Henry and the Paper Route

by Beverly Cleary

  “Swell.” Murph was visibly relieved. He removed the Journal bag, pulled the route book out of his hip pocket, and handed both to Henry. Then he began to speak eagerly, as if he wanted to make up for what he had done. “I’ll have to put Thorvo away for a while until I figure out how to earn some money for parts, and if you still want to go ahead with that private telephone I have most of the stuff we would need. And we wouldn’t even have to go to the library to find out how to do it, because I already know how to build one.”

  “You do!” exclaimed Henry. “Hey, that’s swell!” A genius was going to be a pretty good person to have around the neighborhood after all.

  “Maybe we can get started Saturday,” said Murph, as he started to leave. “You’ll be pretty busy with the route after school.”

  “That’s right. My route will take up a lot of my time,” agreed Henry. “So long. See you Saturday.” Stunned by his sudden good fortune, Henry continued to stand on the driveway in a daze. He had a paper route, and all because of Ramona, but somehow he could not quite believe it. In spite of the bag and the route book in his hands, his good luck did not seem real.

  The next day at school, in order to convince himself that his route was real, Henry mentioned it every time he got a chance. When school was finally out, he went straight to Mr. Capper’s garage, where he enjoyed being one of the gang at last. Even more, he enjoyed starting out with the heavy bag of papers over his shoulders. The route was real, all right.

  Henry had not gone far, however, when he saw something that made him pause. Ramona was sitting on the curb, with her feet in the gutter and her hands folded in her lap. She was no longer wearing the sunglasses, and Beezus was nowhere in sight. “Hello there, Ramona,” said Henry. In a roundabout way he had her to thank for the route.

  “Hello, Henry,” said Ramona demurely.

  I don’t see what Murph was so bothered about, Henry told himself, and went on delivering papers. Ramona continued to sit on the curb like a good girl. She just wants to watch, thought Henry, feeling grown-up and businesslike. Since she wasn’t wearing her sunglass frames, she had probably forgotten all about pretending she was a paperboy. He grinned at the thought of Murph’s being intimidated by a little girl who sat on the curb with her hands folded in her lap.

  Cheerfully Henry rode into the next street, but as he tossed papers he began to have an uneasy feeling that something was wrong. Ramona had been too good. It was not natural. She must be up to something.

  Just to be on the safe side, Henry circled the block so that he was riding up Ramona’s street once more. And there was Ramona skipping along the sidewalk, with her arms full of the papers he had just delivered. She was tossing them wherever she felt like letting them fall.

  That Ramona! I might have known, Henry told himself. “Hey, cut that out!” he yelled furiously.

  Ramona tossed a paper onto a lawn—the wrong lawn. Henry took off after her. When he reached her he let his bicycle fall to the sidewalk while he grabbed at the papers Ramona was clutching. “You give me those,” Henry said fiercely.

  “No!” screamed Ramona. “I’m going to deliver them!”

  Henry knew what was going to happen next. He had seen it all before, only the first time he had thought it funny. Where was Beezus, anyway? She might know what to do. Henry jerked the papers away from Ramona, who threw herself on the sidewalk exactly as he had expected. This is where I came in, thought Henry grimly.

  Ramona shrieked and grabbed his ankle with both hands. Henry tried to shake her loose, but she hung on.

  “Beezus!” Henry yelled. “Beezus, come here!” Faces began to appear at the windows, and Henry felt extremely foolish and not at all businesslike to be standing there yelling for a girl to come and help him. Ribsy, who had been left at home so that he would not get into fights with dogs along the route, came running down the street at the sound of Henry’s voice.

  Beezus ran out of her house. “Ramona Geraldine Quimby!” She sounded completely exasperated. “You’re supposed to be in the house. You know Mother said you had to stay in your room.”

  Ribsy barked furiously.

  “I’m a paperboy,” said Ramona stubbornly.

  “Get her off my ankle, will you?” said Henry. Tackled by a four-year-old, with the whole neighborhood watching! Henry felt a flash of sympathy for Murph.

  Ribsy grabbed Ramona’s coveralls in his teeth. There was a sound of tearing cloth. Ramona screamed.

  “Ribsy, cut that out!” Henry ordered. Now people would probably think Ribsy was a ferocious dog attacking Ramona, and there was no telling what trouble that could lead to.

  Beezus pried Ramona’s fingers from Henry’s ankle and started dragging her sister toward home.

  “Quiet, Ribsy!” Henry said to his barking dog. “It’s all right, fellow. She wasn’t really hurting me.”

  “I’m sorry, Henry,” Beezus apologized above her sister’s howls. “I don’t know what we can do. (Ramona, be quiet!) Mother says she has to stay in her room until the papers are delivered, but if she doesn’t get out one day, she gets out the next.”

  “We’ve got to do something,” said Henry desperately. “I can’t have people phoning complaints about not getting their papers all the time. I’ll lose my route. Can’t you think of something?”

  “I’ve tried,” answered Beezus. “The trouble is, when Ramona knows we don’t want her to do something, that just makes her want to do it all the more. Mother says she is just plain contrary.”

  “Yeah, I know,” said Henry gloomily as he looked at Ramona, who had stopped screaming and was listening with interest. Suddenly the sight of Ramona looking so pleased to be the center of attention made Henry angry. Who did she think she was, anyway? She wasn’t so important. She was just a girl who went to nursery school and played in a sandpile; that was all. She wasn’t going to get him into trouble. He was eleven years old and she was only four. If he couldn’t figure out a way to keep her from bothering him, he wasn’t very smart. Maybe he wasn’t a genius, but he was still smarter than a four-year-old. If she continued her game, and of course she would unless he did something about it, he would get into as much trouble as Murph had. And Henry had no intention of going to Mr. Capper the first thing and saying he couldn’t deliver the papers because of a girl who went to nursery school. No, sir!

  Henry glared at Ramona and thought hard. The thing to do was to outwit her. But how? He had done it once when she had pretended she was a monkey and he would have to do it again. He could get some old papers and fold them and let her deliver them. No, that wouldn’t work. People would pick them up and think he had delivered old papers. Somehow, he had to keep her from pretending she was a paperboy. He could…What could he do? And all at once Henry had an inspiration. If only he had enough time….

  Henry looked at his watch. The papers did not have to be delivered until six o’clock. That would give him just about half an hour to see if his idea would work before he finished his route. All he needed was a box, some wire, a pair of scissors, and some red paint—no, his mother’s lipstick would be quicker—and a few other things.

  “Beezus, you hang on to Ramona,” he directed. “I’ll be back in half an hour. No matter what happens, don’t let her get away.”

  Ramona looked fascinated. She could hardly wait to see what was going to happen.

  “Henry, what are you going to do?” Beezus called after him.

  “You’ll see,” answered Henry mysteriously. “Come on, Ribsy!”

  Henry rode home as fast as he could, and when he got there he worked fast. He had to, if he was going to finish his idea in time to deliver his papers. Scraps of cardboard and bits of Scotch tape fell to the floor, but Henry did not bother to pick them up. There wasn’t time. At last, and not a moment too soon, his creation was finished.

  Henry’s creation consisted of a cardboard hatbox with a wire coat hanger fastened upside down to the top. In one side of the box he had cut holes for eyes and a mouth. These he had outli
ned with lipstick, because Ramona said she liked red eyes. Henry set the hatbox over his head and looked into the mirror. Not bad, he thought, not bad at all. Really gruesome. Of course it was pretty crude, but a girl who could pretend that a jumping rope was a monkey’s tail would not be too particular.

  “Goodness, Henry!” exclaimed Mrs. Huggins, as Henry dashed through the living room. “You scared me!”

  Henry did not stop to talk. He rode as fast as he could to the Quimbys’ house, where Beezus and Ramona were waiting on the front steps.

  “Henry!” exclaimed Beezus, when she saw his cardboard head. “Are you getting ready for Halloween?”

  “Nope,” said Henry, as he lifted off his head and held it out to Ramona. “How would you like to be a mechanical man like Thorvo?” he asked, and held his breath as he waited to see if Ramona liked his suggestion.

  Ramona beamed. There was nothing she liked better than pretending.

  Henry relaxed and set the head on her shoulders. “Now remember,” he cautioned. “A mechanical man can’t move very fast, and he jerks along when he walks.” That was to keep her from getting any ideas about being a robot who delivered papers.

  “Clank, clank,” answered Ramona, jerking down the steps.

  “A mechanical man can’t bend at the waist, because he doesn’t have any,” Henry added.

  “Clank,” answered Ramona.

  Henry and Beezus exchanged a look of relief. His route was safe! Henry could see that Beezus was impressed with his idea. And it was pretty smart of him to think of it, Henry thought modestly. Maybe he wasn’t a genius like Murph, but he wasn’t so dumb, either. In some ways he was even smarter than Murph. Henry found himself pleased with the thought of being smarter than a genius.

  “Henry, what a wonderful idea!” Beezus sounded truly grateful. “Now she will be lots easier to chase.”

  Henry grinned. “Well, so long,” he said, and mounted his bicycle. “I’ve got to get on with my route.” His route. Henry felt like shouting the words so the whole world could hear them, because at last he was doing what he wanted to do—something important. And on Saturday he and Murph would start building their own private telephone line. Good old Murph! It was lucky he had moved into the neighborhood. Life, Henry discovered, was suddenly so full of interesting things to do that he rode his bicycle through a pile of autumn leaves in the gutter just for the joy of hearing them crackle.

  “Clank, clank!” Ramona yelled after him.

  “Clank, clank!” answered Henry.

  About the Author

  BEVERLY CLEARY is one of America’s most popular authors. Born in McMinnville, Oregon, she lived on a farm in Yamhill until she was six and then moved to Portland. After college, as the children’s librarian in Yakima, Washington, she was challenged to find stories for non-readers. She wrote her first book, HENRY HUGGINS, in response to a boy’s question, “Where are the books about kids like us?”

  Mrs. Cleary’s books have earned her many prestigious awards, including the American Library Association’s Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, presented in recognition of her lasting contribution to children’s literature. Her DEAR MR. HENSHAW was awarded the 1984 John Newbery Medal, and both RAMONA QUIMBY, AGE 8 and RAMONA AND HER FATHER have been named Newbery Honor Books. In addition, her books have won more than thirty-five statewide awards based on the votes of her young readers. Her characters, including Henry Huggins, Ellen Tebbits, Otis Spofford, and Beezus and Ramona Quimby, as well as Ribsy, Socks, and Ralph S. Mouse, have delighted children for generations. Mrs. Cleary lives in coastal California.

  Visit Henry Huggins and all of his friends in The World of Beverly Cleary at www.beverlycleary.com.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Enjoy all of Beverly Cleary’s books

  FEATURING RAMONA QUIMBY:

  Beezus and Ramona

  Ramona the Pest

  Ramona the Brave

  Ramona and Her Father

  Ramona and Her Mother

  Ramona Quimby, Age 8

  Ramona Forever

  Ramona’s World

  FEATURING HENRY HUGGINS:

  Henry Huggins

  Henry and Beezus

  Henry and Ribsy

  Henry and the Paper Route

  Henry and the Clubhouse

  Ribsy

  FEATURING RALPH MOUSE:

  The Mouse and the Motorcycle

  Runaway Ralph

  Ralph S. Mouse

  MORE GREAT FICTION BY BEVERLY CLEARY:

  Ellen Tebbits

  Otis Spofford

  Fifteen

  The Luckiest Girl

  Jean and Johnny

  Emily’s Runaway Imagination

  Sister of the Bride

  Mitch and Amy

  Socks

  Dear Mr. Henshaw

  Muggie Maggie

  Strider

  Two Times the Fun

  AND DON'T MISS BEVERLY CLEARY’S AUTOBIOGRAPHIES:

  A Girl from Yamhill

  My Own Two Feet

  Credits

  Jacket art by Tracy Dockray

  Jacket design by Amy Ryan

  Copyright

  HENRY AND THE PAPER ROUTE. Copyright © 1957, renewed 1985 by Beverly Cleary. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub © Edition SEPTEMBER 2009 ISBN: 9780061972225

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