Shoebag (7 page)

Everyone in school clapped their hands, and Mr. Doormatee said, “Congratulations to your father, Tuffy. Children? When you pass Tuffy in the hall today, say to him, Congratulations to your father!’”

Before assembly was over, Mr. Doormatee reminded everyone that principal ended in pal, and that on their way out, they should drop some pennies in the Save The Seals can, “because we all know that a seal needs a pal, too.”

Shoebag was happy to give the three pennies he had left from his milk money to the seals. Still, something bothered him, and he mentioned it to Fatso as they walked down to the cloakroom.

“If people save seals, why do they kill alligators?”

“Seals are like panda bears and koalas—they’re cute. Alligators are like snakes and rats—they’re ugly.”

Shoebag thought of Pretty Soft saying he was cute.

Fatso continued, “If you’re ugly, people turn against you.”

“But how do people decide what’s ugly?” Shoe-bag asked.

“People don’t decide, they just see you and they know. If you’re an animal, it’s better to be soft and furry. It isn’t good to slither around without legs, or to live behind things and have a long tail.”

“What about bugs?” Shoebag asked. “What about bugs with legs and antennae.”

“Legs, maybe, if the bugs have nice colors, like ladybugs with red on them, and green walking sticks. But antennae,
never!
Bugs with antennae get stepped on! So do bugs who live behind or under things!”

“But why?” said Shoebag.

Fatso shrugged sadly and said, “Don’t ask me of all people. If Mr. Buck was out on a people hunt, and he saw us walking down this hall together, I’d be the one he’d go after.”

“Because I’m cute?” Shoebag asked.

“Because you’re thin, and I’m fat.”

“It doesn’t seem fair to judge everything by looks,” Shoebag said.

“Who’s talking about what’s fair?” Fatso said, and then at the approach of Tuffy Buck, he called out “Congratulations to your father!”

Tuffy was surrounded by kids saying the same thing, and it was hard to know if he had heard Fatso.

“I’m not taking any chances,” Fatso told Shoebag. “I want to stay on the good side of him.”

“I didn’t think he had a good side,” Shoebag said, “and I’m not sending congratulations to Mr. Buck. I’m for the poor alligators.”

“That won’t get you anywhere,” Fatso said.

Shoebag said, “I’m for the alligators and the snakes and the rats, and the bugs with legs and antenna, and everything that lives behind and under things!” Then he thought of the jumping spider and he added, “Unless one makes himself my enemy!”

“What about the seals and the pandas, the koala bears, and the bugs with color?”

“I’m for them, too, and for you, Fatso. I’m for you, too.”

“Thanks, Stuart Bagg,” said Fatso, “but I’m not even for me.”

“How can you not be for yourself?” Shoebag asked him.

“It’s very risky to be for yourself,” Fatso told him. “If you are, you have to stick up for yourself. That’s too hard.”

When they got to the cloakroom, while they were getting into their coats, Tuffy Buck appeared again in a group of kids who were patting him on the back, and punching his arm with friendly jabs.

“Congratulations to your father!” Fatso called out again.

“I heard you the first time!” Tuffy snarled.

Shoebag thought of the alligators, the snakes, and the rats, and he thought of his very own family. He did not look across at Tuffy Buck, and he did not speak to him.

It was such a mild and sunny April afternoon that Shoebag did not feel like going directly home.

The other reason he did not feel like going directly home was that his father had told him not to come into the kitchen afternoons, since he only woke up Coffee Cup, Wheaties Box, and Radio.

“They need their sleep, they are just little tykes,” Under The Toaster had said. “Have some consideration. Wipe your feet! You drag dirt around on floors we have to eat off! No wonder your little brothers can’t believe you are one of us, the way you soil where we dine! They are afraid of you, besides.”

“Tell them I’d never hurt my own brothers.”

“I’ve told them that, but they just won’t believe me.”

“Maybe if you’d kill the jumping spider, they’d believe us,” Drainboard had put in.

“Mama, you ask too much of me. I can not squash anything alive, not yet!”

“I’ll be that spider’s supper someday, Son.”

Shoebag felt too guilty to face them all.

This was a good time to go to the park, too. Tuffy Buck was busy back at school receiving congratulations for his father.

Shoebag found an empty swing and got on it, closing his eyes as he made it go higher and higher.

His legs were pointed at the sky, and he threw back his head and felt the sun warm on his face, as he sang to himself a favorite old cockroach song:

We lurk around and on our mark, we

come out in the dark,

Hey de hi ho, we don’t need a coach

To get there!

Hey de hi ho, if you are a roach,

You’ll get there!

We creep around and find the crumbs, happy to be chums,

Hey de hi ho, we hunt high and low,

In kitchens,

Hey de hi ho, the parties we throw,

In kitchens!

Shoebag opened his eyes to enjoy his ride up toward the treetops, telling himself it was not so bad being a person, because the song had made him a little homesick.

What did he care that he was not snug as a bug napping with his new brothers in the warm dark, when there was a blue sky overhead, and off in the distance children playing in the sandboxes and … and … look, over there on that bench!

There they were! Madam Grande de la Grande and Pretty Soft!

He slowed himself down and began thinking of the date. Yes. The third. Monday … the first Monday in April.

He had forgotten that it was the very day the Zap man came.

“Hel-lo!” he called out to them. “Hellll-lo!”

Madam Grande de la Grande waved her red scarf at Shoebag and pointed him out to Pretty Soft.

Pretty Soft, naturally, did not let her mouth stretch in too wide a smile, for that would not be good for her face, but Shoebag could see all the way from the swings that she was watching him with interest.

He made himself go higher to show off, and then he let the swing lose momentum, twisting himself around as it slowed, winding himself in a half circle cleverly.

This was a glorious time, wasn’t it? There were his friends over there, and here he was making the swing do graceful and funky things in the late afternoon sun.

“Hey de hi ho, we hunt high and low, In kitchens,” he sang aloud.

He felt his feet scuff along in the dirt, worrying only a little that it might ruin his new shoes.

“Hey de hi ho, the parties we throw,” he sang, and then he did a fantastic little leap from the swing, knowing that Madam and Pretty Soft were watching him.

Next, a pair of hands grabbed his shoulders.

And next, a voice said, “Stuella! You didn’t offer any congratulations to my father today, did you?”

P
OW! WHUMP! WHUMP! WHUMP!
POW! “Oh, no!” said Pretty Soft. “Stuart Bagg is in a fight! And he said he was popular with everyone!”

“There must be a policeman we can call to stop this!” Madam Grande de la Grande cried out. She got up from the park bench and looked up and down Beacon Hill Park.

“Let’s go closer,” said Pretty Soft. “They are kicking up so much dust rolling around over there on the ground, I can’t see anything!”

“Dust is not good for your nasal passages, child. And it is not good for the eyes!”

“I’ve never seen a fight except on television.”

“It could spill over on us, pet. I am going to look for a policeman!” And with that, Madam trotted away in her black cape, crying, “PO-LICE! PO-LICE! Come quickly!”

Pretty Soft started over toward the swings, where Shoebag was rolling around on the ground with a boy on top of him.

So this is a fight, live from Beacon Hill Park, Pretty Soft thought, and she was glad it had nothing to do with her.

Then as she was almost all the way to the slides, from out of nowhere,
he
appeared.

The tall one with dark glasses and a long nose.

“Break it up!” he was shouting as he ran in the direction of the fight.

Pretty Soft hurried after him. “Be careful. Dust is not good for the nasal passages, and it is not good for the eyes!”

Now the boy on top of Shoebag gave him a hard punch.

“This is for bringing a cockroach to school,” and another, “and this is for not saying ‘Congratulations to your father,’” and still another. “And this is what I’d give to Fatso, since he says you are sticking up for him now!”

The boy with the sunglasses stood over the pair. He put one hand on the boy holding Shoebag down in the dirt.

“Get off him, Tuffy Buck!” he said.

Tuffy Buck looked up, his eyes as wide as though he had seen something ghastly. “I’m s-s-sorry, Gregor.”

Then he got off of Shoebag, and began slouching away, backward.

Gregor helped Shoebag to his feet.

“Are you all right, Bagg?”

“Yes,” but Shoebag had a nosebleed.

Gregor got a wad of Kleenex from his pocket and passed it to Shoebag.

“Thanks,” said Shoebag. “I am not a good fighter, and you are a pal. You are the only real pal I have!”

“That isn’t what you told me,” Pretty Soft stepped forward. “You lied to me, Stuart Bagg. You told me you were very popular, and better than anyone at everything!”

“I tried to keep you happy because of the rule,” said Shoebag.

Gregor said, “What rule?”

“We have a rule that she can only hear and see things that are positive. We cannot let her become unhappy.”

Pretty Soft said, “But I wouldn’t have been unhappy if you’d told me you weren’t popular, Stuart Bagg. Why would that have made me unhappy?”

Shoebag’s face was suddenly scrunched up that awful way which made wrinkles and lines, and the Kleenex he held to his nose was bloody. “You aren’t unhappy to know I’m not popular at school?” he asked Pretty Soft. “Are you unhappy to see the shape I’m in now?”

“I can’t afford to be unhappy,” she said.

“I know who you are,” Gregor said. “You are the little girl on television who sells toilet paper.”

“I’m not as little as I look,” said Pretty Soft. “I’m seven years old.”

“You’re Pretty Soft,” he said. “I am Gregor Samsa.”

While all of this was happening, Tuffy Buck was heading away from them on tiptoe, sneaking off unnoticed.

Gregor Samsa asked Pretty Soft, “Don’t you feel badly that Stuart Bagg was just beat up?”

“I feel glad it’s not happening to me,” she said. “I have a new commercial to shoot very soon, and I must look my best and also be charming.”

“But I’m your new brother,” Shoebag said.

“I know you are,” Pretty Soft said.

Gregor Samsa leaned down so his mirrored glasses were pointed right at Pretty Soft’s sky-blue eyes. He spoke in his very, very deep voice. “I have thought of becoming a star myself, Pretty Soft, but now that I have met you, I know I could never be like you.”

“You could practice,” said Pretty Soft as she looked at the two mirrors that were his eyes.

“Even if I practiced I could never be so selfish. Even if I practiced I could never be so heartless,” said Gregor Samsa. “No, I will have to be something else.”

Then a most peculiar thing happened after he said that to Pretty Soft. She saw her reflection, but not her face: just its outline, not the eyes or nose, not the forehead or the mouth. It was an empty face.

Desperately, she said the words, “I see my own beauty, may it last forever.”

“She says that when she’s handling a crisis,” Shoebag told Gregor Samsa.

“I don’t see beauty,” Gregor Samsa said. “I don’t see anything.”

“Don’t say that to her!” Shoebag told him, and he went close to Pretty Soft, and put his arm around her.

“Please don’t get blood on me, Shoebag.” She said his real name, for she was rattled now. She put her hands to her face to feel her eyes and nose and mouth and forehead.

“I see my own beauty,” she started to try again, but Gregor Samsa turned to face Shoebag.

“What did she just call you, Stuart Bagg?” he asked.

“I called him Shoebag. It’s his nickname,” said Pretty Soft. “Turn around and face me again.”

Gregor ignored her. “That’s not a nickname,” he told Shoebag.

Pretty Soft knew then and there he did not know what he was talking about.

Down at the other end of the park, Madam appeared with a tall, uniformed policeman.

Pretty Soft hurried toward them, to announce that the fight was over, and to see her reflection in the mirror Madam always carried.

Yes! There she was again: everything in place on her beautiful face.

After the policeman had gone, and after Madam had put back the mirror in her bag, they strolled toward home.

“Is Shoebag a nickname or isn’t it?” Pretty Soft asked.

“It is. A most unpleasant nickname,” said Madam G. de la G.

“Am I selfish, Madam? Am I heartless?”

“Stars are the most unselfish of people,” said Madam Grande de la Grande. “They give of themselves tirelessly. And no one has more heart than a star, child, for it is a star’s responsibility to uncover the innermost secrets of the heart, and put them on display for all to see and applaud…. Oh, how I miss the applause! The shouts of Brava! Even the shrill whistles from the balcony!”

Pretty Soft decided not to ask the next question on her mind: how a nose, mouth, ears, and forehead could momentarily disappear from a face.

She must have imagined that.

“I
KNOW A ROACH
name when I hear one,” said Gregor Samsa. He slung one arm around Shoebag’s shoulder as they walked through the park.

“How come?” Shoebag asked.

“Oh, I go back and forth. I must have told you that. I go here and there … and when I am back, and when I am there, my own name is not Gregor Samsa. I am called In Bed…. Do you know what I am telling you?”