On the Blue Comet by Rosemary Wells Read Free Book Online

bread. He inhaled as if for a high dive and sputtered, “‘If you can keep your head on when all around you are losing their heads and blaming . . .’” Cyril lurched through as far as “mastering your dreams and thoughts.” Then he braked on “meet up with Triumph and Disaster.”
    A curtain of silence descended on the room. I had actually been rooting for Cyril as he stumbled through the words. I couldn’t help it. He was so afraid of his father, I thought he’d piss his pants. Without realizing it, I mouthed the words along with him, trying to get him to feel a rhyming code:
master-disaster, fools
and
tools
. I did not notice that Mr. Pettishanks’s eyes were on me.
    “What are you doing, boy?” he asked me, blowing a few rings of smoke my way.
    “I’m . . . sir, I was just . . . reciting along with Cyril. I didn’t mean any harm.”
    Aunt Carmen’s eyes bored holes in me.
    “Cyril, finish the poem!” ordered his father.
    About you, doubt you; waiting
and
hating!
My lips prepared to form each syllable for Cyril to follow half a beat later. But Cyril crumbled in a panic attack. I could almost hear his heart pound across the room. He turned and sprinted to the bathroom, where we all heard him sick-up loud and clear.
    No one moved. Mr. Pettishanks tapped the ash of his cigar into a green marble ashtray with two bronze Irish setters on it. “Can
you
finish that poem, boy?” he asked me.
    Could I finish Kipling’s “If”? I carried the master copy in the pocket of my coat, encoded for memory.
If you can . . . walk with kings
intruded on my dreams.
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
came unwanted into the bathtub with me. At lunchtime, all two hundred and eighty-eight words of it were embedded in the very beans of my baked-bean sandwiches. Not only did I have to write the entire thing ten times a night; I had to listen to four other poor fools like Cyril battle through it five afternoons a week.
    I stood up — in respect for either Mr. Pettishanks or Kipling, I did not know which.
    “May I start at the beginning, sir?” I asked.
    “Go ahead, boy!” answered Mr. Pettishanks. He propped a wing-tipped foot up on the seat of a dining chair and watched me like a buzzard. His eyes strayed to Aunt Carmen. Aunt Carmen sat motionless. I suddenly knew that she was, at that moment, a woman expecting execution. Her eyes sought only mine. In her face was equal measure of hope and fear, all bottled up in her wintery blue eyes.
    In that instant I understood everything perfectly. Mr. Pettishanks wanted to know if his son’s failure was Cyril’s fault or Aunt Carmen’s fault. If Mr. Pettishanks decided it was Aunt Carmen’s fault that his son had flubbed the poem, she would be fired. If Aunt Carmen were fired by the Pettishankses, word would soon spread around the bridge tables in the River Heights Country Club that Aunt Carmen was a second-rate tutor, and she would lose all her River Heights clients. Mr. Pettishankses was not testing me. He was testing Aunt Carmen.
    I did not read from the ceiling. I did not say “meet up with.” I stood straight as a poker and looked Mr. Pettishanks in the eye. I did not stumble over
heap of all your winnings
. I gestured with my right hand as Kipling might have done, smack in the middle of the Indian jungle. The words flew from my mouth as perfect as a song. I sailed on through all the way to
    If you can fill the unforgiving minute
      With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
    Yours is the earth and everything that’s in it,
      And — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son!
    without a single hesitation.
    “Good,” said Mr. Pettishanks, drawing deeply on his cigar. “You’re a smart boy. I like smart boys. Here’s bus fare and a dime for your trouble. Go down to my bank and give the night watchman this package. Tell’m to put it in the head teller’s drawer.”
    He turned to go. Cyril had crept into the room, wiping his mouth on his shirt