Every now and then I post a new short story I’ve just completed; today is one of those days. This one is the title story of a short fiction collection that will be published and available come this spring.
WHY I ALWAYS TELL THE TRUTH
Preamble
I have never used a preamble in one of my short stories before, but I feel a need for one here. Especially because the story’s title suggests it’s about truth and honesty. And that’s actually what was intended when I began writing. It was to be a fairly short set piece, a direct, straightforward retelling of an early adolescent experience that I could use as the title story of a collection I would publish. That was the plan. But, well, you know what they say about plans…
By the second page the tale began trying to pull the reins out of my hands, but I persevered. But by page three I just gave up and went along for the ride, literally not once seeing beyond the next half dozen sentences. In fifty-five-plus years of trying to get my life shared on paper I’ve had similar experience but nothing ever even close to this one.
So, we’ll get one thing straight right from the start—I, of course, do not always tell the truth. No one does. (I’m sure that Jesus, purported Son of God, always did, but that’s another story.) I chose the name of the story in order to use it as a hoped-for ironic, clever and hopefully funny prefix to the name of this recent collection of my writings. If Why I Always Tell the Truth had been a fairly short set piece, a direct, straightforward retelling of an early adolescent experience it all would have worked out just fine. But it wasn’t. To my surprise the retelling of the Miss Bowers story dredged up for me things from my past that I didn’t see coming. So I thought I’d better warn you.
It was a hard lesson that got my attention about telling the truth, one that could have affected, quite literally, the rest of my life…and not in a good way. And it came fairly early; I was just twelve, only a few months into that wondrous and heady experience called junior high school. I’d come from seven years at Highland Elementary School, where I’d been one of the biggest, if not the biggest, kids, one of the best athletes and among the most popular. A big guppy in a little puddle as it were. Highland Elementary served the ‘Highlands’, an isolated and rural community in the East Bay Foothills of the San Francisco Bay Area but it fed into Bret Harte Junior High.
To a twelve-year old who’d spent his entire life in the back woods hills of the Highlands, Bret Harte was just about as huge, beautiful and metropolitan as you can imagine. The school sat nestled on a hilltop overlooking the sleepy little town of Hayward and beyond that the San Francisco Bay. In fact, on a clear day you could see both the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco Bay Bridge…spectacular. So this guppy moved from a small puddle of maybe 250 to 300 little kids to an ocean of well over 2,500 sophisticated, almost grown-ups, or so it seemed to me at the time.
What I remember most about my first few days at Bret Harte in the autumn of 1959 is the smell of new Levi jeans. My own and those of most of the other boys. It seemed like everybody, guys that is, got a new pair of jeans to start junior high school. I swear that closing my eyes and walking through the campus in my mind…the huge amphitheater at the rear of the property and just beyond the wood shop classroom, the Math/Science wing, the cafeteria…I can still smell the newness of those not-yet-washed new Levi’s. A smell I’ll always associate with the excitement of moving on, starting a new chapter in my life.
That’s the most striking memory of those first few days of junior high. That and all the cute girls from the seven or eight other feeder schools, who, like a single bolt of lightning, struck me deaf, dumb and mute that first day. But unquestionably what I would take away from that first year at the new school was my encounter with Miss Bowers, my seventh grade Geography teacher. And with it the lesson she taught me indirectly, about telling the truth, which as you’ll find I didn’t actually learn till some years later. And really, a lesson I’m still working on fully grasping today.
Miss Bowers was a quite tall woman, standing roughly six foot one, with broad shoulders, utterly flat chested and exceedingly rigid posture. Shoulder length, straight gray hair framed a quite long face, not of a woman but of a man who looked strikingly like the film star Boris Karloff, complete with steel gray eyes. (This was not my assessment alone; anyone who’d ever laid eyes on Miss Bowers would tell you that she was the spitting image of Karloff.) The social studies teacher wore four or five floral print dresses from September to June, always with the same severe institutional lace-up shoes.
Scouring my mind nearly sixty years later I cannot uncover a single recollection, a single thought or image, to suggest that Miss Bowers was anything but a kind woman. But very much like her navy-blue lace-ups, she was severe: unsmiling, with the cool, business-like demeanor of a college professor, never a word uttered that wasn’t necessary to the critical task at hand, which was learning what needed to be learned about the land masses and waterways of our planet. But of course, she worked with eleven and twelve-year-olds. Many teachers at all grade levels learn to win over their charges with humor. Not Miss Bowers. Nearly all teachers, some more than others, will share their personal life as another way to connect with students. Not Miss Bowers. We knew nothing about Miss Bowers except that she had zero sense of humor and a deep, almost mystical devotion to all things social studies…history, politics, current events, geography. And that fall of 1959 her sole purpose in living, the reason she breathed one breath after another, was to make sure that we thirty-two boys and girls left Bret Harte come June with the truth about world geography and nothing but the truth. So, thinking about it that way, Miss Bowers’ sole motivation was imparting truth. Which makes the lie I told her all the more hideous and, so many decades later, all the more ironic.
While I stand by my assertion that Miss Bowers was a kind woman, it was clear to me that of the thirty or so students in our class, I was one of her least favorite. Trying to remember back, I don’t believe I felt badly about discovering that because, truth is, I was a terrible student, maybe the worst in the class. Not disruptive or a smart aleck, not unkind or a bully…I just didn’t DO anything academically. Homework, quizzes, class discussion—nothing. Which brings us to a bit of background that’s crucial to understanding my story. You do NOT want to take this with a grain of salt. In fact, after reading the following paragraph, you should probably amplify its importance because, trust me, it’s at the crux of this story…the crux, really, of the story of my entire life. If I were lecturing to you, I’d suggest you pull your yellow marker out of your back pack.
My problem was reading.
I’ll call this an explanation of the “pre-existing” condition that led to my crime. My mother, Millie, was a pretty heavy drinker and smoker and partier all the while she carried me in her womb. I’m totally convinced that if the research about the impact of alcohol and nicotine on pregnant mothers and their newborns had been around when Millie became pregnant with me she’d have stayed away from both. Maybe not totally, but I’m convinced she’d have done the right thing. But word wasn’t yet out. To continue, I believe that there is adequate circumstantial evidence that the jumbled and tangled synapses I was born with can be traced back to those crazy wild parties in 1947…who knows, maybe they were still celebrating the fall of Japan and Germany. In any event, it was not until my primary grades that Millie and Bebe (my dad) began to fully grasp what they had wrought. Here’s a little run down…
I was left handed, which increased my likelihood of suffering from mental illness by 30%; I was color blind, so color blind that a school nurse told me I was off the spectrum (which, of course, I didn’t understand); I had a very serious speech impediment for which I spent years of special sessions with a therapist; I suffered from severe spatial relations disorder, a learning disability not identified until the late ‘70’s, which prevented me from reading until late in the third grade; in my thirties, I learned that I was born with Prosopagnosia, also called face blindness, which is a cognitive disorder of face perception in which the ability to recognize familiar faces is impaired, (boy could I tell you some embarrassing and painful anecdotes about that); I, of course, had Attention Deficit Disorder and now, Adult Attention Deficit Disorder, which affects every aspect of my personality and life; and finally, I suffered and suffer from CBD, (no, not the cannabis CBD). Haven’t heard of the other CBD? Well, of course you haven’t; I identified and named the problem. It stands for “Consequences Blindness Disorder”, which prevents the sufferer from successfully evaluating (or caring about, I’ve never been sure which), the likely consequences of her/his actions.
My reading problem prevented, and prevents to this day, me from reading a single word without sounding it out first, actually reading it aloud in my mind.) Hence, I was and am a painfully slow reader, slower than you could imagine. In school, right up till the end of my MA work, I was constantly behind all the other students.
“Billy Wilder, director and co-writer, Marilyn Monroe, female lead, Tony…”
“Stop, stop, would ya just stop?” I yelled into the receiver, “I’m the one who told YOU about this movie when it came out.”
“No,” said Brooksie, “I’m gonna finish, it’s for your own good. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, male leads, the great George Raft, plays a gangster, Pat O’Brien, fabled character actor as the detective and none other than Joe E. Brown who plays the Shell Oil scion. Now, you comin’ or not?”
“I can’t go, I’m not kidding. I cannot go to the movies today.”
“Why not? Just answer me that. Why the hell not? And don’t tell me your parents won’t let you, because you can talk your mom into anything. ANYTHING!” Brooksie, (Brooks), my best friend since the two of us were still in diapers and a playpen, was getting more and more frustrated by the moment.
“You remember, of course, that we have been waiting a long, long time to see this movie. Ick, Marilyn Friggin’ Monroe. MARILYN FRIGGIN’ MONROE. Marilyn biggest-bazoobas-in-Hollywood Monroe, for Christ’s sake.”
(Re: the “Ick”, as Brooks and I grew into speech, we each coincidentally or not coincidentally, I’ll never know which, developed our own unique speech impediments. (Unique, though “R’s” were clearly the common stumbling block.) And the impediments were relatively severe and landed us both in special speech therapy sessions, twice each week for three grades. As toddlers, we were told, my best friend and I even created a language (devoid of evil, hurtful ‘R’s), that only the two of us could understand. Our mothers would have to occasionally call and ask for translation help. Anyways, during that time, all the way into kindergarten, Brooks was Ooksy-Boy (Oooks for short), and I was Icky-Moe, (Ick for short.)
“I do realize that and, no, my parents aren’t the reason I can’t go. I can’t go because…”
“Yeah, yeah, go on.”
“I can’t go to the movies today because I, I. I can’t go because I have to read a book.”
“WHAT? You mean you haven’t finished your book for Miss Bowers’ book report?” Brooksie was yelling into the receiver. “You’re kidding. Right? RIGHT? It’s due Monday! It’s due the day after tomorrow!”
“My point, my damned point. Read it today and tonight and tomorrow, write the report all day Sunday and Sunday night and I’m home free for Monday morning.”
“Oh Jesus, how’s that gonna work, Ricky? How much have you read? Which book is it you’re reading?” The anger in his voice had been replaced by genuine concern. We’d covered for one another our entire lives, helped one another through jams, and a missed homework assignment was no different.
“Well,” I stammered, “I haven’t gotten too far.”
“How far?”
“I, um, haven’t started reading it yet. Well, actually, I’m having trouble, um…well…having trouble picking out the one I’m gonna read. See, that’s the most important part. It’s like, you know, obviously I’m not gonna read the whole thing, no matter which one I choose, so I gotta pick the one that’s easiest to skim and easiest to write about without actually reading it.”
“Okay then, yer fucked. That’s all. I just don’t see how you could have…”
“Well, hell, don’t be sayin’ that.” I interrupted him. “That’s not exactly what one best friend would be saying to another best friend.”
“Okay, Ricky, I’ll say whatever you wanna hear, but I don’t see how that’s gonna help. What you need is a miracle at this point. By tomorrow afternoon you need somebody to walk right up to you and jam a 250-page book about a river right up through your nose and into your head and then stir it all around in your brain. If you figure out how to make that happen, the rest is a cinch. We both know you could write the report, and no doubt get an A on it, but you gotta have something to write…something to write about a river. You need a river dude, that’s what you need. A river.”
“Hm,” I said into the receiver after a long silence, “or I need a book that’s already in my brain. That’s exactly what I need. I need a river in my brain. One that’s always been there.”
Brooksie was silent, and I was too. An instant before he could demand what the hell I’d meant by the ‘river in my brain’ thing…
“Well, shit, if we wanna see the previews before the movie starts, we’d better git a move on. You dig?”
“No, I don’t dig. What…what are you talking about? Now yer gonna go to the show? Just like that?”
“Yup, just like that”
“Why,” Brooksie demanded, “why? What changed?”
“What happened is that you just gave me the solution to my problem. Now come on and let’s get off the phone. We don’t want to keep Marilyn and her bazoobas waiting.”
Miss Bowers gave us one month to get the project completed. A list of books was provided, each one about a river somewhere around the world, and we were to read the book and write a report about what we’d read. Or, the social studies teacher told us, we could choose to read and write about a book not on the list, but first it would have to be approved by her. That would be my way out of the jam; I’d make up a book, author, Library of Congress Number, date of publication and all. Oh, and of course I’d make up the river that the book was about. In fact, for some reason, the moment that Brooksie made the crack about a book being shoved up my nose, the name of the river came to me…just out of the blue. In fact, the name of the book came to me at that instant as well, and the author. The Fury of the Slugamagucchi River, written by John Malcom, 1948. The sub-title would come later.
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An aside, my parents were good parents, loving and fair and completely dedicated to my well-being. But their dedication to education…my education…was, well, wanting. Lives of extreme poverty on the dusty Great Plains kept them mostly out of school growing up and left each of them with little perspective when it came to seeing the connection between book learning and making a living for ones’ family. They didn’t preach, or even mention, the importance of attaining a good education, there was no helping and coaching with homework, no praising or scolding over report cards. None of that. And yet I can still remember, like a choppy film from a Kodak Brownie movie camera, the evening my dad came home from work and my mother told him she’d signed a contract for a set of Encyclopedia Britannica, two huge encyclopedia volumes and a giant dictionary. The family would pay so much a month, she explained, and it would be good for Melanie and Ricky and their school and such, “and that’s that.” And then she waited for the fireworks…but there were none. Instead, my pop grunted, “good.”
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So where does a twelve-year-old start with his illicit attempt to subvert the principles of honesty and scholarship, betray the trust of a devoted purveyor of history and utterly trash the sanctity of one of our most proud institutions, public education? You guessed it—the Encyclopedia Britannica. I’ve already mentioned that I could not read until the third grade because of an undiagnosed disability. But well before then I’d probably gazed at every single page of both volumes of the enormous encyclopedia. Though all black and white, the drawings and photos were transcendent…and for this little boy, transcending. So, my first thought was, what would someone even say about a river if they were writing a book about one? Simple enough: look up rivers and find out. In no time I’d created a rudimentary outline of the essentials of the furious Slugamagucchi River.
VITALS ON THE SLUGAMAGUCCHI
Length: 2,485 miles
Compared to Other Rivers: 29th Longest in World
Source: Junction of Parnaiba and Rio Grande Rivers
Mouth: Rio de la Plata
Ends Up: Buenos Aires
Countries Flows Through: Mainly Paraguay (also Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay)
Cities Flows By/Through: Parana, Rosario, Buenos Aires
First European to Navigate: Englishman S. Cabot, 1526, sailing for Spain
And then items that for whatever reason were neglected by my big books…
Most Ferocious Fish: Piranha
Biggest Gator Ever Found: Thirty Feet Long
Sports on River: Not Much Because of Two Items Above
American Presence: Tons of Merchant Marine Ships
In addition, from the beginning it was my intention to include in John Malcom’s book the personal accounts of one Louis Kappen, a merchant marine captain who’d actually ferried up and down the Slugamagucchi moving freight to and from Parana, Paraguay’s capital city. Considered an expert on the wild and treacherous inland waterway, Kappen knew every hazard, every tributary, every aboriginal village and every strange and foreboding tale connected to them all. And my oh my, could Captain Kappen relate his stories with verve and dash and hair-curling drama and side-splitting humor. Because, you see, the captain was, in truth, my great-uncle, and the same love for storytelling that runs through my veins ran through his. Yes, he was a merchant marine, though a deckhand and not a captain, and yes, he’d sailed to Parana many times and had wild and crazy stories about it and the river that ran through it, though the river’s name was NOT Slugamagucchi. (Probably time here to go on record: to my knowledge there is no river anywhere name the “Slugamagucchi”.)
Uncle Louie, which is the only name I ever heard him called by, was in my life from birth to about eight. He lived a short time with our family and then moved to another and then another of relatives’ homes in our little close-knit community. Louie dressed the same every day—brown suit, white shirt, floral tie and fedora hat. In his eighty-plus years he’d never married, never settled down, never been in any profession or trade except sailing, and never, as far as anyone could see, regretted any of it. Once Louie was too old to go to sea, his big extended German family, all living within walking distance of one another, welcomed him to just bounce from one home to another. Oh, and for those years he was my number one babysitter, so his South American sailing adventures became a prominent part of my world, true or made up.
My plan for the book report was a simple one. A paragraph on the author, (made up), a paragraph offering an overview of the river, one very, very brief paragraph each on the “essentials” of the river (see the list above), three one paragraph-long Uncle Louie stories, and then a final paragraph kind of summing up. All told seventeen paragraphs. Manageable.
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Very briefly, let me just take a moment to assure those of you who are beginning to doubt the veracity of my story…namely, how could a twelve-year old make all this crap up, organize it all, even include quoted sentences and one entire paragraph purported to have been written by one John Malcom, PhD, and have the guts to pawn it off as real to, of all people, my seventh grade teacher…let me just say this: although I’m certainly not the brightest guy in the world, and although I have huge deficits in any number of basic life skill, from the time I could get people to listen, I could keep them listening, and once I learned to write, I could keep them reading. It’s really the only gift I have…luckily, it’s the only gift I’ve needed.
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Of course the three uncle Louie stories were the most fun to write. Since most of the time the old man and I spent together was alone, he didn’t bother much about cleaning up his South American merchant marine stories…fights, boozing, drugs, brothels, gambling halls, everything you’d expect and some exotic, South American stuff you wouldn’t. The first was about his friend Santino, a young Parana teen with whom he would re-kindle his friendship each time his ship returned to the city. Santino came by the S.S. John W. Brown after Louie’s shift one day and invited him to a cock fight in the hills above the town. I could easily remember the descriptive narratives Louie used, (my brain has always just sort of worked that way), and the wham-bam-bonk of the fight scene, which was the rousing and dramatic climax of the first story, just came naturally. (The fight started when Louis, a passionate animal lover, realized that the matches were over when one cock killed the other and tried to put an end to it much to the consternation of the assembled fans. Needless to say, the cock-fighting went on, and Santino helped his sailor friend back to his ship as best he could.)
The second story was about an incident that happened while the John W steamed down river toward a smaller port city, Cambra, and was attacked by a band of jungle-dwelling aboriginals. I use the word “attacked” loosely as Louie did in his telling; the hapless, mostly naked men could barely reach the giant, slow-moving iron fortress with their stone-tipped wooden arrows. The young German, as sweet and gentle as he was strong and athletic, “near broke the jaw” of a fellow crewman when the man lifted a rifle and was about to fire on an aboriginal. “Ya id-git,” he screamed, “just back away from the rail, smoke yerself a cig and we’ll be right past those injuns ‘fore ya know it.” No one was hurt, uncle Louie assured me, “and that was that, by God.”
The final Captain Kappen story scenario in the phony book report was another about Santino and an adventure the two had. For a long time Louie explained, he’d tried to get Santino to take him to see the infamous parcu, Portuguese name for piranha. Santino said it was too far to go in his canoe, and too dangerous. After much pleading and cajoling by Uncle Louie, his young friend finally agreed to take him to see the pacu, but not in his canoe. The mid-twenties AB (Able Seaman, one rank above OB, Ordinary Seaman) was well-liked by crew and officers on the ship, he was known as a peacemaker instead of a troublemaker, and he was trusted. Hence, when Louie asked the Chief Mate, a man named Danielson with whom he’d sailed a few times already in his young career, to take out one of the Brown’s ‘captain’s gigs’, he was granted permission. (A captain’s gig is a cut above a skiff, about 20 feet long with an out-board motor.)
This third story came out the best because Uncle Louis had told it to me so many times and my recollection, even today, is rich in detail. Able-bodied Seaman Kappen (and pretend captain) and his young friend set off on their excursion right after Louie’s shift ended at 4:00 p.m. Santino’s mother, who liked her son’s friend, thought he was a good influence, packed the two a nice picnic dinner and Louis brought along a couple of 32 ounce bottles of ice cold beer in a bucket of ice chips. And Santino’s contribution, in addition to being tour guide, was a gunnysack of the heads of three freshly slaughtered goats to be used for “fins de demonstração”, (demonstration purposes). What fun would visiting the parcu be without a front-row seat at one of their famous, frenetic group feeds?
Miss Bowers’ book report assignment had a one-thousand-word minimum requirement. At a little after 2:00 a.m. Monday morning I rolled the final sheet of paper out of my sister’s portable Remington typewriter and paper-clipped a dozen or so pages together. I was too sleepy to count the words, but later I’d learn that the book report on The Fury of the Slugamagucchi River; One Man’s Story of Taming the Untamable was just under 3,500 words.
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“Just cool it, dammit!” Brooksie said, “just shut up and let me read.”
“But did you see what she wrote, you know, what she wrote under the grade? Did you read that part,” I asked excitedly.
“Yes, yes, yes, now dammit, let me read this piece of malarkey. I’m almost done.”
We were all the way in the back of the bus, which was just pulling out of the long turnaround at Bret Harte. We’d gotten our book reports back from Miss Bowers and the first thing I did when my best pal joined in in the way-back seat was to shove it in his face, frantically demanding that he read the teacher’s comment written right under the grade, which was A+.
“I’m just asking if you…”
“SHUT THE F..K UP,” Brooks yelled loud enough for several kids to look back in our direction. I obeyed and in five minutes Brooksie had handed back the report, bound neatly in a bright red folder, the words The Fury of the Slugamagucchi River; One Man’s Story of Taming the Untamable. He was shaking his head slowly, with a look perfectly communicating equal parts of satisfied amusement and bewilderment.
“I…cannot…believe…this. I can’t, man. I can’t even believe you tried it, that you had the guts to try it…but that you got away with it. A f..king Plus.”
“Yeah, pretty cool, eh? Glad you called me to go to the movies that day, man. You know it was you and something you said that gave me the idea.”
“Have you ever even GOTTEN an A+ on anything? I mean like in your entire life?”
“Whaddah you think?” We both burst into laughter. Kids around us were staring.
“And to get Uncle Louie in there. Christ, you are one insane dude.” Brooksie, of course, knew Louie well, loved him like I did…and now, missed him like I did, his passing having occurred only six months before.
“Yeah, gettin’ him into the book report, and especially promoting him to captain, that was something I just knew I wanted to do. But you know what, Ooks, turned out that was my one mistake.
“Why a mistake,” Brooks asked? “Seems to me you got it made in the shade.”
“Here’s the deal. Like, on the one hand I’d like my mom and dad to know about the A+. But they definitely can’t read the book report.
“Because of Louie…”
“Right, because of Louie. They see him in there…Captain Louis Kappen…and they’re gonna know the whole thing’s made up.”
“So Whaddah you do?”
“I just give ‘em the front page…you know, like only the sheet that’s got the title, my name, the date and then the A+ and the shit Miss Bowers wrote about how good of a job I did and stuff.”
“They won’t wanna see the report?” he asked.
“No, they won’t,” I said with such monotone assurance that it ended the conversation. Ended it, I think, because Brooks knew, or at least sensed, that the lack of interest my mother and my father had in my schoolwork was a source of sadness for me. No, Brooks didn’t know that, and we’d certainly never talked about it, but he sensed it.
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The expression “made in the shade”, which meant to be in a very good situation, didn’t have a long shelf life, having faded in the ‘60’s and pretty much disappeared in the ‘70’s. But sitting in that bright yellow school bus in the fall of 1960, Brooksie and I knew very well what it meant and we were in complete and happy agreement that it fit my situation flawlessly. I’d successfully faked writing a book report for 7th grade social studies, I’d received an A+ from arguably the toughest teacher at Bret Harte School, I’d managed to show my parents the grade WITHOUT showing them the gigantic lie that won it, and the only evidence that a crime at been committed was firmly in my possession. I’d either burn the report or bury it. Hadn’t decided which.
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Five weeks after the Fury of the Slugamagucchi River book report was returned to me with its A+ grade, the Bret Harte Junior High School’s Parent/Teacher Association holiday edition of the Tiger’s Den newsletter arrived in the Cornish mailbox. I could hear my mother’s scream all the way from the kitchen and ran to see what was wrong. I found her leaning against the kitchen counter just staring at the cover of the Tiger’s Den; on it was a photograph of a small medicine vial and corked inside was a bit of mud colored water and fine-grained sand. The vial, which I’d concocted as an afterthought and taped to the inside of the red cover just before turning the assignment in to Miss Bowers, was labeled “Slugamagucchi River Water”. The headline on the newsletter read “Seventh Grader Brings South American Wild River to Bret Harte.” And below the typeface was another photo, one of me, with my name below it.
My mother, whose back had been to me, turned and embraced me tightly with both her arms; I could feel her warm tears of pride and joy and love on my face. I broke away, ran out of the room and into the bathroom, flipped open the toilet lid and violently threw up my lunch of meat loaf, mashed potatoes and green beans. Now, how would I remember what I’d had for lunch that day back in December of 1960? Simple, it was the day the unraveling had begun.
A Paraguayan named Oscar Galeano, who was the father of Rusty Galeano, an 8th grader I didn’t know, read the rather long, four full-length column article in the Tiger’s Den; it was equal parts tribute to the great Slugamagucchi River, with actual quotes from the non-existent John Malcom, and praise for Rick Cornish, the author of the book report, whose insight into Malcom’s mind and storytelling skill far exceeded anything the author (Miss Bowers) had seen in her career. Yes, it was she, my teacher, who’d had little use for me, grimaced earlier in the year each time I entered the classroom, who had written the story in the Tiger’s Den.
Mr. Galeano, who was an engineer at NASA’s Ames Research Center just across the bay from Hayward, had more than a passing interest in the geography of his native land; he was, in fact, a student of it and did not have to check any references to know that there was no Slugamagucchi River in Paraguay. Who, he wondered a little indignantly, was this John Malcom and why would he write an entire book about such a preposterously named river? Galeano, whose first name was coincidentally Santino, would, he decided, investigate. And that’s when the walls started caving in.
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As I think back, what was most surprising to me was how well insulated I was from the fall out; certainly not insulated from the consequences of the big lie but kept in the dark about how the whole thing