by Raymond Bean
“Justin, do you really think Thanksgiving is about honesty? After all the Thanksgiving lessons you’ve learned in first, second, and third grade, you honestly think it’s about honesty?”
I had a feeling she knew I was messing with her.
“I do,” I bluffed.
“Please, tell us how Thanksgiving is all about honesty,” Mrs. Cliff encouraged.
It was clear she was messing with me, and she’d picked the wrong day because I had nothing to lose. I was already grounded, Mom and Dad were already super mad at me, and Mrs. Cliff was still holding a grudge from the mouse incidents.
“Thanksgiving is the holiday where we celebrate honesty because the Pilgrims stole the turkeys and all the land from the Native Americans. The Native Americans signed a contract saying they would let the Pilgrims stay on their land for a bunch of pots and stuff. Then the Pilgrims stole all the land and the Native Americans had to sell all their stuff and walk to Florida or something. Today we try to remember the importance of always being honest because of that first Thanksgiving in Florida.”
The class fell completely silent. No one knew what to make of my confusing speech. I was signing my own death warrant. I understood that. Mrs. Cliff was set to explode, but she didn’t. She called on someone else and ignored me. I knew it was some kind of knew strategy she must have read about in one of her teacher magazines.
After asking a few other kids what Thanksgiving meant to them, she calmed a little and said, “Thanksgiving isn’t about honesty, Justin. But your indifference and misunderstanding of the holiday’s true meaning is both alarming and inspirational. You’ve given me an idea. I think we should research the holiday and decide for ourselves what we think the true meaning of Thanksgiving is to each of us.”
“No need,” I said. “I think we’d all like to hear what the meaning of Thanksgiving is from you, Mrs. Cliff.”
“That’s the thing. There are some things I can’t teach, Justin, and this is one of them. You kids are going to have to roll up your sleeves and find the true meaning of Thanksgiving for yourselves.”
It felt like all the kids were giving me dirty looks. I think someone behind me may have even growled.
6
A Hundred Years
Mrs. Cliff handed out a sheet at the end of the day for us to complete at home. We each had to find ten new things about Thanksgiving for homework. When I got home, I went on the computer. I couldn’t find anything that I didn’t already know about Thanksgiving, so I made some things up. I put the paper back in my bag and played with my snakes.
Thankfully, I had them safely in their tanks when Mom walked into my room.
“What did I do now?” I asked.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” she said. “Mrs. Cliff just called to say you were being a bit difficult in class today. I feel like that’s the way it’s been around here lately. I don’t understand why you’ve been getting in so much trouble. Is something bothering you?”
“Yes,” I said.
“What is it?”
“School. I can’t stand it. Mrs. Cliff is the worst. Can’t you call the principal and tell her you want me moved to Mrs. Fiesta’s class?”
“Mrs. Cliff is not the worst, and you need to take a long, hard look in the mirror, young man. You walk around blaming your mistakes on your teacher and your sisters, and I don’t hear you taking any blame.”
“I haven’t done anything,” I protested.
“Who let the class pet out of the tank last month?”
“Yeah, but...”
“No buts. Who let the mouse out of the tank?”
“Me.”
“Whose snake ate the mouse when you took the tank home for the weekend?”
“Mine.”
“And who scanned everything in the store at the supermarket and cost his mother and father thousands of dollars?”
“I get it,” I said. “But I didn’t mean any of those things. They just kind of happened. I don’t want to be in trouble.”
“Good. I don’t think you want to be in trouble, but you need to start thinking about the things you do. Sometimes I honestly don’t know what goes through your head.”
“That makes two of us, but I’m telling you, Mrs. Cliff doesn’t like me.”
“Maybe she doesn’t like the way you’re behaving and the choices you’re making. It’s not you she doesn’t like, it’s what you’re doing. Start behaving better, and you won’t have as many issues with her.”
“I’ll try, but she definitely hates me,” I said confidently.
Mom’s phone buzzed, and she checked her e-mail. “Oh, it’s Aunt Veronica. Darwin can’t wait to come and spend some time with his best cousin. They’ll be here on Sunday, November eighteenth.”
“We have school until the twenty-first. Does that mean I don’t have to go to school on the days they’re here?”
“No, you have to go to school. It should be a lot of fun having them here. You haven’t spent time with Darwin in a long time.”
“I don’t know him at all. We hung out once when I was little, and I haven’t seen him since.”
“You two are going to have a blast! I want you to promise me you won’t give him a hard time about his breath and you won’t say a word about how much money we spent for Thanksgiving. If your aunt knows what happened at the store, she’ll feel terrible.”
“I won’t say anything about the money, but can you please make Darwin brush his teeth?”
“He brushes his teeth, Justin. He was only kidding when he told you he doesn’t.”
“I don’t know. You didn’t have to sleep with him. I could live to be a hundred years old, and I’ll never forget that stench.”
7
Gotcha
The next day in class, everyone shared their facts about Thanksgiving. I was thankful Mrs. Cliff didn’t collect the lists because I hadn’t written anything down that made any sense. I held my paper close to my chest so no one could see it.
Kids mentioned some things I never knew about Thanksgiving. Cameron said that the kids weren’t allowed to sit during the meal at the first Thanksgiving and they had to stand while the adults ate. May shared that they didn’t use utensils like forks, that they probably just used their hands or a shell to eat. Karen said she’d read online that people were very dirty in those days and would wipe their hands on long tablecloths.
Mrs. Cliff made a list on the easel. “This list is looking great. We’ll keep it posted and add to it as we learn new things about Thanksgiving. Also, we are going to start planning today for our Thanksgiving feast on November twenty-first. I’ve decided that we’ll have a great big feast and invite all of your parents and younger brothers and sisters to join us. This way it will give us a better feeling of what that first Thanksgiving might have felt like.”
May raised her hand.
“Yes, May?” Mrs. Cliff asked.
“Can we dress up like Native Americans and Pilgrims?”
I was surprised by how many kids in the class seemed to want to dress up. I raised my hand, and Mrs. Cliff called on me.
“I think we’re too old to get dressed up,” I said.
“I love the idea,” Mrs. Cliff said. “Let’s put it to a vote.”
The only two people to vote against dressing up were Howard Lofegh and me. After Howard saw that we were the only two voting against it, he changed his vote.
“All right, it’s decided. We’ll be dressing for our feast,” Mrs. Cliff declared. “I think it would be a hoot to make our own costumes and make some for the parents as well.”
The class cheered. I don’t know what it was about me that didn’t feel excited about dressing up, but I was clearly the only one. Everyone else thought it was the coolest thing ever.
Later in the day, we spent about an hour working on our mousetraps. My group’s was actually pretty good. I was the most into it, and the group basically let me do what I wanted. I looked at a bunch of different safe traps online and decid
ed on a setup where the mouse gets stuck in its own tank.
The plan was to use a yardstick and angle it so the mouse could climb up the stick and onto the top of its tank. I brought in a screen from one of my old cages and cut a hole in the top. The plan was to place a thin cloth over the hole and put a small piece of cheese in the middle of the cloth. If all went right, the mouse would walk up the yardstick, scurry across the screen, and go for the cheese. When it stepped onto the cloth, it would fall through the hole and be right back in the tank. My group loved my idea. They were pretty smart.
“That won’t work,” Karen said when we presented our idea to the class.
“Of course it will. It’s perfect,” I argued.
“Won’t the mouse be able to just climb right back out the hole if it’s foolish enough to fall in?”
“Nope, because the hole is in the middle of the screen. We’ll take out anything that would allow the mouse to climb up on the sides and get back out of the hole.”
“What if it breaks its neck falling through the hole?” May asked.
“What are you talking about? It’s a mouse. They can fall from really high places and they’re fine.”
That’s when I realized that May and Karen were trying to make my idea look bad because they wanted to win.
“I think it’s a fine idea, Justin,” Mrs. Cliff said. “Your group did a great job. It’s nice to see you putting such effort into something.”
A few other groups shared their ideas, which were pretty bad and probably wouldn’t catch the hungriest mouse in the world with the last crumb on the planet. The only other trap that seemed like it might work was from Karen and May’s group. They used a plastic container turned upside down. It was propped up on one side by a small stick. Attached to the stick was a string, and on the end of the string was a piece of fruit.
“The mouse will nibble on the fruit, and if he pulls on the string at all, the stick will fall over, and the whole container will trap the mouse inside,” May explained.
“It won’t work,” I said.
“Why not?” Karen asked.
“Because it was your idea,” I said.
“Justin, that’s enough,” Mrs. Cliff said, and made me apologize. “We will find out in the morning, won’t we?”
She instructed everyone to set up the traps carefully before we packed up to go home for the day. Looking around the room, I was pretty confident we were going to win.
There were no mice in any of the traps until the end of the week. Then on Friday when we came in, there was a mouse in my trap, a mouse in Karen and May’s trap, and one in the custodian’s trap. I imagined all the mice running wild the night before, having a grand old time until they were snagged in our traps. I felt a little sorry for them, but Mrs. Cliff and the principal were super excited. That put the number of baby mice at seven, minus Calamity, of course.
Before we went home for the weekend, we set the traps again because we were pretty sure there were a few more babies running wild in the classroom. I really wanted to catch Myrtle since I was the one who let her loose in the first place.
8
No Justice
Saturday morning, Mom and I were eating breakfast, and she was looking through my backpack.
“Oh, you didn’t tell me you’re having a Thanksgiving feast at school.”
“We just found out about it. Mrs. Cliff wants us and you to dress like Native Americans or Pilgrims.”
“Which are we?”
“She’s going to tell us on the day of the feast. I’m thinking I should probably stay home with my favorite cousin, Darwin.”
Becky walked in and grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl. “You mean Cousin Yuck Mouth?”
“Becky, that’s terrible!” Mom said.
I couldn’t believe it—Becky was about to get in trouble instead of me for a change. I waited for Mom to hand out the punishment.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re not going to punish her for calling Darwin ‘Yuck Mouth’?”
“You were the one who came up with that name in the first place,” Mindy said, walking in and opening the fridge.
“Justin!” Mom exclaimed. “How could you use such a terrible nickname for your lovely cousin Darwin?”
“I didn’t even say anything. I might have called him that a long time ago.”
“You still do,” Becky said.
I couldn’t believe how much the girls got away with. They did and said whatever they wanted. Calling Darwin “Yuck Mouth” was the perfect example. Becky had been the one to call him that, but because I had once said it a few years before, I was in trouble.
9
Where’s the Pool?
The following week flew by. I didn’t get in any trouble, which was nice for a change. We didn’t catch any mice, which was frustrating, and my cousin Darwin arrived on the Sunday before Thanksgiving as planned.
Before we answered the door, Mom got us all together and said, “Please do not embarrass me and say something insensitive about Darwin. I’m sure whatever breath issues he had years ago are resolved by now.”
She opened the door. Aunt Vanessa and Darwin were standing on our porch with their suitcases. Darwin had on swimming goggles with a snorkel attached to the side. Aunt Vanessa had a huge rolling suitcase. Darwin was holding a plastic grocery bag bulging with stuff.
“Hi!” Mom said. “Come in, you two.”
Darwin looked pretty much the same as I remembered him. He was taller than me, with messy hair. He looked like he was good at sports.
“Can I go swimming?” he asked before even saying hello to all of us.
“We don’t have a pool,” I said.
“You boys can play outside,” Mom said.
“I don’t think so,” Darwin said. “Mom told me you guys had a pool.”
“Why’d you tell the boy that?” Mom asked my aunt Vanessa.
“It was the only way to get him here. He would have complained the entire way otherwise.”
“It’s November,” I said. “This is New York. It gets pretty cold up here. Even if we had a pool, it’s too cold to go in anyway.”
“Darwin isn’t the best in geography,” Aunt Vanessa said.
“You didn’t know that it gets cold in November in New York?” Becky asked.
“Becky,” Mom warned. “Why don’t you help show Aunt Vanessa to the guest room, and Justin can show Darwin to his room.”
“He’s staying with me?” I asked, surprised.
“Yes, Justin. It will be like a sleepover party.”
“I hope you like snakes,” I said. “Because I have two of the coolest snakes in the world.”
“I live in Florida. We have snakes that can kill you in our backyard,” Darwin said.
“That’s awesome!”
“You have a snake in the house?” Aunt Vanessa asked, sounding concerned.
“I have two,” I said.
“Take Darwin to your room,” Mom directed. “The girls and I will get Aunt Vanessa settled in. Darwin, we’re so happy you and your mom are here to join us for Thanksgiving.” She reached out to give him a hug.
He leaned in to hug her back and said, “It’s good to be here. You guys are the only cousins I have.”
When he said it, Mom must have gotten a whiff of his breath, because she looked like she’d just opened the door to a barn full of manure on a hot day.
“Oh my,” she said.
“What is it, Mom?” I asked, grinning. The girls were grinning too.
“I’m so happy to have your cousin here at last,” she said, turning her head away from him and pretending to cough in her arm. “Take him up to your room now.”
“Is that a tear in your eye?” I asked.
“I’m just feeling sentimental,” Mom said, wiping at her face.
10
Eat It
When we got to my room, Darwin plopped his stuff down on my bed and said, “What do you
want to do?”
“We could go in the woods and look for snakes and stuff,” I suggested.
“Cool.” We walked out the back door and followed the trail into the woods. “This is pretty cool,” he said. “Are there any alligators?”
“No, we don’t have alligators in New York. It’s pretty cold this time of year, so I don’t usually find much back here. But in the summer, I find all kinds of cool critters.”
“Where I live, it’s warm all the time. There’s a swamp behind our house, and we have a couple of alligators in it.”
“That’s awesome. Do you ever see them?”
“Yeah, check it out,” he said, holding out his phone to show me the pictures of the alligators. “You should come visit us sometime. It’s pretty cool where we live. We’ve got real snakes that can kill you. You’d love it.”
We flipped over a bunch of rocks and climbed a few trees, but didn’t find anything cool. Justin saw a chipmunk, and we chased a few squirrels. We were high in a tree when we heard it.
“What was that?” Darwin asked. We were about twenty feet up, and something on the ground made a noise like bubbling water.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, wondering what could have made the noise.
“Maybe it’s Bigfoot,” Darwin said.
I laughed because I thought he was kidding, but from the look on his face, he was being serious. “There’s no such thing as Bigfoot,” I said.
“Yeah, there is. I’ve seen her.”
“You’ve seen Bigfoot? And it’s a girl?”
“Yep,” he said. “I was out one morning looking for lizards when—”
“Stop,” I interrupted, pointing to a large patch of tall grass and bushes. “Look.”
“What is that?” he asked.
“I think it’s a turkey.”
We sat there staring at it for a few minutes, when he finally said, “Let’s get it.”
