What Hearts Read Online Free PDF Page A

wicked type, so that ought to keep you happy. Do pikes and hooks and scimitars and whatever else the Carthaginians planned on sticking into your flabby pink Roman rib cage. Have you,” she said, turning to Asa with what he could only recognize as brilliant intuition, “ever seen an elephant?”
    â€œAfrican or Indian?” he said. He blushed, ashamed of showing off, for he had seen both in the National Zoo.
    â€œLord help us, a smarty-pants,” she said, turning away to go rewrap the girls in togas.
    â€œSo,” said Mark, pointing at Asa with his sword and bringing him across the threshold of the class with the easy nature of the threat, “you better give us a good idea what we should use to kill those suckers.”
    He did. His report a few days later stunned them all. Oh, Asa knew how to make the most of an opportunity for debut. He was aware that every time he came to a new class he had the chance to create himself in the eyes of the strangers with whom he would spend the next little while—a chance the hometown kidsnever got, being familiar with each other since the beginning of kindergarten or earlier. Asa, by now, knew what land of attention would be aimed at him, knew which aspects of curiosity to exploit and which to deflect. He was good. He could put on a show.
    In the middle of the tribunal presentation he unfurled huge drawings done on the floor of his bedroom on sheets of manila paper, taped together to twelve times the usual size—strangely colored drawings of grotesque exaggerations of elephants as they might have been imagined by Romans who had, after all, never seen one. He struck a senatorial tone that vacillated between military bravado and fascinated fear, emphasizing with wonder the fabulous violence that could be wrought by these wild things driven by wild men. He finished with a roaring challenge to the citizens to “see to our defenses lest we be torn, gored, and rent asunder by the ravaging fury of unknown forces not so distant in time and place!” The boys rose spontaneously to their feet with a roar, shaking their weapons defiantly, devotedly. The girls stared, impressed; they couldappreciate a good report. One girl later asked soberly where he had acquired the archaic language. He confessed it was from the Bible. She nodded thoughtfully.
    Even before his debut Asa had found ways into and out of the needs and enthusiasms of quite a few of his classmates. Steve was afraid of being stupid; so when talking to Steve, he used words that were long but common, and left sentences unfinished, groping for a word Steve could leap to provide. Cheryl liked to laugh at things no one else would find funny, so Asa dotted their talks with quirky details and reacted with a surprised thrill when she cackled. Lee was a comic-book freak who mystified other kids by comparing the subject of every conversation to some obscure subplot from a superhero tale, which he related with awkward, rushed specificity. Asa, who knew all the subplots, brightened Lee’s eyes by providing a detail here and there (and a crisp translation, for Lee’s confused listeners).
    Everyone had an opening. Finding it only took alertness. As for slipping through the openings—well, it just seemed to happen. Asawas not being artificial or even artful. He did not pretend or dupe. With Steve, for example, it seemed he really couldn’t think of that missing word, though at another time he had words by the hundreds to fill every blank. It was all managed above anyone’s notice. This gave the illusion of naturalness, even, sometimes, to Asa himself.
    After Rome was finished, he imagined he had made up for the weeks lost at the beginning of the year, if not for the years lost from kindergarten on. He had roles; he could be counted on for certain things. On the playground he had shown what he could do with the various tops, yo-yos, pocketknives, and harmonicas that demanded demonstrations of