The Wednesday Wars Read online

  And we did.

  That afternoon, Mrs. Baker asked me if I thought that the ending to The Tempest was happy or not. Maybe because I had just had my own happy ending, I told her that I figured it was.

  "How about for Caliban?" she asked. "Does he deserve a happy ending?"

  "No. He's the monster. If there's going to be a happy ending, it means he has to be defeated. You can't end Godzilla without killing Godzilla. And you can't end The Tempest without Caliban getting..."

  "Getting what, Mr. Hoodhood?"

  "He can't win."

  "No, he can't win. But sometimes I wonder if perhaps Shakespeare might have let something happen that would at least have allowed a happy ending even for a monster—some way for him to grow beyond what Prospero thought of him. There is a part of us that can be so awful. And Shakespeare shows it to us in Caliban. But there's another part of us, too—a part that uses defeat to grow. I wish we could have seen that by the end of the play." She closed her book.

  "Defeat doesn't help you to grow," I said. "It's just defeat."

  Mrs. Baker smiled. "Two weeks ago, the Saturn V lunar rocket passed its first flight test. It's been less than ten months since we lost three astronauts, but we're still testing the next rocket, so that some day we can go to the moon and make our world a great deal bigger." She held her hands up to her face. "Wouldn't Shakespeare have admired that happy ending?" she whispered.

  Then she put the book away in her lower desk drawer.

  It was quiet and still in the room. You could hear the soft rain on the windows.

  "Thank you for the cream puffs," I said.

  "The quality of mercy is not strained," she said.

  Mrs. Baker looked up and almost smiled a real smile. Again.

  And that was when Mrs. Bigio came into the classroom. Actually, she didn't quite come in. She opened the door and stood leaning against the doorway, one hand up to her mouth, the other trembling on the doorknob.

  Mrs. Baker stood. "Oh, Edna, did they find him?"

  Mrs. Bigio nodded.

  "And is he..."

  Mrs. Bigio opened her mouth, but the only sounds that came out were the sounds of sadness. I can't tell you what they sounded like. But you know them when you hear them.

  Mrs. Baker sprinted out from behind her desk and gathered Mrs. Bigio in her arms. She helped Mrs. Bigio to her own chair, where she slumped down like someone who had nothing left in her.

  "Mr. Hoodhood, you may go home now," Mrs. Baker said.

  I did.

  But I will never forget those sounds.

  ***

  I found out the next day that Mrs. Bigio's husband had died on a small hill with no name, in a small part of Vietnam. He had died at night, on a reconnaissance mission. Afterward, the army decided the hill was not a significant military target, and abandoned it.

  Three weeks later, the body of First Sergeant Anthony Bigio of the United States Marine Corps was brought back home and buried in the cemetery beside Saint Adelbert's, the church he had been christened and married in. The Home Town Chronicle showed a picture of Mrs. Bigio on the front page, holding in one hand the American flag that had been draped over his casket, now folded into a triangle. The other hand was over her face.

  Two nights after that, the Home Town Chronicle showed a different picture—the home of the Catholic Relief Agency where Mai Thi lived, which had been attacked by unknown vandals. Across its front was scrawled these words in broad black letters: GO HOME VIET CONG.

  At the happy ending of The Tempest, Prospero brings the king back together with his son, and finds Miranda's true love, and punishes the bad duke, and frees Ariel, and becomes a duke himself again. Everyone—except for Caliban—is happy, and everyone is forgiven, and everyone is fine, and they all sail away on calm seas. Happy endings.

  That's how it is in Shakespeare.

  But Shakespeare was wrong.

  Sometimes there isn't a Prospero to make everything fine again.

  And sometimes the quality of mercy is strained.

  December

  On the first Wednesday of December, Mr. Guareschi announced over the P.A. that in January every junior and senior high school in the state would be taking the New York State Standardized Achievement Tests and that we should plan on taking practice exams at home during the holiday break. The reputation of the school was at stake, he told us, and he was very, very, very confident that we would not let Camillo Junior High down.

  I'm not sure, but I think Mrs. Baker may have rolled her eyes.

  The rest of the Morning Announcements were as exciting as December drizzles, and maybe Mr. Guareschi knew that, because he said he wanted to conclude by reading a lovely note, from Mrs. Sidman. She wished us all a happy holiday spirit at this very special time of year and hoped that, even in a time of war, we might be able to use these holidays to reflect on the virtues of peace and good will. She hoped all of this very sincerely.

  The letter, Mr. Guareschi told us, was written from Connecticut, where Mrs. Sidman was taking "a retreat in seclusion."

  Actually, the whole school was in a happy holiday spirit, even before Mrs. Sidman's letter. On one side of the main lobby, Mr. Vendleri had put up a huge fir tree and wound it with silver garlands. Balls as big as grapefruits hung from each branch—plastic ones, because last Christmas Mr. Vendleri had seen what Doug Swieteck's brother did to glass ones. Wherever there wasn't a Christmas ball, tinsel hung down, except when the lobby doors opened and it blew straight out. And then, I guess because Mr. Vendleri believed that no Christmas tree should show any green at all, he had sprayed quick-drying foam snow over the whole thing, as though there really might be snow on Long Island on Christmas Day—which hadn't happened since before there was a Christmas Day.

  On the other side of the main lobby was the menorah. It was heavy and old, and had belonged in Mr. Samowitz's family for a whole lot longer than two hundred years. Some of the white wax that clung to the sides of the bronze cups came from candles that had been lit in Russia. We looked at it, standing on its white linen cloth as huge as History, and could almost smell the sweet wax in the darkness of a long time ago.

  That first week, the second graders made red-and-green construction paper chains that they hung the length of the elementary and junior high school halls. The fourth graders cut menorahs from cardboard and covered them with glittering aluminum foil. The first graders cut out the flames for each of the nine candles, and together they put a menorah on every classroom door. The fifth graders had Charles, who could not only collect erasers but also write exquisite calligraphy—which made every girl in his grade (and some in the sixth grade) fall in love with him. Just because he could write "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Hanukkah" with loopy swirls. His signs appeared all over the halls, and gushing fifth-grade girls colored in the loops secretly to show their eternal love and devotion to the artist.

  Danny Hupfer said it just about made him throw up.

  All through Camillo Junior High, there were signs of the season. The windows on the classroom doors became crepe paper—stained glass. Mr. Petrelli put flashing colored lights around his door and a menorah with orange light bulbs on his window shelf. Mr. Ludema, who was from Holland, put wooden shoes on his window shelf and filled them with straw and coal—probably because he was Doug Swieteck's brother's teacher.

  Mrs. Baker didn't put anything up. Nothing at all. She took down the aluminum-foil menorah the first graders had put on her door, and she wouldn't let any of Charles's signs into the room. When Mrs. Kabakoff came in carrying a crock of apple cider left over from the second-grade Pilgrim Feast, offering a special holiday drink for lunch, Mrs. Baker smiled one of those smiles that isn't really a smile, then had Danny Hupfer take the crock and shove it back on the high shelf in the Coat Room above the moldering lunches.

  Mrs. Baker was not in a happy holiday spirit.

  And to be really honest, neither was I—all because of Mr. Goldman and the Long Island Shakespeare Company's Holiday Extrav
aganza. In which I was going to play Ariel.

  Ariel the Fairy.

  And nothing I said to Mr. Goldman helped.

  "Every boy should be so lucky as you, to play in a Shakespeare Company's Holiday Extravaganza, and with such a part!" he said. "I should have been lucky as you at your age."

  But let me tell you, wearing yellow tights wasn't making me feel lucky. Not if I wanted to keep living in this town.

  So I showed the tights to my mother, who I figured would have some concern for her only son's reputation.

  "They're very yellow," she said.

  "And they have white feathers all over the—"

  "Yes," she said. "But it will be cute. They'll sort of wave in the breeze when you walk. I still can't get over it—my son playing Shakespeare."

  "They're yellow tights. I'm playing a fairy. If this gets out, I'll never be able to go back to school."

  "No one from Camillo Junior High will be there. And even if they were, everyone will think it's cute."

  I tried my father.

  I handed him the tights while Walter Cronkite was announcing new bombing in Vietnam. I thought they might catch his eye, even though the CBS Evening News was on.

  They did.

  "You're going to wear these?" he said.

  "That's what they want."

  "Yellow tights with white feathers on the—"

  "Yup."

  "Whose idea is this?"

  "Mr. Goldman's idea."

  My father tried looking away from the yellow wasn't easy, since they were the brightest thing in tended to draw the eye.

  "Mr. Goldman?" he said.

  I think you've heard the rest of this conversation before.

  "Yes," I said.

  "The Benjamin Goldman who belongs to Goldman's Best Bakery?"

  "I guess that's the one," I said.

  My father looked at the yellow tights again, sort of shielding his eyes, and considered. "The day might come," he said finally, "when tights—which the room and before. Goldman thinks about expanding his business. And then he'd need to hire an architect."

  "Dad."

  "Maybe one that he remembers doing him a favor."

  "I can't wear these," I said.

  He handed the tights back to me. "Wear them. Just hope that no one from your school sees you."

  I didn't try my sister, but she came to my room anyway.

  "Mom told me about the tights," she said. "Let me see them."

  I showed her.

  "When this gets around school..."

  "It won't get around school," I said.

  "Sure it won't," she said. "Keep telling yourself that, and maybe it will come true. But if it ever gets over to the high school, you'd better pray that no one knows I'm your sister." She shut the door.

  "That sure doesn't sound like a flower child who doesn't do harm to anyone," I hollered after her. But she didn't answer.

  It didn't help that on the night of the first dress rehearsal (I wore my blue jeans over the yellow tights until the last minute), the entire cast of the Long Island Shakespeare Company's Holiday Extravaganza clapped when I came onstage.

  Which they did because they had to do something when they saw where the feathers were, and what they really wanted to do was laugh out loud, but they knew what I would do and it was too late to find another kid to play Ariel the Fairy. I mean, who else was going to wander into Goldman's Best Bakery and be $2.80 short on an order of cream puffs?

  "Mr. Goldman," I said after the applause, "I can't wear these."

  "Of course you can wear these. You are wearing these now."

  "I look like a fairy."

  "And this isn't the point? You should look like a fairy. You are a fairy."

  "Do you know what will happen if someone from school sees me?"

  "They will say, 'There is Holling Hoodhood, onstage, playing one of Shakespeare's greatest scenes from one of his greatest plays.' This is what will happen."

  "Mr. Goldman, it's been a long time since you were in seventh grade."

  "I never went to seventh grade. Where I come from, no boy went to seventh grade. We were all working in fields, digging and hoeing and digging and hoeing. But you—you go to school, then you go home and play. Then you come onstage to be a famous Shakespeare character. There is more that a boy could want?"

  Without even trying, it wouldn't be hard to come up with a list of 410 things more that a boy could want. But it's hard to keep complaining after the "When I Was a Boy, Life Was So Hard" card is played on you.

  So I did it. I got through the whole dress rehearsal playing Ariel the Fairy while wearing bright yellow tights with white feathers on the ... well, I might as well say it—butt. There. On my butt! White feathers waving on my butt!

  Let me tell you, this did not put me in a happy holiday spirit.

  The whole of December could have been ruined because of the yellow tights—except for one thing. One glorious, amazing, unbelievable, spectacular thing. The one thing that kept us going in the bare, holiday-less classroom of Mrs. Baker. The one thing that brought back meaning to Hanukkah and Christmas.

  Mickey Mantle.

  The greatest player to put on Yankee pinstripes since Babe Ruth.

  Mickey Mantle.

  And it was Mrs. Baker who announced his advent.

  "I suppose it will be of some interest to some of you," she said, "that Mickey Mantle is coming to town next week."

  The class went as quiet as if Sycorax and Caliban—the rats, not the monsters—had appeared before us, clacking their appalling yellow teeth.

  "Some interest!" said Danny Hupfer.

  "To some of us!" I said.

  "Who's Mickey Mantle?" asked Meryl Lee.

  "Who Mickey Mantle?" asked Mai Thi.

  "He is a baseball player," said Mrs. Baker.

  "He is the baseball player," said Danny Hupfer.

  "He had a batting average of .245 this year," said Doug Swieteck.

  We all turned to look at him.

  "Down from .288 last year," Doug Swieteck said.

  Danny Hupfer turned to look at me. "How does he know that?"

  "What is a batting average?" asked Meryl Lee.

  "My brother-in-law," said Mrs. Baker loudly, "has developed strong ties to the Yankee organization, and he has arranged for Mickey Mantle to come to the Baker Sporting Emporium. I am told that in addition to strutting around swinging baseball bats as if it were a worthy vocation, he will sign baseballs for anyone willing to bring one to him."

  A cheer from the class, as if the happy holidays were already here.

  "This is not an occasion to clamber onto your desk, Mr. Hupfer. You should tell your parents that he is coming a week from this Saturday night, and that he will be swinging bats and signing baseballs from eight o'clock until nine thirty. You should all take note that had he been swinging bats and signing baseballs on a school night, I never would have agreed to make this announcement."

  Another cheer, wild and extravagant.

  "Who's Mickey Mantle?" asked Meryl Lee again.

  We all ignored her.

  Mickey Mantle!

  Now, things would have been fine if Mrs. Baker had just left it there. I mean, Mickey Mantle coming to the Baker Sporting Emporium and all. But she didn't.

  "I have a second announcement," said Mrs. Baker.

  We all got quiet again.

  "Is someone else coming to the Emporium, too?" asked Danny Hupfer.

  "Maybe someone I know?" asked Meryl Lee.

  "No one else is coming, unless you want to say that someone is 'up and coming.'"

  That was a teacher joke. No one laughed, even though we were all supposed to. No one ever laughs at teacher jokes.

  "I have been informed by Mr. Goldman, who is the president of the Long Island Shakespeare Company, that one of the students in our class will be performing in the company's Holiday Extravaganza. He will be playing a part from The Tempest."

  I knew what was coming next. For a while, I ha
d wondered if Mrs. Baker had stopped hating my guts. Now I figured she hadn't.

  "As the corresponding secretary of the company, I invite you all to come see Mr. Holling Hoodhood in his Shakespeare debut. It will be a week from this Saturday—the very same night that the eminent Mr. Mantle will be at the Emporium swinging bats. The performance should be finished thirty minutes before Mr. Mantle makes his exit, so you will all have time for both."

  Toads, beetles, bats. The only thing worse would have been if she found a way to bribe them to come. Maybe with cream puffs.

  "And for those who attend," said Mrs. Baker, "your ticket stub will bring you extra credit for your next English for You and Me assignment."

  It was worse.

  Mrs. Baker looked at me and smiled. It was like the smile she had before Doug Swieteck's brother's assassination attempt. And shouldn't someone have told me that Mrs. Baker was the corresponding secretary?

  This is the part where, if we lived in a just world, some natural disaster would occur right then, or maybe an atomic bomb attack to obliterate the news of the Long Island Shakespeare Company's Holiday Extravaganza and so save me from my undeserved humiliation.

  Still, even though there wasn't a natural disaster or atomic bomb attack, Mickey Mantle was almost enough. After all, with Mickey Mantle coming, no one really cared about my Shakespeare debut. No one except Meryl Lee, who didn't know who Mickey Mantle was, and Mai Thi, who also didn't know who Mickey Mantle was, and Danny Hupfer, who did know who Mickey Mantle was—and they all cornered me after lunch.

  "Why so sneaky?" asked Meryl Lee. "Are you playing a girl's part?"

  "No, I'm not playing a girl's part. It's a part from The Tempest," I said.

  "Gee, so when Mrs. Baker said you were playing a part from The Tempest, she meant that you were really playing a part from The Tempest," said Danny Hupfer. "We know a whole lot more now than we did before."

  "Ariel. I'm going to play Ariel."

  "That's a girl's name," said Meryl Lee. "Isn't it a girl's name?"

  "Suspicion is an unbecoming passion," I said. "Ariel is a warrior."

  I know. That sounds like a lie. But Presbyterians know that every so often a lie isn't all that bad, and I figured that this was about the best place it could happen.