Burning Questions of Bingo Brown

by Betsy Byars

  “Bingo, I wish you hadn’t done that.”

  “I do too.”

  She kept watching him. “That surprises me. It’s not like you.”

  “I thought it might help me understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  “How it happened … why it happened. I didn’t even know it was going to happen.”

  “Of course you didn’t know it was going to happen. No one can predict accidents.”

  Bingo looked down at his feet. For the first time he knew what his mother meant when she said, You are so interested in yourself and your own problems that you never notice anyone else.

  “People have accidents all the time, Bingo,” his mom went on. “People are careless. Remember my wreck? A woman in Head Hunters had given me a terrible body wave, and I glanced at myself in the rearview mirror and backed straight into a telephone pole. Little things cause accidents most of the time.”

  “But not always.”

  “Bingo, you’re making too much of this. Mr. Markham was on his way home. He was tired. He went off the road.”

  Bingo pulled at his throat. “It looked like he did it on purpose.”

  “No, Bingo, no. Now, I’ve met Mr. Markham. He isn’t the type. There’s an explanation. A dog darted into the road. He swerved to avoid a car. Any number of things could have happened.”

  “Mom,” Bingo interrupted. “One time—this was last week—Mr. Mark had us write letters. And these letters were to someone who was thinking of suicide, to talk them out of it. Mr. Mark said these were the most important letters we would ever write in our lives. He said a person’s life depended on them. And Mom, what worries me, what I can’t get out of my mind—” He pulled at his throat, but this time it didn’t let him swallow. “—what I keep thinking about and thinking about is that maybe we were writing the letters to him.”

  “Oh, no, Bingo, surely not.”

  “Yes, Mom, and maybe our letters weren’t good enough. I mean, I didn’t really try, because I thought it was stupid. But if I had known I was writing to him—that it was for real—if I had known that, then I really would have tried. I mean, maybe he went off the road because all of us thought the letters were stupid and didn’t try.”

  He and his mother stared at each other across the kitchen. Then his mother came and put her arms around him. “Honey, your letters didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “How do you know?”

  The phone rang and his mother tightened her grip on him. “Bingo—”

  He turned his head toward the phone, and she put her hands on his face and turned him back. “Listen to me, Bingo.”

  “I better answer the phone.”

  “Let the phone go. I want to talk to you.”

  Bingo pulled away. “It might be for me. It might be about Mr. Mark.”

  His mother followed him to the phone, anxiously wiping her dry hands on her jeans. He picked up the phone. “Hello.”

  “Bingo, is this you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it’s me—Melissa.”

  Bingo looked up and met his mother’s worried eyes. He said, “It’s for me. You can go back to the kitchen. I’m fine.”

  His mom said, “I’ll wait.”

  Melissa said, “I tried to call Dawn.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes, I called the Nautilus and a man named Mike answered and said she wasn’t there. I said I wanted to know if Dawn had heard about Mr. Markham’s accident. Mike said, ‘Is Mr. Markham the guy on the motorcycle?’ I said, ‘Yes, he’s my teacher. Did she hear?’ Mike said, ‘She heard. That’s why she didn’t come in today.’ I said, ‘Could you please give me her home phone number?’ Mike said, ‘No, she doesn’t want anybody calling her.’ I said, ‘I hate to beg, but I have to talk to her.’ He said, ‘Well, give me your name and I’ll have her call you.’ So I gave it to him, but she hasn’t called.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’ve been sitting by the phone for two hours. She should have called by now, don’t you think? Or do you think it was just something Mike said to get rid of me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Because I’ve got to know what happened. I’ve just got to. I’m the kind of person who wants to know everything, Bingo. I’ve always been that way.”

  “Well, I did hear he’s conscious. Someone at the hospital told my mom.”

  “I heard that too. But you know what really worries me? What really worries me is him not having on his helmet, doesn’t it you?”

  Bingo said stiffly, “Yes.”

  There was a pause and then Melissa said, “Bingo, you don’t sound like yourself. Is there somebody there with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it your mom?”

  “Yes.”

  “I knew it. Listen, you want me to call you back?”

  “No, I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”

  “All right, but come early so we can talk. I better get off the phone too and give Dawn a chance to call. Bye, Bingo.”

  Bingo hung up the phone. At once his mother said, “Now, listen to me, Bingo.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Well, look at me.”

  Bingo looked up.

  “I don’t know whether your teacher went off the road on purpose or not. Maybe he did. But it was not up to you kids and your letters to stop him.”

  “But, Mom, if our letters had been really good—”

  “No! Mr. Markham was your teacher, Bingo, and you looked up to him and trusted him and that was exactly what you should have done. Your teacher betrayed you.”

  “Mom, don’t say that. He didn’t betray us.”

  “Oh, yes, he did. A person is given a wonderful gift, Bingo—life. Life! And if he throws it away—as your teacher may have tried to do—if he throws it away, he’s never going to get it back. Never! You can’t change your mind next month and say, Well, I’m tired of being dead. I think I’ll pop back into the world. It doesn’t work that way. You slam the door shut, and you’re never going to open it up again. To me, slamming that door is betrayal to everybody you slammed the door on, and it is the cruelest betrayal in the world.”

  Bingo looked at his mother. “Oh, Mom,” he said. “I wish you’d been there last week to write a letter.”

  After Lunch

  MELISSA WAS TAKING UP money for Mr. Mark’s card. “Does anybody have the right change?” she asked. “The card was ninety-nine cents, remember, so everybody owes three cents. Does anybody have exactly three cents?”

  Melissa had on her Care Bears shirt with baby-blue barrettes holding back her hair. She looked anxiously around the room.

  Bingo put up his hand.

  “Bingo, you have the right change?”

  He nodded.

  She came back to his desk, smiling. “Oh, Bingo, thanks. Now I have your three cents and my three cents so I can make change.” She picked up Bingo’s pennies and turned around. “I can make change now, everybody. I—”

  She broke off with a gasp. Boehmer was in the doorway. He said, “Am I interrupting?”

  Bingo moved behind his shield—Billy Wentworth. He was grateful for whatever protection he could get these days.

  “No, Mr. Boehmer, come in,” Miss Brownley said. “We were just taking up money for a card for Mr. Markham.”

  “I won’t take but a minute,” Mr. Boehmer said. Melissa said, “Scoot over, Bingo. I’ll sit with you.”

  “What?”

  “Scoot over.”

  Bingo couldn’t move. If he scooted over even an inch, he would be in Boehmer’s line of vision, and he’d have to scoot over a lot more than that to make room for a whole girl.

  Melissa sat down and shoved him over with her hip. He gasped.

  “I hope it’s not bad news about Mr. Mark, don’t you?” she said calmly.

  He couldn’t speak. He concentrated on making his face appear normal. He knew his face looked odd, tortured even, because this was the first time he had ever
sat beside a girl, and while he had intended to sit by girls at a later time—in front of a TV set or a movie screen—he had never planned to do it in front of Boehmer. Sweat formed on his upper lip.

  “Class,” Mr. Boehmer said, “some of your parents have been talking to me.”

  There was an audible intake of breath at this betrayal by their parents. Normally Bingo would have worried that his mother had been one of them, because she was not the type to say something like, “I don’t want to give my name, Mr. Boehmer, but—” She would say, “This is Bingo Brown’s mother, and Bingo tells me that—”

  But he had too many other things to worry about now.

  “It was probably my mom,” Melissa said to him.

  Sweat poured down Bingo’s face. His cheeks burned.

  “Your parents have the feeling that some of you—actually, many of you have questions about Mr. Markham’s accident and how he’s getting along.

  “Now, I haven’t been very good, I’m afraid, in supplying answers. So I’ve asked a friend of mine, a doctor, who’s seen Mr. Markham daily, to come in and talk to you. His name is Howard Gaston—Dr. Gaston—and he agreed to come and talk to you after lunch. You can ask him anything you want, all right?”

  “I have tons of questions, don’t you?” Melissa said.

  Bingo shrugged.

  “Well,” Mr. Boehmer said, “that’s all, class. You get back to what you were doing.”

  Mr. Boehmer went out of the room.

  “Here, I’ll leave this for you to sign,” Melissa said. She put the card in front of him and got up.

  Bingo looked down at the card. It was a long one. On the front was a bunch of bananas, and each banana had a smiling or hopeful face drawn on it. At the top were the words, The whole bunch hopes you’re feeling better. Inside was the rest of the message. And you’re back hanging around with us again soon.

  Bingo flattened the card. He was surprised he was still capable of carrying out simple tasks. He wrote his name under the freckled banana that didn’t look as hopeful as the rest.

  Bingo could not eat lunch. This was Wednesday—pizza day—and so everyone in the cafeteria except Bingo was eating happily.

  Ever since Mr. Boehmer had come in and announced that after lunch they could ask answers, Bingo had been blank. It was as if he didn’t know what questions were.

  He, the master of the question, had gone dry. He was an empty well. He had known all week that he would never again open his journal and have his pencil race across the page, writing questions one after another, so fast sometimes it skipped a the or an.

  But it was even worse than that. He couldn’t think of one single question. Not one. He would never use the question mark again.

  The bell rang, interrupting his miserable thoughts. Bingo got up. He took his tray with the untouched pizza to the counter. Then he walked back to his room.

  Dr. Gaston had arrived and was at the desk, talking to Miss Brownley. He looked too young to be a doctor.

  “Class,” Miss Brownley said when they were seated, “this is Dr. Gaston, who’s going to talk to you. Dr. Gaston, I’ll let you take over.”

  Dr. Gaston said, “Boys and girls, first let me tell the good news. Your teacher has had no brain damage whatsoever—and that is very unusual considering the speed at which he was traveling and the fact that he was not wearing a helmet.

  “So. That’s the good news. The bad news is that he has a separated shoulder, a broken collarbone, a crushed upper arm. The left leg is broken in several places, as is the right ankle. There is a crack in the seventh vertebrae. All in all, your teacher is very lucky to be alive and he knows this. Questions?”

  There was such a long pause that Bingo was afraid the whole class was in the same fix he was—no questions. The doctor was going to have to go back to the hospital and tell Mr. Markham, “They didn’t have a single question.” Mr. Markham would be disappointed in them.

  Bingo tried harder than ever to ask something.

  Miss Brownley said, “I know some of them do have questions, Dr. Gaston, but it’s like when my mother was sick, I could never think of questions to ask the doctor until I got home, and then it was too late. Oh, there’s a hand.”

  It was Melissa, of course.

  The doctor said, “Yes?”

  “Did you tell Mr. Mark you were coming here?”

  “Yes, I did. I told him I was coming to talk to you, that some of you had questions.”

  “Did you talk to Mr. Mark about the accident?”

  “We’ve discussed the accident, yes.”

  “Did he say why it happened?” Melissa asked. “Did he tell you why he went off the road?”

  Dr. Gaston shook his head.

  “Mr. Markham does not remember the time directly preceding the accident. This is not unusual in accident cases. He remembers starting home on his motorcycle. He was upset. He had been in an argument. He remembers passing the bowling alley. The next thing he remembers is waking up in the hospital twenty-four hours later.”

  There was another long pause. Billy Wentworth put up his hand.

  “Yes?”

  Billy Wentworth said carefully, “Some people went out there and looked at the place where the accident happened. These people said it looked to them like Mr. Mark went off the road on purpose.”

  The doctor said, “That is a possibility. It’s also possible that something distracted him. We have no way of knowing, and unless Mr. Markham himself remembers, we never will know.”

  Melissa’s hand was in the air again.

  “Yes?”

  “What do you think?”

  “You mean about whether the accident was deliberate or not?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t answer that because I don’t know. I wasn’t there.” The doctor paused. “I can tell you that Mr. Markham is very glad to be alive. He is in quite a bit of discomfort, and he is going to have a long recovery, but he is very glad to be alive. There’s no question about that.”

  Melissa’s hand was still in the air. “Did he tell you that in his own words?”

  “Yes. He has said it several times and there is no doubt in my mind that he means it.”

  Suddenly Bingo felt the first sense of relief he had known in days. At the same time, he leaned out of the protection of Billy Wentworth’s back. With the tentativeness of a child taking a first step, Bingo raised his hand.

  “Yes?”

  “Did he say for you to tell us anything? Did he send us a message?” Not just one question, two!

  “Oh, yes, I’m glad you reminded me.” Dr. Gaston felt his pockets until he heard the rustle of paper. He took out a sheet of paper and unfolded it.

  He read:

  “Gang. Assignment. Imagine that your favorite teacher is in the hospital. He is lucky to be alive and he knows it. You don’t have to convince him of anything. Just write and let him know how you are.

  “Mr. Mark”

  The Lottery and the Prize

  MISS BROWNLEY STOOD IN front of the room with a shoe box. In the box were thirty-three slips of paper with names on them. After Miss Brownley shook the box, she was going to draw out two names. Those two people would get to go with her to the hospital on Saturday to visit Mr. Mark.

  There was an air of excitement and hope at every desk except Bingo’s. Bingo knew his name would not be picked. He had never been chosen for anything in his life.

  Miss Brownley put the top on the shoe box and shook it. She lifted the lid and, without looking, reached inside.

  Bingo leaned around Billy Wentworth to watch the proceedings.

  Miss Brownley pulled one slip out. “The first name is—” She read it to herself and smiled.

  “Melissa.”

  Over the groans of disappointment was Melissa’s gasp of delight. “I didn’t think I’d get picked. I really didn’t,” she said. “I just can’t believe I got it.” She collapsed in her seat with pleasure.

  “Lucky!” Harriet said.

 
Miss Brownley shook the box again. Then she reached in and pulled out a second slip. “The second name is—” She unfolded it, turned it around, read it and smiled.

  That smile told Bingo it wasn’t his name. He got ready to groan with the rest of them.

  “Bingo.”

  She said the word the way it’s said at bingo parlors when someone’s a winner. She sounded as if she was genuinely glad he was going.

  He said, “Me?”

  “Yes, Bingo, you and Melissa will be going with me on Saturday. I’ll get in touch with your moms.”

  When the buzz of disappointment had died, Bingo glanced across the room at Melissa. She was looking at him, smiling so brightly it was dazzling.

  Billy Wentworth turned around in his seat. “Come over Saturday when you get back and tell me about it.”

  “I will.”

  “Next week we’ll draw two more names,” Miss Brownley said, “and we’ll keep on doing this until everybody has had a chance to go to the hospital to see Mr. Markham, or until Mr. Markham is well enough to come see you.”

  Bingo was sitting on the front steps, waiting, when Miss Brownley pulled into his driveway that Saturday in her Toyota. Melissa was beside her on the front seat.

  “They’re here, Mom,” he called quickly. “I’m going. Bye.”

  Bingo ran across the lawn so he could get away before his mom came out—that was why he was on the steps in the first place—but she was too fast for him. She passed him at the azalea bushes.

  “This is a very nice thing for you to do,” she told Miss Brownley. Bingo got in the back seat.

  “Oh, I wanted to do it,” Miss Brownley said. “This has been hard for the kids, and I think it will help them to have Bingo and Melissa tell about seeing Mr. Markham. I was glad they were chosen, because they are good communicators.”

  To hide his pleasure and embarrassment, Bingo glanced out the car window. He saw Billy Wentworth standing at his living room window. Bingo waved but Billy stepped quickly out of sight, the way he himself had done when he was—might as well be truthful—spying.

  Miss Brownley started the car and Bingo’s mother called, “Behave yourself, Bingo.”

  Bingo knew his mom was going to say something like that. What did she think he was going to do—run up and down the hall, disturbing sick people? Turn over wheelchairs? Couldn’t she just once—