Little Gabe

Gabe Ferguson

“Gabe, you have a visitor,” my mother cryptically calls from the door. I leave the sauce I’m cooking to simmer and walk out of the kitchen, forgetting to set down a large silver pot lid. I am confused because we are amidst a pandemic, it is winter in Minnesota, and, even during “normal times” spontaneous visits are rare. As I reach the front hall, through the screen door, I see him.

“Hey Gabe,” he says. Despite my shock, I am quick on my feet and reciprocate. I ask my mother to turn down the burner and stir my puttanesca sauce. Then, I step outside to catch up properly. Six feet apart, I sit atop my front steps, slouching, while he stands on the sidewalk, wearing a goofy lumberjack hat, his quintessential childish grin and, perhaps, the faintest trace of a smirk.

I first met Gabe in our middle school’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. While I starred as Bottom, he, on account of being two years younger, was resigned to playing “the wall.” He wore a sheet painted with a brick pattern and rigidly stuck out his arms while trying not to laugh the whole time. In the scene I remember most vividly, I faked a kiss through a V made by Gabe’s hands, which ostensibly represented a hole in the wall.

“Wearing a goofy lumberjack hat, his *** quintessential childish Gabe begins our first conversation in well over a year grin and, perhaps, the by asking, “How’s Grinnell online?” At first, I am pleasantly faintest trace of a smirk.” surprised that he remembers the college I attend. While I spit out platitudes about how “it’s not great, but I suppose it could be a hell of a lot worse,” I realize I am wearing a black hoodie with “Grinnell” boldly emblazoned in white across my chest. I am disappointed in both of us. Did he even remember what I intended to do after high school? And he must know that I’ve turned myself into a sweater person,

and this is just a bad coincidence, right?

I ask him if he has any idea what he will do next year. He tells me he is applying to colleges but doesn’t have any clear front-runners yet. He is 50/50 on whether or not he will debate in college. If he decides to debate, he will likely go somewhere like Northwestern or Dartmouth. If he decides against it, he is looking at obscure Canadian colleges. I tell him not to do it, and we force ourselves to laugh. ***

When I was in ninth and tenth grade, I occasionally saw Gabe when I judged middle school debate tournaments. One time, he attended a tournament in Spanish and abandoned his script to give an impassioned rant about anarchy. I declared him the loser, partially because his Spanish was intolerably bad, and partially because he did not back up his position on the necessity of anarchy with sufficient evidence. After the round, the mother of Gabe’s opponent reprimanded me because she considered our light banter “unprofessional.” At a tournament in English, I sat on a panel that declared Gabe the winner of the Varsity City Championship. I voted for Gabe, mostly because he deserved it, and partially because I liked knowing that boys named Gabe from our middle school had won the top honor in middle school debate in two of the past three years.

Before too much time passes in our conversation, I remember to congratulate Gabe on his recent success. In the most recent coaches’ poll, he and his partner have been ranked as the fourth-best policy debate team in the entire country. He thanks me and tries to brush it off. He was never very good at being humble. Gabe credits his success to our old coach, Oskar, and tells me I should sit in on an online practice sometime. I can’t tell if he’s joking.

I respond that I haven’t debated in forever and would have nothing valuable to contribute to the team. I tell Gabe that it’s great to see South, our high school, and the name “Gabe” getting some positive attention. I do not tell him that yesterday, speaking to my friend, I said, “this kid named Gabe from my high school is tearing up the national circuit, and sometimes I like to follow his tournaments to live vicariously through him.” I still don’t know what he is doing at my house. I do not tell him that I hear a voice in my ear, whispering, “You summoned him.”

***

When Gabe entered high school and joined our debate team, I became “Big Gabe,” and he became “Little Gabe.” In many ways, we were polar opposites. Albeit mostly by default, I was our team’s most mature member. Just two months into the season, when “Little Gabe” was briefly determined to be too demeaning a nickname, our coach started calling him “Young Lean” instead. Once, when we traveled to a tournament in Michigan, the smell of his weed flooded our car so profoundly that it could not be ignored. We were all glad that Oskar treated us like the family we were, chalked it up to something in the transmission, and said nothing. When we left the hotel in Michigan to return home, I watched with disgust as Little Gabe threw his toothbrush, not even zipped in a plastic bag, into our trunk, directly on top of our luggage. ***

Before Gabe has a chance to ask me “How’s Grinnell online?” for a third time while we flounder in our pitiful attempt at small talk, I ask him what he is doing at my house. “Oh,” he says, as if it is a perfectly normal thing to do, “I was picking the pin cherries on your tree here to make jam. Then your mom came along walking your dog and recognized me.” I don’t tell him that he is pointing at a crabapple tree and that crabapples taste awful.

If almost anyone else showed up in my front yard, urban foraging, claiming not to know it was my house even though I was certain that they had been there at least once or twice, I would not believe them. But this was Gabe, so my surprise was only slight. I ask him to let me know how the jam turns out. He adjusts his lumberjack hat and says that he will. ***

After debate practice most days, I gave Little Gabe a ride home. Every time, I observed with incredulity how he managed to drop at least three different items as we walked through the hallways. When we finally arrived at my car, he always asked, without fail and always with his mischievous grin, “can I hotbox your car?” Every time, I replied, “no, because it’s actually my moms’ car.” I pretended to both of us that things would be different if it were my car. My ideological comfort with drugs greatly exceeded my real-world comfort with them. ***

Once we’ve established Gabe’s grounds for visiting, our conversation flows better. We make fun of our mutual acquaintances with whom at least one of us has lost contact. Anton is impossible to talk to because he’s too into his personal trainer persona. Marie is transferring to Reed, and we hope, but doubt, that she is doing well. As for Eiset, well, neither of us have any clue what he’s up to, but we both feel better about ourselves after jointly retelling the story of how he got kicked off the debate team for forging emails to his counselor, asking her to raise his grades. While we agree that Bea and Sophia, who are now both at Stanford, will probably do big things in life, we wonder: at what cost? “Everyone on the debate team was fucking weird, man,” he muses in a bro-ish tone I find a bit too comforting, “you were probably the most normal one.” It’s not a great compliment.

By the time I graduated high school, my debate partner, Bea, and I had essentially quit the team. At our peak, we were probably the fourth-best team in the state, but our hearts just weren’t in it. By the time we quit, Little Gabe was en route to qualifying for the prestigious Tournament of Champions. In the debate community, he already towered over us. ***

Eventually, Gabe and I run out of gossip. “I should probably get going. Fuck Covid, am I right?” he says. “For sure,” I tell him, “I’ll see you around,” but I don’t believe myself. Just like that, Little Gabe strands me on my porch. I look down at the silver pot lid I’ve been foolishly clutching for the past fifteen minutes. It looks like a shield, but I feel more vulnerable than protected.

At dinner, I tell my family about running into Gabe. “What a coincidence!” says my brother. I nod. “If you write about this story, make sure to add how I only ran into him because the dog utterly refused to go on a long walk,” says my mother. “Okay,” I say, and we all laugh.

At night, I lie awake, trying to convince myself that my brother is wrong. That, somehow, Gabe and I are bound by more than coincidence. That, somehow, we share more than namest, both our own and the ones on our diplomas. Desperately, I want to believe that Little Gabe was not looking for pin cherries. Futilely, I

hope that our encounter has preserved something more than the sour taste of crabapples.

Gabe will never tell me how his jam turns out, and I will never text him to ask. Over the next year, I will continue to check how he performs at each debate tournament. When he rises to first in the national rankings, I will joke that his success would be impossible if I hadn’t driven him home so many times. Frequently, I will think about reaching out, maybe even sending him this essay, but I won’t ever do it. Every time I take my dog on a long walk that happens to pass by his house, I will look up at his window, but I won’t ever stop. Whenever I arrive back in front of my own house, I will have to stop my dog from eating the crabapples which litter the sidewalk. If he eats too many, he’ll get sick.

Pride Celia Meagher acrylic pour on glass