Dave at Night (15 page)

Chapter 30

T
HE KEY WAS
on a ring along with a flat metal disk. “How's Fred?” I whispered.

“He broke his arm. They took him to the hospital to put a cast on it.”

“How's Fred?” Eli asked, coming toward us. Everyone was waking up and crowding around my bed.

“He broke his arm,” Jeff said.

I wondered if he broke it getting the key. “What happened?”

“Mr. Doom lied about sharing his dinner. There was no food. When we got to his office he started talking. At first he didn't make any sense. He said something about, uh, ‘culture' and his wife liking to read about high society. Then—”

“He talked that way to me too,” I said. I guess he started every beating the same way.

“Then he said how much it costs to feed us. We remembered what you said and we didn't argue.” Jeff sat on the edge of my bed. “But he got madder and madder anyway. He kept talking softly, but you could tell.” Jeff stopped.

“How?” Mike asked.

“He started smacking his yardstick into the palm of his hand.”

“Oy vay,” Joey said.

Jeff went on. “He said it was easy for lazy yentas like our grandma to complain. Smack, smack with the yardstick.” Jeff turned to me. “I was thinking about running when Fred raced for the door.”

“Then what?” Harvey said.

“Mr. Doom is fast. Fred wouldn't have gotten out of the office if I hadn't yelled, ‘Bully! Pig! Stinker!'”

Even in the dark, I saw that Jeff was grinning. And I heard it in his voice.

“It was the best I could think of. Anyway, Mr. Doom turned, and Fred got out, and Mr. Doom went after him. That's when I thought of your carving, buddy.”

Buddy. He sure was.

“I went to the knickknack cabinet but it was locked, like you said. So I ran to his desk, and a key was there, right in front. I started towards the cabinet to see if the key opened it, but then Fred hollered, and I ran out to help him. Sorry.”

“That's okay. Thanks, buddy.” I shook his hand.

“Then what happened?” Eli asked.

“Joey's papa came in.”

“My papa?”

“Yeah. Fred was running up the stairs to the balcony. I didn't see this part. He told me about it. He said he wasn't thinking straight or he would have stayed by the wall, not the banister, because all Mr. Doom had to do was reach through and grab him. Fred pulled away hard and he fell. He put out his hand to catch himself, and that's how he broke his arm.”

“What did my papa do?”

Jeff didn't answer for a few seconds, and I realized he was crying. “Mr. Doom didn't care that Fred was screaming. He stood over him, hitting him with the yardstick and yelling, ‘Teach you . . . Teach you . . .' And then your papa came in.” Jeff choked out a laugh. “The second the door started to open, Mr. Doom was hugging Fred and asking him if he was hurt and telling him to be brave.”

“What was Papa doing here?”

“He forgot his hat.”

“Where was Mr. Meltzer?” I asked.

“I didn't see him when I ran out of the office, but he was there a minute or so after Joey's father came. He took us to the infirmary and then he left.”

We were quiet for a minute, thinking about Mr. Doom.

“He shouldn't be in charge of a zoo,” Danny said, “much less us.”

“Here,” Eli said. He handed Jeff his share of the Visiting Day treats. “You didn't get any dinner.”

“We should tell the police,” Mike said.

“Who'd believe a bunch of halfs and wholes?” Harvey said.

“I hate him,” Mike said. “I'd like to punch him. I'd like to punch his nose in.”

I sat down next to Jeff.

“We have a roof over us,” Eli said. “We aren't starving. It could be worse.”

“Our families feel better because we're here,” Joey said.

Yeah. Ida felt a lot better. I stretched out and got under my blanket. Jeff started to get up, but I told him he could stay.

“I wish he could be one of us for a day,” Harvey said, “and see what it's like.”

“If he was one of us,” Jeff said while chewing, “Fred and I would beat the living daylights out of him. We'd break
both
his arms.”

I closed my eyes. I pushed the key under my pillow and covered it with my hand. Around me everybody was still talking. It was nice, aside from the topic. Cozy. I was going to miss them.

Later, I woke up because I needed to use the toilet again. I took the key with me. The chair at the end of the hall was still empty. I wondered where the prefects had their poker game.

In the hall light I looked at the key, which was small and made of brass. The metal disk on the key ring had writing on it. “To Mordecai Bloom,” it said. “A beneficent leader of boys and men.” I didn't know what
beneficent
meant, but unless it meant lousy, rotten, and paskudnyak, it was way off base. The other side said, “HHB Board of Directors.”

Back in our room, I fell asleep holding the key. When the wake-up bell rang, my hand was cramped and the key was still in it.

After I got dressed, I put the key in one pocket and the drawing of Irma Lee folded up small in the other. I wanted to show the drawing to Mr. Hillinger so he could tell me how to do faces better.

Fred came in with his arm in a cast. Everybody went to him, wanting to know how he was. He said he was okay and wiggled his fingers at the end of the cast. He started to tell us what had happened, and he was annoyed that Jeff had beaten him to it.

I walked to breakfast with the twins, Mike, Harvey, and Eli. “At breakfast,” I said, “call me ‘wizard' and act scared of me.” I wanted to try out my idea to stop the food stealing.

“Why should I?” Harvey said.

“Dave has a good reason,” Mike said, scratching his ear. “He has something up his sleeve.”

“Okay, Harvey,” I said. “Call Eli ‘wizard,' and act scared of him. I will too.” That would be better, since I was leaving, and the wizard had to be here if this was going to work. Eli would make a fine gonif. He'd fool Moe because he always seemed so serious and honest.

“Just make sure the bullies notice, especially Moe.” I told them my idea. They all liked it, even Harvey. Breakfast would set the stage. We'd get ready during morning recess, and at lunch we'd do it.

In the dining hall, I sat next to Eli, and a minute later Moe squeezed between us. When he kissed his rabbit's foot, I stuck my head around him and yelled, “Wizard, does that really do any good?”

Eli shook his head. “If it was a black rabbit, he'd have something. But a white rabbit's foot only carries germs.”

“Huh? How does he know?” Moe asked.

“He knows,” I said.

From across the table, Fred waved his cast. “See this?”

The ladies started carrying the coffins out of the kitchen. Everybody knew about Fred's broken arm. Everybody always knew when Mr. Doom beat somebody.

Jeff held his unbroken arms up. “And see this? Not a scratch.”

“So what?” asked Moe.

“He cast a spell to protect me,” Jeff said.

“I didn't have time to do Fred,” Eli said.

The coffin reached us. Moe started on my food while keeping an eye on Eli. When Eli reached Moe's way for the water pitcher, Moe drew back a little.

Good. I might be able to do something for my buddies before I left.

Chapter 31

W
HEN WE GOT
to our classroom after breakfast, Mr. Hillinger was putting a flute on Mr. Cluck's desk. I wondered what it was for.

Stacks of notebook-size paper were on our desks. When we sat down, Mr. Hillinger walked around giving us boxes of colored chalk from a big paper bag. “Good morn . . . You'll have to share the pastels, I'm afr . . . Although it's not so . . . A limited palette is good. Good disci . . .”

There were eight sticks of chalk in the box Mike and I were supposed to share. The red chalk was in two pieces, and the blue was a half-inch nubbin.

“Today we're going to draw to express . . . to show feeling or a mood. An artist can say he's angry or . . . You only
think
you need words . . . It could be any feeling.” He played three long slow notes on the flute. “How does that make you feel, boys?”

Nobody said anything. I raised my hand. “Sad?”

“Good, Dave. Anybody feel anything else?”

Harvey raised his hand. “Definitely lazy.”

“Good too. Other boys may feel something else. I'll play . . . Remember what we've learned . . . Draw over the whole page. Composition is . . . Listen.” He played more sad music.

I stared at my stack of paper. I didn't know how to draw sadness. A face crying? How did you draw tears? Mike had gone to work already, but he was drawing violins.

And then I knew what to do. I held the purple chalk on its side and covered the page with purple. Mike had the black. I borrowed it and broke it in half. Now we both had black.

From the right side of the page I drew part of a long rectangle. The rest of it you had to imagine, because it was off the page. I filled the rectangle in so it was solid black. To the left of it I drew a man bent over from carrying his end of the box. You saw him from the side, and I filled him in in black too. Behind him came a woman. One of her feet was in the air, so you could tell she was walking. She was following the man.

The room was quiet. When had Mr. Hillinger stopped playing? He started a happy song, but I kept drawing the sad one. I drew a boy following the woman. I swallowed around the lump in my throat. Another man came after the boy. None of them touched each other. That was important.

Mr. Hillinger walked through the aisles while he played. He walked by me drawing the first song. I kept going, rushing to catch up with everybody.

I finished. Seven and a quarter people followed the coffin. You only saw a hand and a leg of the eighth person all the way on the left side of the page. The people weren't much more than stick figures. But the picture was sad. I had never seen such a sad picture. I had done it, drawn sadness. It felt grand. Sad, but grand.

I took a new sheet of paper and tried to think what a happy drawing would be, but Mr. Hillinger stopped playing. “Here's another . . .” He looked at his watch. “We have time for . . . Take a new sheet, Eli. No more music. Here's a poem to . . . Draw whatever it makes you . . .” He recited:

 

“'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogroves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.”

 

He went on. How were we supposed to draw that? It didn't mean anything. Some of the words meant something, and for a second I thought I understood, but then it was gone. There was a son and some monsters, a “Jubjub bird” and a “frumious Bandersnatch,” which sounded like an animal to sic on Mr. Doom.

I drew a green lion with big twisty horns coming out of its mane, a red rabbit that was bigger than the lion, and a yellow goat upside down and high on the page. Around the animals I drew shapes that fitted into each other.

Mr. Hillinger came down our aisle. At my desk he picked up my funeral picture and stared at it for a long time. When he put it down again he said, “Very nice, Dave. Fine.”

“Mr. Hillinger . . .” I took the drawing of Irma Lee out of my pocket and unfolded it. “I messed up her face. How do you draw faces?” I hated showing it to him. I hated to look at it, with the stupid one eye in the wrong place.

He studied the drawing. “You like to draw?”

“Yeah. Yes, sir. I do.”

He raised his voice for everyone to hear. “Listen, boys. You draw faces just like everything . . . They're no different. We shouldn't be frightened by a nose or a mouth . . . Be sure to bring your faces on Friday. You're going to do por . . .” He handed the messed-up picture back to me without saying anything else. He probably didn't want to hurt my feelings by talking about it. “Now hold up the drawing you like best,” he told the class. “You should see what your . . . Look at what ideas you all . . .”

I held up the funeral picture. Everybody else held up their happy drawings. Joey's was of food—a cake, an ice-cream cone, and something that might have been a chicken. Eli had drawn a lake with a sailboat. Mike's was pink, blue, and orange guess-whats. I liked Harvey's, which was a smile that filled the whole page. I didn't tell him, though.

He had something to say about mine, of course. “You shouldn't have colored the background purple. There should be trees or houses.”

“That smile you drew is too big,” Mike said, sticking up for me. “And it's too—”

Mr. Cluck came in.

“Boys,” Mr. Hillinger said, “show Mr. Gluck your . . . Aren't they hand . . . You must be so proud to . . .”

Mr. Cluck bustled to the front of the room. Ira and Joey raised their hands to go to the toilet. It was their turn to watch Mr. Doom's office. I'd forgotten all about it.

Mr. Hillinger started collecting our blank paper and chalk. “Save your drawings, boys. You can . . . Mr. Gluck, may I borrow Dave for a . . . He can help me . . .” He gestured, and I knew he wanted me to help him get the chalk and the paper.

Mr. Cluck said, “All right, if he is any help.”

Mr. Hillinger had gotten almost everything already, but I walked along the desks by the window and picked up the rest.

“Now if you'll . . .”

I put the chalk and paper into the paper bag. Mr. Hillinger picked up the bag. “Would you be so . . .”

I took the flute and followed him into the hall and out to the lobby, where Ira and Joey were walking quickly, looking like they were on an important errand—except when they saw Mr. Hillinger, who knew they were supposed to be going to the toilet. Ira stopped. Joey slowed down, then grabbed Ira's arm and tugged him along.

“Hello, boys.” Mr. Hillinger smiled at them and kept going till we reached the front door.

“Dave, would you . . . On Thursdays . . . It would mean missing school, just an afternoon. Everyone is talented, but . . .”

I wouldn't mind missing the whole week, but what did he mean?

“A few . . . Such ability . . . I teach a few boys . . . It's a special . . .”

I started nodding. If he was saying he had a special drawing class, I wanted to be in it. “Yes,” I said. “For drawing? I'd like to . . .” I sounded as jumbled as he did.

He smiled broadly. “Wonderf . . . It's not just . . . We paint too. Oils, watercol . . . You're very . . .” He took the flute from me. “I'm so glad. You have . . .” He opened the HHB door.

Finish the sentence, I thought. Finish it! What do I have?

“. . . a gift.” He left.