by Howard Buten
“Says who.”
“You aren’t.” I got real mad and turned back around to the window.
Then the man whispered, “I know, I know.”
I sat down in the little orange chair by the window, and kicked some kicks in the rug, which sometimes gives you electricity.
“I like getting cavities,” said the red-haired man. “I want to get all my teeth filled as soon as possible before it’s too late. My dentist won’t be around much longer. He’ll be killing himself fairly soon now.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why is he going to kill himself?”
“Oh,” said the red-haired man, and popped another bubble. “Because he’s a dentist. Wouldn’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, everybody hates the dentist. Even dentists’ sons. This guy’s son hates him, but for another reason. See, when he was little, the dentist decided that he would pretend he wasn’t a dentist, so his son wouldn’t hate him. He told his son that he was a professional baseball player. He went and had a Tigers uniform made up, and every day he wore it out the door and wore it when he came home, only then he’d stop on the way home and get it dirty. He had phony newspaper articles written up about him and slipped them into the Sports Section. But when the kid started school, it seemed that no one ever heard of his dad, so the dentist had all these phony baseball cards printed up and brought them to the stores and slipped them into the bubble gum packs.
“Finally he made friends with Ozzie Virgil, the Tigers’ third baseman, took him and his wife out to dinner, did his kids’ teeth for free. He got Ozzie to play along with the scheme. So when the kid was eight years old, the dentist finally took him to a game. The kid was very excited. They went right to the dugout, but unfortunately they were too early and Ozzie Virgil hadn’t showed up yet, so they wouldn’t let him in and then they ran into Ozzie on the way out and the first thing Ozzie said was, ‘Hey, Stan, Joey broke a filling, could Gladys bring him by later today?’
“That was five years ago. The dentist’s son hasn’t spoken to him since. It’s only a matter of time before he kills himself.”
I walked across the Playroom to the toychest. There was a doll in it, a girl who had brown hair with ribbons in it like Jessica. She didn’t have any clothes on and I got a stomach ache. Also I was afraid of going to the dentist.
“I have to go today,” I said to the red-haired man.
He nodded with his eyes closed, like he already knew. “By the way, Burt, my name’s Rudyard.”
There was another doll in the toychest, it was blond with no ribbons. I threw it at the wall and the arms fell off. My stomach hurt so bad I could hardly stand up. It was like freezing inside my tushy, up inside me. And I had to go to the lavatory.
I was starting to have tears in my eyes, I bit my lip. I looked at the red-haired man, at Rudyard, and he looked at me with his eyes. He got up and walked over to me and took out a handkerchief and wiped my eyes very soft.
“Dusty in here,” he said. “Allergic to the dust in here.”
I started to cry and he put his hand on my head.
“Rudyard, I have to go to the lavatory, there is something wrong inside my tushy. I’m afraid. I’m afraid of the dentist.”
He did this to the back of my hair, he squeezed me a little on my head and put me against him and he smelled like my dad.
“Rudyard, I have to go to the lavatory only I have never been down here, I don’t know where one is here.”
“I do,” he said. “It’s a good one too.”
I was crying.
“Rudyard, something is wrong inside me. I am different than everybody else.”
Rudyard squeezed my head and did this to my hair and I pushed it against him.
“Me too, Burt. Let’s go.”
Today I got a letter. I thought it was from Jessica, but it wasn’t.
December 7
Dear Burt,
I just got off the phone with Dr Nevele and he told me that it would still be a little while before the first visiting day at CTRC, so I decided to sit down and write a little note instead, while I’m still thinking about you.
How is everything, Sweetheart? Both your father and I (and Jeffrey!) miss you very much and can’t wait for you to come home. We know that you are anxious to come home too and that’s one of the reasons I am writing this little letter.
Dr Nevele sure sounds like a terrific guy to Dad and me, Burt, and we think it would really be a shame if after all the hard work and time he’s put into helping you, you didn’t decide to help him too. It’s only fair, Burt. He really does want to help you. He knows a whole lot about little boys and what makes them do the things they do, and it would be a shame to waste his time, don’t you agree? We’re sure you do. We all know that you are truly sorry for what you did and want to make everything right as soon as you can, and so you will decide to help Dr Nevele real soon to find out what’s wrong inside you and then you can fix it right away and come home. Won’t that be terrific? We’re sure it will be, and we know you want to do everything in your power to make it happen.
You know, Son, you’re not the only one who needs help finding out why you did that horrible thing to Jessica. Your father and I are going to see a doctor too. Someone that Dr Nevele recommended, to ask him if he thinks it’s something Dad and I might have done, some way we failed as parents. It turns out that Dad knows this doctor from the club, so we’re all going to have lunch some time next week and talk about it. Won’t that be nice? We’re sure it will.
Jessica’s mother came to see us the other night again. She’s still very upset. We asked her to stay to dinner but she wouldn’t. Guess she is still very angry about everything. Jessica is out of the hospital now. She mentioned writing you a letter, but her mother told her she couldn’t, so please don’t be disappointed if you don’t hear from her. We’re sure you understand, you’re just such a terrific young man. Actually, your father and I don’t think it’s such a good idea for you to see her again, either. Her mother is enrolling her in a private school as soon as the new term starts, and we think maybe that’s all for the best. We’re sure you understand because you’re such a smart little boy.
Oh, by the way! Kenneth came over this morning and he brought you some baseball cards that he said you have been wanting. How about those Tigers! We don’t know if you can watch the games there at CTRC, but they sure are going great guns this season! Last week Dad took Jeff to a game and they had a terrific time! It was the best time they ever had! They’re going to go again next week, and this time they’re going to sit in Uncle Paul’s box seats. Isn’t that great? Too bad you can’t be there. Some other time.
Dr Nevele said it wouldn’t be such a good idea to send the baseball cards now, so we’ll keep them for you for when you get home. There’s no one to trade them with there, so they’ll be waiting for you right here at home. Also, there may be a few other presents waiting too! Remember that dinosaur you wanted at Maxwell’s? Dad and I agreed to get it for you! So if you be good and help Dr Nevele it’ll be waiting for you too when you get home.
Well, that’s about all the news from here. Please think about helping Dr Nevele so you can come home and get your toys. Won’t that be terrific? Sure it will!
Love,
Mom and Dad
[9]
FOR THE NEW SEMESTER AT SCHOOL I HAD MISS IRIS FOR Homeroom. She is nice as a teacher, she is young and she wears lots of make-up. She has blond hair. She has nail polish and nice clothes like on tv. She wears perfume which is divine. Also she is easy, man, she never yells. Once she said to us, “I let you children walk all over me,” but I never walked on her.
(Last semester I had Krepnik, who is mean. One time Andy Debbs picked his nose during belltime and Krepnik saw. She screamed, “You disgusting child, don’t you realize that is the foulest habit?” But Andy didn’t say an answer because he is shy, and she yelled, “Go to the lavatory and wash your hands!”
Andy leaned on his desk and then Krepnik said he’d have to wash the desk now. “Who taught you such manners?” screamed Krepnik, and Andy Debbs said, “Nobody, I learned all by myself.” Andy Debbs is from the Home. Miss Krepnik is mean to Home kids because they are poor, but I feel she is the foulest habit.)
But Miss Iris is nice to everyone. But one time something happened. I came home and Miss Iris was in our kitchen eating lunch with my mom. My mom said, “Dolores just dropped by after the PTA meeting, would you like to join us, Burt?” I ran up to my room and slammed the door. It isn’t right when you see teachers outside of school. Miss Iris was wearing slacks.
But the third day of the new semester Miss Iris announced that the next day we were going to go to the zoo for a trip. She passed out permission slips, they were mimeographed. I smelled mine for an hour. She said we were going to have a picnic at the zoo but everybody had to bring lunch.
The next day I woke up early by myself. I made myself breakfast, ketchup and a Mars bar. Shrubs came to call for me, he rang the doorbell and woke everybody up. All the classes in the third grade got to go to the zoo, Miss Hellman’s room and Miss Craig’s room and our room. We had a bus. Miss Iris counted everybody, then she came up to me and said, “May I sit next to you, Burt?” I said no, but she did anyway. Then we went.
Mimeograph. M I M E O G R A P H. Mimeograph.
At the zoo we had to have a buddy who was the person you sat next to on the bus, so Miss Iris was my buddy. I said, “Can’t I have Shrubs?” and she said, “Why Burt, that hurts my feelings.”
At the zoo is trees and fences and cement things that have the animals in them, and refreshment stands. There is a trail that is big yellow elephant footprints. I asked Miss Iris if they are real and she said why of course. We followed them. They went to the Zoo Train. I said, “Is the train so small because the elephant squashed it?” and she said, “Oh Burt, you’re so precious,” and she put the key that’s shaped like an elephant into the Talking Storybook that tells about the animals, and Shrubs said, “I’m going to push ‘Hound Dog,’” but then the train came.
It is like the ones at Kiddyland, only realer. Miss Iris said, “Will you protect me from all the wild animals, Burt?” I said no.
The train went all around the zoo. Miss Craig told us to wave at all the animals and Marty Polaski said he would drop them a postcard. Sometimes the train turned a corner and Miss Iris slid against me and it made me feel funny. She had perfume. Then suddenly Marty Polaski started screaming, “I’m getting mangled by a gorilla, I’m getting mangled by a gorilla!” Everybody turned around. He pointed and said, “Here’s the gorilla.” It was Marcie Kane, she sat next to Jessica, they were buddies.
After the train we went to the chimps. They were picking their noses like Andy Debbs and Shrubs started to sing
Everybody’s doin it
Doin it, doin it
Picking their nose
And chewin it, chewin it
Miss Hellman made him stop. She doesn’t like music.
We went to the snakes who stuck their tongues out and I got scared, and we went to the penguins who wore tuxedos, and we went to the deer. Then it was lunch. I had a tuna fish sandwich, it was warm and mushy how I like it, and an apple and a Twinkie. My mom had left it in the fridge for me. (The bag had a paper clip. She must have ran out of staples.) Each Homeroom got a table in the picnic area. Miss Iris had a thing of lemonade she made herself. Miss Hellman had a box with pop in it, she made the bus driver carry it.
I like to eat by myself so I can pretend. At the zoo I pretended I was up in the tree eating my lunch that I killed with a knife and that down below were humans who were the enemy because they didn’t have good citizenship in the jungle. Then something happened. One of the humans saw me and came over to the tree. It was a white hunter.
“Want this?” he said. He held out a bottle of Nesbitt’s orange pop and I hit it out of his hand and it spilled all over his green dress because he was Jessica.
She looked at the ground. The pop dripped off her finger. She still had her arm out.
“I just thought you might want it instead of lemonade,” she said.
I said, “Umgawa.”
Then Marty Polaski started yelling, “Burton has a girlfriend, Burton has a girlfriend!”
“You better shut up,” I said.
“Make me.”
“Make me make you.”
“I don’t make monkeys,” he said, so I socked him. I aimed at his stomach but I hit his face by accident and he fell down. Then he kicked me in the peenie, and I couldn’t stand up. Everything went around and around. Then I rolled under him and he fell on top of me and I socked him again and he got up but I chased him and caught him and threw him down, but he kicked me in the peenie again and I couldn’t see. He was on top of me.
The next thing I knew he was gone, and I was on the grass and Miss Iris leaned over me. I could smell her perfume. She kept asking if I was ok. I got up. I had to lean on someone. He was right there. Shrubs.
Then I saw a crowd of children over by the drinking fountain. They were looking at Marty Polaski, who was on the grass with a cut in his head. Shrubs said that Jessica Renton had hit him with the Nesbitt’s bottle when he was on top of me. I saw Miss Hellman was holding Jessica real tight and yelling at her. The water fountain had the water coming out of a lion’s head. He was puking.
I sat down at the picnic table and Miss Iris sat down next to me. She did this to my hair, and said “Are you ok, Honey? Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Don’t call me Honey, ok?”
Soon it was time to look at animals again. Everybody switched buddies. I got Shrubs. He walked with a limp. I said, “Why are you limping?” and he said, “A lion ate my knee.”
We had to go to the birds. I hate them because they aren’t wild animals and they smell. When we got there Shrubs and me didn’t go in, we waited outside and made a plan to ambush Marty Polaski when he came out and throw my shirt over his head and beat him up. Then Shrubs said that he didn’t want to because he wanted to go see the mooses because he knew one of them. I said who. He said Bullwinkle.
I feel that sometimes Shrubs is a moron. Once I taught him idiot, and he stood on his front porch and said idiot to everyone who walked past his house.
Everybody started to come out of the bird house. The first one out was Miss Iris. She said, “Burt, why in the world do you have your shirt off, do you want to catch pneumonia on top of everything else?” I said yes.
Then Jessica came out and she saw me and walked over to me, and I was embarrassed because you could see I had a crewcut on my stomach.
“It doesn’t matter that you don’t have your shirt on,” Jessica said. “Germs and bacteria give you sickness, not drafts. I’m just telling you.”
“How do you know?” I said.
“I read it in a magazine.”
“No you didn’t, you’re too young.”
“I did,” she said. “We get them in the mail at my house. My daddy’s a high school teacher and he lets me read all I want.”
“Big wow,” I said, and I put my shirt back on, only I buttoned it crooked and had to do it over. “Ig bay eal day,” I said. (This is Pig Latin. It is eat nay.) Then I saw Shrubs was asking the man from the zoo where the mooses were. Then we all went to look at the porcupines. They were all sleeping in a hole, you could hardly see them. I remember once on “Popeye” a porcupine shot needles at him and then he drank some water and it came out all over him. Jessica leaned on the chain around the porcupines. She was angry.
“You didn’t have to knock the bottle out of my hand,” she said. “You could have said, ‘I don’t care for any thank you.’ It stained my dress.”
“I was like Tarzan,” I said.
“You’re mental,” she said, and went to the llamas.
In the same thing as the llamas there was a bird, he was large. It was a Kukaberra. Jessica looked at him, and I sang a song, I learned it in
Music.
Kukaberra sits
In the old gum tree
Merry merry king
Of the bush is he
Laugh Kukaberra
Laugh Kukaberra
Gay your life must be.
Jessica looked at me for a minute, she listened to my song. Then she like shook her head.
“It doesn’t cost anything to be nice,” she said. “My dad said so.”
“So?”
“So what?”
“So?”
“So what?”
The llamas were all sleeping but they weren’t in holes, so you could see them.
“Sometimes I don’t read magazines,” said Jessica. “Sometimes I just look at the pictures. I like to look at clothes. They are very elegant.”
“I never look at clothes,” I said. “Never.”
“You look at Miss Iris’ clothes,” she said.
“Do not.”
“Do so,” said Jessica. “She sits next to you all the time and you look at her clothes and when she crosses her legs you look at her shoes. I saw you on the bus.”
Then we both looked at the llamas. I think they are spelled wrong.
“There’s a pretty one,” Jessica said. “He’s all black with white socks like my horse.”
“You don’t have a horse.”
“Do so.”
“Where?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
I looked at the llama. He spit on the ground.
“Once I had a horse, Jessica, and I told him to step on Miss Filmer’s head and then blood shot out of her eyeballs and they took her to the furnace and burned her up and I rode away on my horse.”
“I bet she smelled shitty,” said Jessica, and I got angry.
“You aren’t supposed to say shit,” I said. “It’s swearing.”
But Jessica just walked away saying, “Shit, shit, shit.”
Then we went to the bison. They were all sleeping. No holes.
“I can swear if I want to, it’s a free country, Burton,” said Jessica.
“My name isn’t Burton,” I said. “It’s Randy.” (I don’t know why I said this.)
