Gooney Bird on the Map

  Mr. Furillo shook the paint can hard for a minute. "Stand back, everyone!" he said. "I don't want to get paint on anyone's boots!"

  The children, and Mrs. Pidgeon, all retreated to the edge of the territory, to the mound that they called Antarctica, and watched while Mr. Furillo carefully outlined the entire United States in black paint. Then he shook the can again and did Hawaii.

  When he was finished, he took a bow, and the children clapped.

  "Alaska?" Mr. Furillo asked.

  The children shook their heads. They didn't need Alaska.

  "Look!" Keiko said, suddenly. She pointed to the building. There were faces in every window of the small school. "Everybody's watching!"

  "Mrs. Pidgeon! Mrs. Pidgeon!" said Felicia Ann in a worried voice. "It's almost recess time. All the kids will be coming out. What if everybody steps on our map and wrecks it?"

  "They won't," Gooney Bird told her. "Mr. Leroy promised that while we were out here starting our map, he'd get on the intercom and make an announcement about it. Nobody's allowed on this part of the playground except us—the second grade. But when it's all done, then we'll share it with the whole school."

  Tyrone began to dance."Gonna do a rap,"he chanted,"about the playground map!"

  "About the playground map!"the other children repeated.

  "Lets dance around the USA!" Malcolm called.

  Some of the children danced across the map while Tyrone chanted,"This map be so cool, we be famous in our school!"Mr. Furillo, Mrs. Pidgeon, and Bruno watched from Antarctica.

  "Famous in our school!"the children repeated.

  Finally the line of dancers stopped, and Mr. Furillo said, "Okay. I'm heading back inside. Mrs. Clancy has a loose shelf that needs fixing, in the library. Call me if you need me. C'mon, Bruno!" He waited while the dog lifted his leg over Antarctica briefly, and then they returned to the school.

  The second-graders heard the recess bell ring from inside the building. Soon the school doors opened and all of the other children came noisily through.

  Mr. Leroy was among them. He was carrying something.

  Mrs. Pidgeon and the students watched as the principal came to the edge of the map. With a hammer, he planted a sign which he had hastily made:

  2ND GRADE PROJECT

  NO TRE PASSING!

  A tall fifth-grader named Marlon Washington, who always said that George Washington was his grandfather, but everyone knew he was making it up, came and stood by the sign. He peered at the territory, the map, and its sprayed border. "What's going on?" he asked.

  "Secret project," Mr. Leroy explained. "I announced it over the intercom, remember? Just a few minutes ago. The second grade will share it with everyone when it's finished."

  "U Da Man, Mr. Leroy!" Malcolm shouted.

  Marlon Washington looked the situation over. He looked at the map, at the Hawaiian Islands, and at the NESW in the lower right-hand corner. Then he said: "Just a big mess, that's all." He turned and went to play with his classmates in another part of the playground.

  Mr. Leroy bowed to the second-graders. "I am Da Man," he said. Then he went back to the school.

  "Gather round," Gooney Bird told her classmates. They clustered around her.

  "Is anyone here going to Alaska during our winter vacation? Raise your hand if you are."

  No hands went up.

  "Anyone going to Europe? Asia? China, or Japan?"

  No hands. Keiko sighed. "I wish I could," she said. "Maybe next summer."

  "India? Australia? Africa?"

  No one.

  "Okay, then. We don't need to think about those places, at least for now. It was enough work to make the USA and part of South America and then to put Hawaii out there in the ocean. I think we did a great job."

  "Gooney Bird?" Barry Tuckerman, standing near Hawaii, waved his mittened hand in the air.

  "Yes?"

  "What exactly are we going to do with this map?"

  "Barry, Barry, Barry," Gooney Bird said, shaking her head at him. "It's not necessary to do something all the time! Sometimes it's enough just to be!"

  "We could just stand around and admire the map," Felicia Ann suggested in her quiet voice.

  "We could hold hands in a circle and sing 'This Land Is Your Land,'" Keiko murmured.

  "Hey! We could call the TV station and they could put us on the news!" Tyrone said. "They could bring their camera guy and he could interview me! Do an wanna cause no flap, but you oughta see our map ..." Tyrone began to wiggle his hips. "This here map could make us famous!"

  "If they did that," Beanie said, glancing toward Florida, "maybe they could interview us about our vacations. Maybe I could even wear mouse ears during the interv—"

  "I could demonstrate my snowboard technique!" Ben interrupted, planting his feet in snowboard position.

  "I could bring a ukulele! That's how they play Hawaiian music, on a ukulele!" Barry began to strum an imaginary instrument.

  "ENOUGH!" Mrs. Pidgeon said in a loud, exasperated voice. Then she apologized. "Sorry to shout. But, really, I am so tired of hearing about glamorous vacations. And it's time to go inside. We still have math to do. We have a great start on this map now, and we'll figure out how to proceed. I'm sure Gooney Bird will have some wonderful ideas. She always does."

  "Yes. I do," Gooney Bird replied. "Or at least I will. I need time to think." She adjusted her multicolored hat and grinned.

  5.

  "We need ocean," Barry Tuckerman said when they were back in the classroom and looking down on their project from the second grade windows.

  "Yeah," chanted Tyrone. "Don't cause no commotion, but we gotta have a ocean..."

  "Need a magic potion," Chelsea continued, giggling, "to make us have a ocean..."

  Mrs. Pidgeon quickly went to the piano and played the chord that usually reminded the children to settle down. "I don't think we need a rap right now, Tyrone," she said. "But I agree that we need an ocean. And by the way, it's an ocean, Cool Dude, not a ocean."

  "I know that," Tyrone said with a grin. "Raps don't follow the rules."

  Gooney Bird was on tiptoes, her nose pressed against the window. "You know how you're always telling us that we don't need to color inside the lines, Mrs. Pidgeon? That true creative artists don't squinch their colors into outlines?"

  "And that's why our art is so good!" Tricia announced. All of the children looked proudly at the colorful paintings that were on the walls around the classroom. "When my mom came for a conference and saw our paintings, she said that our classroom was better than the Museum of Modern Art!"

  "It is! " Barry announced.

  "Yes, it is," Gooney Bird agreed. "But right now we need to make ocean. And it needs to be blue. Can we use our poster paint, Mrs. Pidgeon? If we mix up a bucket of blue paint and water, Mr. Furillo could use his big sweeping brush and we'd tell him he has to stay in the lines—"

  "Yeah, 'cause this isn't art! This is a map!" Malcolm said.

  "Yes, maps are scientific," Nicholas said. "Not creative art."

  "Right!" Chelsea said.

  "Let's do it!" Mrs. Pidgeon said. She went to the supply closet. "I'll mix up a bucket of paint, and if Mr. Furillo paints the ocean—Gooney Bird, could you go find him in the library and tell him we need him for one more little job?—it will probably freeze tonight. The weather forecast on the radio says it's going to be quite cold. So tomorrow we'll have a good solid ocean around our United States..."

  "Two oceans!" Malcolm pointed out.

  "An Atlantic!" said Tricia.

  "And a Pacific!" Chelsea added.

  "Oh, dear. I'm worried about something," Keiko said in her small, worried voice.

  Gooney Bird was about to leave the room. She turned back at the door. "What are you worried about, Keiko?" she asked. "Something I should mention to Mr. Furillo?"

  Keiko nodded. She looked embarrassed. "Bruno," she whispered. "I'm scared—"

  "Oh, Sweet Thing" Mrs. Pidgeon said. She set down the jar of bl
ue paint and put her arm over Keiko's shoulder. "Bruno is the nicest dog in the world. You've never been nervous around him before. Remember, he marched in our Thanksgiving parade?"

  "And he wore fake antlers at our holiday party!" Chelsea reminded Keiko.

  "I'm not scared of Bruno," Keiko said. "I like Bruno!"

  "What's worrying you, then, Sweet Thing?" asked Mrs. Pidgeon, looking puzzled.

  "He peed on Antarctica," Keiko whispered. "I'm scared he'll ruin our ocean."

  "Yeah, I saw him do that," Ben said. "He peed about six gallons."

  "My dog's little" Barry said. "My dog only pees one gallon."

  "My triplets," Malcolm began, "pee—"

  Mrs. Pidgeon interrupted him. "Math problem! Subtraction!" she announced. "How many more gallons does Bruno—"

  "Five!" all the children said together. "That's too easy!"

  "Yes, it was, wasn't it?" Mrs. Pidgeon sighed. "But we do need to remember to do our math. We'll work on it while we get the ocean painted. Gooney Bird, could you mention the Bruno problem to Mr. Furillo?"

  "I'm on my way," Gooney Bird said. "Start mixing the paint." She saluted. "Oh, also, could I give Mr. Furillo a valentine heart?"

  Mrs. Pidgeon held out the bag and Gooney Bird reached in. "Perfect!" said Gooney Bird. "It says Puppy Love!" She hurried off to find the custodian.

  By the time school ended for the day, and the children were heading for the buses, Mr. Furillo had painted the oceans. Already the temperature was dropping, and the new pale blue had begun to freeze into a shiny crust around North America. Bruno had been told firmly that he must not approach the map. He could lie down on Antarctica if he wanted. He could pee on Antarctica if he wanted. But not on the United States. That included Hawaii.

  For homework, each child was taking home a rolled-up map of the United States. They were each to locate where they would be spending their February vacation.

  Malcolm was sulking. He said he didn't even want to take his map home. He said he might burn his map. He might let the triplets chew on it. He might make a huge paper airplane out of it. He might use it for origami and make an enormous cootie-catcher. He might...

  He was still grumbling loudly when he boarded his bus.

  Gooney Bird, who was a walker, called toward Malcolm's bus as its door hissed closed.

  "William Henry Harrison never even had a map when he was eight years old!" she said. "Moment of silence!"

  But through the bus window she could see that Malcolm wasn't listening. He was using his rolled-up map as a weapon and had begun a swordfight with a fifth-grader, who was stabbing back at him with a ruler. The driver, a gray-haired woman, got up from her seat with an impatient look and went down the aisle to separate the two boys before she began to drive.

  Bruno yawned and lay down with his tail end on Antarctica and his head very, very close to the border but obediently not touching the map. While Mr. Furillo put a few pale blue finishing touches on the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii, and the yellow school buses left the driveway one by one, Bruno slept.

  6.

  The next morning, the entire school was talking admiringly about the second-graders' playground snow map. Overnight the Pacific and Atlantic oceans had frozen into shimmery blue. The United States was a lovely vast landmass, and Mrs. Pidgeon, in doing the outline, had even shoved some snow to create a ridge down the center, where the Rocky Mountains would be.

  Hawaii was tiny hard bumps of snow out in the Pacific, and a plastic palm tree from the turtle bowl in the classroom was now wedged onto it. Humphrey the turtle had died in October, and the children had never gotten around to creating a memorial for him. They felt, now, that Humphrey would be proud to be part of Hawaii.

  "Moment of silence for Humphrey," Gooney Bird announced, and they all stood reverently for a brief period, staring at the palm tree and remembering what a happy life Humphrey had had in his plastic bowl with its small island until he got the mysterious fungus that had ended it all.

  "I brought this," Ben announced, and showed them the small artificial snow-covered pine tree that he'd taken out of his backpack. "It's from my train set."

  "What's it for?" asked Malcolm.

  "Well, I thought I'd put it in Vermont. There are a whole lot of pine trees there. I'm going to be snowboarding down trails that wind in and out among a zillion pine trees. So..." Ben stepped over the border of the second grade territory, walked carefully up into the Atlantic Ocean, crossed onto land at New York, and began to head north with his little tree.

  "Wait!" Gooney Bird commanded, and Ben stopped where he was, with one foot in Connecticut and the other in New York State.

  "What?" he asked.

  "We have a beautiful map here, and I think it cheapens it to set up this fake plastic stuff. If you put your tree in Vermont, then next I bet anything Beanie will—" She glanced over at Beanie, who had already taken something out of her jacket pocket.

  "Hold it up, Bean," Gooney Bird said with a sigh.

  Beanie held up a Mickey Mouse with long thin black legs and huge white feet. "It's not plastic; it's rubber," she said defensively.

  "It's junky," Chelsea said, wrinkling her nose.

  "If we let Ben stand his tree in Vermont," Gooney Bird said, "and Beanie put her rubber mouse in Florida, then everyone will bring some vacation thing, and—let's see, we can make a math problem here..."

  "Good point, Gooney Bird. Eleven second-graders," Mrs. Pidgeon said, "plus me, because I'm part of this class. That makes twelve. And if three people—Barry, Beanie, and Ben—have already put their, ah, vacation objects down, how many more vacation souvenirs—"

  "—will it take to ruin our beautiful map?" Chelsea said.

  "Twelve minus three!" shouted Malcolm.

  "NINE!"

  "It would be a mess. Let's not do it," Tricia said.

  "Can we leave the palm tree?" Barry asked.

  "Yes," Gooney Bird said. "In memory of Humphrey."

  "In memory of Humphrey," all of the children said mournfully.

  "Well, all right." Ben reluctantly returned his little pine tree to his backpack. Beanie sighed and folded her rubbery mouse so that he would fit in her pocket again.

  "Instead," Gooney Bird explained, "we're going to do something that will be very tasteful and appropriate and artistic and unusual. And also educational.

  "Keiko," she asked, "did you bring the special things that I asked you for?"

  Keiko nodded happily. "Yes, they're all in my cubby."

  "Okay, guys," Gooney Bird said. "Back to the classroom. We have work to do."

  "Eleven pairs of mittens equals how many individual mittens?" asked Mrs. Pidgeon as the children hung up their outdoor things. She was still trying to get some math done.

  "Twenty-two," Barry said. He was faster than anyone at math.

  "Right! Good, Barry. Now, if four children lost their mittens—"

  "Lost just one, or the whole pair?" Tricia asked. She draped her knitted scarf over its hook.

  "Well, just one. Let's say four mittens had been lost. So how many mittens would remain, out of the twenty-two?"

  "I lost both of my mittens at the Harry Potter movie," Nicholas said. "They fell under the seat. And my mom called the theater, but they didn't have them, so my mom thinks someone stole them!"

  "Those weren't mittens, Nicholas," Malcolm said. "Those were gloves you lost. Those were your Spider-Man gloves!"

  "Yeah, and somebody stole them! Now look what I have to wear—these dumb baby mittens!" Nicholas glared at the blue knitted mittens he had just put into his cubby.

  "Back to our math problem, children!" Mrs. Pidgeon said. "Twenty-two minus four?"

  "What if an octopus had mittens?" Malcolm shouted. "It would have eight!"

  "Octopuses don't have hands," Ben said.

  "It's octopi" Barry reminded him.

  Chelsea went over to where Mrs. Pidgeon was standing. "U Go, Girl," she whispered.

  Mrs. Pidgeon, whose shoulders had begun
to slump, straightened herself, went to the piano, and played a loud chord. When everyone had fallen silent, she said firmly, "Twenty-two minus four?"

  "Eighteen!" the second-graders replied.

  "Correct! Good job! Everyone in your seats now, please!"

  "Lost your mittens? You naughty kittens!" Tyrone sang as he went to his desk.

  "That's a baby song!" Malcolm told him.

  Tyrone poked Malcolm in the shoulder as he sauntered past. "So? Who cares? I'm a Cool Dude!"

  "Mrs. Pidgeon! Mrs. Pidgeon! Tyrone hit Malcolm!" Tricia called.

  "Tyrone, sit down now. Malcolm? You are a Class Act, remember? So let's behave like one."

  Malcolm scowled. So did Tyrone. But they both remained silent.

  "Go ahead, Gooney Bird," Mrs. Pidgeon said when all of the children were seated and waiting.

  Gooney Bird went to the front of the classroom. "All right, Keiko, Sweet Thing, pass them out," she said.

  Keiko had taken a package wrapped in brown paper from her cubby. Carefully she removed the paper. "My uncle gave me these," she explained. "They came from his restaurant."

  "Those are chopsticks!" Malcolm announced, recognizing the narrow wooden sticks. "Are we going to eat Chinese food? Are you going to make us eat rice? I hate rice!"

  Mrs. Pidgeon went to Malcolm and placed her calm-down hand on his shoulder.

  "No Chinese food," Gooney Bird explained.

  "These are going to be our flagpoles. You can pass them out, Keiko. One for each person."

  Carefully Keiko distributed the chopsticks.

  "NO SWORDFIGHTING!" Gooney Bird commanded when she saw Malcolm and Nicholas beginning to aim their chopsticks.

  "Next, you each get some construction paper. Sorry, Mrs. Pidgeon, but we're going to make a mess again. You can each choose the color you want." Gooney Bird walked around the desk and waited while each child chose a colored sheet of paper.

  "We're each going to cut a rectangle just big enough for a flag at the top of our flagpole. Not yet, Malcolm! Wait!" Malcolm had pulled his scissors out of his desk and was ready to begin cutting a rectangle of dark blue construction paper.