Fictitious Fiction

BucK and I laughed as the words rolled joyfully off Joey's tongue. "A fake book report?" I said, trying to shake my parental armor, my compulsive need to guide these two through the ups and downs of conventional education.

"Yep," he said. "Eddie and Jimmy always get A's on book reports we write in class. Their parents help them practice the night before. Other kids, they just skim a book and fake like they read a whole one. Hardly anybody really does."

He poured a glass of milk and sat down with the sports page. "I'm going to make up the story. I've already thought about it."

"You are going to write a report on a non-existent book? While you're sitting in class?" his older brother asked. Buck creates two, parallel upright creases running up his forehead above his nose. He is a practioner of martial arts. The look, expressed without any other facial movement, is one of feigned indifference meant to cause an opponent to let his guard down. But this time the look was one of curiosity. Here he was, caught in the absurdity of this suddenly (after another laugh) plausible idea.

"Now don't tell anyone," Joey said.

"My lips are sealed," his brother replied.

'Truth', especially to a parent, matters if character is to develop. I was taught that and try to teach it. Now here was my own blood preparing to stretch the truth, and here was I, wallowing in a sea of psychological mud, the residue of a McGuffeyan past. But I was beginning to see his point.

What he was proposing was little different from a truth standpoint from what his classmates did. He didn't ask me to give him ideas for a report on some book the next day and fake it in class. In fact, the act of writing a report on a non-existing book was both imaginative and of as much educational value as simply repeating someone else's words.

A laugh overtook us again and Buck dropped his milk. Joey laughed along, although I'm not sure whether it was with us or at us. These times steal upon us, usually in the kitchen after dinner or before sack time as we sum things iup at the end of anther day--another chapter in life's procession. Today's episode leads to tomorrow's adventure.

Joey can shoot baskets all day. He knows box scores and batting averages and cites in detail the injury reports of pro teams; he is effusive of sports trivia. It's courtesy of his daily perusal of the small, computerized type on the newspaper's summary sport page. But read a book? How? Where is the time? School is bad enough as summer nears. So why would a sane young lad worry about it at home?

The report was coming up the next day. The last book he had read was a few months ago, try as he might to read another. With an exhausting two hours of karate just behind and math yet to be tackled, it was an evening of altogether bleak prospects. The thought of reading a book, even a quick scrutiny of the last book, was absurd.

His book would be ceated whole-cloth in class. "I'm going to call it "A Brain Pays," he said with a wry smile. His dancing imagination was in rondo form.

"Will it be science fiction or a medical thriller?" I asked.

"How do I know?" I haven't written it yet. But Dave Richards will be the main character."

Dave somebody always finds his way into his stories. And here was Dave about to embark on another adventure, hopefully after a good night's rest.

I drank a Guiness and our author went to bed. Buck stayed up to watch Benny Hill. The next morning I noticed that math had been forgotten until ordinals, competing with yesterday's scores, were feverishly going down with wheat bran. Neither brains nor Dave's were mentioned, but their time had come.

"Did you get the report written in class today?" I asked that

evening.

"Yep," he said in a disinterested manner. He moved on to something important. Fictitious books are apparently of little signicance to the youth of today. We of many yesterdays were not creative enough to even consider the question.

Later, during the confab in the kitchen, he did make us privy to some details as he answered our probing questions. No, he was not nervous making something up. Yes, as a matter of fact he enjoyed writing it in class. No, he wasn't worried that his teacher would figure it out because, actually, he knew a lot more about his book than the other kids knew about the books they had supposedly read. His point was unarguable.

"Hey," he said. "I used a diffent character."

"Who?"

"Quinn Davis."

"Davis I can figure out. But, tell me, Quinn?"

"I named him after Quinn Buckner."

"The Celtics guard they just got in a trade with Milwaukee?" I asked.

"Yep. Pro basketball players have great names to use for characters. Think about it," he said. Then he began to rattle off names: Julius Erving, Moses Malone, Adrian Dantley, Lawrence Bird, Elgin baylor, Mark Aguirre, and Nathan Archibald. And there's Kevin McHale and World B. (that's my real name) Free.

He was right. Baseball's heroes were Pete, Hank, Joe, Babe, and Stan. Football names its best linemen hogs, and its best passers were two Joes and two Dans. Basketball is ballet and deserves its more colorful appellations.

He summed up the book for us. "A Brain Pays," we learned, was about Quinn's last fight. His father warned him that the kid coming in against him was tough, real tough, but he knew he had one more fight left. It was a good fight, maybe a historic one. Quinn went down and woke up blind. He became a lawyer.

As I walked by of an evening with beer and preoccupation after a day in the trenches, Joey said "Got my report back."

Buck glanced up from his equations.

"No kidding," I said. "The book report from last week?"

"Yep," he said, with a wry smile that showed he knew he had piqued our interest.

"Teacher read it?" Buck asked.

"Yep."

"Did she find out?" I asked, anticipating a summons from the principal.

"Nope." He settled back with a can of peach nectar and some M adn M's. Had to load those carbs for an evening run.

"How did you do?" we chimed in.

"Aw, I got an A-minus."

"Great," we said. Until the composition half of the course began replacing grammar, spelling, puncuation and the other banalities of English class, a B would have been a triumph. Here was a disappointing A-minus?

"Oh, I don't know," Joey said. "She wrote a criticism on the report. I don't think it was right."

"Well, what is it?" his brother said.

He read his teachers words to us. "Joey- this is a well written report but I'm not sure you completely understand what the author was trying to say."

And so went one of life's little vignettes.

Joey became an avid reader and never got around to writing the promised sequel to "A Brain Pays."

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