Okay for Now (36 page)

Guts.

So I glanced up at Mrs. Baker's window—she wasn't there, probably so she wouldn't be accused of

being an accomplice—and then I ran toward the goal, turned, and stood. I waited for Doug Swieteck's

brother to come.

It was probably kind of noble to see.

I stood my ground, and I stood my ground, and I stood my ground, until the howling and the roaring

and the slobbering were about on top of me.

Then I closed my eyes—nothing says you have to look at your destiny—and stepped out of the way.

Almost.

I left my right foot behind.

And Doug Swieteck's hairy brother tripped over it.

Everything suddenly increased in volume—the howling and the roaring and the slobbering, the

whistling of Doug Swieteck's brother's airborne body hurtling toward the goal, the screams of Danny

Hupfer, my own hollering as I clutched my crushed foot. Then there came an iron thunk against the

goal post, which bent at a sudden angle around Doug Swieteck's brother's head.

And everything was quiet.

I opened my eyes again.

Doug Swieteck's brother was standing and sort of wobbling. Mrs. Sidman was running over—

though, properly speaking, what she did wasn't really running. It was more a panicky shuffle. She

probably saw "Negligent Playground Monitor" headlines in her future. When she got to him, Doug

Swieteck's brother was still wobbling, and he looked at her with his eyes kind of crossed. "Are you

all right?" Mrs. Sidman asked, and held on to his arm.

He nodded once, then threw up on her.

He had eaten a liverwurst-and-egg sandwich for lunch. No one ever wants to see a liverwurst-and-

egg sandwich twice.

And Mrs. Sidman's rain hat did not help at all.

That was the end of the soccer game, except that Danny Hupfer—a very relieved Danny Hupfer—

ran up to thump me on the back. "You sure did take him out!"

"I didn't mean to take him out."

"Sure. Did you see him fly? Like a missile."

"I didn't mean to take him out," I hollered.

"I never saw anyone get taken out like that before."

Doug Swieteck ran over. "You took out my brother?"

"I didn't mean to take out your brother."

"Everyone says you took out my brother. I've been wanting to do that since I was out of the womb."

"It was like a missile," said Danny.

I limped back into school, trying not to look at an unhappy Mrs. Sidman, who was holding the

wobbling Doug Swieteck's brother at the same time that she was using her rain hat to do not very

much. Liverwurst is like that.

Meryl Lee was waiting for me at the door. "You took out Doug Swieteck's brother?" she asked.

"I didn't mean to take him out."

"Then how did he end up flying through the air?"

"I tripped him."

"You
tripped
him?"

"Yes, I tripped him."

"On purpose?"

"Sort of."

"Isn't that cheating?"

"He's three times bigger than I am."

"So that means you can cheat and make him look like an idiot."

"I didn't try to make him look like an idiot."

"Oh. And you didn't try to make me look like an idiot, opening your desk for some dumb surprise

that wasn't even there."

"What's that got to do with it?"

"Everything," said Meryl Lee, and stomped away.

There are times when she makes me feel as stupid as asphalt. "Everything." What's that supposed to

mean?

Mrs. Baker's face was pinched when we came back into the class—the disappointment of a failed

assassination plot. Her face stayed pinched most of the afternoon, and got even pinchier when the P.A.

announced that Doug Swieteck's brother was fine, that he would be back in school after ten days of

observation, and that there was a need for a playground monitor for the rest of the week.

Mrs. Baker looked at me.

She hated my guts.

We spent the afternoon with
English for You and Me,
learning how to diagram sentences—as if

there was some reason why anyone in the Western Hemisphere needed to know how to do this. One

by one, Mrs. Baker called us to the blackboard to try our hand at it. Here's the sentence she gave to

Meryl Lee:

The brook flows down the pretty mountain.

Here's the sentence she gave to Danny Hupfer:

He kicked the round ball into the goal.

Here's the sentence she gave to Mai Thi:

The girl walked home.

This was so short because it used about a third of Mai Thi's English vocabulary, since she'd only

gotten here from Vietnam during the summer.

Here's the sentence she gave to Doug Swieteck:

I read a book.

There was a different reason why his sentence was so short—never mind that it was a flat-out lie

on Doug Swieteck's part.

Here's the sentence she gave me:

For it so falls out, that what we have we prize not to the worth whiles we enjoy it; but being

lacked and lost, why, then we rack the value, then we find the virtue that possession would not

show us while it was ours.

No native speaker of the English language could diagram this sentence. The guy who wrote it

couldn't diagram this sentence. I stood at the blackboard as hopeless as a seventh-grade kid could be.

"Mr. Hoodhood?" said Mrs. Baker.

I started to sweat. If Robert Louis Stevenson had written a sentence like that in
Treasure Island,
no

one would have ever read the book, I thought.

"If you had been listening to my instructions, you should have been able to do this," said Mrs.

Baker, which is sort of like saying that if you've ever flicked on a light switch, you should be able to

build an atomic reactor.

"Start with 'what we have,'" she said, and smiled at me through her pinched face, and I saw in her

eyes what would have been in Long John Silver's eyes if he had ever gotten hold of Captain Flint's

treasure.

But the game wasn't over yet.

The P.A. crackled and screeched like a parrot.

It called my name.

It said I was to come to the principal's office.

Escape!

I put the chalk down and turned to Mrs. Baker with a song of victory on my lips.

But I saw that there was a song of victory on her lips already.

"Immediately," said the P.A.

I suddenly knew: It was the police. Mrs. Baker had reported me. It had to be the police. They had

come to drag me to the station for taking out Doug Swieteck's brother. And I knew that my father

would never bribe the judge. He'd just look at me and say, "What did you do?" as I headed off to

Death Row.

"Immediately," Mrs. Baker said.

It was a long walk down to the principal's office. It is always a long walk down to the principal's

office. And in those first days of school, your sneakers squeak on the waxed floors like you're

torturing them, and everyone looks up as you walk by their classroom, and they all know you're going

to see Mr. Guareschi in the principal's office, and they're all glad it's you and not them.

Which it was.

I had to wait outside his door. That was to make me nervous.

Mr. Guareschi's long ambition had been to become dictator of a small country. Danny Hupfer said

that he had been waiting for the CIA to get rid of Fidel Castro and then send him down to Cuba, which

Mr. Guareschi would then rename Guareschiland. Meryl Lee said that he was probably holding out

for something in Eastern Europe. Maybe he was. But while he waited for his promotion, he kept the

job of principal at Camillo Junior High and tested out his dictator-of-a-small-country techniques on

us.

He stayed sitting behind his desk in a chair a lot higher than mine when I was finally called in.

"Holling Hood," he said. His voice was high-pitched and a little bit shrill, like he had spent a lot of

time standing on balconies screaming speeches through bad P.A. systems at the multitudes down

below who feared him.

"Hoodhood," I said.

"It says 'Holling Hood' on this form I'm holding."

"It says 'Holling Hoodhood' on my birth certificate."

Mr. Guareschi smiled his principal smile. "Let's not get off on the wrong foot here, Holling. Forms

are how we organize this school, and forms are never wrong, are they?"

That's one of those dictator-of-a-small-country techniques at work, in case you missed it.

"Holling Hood," I said.

"Thank you," said Mr. Guareschi.

He looked down at his form again.

"But Holling," said Mr. Guareschi, "we do have a problem here. This form says that you passed

sixth-grade mathematics—though with a decidedly below-average grade."

"Yes," I said. Of course I passed sixth-grade mathematics. Even Doug Swieteck had passed sixth-

grade mathematics, and he had grades that were really decidedly below average.

Mr. Guareschi picked up a piece of paper from his desk.

"But I have received a memo from Mrs. Baker wondering whether you would profit by retaking that

course."

"Retake sixth-grade math?"

"Perhaps she is not convinced that your skills are sufficiently developed to begin seventh-grade

mathematics."

"But—"

"Do not interrupt, Holling Hood. Mrs. Baker suggests that on Wednesday afternoons, starting at one

forty-five, you might sit in on Mrs. Harknett's class for their math lesson."

Somewhere, somewhere, there's got to be a place where a seventh-grade kid can go and leave the

Mrs. Bakers and Mr. Guareschis and Camillo Junior Highs so far behind him that he can't even

remember them. Maybe on board the
Hispaniola,
flying before the wind, mooring by a tropical island

with green palms crowding the mountains and bright tropical flowers—real ones—poking out

between them.

Or maybe California, which, if I ever get there, you can bet that I would find the virtue that

possession would show us.

But Mr. Guareschi returned to his form and read it over again. He shook his head. "According to

this record," he said, still reading, "you did pass sixth-grade mathematics."

I nodded. I held my breath. Maybe I could dare to believe that even a dictator of a small country

might have a moment of unintended kindness.

"Mrs. Baker does have a legitimate concern, it would seem, but a passing grade is a passing

grade."

I didn't say anything. I didn't want to jinx it.

"You'd better stay where you are for now," he said.

I nodded again.

"But"—Mr. Guareschi leaned toward me—"I'll double-check your permanent record, Holling

Hood. Be prepared for a change, should one be necessary."

In case you missed it again, that's another one of the dictator-of-a-small-country techniques: Keep

you always off balance.

Mr. Guareschi scribbled over Mrs. Baker's memo. He folded it, then took out an envelope from his

desk. Looking at me the whole time, he placed the memo in the envelope, licked the flap, and sealed

it. He wrote
Mrs. Baker
on the outside. Then he handed it to me.

"Return this to her," he said. "The envelope had better be sealed when she receives it. I will make

a point of inquiring about it."

So I took the envelope—sealed—and carried it back to Mrs. Baker—sealed. She unsealed it as I

sat back down in my seat. She read what Mr. Guareschi had written and slowly placed the letter in the

top drawer of her desk. Then she looked up at me.

"Regrettable."

She said all four syllables very slowly.

She could probably diagram each one if she wanted to.

I watched her carefully for the rest of the day, but nothing ever gave away her murderous intentions.

She kept her face as still as Mount Rushmore, even when Doug Swieteck's new pen broke and spread

bright blue ink all over his desk, or when the Rand McNally Map of the World fell off its hangers as

she pulled it down, or when Mr. Guareschi reported during Afternoon Announcements that Lieutenant

Tybalt Baker would soon be deployed to Vietnam with the 101st Airborne Division and we should all

wish him, together with Mrs. Baker, well. Her face never changed once.

That's how it is with people who are plotting something awful.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children's Books Educator Guide

Okay for Now

by Gary D. Schmidt