Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Copyright Page
ONE - The Invisible Girl
TWO - Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire
THREE - The Birthday Boy
FOUR - Aunt Queenie
FIVE - The Bratty Gregory Kid
SIX - The Whistle
SEVEN - The Moptops
EIGHT - Spirit Week
NINE - Silver Dollar City
TEN - The Master Woodcarver
ELEVEN - Going Home
TWELVE - The Blank Wall
THIRTEEN - The Swan
FOURTEEN - The Tree Breaks Through the Rock
FIFTEEN - Aunt Queenie’s Decision
SIXTEEN - Sitting on a Time Bomb
SEVENTEEN - The Sheltered Workshop
EIGHTEEN - Alone Again
NINETEEN - Big Bucks
TWENTY - Herkimer
TWENTY-ONE - The Rock
TWENTY-TWO - The Invisible Shell
TWENTY-THREE - Heartache
TWENTY-FOUR - Home
TWENTY-FIVE - Flying
A secret to keep to myself
I was an only child, but not exactly. My uncle, Punky, lived with us. This was his thirty-fifth birthday, but he’d always have the mind of a little boy. All my life, he’d been my built-in playmate, more like a younger brother than an uncle....
Of course, I was getting too old to play much anymore. Now, instead of having Punky watch after me, I was watching after him, trying to protect him from outsiders in a world that was growing up and leaving him behind.
Only once, in second grade, had I made the mistake of bringing a girl home with me. Punky had come rushing toward us in his eagerness to play, and the girl had taken one look at his dwarflike body and his child-man face and run screaming from the house in terror.
I’d cried, knowing I could never have a real friend, and I began to think of Punky as a secret I should keep to myself.
OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY ENJOY
For Mom and Dad and my seven
sisters and brothers—but especially
for my brother Richard, the real
“Punky. ” He was a blessing God
loaned to us for a little while, a
ray of sunshine in our lives.
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto,
Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
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Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
First published in the United States of America by G. P. Putnam’s Sons,
a division of The Putnam and Grosset Group, 1992.
First published in paperback by Hyperion Books for Children, 1995
Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2005
Copyright © June Rae Wood, 1992
All rights reserved
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE PUTNAM EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Wood, June Rae.
The man who loved clowns / June Rae Wood
p. cm.
Summary:Thirteen-year-old Delrita, whose unhappy life has caused her
to hide from the world, loves her uncle Punky but sometimes feels
ashamed of his behavior because he has Down’s syndrome.
ISBN: 9781101078082
[1. Down’s syndrome—Fiction. 2. Mentally handicapped—Fiction. 3. Uncles—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.W84965Man 1992 [Fic]-dc20 91-33861
http://us.penguingroup.com
Version_2
Author’s Note
This book is a work of fiction. Except for Ronald McDonald, none of the characters exist outside my imagination.
However, the character Punky Holloway was patterned after my brother Richard Olen Haggerman. Richard was born with Down’s syndrome on December 17, 1948, in California, Missouri, and died of heart failure at home in Versailles, Missouri, on January 12, 1985.
My parents “let go” of their other offspring as we grew up but they took care of Richard at home for thirty-six years. When my brothers and sisters and I returned to the family farm with children of our own, Richard was there to play with them. Still much like a child himself, he’d build tents for our little ones by throwing old quilts over the clothesline, and he’d line up chairs in the backyard so they could all ride on a make-believe train. In his own simple way he taught yet a third generation about love.
ONE
The Invisible Girl
“Delrita! Delrita Jensen! Wait up!”
I clutched my books to my chest and plowed on through the sea of sweaty bodies in the junior high hallway. Without looking back, I knew it was that new girl yelling at me. Because she and I had to share a math book, she was the only person in this whole school who didn’t consider me invisible. All I wanted was for her to leave me alone.
As I pushed past the mob at Cindi Martin’s locker, I concentrated on staying on my feet. Invisible as I was, if I got knocked down I’d be trampled to death.
Although it was September, it felt like mid-July. Most of the kids were wearing summer jams. Not me. If I melted down or got squashed right there by the water fountain, there’d be nothing left but a greasy spot and the blue jeans I had on to hide my pipe-cleaner legs.
“Gotcha,” said the new girl, in my ear. She grabbed the tail of my green T-shirt and hung on—not saying anything, just hanging on like a leech.
I felt my shirt being pulled tight across my chest. If people could see, they’d think I was hiding two Ping-Pong balls inside.
When I finally squeezed past the crowd, the girl let go of my shirt, but she didn’t go away.
I glanced sideways at her, wondering how she’d gotten a name like Avanelle Shackleford, a name that was almost bigger than she was.
Her jeans were frayed at the knees, and her shirt was clean but faded and ratty-looking. She was cute, though, if you liked carrot-colored curls and freckles. So why did she want to tag along with me—a tall, skinny brunette who had to stand up twice to cast a shadow?
“Do you do homework on Friday night, or do you wait till the last minute?” Avanelle asked, skipping along to keep up.
“Why?”
“I just wondered when you want the math book.”
“Oh. It doesn’t matter. You choose.”
“I could come over to your house, and we could work together.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, lifting my long brown hair to cool the back of my neck. “I’ve got things to do.”
“Like what?” asked Avanelle. “Maybe I could help you.”
Without answering, I walked through the doorway and onto the sidewalk, away from the noise and the smell of books and chalk dust. Across the street, a man was mowing a ditch, and I caught a faint whiff of dust and dried weeds.
Usually I felt relief when the school da
y was behind me, but today the cloud didn’t lift, because Avanelle was trying to get chummy. Mom had been after me to make friends since we’d moved to Tangle Nook, but I couldn’t. Not after that incident with Georgina Gregory and her bratty little brother, who lived on our street.
“Like what?” Avanelle repeated. “What do you do on weekends?”
“Oh, the regular. Chores.”
“Your folks make you work all weekend?”
“They don’t make me work. I do it because I want to.”
Avanelle laughed. “Are you some kind of weirdo?”
“Don’t say that!” I snapped. “I hate that word!”
“Hey, I was just teasing,” she replied, edging away from me.
I was sorry to treat her that way, but I had my reasons. The next thing I knew she’d start calling me on the phone or maybe even drop by the house, and that would be a disaster.
My getaway route was blocked by a dozen buses parked bumper to bumper. I hoped Avanelle would climb on a bus. She didn’t.
Not knowing what else to say to her, I watched two boys from our eighth-grade class take down the flag.
Almost in unison, the bus drivers started grinding gears and revving up their engines. The exhaust fumes burned my eyes and throat.
Avanelle coughed and said, “Yuk. Air pollution. That’s why we moved from St. Louis.”
I stared at her, finding it hard to believe that anybody would trade St. Louis for a dinky little town like Tangle Nook, Missouri.
The buses pulled away, and I hurried across the street, with Avanelle still tailing me.
“Have you always lived in Tangle Nook?” she asked.
“No. We used to live on a farm.”
“A real farm with cows and horses?” she asked, wide-eyed.
“No horses, but we had cows and pigs.”
“Why did you move to town?”
Not for any reason that I’d dare tell you, I thought, and wished for perhaps the jillionth time that we’d stayed on the farm. Life would be a whole lot easier if we didn’t have close neighbors.
I hadn’t answered her question, but maybe Avanelle hadn’t noticed. Sighing, she said, “We once had a pet chicken named Henrietta.”
“You had a chicken in the city?”
“Not for long. She got stolen.”
We walked in silence for a couple of minutes, until Avanelle said, “I just turned thirteen. How old are you?”
Was she overly friendly, or was she just determined to pry information out of me one way or another? I kicked at a stone before answering, “I’m thirteen, too.”
“Good,” she said, and giggled as if I’d told her she’d won the lottery.
I couldn’t see where being thirteen was all that funny. Even my mom said it was an awkward age—too old for toys and too young for boys.
“What about the math book?” asked Avanelle. “Do you want to take it, or should I?”
“You take it. Just tell me where you live, and I’ll come and get it when I need it.”
“I live on Magnolia behind McDonald‘s, but I’d be glad to bring—”
“I said I’d come and get it!”
I saw the hurt in Avanelle’s emerald eyes, but that was better than the goggle-eyed stare that would replace it if she ever showed up at my house.
“Here’s where I turn off. I hope you’re in a better mood when you come to get the math book,” said Avanelle, leaving me at the corner.
It occurred to me that if her house was behind McDonald‘s, she’d gone several blocks in the wrong direction just to walk with me. Well, that was her idea, not mine. I shrugged, glad to be invisible again.
TWO
Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire
I was an only child, but not exactly. My uncle, Punky, lived with us. This was his thirty-fifth birthday, but he’d always have the mind of a little boy. All my life, he’d been my built-in playmate, more like a younger brother than an uncle.
My earliest memory was of him hauling me into the house under one arm and saying, “Poop pants,” as he plunked me down at Mom’s feet. I could picture him throwing quilts over the clothesline to make a tent for us and lining up chairs in the backyard to make a train. Of course, I was getting too old to play much anymore. Now, instead of having Punky watch after me, I was watching after him, trying to protect him from outsiders in a world that was growing up and leaving him behind.
Only once, in second grade, had I made the mistake of bringing a girl home with me. Punky had come rushing toward us in his eagerness to play, and the girl had taken one look at his dwarflike body and his child-man face and run screaming from the house in terror.
I’d cried, knowing I could never have a real friend, and I began to think of Punky as a secret I should keep to myself.
But not everybody was afraid of Punky. Some people called him names, like “dummy” and “weirdo.” Others just laughed. Happy-go-lucky Punky never knew when people were making fun of him. If he saw someone laughing, he thought they were happy, too, and he laughed with them.
At the farm I hadn’t had to worry about other kids’ reactions to Punky. I’d had a couple of friends at my old school, but that’s where I’d kept them—at school.
Sometimes, lying awake at night, I’d hear my parents discussing me. Dad thought I was a natural loner, like him. Mom thought I needed to be in town, close to other kids my age. About a year ago, she started trying to convince Dad to leave the farm and open an antique shop in Tangle Nook.
In May, we made the big move. I was scared about leaving my old life behind and starting over in a new place. To chase away my fears, I’d think about the tree I’d once seen growing from a rock. Maybe I’d be like that tree, which stood proud and willowy after fighting its way to the sun, while the rock was cracked with a deep, jagged scar all the way to the ground.
I never did burst through the rock, and on the very first day in Tangle Nook, I knew I’d jumped out of the frying pan into the fire.
It happened about four months ago, but I can see it now, plain as yesterday. Punky kept peeking into the moving van, watching for his swing set. “My swing?” he’d say every time Dad and the workmen hauled out a piece of furniture.
“Soon, Punky,” Dad would promise as he heaved and grunted under the weight of Mom’s highboy or china cabinet or solid oak table.
At last the swing set was unloaded, and a mover helped Dad carry it to the backyard. Punky, wearing his cowboy hat and a red jogging suit and carrying the stick that was his pretend microphone, followed close behind.
Dad set the poles and hung the chains, and the minute the seats were in place, Punky announced, “My swing.” He started swinging and singing into his microphone about Jesus and Santa Claus and a sunshiny day.
When Dad went back to work, I sat in the other swing. I soon realized, though, that I wasn’t the only person in the audience. Someone was hiding and giggling behind the shrubs. Scooting off the swing, I told Punky I’d be back in a minute.
“Yeah, D.J. Pretty girl, D.J.,” he sang, using the nickname he’d given me because he couldn’t say “Delrita.”
I ran in the back door and out the front, and managed to slip up behind the intruders. A girl about my age and a boy about seven were crouched low behind the spirea bushes, their hands clamped over their mouths to quiet their snickering.
“Who are you?” I demanded. “What do you want?”
They jumped and whirled around to face me. The girl gave me a canary-eating grin and said, “We’re the Gregorys. We—uh—just wanted to see our new neighbors.”
“Did you have to sneak around in the bushes to do it?”
“We—he—that fellow is different,” she stammered, pushing her long blond hair back behind her ears.
Revelation. Columbus discovering America. But I didn’t want to start off on the wrong foot, so I swallowed the hateful words I was thinking and tried to smile as I said, “So Punky doesn’t look and act like the average person. What is average, anyway???
?
The girl didn’t answer, because Punky came around the shrubbery, saying, “Hi, pretty girl,” and patted her on the shoulder. She pulled away as if she’d been burned, eyeing Punky and his microphone stick fearfully.
It made me furious that she thought Punky was funny at a distance but scary up close, and I said, “He doesn’t bite.”
Punky, meanwhile, wanted someone to speak to him. He pointed to his swing set and said, “My swing.” It was an invitation to the kids to join him there, but they didn’t move. If they had, their bulging eyeballs would have popped right out of their heads.
I waited, giving the Gregorys a chance to say something nice to Punky, but all they did was stare. The boy’s blond hair was cut short and spiked on the top, and the two cowlicks at his freckled forehead gave him a devilish look.
“Come on, Punky,” I said finally, grabbing his arm and pulling him toward the house.
But Punky didn’t want to go inside. He wanted to swing. I couldn’t leave him there alone to be laughed at, so I turned my back on the Gregorys and started swinging, too. After a while, I looked and they were gone, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were somewhere close by—watching, watching.
My second day in town was worse. When I enrolled at Tangle Nook Junior High, that Gregory girl was working in the office.
“Georgina,” said the counselor when she’d finished making out my schedule, “Delrita’s in your class. Before the bell rings, will you show her where to find the seventh-grade lockers?”
“Sure, Mrs. Romano,” Georgina replied sweetly, as if she’d never seen me before. She didn’t speak to me when she led me down the hall, but I saw all the grins and nods that passed between her and the other students. I figured Georgina had kept the phone lines hot, getting the word out overnight. Later, I found a crumpled, dirty note lying in the hall. I picked it up and fought back tears as I read: “Steer clear of the new girl. Georgina says she’s got a weird relative, and she’s probably weird, too.”
The other kids ignored me, and that hurt more than I cared to admit. Before long, I’d decided they had nothing on me. I could play their game. I could be happy being invisible. Besides, not having any friends in my new school was a hundred times better than dealing with my burning sense of guilt—guilt that I loved Punky with all my heart and yet felt ashamed of him for the first time in my life.