Who’s Walter Bego, some might ask. Others might answer (bless you)
that he’s Slimy Beach’s best friend in Trouble in Taos. He’s
also the managing director of Go Figure Reads – you know the
company that hasn’t released THREE of my books that are finished.
As to which Walter Bego is named after which; it’s hard to say.
They look like they both were born before 1850.
By the way, the picture above is not an actual likeness of Mr. Bego –
just the closest I could find on Google.
So Walter hands me this story. He wants to be a writer.
Betty Gattis
by Walter Bego
Betty Gattis pushed the point of her notebook’s
spiral binding into my thumb, drawing blood.
“That hurt?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Thought so,” she said. Then the bell rang.
I left my books on the cafeteria table and went round
the corner to the boys’ room. Eddie Franklin made to dump his
cigarette in the urinal until he saw who I was. If I had been a
teacher, he might as well have taken a drag. He would have been
caught either way. I ran water on my thumb and wondered if I should
rub the gritty powdered soap into it. The soap dispenser was caked
with brown crusty soap stalactites. I decided against it.
“What you do to your hand?” asked Eddie.
“Betty Gattis,” I said.
“You too?”
I didn’t answer. I had less than three minutes to
get to algebra, and my books were probably getting kicked all over
the cafeteria by now. I pulled a paper towel and wrapped it around
my thumb.
“See ya,” said Eddie as I left.
I only ever saw Betty in study hall, and only if I
went to the talking study in the cafeteria instead of the quiet study
in the library. Mom wasn’t thrilled that I didn’t get my
homework done at school anymore, but like usual, as long as I didn’t
say anything, she gave up on it after a while.
The first time I got the nerve to sit next to Betty
she ignored me. A senior was telling her about his car – a ’70
mustang that he bought with mostly his own money. Betty didn’t
seem too impressed, but she listened for a while. The senior went on
about his “beauty,” and Betty stood up like she was headed to the
bathroom. The senior kept talking, as Betty stood behind him. Then
she bent down and grabbed the back legs to the senior’s chair. She
stood, pulling the back of the chair with her, and sent the senior
sprawling head first into the table.
“What the…” said the senior from the floor,
stopping before uttering the word that would earn him certain
detention.
“Mister Ward,” said Coach Fox, looking up from
his training equipment catalog, “is there a problem?”
The senior, who must have been named Ward, ‘cause
Coach Fox was pretty good with names, sat there on the floor for a
second until it was obvious that Betty wasn’t going to put his
chair back down for him.
“I just fell, Coach,” said the senior, getting up
to chorus of giggles across the cafeteria.
“Alright,” said Coach, going back at his catalog.
Betty, back in her seat with no senior to torture
shifted her attention to me. Her eyes were just normal brown, but
something about them made me warm all over.
“You don’t talk much, do you?” she said.
I shrugged.
She nodded her head.
From then on, that was my seat – there next to
Betty in F period study hall, and no power in heaven or the
Archendale School Board could drag me from it.
So – is anybody wondering why Walter Bego creeps me out? What is
it about dysfunctional couples that fascinate us?
And the obligatory You Tube video
Walter, seeing that people are actually looking at this blog, has
decided to start a second blog for the more favored writers of Go
Figure Reads: Stanley McFarland, Will Wright, or any hack he can find
to work for nothing. He wants to name it Kitchen Drawer, Junk
Drawer, Granny’s Drawers, some name like that. I guess that’s a
coming soon event.
Let’s just hope there isn’t much of him on it.
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