The Wednesday Wars

We still didn't talk. Not the whole way.

  When I got back, my parents were in the den watching television. It was so cold, the furnace was on high. The hot air tinkled the silver bells that decorated the white artificial Christmas tree that never dropped a single pine needle in the Perfect House.

  "You're done earlier than I thought," my father said. "Bing Crosby is just about to start 'White Christmas,' as soon as this commercial is over."

  "How did it go, Holling?" said my mother.

  "Fine."

  "I hope Mr. Goldman was happy with what you did," said my father.

  "He said it was just swell."

  "Good."

  I went upstairs. The crooning notes of Bing Crosby's treetops glistening and children listening and sleigh bells in the snow followed me.

  Just swell.

  Happy holidays.

  When we got back to school on Monday, there were only three more days before the holiday break. They were supposed to be a relaxed three days. Most teachers coasted through them, figuring that no one was going to learn all that much just before vacation. And they had to leave time for holiday parties on the last day, and making presents for each other, and for looking out the window, hoping for the miracle of snow on Long Island.

  Even the lunches were supposed to have something special to them, like some kind of cake with thick white frosting, or pizza that actually had some cheese on it, or hamburgers that hadn't been cooked as thin as a record. Maybe something chocolate on the side.

  But Mrs. Bigio wasn't interested in chocolate these days. It could have been the last holidays the planet was ever going to celebrate, and you wouldn't have known it from what Mrs. Bigio cooked for Camillo Junior High's lunch. It was Something Surprise every day, except that after the first day it wasn't Something Surprise anymore, because we knew what was coming. It was just Something.

  But I didn't complain. I remembered the Wednesday afternoon Mrs. Bigio had come into Mrs. Baker's classroom and the sound of her sadness, and I knew what burned guts felt like.

  Everyone else didn't complain because they were afraid to. You don't complain when Mrs. Bigio stares at you as you're going through the lunch line, with her hands on her hips and her hairnet pulled tight. You don't complain.

  Not even when she spreads around her own happy holiday greetings.

  "Take it and eat it," she said to Danny Hupfer when his hand hesitated over the Something.

  "You're not supposed to examine it," she said to Meryl Lee, who was trying to figure out the Surprise part.

  "You waiting for another cream puff?" she said to me. "Don't count on it this millennium."

  And, on the last day before the holiday break, to Mai Thi: "Pick it up and be glad you're getting it. You shouldn't even be here, sitting like a queen in a refugee home while American boys are sitting in swamps on Christmas Day. They're the ones who should be here. Not you."

  Mai Thi took her Something. She looked down, and kept going.

  She probably didn't see that Mrs. Bigio was pulling her hairnet down lower over her face, because she was almost crying.

  And probably Mrs. Bigio didn't see that Mai Thi was almost crying, too.

  But I did. I saw them. And I wondered how many gods were dying in both of them right then, and whether any of them could be saved.

  You'd think that Mrs. Baker would try to make up for the holiday disappointments of the Camillo Junior High kitchen over those three days. But she didn't. We went back to diagramming sentences, focusing on the imperfect tenses. She convinced Mr. Samowitz to start some pre-algebra equations in Mathematics for You and Me that Albert Einstein couldn't have figured out. She even bullied Mr. Petrelli into buckling down and making us present our "Mississippi River and You" projects out loud to the class.

  Mr. Petrelli had us finish in a day and a half, but Mrs. Baker didn't let up all three days, and we were the only class in Camillo Junior High who sweated behind a closed decoration-less door, in a hot decoration-less classroom. And did we complain? No, because at the first hint of a complaint, Mrs. Baker folded her arms across her chest and stood still, staring at whoever had started to rebel until all rebellion died. That's how it was as we came up to the happy holidays—all the way until that last Wednesday afternoon.

  As everyone got ready to leave for Temple Beth-El or Saint Adelbert's, I figured I'd probably be diagramming sentences for the next hour and a half, since we hadn't started another Shakespeare play yet.

  Just swell.

  But I was wrong.

  "Mr. Hupfer and Mr. Swieteck," said Mrs. Baker, "I've arranged with your parents for you to stay in school this afternoon."

  Danny and Doug looked at me, then at each other, then back at Mrs. Baker. "Okay by me," Danny said.

  "I'm so pleased to have your approval," said Mrs. Baker. "Now, the rest of you...," and there was the usual hubbub of leaving, while Danny and Doug sat back at their desks.

  "What's it about?" Danny asked.

  I shrugged. "Erasers or sentence diagramming. Maybe Shakespeare," I said.

  We looked over at Doug Swieteck. "You didn't do Number 166?" I said.

  He shook his head.

  "You're sure?" said Danny.

  "Don't you think I'd know?" said Doug Swieteck.

  We weren't so sure. But actually, he hadn't.

  After everyone left, Mrs. Baker went to her desk and opened her lower desk drawer. She took out three—no, not books of Shakespeare, like you might think—three brand-new baseballs, their covers as white as snow, their threads tight and ready for fingers to grip into a curve. And then she reached in again and took out three mitts. Their leathery smell filled the room. She handed them to us. The leather was soft and supple. We slipped our hands in and pushed the new baseballs into their deep pockets.

  "My brother-in-law, whom I believe Mr. Hupfer and Mr. Hoodhood both saw the other night following the Extravaganza, has asked me to give you these as holiday gifts, compliments of the Baker Sporting Emporium," said Mrs. Baker. "And after telling me what happened during your time there, he and I made some arrangements for you to break the mitts in. So take them down to the gymnasium—and don't throw balls in the hall. And dropping one's jaw in surprise happens only in cartoons and bad plays, gentlemen."

  Danny grinned as we went out. "The gym is empty last period. She's giving us the afternoon off."

  But he was wrong, too.

  The gym wasn't empty.

  Joe Pepitone and Horace Clarke were waiting for us in the bleachers. In their Yankee uniforms. Number 25 and Number 20. The two greatest players to put on Yankee pinstripes since Babe Ruth.

  Joe Pepitone and Horace Clarke.

  Can you believe it?

  "Which one of you is Holling?" said Horace Clarke.

  I pointed to my chest.

  "And Doug?"

  Doug Swieteck slowly raised his hand.

  "So you're Danny," said Joe Pepitone.

  Danny nodded.

  Horace Clarke held up his mitt. "Let's see your arm, Holling," he said.

  I threw with Horace Clarke, and Danny and Doug threw with Joe Pepitone. Then we switched, and Danny threw with Horace Clarke, and Doug and I threw with Joe Pepitone. Then we went outside, and under a warm sun and on a diamond that hadn't been used since October, Horace Clarke crouched behind the plate and I threw fastballs to him, and even, once, a knuckleball. Really. And then Danny got up and Horace Clarke pitched and Joe Pepitone and I shagged balls in the outfield. And then Joe Pepitone got up and Doug and I shagged balls in the outfield. And then we took some infield practice from Horace Clarke. And then we stood around the diamond—Joe Pepitone at home, Danny at first, Horace Clarke at second, Doug at deep shortstop, me at third—and we whipped the ball to each other around and around and around, as fast as we could, while Horace Clarke chanted, "Out of there, out of there, out of there," and the balls struck soft and deep in the pockets of the gloves, and the smack of them, and the smell of the gloves, filled the bright yellow air, while a br
eeze drew across us the whole time, as soft as feathers.

  Afterward, they signed our baseballs and signed our mitts. They gave us each two tickets for Opening Day next April. And they gave Doug and Danny their caps.

  And for me? Joe Pepitone gave me his jacket.

  Can you believe it?

  His jacket.

  When they drove off, it felt like a place inside me had filled again. Our revels were not ended.

  Danny and Doug and I ran up to the third floor to find Mrs. Baker. Mr. Vendleri was already taking down the Christmas and Hanukkah decorations. The halls were ghostly dark, and the classroom doors shut with the lights out behind them.

  Mrs. Baker was gone, but she had left a note on the door.

  "Mr. Hoodhood," it said, "read The Tragedy of Macbeth for the first Wednesday of January."

  "Too bad," said Danny.

  But Doug went on in, and he came back out carrying the cardboard box for Number 166 from the Coat Room. He looked at us, shrugged, and hauled it away down the hall, staggering under its clumsy weight.

  We never saw it again.

  ***

  The next day, President Johnson declared a Christmas ceasefire in Vietnam, and the bombs stopped dropping.

  And so the happy holidays finally began.

  January

  On New Year's Day, the Home Town Chronicle devoted itself proudly to celebrating the many accomplishments of those, young and old, who had made outstanding contributions to the life and culture of our town in the past year. It wasn't a very big issue. Most of the stories were about librarians and the Kiwanis Club officers and the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Mr. Guareschi for something and even about my father for the enormous success of Hoodhood and Associates and how he had been voted the Chamber of Commerce Businessman of 1967. The paper printed grainy headshots of people looking distinguished—like they were already thinking about their next outstanding contribution to the life and culture of the town.

  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.