“Are you stupid?” Slap.
“Are you stupid, Kropp?” Slap.
“Are you thick, is that it, Kropp?” Slap-slap.
“No, sir, I’m not.”
“No, sir, I’m not what?”
“Stupid, sir.”
“Are you sure you’re not stupid, Kropp? Because you act stupid. You play stupid. You even talk stupid. So are you absolutely sure, Kropp, that you are not stupid?” Slap-slap-slap.
“No, sir, I know I’m not!”
He slapped me again. I yelled, “My mother had my IQ tested and I’m not stupid! Sir!”
That cracked everybody up, and they kept laughing for the next three weeks. I heard it everywhere—“My mommy had my IQ tested and I’m not stupid!”—and not just in the locker room (where I heard it plenty). It spread over the whole school. Strangers would pass me in the hallway and squeal, “My mommy had my IQ tested!” It was horrible.
That night after the practice, Uncle Farrell asked how it was going.
“I don’t want to play football anymore,” I said.
“You’re playing football, Alfred.”
“It’s not just about me, Uncle Farrell. Other people can get hurt too.”
“You’re playing football,” he said. “Or you’re not getting your license.”
“I don’t see the point of this,” I said. “What’s wrong with not playing football? I think it’s pretty narrow-minded to assume just because I’m big, I should be playing football.”
“Okay, Alfred,” he said. “Then you tell me. What do you want to do? You want to go out for the marching band?”
“I don’t play an instrument.”
“It’s a high school band, Alfred, not the New York Philharmonic.”
“Still, you probably need to have some kind of basic understanding of music, reading notes, that kind of thing.”
“Well, you’re not going to lie around in your room all day listening to music and daydreaming. I’m tired of coming up with suggestions, so you tell me: What are your skills? What do you like to do?”
“Lie in my room and listen to music.”
“I’m talking about skills, Mr. Wisenheimer, gifts, special attributes—you know, the thing that separates you from the average Joe.”
I tried to think of a skill I had. I couldn’t.
“Jeez, Al, everybody has something they’re good at,” Uncle Farrell said.
“What’s so wrong about being average? Aren’t most people?”
“Is that it? Is that all you expect from yourself, Alfred?” he asked, growing red in the face. I expected him to launch into one of his lectures about the movers and shakers or how anybody could be a success with a little luck and the right mindset.
But he didn’t do that. Instead he ordered me into the car and we drove downtown.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“I’m taking you on a magical journey, Alfred.”
“A magical journey? Where to?”
“The future.”
We crossed a bridge and I could see a huge glass building towering over everything around it. The glass was dark tinted, and against the night sky it looked like a fat, glittering black thumb pointing up.
“Do you know what that is?” Uncle Farrell asked. “That’s where I work, Alfred, Samson Towers. Thirty-three stories high and three city blocks wide. Take a good look at it, Alfred.”
“Uncle Farrell, I’ve seen big buildings before.”
He didn’t say anything. There was an angry expression on his thin face. Uncle Farrell was forty and as small and scrawny as I was big and meaty, though he had a large head like me. When he put on his security guard uniform, he reminded me of Barney Fife from that old Andy Griffith Show, or rather of a Pez dispenser of Barney Fife, because of the oversized head and skinny body. It made me feel guilty thinking of him as a goofy screwup like Barney Fife, but I couldn’t help it. He even had those wet, flappy lips like Barney.
He pulled into the entrance of the underground parking lot and slid a plastic card into a machine. The gate opened and he drove slowly into the nearly empty lot.
“Who owns Samson Towers, Alfred?” he asked.
“A guy named Samson?” I guessed.
“A guy named Bernard Samson,” he said. “You don’t know anything about him, but let me tell you. Bernard Samson is a self-made millionaire many times over, Alfred. Came to Knoxville at the age of sixteen with nothing in his pockets and now he’s one of the richest men in America. You want to know how he got there?”
“He invented the iPod?”
“He worked hard, Alfred. Hard work and something you are sorely lacking in: fortitude, guts, vision, passion. Because let me tell you something, the world doesn’t belong to the smartest or the most talented. There are plenty of smart, talented losers in this world. You wanna know who the world belongs to, Alfred?”
“Microsoft?”
“That’s it, smarty-pants, make jokes. No. The world belongs to people who don’t give up. Who get knocked down and keep coming back for more.”
“Okay, Uncle Farrell,” I said. “I get your point. But what about the future?”
“That’s right,” he said. “The future! Come on, Alfred. You won’t find the future in this garage.”
We took the elevator to the lobby. Uncle Farrell led me to his horseshoe-shaped desk that faced the two-story atrium. About halfway between the security desk and the front doors was a waterfall that fell over these huge rocks that Uncle Farrell told me had been hauled down at great expense from the Pigeon River in the Smokies.
“Funny thing about life is you never know where it’s going to take you,” Uncle Farrell told me. “I’m working at the auto body shop when in strolls Bernard Samson. He strikes up a conversation, and next thing I know here I am making double what I pulled in at the shop. And for sitting—for nothing! Double for nothing, just because the richest man in Knoxville decides to give me a job!”
Mounted on the desktop were dozens of closed-circuit monitors set up to survey every nook and cranny of Samson Towers.
“This system is state-of-the-art, Alfred. I mean, this place is tighter than Fort Knox. Laser sensors, sound detectors, you name it.”