E D D
I E B I T T E L M A N
By F. John Sharp
or
Eddie Bittelman, it all began with hormones.
Eddie's science fair
project, 'Can Animals Feel Electromagnetic Waves?,' had
one purpose: win the heart of Angela McAllister. Angela was
the smartest girl in school, but that's not why he liked
her. She was exactly his height, regular sixth grade height,
and she was cute with her red hair curled down to her
shoulders and her ice blue eyes sparkling when she smiled, but
that's not why he liked her either. Eddie thought he
liked Angela because she liked to do boy things like fish and
play ball and touch bugs. But she made Eddie feel all weird
inside when she was near him. Eddie didn't know it really was
her red hair and her blue eyes and the way she looked when she
smiled that made him like her. He didn't yet know about
hormones. But hormones knew about him.
Hormones also knew about Mr.
Leonard, the school custodian, but unlike Eddie, he was fully
acquainted with his. And on this day Mr. Leonard and his
hormones had spent much time thinking together about his big
evening to come.
At Eddie's school the
science fair was a big deal. You didn't need to win to be
celebrated; participating was enough. Every entrant presented
his project to the entire school, grades two through six, in
the gym. Eddie thought of it as the gym, but it was one of
those old schools where a hardwood floor with lines and two
basketball hoops was sandwiched between a stage and a section
of tiered seats. The room doubled as an auditorium when
folding chairs were set up on the playing surface, one of a
long list of tedious jobs performed gladlessly by the
impatient Mr. Leonard.
Mr. Leonard had already
retreated to his "den" in the boiler room, drumming
his fingers on his workbench until the "whiny little
snots" were gone. Mr. Leonard had a date. The fact that
he was married wasn't a deterrent to him having standing
plans to meet his girlfriend of several weeks on his wife's
night to play bridge. His plans hinged on being able to get
out of work on time. "Some stupid science fair isn't
going to stand in my way," were the words he had muttered
to himself while unfolding the two hundred and seventy five
chairs needed to fill the gym floor.
The science fair projects were
set up behind closed curtains on a stage already too crowded
with phys-ed equipment, theater props, and rolling racks of
custodial supplies. From left to right Eddie's was second to
last, with Angela's project on dragonfly husbandry at the
end. In all there were seven tables, covered with paper
tablecloths and full of projects, each filled with all sorts
of experimental apparatus, and surrounded by posters and signs
and lab journals and bound reports. This preponderance of
paper was later found to be a "contributing factor."
The presenters were in front of the curtain, being praised by
Principal Gauntner, when everything started.
Fire officials believe the
blaze began with a synergy of the science projects of Gary
Plimpton, whose grandfather had shown him how to make
moonshine from corn, and Patrice Winston, whose idea for a
project on the different heat conducting properties of metals
had been plagiarized nearly word for word from her cousin
Kate.
Gary's moonshine experiment
—he titled it 'Alcohol Distillation Using Locally Grown
Natural Resources'—was busy producing alcohol vapors as
Principal Gauntner was telling everyone how proud she was of
the budding scientists. During the speech Eddie shifted from
side to side in front of the curtain, simultaneously happy and
nervous about standing next to Angela. Patrice, before going
out front, had test-lit her portable Bunsen burner to avoid
the embarrassment of a recalcitrant flame. She had been
careful to turn it off, but not so careful as to turn it all
the way off. The nearly invisible flame that remained was
enough to lick the volatile vapors and send a fiery trail to
its source, where the beaker of pure distillate erupted with a
'whomp.'
Oblivious to the impending
disaster, Eddie was busy stealing glances at Angela out of the
corner of his eye. Possessing an awkwardness born of a
homemade haircut, hand-me-down clothes, and a mother who liked
things 'just so,' he had always been too shy to do more
than hover in Angela's periphery. Dressed in the white shirt
and clip-on tie his mother made him wear, he scratched an
itchy nose with his cuff, then quickly threw the arm to his
side, aware that Angela might think he was "snotting all
over his sleeve."
The eruption on the stage
caused alcohol to splatter all over the first six tables and
flames danced behind. Posters and signs and journals and
reports were ablaze, as was the back of the curtain. The noise
attracted the attention of a teacher; within seconds the fire
bell announced its alarm.
Life-changing moments often
require the help of an unwitting accomplice. So as not to be
late, Mr. Leonard had done as many of his tasks ahead of time
as he could, but only two were instrumental in making Eddie a
hero. Mr. Leonard had chained shut the exterior doors before
the assembly; and he moved a rolling shelf full of painting
supplies—including mineral spirits and a case of WD-40 —
from the freshly painted hallway outside the gym to the stage
next to Angela's table. "Every minute saved was a
minute more in heaven," his hormones had told him more
than once.
The fire alarm sounded and the
gym grew perfectly still; everyone was trying to figure out
why there was a fire drill on science fair day. When smoke
rolled from under the curtain, the puzzlement turned to panic
and the gym exploded in screams.
The once neatly organized rows
of attentive children gave way to a tangle of scared school
kids. The teeming mass dissolved in the center and grew thick
at the edges as a doughnut of children pressed toward the
perimeter. As each chained door was discovered, the screaming
escalated anew. Soon nearly three hundred people realized
there was only one small portal through which they could
squeeze to safety. Like trying to pour peas from a pop bottle,
it was only a matter of patience and time, but the bottleneck
grew quickly and levelheaded teachers were no match for the
mass of grade schoolers that choked the open doorway.
Terrified boys and girls packed toward the door but couldn't
get out fast enough, so they did the one thing they had always
done in an emergency: they screamed even louder. It had become
clear to many of the teachers that one exit may not be enough.
To Eddie and his hormones,
this was a disaster. He couldn't allow his project—his
big chance to score points with Angela—to perish. He
ducked behind the curtain while the science fair participants
were ushered off stage. The first five tables were engulfed in
flame and his was half ablaze. Grabbing a fire extinguisher, he
let loose a blast at his project but it was too late. Seeing
his display already ruined, all that was left was to save
Angela's, which he realized would be even better. He aimed a
blast at Angela's table, quenching the fire for a moment.
The fire attacked again and again and Eddie turned it back
again and again until the extinguisher was dry. He looked for
another extinguisher but the curtain opened wide and the
strong hand of Principal Gauntner grabbed his shirt collar,
and dragged him to safety as the last of the students were
shouldering their way to safety.
The explosion blew out a
window near the stage only thirty seconds after Eddie regained
sole possession of his shirt collar. Fire officials speculate
that the flames from the science projects touched off a leaky
bottle of mineral spirits which generated enough heat to make
the bottles of WD-40 explode, sending flammable liquids
shooting in all directions. Tentacles of flame traced arcs
behind them and lit upon seats once held by second graders.
The recently varnished gym floor soon caught fire and in the
end the gym became a total loss.
Eddie found Angela in the
crowd and sidled up behind her, waiting for a moment when her
friends were otherwise occupied. "I tried to save your
project," he said.
Angela looked over her
shoulder at him. "What?"
"I tried to save your
project. But the fire extinguisher ran out and your stuff was
almost on fire and I was going to get another but Principal
Gauntner grabbed me and pulled me out of there and ... "
Eddie stopped for a breath ... "I'm sorry."
Angela looked Eddie up and
down, with his clothes covered in extinguisher dust and his
light brown hair full of paper ash, his freckled cheeks wet
with sweat and his puppy dog eyes begging for a pat on the
head. "Don't you know you could have been killed, Eddie
Bittelman?" she said in a tone much like his mother would
use later that day. Eddie almost whimpered as he backed away
and disappeared into the crowd.
Angela and his mother
notwithstanding, it didn't take long for everyone else to
name Eddie a hero. "For courage in the face of
danger," read the Mayor, "and for saving the lives
of countless children, we award this Medal of Bravery to Eddie
Bittelman." Eddie was, at first, embarrassed by the
award. He knew he was no hero. But the legend grew that Eddie
Bittelman had single-handedly fought a raging inferno, buying
just enough time for the salvation of every last child from a
death sentence issued by a careless, and soon-to-be jobless
and divorced, janitor Leonard. And with the rewards that
followed, who was he to argue?
At the grocery store, Eddie
never again paid for another candy bar or bottle of pop as the
Wilkins' way of thanking him for saving their Lydia. At the
barber, all Eddie's haircuts were on the house for saving
Nathan. At the drugstore, Eddie had his pick of comic books,
at no charge, for having saved Clarissa. And the gas tank was
always filled gratis whenever he rode with his dad to the
Nowak's filling station, where their son Roger still lived
and breathed and washed windshields because of the town hero.
Eddie quickly learned that being a hero had an upside, which
he hoped one day would win him Angela. In the meantime he had
Angela's parents on his side; they started a college fund
for him at the Savings and Loan, to which nearly everyone in
town contributed over the years until Eddie went to college.
"Eddie, dear, you're
going to be late."
The century old stairs creaked
as Eddie descended. "It's okay, Mom, I've got
time."
"You need to make a good
impression."
"I can make a good
impression."
"I know you make a good
first impression dear but you have to make a good second and
third impression too."
As she watched him tie his
necktie she was surprised at how tall he had become. This
surprised her nearly every day, and she enjoyed this exercise
in newness. "So do you think the newspaper business is
something you'll like?"
"I don't know. I'll
have to see." Eddie finished straightening the red
paisley tie in the mirror and adjusted the lapel of the suit
that Nick Genaro of The Men's Place all but gave him two
years ago when he returned from college. Nick Jr's science
fair project on the day of the fire had been about turbulence.
"I just need to find my
niche, that's all, Mom."
His mom smiled patiently at
that word 'niche' as she picked lint from his shoulder.
She'd heard that word a lot lately. "What do you
envision your niche as being?"
"I don't know, I like
all kinds of stuff."
'I think a niche has to be
narrower than that."
"But I won't know until
I find it."
"You're running out of
places to try."
"Naw. I still have lots
of friends."
'Maybe so." She fixed
the back of his collar. "But I wonder how long you can
get by on ... " She snapped shut her mouth.
"On what, Mom?"
She chose her words.
"Folks owe you a lot, but it won't last forever."
"Oh Mom, that's not why
they hire me. They like me. Everyone always says I'm the
nicest boy in town."
"That was a good thing to
be when you were fourteen, but at twenty you need to be
something more." She smoothed down a stray hair.
"All I'm saying is you need to pick something and stick
with it. You need to pull your weight. That's all I'm
saying."
Eddie nodded at himself in the
mirror. "I will, Mom, as soon as I find my niche."
Eddie's mother found herself
wishing she could have a word with the person who taught Eddie
the word 'niche.'
"Eddie, let me ask you a
question," said George Tasker, Chief Editor of the Daily
Leader. "What are you doing here?"
"Well, Mr. Tasker, sir,
I'm trying to start a career." Eddie was bright and
chirpy.
"Why the newspaper
business?" George was leaning back in his chair with his
hands clasped behind his head.
"Well, I got good grades
in English and I ... "
"No, Eddie," George
interrupted, "I don't want to know what you think your
qualifications are. I want you to tell me why you chose the
newspaper business."
Eddie's eyes widened and his
nervous feet stopped tapping. "I don't know what you
mean, Mr. Tasker."
George sat forward and leaned
across his desk. "What I mean, Eddie, is this. You came
home from college after only one year. You worked at the
granary for what, three months? Then you worked at the car
dealer for ... two months was it? Then the dry cleaner for
four, the hotel for one, the golf course for six—you must
have really liked that one. The boarding kennel for three.
Have I missed any?"
Eddie's shoulders sank.
"The landscaper."
"Yes. Mike Overman. How
could I forget. He had twins at that school. You could
probably apply there again."
"I don't think
landscaping's my niche," said Eddie.
"Your niche," George
laughed as he leaned back in his chair again. "Searching
for your niche are you?"
"Yes sir."
"I think you found your
niche the day they pinned that medal on you Eddie."
"I don't
understand."
"Why did you leave the
granary?"
"Because it wasn't for
me."
"And what about the car
dealer?"
"That wasn't really for
me either."
"And the golf course and
the dry cleaner and all the others weren't for you either, I
take it?"
Eddie hung his head.
"When you put it like that, it doesn't sound so
good."
"No, it doesn't."
"Maybe I shouldn't have
come here, Mr. Tasker."
"Why not, Eddie?"
"Because ... maybe this
isn't for me either."
"Then why did you
come here?"
"Because ... because my
... my mom set it up."
"Yes, your mother's a
good friend of my wife's and I did her a favor. But do you
know the problem you have with me, Eddie?"
"You don't hire friends
of your wife?"
"No, Eddie. The problem
is that I don't have any children who were saved by Eddie
Bittelman, Town Hero. I don't owe you anything."
Eddie shrunk into his chair,
hoping to disappear. He had never been talked to this way, at
least not since the fire.
"You've been living off
that one good deed and you haven't done a thing for
yourself. You can't hold a job. Everyone keeps hiring you
hoping that you'll at least be useful but you don't give
it any effort. Everyone likes you, Eddie, but we simply
can't find anything for you to do that you won't screw up.
There aren't many jobs whose main requirement is being
likeable. There are no awards for Mr. Congeniality in the
working world, I'm afraid."
Eddie slowly got up to leave.
"Eddie," George said
in a kindly tone, "I'm sorry to lay this on you like
that. But someone has to say it. There's hardly a person in
town who didn't have someone in that school that day. Folks
here will never forget."
Eddie stood still with his
head down, listening and trying not to cry.
"Damn, Eddie, I feel bad
for you. But you have to figure out what you want to do —
not pretend to do. If you could show folks that you're
willing to work at something you really want to do, they'd
move heaven and earth to help you do it. Hell, at this point
they'd be happy just to find you something useful. "
Eddie plopped back into the
chair. "Mr. Tasker?" he said, "how can I figure
out what I want to do?"
George sighed and put his
hands behind his head again. He started to speak, but found he
had no answer.
"Did you hear that Angela
McAllister is moving back to town?"
Eddie blanched.
"Seems her husband
cheated on her and she's moving back to run her parents'
store. Didn't you date her?"
"Yeah. For a while."
Eddie wanted to leave, to run home, to run past home and far
away so Angela wouldn't see him yet. Clearly he wasn't
ready. But he just sat, hoping George Tasker would give to him
the secret of success.
Eddie took the long way home,
so as to avoid both McAllister's hardware store and the
McAllister home. But his route took him past the school
complex--first the middle school where Eddie first began to
wear down Angela's defenses, then the high school where he
finally won, then soon lost her affections.
He stopped and stared at the
buildings where adolescent boys and girls perform the rituals
of winning a mate. He could see in his mind the seventh grade
home room where he sat directly behind Angela, cracking jokes
and making her laugh.
He could see their tenth grade
lockers, side by side, where his awkward attempts at chivalry
—"Can I carry your books?" "Need someone to
walk you home?"—were met at first with annoyance then
later with smiles.
He saw the twelfth grade gym,
decorated with balloons and streamers for the homecoming
dance, where he and Angela had their first real date.
And he saw the letter taped to
his locker the next February, full of sentences like,
"You haven't changed a bit since sixth grade," and
"you need to grow up." He couldn't know that it
tore her up to do that to him, that all she wanted was to feel
that they had a future, that Eddie was even trying. He
couldn't know that when she thought about their future,
Eddie always looked twelve years old.
The town had always seemed
plenty big to Eddie, but it got considerably smaller when you
were trying to avoid someone. Angela finally spotted him at
the bank.
"Eddie," she called
across the parking lot.
He knew the voice but was too
close to pretend he didn't hear. "Oh, hi, Angela. I
heard you were back in town."
"How come you didn't
stop by?"
"I wasn't sure you
wanted me to."
"Don't be silly,"
she said, touching him on the arm. "How have you
been?"
"Fine. I've been
fine." He fidgeted with his feet. "I'm sorry about
your marriage."
Angela just looked away.
"So, anyway," he
said, "you're going to help run the store?"
"Yeah, it's growing and
I've always loved that store."
"I thought about working
there but I never asked."
"A hardware store's a
lot of work."
"I guess."
They nodded together.
"So why didn't
you?" Angela asked.
Eddie looked around for some
help but none was forthcoming. "I don't know," he
said, "I guess I didn't want to be there unless you
were there too."
"Aw, Eddie," she
said, touching his arm again, "you were always so
sweet."
Eddie's wounded puppy dog
eyes met Angela's. "But not too sweet to dump."
"You know perfectly well
why it didn't work out, Eddie Bittelman."
"But I didn't ... I
didn't know then. I knew what you said was the
reason, but I never really understood." Eddie looked back
down at his fidgeting feet. "At least not until
today."
"I had to, Eddie. I
couldn't stand it anymore. I liked you, I liked you a lot,
but you never grew up. It's like you were stuck in reruns of
yourself. We were seniors for God's sake, and you were still
trying to base a relationship on making me laugh and carrying
my books. You had no plans for us, no plans for yourself. You
just existed for the sole purpose of being liked."
Eddie stood stunned by another
iteration of a recent theme. "Maybe," he finally
said, "I was just being dependable. There's a lot to be
said for dependable."
Angela's eyes teared as she
stared through Eddie and into her recent past. "Yes, she
said, "there's something to be said for
dependable."
He put his hand gently on her
shoulder. "Ang, I'm sorry." He was too close. He
could smell the herbal shampoo she still used on that long red
hair. He could feel the warmth from her body which he had
always thought felt like love itself. He could almost taste
her lips. Almost.
"I have to go," she
said and pulled away, not looking back. "I'll see you
around."
"Yeah," Eddie said,
"see ya." Eddie's hormones announced themselves
again, and he found himself wishing he had better news for
them. But Angela was right, he hadn't changed. And Mr.
Tasker was right, he didn't try at anything. Not since sixth
grade had he tried. Not since the science fair. Eddie's
hormones were telling him that he had let them down, that the
rest of Eddie wasn't doing its fair share, and Eddie was
listening.
The town was filled with noise
and lights, which is bad news for a small town in the middle
of the night. Eddie was just about the only person in town who
didn't go see the fire. He stayed home because he thought he
might run into Angela again. He would have too, because she
lived only down the street from the mayor, whose house was
burning to the ground.
"Eddie," his mother
called up the stairs when she got home, "you should have
been there, dear. It was awful. Mayor Mifflin and his wife are
both gone."
Eddie had been awake and came
down. "They're dead?"
"It was the worst thing
you ever saw."
Eddie sat at the kitchen table
while his mother fixed an early breakfast. "He was the
one who gave me my medal. I always liked him."
"They're going to need
a new mayor now," his mother said in a suggestive way.
"I wonder who they'll
pick," Eddie asked.
"Nobody picks," said
his mother. "Town by-laws say we have to elect a new one
soon as possible. I asked Councilman Nagy at the fire."
Eddie buttered his toast
thoughtfully. "What's the mayor do, anyway?"
"I don't think our
mayor does much at all, dear," his mother replied.
"It's not like this is Cleveland or anything."
"Hmmp," Eddie said
with a mouthful of bacon. He was talking to his mother, but he
was addressing his hormones.
Eddie showed Mr. Tasker to his
living room.
"Eddie, Clara at the
Board of Elections called me with some news."
Eddie fidgeted with his
fingers.
"Seems someone by the
name of Eddie Bittelman put in the paperwork to run for mayor.
Do you suppose there are two Eddie Bittelmans in town?"
Eddie wished just then that
there were. "No," he said.
"So you think this is
your niche, being mayor?"
"Maybe."
George let a moment pass.
"I have to cover it you know. I have to tell the story
and ask hard questions. Are you ready for hard questions,
Eddie?"
"You mean like why I'm
such a failure? Like why I've wasted every opportunity
I've been given? Like why I squeezed every ounce of good
will out of that one stupid fire that I wish never
happened?"
George shrugged. "People
are going to want to know why they should vote for you."
"A few days ago I would
have said they should vote for me because I'm Eddie
Bittelman. Now I'm not so sure." Eddie noticed there
was no notebook. "Aren't you going to take notes or
something?"
"No, not today. I'll
put on my reporter's hat another time."
Eddie thought about that for a
moment. "I guess I need to see if people still like me
enough to give me one more chance."
They both sat for a while
thinking about all that was to come.
"And you know the worst
part? I wasn't even trying to save anyone; I was just trying
to rescue Angela's project, that's all, just so she'd
like me. After that it was all so easy, everything was so
easy, and I liked it. I like being liked and I liked feeling
important and nothing I did in college or in any of those
other jobs made me feel that way. I could have gone on being
that Eddie Bittelman forever, except ... "
"Except?" said
George.
"Except that it won't
get me the things I want." Eddie sighed and got up.
"So what does a likeable person with no discernable
skills do in this town?"
George let out a laugh.
"He runs for mayor." George got up to leave,
"And you know, Eddie," he said, " Council here
pretty much runs things. The mayor is more or less a
figurehead."
Eddie nodded distantly.
"So you may have found
your niche after all."
Eddie dared look George in the
eye for the first time since George had told him he was a
failure. Eddie smiled a confident and knowing smile, as if
that moment separated the old Eddie from the new one, as if
Eddie's niche had suddenly found him.
"And now that you're
running for mayor, you can come out of hiding. I'm sure
Angela wouldn't mind seeing a little more of you."
Eddie blushed, but he didn't
respond. He was imagining whether Angela would like being the
wife of the mayor. He was hoping she would.
Copyright
© 2000 F. John Sharp
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