Gooney Bird on the Map (4 page)

Everyone smiled.

"It's a real map!" Ben said.

"We're going to make a map of the United States inside our territory," Gooney Bird explained.

"I think I'm standing on Antarctica!" Barry Tuckerman said proudly, looking down at his own boots where they were planted on a mound of snow at the lower edge of the marked-off area.

"May I make a suggestion?" Mrs. Pidgeon asked.

"Of course," said Gooney Bird.

"I think," Mrs. Pidgeon suggested, "that if Mr. Furillo sprayed a little arrowhead at the tip of each—"

"Gotcha!" Mr. Furillo said, and he went to work.

"Perfect! May we keep the paint can?" Gooney Bird asked Mr. Furillo. "Once we build our map, we might need to paint the borders."

Mr. Furillo hesitated. "Tell you what. How about if you tell me when you're ready and I'll spray the borders for you?" he asked. "I'll just wait over here."

"Yes, I think it's a good idea if Mr. Furillo is in charge of the spray paint," Mrs. Pidgeon said.

Gooney Bird agreed. "Okay," she said.

Mr. Furillo leaned against the playground fence and Bruno sat beside him. They watched while Mrs. Pidgeon, consulting the map in her book, used a ruler to carefully gouge the outline of a huge United States into the packed snow.

"Florida should be a little longer!" Beanie called. Mrs. Pidgeon looked again at the map, nodded, and lengthened Florida.

"Don't forget that we need the Hawaiian Islands!" Barry said loudly, pointing to the left-hand side of the map. "You can put them over there, out in the Pacific Ocean!"

Mrs. Pidgeon had finished the coast of California with her ruler, and now she stabbed out little circles to make Hawaii.

Ben was examining the top of the map. "See where Maine pokes up?" he said to the teacher. "You did a good job on Maine. But over there, you need a straighter line for the top of Vermont."

Mrs. Pidgeon examined the northeast United States, consulted the map, and sliced a straighter line where Ben was pointing.

Then she looked carefully at the map she had carved from the snow. "Gooney Bird? Everybody? What do you think?" She passed the geography book around. One by one the children compared the pictured map with the snow map. They nodded their heads.

"Excellent, Mrs. Pidgeon!" Gooney Bird said. "Good job!"

"
U Go, Girl
!" Keiko said with a giggle.

"Your turn, Mr. Furillo," Gooney Bird told the custodian. "You can spray the outline now."

"Be really, really careful on Hawaii," Barry said nervously. "It's quite small."

Mr. Furillo shook the paint can hard for a minute. "Stand back, everyone!" he said. "I don't want to get paint on anyone's boots!"

The children, and Mrs. Pidgeon, all retreated to the edge of the territory, to the mound that they called Antarctica, and watched while Mr. Furillo carefully outlined the entire United States in black paint. Then he shook the can again and did Hawaii.

When he was finished, he took a bow, and the children clapped.

"Alaska?" Mr. Furillo asked.

The children shook their heads. They didn't need Alaska.

"Look!" Keiko said, suddenly. She pointed to the building. There were faces in every window of the small school. "Everybody's watching!"

"Mrs. Pidgeon! Mrs. Pidgeon!" said Felicia Ann in a worried voice. "It's almost recess time. All the kids will be coming out. What if everybody steps on our map and wrecks it?"

"They won't," Gooney Bird told her. "Mr. Leroy promised that while we were out here starting our map, he'd get on the intercom and make an announcement about it. Nobody's allowed on this part of the playground except us—the second grade. But when it's all done, then we'll share it with the whole school."

Tyrone began to dance."
Gonna do a rap,
"he chanted,"
about the playground map!
"

"
About the playground map!
"the other children repeated.

"Lets dance around the USA!" Malcolm called.

Some of the children danced across the map while Tyrone chanted,"
This map be so cool, we be famous in our school!
"Mr. Furillo, Mrs. Pidgeon, and Bruno watched from Antarctica.

"
Famous in our school!
"the children repeated.

Finally the line of dancers stopped, and Mr. Furillo said, "Okay. I'm heading back inside. Mrs. Clancy has a loose shelf that needs fixing, in the library. Call me if you need me. C'mon, Bruno!" He waited while the dog lifted his leg over Antarctica briefly, and then they returned to the school.

The second-graders heard the recess bell ring from inside the building. Soon the school doors opened and all of the other children came noisily through.

Mr. Leroy was among them. He was carrying something.

Mrs. Pidgeon and the students watched as the principal came to the edge of the map. With a hammer, he planted a sign which he had hastily made:

 

2ND GRADE PROJECT
NO TRE PASSING!

A tall fifth-grader named Marlon Washington, who always said that George Washington was his grandfather, but everyone knew he was making it up, came and stood by the sign. He peered at the territory, the map, and its sprayed border. "What's going on?" he asked.

"Secret project," Mr. Leroy explained. "I announced it over the intercom, remember? Just a few minutes ago. The second grade will share it with everyone when it's finished."

"
U Da Man,
Mr. Leroy!" Malcolm shouted.

Marlon Washington looked the situation over. He looked at the map, at the Hawaiian Islands, and at the NESW in the lower right-hand corner. Then he said: "Just a big mess, that's all." He turned and went to play with his classmates in another part of the playground.

Mr. Leroy bowed to the second-graders. "I am
Da Man
," he said. Then he went back to the school.

"Gather round," Gooney Bird told her classmates. They clustered around her.

"Is anyone here going to Alaska during our winter vacation? Raise your hand if you are."

No hands went up.

"Anyone going to Europe? Asia? China, or Japan?"

No hands. Keiko sighed. "I wish I could," she said. "Maybe next summer."

"India? Australia? Africa?"

No one.

"Okay, then. We don't need to think about those places, at least for now. It was enough work to make the USA and part of South America and then to put Hawaii out there in the ocean. I think we did a great job."

"Gooney Bird?" Barry Tuckerman, standing near Hawaii, waved his mittened hand in the air.

"Yes?"

"What exactly are we going to do with this map?"

"Barry, Barry, Barry," Gooney Bird said, shaking her head at him. "It's not necessary to do something all the time! Sometimes it's enough just to
be!
"

"We could just stand around and admire the map," Felicia Ann suggested in her quiet voice.

"We could hold hands in a circle and sing 'This Land Is Your Land,'" Keiko murmured.

"Hey! We could call the TV station and they could put us on the news!" Tyrone said. "They could bring their camera guy and he could interview me!
Do an wanna cause no flap, but you oughta see our map ...
" Tyrone began to wiggle his hips. "This here map could make us famous!"

"If they did that," Beanie said, glancing toward Florida, "maybe they could interview us about our vacations. Maybe I could even wear mouse ears during the interv—"

"I could demonstrate my snowboard technique!" Ben interrupted, planting his feet in snowboard position.

"I could bring a ukulele! That's how they play Hawaiian music, on a ukulele!" Barry began to strum an imaginary instrument.

"ENOUGH!" Mrs. Pidgeon said in a loud, exasperated voice. Then she apologized. "Sorry to shout. But, really, I am so tired of hearing about glamorous vacations. And it's time to go inside. We still have math to do. We have a great start on this map now, and we'll figure out how to proceed. I'm sure Gooney Bird will have some wonderful ideas. She always does."

"Yes. I do," Gooney Bird replied. "Or at least I
will.
I need time to think." She adjusted her multicolored hat and grinned.

"We need ocean," Barry Tuckerman said when they were back in the classroom and looking down on their project from the second grade windows.

"
Yeah,
" chanted Tyrone. "
Don't cause no commotion, but we gotta have a ocean...
"

"
Need a magic potion,
" Chelsea continued, giggling, "
to make us have a ocean...
"

Mrs. Pidgeon quickly went to the piano and played the chord that usually reminded the children to settle down. "I don't think we need a rap right now, Tyrone," she said. "But I agree that we need an ocean. And by the way, it's
an
ocean,
Cool Dude,
not
a
ocean."

"I know that," Tyrone said with a grin. "Raps don't follow the rules."

Gooney Bird was on tiptoes, her nose pressed against the window. "You know how you're always telling us that we don't need to color inside the lines, Mrs. Pidgeon? That true creative artists don't squinch their colors into outlines?"

"And that's why our art is so good!" Tricia announced. All of the children looked proudly at the colorful paintings that were on the walls around the classroom. "When my mom came for a conference and saw our paintings, she said that our classroom was better than the Museum of Modern Art!"

"It
is!
" Barry announced.

"Yes, it is," Gooney Bird agreed. "But right now we need to make ocean. And it needs to be blue. Can we use our poster paint, Mrs. Pidgeon? If we mix up a bucket of blue paint and water, Mr. Furillo could use his big sweeping brush and we'd tell him he has to stay in the lines—"

"Yeah, 'cause this isn't
art!
This is a
map!
" Malcolm said.

"Yes, maps are scientific," Nicholas said. "Not creative art."

"Right!" Chelsea said.

"Let's do it!" Mrs. Pidgeon said. She went to the supply closet. "I'll mix up a bucket of paint, and if Mr. Furillo paints the ocean—Gooney Bird, could you go find him in the library and tell him we need him for one more little job?—it will probably freeze tonight. The weather forecast on the radio says it's going to be quite cold. So tomorrow we'll have a good solid ocean around our United States..."

"Two oceans!" Malcolm pointed out.

"An Atlantic!" said Tricia.

"And a Pacific!" Chelsea added.

"Oh, dear. I'm worried about something," Keiko said in her small, worried voice.

Gooney Bird was about to leave the room. She turned back at the door. "What are you worried about, Keiko?" she asked. "Something I should mention to Mr. Furillo?"

Keiko nodded. She looked embarrassed. "Bruno," she whispered. "I'm scared—"

"Oh,
Sweet Thing
" Mrs. Pidgeon said. She set down the jar of blue paint and put her arm over Keiko's shoulder. "Bruno is the nicest dog in the world. You've never been nervous around him before. Remember, he marched in our Thanksgiving parade?"

"And he wore fake antlers at our holiday party!" Chelsea reminded Keiko.

"I'm not scared of Bruno," Keiko said. "I
like
Bruno!"

"What's worrying you, then,
Sweet Thing?
" asked Mrs. Pidgeon, looking puzzled.

"He peed on Antarctica," Keiko whispered. "I'm scared he'll ruin our ocean."

"Yeah, I saw him do that," Ben said. "He peed about six gallons."

"My dog's
little
" Barry said. "My dog only pees
one
gallon."

"My triplets," Malcolm began, "pee—"

Mrs. Pidgeon interrupted him. "Math problem! Subtraction!" she announced. "How many more gallons does Bruno—"

"Five!" all the children said together. "That's too easy!"

"Yes, it was, wasn't it?" Mrs. Pidgeon sighed. "But we do need to remember to do our math. We'll work on it while we get the ocean painted. Gooney Bird, could you mention the Bruno problem to Mr. Furillo?"

"I'm on my way," Gooney Bird said. "Start mixing the paint." She saluted. "Oh, also, could I give Mr. Furillo a valentine heart?"