by Susan Shreve
“How come you’re not in this class, Josh?” someone called from the back of the room.
“He flunked,” Billy Nickel, the only seriously stupid boy from Mrs. Nice’s third grade, said thoughtfully. “My mother told me last night.”
“That’s a lie,” Andrew said.
“I saw him go into Mrs. Goodwin’s class with his parents this morning,” Tommy Wilhelm said. “I don’t think he was going to a birthday party.”
“Please,” the new teacher said, rising from her desk. “It’s time for social studies.”
“I’m actually moving away,” Joshua said as loud as he could, which wasn’t very loud because his voice was filling with tears.
Andrew agreed that Joshua Bates was telling the absolute truth. He knew, he said, because they were best friends. “His father told me they were moving last night on the telephone.”
“Liars,” Tommy Wilhelm sang out as Joshua left the classroom with Andrew Porter.
In the empty boys’ room Joshua started to cry in spite of himself.
“I mean, Billy Nickel was ten times worse at reading than me,” Joshua said.
“I know,” Andrew agreed sympathetically. “And so were Tommy Aiken and John Starer.”
“And Dickie Fluger.”
“It’s unfair,” Andrew said sadly.
“So I’m running away. Blowing town. Beating it. Mrs. Goodwin is a tank,” Joshua said, feeling his strength return.
They leaned against the windowsill. The window was half open, over the playground full of kindergarten children swinging and playing in the sandbox.
“Where’ll you go?” Andrew asked.
“East Africa.”
“Alone?”
“Do you want to come?” Joshua asked brightly. “We could have a really good time.”
“Well,” Andrew said. “Probably I can’t. My parents wouldn’t let me.”
There was a knock on the bathroom door and Mrs. Goodwin called in her low, gravelly voice.
“Joshua? Are you all right?”
Joshua didn’t answer.
“Joshua?”
“I’m not dead if that’s what you mean,” he replied.
“We better go,” Andrew whispered. “I don’t want to spend the day with the principal.” He reached into his pocket and took out two plastic standing Union soldiers with rifles pointing. “You can have them,” he said. “They’re extras. I’ll see you on the playground in an hour.”
Back in the classroom Joshua told Mrs. Goodwin that he had the flu and needed to go home pronto or everybody else in the third grade would catch it.
Mrs. Goodwin put her hand on his forehead. “You’re not hot,” she said. “You’ll last until three o’clock.”
“You’ll be sorry,” Joshua said darkly.
“We’ll see how you feel after reading,” Mrs. Goodwin said. “I need you to help me in reading class.”
So Joshua stayed through reading class, moving his chair next to the child in the hippopotamus dress, who needed special help with phonics.
“I won’t read aloud, you know,” he said to Mrs. Goodwin as she passed his desk.
“I wouldn’t dream of asking you,” she said.
During social studies Mrs. Goodwin asked Joshua to explain about the lives of Indians on reservations, which he did. She didn’t mention the fact that Joshua knew about Indians because he had already studied them in third grade once. She simply acted as if Joshua T. Bates, formerly retarded, was the smartest boy she had met in several months.
By recess Joshua had almost forgotten his stomachache and was helping a new boy from Peru add three digits.
As he left the classroom to go to the playground, Mrs. Goodwin called to him.
“I’m sorry to hear you have to leave town tomorrow,” she said.
He shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe my plans will change.”
Amanda was out on the playground hanging by her knees on the junglegym when he came out for recess.
“H’lo, Josh,” she called to him upside down. “How’s Mrs. Goodwin’s class?”
“Not bad,” he said. “I’ll probably be promoted next week,” he lied.
Three
Tommy Wilhelm was already on the playground with Billy Nickel, who should have been the one to flunk third grade, and two other enemies of Josh’s from third grade. They were in the corner of the playground, leaning against the cyclone fence with criminal attitudes, and Joshua could tell without a shadow of doubt that they were talking about him. In all probability they were saying how he couldn’t read and had an irregular brain, had never learned to spell, and would grow up to be a trash collector in Japan.
Courageously, Joshua sauntered down toward the cyclone fence, looking at the sea of faces on the playground, wishing that Andrew were somewhere in sight to help him out.
“I brought a softball and bat if you want to play baseball,” he said to Tommy as he leaned on the fence beside him.
“Big deal,” Tommy said.
“Why not? The field’s empty,” Billy Nickel said. “We could have two teams.”
“G’won if you want to play. Myself, I play with fourth graders only.”
Joshua could feel his blood shooting like hot darts straight through his arms, but he didn’t say a word.
“See you later then,” he called, slinging his bat over his shoulder.
“Andrew’s looking for you,” Amanda, still hanging red-faced by her knees, called to him. She pointed in the direction of the lower field, where Andrew was walking with two friends.
Joshua caught up with them, batting Andrew lightly on the shoulder.
“Want to pitch?” he asked.
“Sure,” Andrew said. “You guys against us,” he told the two boys he was with. “We’re up at bat first.”
“Tommy Wilhelm is passing it around school that you flunked,” one of the boys said as he took the softball from Joshua.
“Tommy misunderstood,” Joshua said as patiently as he could. “There was a mix-up. The fact is if I stay in town, I’m being promoted very soon.”
They played all during recess until the bell, and Joshua felt better than he had felt in twenty-four hours, since he had first heard from his mother about third grade. He hit one home run and a double. He caught a fly ball and a grounder and tagged a man out on first base. He was actually beginning to feel normal when Tommy Wilhelm, followed by Billy Nickel and the two enemies, waddling like ducklings behind Tommy, sauntered over to the lower field.
“Third graders aren’t allowed to play with softballs. Only rubber balls,” he called. “School rules.”
Joshua was up at bat with two strikes. He tried not to listen to Tommy Wilhelm. He imagined himself hitting the ball smack, sending it out beyond the pitcher, over the heads of the outfielders, a home run. But when the ball came straight as a dime over home plate, he swung hard and missed.
Perhaps if Tommy Wilhelm hadn’t laughed a loud monkey laugh that went on and on, Joshua wouldn’t have dared to hit a boy one head taller than he was, flanked on either side by three allies built in large solid squares like cement blocks.
But Joshua didn’t think.
As soon as he heard Tommy Wilhelm laugh, he took off at a sprint, running as fast as he had ever run, charging like a tiger or a bear or an elephant—so Amanda told their parents that night at supper—straight into the center of Tommy Wilhelm, knocking the wind out of him. Tommy toppled over like a sack of flour suddenly emptied.
“I can’t breathe,” he moaned.
“You killed him!” Billy Nickel shouted, hopping on Joshua’s back.
“Not yet,” Joshua said.
“You’re just a third-grade bully,” one of the enemies said, and he pushed Joshua into the cyclone fence.
“I’m not in third grade,” Joshua said. He fell to the asphalt, with both arms pinned behind him. “I just got promoted.”
One enemy hit him in the nose. Another kicked him hard on the side. He might have been braindamaged, as he told hi
s parents later, if Andrew had not flown out of nowhere, sailing bravely into the center of the fight.
“I’m telling,” Andrew said.
“Josh hit Tommy first,” Billy Nickel said.
“Tommy was teasing, and look what you’ve done,” Andrew said, pointing to a wave of blood pouring from Joshua’s nose down his face. “Murderers.”
A teacher came rushing over and then another. The principal, called from his desk by one of the enemies, took Joshua by the arm.
“I’m going to have to call your mother,” the principal said as he led Josh back to his office. “Violence on the playground is not permitted.”
His mother wasn’t home when the principal called. By a stroke of good fortune his father, who was not inclined to be good-tempered on these occasions, was out of the office.
“Go back to Mrs. Goodwin’s class and write, ‘I will not fight on the playground’ one hundred times,” the principal said.
Mrs. Goodwin was sitting at her desk, looking less like a military tank at that particular moment than a soft-fleshed grandmother with a kindly face.
“H’lo,” Josh said. He sat down at his desk.
“Trouble?” she asked.
“I started a fight on the playground and the principal is trying to reach my parents to send me home. For violence.”
Mrs. Goodwin raised her eyebrows.
“Who won?”
Joshua shrugged. “There were four boys against me,” he said. “I’m glad I’m leaving the country.”
Mrs. Goodwin got up from her chair with The Joy of Reading: 4, pulled up another chair next to Josh, and opened the book on his desk to the first story.
“I lied,” he said to her.
“What was the lie?”
“I said you were promoting me soon to fourth grade.”
“Not soon, Josh,” she said thoughtfully, “but maybe before the end of the year if you work hard and don’t leave the country.”
Four
Joshua stopped at People’s Drugs to play Pac Man on the way home from the first day at school. Billy Nickel was already there with Tommy Wilhelm, standing in line for their turn. Joshua stood behind them.
“So?” Billy Nickel asked. “Did you get suspended or not?”
Joshua didn’t answer.
“At this rate, you’ll be twenty-one and driving before you get out of third grade,” Tommy Wilhelm offered pleasantly.
Joshua picked up a Dr. Strange comic from the newsstand and pretended not to hear.
“What’s the matter? Scared to talk?” Billy asked after he finished his turn.
Joshua dropped his fifty cents into the Pac Man machine and concentrated on the blue and yellow figures on the screen. He played on and on, winning and winning.
“You know your friend Andrew?” Tommy Wilhelm asked. “He’s not long for fourth grade. Right, Billy?”
“Right,” Billy said.
Joshua bought a double-dip chocolate ice cream cone at the counter, and the copy of Dr. Strange, and walked home along Wisconsin Avenue.
“I spoke with the principal,” his mother said when Joshua got home. “He is very cross.”
“I hope he drowns in the Potomac River,” Joshua said, giving first Georgianna in her playpen and then the cat, Plutarch, a lick of his ice cream.
“He said you initiated a fight and beat up Tommy Wilhelm.”
“I didn’t beat him up enough,” Joshua said.
“He’s suspending you for tomorrow.”
“Good,” Josh said. He sat on the living room couch and put his feet up on the coffee table. “Either I will play Pac Man all day or else go to East Africa tomorrow. I haven’t decided which.”
His mother picked up Georgianna and bounced her absently on her lap.
“Please, darling, don’t call attention to yourself by getting into trouble.”
“I would have been very glad not to have any attention at all today. Tommy Wilhelm called attention to me and I wish I could turn him into vanilla pudding.”
“If you have that kind of attitude, Josh, repeating is going to be much harder.”
“Well, that’s the attitude I’ve got.”
The front door slammed open and Amanda rushed in.
“Josh got in a terrible fight,” she called from the hall. “He attacked four boys and almost beat them single-handed.”
“So I’ve heard,” Mrs. Bates said.
“News gets around fast,” Josh said.
“Are you suspended or not?” Amanda asked. She sat down on the couch next to Joshua, who had set up an army of metal soldiers, plus Andrew’s plastic ones, on each extended leg.
“Suspended.”
“Too bad.”
“It’s not too bad at all. It’s going to be wonderful. I’ll have all day to do nothing at all like it’s a vacation. Perhaps I won’t even have to leave town if I can get suspended often.”
“What about your reading if you’re not in school, Josh,” Mrs. Bates asked impatiently.
“I’ll teach Josh to read,” Amanda said.
“I already know how to read, you dolt,” Josh said, leveling a whole army of soldiers by brushing them off his leg.
“What I mean is we can read together,” Amanda said with surprising good sense.
And then she boxed him gently on the arm and said, “You were amazing today.”
When the telephone rang, Mrs. Bates thought it was Mr. Bates calling from the office to say what time he’d be home for dinner. Amanda thought it was her friend Luli calling for the homework assignment in language arts. And Joshua was sure it was Tommy Wilhelm’s mother calling to whine about injustices.
Instead, to everyone’s surprise, it was Mrs. Priscilla Goodwin, calling to invite Joshua over.
“For tea,” Mrs. Bates said.
“She didn’t mention tutoring?” Joshua asked.
“She simply said tea and cookies,” Mrs. Bates said.
Joshua shrugged. “Well, I guess I’ll have to go see the military tank if she insists,” he said.
But in truth, he was very pleased.
Five
Joshua knew absolutely what he was going to do about school as he took his dirt bike out of the shed, rode it up Lowell Street, passed the older boys playing street hockey, and screeched to a halt so the wonderful bike reared in the air like a stallion at the stop sign on Thirty-fifth Street.
He rode down Wisconsin Avenue on the sidewalk, taking the bumps full speed, his wheels spinning on the pebbles. At R Street he turned left to the address Mrs. Goodwin had given, a rectangular house with red geraniums in pots at all the windows, and there she was on the front step waiting.
“Hello,” she called.
“H’lo.” He locked his bike on a wispy birch tree in front of her house, bounded up the steps, and followed her through the front door.
Certainly he knew that it wasn’t going to be possible for a boy of almost ten to leave home and travel alone in East Africa, whatever the emergency. Besides, he would miss his family, even plump Georgianna banging her spoon on the high-chair table and splashing her dinner on the walls. Neither was he going to be able to arrange to be suspended on a regular basis. Besides, what he wanted more than anything except a black ten-speed bike was to be promoted to fourth grade as a perfectly smart boy who could spell and read, not brilliantly, of course, but well enough. And was good at sports. Next he wanted to capture Tommy Wilhelm in a gunnysack, dress him in girls’ clothes, perhaps a hippopotamus dress with puffed sleeves, and tie him to the flagpole in front of Mirch Elementary for everyone in the world to see.
Joshua sat down at the table in Mrs. Goodwin’s kitchen, took a stack of slender brown-edged sugar cookies, and filled his teacup with milk and sugar and a small amount of tea.
“I want you to make me as smart as anyone in the fourth grade,” he said matter-of-factly.
“You are already smart, Joshua. What you need to do is learn to read.”
And so together they made a serious plan of actio
n.
Every weekday afternoon Joshua would go first to People’s Drugs, play two games of Pac Man to relax, then get his bike and ride to R Street, where he and Mrs. Goodwin would sit at the kitchen table with cookies and tea, chocolate as the weather chilled, and practice reading and spelling until the words fell like magic into stories in his brain.
On that first afternoon Mrs. Goodwin showed him all around her house. She took him to the library stacked with books from floor to ceiling; on the desk was a picture of Mrs. Goodwin looking young and thin, even pretty, with two small smiling boys on her lap. There was a yellow Labrador retriever, who had already lived one hundred and forty people years, lying in front of the fireplace, as still and patched with age as the oriental rug on which he slept. In a cage in the window of the living room, a brown mother finch sat smugly on two tiny eggs. And in an aquarium, visible as day, an unattractive boa constrictor shot his forked tongue at Joshua as he peered through the glass.
“The snake belongs to Mr. Goodwin,” Mrs. Goodwin said. “I hope he’ll take the awful thing to his new apartment as soon as possible.”
“Are you moving?” Joshua asked.
“Mr. Goodwin is moving,” Mrs. Goodwin replied, and Joshua could tell she was not anxious to discuss Mr. Goodwin at greater length.
On the way home Joshua decided, however, that Mr. Goodwin was responsible for the first day of school being the worst day in Mrs. Goodwin’s life, as she had told him that morning when they met.
Andrew was waiting on the front steps when Joshua got home from Mrs. Goodwin’s that first day. He was dressed in the same shorts and T-shirt he had worn to school, only the T-shirt had a stripe of dried blood and the flesh just above his cheekbone was as purple as a ripe plum.
“Are you going to be promoted soon?” Andrew asked.
Joshua shrugged.
“Maybe, and maybe I’ll move away. I haven’t decided. How come?”
Andrew pulled his baseball cap down over his forehead, wiped at the dried blood on his T-shirt.
“Because there’s a new rule at school.”
“What’s that?” Josh asked.