4B Goes Wild

by Jamie Gilson

  We both yawned big and took our shoes off. I grabbed one of Nick’s and yelled in a high voice, “Oh, your tongue looks furry. It’s probably fatal.” Nick crossed his eyes and collapsed on the floor.

  When Rolf left the room, we crawled into bed with our clothes on and turned to the wall so he wouldn’t see if our eyes flickered. Then we waited.

  Down the hall I could hear kids calling, “I am not!” “Give that back!” “My nose is bleeding.”

  After lights out, Nick started fake snoring, and if I hadn’t known what he was doing, I’d have thrown a pillow at him. Rolf complained to Eugene about how we weren’t having any fun at all, but soon he was snoring, too, for real. I lay there close to the ceiling listening to the crickets outside, wishing it was tomorrow and the bus had just pulled in at school and both my folks were there meeting me with a batch of chocolate chip cookies and telling me how great it was to be the three of us again. And telling me, too, how the firemen had rescued Fido from the top of a TV antenna and how the FBI had found my bike painted gold in a raid on an international bike ring, and how … I decided when Nick got to sleep really, I would get up and call home. The crickets chirped on and on.

  “But,” I was asking this lady dressed in blue, “but aren’t you going to … But I thought you fought …” And the lady was about to say something very, very important to me when suddenly, “Hobie,” somebody hissed in my ear. “Hobie, come on!” A hand was shaking my shoulder.

  “Who …” I asked. “Wha … time?”

  “We fell asleep,” Nick was telling me. “It’s eleven thirty-two. My watch says. Come on. Carry your shoes till we get outside, and don’t forget your flashlight. I’ve got the paper and crayon. We ought to be able to do it in an hour.”

  Rubbing my eyes and shaking the sleep out, I climbed down from the bunk as quietly as I could. We tiptoed through the dimly lighted hall past Mrs. Bosco’s room. She was rumbling in her sleep like a cement mixer.

  The front door clicked when we opened it, but nobody appeared, so we sat down on the outside steps to put on our sneakers. The crickets weren’t asleep yet, but the night was quieter and the air cooler than it had been during Silence and Skits.

  All we had to do was follow the road to the graveyard. Looking behind and in front both, we watched for cars and ghosts and teachers. As we jogged, I could feel things alive and watching from both sides of the road, but no one real knew we were there. If we got trucked in the deep, dark night, nobody would know.

  By the time we reached the cemetery, I felt like I’d been running a hundred miles, a hundred thousand miles, with some mysterious predator chasing after. Something shaped like a shadow.

  Nick, though, was all excited. Every step and he loved it more.

  “Don’t you feel like you’re skipping school and nobody’s ever going to find out? This is so excellent,” he said as we reached the graveyard.

  “I’m tired,” I told him, and that’s all I could say about how I felt. He’d have rolled on the graves laughing at the rest. He was scareproof.

  As we searched our way down the main path of the cemetery, we heard a car coming on the highway. Flicking our lights off, we fell flat. The dead were quiet in the night. Not even a breeze moved. The car slowed down, but kept going. When everything was totally black again, we got up. Nick turned on his light and located the baby with wings. We took turns rubbing and holding the paper and the light. It was better to be the one rubbing because then you had something to do. I held the paper last, watching for cars and trying not to stare at the tombstones where things seemed to shift in the shadows.

  “Can’t you hurry?” I asked Nick. “My fingers are numb.”

  “Finished!” he said. “One more sweep and I’m finished.” He leaned into it.

  After the last stroke we sat on the grass away from the mounds and looked at what we’d done.

  It was excellent. Except that the paper had been moved a very little bit and the angel had a moustache because of it, the rubbing was practically perfect. True, Nick hadn’t checked the color of the crayon and we’d done it in purple instead of black, but it was still excellent. I began to feel good for the first time since he woke me. Rolling the rubbing up into a tube, I looked up at the stars through it and then tucked it under my arm.

  On the way back we headed down the middle of the highway like it was the yellow brick road, figuring everybody was asleep by twelve-thirteen, the time it said on Nick’s digital watch. We swung our flashlights dark by our sides, though, just in case.

  “Hey, Hobie, look, it’s our old friend,” Nick shouted, pointing ahead at the side of the road.

  “Here, kitty, kitty,” he called, running ahead. “Here, owl!” The creature moved toward us slowly as we galloped his way, calling and whistling. And I bet we were only ten feet away before I saw that, while he was black and white, he wasn’t our cat. This kitty was big and black and furry with white stripes down both sides and had eyes like tiny red marbles. He was a skunk.

  10

  SQUIRT

  I grabbed Nick by the arm. “Back up slow or he’ll shoot!” I said, my voice squeaking. I pulled at Nick again, but he didn’t move. The skunk eyed us to see, maybe, if we were his friends. I tried a smile, but my mouth wouldn’t work.

  “Hurry,” I hissed at Nick, yanking his arm. But he was like a stone statue. “Please, Nick.” I never knew what it meant before, scared stiff, but that’s what Nick was.

  The skunk wasn’t scared. He was mad. He stamped his front feet on the pavement and began a low half purr, half growl. Then he lifted his tail high, the white tip hanging limp like a flag in no wind. I knew what was going to happen next. I knew because Mr. Star had told us in class. The skunk was going to turn around, raise that tip, and squirt us straight from jets in his bottom with an oily yellow stink. Everybody had practically rolled on the floor laughing when he told us in school what fantastic backward aim the skunk has.

  “Truck!” I gasped in Nick’s ear, thinking that might move him. “Truck!” When it didn’t, I grabbed his belt and pulled. Mr. Star had said if the smell got on your clothes, you soaked them in ammonia for a week, buried them in the ground for a week, and then threw them away. He didn’t say what you did with the people inside.

  The skunk arched his back and hissed again.

  Like I was Superman, I dragged Nick down the road toward the graveyard. I don’t know how I got so strong. But when I couldn’t go any farther, I rolled us off into the ditch and grabbed my nose. Nick sucked in his breath. I think he’d been holding it all that time. “It … never … knees … locked,” he gasped.

  As we lay hiding, listening to our hearts bump and our breath heave, I realized that the air I was gulping tasted like ditch dirt and nothing worse. Letting go of my nose, I found out it was true. The skunk hadn’t sprayed—yet.

  “Whoooo,” I heard, somewhere in the distance. “Whooo.” Owls, I remembered, eat skunks. Owl is predator. Skunk is prey.

  “Whoooo,” I answered low. “Woooooo.” The owl, what if that owl hears me, swoops over, snatches the skunk up for a midnight snack, and carries him away in the sky? What if?

  “You crazy?” Nick whispered, no longer speechless. “Now he’ll find us sure.” We listened and heard nothing. No skunk, no owl. “Maybe he’s gone. Can you see?”

  Slowly I raised my head out of the ditch and looked. At first everything was fuzzy and dark, then about thirty feet away, maybe, I saw the skunk. And the skunk saw me. I was certain of it. Maybe it was the “whooo’s” or maybe he just smelled us, but he knew for sure where we were. And he was heading straight at us down our yellow brick road.

  I was just sinking back down in a panic when I turned my head to look again. The skunk wasn’t alone. I blinked my eyes to see clearer. Coming over the top of the hill behind, a flashlight beam swept the road and the ditch.

  “Ho-bie! Ni-ick!” a voice called. I couldn’t see who had the flashlight, but I knew we’d been found out.

  “Hobie! Ni
ck! Where are you?” the voice cried. Steaming down the highway, gaining on our skunk, was Miss Ivanovitch. When she stopped yelling, I called back. I had to.

  “Skunk!” I sang out quietly, hoping she would hear and the skunk couldn’t. “Skunk!” He better not understand English, I thought, and think I’m calling him to come. “Skunk!” Please, Miss Ivanovitch, I wished, closing my eyes tight, please don’t rush up to pet the kitty.

  I waited as long as I could stand it. Then, lifting my head again, just eye-level over the ditch, I tried to see what was happening.

  Her flashlight still glowed and the skunk marched on—our way. Nick lay face down on his arm, breathing hard. Hiding my head again, I looked up at the stars, quadrillions of them, too many to wish on, but I wished anyway. I am asleep and this is some weird dream, I decided. Or a nightmare, maybe, galloping out of control. That girl Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, all she had to do was say “There’s no place like home,” and she got there. There’s no place like home, I thought as hard as I could, clenching my fists, There’s no place like home. But I could hear paws on the pavement now, and the dirt was not my bed.

  “He’s coming,” I barely breathed aloud. “Freeze.”

  “Last time, you said run,” Nick sobbed.

  The paw steps clicked closer and closer until I could hear breathing, too. It is the year, I thought, of the stink. Forever after they are going to remember this Outdoor Ed as the Big Stink. The whole place will reek of us unless they soak us in ammonia and bury us for a week. The footsteps stopped, but the breathing didn’t.

  At the edge of the ditch, the pointy-faced skunk was peering at me. I did not close my eyes. I did not blink them, even. I did sweat. He opened his mouth and his teeth shone. He’d won the battle paws down. Maybe he was laughing. For sure he wasn’t scared. All he had to do was whip around, lift his tail, and aim rat-a-tat-tat.

  Instead, though, he stood there for a minute, staring, and then, swishing his vast bushy tail, he turned and disappeared down the road.

  Even after his steps had faded, we waited five minutes—ten—a long time, listening, until all we could hear was each other breathing. Maybe he had walked a ways and then snuck back into our ditch to surprise us from behind. My eyes were closed, my fingers crossed, and my scalp was prickling as if tiny ants were moving in with all their gear when a voice above us whispered, “You OK?”

  She smelled like perfume. Miss Ivanovitch sat down on the side of the road, her feet in the ditch. That’s when Nick began to cry. Actually, it was a sort of half cry, half laugh. “He’s gone?” Nick asked.

  “He is gone,” she said. “Tail down. Saving his spray for something a little more wild than you two.” She smiled. She didn’t say, For this cute trick I’ll see to it you stay in fourth grade forever.

  “How did you know where we were?” I asked her.

  “Well, I heard the word ‘skunk’ kind of floating through the air, but I didn’t actually see it until one of you peered from your hiding place,” she told us, “and all at once I saw skunk and prey.” She looked down at Nick and shook her head. “I didn’t know what to do. It’s a genuine problem, I thought, no crocs in the grass, but a real live skunk on the road. I don’t know when I’ve been so scared.” She stood up and shook her shoulders like she wanted to get rid of the feeling in them.

  “It worked,” I told her, “doing nothing worked.”

  “You guys were fantastic,” she said, leaning toward us. “What a disaster if you’d panicked.”

  “If?” Nick laughed, embarrassed.

  “Come on,” she said, “it’s late.”

  “Is everybody looking for us?”

  “Nobody but me. I thought I knew where you were and I knew it was my fault you were there. Look, I ought not to have lashed out at you yesterday. I’m sorry.” She brushed her hair back and rubbed her front teeth with her fingers. “Maybe I’m not ready to be a teacher, do you think, losing my temper like that?”

  Nick and I didn’t say anything. No teacher had asked us a question like that.

  “And maybe,” she said, “I should have reported you gone.”

  I didn’t know teachers thought about making mistakes. It was like they were always right and we were supposed to be wrong.

  “Race you back,” she said, smiling suddenly and starting off. She had no shoes on. She was wearing red-and-green striped socks, which was why we hadn’t heard her walking up.

  “How’d you know we were gone?” I asked as we started back, brushing chunks of ditch dirt off our clothes.

  “Eugene,” she said, trotting faster.

  “How’d he know?” Nick asked, his voice shaking only a little now.

  “Actually, he only had clues. When you left he was awake, and he heard you say something about crayon and paper and how it would take only an hour.” She made a little bow as she ran and said, “I used my remarkable Sherlock Holmes handy-dandy deductions and figured out what that meant. It meant the graveyard.”

  “But we left our room late. It was eleven thirty-two exactly. Why did you come in at all? Were you just checking?” Nick asked her. It was like a mystery, suddenly, since she was Sherlock Holmes.

  “Ah, you weren’t the only ones awake,” she said, sighing. We walked easy now, in the dark. “Just after eleven forty-five Eugene invaded the girls’ hall.”

  “Eugene?” Nick and I said together.

  “Somebody disguised as Eugene,” Nick told her. “No way he’d do that again.”

  “Again? No, it was Eugene. He appeared at the top of the steps carrying a gray stuffed cat with a red bow. Somebody had set Molly’s clock to go off at eleven forty-five, and it clanged as loud as the fire alarm at school. The place went wild. Molly had shut the alarm off by the time Eugene came, but all the girls were standing in the hall in their pajamas and nightgowns, and the poor kid hardly knew what to do.”

  “What did he do?” Nick asked.

  “Well, he threw the cat at Molly like it was a football and fled. I think he really had come to talk to me about your leaving, but the girls didn’t give him a chance.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why he had the gray cat.”

  Nick and I looked at each other and laughed.

  The lodge was in sight now. All the rooms were dark.

  “After that,” she went on, lowering her voice, “there was this terrific disturbance around midnight in the boys’ hall. Marshall, R.X., and some other boys had pushed their bunks together, built a fort by draping their blankets across the beds, and were telling ghost stories that ended up in pillow fights. They howled, and that woke the boys next door. And the boys next door started pounding on the walls. I was right at the top of the steps, so I came down to be stern. What a night!” She laughed.

  “But we weren’t making any noise,” I said. “We weren’t there.”

  “Actually,” she said, “I had something to talk with you about, and I thought if all the yelling and pounding had woken you—”

  “To talk with me?”

  She looked over at Nick, who was flashing his light up at the stars. “It’ll keep,” she said.

  Slowly, slowly we crept up the lodge steps and in the front door. The halls were so quiet you’d think there’d never been a pillow fight inside a blanket fort, or ghosts, or bumps in the night.

  She put her finger to her lips, then waved goodbye with both hands. When Nick had turned into our room, I started back to ask what she’d wanted to tell me, but she was gone. I’d decided there was only one thing she could need to talk to me about. She must know something from home. I thought about following her to the girls’ floor, but if I ran into Molly or Lisa I’d never be able to go back to school again.

  “Hobie,” Nick hissed down the hall, sticking his head out the door. I hurried into the room. “They catch us in our clothes like this and they’ll ask us questions and we’ve had it.”

  Rolf was snoring away. Eugene sat up in bed and stared at us, his eyes wide open.

  “What time is it?” h
e asked.

  “Twelve forty-five,” Nick told him.

  “Then it took more than an hour. I was worried,” he said, “about the ghosts at midnight. And I kept thinking about deep, dark holes with hairy green hands in them. That place is creepy enough in the daylight.” He leaned forward. “Did … did she find you?”

  “Yeah,” Nick said, climbing into his bunk above Rolf. He tossed a heap of dirty clothes on the floor and got under the covers wearing his underwear.

  “Are you mad at me for telling?” Eugene asked him. “I knew I shouldn’t have.” He watched me take off my socks. “Look, I know you guys don’t get scared like I do, but anything could have happened in the night.”

  “Anything did,” I told him.

  He looked puzzled, but shrugged it off. “Did you get a good rubbing for Miss Ivanovitch? She said she was really mad at herself for yelling at you about killing the first one.”

  “Yeah,” I told him, yawning as I climbed into bed. “We got a really good one. We did it in purple. It’s got a—” And then the panic hit me, pow, in the stomach. “Nick?” I called. “Nick!” But he was breathing heavy.

  “He’s asleep,” Eugene said, craning his neck to look. “His mouth is open.”

  “Nick!” I called again, anyway. “Do you have the rubbing?” But he didn’t. I knew he didn’t. I had carried the rubbing myself. And it was lying scrunched in a ditch somewhere down the cemetery road, ants crawling through its tunnel, waiting for a high-tailed skunk to pass by.

  11

  THE ANNOUNCEMENT

  “Beautifully behaved! That’s what I have to say, and you can quote me. Beautifully behaved. I would be a chaperone for those lovely, lovely boys any day.” As they walked down to breakfast, Mrs. Bosco was shouting to the world around and Miss Hutter in particular how perfect we were. “Not a peep out of them after their nine-thirty bedtime. Not a peep. And I am a very light sleeper.”

  “Um,” Miss Hutter answered. She must have been down for the midnight wall-banging.

  Nick and I, walking behind them, held our knuckles to our mouths to keep from laughing. We also had our fingers holding our noses to keep from smelling. A breeze whipping in cool weather was also blowing in the strong, sharp smell of skunk. It was even worse than I had remembered. Kitty-Kitty must have met somebody he didn’t like. Maybe the owl came and picked him up by the scruff of his neck. Mrs. Bosco pulled her red cowboy neckerchief up over her nose like a bandit.