Leon and the Champion Chip

by Allen Kurzweil

  “Non.”

  “Cousin Ray’s Low-Fat Kosher Dill Pickle Delights?”

  “Non.”

  “Furtles Double Crunchers?”

  “Non.”

  “Okay, already. I give up!”

  Napoleon ended the guessing game by tossing the source of the crinkling into the backseat.

  “Wow!” Leon exclaimed as soon as he saw the label. “Pinocchio Sour Cream and Clam Artificially Flavored Ripple Potato Chips! Where’d you get these?”

  “A passenger,” said Napoleon. “I’ve been saving them for a special moment.”

  “I have sixteen or seventeen sour creams,” said Leon, “but this is my first clam.” He turned the package over to see where it was made. “Dynamite! They’re from Maine!”

  “Is that good, Monsieur Leon?”

  “Better than good,” said Leon. “I don’t have a single bag from Maine.” He inspected the package closely. “Listen to this poem. ‘Nobody tires of Pinocchio fryers. / If folks say they do? / Well, we say they’re liars!’”

  “We should find out if that is so,” Napoleon proposed.

  “You read my mind,” said Leon as he gently pulled apart the bag’s heat-sealed seam, careful to minimize damage.

  The taxi quickly filled with the distinctive odor of clam.

  Leon reached forward with the open bag. “Care to do the honors?”

  “Mon dieu,” Napoleon exclaimed, waving a hand in front of his nose before rolling down the window.

  “I’ll take that as a no,” said Leon, helping himself to a clam chip.

  Within seconds he was rolling down his window. “Yuck!” he cried, spitting out the chip. “They taste even worse than they smell—not that I’m complaining. My first clam and my first Maine all in a single bag? That’s one fine twofer!”

  “Does that mean I win the challenge, Monsieur Leon?”

  “I guess so.”

  As Napoleon adjusted the needle on the moodometer to five, Leon realized that potato chips had almost made him forget the botched turbowedgie, the trash can, the teasing, the taunts, and the tripping. Potato chips had almost made him forget Lumpkin. Almost.

  But not quite.

  SEVEN

  The Collection

  As soon as the taxi dropped him off, Leon spun through the revolving door (twice) and headed for the elevator.

  He didn’t make it.

  Maria, the Trimore Towers housekeeper, blocked his path. “Not so fast, Leonito. Where you running?”

  “Upstairs,” said Leon. “I just got a twofer.”

  “Sorry, that twofer, she must wait. Your mother wants to see you.”

  “All right,” Leon sighed before he made his way to the reception desk.

  “Hey there, sweetie,” said Emma Zeisel. “How was school?”

  “Fine,” Leon answered, figuring the less said, the better. “Look what Napoleon gave me.” He showed off the twofer.

  “Clam chips?” said Emma Zeisel dubiously.

  “Yup—plus they’re from Maine.”

  “Does that mean you’ve polished off New England?”

  “Almost,” said Leon. “I’m still missing Rhode Island. Can I go upstairs?”

  “As soon as you update the VIP board. The Barnstable Beekeepers will be swarming the place any minute.”

  “Can you handle it, Mom? Please?”

  “Tell you what,” said Emma Zeisel. “I’ll do the board if you shell out one of those clam chips.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” said Leon.

  “Shell out a clam or no deal.”

  Leon presented the open bag to his mom. She reached in and took a chip. The gagging started almost at once and was followed by a quick dash to the tiny office behind the reception desk. When Emma Zeisel reemerged, she was looking a little green.

  “I tried to warn you,” said Leon.

  Leon’s mother managed a nod and waved her son away.

  He took the elevator to the fifth floor. After a brief pit stop at the hallway garbage chute to dump the clam chips from the bag of Pinocchios, he let himself into the tiny two-room suite he shared with his mom. Once inside he went straight for the old metal footlocker stowed under his bed. He popped open the lid and removed an empty plastic sleeve. He slotted the chip bag into the transparent protector and placed it on the carpet. Then he took out the rest of his collection and spread it all around him.

  Not bad, he said to himself. Not bad at all.

  Empty potato chip bags—dozens and dozens of them—formed a crazy quilt of bright, bold colors, with not a double or damaged bag in the whole extraordinary bunch.

  Leon had always loved potato chips. Always. He had been gobbling up chips for as long as he could remember. His collection, however, had a briefer history.

  It all started in the middle of fourth grade. For Leon’s tenth birthday, Maria had surprised him with a subscription to the Worldwide Chip of the Month Club. Membership entitled Leon to a monthly sampler of six different kinds of potato chips. After eating the chips, Leon decided to save the bags and mark the name of each sample on a little checklist included with the first shipment.

  For a while the monthly packages kept Leon happy. But at a certain point, he discovered that the club failed to include samples of smaller, hard-to-find brands. That’s when he decided to take matters into his own hands. He used his salary—with Emma Zeisel’s authorization, the hotel bookkeeper cut him an allowance check in the amount of ten dollars every two weeks—to buy brands of chips the club had overlooked.

  Did Leon stop there? No, he did not. Soon he began recruiting friends and family to help boost his holdings. Maria kept a lookout for stray chip bags left behind in the hotel rooms she cleaned, and Napoleon agreed to do the same when tidying up his taxi. Was that where Leon stopped? Again, no.

  He added still more samples by writing directly to potato chip makers all over the country. It was amazing how many companies sent free samples when informed that their donations would be added to the permanent holdings of the Leon Zeisel Potato Chip Collection.

  Surely Leon must have ended his pursuits there? Once more, the answer is no.

  As the collection grew, so did Leon’s ambitions. He started making special trips to the public library, where he compiled a master list of national and international potato chip makers. Furthermore, whenever foreign visitors stayed at the hotel, Leon would match their hometowns—helpfully listed in the Trimore Towers guest register—to the master chip list. If the visitors came from someplace near a potato chip factory that hadn’t provided a sample, Leon would approach the guest and explain the situation. Since many visitors took pride in their local brand of chip, they often agreed to mail Leon a sample of the bag in question. Did it matter that some of the chips arrived crushed to the size of breakfast flakes? Not to Leon. He tasted the crumbs and preserved the bag like a first-edition comic book.

  Besides collecting bags and keeping a checklist, Leon also maintained a geographical record of his potato chip holdings by noting the origin of every bag on a map of the world that hung above his bed. Each and every specimen that earned a place in the footlocker also received a flag marker on the map.

  Leon kept a box of flag pins in his desk. The flag pins came in four colors (green, red, blue, and yellow). The variety proved useful, since Leon collected tons of stuff besides chips.

  Blue flags marked the nationalities of the human visitors who checked into Trimore Towers.

  Red flags recorded the birthplace of the animal guests. (For example, at the end of fourth grade when a group of emperor penguins booked a suite, Leon got to poke a red flag in Antarctica.)

  Green flags were reserved for taxi drivers. Every time Leon took a cab, he would ask the driver where he or she was from. He’d then flag that country on his map. (The taxi driver collection, it should be noted, dried up once Napoleon took Leon under his wing.)

  And the yellow pins? The yellow pins, logically enough, were reserved for potato chips. Which e
xplains why Leon fished one of those from his flag box and plunged it into Maine.

  With the new conquest declared, Leon sat back and surveyed his holdings. Twenty-two states. Eight brands from Pennsylvania alone. All of New England (except for Rhode Island). Eleven countries in South America. Nine more from Asia, including a bag of squid-flavored chips sent by a Japanese VIP whose feisty Akita puppy Leon had happily walked three times a day during the entire month of July.

  The ding-dong of an old-fashioned door chime interrupted his territorial inspection.

  “Who is it?” Leon called out.

  “Room service, Herr Zeisel,” came the reply.

  “Coming!” Leon jumped off his bed and cleared a path through his collection. He undid the chain on the front door and allowed a plump, pink-cheeked woman to enter the front room of the suite.

  “Hey, Frau H!”

  “Hey yourself, you little stinker, you,” said Frau Haffenreffer, setting down a heavy tray on the table next to the pull-out couch.

  “Whatcha got?”

  “Dinner from my coffee shop.”

  “Mom pretty busy?”

  “Ja. A new group is just now checking in.”

  “Must be the beekeepers,” Leon speculated.

  “Ja. Your mother told me the whole place is buzzing!”

  Leon rolled his eyes. “I’m sure she did.”

  Emma Zeisel loved jokes and puns almost as much as Leon loved potato chips. The lamer the better. Guests who attended the auto show drove her crazy. The rabbit breeder convention kept things hopping. The West Coast Mime Company left her speechless. Leon was sure his mom had demanded he shell out a clam chip just to make a joke.

  “So, anyway,” said Frau Haffenreffer, “here is your dinner. You’re the only one I give my personal room service.”

  “Thanks,” said Leon, eyeing the dinner tray. “Let’s see what we’ve got.” He lifted the first of three dome-shaped food warmers. “Hmm,” he said noncommittally. He removed the second dome, poked at the food underneath, and licked his fingertip. That prompted another “hmm.”

  “So?” Frau Haffenreffer asked nervously.

  Leon refused to comment until he had lifted the third and final dome. Once he had, he let out a sigh.

  “It’s not okay?” said Frau Haffenreffer. “Tell me!”

  “No,” Leon replied. “It is not okay, Frau H. It’s… perfect.”

  He waved his hand over the three-course meal. “PB&J (extra J). A bag of Billy Bob Barbeque Potato Chips. And, to finish things off, a platter of Haffenreffer dough balls. Now that’s what I call dinner!”

  “You little stinker, you!” Frau Haffenreffer said, pinching Leon’s cheek. “You just make sure you eat everything up. And don’t forget to leave the tray in the hall for Maria.”

  Frau Haffenreffer bustled toward the door. “Ach, and something else. Your mother—she wanted me to tell you she has some doggone good news for you.”

  “Let me guess,” said Leon. “The toy poodle in three-oh-nine checked out.”

  Frau Haffenreffer gave him a startled look. “How did you know that?” she said.

  “Because,” said Leon, “Mom can’t resist doggone jokes.”

  After polishing off his three-course dinner, Leon worked on the collection. Comforted by the soothing crinkle of foil, he felt his mood climb into the low sevens by the time he prepared for bed. But that was before he noticed a mysterious black splotch on the bottom of his backpack. He undid the zipper and stuck his hand inside.

  He felt something wet and slimy.

  A queasy feeling came over him as he dumped the contents of his pack. Brown gunk covered everything—his three-ring binder, his No. 2 pencils, the purple pouch.

  Leon was forced to replay the humiliating attack that had ended the school day. He thought he’d been lucky when the backpack pillowed his fall. Now he knew better. The spit bottle inside the pouch had smashed on impact. He hadn’t gotten hurt, but Pumpkinhead was another matter.

  In a rage, Leon grabbed the dripping pouch by the drawstring, dropped it into one of the metal domes resting on the dinner tray, and used the dome to carry the mess to the bathroom.

  “Sayonara, Pumpkinhead!” he said bitterly as he tipped the dome. The pouch landed in the toilet with a plouf!

  He banged on the toilet handle and waited for the damaged doll to disappear. Seconds later he let out a curse. The Trimore Towers toilets proved every bit as feeble as the toilets at school.

  Leon retrieved the other two metal domes and used them to extract the pouch from the bowl. He dropped the pouch onto a dinner plate, which he took to the garbage chute. He pulled on the heavy handle and tilted the plate. The pouch plopped into the bin.

  All that remained was to release the door handle and send the pouch on its final voyage—first in a free fall to a basement Dumpster, then to the hotel trash compactor, and from there to a garbage truck that would haul it to a landfill beyond the city limits.

  Leon decided to take one last look before letting go. He loosened the drawstrings of the pouch and shook out the contents into the open bin.

  The sight was horrible—a disgusting stew of saliva, broken glass, and cloth. Shards from the shattered bottle had sliced through Pumpkinhead’s arms, legs, and face. Panty hose stuffing oozed out of the wounded figure’s substantial rump and tiny head.

  “Time for a Lumpkin Dunkin’—Zeisel style!” Leon announced bitterly. And with that, he slammed the chute door shut.

  EIGHT

  Sparks

  Even though he no longer had to deal with Pumpkinhead and could sleep later than usual, thanks to Trudy Lite’s departure, Leon was feeling miffed when Napoleon picked him up the next morning.

  “A three,” he said when pressed for a reading. “Three and a half, tops.”

  “I am sorry to hear that, Monsieur Leon. I wish I could adjust your mood like so.” Napoleon reached over and fiddled with the needle on the moodometer so that it pointed to GREAT!

  “Yeah, well, you can’t,” Leon said glumly.

  His mood stayed in the low threes for most of the morning, then dropped to the mid-twos after Lumpkin tripped him, accidentally on purpose, during a third-period fire drill.

  He measured a tiny improvement at lunchtime after discovering that Frau Haffenreffer had packed a bag of Krispee Krunchy Salt ’n’ Vinegar Potato Chips in his lunch sack. (It was a brand he needed for his collection.) But then Lumpkin snatched the bag away. Within seconds he had devoured the chips and destroyed the package, which sent Leon’s mood needle to the danger zone of CRUMMY.

  During recess Leon swished two shots from the free throw line in a fierce game of H-O-R-S-E. That raised his mood to four. Yet comfort again proved fleeting.

  “Lumpkin wants the ball,” Lumpkin announced before Leon could secure the win.

  “But Lily-Matisse is at H-O-R-S,” said Leon, “and she’s about to get an E.”

  “Tough!” Lumpkin barked. “Give me the ball now, or I’ll knock the stuffing out of you.”

  Leon was tempted to satisfy the request by launching the basketball at Lumpkin’s head. He resisted the impulse, knowing it would trigger a swift and brutal counterattack.

  “Take it,” he said, releasing the ball.

  His mood dropped below two, and there it stayed until last period.

  The school day ended with science, a subject taught in a big old basement laboratory next to Mr. Groot’s woodshop. Leon had never set foot inside the lab. It was off-limits until fifth grade. As soon as he entered, he understood why.

  The lab was filled with lots of serious-looking equipment. There were Bunsen burners, safety goggles, and racks of test tubes and beakers. Three glass tanks—containing tropical fish, a turtle, and a pair of lazy geckos—took up one wall of the lab. A giant plastic python stretched across a locked cabinet filled with chemicals.

  Leon joined his two friends near a lab sink.

  “You’re off the hook,” said P.W. “Looks like Hank the Tank is going af
ter the new kid.”

  “Who is she?” asked Leon.

  “Florence Parmigiano,” said Lily-Matisse. “Mom told me I have to be nice to her.”

  “From the looks of things,” said Leon, “she should have told Lumpkin.”

  “Yeah,” P.W. agreed. “Lumpkin’s going to eat her up alive.”

  Before Lumpkin could make a quick meal out of Florence Parmigiano, a brilliant flash lit up the lab.

  “Welcome, fellow researchers!” a voice chirped from the back of the room as a dazzling pinwheel, the size of a Frisbee, began spinning and shedding sparks near the blackboard. Even before Leon turned, he knew that the voice belonged to the bald bearded man who had rescued him from the trash.

  “That’s the science teacher,” Lily-Matisse whispered. “He’s new. Mom told me he’s a little weird. And given how loosey-goosey she is, that means he must really be out there.”

  “No kidding,” said P.W. “What clued her in? The bright green high-top sneakers? The wild-man beard? Or was it the ponytail running down his back?”

  “Knock it off,” Leon said protectively. “Cut the guy some slack.”

  The science teacher made his way to the front of the room, and as he passed Leon he whispered, “Ah, the boy who defies gravity.” With the pinwheel still spinning, the teacher grabbed a stick of chalk off the ledge of the blackboard. He drew a pair of jagged lightning bolts and, between them, wrote the word “park” so that the blackboard looked like this:

  He put down the chalk and wiggled the fingers of one hand, which appeared to make the pinwheel stop. “My name is Franklin Sparks,” he informed the class. “Everyone grab a seat.”

  “Don’t we have assigned seating?” asked Antoinette Brede expectantly.

  “Not exactly,” said Mr. Sparks. “My seating rule is simple. You can’t sit next to the same person twice in a row. And before anyone asks me why, I’ll tell you. Great science tends to emerge from unexpected combinations.” As the students swapped looks of amazement, Mr. Sparks pulled a clipboard from a beat-up leather satchel. “I’ll have to take attendance,” he said, “at least till I learn who you are. Sound off when you hear your name.” He glanced at the clipboard. “Zeisel, Leon?”