October

The Wednesdays of September passed in a cloudy haze of chalk dust.

At 1:45, the bus arrived from Temple Beth-El to spring half of my class.

At 1:55, the bus arrived from Saint Adelbert's to spring the other half—even Mai Thi, who had to go to Catechism since it was the Catholic Relief Agency that had brought her over from Vietnam, and I guess they figured that she owed them, even though she wasn't Catholic.

Then Mrs. Baker and I sat. Alone. Facing each other. The classroom clock clicked off the minutes. She was probably considering what she could legally do to remind me how regrettable it was that my family was Presbyterian.

"There's no point teaching you something new," she said. "You'd just hear it a second time tomorrow." So that first Wednesday I washed all the chalkboards. Then I straightened the Thorndike dictionaries. Then I washed all the chalkboards again since they were streaky. Then I went outside and pounded the erasers against the brick wall of Camillo Junior High until the white chalk dust spread up and around me, settling in my hair and in my eyes and up my nose and down my throat, so that I figured I was probably going to end up with some sort of lung disease that would kill me before the end of the school year. All because I happened to be Presbyterian.

The second Wednesday of September, and the third, and the fourth, and Wednesdays on into October were pretty much the same. I got good at the chalkboards, so Mrs. Baker added putting up her bulletin boards with microscopic pins and leveling tools, and sweeping down the cobwebs from the asbestos tiles on the ceiling, and wiping the grime of sweaty hands off the lower half of the windows, then pushing them all up so that, as Mrs. Baker said, fresh air could circulate into the classroom.

Which it really needed, since once air reached the Coat Room, it landed on all the stuff from all the lunches that had been chucked into the corners because they were too vile to eat even when they were fresh. Lunches like liverwurst sandwiches.

So after I got good at the windows, Mrs. Baker got me cleaning out the Coat Room.

But what I didn't clean out was the stash that Doug Swieteck was hiding to prepare for Number 166. So far, there was a box of tapioca pudding, a bag of marshmallows that had been smashed into a sticky pulp, a half-dozen ragged feathers, a bottle of red ink, and a plastic bag with something awful in it. Probably something dead. He had it all in a small box from the A&P, stuffed on the shelf above the coats.

I didn't touch any of it.

And do you think I complained about this? Do you think I complained about picking up old lunches that had fungus growing on them and sweeping asbestos tiles and straightening Thorndike dictionaries? No, I didn't. Not once. Not even when I looked out the clean lower windows as the afternoon light of autumn changed to mellow and full yellows, and the air turned so sweet and cool that you wanted to drink it, and as people began to burn leaves on the sides of the streets and the lovely smoke came into the back of your nose and told you it was autumn, and what were you doing smelling chalk dust and old liverwurst sandwiches instead?

And why didn't I complain?

Because after the first week in October, the Baker Sporting Emporium narrowed its architect choices down to two—Hoodhood and Associates, and Kowalski and Associates—and so every single night after supper but before Walter Cronkite began reporting, my father said to me, "So Holling, everything all right with Mrs. Baker?" and I answered, "Just swell."

"Keep it that way," he'd say.

So I didn't complain.

Still, you would have thought that since all this was happening because I was a Presbyterian, God would have seen to it that the Yankees would have played in the World Series to pay me back for my persecution. But were they? Of course not. The world isn't fair that way. The Boston Red Sox were playing instead. And let me tell you, everyone knows that the Boston Red Sox are never going to win another World Series. Never. Not even if they have three Carl Yastrzemskis. Which they don't.

Doug Swieteck's brother was still not back in school, and Doug Swieteck told us why: The ten days of observation had been pure delight for him, but when no one had found any behavior beyond his usual weirdness, he realized that he would be coming back to school again pretty soon. So the evening before he was to return, when he came to his classroom with Mrs. Swieteck to meet with his teacher, Doug Swieteck's brother walked up to the chalkboard and pounded the erasers against his head. Since Mr. Ludema didn't have someone like me around to pound them against the brick walls every Wednesday afternoon, Doug Swieteck's brother's hair turned white after about four poundings. Then he took two long pieces of chalk, stuck them into his mouth like fangs, and went howling and roaring and slobbering out into the hallway.

The school was mostly deserted, so it really was just dumb luck that Mrs. Sidman, who had decided to leave her new post in the Main Administrative Office, had come into school that particular evening to clean out the last of her personal effects.

I think her screams echoed up and down the halls of Camillo Junior High until dawn.

That bought Doug Swieteck's brother another four weeks of medical observation. And it was pretty clear from Mrs. Baker's glares the next morning that, somehow, she thought this was all my fault. Which it wasn't. I didn't have a thing to do with it. But when someone hates your guts, truth, justice, and the American way don't mean all that much.

On Wednesday, when we all stood up to go to Mr. Petrelli's geography class, Mrs. Baker stopped glaring. In fact, as we walked out with Geography for You and Me in our hands, she started to smile at me. Then I got worried. She looked like those evil geniuses who suddenly figure out a plan to conquer the world and can already imagine earth's population quivering in their grasp.

It was all I could do not to sprint out of Mrs. Baker's classroom—even though we weren't supposed to run in the halls—to the safe world of junior high geography.

Mr. Petrelli believed that no class was worth anything without a Study Question Data Sheet. He dittoed these off like a major publisher. His hands were always blue from the ink, mostly because he hauled the dittos out from the machine while they were still wet from the alcohol—the smell of which gave the room a tang.

"Fill these out in pairs," he said. "You have forty-three minutes."

Forty-three minutes. Teachers don't reckon time the way normal people do.

When Meryl Lee came over to be my study partner, I was still wondering why Mrs. Baker had smiled.

"Are you all right?" Meryl Lee asked.

"Just swell."

"You're holding your pen upside down."

"Thanks for pointing that out, Detective Kowalski."

"You're very welcome. Do you think you can figure out the answers while I write them down on the sheet?"

"Why don't you figure out the answers while I write them down on the sheet?"

"Because I know how to write. What's the first state?"

"Delaware. Do you think Mrs. Baker looks like an evil genius?"

"Not unless you're paranoid. What's the second state?"

"I'm not paranoid. Pennsylvania. Mrs. Baker hates my guts."

"Mrs. Baker doesn't hate your guts, and you are, too, paranoid. What's the third state?"

"Well, thank you for your vote of confidence. New York."

Meryl Lee looked over at Geography for You and Me. "New York wasn't the third state. It was New Jersey, not New York."

"How do you know that?"

"Everybody knows that," she said.

Oh, out beyond Mr. Petrelli's not-so-clean lower windows it was one of those perfect blue autumn days, when the sun is warm and the grass is still green and the leaves are red and tipped with yellow. A few white clouds drifted high, teased along by a breeze as gentle as a breath.

"What's the fourth state?" said Meryl Lee.

That's pretty much how it went for Meryl Lee and me until recess, which had become a whole lot safer since Mrs. Baker's failed assassination plot. I figured that most of her would-be assassins had seen what had happened to Doug Swieteck's brother and were worried I might take them out, too. So when we left Mr. Petrelli and went back to Mrs. Baker's classroom, I believed I could actually run out into the perfect October day and hope to come back alive.

I could feel the warm sun on my back already.

But then I found out why Mrs. Baker had been smiling.

"Mr. Hoodhood," she called from her desk as the school clock clicked to noon, "I have a quick job for you. Everyone else, enjoy your recess."

I looked at Meryl Lee. "See?" I whispered.

"You are paranoid," she said, and abandoned me.

"Mr. Hoodhood," said Mrs. Baker, "there are some pastries that Mrs. Bigio has spent the morning baking for me that need to be brought up to this room. Would you go down to the kitchen and bring them here? And do not start any rumors. These are not for the class. They are for the Wives of Vietnam Soldiers' gathering at Saint Adelbert's this afternoon. Not for anyone else."

"Is that all?" I said.

"Don't look so suspicious," she said. "Suspicion is an unbecoming passion."

I took my unbecoming passion and left to find Mrs. Bigio. This didn't seem like it would take too long, even though the seventh-grade classrooms were on the third floor and the kitchen was on the first floor, at the very end of the hallway—probably so that the wind could blow the fumes away. Sometimes that worked. And sometimes it didn't. When it didn't, the halls filled up with the scent of Hamburger-and-Pepper Surprise, a scent that lingered like the smell of a dead animal caught underneath the floorboards.

I think that Mrs. Bigio couldn't smell the scents, either because she wore a cotton mask over her face all the time or because she had worked in the kitchen of Camillo Junior High for so long that she could no longer smell.

But I didn't have a mask and I could smell, so when I reached the kitchen, I got ready to take a deep breath before I walked in. But then I realized I didn't need to. There were no fumes. There was only the delicious, extravagant, warm, tasty scent of buttery baking crust, and of vanilla cream, and of powdered sugar, still drifting in the heated air. And stretched out on the long tables, far from Whatever Surprise was being fed to Camillo Junior High for lunch that day, were a dozen trays of cream puffs—brown, light, perfect cream puffs.

"Mrs. Baker send you?" said Mrs. Bigio.

I nodded.

"You can start with that one," she said, pointing.

I thought, Shouldn't Mrs. Bigio be grateful for my willingness to help? Wouldn't any human being with a beating heart hand me one of the brown, light, perfect cream puffs? Was that so unlikely?

Yes. It was unlikely.

"Now would be a good time to start," said Mrs. Bigio. "And don't drop any."

I won't drop any, I thought, and you're very welcome.

I picked up a tray in each hand.

"One tray at a time," said Mrs. Bigio.

I looked at her. "That will take me twelve trips to the third floor," I said.

"So, Mr. Samowitz is teaching you some arithmetic after all. Don't drop any."

It took me the rest of lunch recess to carry the trays—one at a time—up to the classroom. Mrs. Baker smiled sweetly as I brought each one in. "Place them on the shelf by the windows. The cool air will keep them from getting soggy."

I thought of my father and the future of Hoodhood and Associates. I did not complain. Even when Mrs. Baker asked me to open the windows a little wider and I had to move all the trays—one at a time—so that I could reach over the shelf and jerk all the windows open a little wider, I did not complain.

"Thank you," said Mrs. Baker, as the school clock clicked to 12:30 and the classroom began to fill and Danny Hupfer came to punch me on the shoulder because he thought the cream puffs might be for us, which they weren't. He figured that out when Mrs. Baker told us to take our Mathematics for You and Me books, line up by the door, and then head to Mr. Samowitz's class.

Let me tell you, it is hard to care much about set theory when there are twelve trays of brown, light, perfect cream puffs cooling deliciously on a shelf back in your own classroom. Twelve sets of cream puffs divided by twenty-three kids plus Mrs. Baker meant half a set of cream puffs for every person in that room. And don't think we weren't all figuring out that same equation. And don't think we weren't all worrying that Mr. Samowitz's homeroom class, who had walked past us with English for You and Me in their hands, was trying to get those same hands on our cream puffs.

But they didn't, and when we came back in after set theory, the cream puffs were still there, cooling in the circulating air coming in beneath the clean lower windows. But Mrs. Baker acted like the cream puffs weren't there at all. And I suppose that in the end it didn't really matter that they were there. They may as well have been over with the Wives of Vietnam Soldiers at Saint Adelbert's already, for all the chance we had of getting one.

When 1:45 came, half the class left, and Danny Hupfer whispered, "If she gives you a cream puff after we leave, I'm going to kill you"—which was not something that someone headed off to prepare for his bar mitzvah should be thinking.

When 1:55 came and the other half of the class left, Meryl Lee whispered, "If she gives you one after we leave, I'm going to do Number 408 to you." I didn't remember what Number 408 was, but it was probably pretty close to what Danny Hupfer had promised.

Even Mai Thi looked at me with narrowed eyes and said, "I know your home." Which sounded pretty ominous.

But I knew I was safe. It was just as likely that President Lyndon B. Johnson himself would walk into the classroom as Mrs. Baker would give me a cream puff.

Actually, though, someone did come to the door after everyone had left. It wasn't President Johnson. It was a fifth grader from Camillo Elementary. He was carrying a box.

"There you are, Charles," said Mrs. Baker. "Did you get them all?"

"I think so."

"From Mr. Petrelli's class? And Mr. Samowitz?"

Charles nodded.

"And did you remember Mrs. Harknett downstairs?"

"Yes."

"And Mr. Ludema?"

"I got them all," Charles said.

"Thank you. You may put them here on the desk."

Charles put the box on Mrs. Baker's desk. He looked once at me—kind of sadly, I thought—then left, brushing his hands off.

Chalk dust fell from them.

"Mr. Hoodhood," said Mrs. Baker, "recent events have led the junior high school teachers to conclude that we need to be keeping our chalkboard erasers much cleaner. So I asked Charles to gather them from the classrooms and bring them here each Wednesday." She gestured toward the box on her desk. "Would you take care of them, please?"

If there ever was a time to complain, this was it. I walked over and looked into the box. There must have been thirty erasers in there. White with six weeks' worth of chalk.

This was really the time to complain.

But I thought of the future of Hoodhood and Associates.

I picked up the box of erasers.

"I'll be in the ditto room," said Mrs. Baker.

Just swell, I thought.

But then Mrs. Baker said something that made the world spin backward. "If we both finish in time, you may have one of the cream puffs."

I think I must have gone white.

"You needn't look so shocked," she said.

But I was shocked. She had offered the hope of a cream puff. A brown, light, perfect cream puff. It was as if Mrs. Baker had suddenly become not Mrs. Baker. It was like I had had another vision, only this one was real.

So before the vision could fade, I carried the box of erasers down the hall, down two flights of steps, and outside.

The day was still a perfect blue October day, as if it had been waiting for me since I'd missed it at lunch recess. It smelled of baseball, and the last cut of grass, and leaves drying out but still holding on. And for a while I could smell all of it.

But the cloud of white chalk that comes out of thirty erasers is pretty impressive, let me tell you. I pounded and pounded them against the wall. And the chalk dust that didn't get into my lungs flew and twisted with the breeze that curled against the first-floor classrooms, coating all the windows—the teachers had learned to close them on Wednesday afternoons now.

A cream puff. At the end of a long school day. Brown, light, and perfect. And no one—not Danny Hupfer, not Meryl Lee, not Mai Thi—no one needed to know.

The cloud of chalk dust wafted higher. It flew up to the second-floor windows—all closed.

Maybe Mrs. Baker would give me two. After all, there were twelve trays of the things. Maybe two.

The chalk dust wafted with the swirling breeze—past the second-floor windows and then up to the third-floor windows.

Maybe she would give me a third cream puff to take home.

The chalk dust gathered by the seventh-grade windows.

Windows someone had left open so the air could circulate.

Mrs. Baker's windows.

Open next to the brown, light, perfect cream puffs so that they wouldn't get soggy!

I ran up desperately, lugging the box of thirty erasers, twenty-three of which had sent their chalk dust toward Mrs. Baker's windows.

But I was too late.

The cloud of chalk dust had drifted in, and then gravity had taken over. The chalk had fallen gently upon each one of the cream puffs. They looked like Mrs. Bigio had spread an extra-thick layer of powdered sugar on top.

"Are you picking out the one you would like?" Mrs. Baker came back into the room with a pile of blue dittos.

"Not really," I said.

"Choose quickly, then," she said, "and we'll carry the trays down to my car."

I picked one up off the tray. It felt a little gritty.

Then I helped Mrs. Baker carry all the trays down to her car—one at a time—hoping that the Wives of Vietnam Soldiers would not notice the chalk dust all that much.

Between trips, I threw my own cream puff into the Coat Room, beside the moldering lunches.

You know how a story gets told in a small town, and how every time someone tells it, it gets bigger and bigger, until it's a flat-out lie? That's what happened to the story of the cream puffs at Saint Adelbert's that afternoon. By the time the story got back to my father—which took only sixteen hours, since he heard it the moment he arrived at Hoodhood and Associates Thursday morning—it said that every single one of the Wives of Vietnam Soldiers had nearly choked to death while eating cream puffs—which had to have been an exaggeration. At first, according to the story, they had turned on Mrs. Baker, but when they realized that Mrs. Baker could not even imagine pulling a practical joke, they had turned on Mrs. Bigio, who was also one of the Wives of Vietnam Soldiers. When Mrs. Bigio assured them that there must have been something wrong with the powdered sugar and she would be sure to write the company to complain, they decided that they would not expel her from the Wives of Vietnam Soldiers. However, she would never again be their Official Cook. Never.

At this, Mrs. Bigio had tearfully insisted that the cream puffs were really not that bad after all, and she had put a whole one into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed.

The doctor at Saint Ignatius Hospital said that the spell had come on when she refused to let herself cough even once.

That night at supper, my father looked at me with an unbecoming passion.

"Holling," he said, "everything all right with Mrs. Baker?"

"Just swell," I said.

"You didn't help to make her cream puffs yesterday, did you?"

"No, sir."

"You didn't sneak down to the school kitchen and do anything to Mrs. Bigio's powdered sugar?"

"No, sir. No sneaking."

"So everything is all right?"

"Just swell."

"You don't know anything about—"

Okay, this is where God broke in to pay me back for all that had happened because I was a Presbyterian, because if my father had finished this question, I might have had to give him something pretty far from the truth. But he never finished it, because my sister came in and sat down across from me, and on her cheek she had painted a bright yellow flower.

My father stared at it, then turned to my mother.

"Tell your daughter that she has a bright yellow flower painted on her cheek."

"I know I have a flower painted on my cheek," said my sister.

"Why?" said my father.

"Isn't it obvious?"

"Not unless you want us to believe that you're a flower child."

My sister didn't say anything.

There was a little pause while the whole world sucked in its breath.

"No," said my father, "you're not a flower child."

"A flower child is beautiful and doesn't do anything to harm anyone," said my sister.

My father closed his eyes.

"We believe in peace and understanding and freedom. We believe in sharing and helping each other. We're going to change the world."

"A flower child," said my father, opening his eyes, "is a hippie who lives in Greenwich Village in dirty jeans and beads and who can't change a pair of socks."

"Fifty thousand flower children protested the war at the Pentagon today. They all say you're wrong."

"Fortunately, right and wrong don't depend on math."

"They don't depend on President Johnson, either."

"Thank you, Miss Political Analyst," said my father. "Now analyze this: The person to whom you are now speaking is a candidate for the Chamber of Commerce Businessman of 1967. This is an honor that he has wanted for a long time. It is also an honor that will lead to larger, more profitable ventures than he has yet seen. It is not an honor that is awarded to a man who has a daughter who calls herself a flower child. So go wash your face."

There was another one of those long pauses because the world still hadn't let out its breath. It was a really long pause. The world must have been about ready to have a spell.

Then my sister shoved back her chair and went upstairs. She came down with only a yellow smudge.

"Pass the lima beans," said my father.

***

That night, my sister opened my door.

"Thanks for all your help, Holling."

"A flower child? You want support for being a flower child?"

"I want support for believing in something bigger than just me."

"Then don't paint a bright yellow flower on your face. You looked stupid."

"Imagine that," she said. "And you don't have to paint anything on your face to look stupid."

"You're not going to get my support that way," I pointed out.

"Fifty thousand people at the Pentagon, Holling. Fifty thousand. Something big is happening, and it's starting right now. Maybe it's time to think about growing up."

"So I can become a flower child?"

"So you can become who you're supposed to be: Holling Hoodhood."

"In case you haven't noticed, I am Holling Hoodhood."

"Isn't it comforting to think so? But when I look at you, you're just the Son Who Is Going to Inherit Hoodhood and Associates."

"It's the same thing," I said.

"Only if you let it be the same thing. Why do you let him bully you? Why don't you ever stand up to him?"

"And it works so well when you stand up to him."

My sister put her hand up to her cheek.

"So why do it?" I said.

"To let him know that I don't like being told who I am, and who I'm going to be."

"You don't have a flower on your cheek now. It doesn't look like it made a whole lot of difference."

"It makes a difference to me," she said, and went to her bedroom to play the Monkees. Loudly.

The next morning, Mrs. Baker was waiting for me by the Coat Room. "Mr. Hoodhood, I have been thinking about our Wednesday afternoon routines, and we need to make some changes."

Remember the ham and cheese and broccoli omelet?

"We do?" I said.

"We do. We'll talk about it on Wednesday. But no more chores—or perhaps, just one more."

"One more?"

"For another cream puff, perhaps."

I felt my unbecoming passion rising.

"Okay," I said. "One more chore. But I don't need the cream puff."

"Imagine that," said Mrs. Baker, and walked away. This was a new strategy, I was sure. But I didn't have time to figure it out.

"You got one of the cream puffs?" said Meryl Lee.

"Not exactly," I said.

"Mrs. Baker just said, 'For another cream puff? Another. And you said, 'Okay.' So how is that 'not exactly'?"

Danny Hupfer came over. "You got one of the cream puffs?"

"I didn't eat it."

"Sure, you didn't eat it. You put it up high on a shelf so you could just look at it."

"No. I really didn't eat it."

"You owe us all cream puffs," said Meryl Lee.

"What do you mean, I owe you all cream puffs?"

"I'll speak slowly and clearly: You ... owe ... us ... all ... cream ... puffs."

"Where am I supposed to get cream puffs for the whole class?"

"That's your problem," said Danny Hupfer. "Find the cream puffs or die."

Mai Thi looked at me, and narrowed her eyes.

Let me tell you, it's a pretty hard thing to be a seventh grader with new death threats hanging over you just about every day.

On the way home that day, I stopped at Goldman's Best Bakery. They had cream puffs, too—without chalk dust. But you wouldn't believe how much they wanted for them! It would take three weeks' worth of allowance to be able to pay for twenty-two cream puffs. Three weeks!

The world is not a fair place.

On Monday, I told Danny and Meryl Lee and Mai Thi that I needed three weeks. They agreed. Sort of. But the death threats were repeated every day, along with new and colorful descriptions of what would happen if the cream puffs didn't appear. Let me tell you, Danny Hupfer has one bloody imagination, but he is nothing compared to Meryl Lee. I was almost glad when Wednesday came and Mrs. Baker and I were alone again.

Can you believe it? I felt safer with Mrs. Baker!

Even if I still hadn't figured out the new strategy.

"Mr. Hoodhood," said Mrs. Baker, "we have been wasting our opportunities."

"We have?"

"We have. On Wednesday afternoons from now on, we will be reading Shakespeare together."

"Shakespeare."

"You don't need to repeat everything I say. I presume you know the English language well enough or I wouldn't ask you to read Shakespeare."

I nodded.

"First we'll read The Merchant of Venice aloud together, so that I can be sure that you are following the dialogue. Afterward, you'll be reading on your own."

Reading Shakespeare. Of all the strategies Mrs. Baker could come up with, this must be the worst. Teachers bring up Shakespeare only to bore students to death. And I was going to be bored to death for eight months. No human being could stand it.

"Are you sure you don't want me to pound erasers instead?"

Mrs. Baker shook her head. "There's only one last chore," she said. "Sycorax and Caliban need their cage cleaned out."

I looked across the classroom at Sycorax and Caliban.

I haven't told you about Sycorax and Caliban yet, and you might want to skip over this next part, since it's pretty awful.

Because Sycorax and Caliban were rats.

Every other classroom in Camillo Junior High had fish or hamsters or gerbils or mice.

We had rats.

The reason we had rats, Mrs. Baker told us, is that Lieutenant Tybalt Baker had picked them out for her when they were only cute balls of fuzz and pink snouts playing in clean and aromatic cedar shavings. He had seen them in a pet-shop window, and when he went inside and put his finger to their cage, one of them had come and licked it. Right then, he decided that they needed a home.

So here they were in our classroom, and Mrs. Baker wasn't going to get rid of anything that Lieutenant Baker had given her—even if she wouldn't go near them herself.

Actually, no one in the class had ever gone near Sycorax and Caliban—not even Doug Swieteck, and he would do anything—because they weren't cute balls of fuzz anymore. They looked like they weighed about fifteen pounds each. They had hair the color of cardboard in splotches over parts of their bodies, but mostly they were just yellow and scabby skinned. If anyone even looked at them, they threw themselves against the sides of their cage and stuck their scabby snouts out as far as they could and clacked their long yellow teeth together. The sounds that came out of their throats were never heard anywhere else in Nature.

They probably carried plague.

"I can't clean the cage with them in it," I said.

"In the cupboard beneath the counter is a smaller cage. Pour some food into it, put the door to that cage next to the door in the bigger cage, and open them both. Sycorax and Caliban will run into the smaller cage. Then you can clean their cage."

It sounded too easy, and I looked at Mrs. Baker to see if something in her eyes said "Plot." But I couldn't see her eyes, because she was opening an ancient green book and turning thin pages. "Hurry, Mr. Hoodhood, so we can enjoy the play," she said.

I found the small cage in the cupboard, and even though I didn't think it would work out just like Mrs. Baker had said, it actually did. The rats were so hungry, I guess, that they would have done anything to get at the food. They probably would have eaten chalk-covered cream puffs. So when I opened the doors, Sycorax and Caliban laid off sticking out their scabby snouts and clacking their yellow teeth and rioted into the smaller cage. Then I carried the big cage outside to the garbage cans, holding it as far away from me as I could reach. I dumped everything, then carried the cage to the faucet near Mr. Vendleri's office. I hosed it down from about twenty feet away. I wasn't going to touch anything I didn't have to.

I got paper towels from the boys' restroom and dried the whole thing off. Then I carried it back upstairs into the classroom, spread new sawdust—there was a whole bucket of it in the back of the cupboard—and filled the food and water dishes in the big cage.

In the small cage, Caliban and Sycorax were back to their scabby-snout-and-yellow-teeth routine, but they were a little less frantic about it, probably because they had just stuffed themselves. The blacks of their eyes seemed almost natural, not like they were possessed.

I slid the two cages together, held them tightly against each other, and opened the two doors. Sycorax and Caliban started to clamber in.

"By the way," said Mrs. Baker from her desk, "teachers do not bring up Shakespeare to bore their students to death."

She knew! She could tell what I had been thinking!

And so you see, what happened next wasn't my fault at all.

I turned around, sort of stunned, to look at Mrs. Baker, and I felt the two cages move apart.

"Mr. Hoodhood!" cried Mrs. Baker, suddenly standing up.

Sycorax and Caliban each had half their bodies pushed into the space between the two cages. Their scabby snouts were twitching triumphantly, and their teeth were clacking as close to my thumbs as they could get. I smashed the two cages together, hard, and they let out a high, awful rat screech. They both turned their little black eyes toward me—bulging with demonic light—and clawed hysterically at the bars that were hardly holding them from escape. And they kept on screeching.

"Don't hurt them!" cried Mrs. Baker, who was now halfway across the room. So I pulled apart the two cages just a little bit, and Sycorax whirled, hissed, threw herself on top of Caliban, and pushed through. Then she leaped at my thumb, her yellow jaws open.

"Oh!" I said, and jumped back from the cages.

"Hiss," said Caliban, and jumped out from the cages.

"Screech," said Sycorax, and jumped down from the counter.

"Hiss," said Caliban again, and jumped down from the counter over the cupboard after her.

"Oh!" said Mrs. Baker, and jumped onto Danny Hupfer's desk.

"Oh!" I said again, as Sycorax and Caliban ran over my foot—over my foot!—and headed into the Coat Room, where they threw themselves into the pile of fungused lunch remnants.

Mrs. Baker and I were both breathing pretty hard by this time, so what she said next came out in a sort of strangled whisper. "Go get Mr. Vendleri. Quickly."

I did, jumping from desk to desk, since I wasn't going to take any chances—Over My Foot!

I didn't tell Mr. Vendleri what we needed him for until we got to the classroom, because I wasn't certain he would come if I did. He looked at us with wide eyes while we told him. (I was back up on a desk.) Then he nodded, went down the hall to the supply closet, and came back with a shovel and two brooms. "You two flush them out from that side," he said. "I'll be waiting with the shovel."

"Flush them out?" I said.

"Don't hurt them," said Mrs. Baker.

"Flush them out?" I said again. I guess they hadn't heard me.

"I won't hurt them unless they're going to hurt me," said Mr. Vendleri—which is exactly what they tried to do.

Mrs. Baker and I climbed down from the desks.

"Flush them out?" I said a third time.

"Mr. Hoodhood, be bold," said Mrs. Baker.

Let me tell you, we probably did not look bold as we crept toward the Coat Room with our brooms. Or when we poked at the moldering lunch remnants. Or when we peered behind the coats still hanging there. And I know we didn't look bold when the rats erupted from Doug Swieteck's coat with a full scale of screeches. They howled and roared and slobbered toward Mr. Vendleri, Sycorax with a decaying cream puff still in her yellow jaws. We heard Mr. Vendleri holler "Oh!" and by the time we got to the other side of the Coat Room, Mr. Vendleri was up on Danny Hupfer's desk.

"Climbed into the radiators," he said, pointing.

But they weren't there long.

We heard hissing. We heard scrambling up the walls. We heard heavy pattering across the asbestos ceiling tiles. Then all was silence. The only thing that remained of their passing was the cream puff, abandoned before Sycorax had climbed into the radiator.

"I'd better tell Mr. Guareschi," said Mr. Vendleri.

Mrs. Baker, who had somehow gotten up onto her desk, looked at me, then at the cream puff, and then back at me. "Perhaps you had better hurry," she said.

And that was all. Nothing about the cream puff.

Whatever this new strategy was, it was good.

So Mr. Vendleri went to report, and soon Mr. Guareschi arrived at the scene of the escape. He was breathing heavily, since principals and dictators of small countries aren't used to running. He looked over the two cages, peered into the Coat Room, and then put his ear to the walls. "I don't hear a thing," he said. None of us did, either.

"They might be gone," said Mr. Vendleri hopefully.

"How did they get out in the first place?" Mr. Guareschi asked, as if that made a whole lot of difference now.

"I was cleaning their cage," I said.

"It was my fault," said Mrs. Baker. "I shouldn't have had him do it."

"Indeed not," said Mr. Guareschi. He rubbed his chin, considering. "But they're out now, and we can't let anyone know. Do you all understand? Until the ... escapees ... are caught, not a soul outside of this room hears about the incident." Mr. Guareschi's voice got low and menacing. "Not. One. Soul."

And so began Mr. Guareschi's Campaign Against the Escapees.

And by the way, for the record, I didn't exactly say "Oh" when Sycorax and Caliban jumped out from the cages.

Neither did Mr. Vendleri.

And neither did Mrs. Baker.

I wasn't sure that I wanted to be left in the classroom alone with Mrs. Baker after Mr. Guareschi and Mr. Vendleri left to begin planning campaign strategy. She still hadn't said anything about the cream puff, and I figured it had to come sooner or later. It turned out to be sooner.

As soon as the door closed, Mrs. Baker put her hands on her hips and looked at me thoughtfully.

"You never did eat the cream puff, did you?" she said.

I shook my head slowly. I tried to look guiltless.

"But you pretended that you did."

I said nothing. The future of Hoodhood and Associates was suddenly shaky.

"You made a wise culinary choice. Go sit down."

And that was it. Really. That was all she said.

I was about to climb down off my desk, but first I looked around to be sure that nothing was lurking on the floor.

"Mr. Hoodhood," said Mrs. Baker impatiently.

I wanted to point out that she was still standing on her own desk, but since Hoodhood and Associates was suddenly okay again, I didn't. But when Mrs. Baker saw me hesitate, she looked around, then climbed down from the desk to the chair to the floor. She hesitated a bit herself before she put her feet on the floor. "Now go sit down," she said. She opened the lowest drawer of her desk. She pulled out an ancient black book to match the ancient green book, and blew away cobwebs from it. Then she brought the black book to my desk and thumped it down. It smelled of must and dust.

"The plays of William Shakespeare," said Mrs. Baker, "which can never be boring to the true soul. Open it to The Merchant of Venice"

I did.

The rest of that afternoon, we both held our feet up off the floor and took turns reading parts from The Merchant of Venice— even though the print was made for tiny insects with multiple eyes and all the pictures in the book were ridiculous. I mean, no one really stands as if they're posing to be a flower, and no one would wear the stuff they were wearing and dare to go outside.

But it turned out that Mrs. Baker's strategy didn't work after all! She had wanted to bore me to death, even though she said that she didn't—which was all part of the strategy. But The Merchant of Venice was okay.

There's no Jim Hawkins. And the stuff about Shylock was slow at first. But it picks up with him in the courtroom, ready to cut out a pound of Antonio's flesh because Antonio hasn't been able to pay—which is exactly what Long John Silver would have done. And then Portia comes in and gives this speech that turns everything upside down.

But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings.

When Mrs. Baker read that, I had shivers running up and down me.

But Shylock didn't. He was ready to get to work with his knife, when Portia turns everything upside down again and the judge ends up freeing Antonio.

The quality of mercy is not strained,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath.

Those are words to make you shiver.

So, another nefarious Mrs. Baker plot foiled.

That night, I dreamed about Doug Swieteck's brother as Shylock, and him bending over me with a soccer ball in his hand, about to smash it into my face because I had taken him out. And then Meryl Lee comes up, and Doug Swieteck's brother looks at her, and I look at her, and I'm waiting for the quality-of-mercy-dropping-like-a-gentle-rain-upon-the-place-beneath speech, and Meryl Lee opens her mouth and says to Doug Swieteck's brother,

Go thou ahead.
Droppeth thine soccer ball as thunder from the clouds
Upon his head beneath thee.

Those are words to make you shiver, too.

And then I look over at Mrs. Baker, who is the judge standing by, and she is smiling because she's wearing a yellow flower on her cheek. And then I look around the courtroom, and there's my father, and I'm thinking, Maybe he can bribe the judge, and he says, "Is everything all right with Mrs. Baker?" and I say, "Just swell" and he says, "Then what did you do?" And Mrs. Baker keeps smiling.

Let me tell you, if Shakespeare had known about me and Meryl Lee and Doug Swieteck's brother and Mrs. Baker, he really would have had something to write about.

We read The Merchant of Venice the next Wednesday, too, and finished it on the last Wednesday of October. After we closed our books, Mrs. Baker asked me to discuss the character of Shylock.

"He isn't really a villain," I said, "is he?"

"No," said Mrs. Baker, "he isn't."

"He's more like someone who wants..."

"Who wants what, Mr. Hoodhood?"

"Someone who wants to become who he's supposed to be," I said.

Mrs. Baker considered that. "And why couldn't he?" she asked.

"Because they wouldn't let him. They decided he had to be a certain way, and he was trapped. He couldn't be anything except for what he was," I said.

"And that is why the play is called a tragedy," said Mrs. Baker.