At this, Mrs. Bigio had tearfully insisted that the cream puffs were really not that bad after all, and she had put a whole one into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed.
The doctor at Saint Ignatius Hospital said that the spell had come on when she refused to let herself cough even once.
That night at supper, my father looked at me with an unbecoming passion.
"Holling," he said, "everything all right with Mrs. Baker?"
"Just swell," I said.
"You didn't help to make her cream puffs yesterday, did you?"
"No, sir."
"You didn't sneak down to the school kitchen and do anything to Mrs. Bigio's powdered sugar?"
"No, sir. No sneaking."
"So everything is all right?"
"Just swell."
"You don't know anything about—"
Okay, this is where God broke in to pay me back for all that had happened because I was a Presbyterian, because if my father had finished this question, I might have had to give him something pretty far from the truth. But he never finished it, because my sister came in and sat down across from me, and on her cheek she had painted a bright yellow flower.
My father stared at it, then turned to my mother.
"Tell your daughter that she has a bright yellow flower painted on her cheek."
"I know I have a flower painted on my cheek," said my sister.
"Why?" said my father.
"Isn't it obvious?"
"Not unless you want us to believe that you're a flower child."
My sister didn't say anything.
There was a little pause while the whole world sucked in its breath.
"No," said my father, "you're not a flower child."
"A flower child is beautiful and doesn't do anything to harm anyone," said my sister.
My father closed his eyes.
"We believe in peace and understanding and freedom. We believe in sharing and helping each other. We're going to change the world."
"A flower child," said my father, opening his eyes, "is a hippie who lives in Greenwich Village in dirty jeans and beads and who can't change a pair of socks."
"Fifty thousand flower children protested the war at the Pentagon today. They all say you're wrong."
"Fortunately, right and wrong don't depend on math."
"They don't depend on President Johnson, either."
"Thank you, Miss Political Analyst," said my father. "Now analyze this: The person to whom you are now speaking is a candidate for the Chamber of Commerce Businessman of 1967. This is an honor that he has wanted for a long time. It is also an honor that will lead to larger, more profitable ventures than he has yet seen. It is not an honor that is awarded to a man who has a daughter who calls herself a flower child. So go wash your face."
There was another one of those long pauses because the world still hadn't let out its breath. It was a really long pause. The world must have been about ready to have a spell.
Then my sister shoved back her chair and went upstairs. She came down with only a yellow smudge.
"Pass the lima beans," said my father.
***
That night, my sister opened my door.
"Thanks for all your help, Holling."
"A flower child? You want support for being a flower child?"
"I want support for believing in something bigger than just me."
"Then don't paint a bright yellow flower on your face. You looked stupid."
"Imagine that," she said. "And you don't have to paint anything on your face to look stupid."
"You're not going to get my support that way," I pointed out.
"Fifty thousand people at the Pentagon, Holling. Fifty thousand. Something big is happening, and it's starting right now. Maybe it's time to think about growing up."
"So I can become a flower child?"
"So you can become who you're supposed to be: Holling Hoodhood."
"In case you haven't noticed, I am Holling Hoodhood."
"Isn't it comforting to think so? But when I look at you, you're just the Son Who Is Going to Inherit Hoodhood and Associates."
"It's the same thing," I said.
"Only if you let it be the same thing. Why do you let him bully you? Why don't you ever stand up to him?"
"And it works so well when you stand up to him."
My sister put her hand up to her cheek.
"So why do it?" I said.
"To let him know that I don't like being told who I am, and who I'm going to be."
"You don't have a flower on your cheek now. It doesn't look like it made a whole lot of difference."
"It makes a difference to me," she said, and went to her bedroom to play the Monkees. Loudly.
The next morning, Mrs. Baker was waiting for me by the Coat Room. "Mr. Hoodhood, I have been thinking about our Wednesday afternoon routines, and we need to make some changes."
Remember the ham and cheese and broccoli omelet?
"We do?" I said.
"We do. We'll talk about it on Wednesday. But no more chores—or perhaps, just one more."
"One more?"
"For another cream puff, perhaps."
I felt my unbecoming passion rising.
"Okay," I said. "One more chore. But I don't need the cream puff."
"Imagine that," said Mrs. Baker, and walked away. This was a new strategy, I was sure. But I didn't have time to figure it out.
"You got one of the cream puffs?" said Meryl Lee.
"Not exactly," I said.
"Mrs. Baker just said, 'For another cream puff? Another. And you said, 'Okay.' So how is that 'not exactly'?"
Danny Hupfer came over. "You got one of the cream puffs?"
"I didn't eat it."
"Sure, you didn't eat it. You put it up high on a shelf so you could just look at it."
"No. I really didn't eat it."
"You owe us all cream puffs," said Meryl Lee.
"What do you mean, I owe you all cream puffs?"
"I'll speak slowly and clearly: You ... owe ... us ... all ... cream ... puffs."
"Where am I supposed to get cream puffs for the whole class?"
"That's your problem," said Danny Hupfer. "Find the cream puffs or die."
Mai Thi looked at me, and narrowed her eyes.
Let me tell you, it's a pretty hard thing to be a seventh grader with new death threats hanging over you just about every day.
On the way home that day, I stopped at Goldman's Best Bakery. They had cream puffs, too—without chalk dust. But you wouldn't believe how much they wanted for them! It would take three weeks' worth of allowance to be able to pay for twenty-two cream puffs. Three weeks!
The world is not a fair place.
On Monday, I told Danny and Meryl Lee and Mai Thi that I needed three weeks. They agreed. Sort of. But the death threats were repeated every day, along with new and colorful descriptions of what would happen if the cream puffs didn't appear. Let me tell you, Danny Hupfer has one bloody imagination, but he is nothing compared to Meryl Lee. I was almost glad when Wednesday came and Mrs. Baker and I were alone again.
Can you believe it? I felt safer with Mrs. Baker!
Even if I still hadn't figured out the new strategy.
"Mr. Hoodhood," said Mrs. Baker, "we have been wasting our opportunities."
"We have?"
"We have. On Wednesday afternoons from now on, we will be reading Shakespeare together."
"Shakespeare."
"You don't need to repeat everything I say. I presume you know the English language well enough or I wouldn't ask you to read Shakespeare."
I nodded.
"First we'll read The Merchant of Venice aloud together, so that I can be sure that you are following the dialogue. Afterward, you'll be reading on your own."
Reading Shakespeare. Of all the strategies Mrs. Baker could come up with, this must be the worst. Teachers bring up Shakespeare only to bore students to death. And I was going to be bored to death for eight
months. No human being could stand it.
"Are you sure you don't want me to pound erasers instead?"
Mrs. Baker shook her head. "There's only one last chore," she said. "Sycorax and Caliban need their cage cleaned out."
I looked across the classroom at Sycorax and Caliban.
I haven't told you about Sycorax and Caliban yet, and you might want to skip over this next part, since it's pretty awful.
Because Sycorax and Caliban were rats.
Every other classroom in Camillo Junior High had fish or hamsters or gerbils or mice.
We had rats.
The reason we had rats, Mrs. Baker told us, is that Lieutenant Tybalt Baker had picked them out for her when they were only cute balls of fuzz and pink snouts playing in clean and aromatic cedar shavings. He had seen them in a pet-shop window, and when he went inside and put his finger to their cage, one of them had come and licked it. Right then, he decided that they needed a home.
So here they were in our classroom, and Mrs. Baker wasn't going to get rid of anything that Lieutenant Baker had given her—even if she wouldn't go near them herself.
Actually, no one in the class had ever gone near Sycorax and Caliban—not even Doug Swieteck, and he would do anything—because they weren't cute balls of fuzz anymore. They looked like they weighed about fifteen pounds each. They had hair the color of cardboard in splotches over parts of their bodies, but mostly they were just yellow and scabby skinned. If anyone even looked at them, they threw themselves against the sides of their cage and stuck their scabby snouts out as far as they could and clacked their long yellow teeth together. The sounds that came out of their throats were never heard anywhere else in Nature.
They probably carried plague.
"I can't clean the cage with them in it," I said.
"In the cupboard beneath the counter is a smaller cage. Pour some food into it, put the door to that cage next to the door in the bigger cage, and open them both. Sycorax and Caliban will run into the smaller cage. Then you can clean their cage."
It sounded too easy, and I looked at Mrs. Baker to see if something in her eyes said "Plot." But I couldn't see her eyes, because she was opening an ancient green book and turning thin pages. "Hurry, Mr. Hoodhood, so we can enjoy the play," she said.
I found the small cage in the cupboard, and even though I didn't think it would work out just like Mrs. Baker had said, it actually did. The rats were so hungry, I guess, that they would have done anything to get at the food. They probably would have eaten chalk-covered cream puffs. So when I opened the doors, Sycorax and Caliban laid off sticking out their scabby snouts and clacking their yellow teeth and rioted into the smaller cage. Then I carried the big cage outside to the garbage cans, holding it as far away from me as I could reach. I dumped everything, then carried the cage to the faucet near Mr. Vendleri's office. I hosed it down from about twenty feet away. I wasn't going to touch anything I didn't have to.
I got paper towels from the boys' restroom and dried the whole thing off. Then I carried it back upstairs into the classroom, spread new sawdust—there was a whole bucket of it in the back of the cupboard—and filled the food and water dishes in the big cage.
In the small cage, Caliban and Sycorax were back to their scabby-snout-and-yellow-teeth routine, but they were a little less frantic about it, probably because they had just stuffed themselves. The blacks of their eyes seemed almost natural, not like they were possessed.
I slid the two cages together, held them tightly against each other, and opened the two doors. Sycorax and Caliban started to clamber in.
"By the way," said Mrs. Baker from her desk, "teachers do not bring up Shakespeare to bore their students to death."
She knew! She could tell what I had been thinking!
And so you see, what happened next wasn't my fault at all.
I turned around, sort of stunned, to look at Mrs. Baker, and I felt the two cages move apart.
"Mr. Hoodhood!" cried Mrs. Baker, suddenly standing up.
Sycorax and Caliban each had half their bodies pushed into the space between the two cages. Their scabby snouts were twitching triumphantly, and their teeth were clacking as close to my thumbs as they could get. I smashed the two cages together, hard, and they let out a high, awful rat screech. They both turned their little black eyes toward me—bulging with demonic light—and clawed hysterically at the bars that were hardly holding them from escape. And they kept on screeching.
"Don't hurt them!" cried Mrs. Baker, who was now halfway across the room. So I pulled apart the two cages just a little bit, and Sycorax whirled, hissed, threw herself on top of Caliban, and pushed through. Then she leaped at my thumb, her yellow jaws open.
"Oh!" I said, and jumped back from the cages.
"Hiss," said Caliban, and jumped out from the cages.
"Screech," said Sycorax, and jumped down from the counter.
"Hiss," said Caliban again, and jumped down from the counter over the cupboard after her.
"Oh!" said Mrs. Baker, and jumped onto Danny Hupfer's desk.
"Oh!" I said again, as Sycorax and Caliban ran over my foot—over my foot!—and headed into the Coat Room, where they threw themselves into the pile of fungused lunch remnants.
Mrs. Baker and I were both breathing pretty hard by this time, so what she said next came out in a sort of strangled whisper. "Go get Mr. Vendleri. Quickly."
I did, jumping from desk to desk, since I wasn't going to take any chances—Over My Foot!
I didn't tell Mr. Vendleri what we needed him for until we got to the classroom, because I wasn't certain he would come if I did. He looked at us with wide eyes while we told him. (I was back up on a desk.) Then he nodded, went down the hall to the supply closet, and came back with a shovel and two brooms. "You two flush them out from that side," he said. "I'll be waiting with the shovel."
"Flush them out?" I said.
"Don't hurt them," said Mrs. Baker.
"Flush them out?" I said again. I guess they hadn't heard me.
"I won't hurt them unless they're going to hurt me," said Mr. Vendleri—which is exactly what they tried to do.
Mrs. Baker and I climbed down from the desks.
"Flush them out?" I said a third time.
"Mr. Hoodhood, be bold," said Mrs. Baker.
Let me tell you, we probably did not look bold as we crept toward the Coat Room with our brooms. Or when we poked at the moldering lunch remnants. Or when we peered behind the coats still hanging there. And I know we didn't look bold when the rats erupted from Doug Swieteck's coat with a full scale of screeches. They howled and roared and slobbered toward Mr. Vendleri, Sycorax with a decaying cream puff still in her yellow jaws. We heard Mr. Vendleri holler "Oh!" and by the time we got to the other side of the Coat Room, Mr. Vendleri was up on Danny Hupfer's desk.
"Climbed into the radiators," he said, pointing.
But they weren't there long.
We heard hissing. We heard scrambling up the walls. We heard heavy pattering across the asbestos ceiling tiles. Then all was silence. The only thing that remained of their passing was the cream puff, abandoned before Sycorax had climbed into the radiator.
"I'd better tell Mr. Guareschi," said Mr. Vendleri.
Mrs. Baker, who had somehow gotten up onto her desk, looked at me, then at the cream puff, and then back at me. "Perhaps you had better hurry," she said.
And that was all. Nothing about the cream puff.
Whatever this new strategy was, it was good.
So Mr. Vendleri went to report, and soon Mr. Guareschi arrived at the scene of the escape. He was breathing heavily, since principals and dictators of small countries aren't used to running. He looked over the two cages, peered into the Coat Room, and then put his ear to the walls. "I don't hear a thing," he said. None of us did, either.
"They might be gone," said Mr. Vendleri hopefully.
"How did they get out in the first place?" Mr. Guareschi asked, as if that made a whole lot of difference now.
"I was cleaning their cage," I said.
"It was my fault," said Mrs. Baker. "I shouldn't have had him do it."
"Indeed not," said Mr. Guareschi. He rubbed his chin, considering. "But they're out now, and we can't let anyone know. Do you all understand? Until the ... escapees ... are caught, not a soul outside of this room hears about the incident." Mr. Guareschi's voice got low and menacing. "Not. One. Soul."
And so began Mr. Guareschi's Campaign Against the Escapees.
And by the way, for the record, I didn't exactly say "Oh" when Sycorax and Caliban jumped out from the cages.
Neither did Mr. Vendleri.
And neither did Mrs. Baker.
I wasn't sure that I wanted to be left in the classroom alone with Mrs. Baker after Mr. Guareschi and Mr. Vendleri left to begin planning campaign strategy. She still hadn't said anything about the cream puff, and I figured it had to come sooner or later. It turned out to be sooner.
As soon as the door closed, Mrs. Baker put her hands on her hips and looked at me thoughtfully.
"You never did eat the cream puff, did you?" she said.
I shook my head slowly. I tried to look guiltless.
"But you pretended that you did."
I said nothing. The future of Hoodhood and Associates was suddenly shaky.
"You made a wise culinary choice. Go sit down."