How to Eat Fried Worms

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How to Eat Fried Worms Page 3

by Thomas Rockwell


  “If he don’t, he’s chicken,” said Alan. “After all his talk.”

  Why don’t I eat it? thought Tom. I mean, it’s a yucky thing to do, but it wouldn’t kill me.

  He scratched his neck, shifting his seat on the pail.

  I don’t know, thought Tom. I just won’t, I guess.

  He gagged, imagining what it would be like to bite down on a soft, fat, boiled worm. He glanced at the door again.

  Billy kicked the door shut.

  “Leave it open,” said Tom.

  “Why?”

  “Because I said so.”

  “Yeah? Well, you don’t own this barn.”

  “Neither do you. Your father does.”

  Billy rubbed his nose, watching Tom, figuring: He’s trying to pick a fight so he won’t have to eat the worm.

  “Okay.”

  Billy opened the door and set a brick against it.

  Tom shifted his seat on the pail again. He couldn’t stop thinking about what it would be like to bite down on a soft, fat, boiled worm. He scratched his ear. Who did Billy think he was, trying to order people around, telling them what they had to eat and all? Billy wasn’t anybody’s father. Tom began to feel put-upon and indignant and stubborn.

  A screen door slammed: Joe coming back with the worm. Tom licked his lips. He heard Joe running across the barnyard toward them …

  “Billy!” Alan shouted.

  Billy spun around just in time to catch a glimpse of Tom pelting out the door, the door banging shut. He flung to the window: Joe sprawled in the middle of the barnyard on his back, Tom was clambering over the wall into the meadow, the frying pan lay upside down beside the horse trough.

  XII

  The Fifth Worm

  LOOK, said Billy to himself, staring down at the fried worm on the plate. Be sensible. How can it hurt me? I’ve eaten four already. Tom was just scared. He’s like that. He eggs other people on, but he never wants to do anything himself.

  “Give up?” asked Alan.

  “Come on,” said Joe. “We haven’t got all day.”

  “Five more minutes,” said Alan. “Then I win.”

  “There’s no time limit,” said Billy. For the first time he wondered what he’d do if he lost. Where could he ever get fifty dollars? But how could he eat ten more? Big, fat, ugly, soft, brown things. He couldn’t ask his father for fifty dollars.

  He heard Alan and Joe whispering together.

  “He’s gonna quit.”

  “Yeah. I knew he’d never make it when I bet with him. He talks big. Him and Tom are just the same. But they never do anything.”

  Billy gritted his teeth, glopped on ketchup, mustard, salt, grated cheese, whatever was on the crate, anything, everything, and then grabbed up the worm and tore it apart with his hands, stuffing it into his mouth, chewing and chewing and swallowing, gulping….

  Then, panting, he reached out and wiped his gooey hands on Alan’s trousers and grinned messily up at him and said,

  “There. Five.”

  XIII

  Nothing to Worry About

  THAT night Alan asked his father to show him fifty dollars.

  After that, he couldn’t sleep, tossing and turning in his rumpled bed. Suppose he lost? He could just see himself asking his father for fifty dollars—begging for it, on his knees, tears streaming down his cheeks; and then, at Thanksgiving dinner, cringing while all his aunts and uncles and cousins roared over his father’s story of “Alan’s bet.”

  He slid out of bed and snuck down the carpeted hall to his parents’ bedroom.

  “You got to wake him, Mrs. O’Hara, you got to,” he whispered into the phone. “It’s an emergency. I got to speak to him.” Pause. “I got a hoarse throat, Mrs. O’Hara, that’s why I’m whispering. Please.” Pause. “Gee, thanks, Mrs. O’Hara. No, I won’t ever call this late again, it’s just it’s—”

  He waited, gnawing at his thumbnail. A board creaked on the stairs. He stiffened. Silence.

  “What d’ya want?” said Joe suddenly over the telephone. “Geez, I was sleeping. You woke me up.”

  “Joe, suppose I lose? My father’ll never let me take the money out of my savings account. I know he won’t. You think I’ll lose, Joe? Huh? Huh? Joe, tell me. Give it to me straight. Joe, I got to know. I can’t sleep.”

  Joe sighed. “Look. I told you this afternoon. You got nothing to worry about. He’s cracking. Sure, he ate that one today. Sure, he might—”

  XIV

  The Pain and the Blood and the Gore

  FOUR blocks away Billy suddenly found himself in a brightly lit butcher shop, jostled by a crowd of enormous, pigeon-breasted, middle-aged women, shouting to make himself heard over the din of their chatter and the roars of butchers ordering about the weasel-faced boys who were lugging haunches and tubs of meat in and out of the refrigerator room in the rear. Then a butcher saw Billy jumping and jumping among the women and asked for his order and Billy gave it, and suddenly he was shoved up close to the chopping block and the butcher slapped down ten black worms as big as snakes and Billy tried to say they were too big, he’d choke on them, but the butcher couldn’t hear him over the thumps of his cleaver and the din of the women and the hoarse shouts of the other butchers, and before Billy knew what was happening, he was seated at a table in Longchamps Restaurant on Times Square in New York City with a large napkin tied under his chin, and a waiter was uncovering a platter on which lay one of the huge black worms, coiled snakily, a red, red rose wobbling in the center of its coils.

  “How can I ever finish it?” said Billy and cut into a mammoth coil. Steaming pink juice flooded out. Billy ate and ate and ate and ate and then looked … and … and … he must have eaten more than that? And then he looked again and there was no hole at all. He had eaten and eaten and eaten … nothing at all!

  And then he felt something cold on his ankles and looked under the tablecloth and there were two more of the huge worms wound around and around his ankles. And then he felt something weighing down his arm and he looked and there was another worm wound around his arm, glaring hungrily at him with its bloodshoot eyes, and from everywhere in the vast room, winding between the tables, waiters approached carrying huge silver serving platters….

  * * *

  Billy opened his eyes.

  For the first moment, in the moonlight flooding his bedroom, his two bare feet, sticking up out of the bottom of the covers, looked like two huge white worms’ heads.

  And then he realized that he had been dreaming and sank back onto his pillow, the nightmare melting away. There were no huge worms as big as pythons, he was home in bed, his parents were asleep in the next room….

  His stomach rumbled.

  But suppose Joe hadn’t been lying?

  The hair stood up on the back of his neck.

  Or suppose Joe had made it all up but had been right anyway, without knowing it?

  A shutter banged. Billy glanced out the window and saw the moon riding among the tossing leaves. His stomach rumbled and gurgled.

  He groaned.

  Suppose he was dying? He’d heard of people waking up in the middle of the night with pains in their stomachs, and then, as the windows turned gray in the dawn, they died. Toadstools, soured lobster, tainted pork.

  That was a pain!

  He clutched his stomach, and groaning, half fell, half staggered out of bed and hobbled toward the door, bent double. Maybe there was an antidote. He whimpered. It didn’t hurt a lot, but nothing ever did to begin with, did it?

  XV

  3:15 A.M.

  HIS mother reached out and switched on the light. “What kind of pain, Billy?”

  He stood beside the bed, clutching his stomach. “In my stomach. Oooo, there it goes again, I think.”

  “Did you eat something before bed?”

  She was pulling on her bathrobe. “John, John.” She shook her husband’s shoulder. He mumbled sleepily. “Did you eat candy or something before bed, Billy?”

  “Worms,�
�� groaned Billy.

  “Worms? John! John! Billy, what kind of worms?”

  “Regular worms, night crawlers.”

  She felt his forehead, lifted his chin to look in his face. “You don’t have a temperature. How many worms did you eat?”

  “Five. Two boiled and three fried. With ketchup, mustard, horseradish, salt, pepper, butter. To make them taste better.”

  “Fried? Ketchup? Taste better? John! Wake up.”

  “I had this bet with Alan. Ohhhhh.” He groaned again.

  “Take your hands away. Where does it hurt now? Show me.”

  “It doesn’t really hurt so much now. It’s just rumbling and gurgling something awful. It’s—”

  “Then why are you groaning?” asked his father, sitting up.

  “Because I’m afraid it’s going to start hurting. Do you think I’m going to die, Daddy?”

  “Worms?” his father asked. “Ordinary worms? Earthworms?”

  Billy nodded.

  “And how many did you eat this evening?”

  “One this afternoon. I’ve eaten one every day for the last five days. But they weren’t little ones; they were night crawlers, huge ones, as big as snakes almost.”

  His father lay back down, pulling the covers up around his shoulders. “Don’t worry. Eating one night crawler a day for six weeks wouldn’t hurt you. Go back to bed. It’s probably all the ketchup and mustard that’s upsetting your stomach. Drink a glass of warm water.”

  “John, are you sure?” said Billy’s mother. “It doesn’t seem to me that worms could be a very healthy thing to eat. John?”

  His father snuggled deeper under the covers. “I didn’t say eating worms would turn him into an All-American fullback. I just said they wouldn’t hurt him. Now let’s go to sleep.”

  Billy’s mother glanced at Billy, shivering beside the bed in bare feet and pajamas, and then shook her husband again. “John? John, wake up. I think you should call Dr. McGrath. You don’t really know whether or not eating worms is harmful. I know you don’t.”

  Billy’s father groaned and sat up. “Now, look. I am not going to call Dr. McGrath at three thirty in the morning to ask if it’s all right for my son to eat worms. That’s flat. Secondly, I do know that Billy’s not going to die before morning. If worms were poisonous, which they’re not, he would have been laid up before this. Billy, you’ve been eating worms for five days?”

  Billy nodded.

  “All right. And thirdly, I ate a live crayfish when I was in college and have suffered no discernible ill effects. And fourthly: I am going to sleep.”

  Billy’s mother slipped her feet into her slippers, stood up and buttoned her bathrobe, and then leaned over the bed and shook her husband’s shoulder. “John? John, I won’t be able to sleep until you call. John? John, what about tapeworms or a fungus? John? Wake up. Billy, you go back to bed. Your father will call Dr. McGrath. John? John?”

  Billy lay in bed listening to his mother and father arguing in their bedroom. He could only make out a word here and there, usually when his father started to shout, only to be shushed immediately by his mother. Billy got sleepier and sleepier. His stomach had stopped rumbling and gurgling. It was warm and cozy under the covers after standing on the cold floor in his bare feet. Then, in the midst of a foggy drowse, he heard someone dialing the phone in the hall outside his parents’ bedroom, and then his father say, “Poison Control?” and explain the case.

  Then there was a silence. Billy heard the water running in the bathroom. And then his father said, “You’re sure? These weren’t little ones. These were nightcrawlers.” Pause. “And no long-range ill effects?” Pause. His father laughed. “A bet, I think.”

  And the next thing Billy knew, sunlight was streaming through his window and Emily was skipping down the hall past his door singing,

  “Half a pound of tupenny rice,

  Half a pound of treacle,

  That’s the way the money goes—”

  His father shouted down the stairs, “Helen, do you know where my green tie with the red stripes is?”

  XVI

  The Sixth Worm

  BILLY gulped it triumphantly, serene, untroubled.

  By the door Alan glowered, his mind racing: He’s gonna do it, he’ll win, what’ll I do? Fifty dollars.

  Joe sat on an overturned pail, whistling, gazing carelessly about … sneaking a glance now and then at Billy. What had gone wrong? Why hadn’t he cracked?

  Outside, Tom lurked sheepishly in the bushes behind the stone wall, peering at the barn.

  XVII

  The Seventh Worm

  BILLY ate it offhand, sideways, reading a comic book.

  Alan and Joe squatted glumly in the barn door, watching him.

  As Billy was daubing horseradish sauce on the last bite, Tom’s head appeared in a corner of the grimy window. He waved tentatively at Billy.

  Ignoring him, Billy gulped down the last bite, wiped his mouth, and tucking his comic book under his arm, strolled airily out of the barn, remarking over his shoulder, “See you tomorrow, fellows.”

  XVIII

  The Eighth Worm

  WHERE’S Joe?” asked Billy, spreading mustard down the length of the fried worm.

  “He wouldn’t come,” said Alan sullenly. “It’s no fair putting on that much mustard.”

  “Ha, ha,” said Billy. “Who says? I can put on as much as I like of whatever I like, and you know it. Why wouldn’t he come?”

  “How should I know?”

  Billy swooshed a bit of worm around in ketchup and horseradish sauce. “I know why he didn’t.”

  “Yeah. You’re so smart. Big deal.” Alan couldn’t get the fifty dollars out of his head. What was his father going to say when he told him he’d bet fifty dollars and lost? Geez! He gnawed at his thumbnail.

  “He wouldn’t come because he knows I’ve won. He knows I could eat twenty worms if I had to.”

  “Yeah? Yeah? Well, you ain’t won yet. There’s still seven to go. You act so big. Wait’ll you begin to feel it in your stomach. You think you know everything. Yeah. You’ll see. You wait.”

  “Ha, ha,” said Billy. “You think you can scare me talking like that? Phooey.” He strolled past Alan out into the sunlight.

  “Hi,” said Tom, popping up from behind a barrel.

  “Pfffffft!” said Billy disdainfully and walked on.

  XIX

  The Ninth Worm

  THAT’S not a worm!” yelled Billy. “How can it be a worm? Geez, it must be two feet long!”

  “It’s a worm,” said Alan stubbornly. “It’s just like all the others. I rolled it in cornmeal and fried it.”

  “It’s over two feet long!” screeched Billy.

  He knew something was up. Otherwise Joe wouldn’t have come back, slouching in the doorway pretending to be gazing up at the clouds. But Billy noticed he kept glancing at Alan and him. And Tom was peering in the window again. Something was up.

  “Look,” said Alan. “I’ll cut it. You can see for yourself it’s a worm. There. See? Come on. Eat up. We ain’t got all day. Joe and me have to go to Shushan with his father.”

  Billy poked at the huge worm with his fork. Something sure was up. He ate the piece Alan had cut, looking the rest of the worm over carefully as he chewed. He ate another bite. Fauh! He’d forgotten to dip it in the horseradish sauce.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” said Alan.

  “Yeah,” said Joe. “Eat up, Billy, we got to go.”

  I’ll never be able to eat the whole thing, thought Billy. It’d choke me; it’s too much yuck at once.

  “Half,” he croaked. “I’ll eat half. This is some sort of a ringer. There’s never been a worm this long.”

  “Okay,” said Alan. “Then the bet’s off. Suit yourself. Come on, Joe, he chickened out. Let’s go.”

  “All right, all right,” said Billy, playing for time. “The whole thing.”

  “You’ll make yourself sick,” said Alan.

&nbs
p; He’s too anxious, thought Billy. What’s going on?

  “Leave him alone,” said Joe. “Let him eat it. It’s his stomach.”

  He’s trying to cover for Alan, thought Billy. He ate another bite. Then he began to scrape the cornmeal carefully off the worm with his knife.

  “What are you doing?” said Alan.

  “I think I’ll have it plain today. No cornmeal.”

  “That’s not fair! You can’t—”

  “Glue!” screamed Billy all of a sudden. “Glue! You glued two crawlers together! Geez! You bunch of lousy cheats! Tom! Tom, look what they tried to pull! Glue!”

  Panting, Tom bent over the plate. “You’re right. Geez!”

  Alan kicked a pail clattering against the wall. “I told you it wouldn’t work!” he screamed at Joe.

  “All right. So it didn’t work. You couldn’t think of anything better.”

  “That’s cheating!” said Billy. “I ought to win right now. You cheated.”

  “Fifteen worms in fifteen days!” yelled Joe. “You ain’t won yet!”

  “But you cheated!” shouted Tom.

  “So what?”

  They argued and yelled, striding here and there about the barn, sprawling against posts, flinging up their arms, kicking walls, banging down on a pail or orange crate and squeezing their heads between their hands.

  “It doesn’t make any difference!” Joe yelled at Billy. “It didn’t work! You didn’t fall for it! If you’d eaten the whole thing and then found out it was two worms glued together, then you could have claimed to win because Alan was cheating.”

  “Big mouth!” shouted Alan from the horse stall, where he was kicking the slats in. “Who thought it up? Not me!”

  “Who cares who thought it up?” shouted Tom. “It’s still cheating!”

  A pig looked in at the door and then wandered away.

  Joe ran out and stuck his head under the faucet by the kitchen steps. A minute later he came running back dripping, yelling, “That’s not true!”

 

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