Mudshark (5 page)

“Anyway,” Bill went on, “when I got out of the service and came home, I wasn't the same. War changed me. I didn't want what I'd wanted before, college and a normal career and all that. I wanted something else.”

“Peace,” Mudshark guessed, and Bill nodded. “That makes sense.”

“The one thing I knew was that I wanted to live in a way that could never possibly hurt another person or creature. Where I could spend the rest of my life seeking beauty. And joy.

“I didn't want to go to college, but I still wanted an education. So I read like crazy—Plato and Aristotle and Shakespeare and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Jane Austen and John Cheever and Dylan Thomas and Mark Twain and Hemingway—all kinds of poems and novels and plays. I traveled all
over to go to museums and galleries so that I could look at paintings and sculpture—Rembrandt, Degas, Michelangelo, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Christo … I went to the ballet to see the choreography of Agnes de Mille and Balanchine; modern dance, too, Twyla Tharp and Merce Cunningham, and wacky new things at student festivals. I went to concerts—Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss, Vivaldi and Bach. New music, too, by young composers who were just starting out. I couldn't even list all that I studied. It was wonderful.”

“A great life,” Mudshark agreed.

“But still”—Bill frowned—“a person has to eat. And pay the electricity bill. And buy pants. I needed a job. But one where I could work in peace and still have time to keep up my studies. I tried jobs in hospitals, driving a bus, mowing lawns, painting houses, smoothing concrete … nothing really fit. Until one day I drove past the middle school. And I thought, hey! A custodian. Even the name made sense. I could be the custodian not just of the building but of the joyful things I'd found, too. It was perfect. Until…”

“The erasers.” Mudshark took a chance and jumped into the silence. “You took them. But how do they fit into all this?”

Bill sighed. “How'd you know it was me?”

“Logic,” Mudshark said. “You were the only person with access to all the rooms. But how come you did it?”

“It's kind of complicated.”

Silence, except for the sound of people walking by outside.

Bill hesitated. “I hate … no, that's too strong a word. Let's see … When beauty ends, it's just so sad and meaningless.”

Mudshark nodded.

“One day, a girl wrote something amazing on a blackboard when I was in the room setting up a new crayfish tank. I stopped and looked at the board. It was as vivid and … meaningful in its own way as any painting I'd ever seen in any museum. And then the teacher erased it.”

Bill took a deep breath. “It was … painful. To see it vanish. And I suppose it was wrong, but I
thought, you know, if that eraser wasn't there, it wouldn't be so easy to wipe away.”

“What was erased?”

“She wrote, ‘I can hear the color green and taste the color blue.’”

“That was it?”

“It doesn't sound like much. But think of it! She can hear and taste colors—how incredible! And then the idea was gone, lost, and no one else can ever see it and wonder like I did. Another time, I watched some kids at the blackboard doing math together. They were so excited that they'd solved the problem—I hated to see that wiped away. So I took those erasers. And then I couldn't stop.”

“I see what you mean,” Mudshark said. He thought. “But … that's funny, though, 'cause I like looking at a clean blackboard. It's ready for anyone to draw or write anything. Like it's … waiting for a new idea and everything is possible.”

Bill nodded slowly. “Maybe you're right about that.”

Mudshark thought again. “And then,” he said, “people
expect
a blackboard to be erased. They don't mind. And erasing mistakes is good, because you can keep going, trying to find the solution. And, you know, solving things, that's kind of beautiful. Well, I think so anyway. I like figuring things out.”

Bill turned to put in a new CD and Mudshark noticed a small box on top of the speaker with a hole cut out like a little cave. A set of tiny whiskers poked out and he heard a soft scratching sound from within. Bill glanced at him.

Mudshark grinned. “I won't say anything to Mr. Patterson if you won't.”

“He likes the music,” Bill said. “I think it's soothing after his … misadventures on the run. I kept him here to fatten him up. He was half starved after being lost for so long. Sometimes he goes off exploring.” He chuckled. “Poor Mr. Patterson.”

“Oh, I don't know. I bet he kind of likes the excitement. Everybody noticed that Mr. Patterson was pretty bored with school after he came back
from that wilderness camp last summer. Now he's all charged up.”

“He sure is. I had to rescue him from a vent this morning—his leg was stuck. This job is more interesting every day.”

“That's one way to look at this school.”

“So about the erasers,” Bill continued. “You make a good point. I never thought about it that way before. But I suppose you'll have to tell Mr. Wagner that I took them. I like my job and I'd hate to lose it because I stole some erasers. They have a zero-tolerance policy on theft in this school district.”

Mudshark thought. “He only asked me to
find
them. He never said he wanted to know who had taken them or why. If I put them back, I bet he won't care about who did it. He's got bigger stuff to deal with.”

“Yeah, the faculty restroom and that weird parrot in the library.” Bill laughed but then looked at Mudshark, who was scowling. “What's the matter?”

“The bird's got a really big mouth,” Mudshark said. “And he's not afraid to use it. You taking the erasers is just the kind of thing he would notice. I've got to stop him from figuring it out and telling the whole school! Fast.”

This is the principal
.
The area within fifteen feet of the door of the faculty restroom, defined by yellow warning tape, has been declared a hazardous material area. Do not enter this taped area, and when passing please refrain from looking directly at the bright light coming from beneath the door. Thank you. Oh, yes, and the gerbil has allegedly been cornered in the science lab room. Mr. Patterson will report specifics later. Thank you
.

While Mudshark was wondering how he could return all the erasers without getting Bill in trouble or
arousing any further suspicion, Helen Cartwright came to ask him to find her missing cat, Toby.

In Mudshark's opinion, Toby was more than a little mean. Mudshark had seen the scratches on Helen's arms. Toby was an ankle nipper, too. Mudshark couldn't help noticing that Toby's mood had become worse after Helen had turned twelve. He was no longer the apple of Helen's eye.

Helen, Mudshark knew from sitting near her in the cafeteria at lunch, liked to talk about boys and more boys and still more boys and who was a geek and who was not a geek and which lip gloss looked best when talking to boys.

Mudshark guessed that, in addition to being cranky, Toby was also bored out of his mind living with Helen. Mudshark was certainly bored out of his mind just sitting near her during lunch.

A bored cat, Mudshark knew, is a leaving cat.

Later that day, he was in the grocery store and saw Helen's neighbor Mrs. Downside. She was giving very specific instructions to the butcher about trimming the fat from a piece of sirloin. But Mudshark knew that Mrs. Downside was a vegan, because
when she'd broken her hip the winter before, Mudshark's mother had volunteered him to do her grocery shopping. He looked in Mrs. Downside's cart. Aha! Cat treats. From the looks of her new grocery shopping habits, Toby had found himself a new home. Mrs. Downside hadn't had any pets last winter.

Mudshark volunteered to help Mrs. Downside home with her groceries. When they got to her house, Mudshark sat on the front porch with her, drinking lemonade. He watched Toby eat sirloin that she hand-fed to him while he reclined on a purple satin cushion that had his new name, Mr. Cuddles, embroidered on it in gold letters. Then Mrs. Downside brushed Toby's coat with a soft-bristled brush.

“I special-ordered this from the Precious and Pampered Pet Web site for Mr. Cuddles. He enjoys a good brushing. Poor thing; he obviously never had a loving home before.”

“He's a really nice cat, Mrs. Downside.” Mudshark got up. “Thanks for the lemonade.”

“Thank you, Lyle, for helping me with my
groceries,” she said, brushing the surprisingly docile Mr. Cuddles.

Mudshark trotted down the street to Helen's house to report his findings.

“You might get him back,” Mudshark told Helen, “but it would be an uphill fight to keep him. Mrs. Downside has time to sit with him, but you have school. You could bring him home by force, but the first time he got out … They seem like they belong together, actually; they were both bor—I mean, lonely.”

Helen nodded. “You know, Mudshark,” she said, “actually, I'm just as glad that he's found another home. I mean, I love him and all, but, well, have you noticed that he's kind of mean?” She absentmindedly patted the scratches on her arms. “But I need him for a science project that Betty Crimper and I are doing in lab tomorrow. She was working on building a better mousetrap. Or, wait, no, was it creating a new kind of catnip? I'm not very good at science and so I haven't really paid attention. Bringing Toby as a visual aid for our oral presentation was my
only responsibility for the project we're doing tomorrow. Can you believe I had to get special permission from the principal to bring an animal onto school property? I mean, we had crayfish in every classroom and now a gerbil on the loose and that weird parrot in the library and … what is it?”

Mudshark had leapt to his feet. “That's it!” He beamed at Helen. “Don't worry about bringing the cat to school for your science project; I'll speak to Mrs. Downside about borrowing him. Kyle and I need to use Toby for a little while after school, too. And then—could you and Betty help me out? I'm working on an experiment of my own.”

This is the principal
.
Please refrain from distracting the hazmat crew the government has sent in. They are working to contain the dangerous material in the faculty restroom, sealing it in lead-lined containers before sending it to appropriate government agencies for classification and neutralizing. Oh, and Mr. Patterson was last seen heading up into the overhead heating and air-conditioning ducts in pursuit of the gerbil, so refrain from becoming distracted by the thumping and banging overhead. Thank you
.

Mudshark sat at the library table the next day, looking at the parrot and listening to the low buzz around
him; everyone was talking about the missing erasers, the art posters that had suddenly started to appear all over the school and the classical music wafting out of the custodian's room.

Mudshark noticed that the parrot, like him, seemed to listen to
everything
, cocking his head and closing his eyes, almost as if he were filing the words away. Like some sort of feather-covered computer.

“Hmmm …,” Mudshark said aloud, “feathers.” He closed his own eyes, remembering. A few tiny green feathers in the boys' room, a stray feather fluttering down the hallway … He opened his eyes, homing in on the open transom above the library door. He reached out and jiggled the door of the birdcage. It popped open.

Aha! So that was how the parrot collected information.

Mudshark looked over at Ms. Underdorf, who had her back to the room, her nose in a book. He stole a peek around the room, where everyone was deep into either whispered gossip or homework.
Although improbable, it
was
likely that no one noticed the bird getting out of his cage and out of the library to stealthily patrol the halls of the school from time to time. Especially if it happened when the school was empty.

Like Mudshark, the bird paid attention to details and gathered information in a way that no one, not even Mudshark himself, had noticed.

“Well done, my good bird, well done,” Mudshark whispered approvingly. “But I'm the big fish around here, and more important, I can't let you see everything; that's no good.”

The parrot belched, ruffled his feathers and, with his beak, picked at the loose door of his cage. “Going. Walk. Shhhh.”