His father was very excited about the project. The first night Donald tried to paint, he kept looking over Donald’s shoulder to see how it was coming. Donald messed up a couple of sheets of paper just getting used to the paint. His father watched him. Every time he brushed a new color onto the paper, his father clapped and laughed as though he were watching fireworks. Donald started to laugh too, and they wound up laughing until their eyes were wet, especially his father’s.
Donald started to work on a serious painting the next night. He decided to paint the marketplace in the old Chinese city he had seen. He also put a dragon in the picture. He had seen a dragon in New York City just a few days before, in Chinatown with his father, brother, and sister. It was New Year’s—not January first, but Chinese New Year, which comes later—and he had seen a dragon dancing in the street. It was not really a dragon, but a lot of people dressed up as a dragon. Donald could see their feet. It was a little like a giant caterpillar. There were firecrackers going off everywhere, and the people inside made the dragon twist and turn and rear his head up in the air. Donald liked it a lot.
Donald painted the dragon dancing in the open square. He painted the buildings, and the vegetable stalls. He painted crowds of people watching the dragon; he made some of them look like people he knew. His father was carrying a stack of sheets; Uncle Noon had a big bottle of wine. He painted his brother and sister, and the three people from the picture in the museum, leading their horse. He painted exploding firecrackers the way they are shown in comic books, two red halves with a yellow flash between them. For good measure, he painted some up-in-the-sky fireworks. Above it all, very small, he painted Wingman and himself, flying in a corner of the sky.
When the picture was finished, he signed it, Chen Chi-Wing. His father put it in the window of the laundry on Saturday. All day long people came in to say nice things about the picture. Donald kept going out in the street to look at it. It was a pretty good picture, there was no doubt about it.
On Monday he took the picture to Mrs. Miller. He told her she could keep it, but she said she would keep it just for a while. When school was over that day, he saw her take the rolled-up picture out of the cabinet and take it with her.
Time passed in the ordinary way. Donald had some of the big sheets of paper left, and did some more pictures. He found a rare comic he had been looking for, Barney Baxter Four Color Number 20. He also made a couple of visits to the museum on his own. He was getting better at the game of letting the picture come to life, and he also tried it on different kinds of pictures. With some it worked, with some it didn’t. In school they were learning about the Indians who used to live right in his neighborhood before New York City was there. He liked that pretty well, and kept up with his homework. He hadn’t cut school or climbed the bridge for a long time.
So he was not prepared for the note Mrs. Miller gave him to take home. It said that the principal of P.S. 132 invited Donald and his father to meet him in his office the next morning. Mrs. Miller had said that she hoped it would be a pleasant surprise. Donald tried to remember if he ever heard of anything pleasant happening in the principal’s office. He hadn’t, so he spent some time trying to remember some crime for which he had not been caught.
In the morning he still had no idea what the principal had found out. His father was wearing his suit. He didn’t say anything one way or the other. They went to school together.
In the hall outside the principal’s office, there was a big glass case, almost as big as a store window. There was a fluorescent light inside it, but the light was always out. Donald had never seen anything on display in the case. This morning the light was on, and in the case, tacked to a big sheet of red construction paper, was Donald’s painting, the one he had given to Mrs. Miller.
Donald and his father began to smile. Mrs. Miller saw them through the open door of the office, and she and the principal, Mr. Toomey, came out into the hall. They both shook hands with Donald’s father, and Mr. Toomey shook hands with Donald. He called him Don.
Mrs. Miller explained that she had entered Donald’s picture in a city-wide school art contest. One hundred and nineteen schools had each sent a picture by one of the pupils, and Donald’s picture had been selected as the best of the hundred and nineteen.
Mr. Toomey shook hands with Donald again, and gave him his prize, which consisted of a blue ribbon, a sheet of paper with fancy writing on it saying Donald had won the contest, and a five-dollar bill. Donald’s father kept patting him on the back and saying, “Good boy.” Donald gave his father the prizes to take home.
Mrs. Miller told the class that they could see Donald’s picture outside the principal’s office. “Also,” she said, “Mr. Toomey has decided that we should have Art as a regular subject, so, starting next week, we will paint pictures on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.” After the cheering died down, the class settled to work on the old-time Indians of Manhattan.
Donald was looking out the window. Nobody else saw the bird, or if they did, they thought it was a pigeon and hardly looked at it. Donald watched the eagle glide and spiral higher and higher. Even after it was out of sight he heard its shrill cries.
THE MAGIC GOOSE
To Geese and other creatures of goodwill.
—DP & JP
Contents
1.Seymour
2.Magic
3.In the Kitchen
4.A Magic Activity
5.Night Flying
6.Magic Goose Land
7.Lost Goose
8.Nathaniel lnkblotter
9.Home Again
I have written several important works about or featuring chickens, but never a goose until now. The reader will be aware that goose literature (la littérature d’oie) is an important part of world culture, and this is my contribution. Of course, I do not expect to achieve the fame of a certain Mother (no relation), but I do my humble best to entertain and enlighten. I hope the reader will have a honking good time.
1. Seymour
M y name is Seymour Semolina, and I like to read. I read a lot. Twice a year, when my mother, Selma Semolina, and my father, Steven Semolina, go to parents’ night at school, my teacher, Mrs. Mulberry, tells them, “Seymour is a good reader.”
I not only read books in school, I read books on the bus, going to school and going home. I read comics and magazines. I read most of the newspaper every day. When I eat my breakfast, I read the cereal box. I read while listening to the radio. I read while watching TV. I read in the bathroom. When I ride in the family car, I read in the backseat. Sometimes I read two things at once. When I play baseball, I read while waiting for my turn at bat. Sometimes, I read while playing left field. I can also read while riding my bicycle, but my father made me promise not to, for fear of accidents. I am a reading fiend.
Saturdays, I go to the library. I read a book there—maybe two books. I usually check out five books and take them home.
Every night I read in bed. When my mother makes me turn out the light, I read under the covers with a flashlight.
I have two favorite books. One is The Haphazard House Junior Dictionary for Little Scholars. The other is Seymour and the Magic Pudding by my favorite author, Nathaniel Inkblotter. I like that book because it is about a kid named Seymour, just like me.
In Seymour and the Magic Pudding, this kid, Seymour, is in bed at night. He notices that something is in the room. He’s pretty sure it is a monster.
The monster says, “Are you scared?”
Seymour says, “No. I am not scared.”
The kids in stories like this are never scared.
The monster turns out to be a magic thing. It looks like a big pile of tapioca pudding, It says, “I have come to visit you. I will be your friend.”
Then Seymour and the magic pudding go out the window. Seymour’s parents do not wake up while all this is happening. They don’t have a clue.
Seymour and the magic pudding have an adventure. They fly through the air. They visit strange land
s. They dance and play. In books like this, the kid always learns a lesson. Maybe it’s about how wonderful imagining things can be, or about how you should never be scared. In Seymour and the Magic Pudding, Seymour learns that tapioca is your friend.
Then the magic pudding brings him home. He winds up back in his bed.
“Will you ever come back?” Seymour asks the magic pudding.
“Yes, I will come back,” the magic pudding says. “I will be your friend. Now go to sleep.”
And Seymour goes to sleep.
It’s a heck of a book.
I wouldn’t mind if something like that happened to me.
2. Magic
My other favorite book, The Haphazard House Junior Dictionary for Little Scholars, is a killer. It’s got everything. I read it every night.
On this particular night, I was reading about fowl.
fowl foul 1: a bird of any kind 2a: a domestic cock or hen; esp: an adult hen b: any of several domesticated or wild gallinaceous birds 3: the meat of fowl used as food
Fascinating. Next, I looked up “gallinaceous,” because that was a word I did not know.
gallinaceous gal-in-ay-shus: of or relating to an order (Galliformes) of heavy-bodied largely terrestrial birds, including the pheasants, turkeys, grouse, and the common domestic fowl
Then, I had to look up “terrestrial.” I almost knew what that meant, because I knew that an extraterrestrial is a being from outer space. It turned out that terrestrial means living on land or the earth.
You can’t beat The Haphazard House Junior Dictionary for Little Scholars. I wonder what sort of book Nathaniel Inkblotter would write if he had a copy.
After I had read for as long as I could, when I felt my eyes closing, I switched off the light, rolled over, and went to sleep.
One moment I was sleeping, and the next moment I was awake. At first, I thought I might be dreaming I was awake. I wiggled around. I was pretty sure I was awake. I kept my eyes shut. I could not remember waking up like this, in the dark. It was an odd feeling.
Plus, I had an odd feeling on top of the odd feeling. I felt a tingling all over my skin. My nose kept wrinkling, all by itself, as though it were trying to smell something—but at first there was nothing to smell. Then I thought I smelled a smell like the smell of my Uncle Dave. Uncle Dave smokes cheap cigars.
Something’s up, I thought.
I opened one eye.
I opened the other eye.
Something is in this room, I thought.
I sat up. “Who’s there?”
“Me. I’m here.”
“Who said that?” I said.
“I did.”
I looked around the room. I saw something pale and gray. It was in the corner. It was dim, and hard to see—but it was there. Something was certainly there.
“Are you a ghost?” I asked.
“Would you be scared if I were?” the dim gray thing asked.
“I’m not scared,” I said.
“I’m not a ghost.”
“Are you something magic?” I asked.
“I sure am,” the gray thing said.
“I’m turning on the light,” I said.
“Go right ahead.”
I turned on the light.
“You’re a goose!” I said.
“I am. You have a problem with that?”
It was a very large goose, larger than any goose I had ever heard of or imagined. This goose was larger than a large person. I was not sure whether I had actually ever seen a live goose before—but I’d seen pictures of geese, and a goose is what this was. In the light the goose was a beautiful gray. Its beak was orange. It smelled of cheap cigars.
“You aren’t a magic goose, by any chance?” I asked.
“A magic goose. Yes, indeed I am!” the goose said.
“This is good,” I said. “What magic can you do? What kind of special powers do you have?”
“I can speak English.”
“Excellent!” I said. “What else?”
“What else? What do you mean, ‘what else?’ You know any other geese who can talk?”
“I don’t know any geese at all,” I said.
“Well, if you had any experience with geese, you’d know that a talking one is fairly spectacular.”
“I agree,” I said. “But how about other magic powers? For example, can you take me flying? Can we visit strange lands? Can we dance and sing? Will I learn a lesson?”
“I have no idea what you are talking about,” said the goose.
“You haven’t?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“But you are a magic goose,” I said. 1 am.
“So, what magic can you do?”
“I got into your room. I’m talking to you. Forget about geese—are you aware of any animals of any kind who can do that?”
“Well, no,” I agreed.
“See? Magic.”
“In stories, like Seymour and the Magic Pudding, for example, they go someplace.”
“Who does?”
“The kid and the magic thing,” I said.
“Oh.”
“Aren’t we going someplace?” I asked.
“We will go to the kitchen.”
“The kitchen?”
“Yes,” the goose said.
3. In the Kitchen
T he magic goose and I went to the kitchen. Just like in Seymour and the Magic Pudding, my mother, Selma Semolina, and my father, Steven Semolina, did not wake up.
When we got to the kitchen, I turned on the light. The goose looked around.
“Nice kitchen,” the goose said.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Let’s make soup,” the goose said.
“Goose soup?”
“Ha, ha. Very funny. We will make cornflakes soup.”
“Cornflakes soup?”
“Yes,” the magic goose said.
“How do you make that?”
“You put cornflakes in a bowl. Then you pour milk. Then you put sugar on. Then you eat it.”
“That’s not cornflakes soup! That’s cornflakes.”
“It’s wet. You eat it with a spoon. You eat it out of a bowl. I call that soup. If you ate them dry, out of the box, then you could say cornflakes.”
“That makes sense, I suppose,” I said.
“See? You learned something,” the goose said.
“This isn’t as good as in the book,” I said.
“Look, you are talking with a goose,” the goose said. “A goose who speaks English—a magic goose. I came to your room. I came in the night. I taught you the difference between cornflakes and cornflakes soup—and we’re going to make some. So stop complaining.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” the goose said. “Help me with the milk.”
I fixed some cornflakes soup for the goose.
I fixed some for myself.
We sat at the table and ate our cornflakes soup.
“That was good,” the goose said.
“Now what?” I asked.
“What do you mean, ‘now what?’” the goose asked.
“I mean, what happens now?” I said.
The goose thought. “We could have some more cornflakes soup. You want some more cornflakes soup?”
“No,” I said. “I’m full.”
The magic goose and I sat and looked at each other across the table. Neither of us said anything for a while.
“Do you want some more cornflakes soup?” I asked the goose.
“Not really,” the goose said.
We sat in silence. The goose looked around at the kitchen. I looked at the goose.
“Isn’t this fun?” the goose asked.
“I was just thinking,” I said. “Aside from the fact that you are a magic goose, it is sort of boring.”
“I don’t know how you can say that,” the goose said. “We’re practically having a party here.”
“You’ve never done this before, have you?” I asked.
“Done what?”
“The magic goose thing—coming into a kid’s room in the middle of the night—you’ve never done it before, am I right?”
“Well, not as such,” the goose said. “But I’d say I’m doing an excellent job.”
“You’ve never read any of the books about this sort of thing, have you?” I asked.
“Actually, geese don’t read much,” the goose said.
“Would you mind if I gave you some advice?” I asked.
“Not at all,” the goose said.
“Appearing in my room and being an English-speaking, six-foot-tall magic goose is all very well and good,” I said. “And you did that part very nicely.”
“Thank you,” said the goose.
“But you need to have some sort of a plan,” I said. “There ought to be a magic activity. It’s not enough just to come down to the kitchen and fix cornflakes.”
“Cornflakes soup,” said the goose.
“Whatever.”
4. A Magic Activity
I’d welcome any suggestions,” the goose said.
“Let me think a minute,” I said. “You can fly, I suppose.”
“I’m a goose.”
“How about this? I get on your back, and you take me flying?”
“It sounds unsafe,” the goose said.
“I hang on to your feathers,” I said.
“That might hurt,” said the goose.
“I take the belt from my bathrobe, tie it around your neck, and hold on to that, all right?”
“That would work,” said the goose.
“So you’ll take me flying?” I asked.
“For how long?”
“For a while! What does it matter? Do you have other kids to visit tonight?”
“No.”
“Do you have to be back in Magic Goose Land, or wherever you come from, at some special time?”
“No.”
“So let’s go already! By the way, where do you come from?”
“Magic Goose Land.”
Four Different Stories Page 5