The Wednesday Wars (12 page)

There was one action shot, though.

Of Ariel the Fairy, flying high in the air, across the stage of the Festival Theater, his legs splayed out as though he really
was
flying.

The picture covered almost half of the front page.

And the story told the whole world that the tights were yellow!

And that they had white feathers on the butt!

"No one is going to see it," said my mother. "It's New Year's Day. Who looks at the newspaper on New Year's Day?"

It turned out that Doug Swieteck's brother did. Probably he looked at the picture on the front page. He saw who it was and what he was doing. And there was a flash of inspiration and ambition—which was, according to Shakespeare, what Macbeth was feeling a day or so before he murdered Duncan.

Maybe for a second, Doug Swieteck's brother thought that, since I had told him about "pied ninny," he shouldn't do anything about what his inspiration and ambition were telling him to do. But probably only for a second. In the end, he was Doug Swieteck's brother, and he couldn't help himself. It's like there's a Doug Swieteck's Brother Gene that switches on, too.

Some of what happened after that we found out from Doug Swieteck, who came back to Camillo Junior High with a black eye—which is not how you're supposed to come back to school after the happy holidays. The shiner had been a whole lot bigger and blacker a couple of days earlier, he said. But it was still pretty impressive. It's hard to believe that parts of you can turn green and purple at the same time, but they can.

At first he wouldn't tell anyone what had happened—not even when Danny threatened to give him a matching set of black, green, and purple eyes. But when I promised him one of my free cream puffs from Goldman's Best Bakery, he gave in. (People will do just about anything for one of Mr. Goldman's cream puffs, I guess.)

So here's what happened.

It was still early in the morning when his brother found the newspaper, Doug told us. Since it was the day after people had stayed up to watch the New Year's ball drop in Times Square, his brother figured everyone was sleeping late. He put his coat on, went out into the neighborhood, and stole the front page of the
Home Town Chronicle
from every stoop he could find. And there were plenty. Then he came back home, carried them up to his lair, and cut out the Ariel the Fairy picture from each one, careful to include the headline, which was this:

Holling Hoodhood as Ariel the Fairy Soars Onstage
to Rescue His Potent Master

This isn't at all what was happening in the play, but that was the least thing to fuss about.

After he finished cutting out the pictures, he took them all to the basement and found the bright yellow oil paint left over from a go-cart he had made to run kids down with. Then he went to get Doug—probably because he didn't know how to paint inside the lines.

Doug wouldn't tell us what he said when he saw the pictures and the can of yellow paint. All I know is that he wouldn't help, and so took a black eye. His brother probably promised a whole lot more if he said anything about the pictures—or the black eye. Then he found a brush and got to work himself.

Whatever it means to be a friend, taking a black eye for someone has to be in it.

The rest of what happened I figured out myself.

On the morning that school started again, Doug Swieteck's brother got to Camillo Junior High early. This should have warned somebody. If Mr. Guareschi had been in the halls trying to track down Sycorax and Caliban, he might have intercepted him. But he was probably supervising the unloading of multiple boxes of the New York State Standardized Achievement Tests—which I hadn't been preparing for because Mrs. Baker refused to give us practice exams to do during the holiday break. So Mr. Guareschi never saw him, and Doug Swieteck's brother was free to change his inspiration and ambition into reality.

He went up and down the halls taping up pictures of Holling Hoodhood as Ariel the Fairy Soaring Onstage—all in bright, vivid, living, impossible-to-take-your-eyes-away-from color—even though a lot of it wasn't in the lines. He stuffed some in the eighth-grade lockers. He taped some to the asbestos tiles on classroom ceilings. He put them in all the stalls of the boys' restroom, and in all the stalls in the girls' restroom, too. (I heard that from Meryl Lee.) He put them over the drinking fountains, and on every classroom door, and on the fire escape doors, and on the walls of the stairwells. He put them on the arches over the doors of the main lobby (no one figured out how he got that high without a ladder), and on the backboards of the basketball hoops in the gym. He even got them on all the trophies in the locked glass cases by the Main Administrative Office, and found a way to tape them to the Administrative Office counter, so that they were the first thing you saw when you walked in.

By the time he was done, every place you looked was bright yellow. It was high noon in the halls. The only thing that could have been worse was if the pictures had shown the white feathers on my butt. If they had, I would have had to leave the country.

As it was, when I walked into school, I figured this would be my last day at Camillo Junior High.

Maybe I'd try the Alabama Military Institute.

Can you imagine what it's like to walk down the halls of your junior high and just about every single person you meet looks at you and starts to grin, and it's not because they're glad to see you? Can you imagine what it's like to walk into the boys' restroom before the eighth graders have cleared out? Can you imagine what it's like to go to Gym and have Coach Quatrini, the pied ninny, announce that morning exercises will be stretches so that we can all practice soaring like Ariel the Fairy?

No, you cannot imagine this. But let me tell you, it was a long first Wednesday back.

And to top it off, Mrs. Baker gave me a 150-question test on
The Tragedy of Macbeth.

"Let's keep you on your toes," she said cheerfully.

Sometimes I still think that she hates my guts.

By the next morning, Mr. Vendleri had torn down almost all of the pictures. He hadn't gotten to the ones in the trophy case yet, or the ones in the main lobby. Meryl Lee took care of the ones in the girls' restroom.

Good old Meryl Lee.

But Doug Swieteck's brother had an ample supply. They showed up in the halls again that Friday. On Monday in the cafeteria. On Tuesday across the stage front in the auditorium. Mr. Vendleri could hardly keep up.

And when Tuesday was over and I walked home, figuring that I would be free of the picture for at least the evening, my sister was waiting for me at the front door of the Perfect House, and she was holding one in her hand, complete with yellow oil paint.

"This," she said, "was taped to my locker."

So it had migrated to the high school, too.

"Do you want to tell me why this was taped to my locker?" she said.

"Because someone wanted to be a jerk," I said.

"Someone?" She looked at the picture, then held it out to me again. "Who looks like a jerk in this picture, Holling?"

"I didn't take it," I said.

"You're the one wearing the yellow tights! I told you this would happen. I didn't care as long as it was just you. But it's not just you now, is it? This was taped to my locker. And now I'm the one who has a baby brother who wears yellow tights."

"I'm not your baby brother."

"No, you're right. You're my brother who is all grown up and wearing yellow tights." She shoved the picture into my chest. "Fix this or you die," she said.

I never thought being in seventh grade would mean so many death threats.

I considered my options. Cream puffs were not going to work again. The Alabama Military Institute was looking pretty good. Maybe Dad would even like the idea.

That hope lasted until suppertime, when my father announced that the town had decided to build a new junior high school, and that Hoodhood and Associates had been invited to bid to become the architect.

He looked at my sister after making the announcement. "You see what being named Chamber of Commerce Businessman of 1967 can do for you?"

"Gee," she said, "I thought it was getting the nifty magnetic sign for the side of your car that was the big deal." She smiled.

My father looked at me.

"Just swell," I said.

"That's right," he said. "And having a kid in the school is a big plus in making a bid like this. It makes the board members think that we have a deep commitment already. And if Hoodhood and Associates gets this contract, we'll really be going places."

"I've been thinking of military school," I said.

Dad took a sip of his coffee.

"I'm not sure Kowalski will even bother to put in a bid," he said.

"I'm thinking of military school," I said again. "In Alabama."

"You don't have to say ridiculous things twice, Holling. Once is more than enough."

"Why is military school ridiculous?" asked my sister.

"Today the Mets decided to pay Buddy Harrelson eighteen thousand dollars a year to play baseball. Can you imagine that? Eighteen thousand dollars a year ... just to play baseball. This for a player who can't hit the ball out of the infield. Holling going to military school isn't quite as ridiculous as that, but I'll give him this—it's pretty close."

"It's not any more ridiculous than going to our high school," said my sister.

My father closed his eyes. He took another sip of coffee. I think he was fortifying himself.

"Girls can't wear their hair too short, boys can't wear their hair too long," my sister said. "We can't wear skirts that are too short, or slacks that are too long, or sweaters that are too tight, or jeans that are too—and I'm not making this up—too blue. We can't even wear a turtleneck because it's too something—no one knows what, but it's something. Now, that's ridiculous. That a principal even cares about this stuff while bombs are dropping on people who hardly have any clothes is even more ridiculous."

"You don't wear those things because you're not a hippie," said my father. His eyes were still closed.

"What's all that got to do with education? Why can a principal just make all those rules up?"

My father opened his eyes. "Because he can," he said, and put down his cup of coffee. "Eighteen thousand dollars. They are out of their minds."

The Alabama Military Institute faded right away.

After supper, my sister came into my room.

"So you don't think you need to knock?" I said.

"Holling, going to military school is a ridiculous idea."

"That's not what you said at supper."

"It's not a ridiculous idea because of why Dad thinks it's a ridiculous idea. It's a ridiculous idea because it's military school, and because the next stop after military school is Saigon."

"So?"

She put her hands on her hips. "Sometimes I wonder if you're even worth trying to save," she said. "There's a war going on in Vietnam, Holling. Have you noticed? A war. Two hundred soldiers die every week. They come back home in black body bags stacked into planes. And after they're buried in the ground, their families get a new American flag with fancy folds. And that's it."

She stopped.

"And I couldn't stand it if..."

She stopped again.

"It's a ridiculous idea, Holling," she said, and left.

Pete Seeger began to play loudly in her room.

The next afternoon, after everyone had left for Temple Beth-El or Saint Adelbert's, and after Doug Swieteck and Danny had waited around until the last minute in case Mrs. Baker had arranged for Whitey Ford to show up, Mrs. Baker handed me back my
Macbeth
test.

"Macbeth and Malcolm are not the same person, though their names share an initial consonant," she said.

"I know," I said.

"Nor are Duncan and Donalbain, who also share an initial and, for that matter, concluding, consonant, the same person."

"I guess not," I said.

"Malcolm and Donalbain are the king's sons, not..."

"You know," I said, "it's not so easy to read Shakespeare—especially when he can't come up with names that you can tell apart."

Mrs. Baker rolled her eyes. This time I was sure.

"Shakespeare did not write for your ease of reading," she said.

No kidding, I thought.

"He wrote to express something about what it means to be a human being in words more beautiful than had ever yet been written."

"So in
Macbeth,
when he wasn't trying to find names that sound alike, what did he want to express in words more beautiful than had ever yet been written?"

Mrs. Baker looked at me for a long moment. Then she went and sat back down at her desk. "That we are made for more than power," she said softly. "That we are made for more than our desires. That pride combined with stubbornness can be disaster. And that compared with love, malice is a small and petty thing."

We were both quiet.

"Malice is not always small and petty," I said. "Have you seen what Doug Swieteck's brother put up in the halls?"

"I have," said Mrs. Baker. "A wonderful picture of you playing a wonderful part."

"In yellow tights," I said.

"Well," she said, "you may chance have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on you."

"That doesn't sound like it's from
Macbeth
."

"It's not. But I promise you, people will soon forget about Ariel."

I sighed. "It's a whole lot easier saying that than seeing yourself in that picture."

"I suppose that would be true," she said.

"It's not like it's
your
picture in the halls, or that you have all that much to worry about," I said.

I know. Dumb.

Mrs. Baker's face went suddenly white. She opened her lower desk drawer, put her copy of Shakespeare into it, and closed it. Loudly. "Go sit down and fix the errors on your
Macbeth
exam," she said.

I did.

We said nothing else to each other that whole afternoon. Not even when I left.

I walked home under gray clouds whose undersides had been shredded. They hung in tatters, and a cold mist leaked out of them. The cold got colder, and the mist got mistier all through the afternoon, so that by suppertime a drizzle was making everything wet and everyone miserable—especially my sister, who believed that she had hair that belonged in southern California, where it would be springy and bouncy all the time, instead of in gray, cold, misty Long Island, where it just hung.