Alexander's Gift

The Maverick- 1

Back at the great house in 1956, the anxious man in the brightly colored suit crossed his arms and looked away from the three strangers who both seemed to know one another, and who seemed shocked by that recognition. He turned to the man next to him, whose face had been hidden this entire time, and suddenly found the words flying from his mouth in as much surprise as was written on the three guests' pale faces: "Monty Vallen?!"

1936

"Io faccio, tu fai, lui fa." The words came from the man's mouth as one long sigh of boredom, and the two boys sitting across the table from him knew it instinctively despite their tender ages of 15 and 16. Although they repeated the words with perfect affectation, their words, too, were a painful sigh. For if a teacher did not care about what he was teaching, there was no use in pretending, for a child could always tell where the heart lay. And if the heart was not there, the child's heart would not be there. "Bene! Molto bene!" The words were halfhearted as if being read from a script.

The boys immediately and obediently returned to their silent studies, seeming as they scrawled meticulously slowly in their leather-bound notebooks like matching aristocrats.

One of the boys, though, was bothered by his own disinterest. Bothered by the tutor's disinterest. The pencil clenched in his thin, delicate hand ceased from its graceful movements and then finally was dropped onto the paper with a dull thud that seemed to the boy to echo ominously within the grand, old room as if it had been a chair that had dropped onto the floor. Maybe it was the room that made every movement sound ominous- it was a grand, Victorian room with sleek, wood-paneled floors and pale yellow walls speckled with decorative molding. The boys' parents very much liked the room, as it was one of the reasons they picked the house, but the boy felt it was ominous. For when the two little aristocrats studied in that room, the heavy, black curtains were always drawn closed, leaving only the faint light from a lamp in the center of the table. Something about eliminating distractions, the tutor had said.

But that day a thin stripe of white light had fallen on the boy's paper, and he knew that the tutor must have forgotten to close one of the curtains all the way. So, he took a chance and hungrily looked up to see the grounds to the side of the house through the window. His wide, blue eyes traced the leaves that seemed to hang from the weeping willow's branches like falling rain; he imagined how refreshingly cool it would feel to lie on the shaded grass beneath that tree, with the morning breeze tousling his hair like the soft caresses from his mother.

A sharp rap on the table brought him reluctantly back to his studies, which at the moment was to read through "Crime and Punishment" and do the proper annotations and complete the proper comprehension questions. It seemed a terrible shame and an utter waste of time to have to worry about underlining just the right things and coming up with clever thoughts to jot down in the margins. It was so distracting, and it actually made the boy dread to read. Just a few years ago, he could never have imagined himself not wanting to read. Back in time, his punishment used to be having his books taken away from him! It seemed to this boy that such drudgeries could not be all education was about. All life was about.

That thoughtful, sad, young boy was Monty Vallen. The identically dressed boy beside him was his younger brother, Will.

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On some afternoons when Monty's father was in a more chipper mood, he allowed Monty and Will to go to the beach- only they had to go to the private one owned by the country club several miles from their house, as apparently it would look bad for them to mingle with the other sort of people. So, naturally, whenever they made their way to the beach in their matching striped tank tops and belted trunks, they found they were usually all alone on that stretch of shore.

As soon as they had arrived, Monty practically flew from the car as he raced Will down the rocky hill to the sand. He won easily, for he had always been very skinny and thus very fast. Already the weight of his studies was fading, and Monty's chest heaved as he took an exaggerated lungful of the sharp, fresh ocean air.

Oh, it was a picture-esque day, with the clouds hiding the sun just enough so that the sand didn't burn their feet, but it was still warm enough they didn't catch a chill. As he looked around, Monty realized with a sinking feeling he had forgotten his camera, and was beginning to put himself in a bad mood when Will came bounding up a few hundred yards from him, ruddy-cheeked and carrying a football in the crook of his arm. "Catch!" The ball rocketed into Monty's outstretched arms with a sting, and Monty shouted to him before throwing the ball back, "Not so hard!"

"Sorry!" Even from a distance, Monty could tell Will was smirking at him- Will knew he was stronger than Monty, and he loved to rub it in whenever he got the chance. Catch lasted for about twenty minutes, at which point Monty doubted he'd be able to lift his arms again, but he'd be damned if he would ever admit it to Will.

Finally, after testing out the deceptively cold waters, they ended up collapsed on a clean patch of sand near the hill in a mini alcove of sorts, with a hill to one side of them and a massive piece of driftwood on the other.

"Wouldn't it be swell if we could do our studying here?" Monty eventually asked, not really to anyone in particular. As he let his gaze drift upward into a solidly light blue portion of the sky, it made him feel a little dizzy. It seemed to take up all his vision, and frightened him. He didn't know exactly why . . . but maybe it was because he almost felt lost when there was only sky and nothing else . . . like he would just float away into space.

"Sure. It'd be nice. But impractical." Came Will's delayed response from beside him, and it annoyed Monty much more than he understood. "Yeah, yeah, everything's gotta be practical."

"Oh, come on, Mont, y'know I didn't mean it that way. I was just thinking about what father would say." Will nudged him in the ribs playfully, but Monty didn't feel playful. "Yes, I know, and he's right, of course." The words were rather mechanical, and he turned his head to offer Will a similarly mechanical smile. Father was always right, even when it felt so very wrong.