Heads or Tails

by Jack Gantos

  Donna’s Safety Patrol location was the farthest away from school. There were few houses around that part of Lloyd Estates. Most of the land had been bulldozed over into fields of sand and fast-growing saw grass. On her corner was an old house trailer almost overgrown with flowering bushes and low trees. I didn’t normally pass her post on my way to school, but every day for the last month I’d gone out of my way. She had a giant tin policeman on wheels that she pushed into the middle of the road each morning. He held a big STOP sign in one hand. Donna stood next to him and directed traffic. She was a real pro. A chrome whistle was jammed into the corner of her mouth and her hair was tucked under a blue baseball cap. When the wind was just right I thought I smelled her perfume. White Shoulders.

  One morning when I arrived, she was dragging the policeman across the scrubby field. I always tried to think of something interesting to say when I saw her but never did better than “Good morning” or “Hi” or “See you around.” This was my chance.

  “Need any help?” I hollered.

  “Yeah.”

  I ditched my new bike. It was a three-speed girl’s model Dad had gotten for me at a yard sale. I ran over and grabbed one of the tin man’s arms. We dragged him to the road.

  “Every damn morning I have to get up extra early just to drag this cop out of the field,” she said angrily. “Some jerks keep dragging it away in the night and I have to find it. I’m beginning to hate this job.”

  “Why do you do it?” I asked.

  “Because I wanna be a cop when I grow up. My dad’s a cop and my uncle’s a detective.”

  “I don’t know if I want to be a cop,” I said, “but I’d like to arrest people.”

  “Then you should join the Safety Patrol. You get a real police badge and you can make a citizen’s arrest on people who don’t do what you tell ‘em to do.” She looked at her watch. “Hey, you better get going,” she said, and smiled at me. “I don’t want to have to arrest you for being late.”

  I got on my bike. “See you later,” I sang and waved goodbye. I was so excited. I just knew everything was going to work out for me and Donna. I hadn’t had a girlfriend since third grade, when I threw myself out of a tree in front of Melissa Foster and landed on my back. She took pity on me for about a week, then got tired of my tricks.

  After school, I stayed behind and waited for everyone to leave before I approached Mrs. Marshall.

  “Yes,” she said as she tidied up her desk. “What is it?”

  “I’d like to join the Safety Patrol,” I said. “I think I’d be good at it.”

  “Have you done this before?” she asked.

  “No,” I replied.

  “Well,” she said, opening her bottom desk drawer. “You’re in luck today. Donna quit at lunchtime and you can take her place.”

  Quit! That can’t be right. I wanted to step back and say, “Well, forget it,” but didn’t have the guts.

  She handed me the badge, whistle, and orange belt. “You’ll be on Donna’s old corner. Do you know where that is?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I replied. “I pass by it every day.”

  “Fine,” she said. “I expect you to be kind and courteous. And one more thing. Make sure you wheel the tin policeman into the middle of the road when you begin and put it to the side of the road when you finish.”

  As she rattled on, I got up enough nerve to ask, “Why did Donna quit?”

  “Personal reasons,” Mrs. Marshall replied. “She said someone had been bugging her every morning.”

  I didn’t say another word. Bugging her? Is that what she thinks of me? I got on my bike and raced home. I wondered if I could quit, but then Donna would know I only joined to be her boyfriend. I was stuck. Bugging her! Bugging her! It made my head pulse each time I said the words to myself.

  When I got home I tried on my cop outfit and told Betsy about my new job.

  “You know where they get those tin policemen?” she asked. I didn’t. “They’re Safety Patrolmen who’ve been flattened by maniac drivers.”

  “Leave me alone,” I yelled, but an image of Gary’s insane sister flashed across my mind.

  “My pleasure,” Betsy replied.

  I went into my room and unlocked my diary. It smelled like an old lady’s hankie. “Donna hates me,” I wrote. “The moment I joined she quit because I’ve been bugging her every morning. She thinks I’m some kind of nut like the losers who call in to the lonely hearts radio show and beg people to be nice to them.”

  I got up extra early the next morning and put on my orange Safety Patrol belt and my badge and hung the whistle around my neck. Then I got on my bike and rode down to my corner.

  The tin policeman was nowhere in sight. I walked through the field until I found him knocked over onto his face. Someone had thrown rocks at him and he was all dented up and his arm was twisted back. It looked as if he was playing ping-pong. “Come on,” I said with a sigh. I jerked him up under his arms, dragged him across the field, and stood him in the middle of the street.

  I checked my watch. I had a half hour on duty and then I had to return to school. A few kids came by, but since there were no cars coming, I didn’t get to jump out into the street and make a car come to a screeching halt. I just waved the kids across.

  Then I saw Donna riding up on her bike. I figured she was coming by to laugh at me.

  “I wanted to see how you were doing,” she said.

  “Okay, once I found the policeman. Mrs. Marshall told me you quit.”

  “What really got to me,” Donna said, “was the old lady in the trailer.” She picked up a rock and threw it into the bushes alongside the trailer. “That old lady drives me nuts. She’s always calling me to help her lift something or reach something or get her something from the store. I’m a cop, not a nurse. She should be arrested and locked up in a nursing home. You’ll see.” She hopped on her bike and rode off. “Whatever you do, don’t help her,” she shouted.

  “Yes! Yes! Yes!” I sang as she turned a corner. “She doesn’t hate me. She hates someone else!”

  When it was time, I hid the policeman in the bushes to the side of the house trailer and rode to school. Mrs. Marshall hadn’t even started her copying frenzy yet.

  The next morning, I woke up humming another stupid song from The Sound of Music. That movie was still driving me crazy. I put on my rust-colored slacks, green shirt, and brown socks. As I buckled my Safety Patrol belt, I thought I might go to the drive-in theater and try to arrest the owner, “for crimes against my ears.” Then I could lock him in a little room and play that movie a million times in a row until he went insane …

  When I arrived on my corner I found my tin policeman just where I’d hidden him. As I began to drag him toward the road I heard a faint voice calling, “Boy … oh, Boy.”

  I dropped the policeman and looked around. “Over here,” called the voice. “I’m at the window.”

  The window was dirty, but through it I saw the old lady that Donna warned me about. “Come here,” she called, and I walked over to the window. I stopped short so she couldn’t grab me.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “I have a favor to ask of you,” she said. She was very old and brittle. Her voice was cracked and her whole body shook back and forth as if she were the most scared person in the world. “My pet bird died, and I wish you would bury it for me.”

  “Sure.”

  “Oh, thank you,” she said. “I’ve had him for a long time and I think he deserves a proper burial.” She reached forward with her shaky hand and gave me a small paper bag. “His name is Victor,” she said. “He was good company.”

  “I’ll bury him right now,” I said. “In the field.”

  “That’s fine,” she said. “By the way, you can keep that policeman in my yard so the boys won’t drag it off every night.”

  “Thanks.” I looked at my watch. “I’ve got to get going.” She nodded her head up and down as she backed away from the window and slipped deeper into the gray
light of the trailer. She looked like someone drowning.

  I ran out to the road. Donna wasn’t in sight. I crossed into the field on the other side and began to dig a hole by kicking up the sand and stones with the back of my shoe. I knew if Donna caught me I’d never have a second chance with her. She hated the old lady and she’d think I was an idiot for helping. When I thought the hole was deep enough, I put the bag in and covered it over. Then I searched around for pieces of rocks and shells to cover the grave and to spell out the name VICTOR.

  “What are you doing?” It was Donna.

  I jumped up and looked at her as if she were a crazed murderer who’d escaped from a mental institution.

  “You’re doing something for that old lady, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t. Once you start doing things for her she’ll be after you every morning. Why’d you think I quit? Are you burying something for her?”

  “Her bird died,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with helping her.”

  “Yeah, I buried her other bird. Only, when I looked in the bag it wasn’t a bird but an old chicken leg. I told you, she’s nuts.”

  “Well, I looked in the bag,” I said, lying. “It was a bird.”

  “I don’t believe you. You’re stupid if you do anything else for that old basket case.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “So long, sucker,” she yelled back at me as she rode away. I felt like running after her and shoving her off her bike, but I didn’t. I finished spelling out VICTOR, pushed the policeman into the bushes, and went to class.

  On the way home Gary Rook wanted to know if I’d help him knock down a wasps’ nest in his carport.

  “Forget it,” I said. “After your sister almost killed me I don’t want to play at your house.”

  “Don’t worry about her,” he said. “She and Mom made up.”

  That’s what worries me, I thought. They make up one day so they can try and kill each other the next. They should both be arrested for soap-opera behavior.

  I rode past the drive-in and stopped at Woolworth’s. They had a pet department with singing canaries and parakeets. I looked them over carefully. I didn’t want to buy a dud, so I decided on the canary. It cost ten dollars, a lot of money. But Victor must have meant a lot to her.

  Back in my room, I unlocked my diary. I kept all my money taped between the pages. I counted the bills and the change. I still only had eight dollars.

  “Hey, son,” Dad called as he passed by my bedroom. “Get ready for dinner.”

  When we all sat down at the table, Betsy served. She’d made spaghetti.

  “We’re having an audit at the bank this week,” Mom said. “I’m going to be coming home a couple of hours later than usual.”

  “Jack, that means you’re going to have to help out more around the house.”

  “What’s that mean, Dad? I already do the yard work and garbage. It should be Betsy’s job to do the housework.”

  “Betsy already does more than her share with cleaning and laundry and now cooking,” said Mom. “You can do the dishes.”

  “Not the dishes,” I moaned. I had almost been flattened by Gary’s sister, I’d blown it with Donna Lowry, and now I had to do the dishes for my sister.

  “Well, I’ll make you a deal,” Dad said. “You do the dishes one week and Betsy can do them the next.”

  “Okay. But she starts this week.” I didn’t want to have to do the spaghetti dishes.

  “We’ll flip a coin.” Dad fished a quarter out of his pocket. “Loser washes for the first week.”

  “Okay,” I agreed reluctantly.

  Dad flipped the coin. “Your call,” he said to Betsy.

  “Heads,” she yelled.

  It landed in his hand and he slapped it down on his forearm. “Heads it is,” he announced. “Jack does the dishes.”

  “Loser,” Betsy said under her breath.

  “People can be arrested for using children as slave labor,” I mumbled, but nobody paid any attention to me.

  While they finished dinner I put together a plan. I started to eat very slowly. Before long, everyone had finished eating and excused themselves, but I still had food on my plate. I drank my water slowly. I buttered another piece of bread. I helped myself to more spaghetti.

  When Betsy walked by, I said, “This sure is good spaghetti.”

  “What a pig you are,” she shot back. “Look at you. People are starving all over the world and you eat not because you need to but just because you like the taste of it.”

  When I finished that plate I served myself another. I looked at my watch. An hour had gone by. Mom and Betsy hadn’t lifted a finger in the kitchen. I served myself a third, then a fourth plate. I will eat all night long if I have to. When they get up for breakfast, I’ll still be sitting here, eating. By then, they’ll clean up the kitchen just because they can’t stand to see it so messy.

  But after a few more bites I couldn’t eat any more. I pushed myself away from the table and staggered into the living room.

  “I don’t feel so good,” I said to Mom. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

  “It’s no wonder you feel sick,” she replied. “You just ate four plates of spaghetti.”

  “I hope you heave all over yourself,” Betsy sneered.

  “I hope I heave on you,” I replied, then dashed down the hall and into the bathroom. I leaned over the toilet and threw up. It looked like bloody worms. I flushed the toilet and moaned loudly.

  “Mom, I don’t think I can do the dishes,” I said when she checked on me.

  “You know as well as I do that you made yourself sick,” she said. “Now, make sure you clean up your mess, and then do the dishes. And no more of your nonsense.”

  As I washed the dishes I began to sing about the hills being alive with music. But instead of making me crazy, it gave me the perfect idea. I finished the dishes in record time, got dressed in my grubby clothes, and snuck out of the house. I grabbed a trash bag from the utility room and walked down to the drive-in theater. There was a hole cut in the chain-link fence and I slipped through just as the von Trapp family ran a forty-yard dash and sang without breathing hard.

  There were bottles and cans just below all the car windows. I had to move quickly. I didn’t want to be missed at home. I darted between the cars and picked up the cans and searched through the garbage bin until I had two dollars’ worth. The bag was so full it wouldn’t fit through the hole in the fence, so I had to unload half of it and then reload it on the other side. Then I ran home.

  I woke late and had to ride like a maniac so I could be on time to roll the tin policeman into the middle of the road. I was out of breath but excited. I had enough money in cans and bottles to buy the canary. Still, it bothered me what Donna had said about the chicken bone, so I checked on my grave. A dog had dug it up and there were feathers and a piece of dried-up bird leg next to the ripped-open bag. I felt good knowing that Donna was wrong and I was right. But I felt bad about Victor and reburied him.

  At lunchtime, Mrs. Marshall asked me to stay behind. “I’m sorry to tell you this,” she said sternly, “but I’m taking back your Safety Patrol badge.”

  “Why?”

  “Donna said you weren’t doing a good job. Said you were spending your time talking to someone in a house trailer. She wants to rejoin and I’m giving the badge back to her. She’s never caused me a bit of trouble and I can see that you aren’t cut out for the job.”

  I turned and walked out of the room. I knew I was being disrespectful, but I didn’t care. I rode my bike home as hard as I could. If I see Donna in the street, I thought, I’ll flatten her. I’ll call her a liar and then I’ll run her over.

  I didn’t have time to eat lunch. I grabbed my bag of cans and bottles and took them to the Piggly Wiggly supermarket and redeemed them for two dollars. Then I went next door to Woolworth’s and bought the canary. It seemed very happy in its cardboard cage and chirped all th
e way home. I put it in my room and raced to school. I made it back just in time. Still, Mrs. Marshall gave me a dirty look as I took my seat.

  After school, I went home and got the bird. Suddenly, I was nervous. I didn’t know if the old lady wanted another bird. If she didn’t, I’d have to talk Mom into keeping it or tell Woolworth’s the bird had a disease, like beak rot, and they’d have to give me my money back. I put the cage in my bike basket and headed for Donna’s corner.

  She was dragging the policeman across the road.

  “Thanks a lot for telling Mrs. Marshall I was doing a lousy job,” I said.

  “You should be mad at yourself for hanging around that old nut,” she said right back.

  “I can do anything I feel like doing. Any time I feel like doing it.”

  “You aren’t going to give that old witch a bird, are you?” she asked, rolling her eyes.

  “Mind your own business.”

  “She’ll probably cook it.”

  “I wish she’d cook you.”

  “You’re weird,” Donna said, matter-of-factly. “You know I could arrest you.”

  “That badge doesn’t mean a thing. It’s fake. A real policeman would laugh at you.” I reached out and tried to snatch it off her belt. I wanted to jump up and down on it, but she stepped back.

  “Look out,” she barked and dropped into a crouch. “I know karate.” She struck a fighting pose and hissed like a snake.

  “You don’t scare me,” I said. “You or your badge.”

  I turned away and crossed the street. I knocked on the old lady’s door, and when she opened it, I gave her the bird.