Funny Business

by Jon Scieszka

  I’M ALSO PRETTY FAMOUS WITH THE GIRLS NOW THAT THEY KNOW YOU AND ME WRITE STUFF TOGETHER. I’LL TRY TO READ SOME MORE OF YOUR BOOKS, BUT I HAVE TO SAY I STILL THINK THEY ARE A LITTLE BIT GIRLISH. NOT TOTALLY. YOU DO HAVE A LOT OF STUFF THAT REALLY GRABS A READER LIKE A MONGOOSE GRABS A COBRA BY THE THROAT AND THRASHES IT AROUND UNTIL IT IS BLOODY AND DEAD (OUR LATEST ENGLISH ASSIGNMENT IS WRITING METAPHORS AND SIMILES).

  MRS. BUND DOESN’T LIKE TO TALK ABOUT YOUR VISIT TOO MUCH AFTER WHAT HAPPENED IN THE READ AND SHARE PART OF CLASS. BUT SHE DID SAY IT CHANGED HER LIFE. YESTERDAY SHE TOOK DOWN THE AUTHOR BOARD AND SAID WE DON’T NEED TO WRITE TO AUTHORS EVER AGAIN.

  AND IT’S NOT PART OF AN ASSIGNMENT OR ANYTHING, BUT I MADE UP ANOTHER HAIKU.

  WHAT AUTHOR KICKS BUTT

  AND MAKES PEOPLE GLAD SHE DID?

  MAUREEN O’TOOPLE.

  OH, AND THANKS THE MOST FOR YOUR TIP ABOUT MY BATTING STANCE. I WENT 3 FOR 5 WITH 4 RBIS. WE KILLED CWI WOODWORKING, 8–3. WE ARE THE CHAMPS.

  MY MOM SAYS TO GIVE YOU A HUG AND A KISS. MY DAD SAYS YOU ARE A REAL CHARACTER. I THINK YOU TURNED OUT TO BE A PRETTY GOOD AUTHOR TO PICK EVEN IF I DID DO IT TO BUG JENNIFER.

  GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR WRITING STUFF. I THINK I MIGHT WORK SOME MORE ON MY STORY “ CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS UNDER THE WAXING GIBBOUS MOON.” LET ME KNOW IF YOU NEED ANY HELP WITH YOUR STORIES. I’VE GOT PLENTY MORE IDEAS.

  YOUR WRITING PAL,

  JOE JONES

  Dear Champ,

  I can’t wait to read “Civil War Soldiers under the Waxing Gibbous Moon.” It sounds like it will be a fantastic book. Maybe after you are done writing it and I am done reading it, I will write you a letter and you will answer it and we will become friends.

  Wouldn’t that make a great story?

  Thank you, Joe.

  Maureen

  P.S. That last haiku of yours was one of the best poems I have ever read.

  A FISTFUL OF FEATHERS

  BY DAVID YOO

  One night in the fall of fifth grade my dad finally got fed up with me and decided it was time to make me a man. Translation: My dad thought I was positively girly and was worried that I’d get bullied once I got to middle school the next year. He had been appalled earlier that day to see that only girls had been invited to my eleventh birthday party, and that night he glared at me all through dinner as I nibbled on a tofu burger (I’d been a vegetarian since the third grade, when I bit into an unbelievably purply, bloody Chicken McNugget at McDonald’s), before finally announcing, “That’s it, I’m making you my special project, Sam. We’re going to right this ship starting tomorrow.”

  Had I been born in previous generations, my dad telling me he was going to make a man out of me would have meant taking me hunting for the first time, or letting me take a sip of his beer as we watched baseball on TV, or spending the fall making a soapbox racer together, but he had other ideas for how to make me less girly.

  Before I continue, let me make it clear that it wasn’t so much that I was girly as it was that my dad was the manliest boy growing up, ever. His own father was a lifelong military man, and my dad was born macho. He was that kid who never said no to a dare, rode a mini motorcycle at age eight (without a helmet, even), was the star linebacker of his Pop Warner football team. He shot BB guns and got into fights, and he was obsessed with fires—if he wasn’t setting them for fun, he was pretending there was one and pulling the fire alarm at school.

  I’ll be the first to admit I wasn’t a spitting image of my dad, not by a long shot. I didn’t like to kill things with BB guns. I wasn’t into pulling fire alarms and aimlessly riding bikes all over the neighborhood all day, and I didn’t get a thrill from jumping off really high things for no good reason. Even if something was on fire or sinking or about to explode, you’d probably still have had a hard time getting me to jump. So sue me.

  But for my dad, it was more than that. Or rather, it was everything about me that seemed wrong. Truth be told, I didn’t have any guy friends, but that wasn’t really my fault; we lived on a street that had three girls in my grade and no boys, so I had no choice but to hang out with the ladies. But what really bugged him was that even my imaginary friend was a girl. Her name was Elizabeth, and I’d invented her back in third grade so I could have someone to play dolls with when the twins weren’t around (I’ll explain that in a moment), and we’d been best pals ever since. Even though she wasn’t even real, my dad was still disgusted.

  “Even your imaginary friend’s a girl?” he’d groan anytime he caught me having a really loud conversation with nobody else in the room.

  To make him feel better, I changed her name to Mr. Elizabeth, but it didn’t help matters. I explained that he should’ve felt grateful that I’d changed her name at all but that I couldn’t change her actual name—I mean, that would only confuse her, right? “Besides,” I added, “what difference does it make what her name is if she’s invisible. Shouldn’t calling her Mr. Elizabeth be enough to make you happy?”

  “I don’t even know where to begin explaining just how messed up that is,” he said, and left the room.

  I kept the name Mr. Elizabeth anyway, because she was a tomboy and it turned out she actually really liked the name. I considered telling my dad the good news but wisely figured he’d only hate me more.

  Instead of doing typical “boy” things, I was creative as a kid, and of course my dad considered any type of creativity a girly quality. For example, he hated that I liked to draw. It’s not like I drew unicorns and flowers with smiley faces and rainbows all day, but that I didn’t at least draw realistic pictures of gun battles and spaceships bothered him. Instead, I preferred to draw nature scenes featuring really realistic cats, because I’d always wanted one, and I guess he considered a cat similar enough to a unicorn and this made him feel positively icky.

  But did that make me any less of a man than all the other boys in my grade? I didn’t think so. Okay, so maybe I liked to weave friendship bracelets in my spare time—which I’d learned how to make at summer camp (that my dad forced me to attend in the first place). And I admit I played with Polly Pocket dolls, which are intended for girls, at least according to the packaging (personally, I felt they were for anyone with a wonderful imagination). But again, this had more to do with my surroundings than me as a person: I played with Polly Pockets because my parents didn’t buy me action figures (they were paranoid that my infant sister would try to eat them), and so I had to make do with the Benson twins’ toy collection next door. If my dad caught me playing with the dolls, I’d immediately switch from trying out different outfits on them (for a tea party) and instead pretend that they were having a battle royale to the death. After he’d leave the room, I’d quietly apologize to the dolls and make sure they were okay.

  “Sorry, ladies,” I’d whisper. “Now who wants ice cream?”

  My mom would always try to make me feel better whenever she witnessed my dad being appalled at my playing with dolls and stuff, and she’d always say the same thing: “Your father always wanted a boy.” I knew what she meant—what she was trying to do was remind me that my dad, despite the way he grimaced all the time around me, really did always want a son and that I should feel welcome around him, which of course had the opposite effect. I mean, when a parent feels compelled to tell their child that their father really did want to have him, you know that’s not a good sign.

  Mom was probably the worst consoler in the history of mankind. She tried way too hard to make me feel better by saying things like that, which would always end up making me feel ten times worse. Like after I struggled with my first-ever swimming lesson, swallowing a mouthful of chlorine as the instructor had us hold the side of the pool and practice holding our breath underwater, Mom patted me on the head on the ride home and said, “Not everyone was meant to swim.” Up to that moment I’d been planning on sticking it out for at least a second day but immediately decided I wasn’t ever going to be able to do it. Or there was that time we spent a week at a beach house on the Cape
, and one rainy afternoon I lost to her in a game of Concentration and she said, “Don’t feel bad. We did drop you on your head once when you were really little.”

  And now she was telling me that Dad had always wanted a boy, thinking I felt unloved, which I did. I was failing in my dad’s eyes, yet again. And she was wrong, for that matter—my dad didn’t want just any old boy; specifically, he wanted a boy that was just like he was when he grew up. Which I clearly wasn’t.

  Hence the problem.

  And so that’s why that night at dinner my dad said he was going to make a man out of me. It was a vague statement, but somehow I knew to fear it.

  “Thanksgiving’s coming,” he said, changing the subject, clicking his teeth as he pretended to hold up a drumstick. I played with the oversteamed, mushy carrots on my plate.

  “Gross,” I muttered, picturing him eating turkey.

  He frowned.

  “I don’t know what his problem is,” he said as if I couldn’t hear him. “Everyone loves Thanksgiving. Must be the neighborhood. When I was seven, I played touch football with the older kids and ate red meat five times a week.”

  He looked at me, and I looked away.

  “He plays with girls. You’ve been to our farm, Grace. We raised our own darn turkeys every fall. And we didn’t have much money. Made you appreciate what a good Thanksgiving dinner’s all about. Maybe that’s what he needs.”

  Mom sighed.

  “Only two weeks till Thanksgiving,” she said.

  They looked at each other. She shook her head, not looking at me.

  “I just think it’s so unnatural. It’s not a healthy way to grow up,” Dad went on. “Kids need to have tradition.”

  “Oh, please, Martin,” she replied. “He’s just more creatively inclined.”

  My dad just kept staring at me as if I was a stranger, and it made me feel really uncomfortable, but I now know that all the while he was coming up with the plan in his head to make me less girly, and in the end I have to admit the plan worked, although not nearly in the way anyone could have ever guessed.

  The next morning from the window I watched Tracy, the babysitter, pull up in the rain. Mom handed the baby over to Tracy under the front stoop. Mom looked like she was giving directions, gesturing with her hands. A minute later my parents left in the SUV. Tracy came inside, and I followed her into the baby’s room and watched her change the baby’s diaper.

  “Want to help me re-dye my hair?” she asked.

  “Duh. Of course,” I replied. “I’ll go get the tinfoil from the kitchen.”

  An hour later I was watching TV downstairs when my parents got home. Mom took my hand and made me visit the baby again. We listened over the light snoring and the hum of the humidifier to the sounds in the backyard. I started to head over to the window to see what the noise was, but Mom pulled me back. She smiled at me.

  “We have a surprise for you, Tiger.”

  I stared at the window, my mind racing.

  “Okay, everything’s set,” Dad said as he bounded into the room two hours later. Mom had fallen asleep on the floor, and I was in the process of starving to death. “C’mere, Sammy.”

  He scooped me up; I tried to smile but his hands were digging into my armpits. He settled me on his shoulders and carried me down the stairs. When we got outside, Dad put me on the ground, and I stared at the pen by the basement doors. The chicken fence. The dark shadow inside. I edged backward. Dad pushed me forward.

  “Go see,” he whispered.

  We crowded around the pen. In a whoosh of feathers, the turkey emerged from the darkness. It was large with brown feathers and scaly claws. It hobbled around the small fenced-in space outside the pen.

  “He’s so adorable,” Mom said, holding the baby, pointing at the pen, kissing the baby, pointing again.

  “This one was the biggest of them all,” Dad said. “We barely have to feed it. I think this will be good for Sam. Kids like animals; this is just the thing.”

  “But what if he gets attached to it?”

  “You’re missing the point, Grace. It’s the tradition of raising a turkey. It teaches things. Having this bird around will get him into the spirit of Thanksgiving. That’s what it’s all about. It’s simple math. Sam keeps eating tofu and he stays the smallest kid in his class, and that’s just going to make life harder the older he gets.”

  She nodded.

  “This is going to make him a man,” he continued. “I can’t make him good at sports, and maybe I can’t make him get real friends, but this…this has to work!”

  Dad took the turkey out and set it on the ground.

  “Will it try to run away?” I asked.

  “No,” he replied. “Birds are pretty stupid, especially turkeys; they’re like glorified chickens. Don’t be afraid.”

  I inched closer to the turkey and held out a hand. Suddenly the turkey lashed out, clamping its beak on my hand. It didn’t hurt, but the sudden movement startled me and I said something I shouldn’t have.

  “Don’t use the Lord’s name in vain!” Dad shouted.

  “He’s barely spoken this whole afternoon, and when he does, this!” Mom said, pointing at the space in front of my mouth as if she could see the dirty words.

  I was visibly shaken, and attached myself to the dogwood tree next to the garden. Dad stormed up the steps of the back porch and let the screen door slam behind him. The turkey did a circle on the grass. It pecked at the ground.

  “Listen, Sam,” Mom whispered soothingly. “Your daddy just wants you to appreciate Thanksgiving. This turkey means a lot to him. He spent all afternoon setting up the pen. Will you please come over here and just try, for Mommy, to get to know the turkey?”

  I shuffled my feet in the thick green grass. The turkey hopped back two steps. It stared at me with red eyes, and I gasped.

  “See, it likes you.” She laughed. The baby burped. Dad was watching from an open window above us.

  “Give it a name,” he called down to me.

  “Um…Turkey?” I suggested.

  Dad rolled his eyes at Mom.

  “Yeah, he’s the creative one all right,” he said. Then he stared down into the turkey’s devil red eyes for a couple of seconds. “I’m thinking your name is…Travis.”

  “Travis the turkey?” I asked.

  Dad glared at me.

  “It’s a wonderful name, Martin,” Mom added.

  I watched as she placed the turkey back in the pen. The sun was going down, past the trees in the backyard, and the wind felt cold. We went inside.

  That night, I sat next to the window in my bedroom on the second floor with the lights off, staring down at the pen. The sound of the baby’s humidifier in the next room, through the thin walls. The house creaking as it braced against the wind. Downstairs, I could hear the faint sounds of clapping and laughter from the TV, followed by deep laughter from my dad.

  The roof of the pen was a wide sheet of strip metal. Occasionally it clanged as a breeze swept across the backyard. The roof seemed to shimmer in the moonlight. I could make out a dozen half-bent nails sticking out of the wood on the side. The turkey was moving, bumping into the chicken wire with its beak. Inside the pen it was dark. I couldn’t even make out a shadow. The light in the kitchen flicked on, and suddenly I saw the turkey. It was staring up at me, motionless, its red eyes gleaming in the light from the kitchen window. I was at first frozen, then dove out of view, two hops to the bed.

  I slept with the blanket over my head.

  “Will you look at this,” Dad exclaimed, shaking his head at the window.

  It was the next afternoon, and we were all sitting in the den, watching TV. The baby was upstairs, as Tracy sat by the crib reading an airport novel. Mom and I bent to see outside the window. The turkey, out of its cage, was performing a series of somersaults across the grass. It completed three before it hit the fence, letting out a squawk. We ran outside. It noticed us, earnestly hopping back to the side of the pen, leaned over, and began to roll
over again and again.

  Mom gasped. “Have you ever seen a turkey do that before?”

  “Maybe it’s itchy and has lice or something,” I suggested.

  “Heck no, they don’t have hair,” whispered Dad. “I know this sounds crazy, but I think it might be trying to get our attention.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she replied, but continued to stare at the turkey.

  It performed another series of somersaults, then hopped toward us. It stopped. A moment later, it started hopping in place, raising one wing then the other, in time to the music coming through the open window.

  “Mother of pearl.” Dad whistled.

  He brought the turkey inside the house. At first mom objected, but Dad wasn’t hearing any of it. We circled the turkey in the middle of the family room.

  “Get me that ball, Sam,” Dad said, pointing at the baby’s red ball in the corner, next to the sofa.

  I got the ball and handed it to him. Dad then rolled the ball at the turkey. It came to a rest at the turkey’s clawed feet. The turkey stared at the ball, then at Dad. It ducked its head, and nudged the ball! The ball rolled up against Dad’s feet. Mom laughed, started clapping her hands. Dad rolled it back. The turkey passed the ball back almost immediately.

  This went on for some time.

  The sun was fading behind the trees by the time Mom finally got up to make dinner. Dad placed the turkey and the red ball back in the pen. The turkey stared at me through the chicken fence. I ran upstairs and watched from behind the curtain in my bedroom as my dad went into the shed and took out the shiny new soccer ball that I’d refused to practice with all summer. He rolled it to the turkey. The turkey stared at it with its head cocked sideways for a minute. Dad looked…disappointed? But just as he seemed about to grab the soccer ball and toss it back in the shed, the turkey passed it back to him by kicking it with its right foot.