What Would Joey Do?

by Jack Gantos

  “Where have you been?” she asked angrily. She had a broom and was sweeping up a pile of old cigarette butts Grandma had tossed into the corner behind the couch. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

  “That’s my business,” I said.

  “Well, things are going to change around here, young man.”

  “I hope so,” I said.

  “First help me drag this smelly couch outside. It stinks.”

  I grabbed one end and grunted and lifted it up over the threshold of the doorway, and Mom gave it a push, then another. I jumped out of the way, and she kept pushing until it thumped down the front steps. Then she picked up one end and heaved it onto the sidewalk. I threw the pillows from the porch.

  “So,” she started up again looking just as wild-eyed as the day she drove the broom handle through Dad’s motorcycle spokes. “Where have you been? With your father?”

  “Where have you been?” I asked right back. “With your boyfriend?”

  “He’s gone,” she said without much emotion. “Said he didn’t want to sink down to my level. Said I was bad karma, whatever that is,” she remarked. “I can’t blame him. All he wanted was a fairy-tale life, and all we gave him was a nightmare. Well, maybe it’s for the best,” she said, but her face looked disappointed.

  “And I have to do what is best for me,” I said.

  “Well, tell me,” she said with her hands on her hips, “tell me, Mister Joey P Pigza, just what is best for you?”

  “First,” I said, “I want to get back to regular school. I want to go back to Mrs. Lucchina’s class.”

  “Oh, no you don’t,” she said, shaking her head back and forth. “No. You are doing so much better at Mrs. Lapp’s.”

  “I’ve got news for you,” I said. “Mrs. Lapp kicked me out of her school. And not because of anything I did. She saw that huge scene you and Dad pitched on the front steps at Thanksgiving. After that she decided that maybe my family was too messed up and I’d be a bad influence on Olivia. And now she’s sending Olivia off to boarding school. And believe me, I wish I was going with her so I wouldn’t have to see you again.”

  “Don’t speak to me that way, young man,” she snapped. “I think you owe me an apology.”

  “Can I get back to you on that?” I blurted out, shouting the one thing she didn’t want to hear, and stomped into my room.

  “That’s right,” she hollered. “You go to your room, and you stay there and I want you to think about your behavior.”

  “That’s all I ever think about,” I yelled back. “And I’m so tired of thinking about my behavior, I’ve started to think about yours!”

  She whipped open my bedroom door. “Do me a favor,” she said angrily. “If you come up with any more ways to improve me, keep them to yourself!” Then she slammed the door so hard, Dad’s muffler fell off the wall and onto my pillow, then bounced off onto the floor. I picked it up and opened the window and threw it outside. Then I closed the window and locked it. I didn’t need a souvenir to know what it felt like to be squished between Mom and Dad.

  I undressed and carefully hung up my new clothes. I buttoned all the buttons on the shirt. I made sure the creases in the pants were perfectly lined up. I urnknotted my tie and draped it over a hanger. I bent down and used one of my socks to buff my shoes. Then I put on my pajamas and sat down on the side of my bed. I reached down to the floor and picked up my label maker and spelled out JOEY. Then I pressed it on my forehead. I turned off the lights, and when I climbed into bed, I lay down like a corpse with my hands against my sides and my feet straight out. I didn’t want to be dead. But the idea of being alone in a quiet wooden box was a pretty nice thought. It was peaceful. Then I heard Mom calling Booth on the telephone. Then I heard her calling him a “quitter” and some other worse names, then I heard the phone smashing against the wall and Pablo and Pablita running for cover. Grandma was right. He didn’t stick around once he saw what a bunch of nuts we were.

  Then I heard her open a kitchen cabinet, and the clinking of glasses. In a moment she plopped down into a chair. “I’m sorry,” she said to the dogs. “I’m not upset with you, just myself. I don’t know why I was thinking it would take a man to pull us together. I guess I was just hoping for something easy to happen around here.”

  We all were.

  14

  W.W.J.D.?

  When I woke up, I thought Grandma was alive again. The sucking sound of the wind tugging back and forth on the plastic sheeting over the front door sounded like her labored breathing. The morning light was just coming around. I rolled over and lowered my feet to the floor. Mom must have let the dogs into my room when I was sleeping because Pablo and Pablita were cuddled up on their beanbag chair.

  I tiptoed out of my room and peeked in Mom’s room. She was still asleep, and I didn’t want to wake her up. I got ready for school as quietly as possible. When I finished, I looked into the mirror. It was like a big crystal ball, and the only thing in it was me. The friendly me, I thought, with JOEY on my forehead so everyone would know my name right away.

  I patted Pablo and Pablita on their little heads. Grandma knew it all along. Pablo was a dog. Now he was a dog with a dog friend and protected by Mrs. Lapp’s D.O.G. medal, which I had snapped onto his collar. And now it was time for me to get back to my class and meet those kids who didn’t know yet what a great friend I was going to be to them.

  I poured the rest of the dog food out of my backpack into an old shoe Pablo liked to chew on, and that kept the dogs busy while I tiptoed out the back door. I walked across our yard and through the cemetery. I passed the funeral parlor on the way to school. I knew Grandma would be proud of me for doing what was best for me and nobody else. I looked up into the sky. Her big face was still smiling down on me. “This is good thing number one,” I said to her. “From now on I’m just counting good things.”

  Then I heard a motorcycle. Maybe it was Dad, maybe not. But just the growl of that motor echoing off the buildings sounded like an argument hollering back and forth at itself. I just wish Dad could shout out something good about himself sometime. Maybe that would echo back and surprise him.

  I stopped in at the Mini Mart to get a Yoo-Hoo and a muffin. I still had about a hundred dollars. I thought, After school I’m going to go to the bank and open a college fund. Grandma was right. I didn’t need to make money by being an experiment. I stood in front of the store and watched the town wake up. Lights came on in houses. I could see shadows against the curtains. Everyone had to wake up to somebody. Everyone had to wake up to themselves. And I was wondering who I might be if I didn’t have the nutty family I had. And then I realized it didn’t matter where I came from. It was where I was going that counted. And as long as I helped myself, I’d be going in the right direction.

  I looked down the sidewalk toward the school. A couple kids were raising the flag. Teachers were pulling in the driveway. The supply trucks were around back delivering food. The crossing guard was putting on her orange vest. And suddenly I saw Mom get out of a cab and start toward me.

  Her words reached me before her arms. “I knew you’d be here,” she said.

  “Where else would I be? It’s a school day,” I said.

  “Do you want me to come in with you?” she asked.

  “No,” I replied. “I know where I’m going.”

  “Well, I’ll call the principal and set everything up.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and turned away.

  “Joey, I want you to move on,” she said. “Really, I do. But you don’t have to move on without me.”

  “I know,” I said, “but I don’t want to be like you and Dad doing the same scary stuff over and over again. Dad goes in circles. You have your ups and downs, and I just want to go forward.”

  “Then give me a kiss before you blast off,” she replied. She bent down and ran her fingers under the lapels of my jacket. “You look very handsome,” she said. “Very grown up.”

  I kissed her on one cheek. “
Are you still mad at me?” I asked.

  “How could I be mad at such a handsome boy?” she said.

  I grinned. “I look like a hunk,” I whispered.

  “You’re my little hunk,” she said.

  I kissed her on the other cheek.

  Then quickly she reached out and ripped the JOEY label off my forehead.

  “Ouch!” I shouted.

  “I’m your mom,” she said. “You don’t need a label for me.”

  I kissed her again. “One question. Did you get Grandma back in the coffin?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Did you get her shoes on again?”

  “Can I get back to you on that?” she asked.

  I grinned because I liked that she was imitating me. “Okay,” I said, stepping away. “But I’ll be a little late. I have a lot of catching up to do.”

  “When you get home, I’ll order Chinese takeout.”

  “I’d like that,” I said, and took a couple more steps.

  “One more thing,” she added. “I really like Pablita. It’s great to have another girl in the house.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I like girls.” Then I turned and ran the rest of the way down the sidewalk and up the front steps. I glanced back, and she was still standing there with one hand on her hip. Then I turned and pressed my hand against the wooden door. I could feel the worn spot where so many hands had pushed against it. I liked that spot.

  “W.W.J.D.?” I asked myself.

  Then I answered. “He’d help himself. That’s just what that smart kid would do. Help himself.” I gave the door a push. I was in, and everything outside faded behind me. I was in where I belonged.

  BY JACK GANTOS

  Heads or Tails: Stories from the Sixth Grade

  Jack’s New Power: Stories from a Caribbean Year

  Desire Lines

  Jack’s Black Book

  Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key

  Jack on the Tracks: Four Seasons of Fifth Grade

  Joey Pigza Loses Control

  Hole in My Life

  What Would Joey Do?

  Jack Adrift: Fourth Grade without a Clue

  The Love Curse of the Rumbaughs

  I Am Not Joey Pigza

  Copyright © 2002 by Jack Gantos

  All rights reserved

  www.fsgkidsbooks.com

  Designed by Nancy Goldenberg

  eISBN 9780374706494

  First eBook Edition : March 2011

  First edition. 2002

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Gantos. Jack.

  What would Joey do? / Jack Gantos—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Joey tries to keep his life from degenerating into total chaos when his mother sends him to be home-schooled with a hostile blind girl. his divorced parents cannot stop fighting, and his grandmother is dying of emphysema.

  [1. Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder—Fiction. 2. Grandmothers—Fiction. 3. Family problems—Fiction. 4. Home schooling—Fiction. 5. Blind—Fiction. 6. Persons with disabilities—Fiction.] 1. Title

  PZ7.G15334 Wh 2002

  [Fic]—dc21

  The strangest things are about to happen in this small town—things involving the newly dead, molten wax, Girl Scout cookies, underage driving,

  Hells Angels, and countless bloody noses.

  Keep reading for an excerpt from another outrageously funny story from Jack Gantos

  DEAD END IN NORVELT

  1

  School was finally out and I was standing on a picnic table in our backyard getting ready for a great summer vacation when my mother walked up to me and ruined it. I was holding a pair of camouflage Japanese WWII binoculars to my eyes and focusing across her newly planted vegetable garden, and her cornfield, and over ancient Miss Volker’s roof, and then up the Norvelt road, and past the brick bell tower on my school, and beyond the Community Center, and the tall silver whistle on top of the volunteer fire department to the most distant dark blue hill, which is where the screen for the Viking drive-in movie theater had recently been erected.

  Down by my feet I had laid out all the Japanese army souvenirs Dad had shipped home from the war. He had been in the navy, and after a Pacific island invasion in the Solomons he and some other sailor buddies had blindly crawled around at night and found a bunker of dead Japanese soldiers half buried in the sand. They stripped everything military off of them and dragged the loot back to their camp. Dad had an officer’s sword with what he said was real dried blood along the razor-sharp edge of the long blade. He had a Japanese flag, a sniper’s rifle with a full ammo clip, a dented canteen, a pair of dirty white gloves with a scorched hole shot right through the bloody palm of the left hand, and a color-tinted photo of an elegant Japanese woman in a kimono. Of course he also had the powerful binoculars I was using.

  I knew Mom had come to ruin my fun, so I thought I would distract her and maybe she’d forget what was on her mind.

  “Hey, Mom,” I said matter-of-factly with the binoculars still pressed against my face, “how come blood on a sword dries red, and blood on cloth dries brown? How come?”

  “Honey,” Mom replied, sticking with what was on her mind, “does your dad know you have all this dangerous war stuff out?”

  “He always lets me play with it as long as I’m careful,” I said, which wasn’t true. In fact, he never let me play with it, because as he put it, “This swag will be worth a bundle of money someday, so keep your grubby hands off it.”

  “Well, don’t hurt yourself,” Mom warned. “And if there is blood on some of that stuff, don’t touch it. You might catch something, like Japanese polio.”

  “Don’t you mean Japanese beetles?” I asked. She had an invasion of those in her garden that were winning the plant war.

  She didn’t answer my question. Instead, she switched back to why she came to speak to me in the first place. “I just got a call from Miss Volker. She needs a few minutes of your time in the morning, so I told her I’d send you down.”

  I gazed at my mom through the binoculars but she was too close to bring into focus. Her face was just a hazy pink cupcake with strawberry icing.

  “And,” she continued, “Miss Volker said she would give you a little something for your help, but I don’t want you to take any money. You can take a slice of pie but no money. We never help neighbors for cash.”

  “Pie? That’s all I get?” I asked. “Pie? But what if it makes her feel good to give me money?”

  “It won’t make me feel good if she gives you money,” she stressed. “And it shouldn’t make you feel good either. Helping others is a far greater reward than doing it for money.”

  “Okay,” I said, giving in to her before she pushed me in. “What time?”

  Mom looked away from me for a moment and stared over at War Chief, my uncle Will’s Indian pony who was grinding his chunky yellow teeth. He was working up a sweat from scratching his itchy side back and forth against the rough bark on a prickly oak. About a month ago my uncle visited us when he got a pass from the army. He used to work for the county road department and for kicks he had painted big orange and white circles with reflective paint all over War Chief’s hair. He said it made War Chief look like he was getting ready to battle General Custer. But War Chief was only battling the paint which wouldn’t wash off, and it had been driving him crazy. Mom said the army had turned her younger brother Will from being a “nice kid” to being a “confused jerk.”

  Earlier, the pony had been rubbing himself against the barbed wire around the turkey coop, but the long-necked turkeys got all riled up and pecked his legs. It had been so long since a farrier had trimmed War Chief’s hooves that he hobbled painfully around the yard like a crippled ballerina. It was sad. If my uncle gave me the pony I’d take really good care of him, but he wouldn’t give him up.

  “Miss Volker will need you there at six in the morning,” Mom said casually, “but she said you were welcome to come earlier if you wa
nted.”

  “Six!” I cried. “I don’t even have to get up that early for school, and now I’m on my summer vacation I want to sleep in. Why does she need me so early?”

  “She said she has an important project with a deadline and she’ll need you as early as she can get you.”

  I lifted my binoculars back toward the movie. The Japanese were snaking through the low palmettos toward the last few marines on Wake Island. One of the young marines was holding a prayer book and looking toward heaven, which was a sure Hollywood sign he was about to die with a slug to a vital organ. Then the scene cut to a young Japanese soldier aiming his sniper rifle, which looked just like mine. Then the film cut back to the young marine, and just as he crossed himself with the “Father, Son, and Holy—” BANG! He clutched his heart and slumped over.

  “Yikes!” I called out. “They plugged him!”

  “Is that a war movie?” Mom asked sharply, pointing toward the screen and squinting as if she were looking directly into the flickering projector.

  “Not entirely,” I replied. “It’s more of a love war movie.” I lied. It was totally a war movie except for when the soon-to-be-dead marines talked about their girlfriends, but I threw in the word love because I thought she wouldn’t say what she said next.

  “You know I don’t like you watching war movies,” she scolded me with her hands on her hips. “All that violence is bad for you—plus it gets you worked up.”

  “I know, Mom,” I replied with as much huffiness in my voice as I thought I could get away with. “I know.”

  “Do I need to remind you of your little problem?” she asked.

  How could I forget? I was a nosebleeder. The moment something startled me or whenever I got over-excited or spooked about any little thing blood would spray out of my nose holes like dragon flames.