” said Marcus, from the row in front, turning round.

“I don’t know.”

“Open it.”

“I’m going to,” said Theo. “Not here.”

He put it in the zipped pocket of his bag, with the folded chemistry paper, and zipped it, and did not look at Frederick.

---

At break he was not on the low wall.

Frederick looked for him. Not in the yard. Not at the bike racks. Not on the bench by the far fence where Inés sat. He found him at last on the bleachers of the playing field, at the top, at the end, where they had sat on the thirty-first of May, alone, with the envelope open on his knee and two sheets of lined paper in his hands and something else on the bleacher beside him, face down.

Frederick stopped at the bottom of the bleachers.

Theo looked down at him. His face was a colour Frederick had seen once before, on a heap on Twenty-Second Street, running.

“Come up,” said Theo.

---

The letter was two pages, lined, torn from a pad, in the same capitals as the envelope, which went uphill across the lines.

DEAR THEO.

YOU WON’T REMEMBER MY NAME BECAUSE I NEVER TOLD IT YOU. I TOLD YOU ABOUT MY DAUGHTER AND ABOUT THE HOUSE ON FOURTEENTH STREET THAT FELL DOWN WITH MY LADDER ON IT. I TOLD YOU THAT WAS FUNNY. IT WASN’T. YOU KNEW IT WASN’T AND YOU LET ME SAY IT ANYWAY.

MY NAME IS ARTURO MENDOZA. I PAINT HOUSES. I HAVE PAINTED HOUSES IN SANTA MONICA FOR THIRTY ONE YEARS.

ON THE FIELD BEHIND THE SCHOOL ON THE FRIDAY AT TWO, WHEN THE WINDOW CAME DOWN ON MY ARM, YOU TOOK YOUR SHIRT OFF AND PUT YOUR HANDS ON IT. YOU KEPT THEM THERE THIRTY EIGHT MINUTES. THE NURSE TOLD ME. SHE SAID YOU COUNTED. SHE SAID YOU COUNTED IN GERMAN.

THE DOCTORS AT THE HOSPITAL SAID IF NOBODY HAD PUT THEIR HANDS ON IT I WOULD HAVE BEEN DEAD IN TEN MINUTES. THEY SAID IT TWICE BECAUSE MY DAUGHTER DIDN’T BELIEVE IT THE FIRST TIME.

IT TOOK ME A YEAR TO FIND YOU. THE NURSE WHO CAME IN THE TRUCK TOLD ME YOUR FIRST NAME AND ABOUT THE RED BOOK. SHE DIDN’T KNOW YOUR LAST NAME. THEN IN JANUARY I SAW THE LIST IN THE PAPER. THE KING’S LIST. ALL THE NAMES FROM THAT WEEK. I READ IT FOUR TIMES. I WAS LOOKING FOR A BOY CALLED THEO. YOU WEREN’T ON IT.

THEN IN MARCH I SAW A PICTURE IN THE PAPER OF THE THING AT THE PALACE WHERE THEY GAVE THEM OUT. THERE WAS A BOY SITTING BY THE WINDOWS IN A BLUE COAT. MY DAUGHTER SAID THAT’S HIM, DAD, THAT’S THE ONE WITH THE EARS. SHE WAS RIGHT. THE PAPER SAID YOUR NAME UNDER IT. IT SAID PAGE OF HONOUR. I HAD TO LOOK IT UP.

SO YOU’RE NOT ON THE KING’S LIST. I DON’T KNOW WHY. I DON’T CARE WHY. I’M NOT A COMMITTEE. THIS IS MY LIST. IT’S GOT ONE NAME ON IT.

THANK YOU FOR MY ARM.

ARTURO MENDOZA.

P.S. MY DAUGHTER DREW YOU A PICTURE. SHE’S TWENTY-SIX. SHE SAYS IT’S A JOKE. IT ISN’T.

---

Frederick read it twice. Then he gave it back.

Theo did not take it at once. He turned over the thing on the bleacher beside him.

A photograph. Of an arm. A man’s forearm, brown, with paint on the knuckles, held out to the camera palm up, and across the inside of it, below the elbow, a long white line. Healed. Raised a little. From one side of the arm to the other. The line Theo had drawn on his own arm in the dark on the lawn of Government House with one finger, slowly.

And under the photograph, a drawing. Felt pen, on thick white paper. A boy with very large ears, much larger than Theo’s had ever been, in a T-shirt that said FORT IRWIN, kneeling on grass, with both hands on something, and above his head, in a speech bubble, EINS ZWEI DREI.

Theo looked at the drawing.

“She’s got the ears wrong,” he said, at last.

“She’s got them about right.”

“She’s got them very wrong,” said Theo. His voice did something, and he did not make it stop. “They were never that big. Not even in seventh grade.”

They sat on the top of the bleachers in the June sun with the drawing between them.

---

“I didn’t know his name,” said Theo, after a while. “I didn’t ask. On the field. I just pressed.” He looked at the photograph of the arm. “I’ve thought about him every day. Not his name. His arm. Whether it worked. Whether the band held. Whether the woman in the truck got him there.” He put his finger on the white line in the photograph. “It worked.”

“It worked.”

“Thirty-one years painting houses,” said Theo. “He said he’d been painting one on Fourteenth Street. When it fell down.” He looked out at the field. “I wonder if he’s painting again.”

“Look at his knuckles.”

Theo looked. Paint on the knuckles. White. Fresh.

He laughed. Once. Then he put the heel of his hand against his eyes and held it there, and Frederick sat beside him on the top of the bleachers and looked at the field.

---

The bell went. Neither of them moved.

“Theo.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you going to write it down and fold it in half and give it to Castellanos?”

Theo took his hand away from his eyes. He looked at the letter in his lap, and the photograph, and the drawing of a boy with enormous ears saying eins zwei drei.

“No,” said Theo.

He folded the letter, carefully, along its own folds, and put it back in the envelope with the photograph, and the drawing, and stood up, and unzipped the pocket of his bag, the one with the chemistry paper in it, and put the envelope in, beside the paper, and zipped it.

“This one’s mine,” said Theo.

He looked down at Frederick.

“It’s not an honour,” he said. “It’s not on a list. Nobody’s going to read it out in a ballroom. It’s a letter from a man about his arm.” He hitched the bag. “That’s the one thing. That’s the thing that’s mine.”

“I know.”

“I know you know,” said Theo. “That’s why I showed you.” He started down the bleachers. “Don’t tell anybody. Not even your dad.”

“Not even my dad.”

“You’ll tell your dad,” said Theo, from the bottom step, without turning round. “You tell him everything. At four.” He stopped on the grass. “Tell him, then. But tell him it’s mine.”

---

At four, at the kitchen table, he told his father.

Not the letter. He did not have it. He told him there had been one: a man in Santa Monica who painted houses, with a white line across his arm, who had made his own list with one name on it.

His father listened with his whole face.

At the end he was quiet. He looked at his own forearm, on the table, under the sleeve of the jacket. Then he looked at Frederick.

He did not take a breath first.

“Tell Theo I said well done,” said his father.

All of it. In one piece. The second time.

Frederick looked at him.

His father’s eyes were bright.

“His,” said his father, with the breath again, the old way, as though to show that he could still do it like that too, if he liked. “Not. Yours.”

“I know, Papa.”

“Good.” He pointed at the blue book by the cup. “Trains.”