chest and his hand on the top of his head. “They’ll remember your body,” he said to me, “and then what you said. It’s pivotal to use the body.” He walked sideways or drifted backward. His hands were always in the air.
I remember his head, which bore his own self-administered haircut, a close, uneven job that made him look like someone in radical recovery, turning slowly, rolling like a machine part and clicking into place, focused right on methere high above the football field. “When you write the story of my name,” Evil Eye Allen said to me, his voice now an airy whisper, “write the story truly but with delicacy. You’re capable of that; you were there and you know me, and we’ve got to think of Janey. See what I mean?”
“I guess,” I said.
“That would be the wrong answer,” he said, folding up and realigning himself along the bench. “Leave nothing out. Put everything in the story; put all about Evil Eye and his assistant, but don’t change the names. And put in Janey Morrow’s election speech.” His hand rose into the sky as if lifted by a string. “Word for word.”
His name, of course, was not Evil Eye. His real name was Gary, and it would be great to start with something like
He was always a strange kid
, but that isn’t true. He grew up two houses down from me and we were friends from day one, that is before we went to school, and he was a regular kid, better at chess than I, worse at poker, better at baseball, as good with football, liked by his teachers, my parents, girls. By the time we entered high school, he could have gone with any girl he wanted; he was real and kind and he had something else, an actor’s magnetism and what 1 called poise.
“Poise,” he’d say. “Please. Poise is never looking at your hands. I’m a bit beyond that. I’m using my body for something I don’t even understand.”
And so he got this reputation for being different, but it was an enviable different, something we would have imitated if we could have gotten ahold of it. Sometimes it was his elegant walk, sometimes the way his head seemed to be doing different work than his body, sometimes his mouth opening as he listened or offered you a quick smile. Here I was, a teenager, trying to walk straight, not collapse over my new size-twelve feet, and keep my shirt tucked in, and walkingwith me was this person who embodied grace, a person like I’ve never seen since, who used every step he took to do two if not three things. “Why do we go up the stairs?” he said to me one day that first year at Orkney High.
“Because we have language arts in 202,” I told him, lugging my books up behind him.
“Rick. Oh, Rick. This would be the wrong answer,” he said, a phrase I knew by heart. “We are communicating.”
“Are we going up to language arts?” I asked.
“If that happens,” he said, “so be it. But we are moving upward to say something to the ages.” His right hand was clamped on the top of his head and his left under his chin, his hands free because he had given his books to me. “I’m glad you’re here to see this.” It’s what he said later that year when he went a week without closing his mouth and when he went two days, school days, without speaking. That time he told me, “You don’t need to talk. It’s a luxury. Listen to me right now; I’m enjoying this, but I don’t need to do it.”
In February of that year, a certain girl came into Evil Eye’s sights, a girl everyone else had already seen in that she was the most beautiful girl on dry land anywhere, a girl who was so popular and confident and finished, she seemed already above it all, a girl renowned for her snobbery and style, who every good soul in our school knew^ not to greet because there would be no greeting in return. She was self-contained, sealed shut with her abundant talents, and moving on a straight, graceful line through high school like a first-class car on the express rail. Her name was Janey
I remember his head, which bore his own self-administered haircut, a close, uneven job that made him look like someone in radical recovery, turning slowly, rolling like a machine part and clicking into place, focused right on methere high above the football field. “When you write the story of my name,” Evil Eye Allen said to me, his voice now an airy whisper, “write the story truly but with delicacy. You’re capable of that; you were there and you know me, and we’ve got to think of Janey. See what I mean?”
“I guess,” I said.
“That would be the wrong answer,” he said, folding up and realigning himself along the bench. “Leave nothing out. Put everything in the story; put all about Evil Eye and his assistant, but don’t change the names. And put in Janey Morrow’s election speech.” His hand rose into the sky as if lifted by a string. “Word for word.”
His name, of course, was not Evil Eye. His real name was Gary, and it would be great to start with something like
He was always a strange kid
, but that isn’t true. He grew up two houses down from me and we were friends from day one, that is before we went to school, and he was a regular kid, better at chess than I, worse at poker, better at baseball, as good with football, liked by his teachers, my parents, girls. By the time we entered high school, he could have gone with any girl he wanted; he was real and kind and he had something else, an actor’s magnetism and what 1 called poise.
“Poise,” he’d say. “Please. Poise is never looking at your hands. I’m a bit beyond that. I’m using my body for something I don’t even understand.”
And so he got this reputation for being different, but it was an enviable different, something we would have imitated if we could have gotten ahold of it. Sometimes it was his elegant walk, sometimes the way his head seemed to be doing different work than his body, sometimes his mouth opening as he listened or offered you a quick smile. Here I was, a teenager, trying to walk straight, not collapse over my new size-twelve feet, and keep my shirt tucked in, and walkingwith me was this person who embodied grace, a person like I’ve never seen since, who used every step he took to do two if not three things. “Why do we go up the stairs?” he said to me one day that first year at Orkney High.
“Because we have language arts in 202,” I told him, lugging my books up behind him.
“Rick. Oh, Rick. This would be the wrong answer,” he said, a phrase I knew by heart. “We are communicating.”
“Are we going up to language arts?” I asked.
“If that happens,” he said, “so be it. But we are moving upward to say something to the ages.” His right hand was clamped on the top of his head and his left under his chin, his hands free because he had given his books to me. “I’m glad you’re here to see this.” It’s what he said later that year when he went a week without closing his mouth and when he went two days, school days, without speaking. That time he told me, “You don’t need to talk. It’s a luxury. Listen to me right now; I’m enjoying this, but I don’t need to do it.”
In February of that year, a certain girl came into Evil Eye’s sights, a girl everyone else had already seen in that she was the most beautiful girl on dry land anywhere, a girl who was so popular and confident and finished, she seemed already above it all, a girl renowned for her snobbery and style, who every good soul in our school knew^ not to greet because there would be no greeting in return. She was self-contained, sealed shut with her abundant talents, and moving on a straight, graceful line through high school like a first-class car on the express rail. Her name was Janey
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