I Am Not Joey Pigza

by Jack Gantos

  “Ohhh, no!” the crowd groaned.

  “Ohhh, yes!” I replied, and bobbled my head and did a slow little bobblehead shuffle over to the toilet and gave Joey a flush and then I shuffled out of the bathroom. “Freddy is lettin’ his walkin’ do his talkin’,” I said.

  I was feeling very good about being Freddy-the-brainless-bobblehead until I ran into trouble. I was looking over the souvenirs and counting my money to see how much I had left when the woman next to me who was wearing all black and gold tapped me on my shoulder. I looked up at her and my head began to bobble out of control. It was Mrs. Ginger.

  “Do I know you?” she asked, and stooped down to get a closer look at me. I was going to run but then she locked eyes with me, which just stopped me in my tracks and sucked the words right out of my chattering mouth.

  “Yes,” I replied. “I’m Freddy Heinz.”

  “That’s right—Freddy. We were expecting you and then you never showed up.”

  “My parents decided to homeschool me,” I said. “I’m going to help them run the Beehive Diner.”

  “Really?” She stared hard at me and I felt naked. I always felt that way when I was telling a lie. “Well, they need to register your status with the district and they need to be certified by the state. Do you know if they’ve done that?”

  “How would I know what they do?” I said.

  “You’re right,” she said. “It’s not up to you to register yourself. I’ll follow up on this, and in the meantime can you have your parents call me?”

  I began to pull away from her. “Do you want fries with that?” I shouted, then turned and shuffled away.

  “Have them call me!” she ordered.

  “Yes,” I bleated, and waved one hand overhead as I baby-stepped my way through the packed crowd. I was so nervous my head began to throb and swell, which made me worry that it would explode into a million pieces and if that happened I might have to become a million selves—only each one of me would have a tiny speck of a brain the size of plankton.

  Finally I popped out of the crowd and spotted Dad. He looked grumpy. Still, it was good to see him because it got me away from my thoughts.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “I thought you had a happy beer?”

  “There’s just not enough action,” he groaned, throwing his arms up into the air when I sat down. “Now we’re losing and they’re just playing patty-cake with each other.”

  “Too bad,” I replied. “They should have paint guns and play at the same time.”

  “That would put some pizzazz in it,” he agreed. “I should call the commissioner. We could start a Paintball Football League. Can you imagine the announcer saying, ‘He’s going deep—here’s the pass—he reaches for it—SPLAT!—oh, too bad he was blindsided by a shot to the eyes.’”

  “Oh, here’s one more thing on my mind that I found while my walkin’ was doin’ my talkin’,” I said.

  He gave me an intensely disapproving look. “I thought you took care of that thinking problem,” he said harshly.

  “It’s the last thing,” I cried. “I promise. And then I’ll shut up.”

  “What is it?”

  “I just ran into the school principal,” I blurted out, “and she said she was going to call the school department on me, so I think it would be good for me to go back to school and be a good example for Heinzie because I’m not doing anything around the diner besides shooting everything that moves.”

  Suddenly his face lit up. “Wait a minute!” he shouted, and grabbed my shoulders. “You are a genius. You can’t go back to school, because something you said gave me an insanely brilliant idea, and like the smart, rich people we are going to make a fortune by putting our best qualities to work.” His gaze seemed to drift away, out the window and toward a distant vision of our golden success. When he turned back toward me his face had that glow from when he had a big new idea—a sure winner—and I leaned toward him because I wanted that glow to light me up too and then I’d have the glow and light up little Heinzie.

  “Well,” I said, and pinched him. “Are you going to tell me about it?”

  “Mercy!” he cried, snapping out of it. “Come on! Football is totally boring compared to what I have in mind. Besides, we lost the bet.” He jumped up and began to push people out of the way. “I’ll explain it on the way home,” he said over his shoulder. “You’ll love it.”

  12

  BUZZED

  It was a great idea. It was better than the name change idea. Or buying the diner and turning it into the Beehive idea. And it was far better even than trying to win the lottery all the time because it was taking the bull by the horns and working for success instead of waiting for chance to do all the heavy lifting for us.

  Here is how he explained the idea on the drive home from Quips. “First,” he declared, pumping his fist with pride, “it is a plan to make money sticking to the Charles Heinz standards of labor management. It is not boring. It is fast. It is breezy-easy. It will keep you busy. It will make us rich. And once we get it up and going, we can hire people to run the diner so we don’t have to cook and clean, and then we can chill out and roll in the dough as we build our empire.”

  “Well, don’t keep me waiting,” I begged. “What is it?”

  “Picture this,” he said, glancing between me and the road.

  “It’s human nature to want to shoot something—right?” he asked.

  “Right,” I confirmed. “Mom even took a shot at me today.”

  “That proves my point,” he concluded. “We’ll simply take advantage of what people like to do—which is to shoot each other.”

  “I like to do it, but I don’t think it’s a good thing,” I said doubtfully.

  “This isn’t about right or wrong—this is about business. I propose we build a kind of outdoor shooting range. We have a raised platform at one end of a fenced-in area about the size of a tennis court. On the platform we have a dozen mounted superpowerful paintball guns. And now here is the genius part. We put you back in that big padded bee costume and give you some more padding and protective head gear and you buzz around the fenced-in area like a big menacing bee and people pay to shoot at you.”

  “What do you do?” I asked.

  “I collect the money We’ll charge like a buck for five shots, three bucks for twenty shots and so on. I’ll hand out the paintballs and service the guns,” he said.

  “Can I add to your idea?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he said. “Shoot.”

  “Well, can we decorate the field with bee stuff. Like a beehive. And some wooden flowers and a big jar of honey—stuff like that, so it would look more fun and give me a chance to hide.”

  “Well, okay, but you can’t hide too much,” he cautioned. “People are going to want to have a clean shot at you. I think mostly you need to run around.”

  “How about the dogs?” I asked.

  “Wow! Good idea,” he said, getting even more excited. “There must be combat padding for military dogs. Your mom will know where to buy it.”

  “And can I ride my ATV?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” he said, considering it. “We can paint it black and yellow to match the minivan.”

  “That would be cool,” I said.

  “Oh,” he cried with excitement. “And one more thing. You’ll have to have a bullhorn and yell a steady stream of insults at the shooters. You know, egg ’em on so they get really mad at you and fire a lot of shots because the faster they shoot the more money we make.”

  “Can I say anything?” I asked.

  “Within reason,” he replied. “You have to figure this is going to be a family audience, so no curse words.”

  “Yeah,” I said, bobbing my head up and down. “Saying anything I want is like a dream come true for Freddy.”

  “I was thinking we’d call it Shoot the Busy Bee.”

  “Or Sting the Busy Bee,” I suggested, “because that’s what bees do.”

  “Yeah,” he said, uncertai
n. “Though I sure like the word shoot in there. People are attracted to that word like bees to honey.”

  “Well, you can put up a billboard on the side of the road telling people they can shoot paintballs at the Busy Bee,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Then over time we can expand the concept. You can dress up as a deer and we’ll have paintball deer-hunting season. We can call that one Shoot-to-Kill. Or your mom can dress up like a crazy shopper chasing after bargains, or I can find Dick the thief and we can have Shoot-the-Criminal-Escapee and he can wear a black-and-white-striped suit. Once we get going we can have a row of themes.”

  “Don’t forget Shoot-Your-Lousy-Kid!” I shouted.

  “Excellent!” he yelled back. We high-fived. “I can see this idea right before my eyes, just like the first time I saw those winning lottery numbers.”

  It was like having him in charge allowed me to just go with the flow. As he talked I said, “Yeah,” and “yeah,” like the Freddy bobblehead I was, until we couldn’t think of anything else to add to the big, beautiful idea that was the beginning of my Freddy future, an incredible future which was bright and hopeful and made me think that being Freddy was going to work out just like Mom promised. I’d have the Sting the Busy Bee business and diner and Dad and I would make money and we’d be able to raise little Heinzie to follow in our successful footsteps, and Mom would have enough money to shop and be happy and if she wanted we could buy her a nail salon and put it next to the diner and we could call it Ten Little Fingers or The Hand of Heinz and she could hire people to work for her, too.

  Then he said, “One more thing. We’ll have to wait till the spring to build it ’cause the ground has to thaw.”

  “Dang,” I said, disappointed, and punched myself in the thigh. But then I pulled myself together. “Well, that will give me time to practice my insults.”

  “That’s thinking positive,” he said, and rapped his knuckles on my helmet, which I still liked to wear in the car. “Now you’ll have plenty of time to cook up some really rude things.”

  But Dad was as impatient as I was. Even though we were not going to build it until spring, he got off to a fast start. He drew out elaborate plans for the paintball shooting gallery. He ordered fencing and lumber and bags of cement. But when the truck arrived, Dad got into a shouting match with the driver, who wanted cash on delivery and wouldn’t take a credit card.

  When the truck left with our stuff, I asked Dad if he was mad.

  “Not really,” he said. “By the time the ground thaws I’ll have figured out how to crack the lottery bank and we’ll have enough cash to hire a company to build the paintball court. I don’t know what I was thinking by ordering the supplies.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Maybe we dodged a bullet.”

  “You got that right,” he said, and poked my shoulder. “We just want to make the money. Let someone else do the heavy lifting.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s the Heinz way of thinking.”

  While we waited for warmer weather Charles went back to making lists of numbers so he could win more money and plan for our paintball theme park empire. I rolled up my sleeves and got to work because when my hands are busy I’m not thinking of weird things to do. I cut up cardboard boxes into large flowers and bees and other bugs. I even cut out little doghouses and fire hydrants for El Gordo and Quesadilla to hide behind. Then I painted them and propped them up against the booths to dry.

  But not everyone was waiting for our empire to grow. On one of those sunny winter days, Dad and I were working up a practice session for the paintball game. I was in the bee costume with my bullhorn and he stood about a hundred feet away from me and tried to hit me. I was yelling out insults and running in figure eights and his shots were missing me pretty good, but a few hit me. “What are you? Some kind of a girlie man!” I hollered, ducking down behind one of my large tulips. “Hit me in the bee-hind!” I yelled, and stuck my rear out to the side to give him a target.

  Just when Dad planted a direct hit on my stinger and I flopped to the ground, a car pulled up and a stranger stepped out. He was in a dark suit and carried a briefcase. Dad lowered his paint gun and looked at him suspiciously. I came running in to see what was going on.

  I arrived when the man said, “My name is Mr. Paxson and I’m with the Lancaster school board.”

  “So?” Dad said, and squinted at him.

  “You might call me a truant officer,” he explained further. “I’m here to check up on a boy named Freddy Heinz. Some time ago we received a notification from the principal at Keystone that a kid was living here who wasn’t going to school. And recently she called to follow up. Said she saw him and he still wasn’t in school.”

  After he said that last bit he looked down at me. I had some paint dripping down the side of my helmet and onto my costume. “Buzzzzz,” I said.

  “While you’ve been meaning to check up on him,” Dad said, “we’ve made other educational arrangements.”

  “You’ll have to excuse me,” Mr. Paxson replied. “I have a huge caseload and I’ve been slow to get out here. You would be surprised to know how many kids don’t go to school.”

  “So you mean a kid could fall between the cracks before you find him?” Dad asked, and from the tone of his voice I knew he was hoping that I had done just that—fallen between the cracks.

  “Or he could just be hiding between the cracks,” Mr. Paxson suggested as he pointed at me. “Maybe like this kid.”

  Dad looked at me then back at Mr. Paxson. “He’s being homeschooled,” he explained.

  “And what are you teaching him?” Mr. Paxson asked, nodding toward the paint gun.

  “This is part of the physical education program,” Dad replied in his official voice. “At regular school they have dodgeball. Well, we don’t have a lot of kids so we play dodge the paintball.”

  “Are you aware that this could look like abuse to me?” Mr. Paxson stated firmly.

  “Freddy,” Dad said with mock concern in his voice, “am I abusing you?”

  I lifted the bullhorn to my lips and pointed it at Mr. Paxson. “No!” I shouted. “I live for this game!” Mr. Paxson stepped back a pace. “I see,” he said while wiggling a pinky finger in his ear hole. “Well, what about”—he paused and looked at his notes— “Joey Pigza? The principal wanted me to ask about him. Is he around?”

  “He disappeared!” I shouted through the bullhorn before Charles could say anything.

  “Do you know where he went?” Mr. Paxson asked as he motioned for me to lower the bullhorn.

  “You won’t find him ever again,” I replied.

  “Why not?” he pressed.

  “’Cause trying to find him is like trying to find a breath of air you had last year—it’s impossible.”

  “Then what about you?” he asked. “Tell me about this homeschooling.”

  “I’m in a special program where I’m learning how to be a chef at the diner,” I said, and kicked a clod of dirt toward it.

  “What program is that?”

  “Mail order,” Charles said abruptly. “And I think you’ve asked enough questions.”

  “For now I have,” Mr. Paxson replied without flinching. “But I’ll be back for more answers. The state requires certification for homeschool situations, so you better get your papers in order.” Then he turned and walked toward his car. When he opened the door I hollered through the bullhorn, “Kiss my honey-dipped doughnuts!”

  Dad yanked the bullhorn out of my hand. “What are you doing?” he snapped, his eyes bugging out in anger. “That guy could be trouble.”

  “I’m just practicing my insults,” I said. “Like you told me.”

  “Well, now I’m telling you to get in the house. I don’t want that guy breathing down my neck and looking for Joey Pigza.”

  The next morning Dad had me clean up around the grill so I could work on my cooking homework and pretend I was being homeschooled in case the truant officer returned. I made pancakes and eggs a
nd sausage and toast. Mom came in from the house and I loaded up her plate.

  “This is the best food I’ve ever eaten,” she said, wolfing it down.

  “Would you give me an A for cooking today?” I asked.

  “Definitely” she said. “It’s given me a burst of energy.”

  “What are you doing with your energy?”

  “Some final shopping!” she said. “There’s just a million things a woman needs when she is going to have a baby.”

  “By the way,” she said, turning toward Dad as she dug a credit card out of her pocket. “I was doing some online shopping just now and my credit card was refused.” She threw it on the table.

  “I bet,” he said, half distracted by his list of numbers. “That’s happened to me before and it’s a total bummer.”

  “A huge bummer,” she said testily. “I called the credit card company and they said I was ‘maxed out’ and late with a payment.”

  “Tell them that’s a temporary problem,” Dad replied.

  “You tell them,” she said, “because it’s too stressful for me to deal with. I swear when he said ‘maxed out’ I almost had little Heinzie on the spot.”

  “Don’t work yourself into a panic,” Charles said. “It’s just a little mix-up with the credit bureau.” Then he started making a list of numbers again.

  After a moment she said, “Well, aren’t you going to do something? You know today’s the day my girlfriends are taking me for a three-day spa treatment for a baby shower, and I’ll need some credit.”

  “Sure,” he replied. “Now come here so I can rub your belly for good luck. I won a few bucks the last time I did it.”

  “I guess so,” Mom groaned. “But make it snappy. I’m itchin’ to hit the road.”

  He rubbed her belly and then he put his lips against her skin and whispered, “Little Heinzie. If you hear me, knock three times.” He pulled his head back and placed his palm on her belly. Suddenly his face lit up and he turned to us. “He just kicked me three times,” he said joyfully. “I felt it.”