The Landry News

by Andrew Clements

  LeeAnn’s mouth dropped open. “What, are you a spy or something? How do you know all that?”

  Feeling embarrassed, Cara smiled, something LeeAnn had never seen her do before. “No, I’m not a spy. I’m a journalist. People who make newspapers need to know what’s going on, that’s all. When things happen, or when people say things, I just pay attention.”

  Ed Thomson and Joey DeLucca were in the seat right behind LeeAnn and Cara, and they were listening. They were in Mr. Larson’s class, too.

  Joey leaned forward over the seat and looked at Cara. “You mean you know stuff like that about everybody?”

  “No, not everybody. Some people are newsmakers and some aren’t.” Cara blushed. She thought Joey was cute. He had never said a word to her until now. Somehow, she made herself talk naturally. “It’s not like I memorize all this stuff or anything. But if something happens that might be news, then I ask questions and pay attention so I can report on it. News has got to be accurate. Like that kid who choked on the rubber Jell-O? That was Alan Cortez. He’s in second grade in Mrs. Atkins’s class. The lady in the kitchen who cooked the Jell-0 that day is Alice Rentsler. The principal made her write a letter of apology to Alan’s parents. Alice also had to have a special Jell-O-making session with the kitchen supervisor to make sure she cooks it right from now on. I thought that was all pretty interesting, so I looked around and I got the facts.”

  Ed piped up. “But all that stuff about LeeAnn? What’s that about? Is she such a big newsmaker?” LeeAnn narrowed her eyes at Ed and pretended like she was going to whack him with her backpack.

  Cara smiled and said, “No, that’s just stuff I’ve noticed—or heard kids talk about. LeeAnn has cat stickers all over her notebook and her locker, her mom’s name is on the PTA newsletter we got in the mail at my house this summer, her big sister drops LeeAnn off at school sometimes when she’s wearing her cheerleader outfit, and everybody knows that LeeAnn likes Deke.”

  Ed was impressed. “Okay, okay . . . all that makes sense. But tell me why you wrote that thing about Mr. Larson. Are you mad at him or something?”

  Cara didn’t answer right away. “No, I’m not mad at him,” she said thoughtfully. “I just don’t think it’s right that he doesn’t teach us anything.” Cara was quiet while about ten kids got up and pushed and shuffled and yelled their way off the bus. Her stop was next.

  As the bus lurched forward again, Cara lowered her voice and said, “Can you guys keep a secret?” Joey and LeeAnn and Ed nodded. “Promise?” All three kids nodded again, leaning closer. Looking from face to face, Cara said, “Have you ever looked in those glass cases in the front hall by the office?”

  “You mean all the sports trophies?” asked Joey. “Yeah, I’ve seen them.”

  Cara said, “Well, you’re right, it’s mostly sports, but there’s some other stuff there, too—Writer of the Month awards, and Math Club honors—all sorts of things. And there’s one plaque for Teacher of the Year.”

  LeeAnn said, “Oh, yeah . . . I’ve seen that. Mrs. Palmer—my teacher in third grade—well, she won it last year.”

  Cara shook her head. “No, that’s the new plaque. I’m talking about the old one, way back in the comer of the case. The teachers and the PTA have been giving that award for over twenty-five years. And about fifteen years ago, guess whose name got carved on that plaque?”

  “Him?” asked LeeAnn. The bus was stopping at Edgewater Village. LeeAnn got up to let Cara into the aisle.

  Cara nodded. “Yup. Mr. Karl Larson—Teacher of the Year, three years in a row.” Cara heaved her backpack up onto one shoulder. As she headed for the door she looked back at the three kids staring after her, and she said, “Now that’s what I call news”.

  CHAPTER 4

  MISSING TEACHER FOUND IN NEARBY SUBURB

  IT WAS A LONG drive home for Mr. Larson that Friday afternoon.

  He was angry. Angry at that Landry girl. Angry at life in general, but most of all, angry at himself.

  He’d been a teacher for almost twenty years now, and he couldn’t remember the last time he had gotten mad in front of a class. All his talk about respect for one another, respect for different opinions, respect for honesty and real learning. Talk, talk, talk. All his words flew back into his face as he drove south on Interstate 55. Above the half-harvested cornfields on either side of the road, the flat gray sky was a good mirror for his thoughts.

  Well . . . what about that little girl’s respect for him? Mr. Larson tried to build a case for himself, tried to find a way to let himself off the hook for losing control. But he had to face facts. He knew Cara Landry had only been telling the truth. That was the hardest thing for him to admit.

  By the time he drove into Williston, then down Ash Street and into his driveway, he was feeling a little better.

  But when he opened the kitchen door and stepped into the empty house, the self-pity kicked in again. He opened the refrigerator and poured himself a tall glass of cider. He walked into the living room and slumped into the big armchair.

  “What do those kids know about me, anyway?” he thought. “What gives that Landry girl the right to judge me?”

  Mr. Larson remembered his own fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Spellman. She had been perfect. Her clothes and hair and lipstick were always just so. Her classroom was always quiet and orderly. She never raised her voice—she never had to. She wrote in that flawless cursive, and a little gold star on a paper from Mrs. Spellman was like a treasure, even for the toughest boys.

  Then young Karl Larson saw Mrs. Spellman at the beach on Memorial Day with her family. She was sitting under an umbrella, and she wore a black swimsuit that did not hide any of her midriff bulges or the purple veins on her legs. Her hair was all straggly from swimming, and without any makeup or lipstick she looked washed out, tired. She had two kids, a girl and a boy, and she yelled at them as they wrestled and got sand all over the beach towels. Her husband lay flat on his back in the sun, a large man with lots of hair on his stomach, and it wasn’t a small stomach. As Karl stood there staring, Mrs. Spellman’s husband lifted his head off the sand, turned toward his wife, pointed at the cooler, and said, “Hey Mabel, hand me another cold one, would you?”

  Karl was thunderstruck, and he turned and stumbled back to where his own family had set up their picnic on the beach. This big, hairy guy looked at his Mrs. Spellman and said, “Hey Mabel.” At that moment, Karl Larson realized that the Mrs. Spellman he knew at school was mostly a fictional character, partly created by him, and partly created by Mrs. Spellman herself. The students and . . . and Mabel created Mrs. Spellman together, in order to do the job—the job of schooling.

  As Karl Larson sat there sipping cider, he considered the Mr. Larson that Cara Landry and the rest of the class knew. They had no idea who Karl Larson was. They didn’t know that he was the first person in his family who had ever gone to college. They didn’t know about the sacrifices he and his parents had made so he could get an education, and how proud he had been to get his first job teaching school in Carlton over nineteen years ago.

  They probably didn’t know that his wife was a teacher too—eighth grade English at a school on Chicago’s South Side. The kids had no idea how much Karl Larson had hated seeing his wife’s job get harder and harder over the years. Barbara Larson worried day and night about whether she could ever make a real difference in the lives of those kids she loved so much. Her school had always been a pretty rough place, but now . . . now there were metal detectors at the doors, and an armed guard escorted teachers to a padlocked parking lot at the end of each school day.

  These kids didn’t know that he and his wife had two daughters, a sophomore and a senior at the University of Illinois. Both girls were happy there, good students, doing well. But each of them had been accepted at top-notch colleges in Connecticut and Ohio and California, and each had chosen to go to the state school because that was the college their parents could afford. And Karl Larson couldn’t forgive himself.


  How could fifth-graders understand how hard it had been for him and his wife to take care of their aging parents over the past eight years—first hers and now his? The kids didn’t know, they couldn’t know.

  So here he was. It was a Friday afternoon, and he was sitting alone in a dark house, waiting for his wife to fight her way home through the rush-hour traffic. After about fifteen minutes he finally gathered enough energy to get up and go to the kitchen and start cooking supper.

  Later, after dinner, Mr. Larson told his wife about the editorial. He was expecting some sympathy, but he should have known better. His wife was much too honest for that. It was one of the things he loved best about her. Barbara Larson leaned across the kitchen table and squeezed his arm and said, “Sounds like this little girl is looking for a teacher, Karl—that’s all. She’s just looking for a teacher.”

  Mr. Larson tried to remember when he had stopped being a good teacher. But it wasn’t like there was one particular moment you could point to. Teachers don’t burn out all at once. It happens a little at a time, like the weariness that can overtake a person walking up a steep hill—you begin to get tired and you slow down, and then you feel like you just have to stop and sit and rest.

  And that’s how Karl Larson felt—overburdened and depressed. Some mornings he could barely get out of bed, and now this . . . this editorial. It didn’t seem fair to be judged this way.

  But still, could he blame anyone but himself? Were those kids supposed to know anything about him? Should anything outside of the classroom even matter to them? Should it have mattered to young Karl Larson that Mrs. Spellman was also this lady named Mabel who had a beer-drinking husband with a large hairy stomach? No. At school, Mabel was Mrs. Spellman, and she was a good teacher.

  Karl Larson could see it clearly. The only reason that he and those kids were together was to do the job—the job of schooling. The kids didn’t need Karl Larson’s life story. They needed Mr. Larson, the teacher.

  So, over the weekend Karl Larson gradually faced the facts. The Landry News had told the truth. Mr. Larson the teacher was guilty as charged.

  And Karl Larson knew he had to do something about it.

  CHAPTER 5

  HOMEWORK: HARD BUT IMPORTANT

  WHEN CARA FINISHED taping it back together late Friday afternoon, she left the first edition of The Landry News on the kitchen table and went to her bedroom. She wanted to find the stack of newspapers she had made during fourth grade. When she came back with the small pile of earlier editions, her mother was standing at the table, reading the editorial about Mr. Larson.

  Looking up, her mother said, “Let me guess: The teacher tore this up after he read it, right?”

  Cara nodded.

  “Cara, honey, you have done it this time.” Her mother scanned the patchwork newspaper and heaved a long, tired sigh. “Well, at least this is the only copy and Mr. Larson didn’t run it down the hall to the principal—like some other teachers have done.”

  Mrs. Landry dropped heavily onto one of the chairs beside the table. She looked at her daughter standing there. “Now tell me, Cara: Are you angry at me? Is that why you do this? Because if you are trying to hurt me, I just want to tell you that it’s working. It’s working just great.”

  Tears welled up in her mother’s eyes, and Cara looked at her, unblinking. “No, Mother, I am not trying to hurt you. And you shouldn’t be upset. This is just a newspaper. These are just facts, Mother.”

  “Facts? Just look right here, young lady.” Joanna Landry stabbed a red fingernail at the editorial. “This is not just facts. You have unloosed your acid little tongue on this man and said mean and hurtful things here.”

  Cara flinched at the accusation, but she jumped to defend herself. “It’s an editorial, Mother, so it’s allowed to have opinions in it. And all the opinions are based on facts. I didn’t make any of that up. I never have made anything up. I just report the facts. You are the one who taught me to always tell the truth, remember? Well, I’m just telling the truth here.”

  Mrs. Landry was outgunned, and she knew it. It had been years since she had won an argument with Cara, and she wasn’t going to win this one. But having to admit that her daughter was only telling the truth did not make things any easier. Here they were only one month into a new school year in a new town, and Cara was already stirring the pot, stewing up trouble. Joanna Landry could feel her hair getting grayer by the minute.

  She took a deep breath. “You may call it just telling the truth, but ever since your father left, you have gone out of your way to tell the truth in the most hateful way you know how. And it just makes me sad, Cara. It’s not fair to me, and it’s bad for you, and it just makes me sad.” And with that, Mrs. Landry stood up and went to her room and closed the door.

  Cara’s thin shoulders hunched together as she sat on the dinette chair, looking at the paper, waiting for the sobs to begin in her mother’s bedroom. She’s wrong, thought Cara. This time, she’s wrong.

  But last year, it was like her mother said. Cara had been hateful—to everyone. When her dad left, Cara was sure it was because of her. Her mom and dad had always argued about money and about saving for Cara’s college and about buying Cara better clothes, about taking Cara on a nice vacation. When her father left and filed for divorce, she thought it was because he didn’t want to feel responsible for a family—for her.

  It was just bad timing that turned Cara into an outlaw journalist. The week her father moved out, Cara’s fourth-grade teacher had begun a unit on newspapers, and Cara seized hold of the idea with murder in her heart. She became a ferocious reporter—aloof, remote, detached. She turned a cold, hard eye on her classmates and teachers, saw their weaknesses and silliness, and used her strong language skills to lash out. She stuck close to the truth, but the truth wasn’t always pretty.

  When she learned that a rather large teacher kept a desk drawer filled with candy bars and fatty treats, Cara wrote an editorial with the title, “Let’s Chat about Fat.” The story got some laughs, but it was too mean, almost cruel. It did not win Cara any new friends, and it sent all her old friends ducking for cover.

  When she noticed that the cafeteria staff would sometimes carry home leftovers at the end of the day, Cara blew the whistle in a banner headline: FOOD WORKERS PERFORM DISAPPEARING ACT. But she hadn’t done enough research. What they were doing was all legal and approved. The practice actually saved the school money by decreasing the garbage-disposal expenses. The principal made Cara go and apologize to the cafeteria workers. After that she thought it best to bring bag lunches to school.

  Every week, somewhere in the school, Cara would put up the newest edition of The Landry News, and then wait for the consequences. After the story about the cafeteria workers, her research got more careful, and she was always sure of her facts. But the way she told her news stories was always designed to create a stir and get a reaction, and she was never disappointed. There were conferences with her mother and the principal, conferences with the principal and the school psychologist, and conferences with her mother and every one of her teachers. And every conference would then become the subject of a sarcastic editorial, published in the very next edition of The Landry News.

  The only person who never showed up at a conference was the only person Cara really wanted to see: her dad.

  Now as Cara sat at the kitchen table looking through the sheaf of fourth-grade editions, she had trouble imagining herself writing all this. So much anger. But this newest paper wasn’t like the ones she had made last year. She was still sad, but she wasn’t angry anymore. Things were better now.

  Over the summer, she had started getting letters from her dad. He worked in Indianapolis now, and he had promised Cara that she could come and visit him there—maybe at Thanksgiving or Christmas. And he would be coming to Chicago pretty often, too. He had called to tell her he was sorry about the way things had worked out. He explained why he and her mom had split up. And it didn’t have anything to do with her. C
ara could see that now, and she could believe it was true, even if all the rest of it still didn’t make any sense to her.

  Cara tiptoed to her mother’s door and listened. It was quiet. She knocked softly and her mom said, “Come on in, honey.”

  Her mom was on the bed, sitting with her back against the headboard. Her old leather-bound Bible lay open on her lap. There were some wadded tissues on the bedspread, and Joanna Landry swept them aside and patted the bed. Cara sat on the edge and took her mother’s hand.

  “Mom, I’m not writing the news because I’m angry. Honest. I’m really not mad anymore. I was. I was real mad last year, and I know I hurt a lot of people’s feelings, and I’m sorry about that now. And I guess I should have stopped to think before I wrote this new editorial . . . and I’ll tell Mr. Larson I’m sorry—I will. But I still think it’s okay to tell the truth, and to publish it, too. I like being a reporter. It’s something I’m good at, Mom.”

  Her mother reached for a fresh tissue with her free hand and dabbed at her eyes. “Cara honey, you know I just want the best for you, that’s all. I just don’t want you to make things hard for yourself. I feel so bad already—about me and your dad, I mean. I know that’s been tough on you, and you took it so hard. But it wasn’t anything to do with you. Can you see that?”

  Cara nodded. “I know. It just felt that way, that’s all. And I’m sorry I gave you so much more to worry about, Mom. But . . . but don’t you think it’ll be all right to keep on making my newspaper—if I’m careful, and if I only report the truth?”

  Her mom smiled. “Listen to this, Cara. It’s from the book of Psalms.”

  MERCY AND TRUTH ARE MET TOGETHER; RIGHTEOUSNESS AND PEACE HAVE KISSED EACH OTHER. RUTH SHALL SPRING OUT OF THE EARTH; AND RIGHTEOUSNESS SHALL LOOK DOWN FROM HEAVEN.

  Her mother smiled at her and said, “Truth is good, and it’s all right to let the truth be known. But when you are publishing all that truth, just be sure there’s some mercy, too. Then you’ll be okay.”