We Could Be Heroes

by Margaret Finnegan

  “He licked me,” laughed Hank, even as he turned his face away from Booler’s hot, dank-smelling breath.

  “That’s ’cuz Raksha thinks you’re probably not a lemon.”

  4.

  Unexpectedly, Mrs. Vera announced that she had revised the seating chart. Jacob F. needed to switch places with Emma L. Jacob G. needed to switch places with Marcela. And Jacob W. needed to switch with Maisie, which meant that Hank now sat right next to his new friend.

  “It’s a little suspicious, don’t you think?” Maisie asked him after school that day. They were playing tug-of-war with Booler as their moms sat talking in Maisie’s kitchen.

  When Hank just shrugged, Maisie added, “I mean, putting us together is nice and Mrs. Vera is not normally that nice, is she?”

  That observation was certainly hard to deny. And it wasn’t just that Mrs. Vera had gotten so mad when Hank burned down the boys’ bathroom or that she had gotten so mad when he and Maisie had a fight. Mrs. Vera just generally seemed mad. Well, not really mad, but serious. Part of it was her voice, which did not have all the warm and fuzzy highs and lows of Hank’s mom’s voice. When Hank’s mom was happy, Hank knew she was happy. Her voice got loud and fast and high and every word spilled out of a great big smile. When Hank’s mom got mad, he knew she was mad. Her voice got louder and faster and lower and every word spilled out of a great big frown. Mrs. Vera was not like that. Her voice was always the same—no real highs, no real lows, just steady, measured consequences handed out for every little mistake. You did not want to mess with Mrs. Vera.

  “She’s a piece of work, that Mrs. Vera,” Hank said.

  “Why does she limp like that?” asked Maisie.

  Hank shrugged. “That is a big mystery.”

  Maisie pulled the tug-of-war toy free from Booler’s mouth and threw it just far enough for Booler to reach without tensing the rope around his neck.

  “You know what I think?” she said. “I think maybe Mrs. Vera has been replaced by an exact replica—limp and all—from outer space.”

  Hank stood still. “Do—do you think aliens might replace us?”

  “No,” said Maisie, grabbing one end of the tug-of-war toy that Booler had returned to her. “Aliens only replace mean people. It’s a well-known fact.”

  Alien replacement or not, a funny thing happened with the change in seats. Hank began to find the horrible book a little less horrible. To be sure, the book was still heartbreaking. It was also—because of Hank’s crime spree—bloated, charred, and smelled like smoke. And every time Mrs. Vera picked it up she would display it to the class like a valuable artifact. Then she would stretch her neck long and say with a holy voice, “You know, the Nazis burned books too. May this be a powerful lesson for all of us.”

  At this point in the story, the boy was hiding in the forest and living off berries and nuts. He had befriended a stray wiener dog that he named Leah. And Leah was a real hero. An old woman had seen the boy, and she had alerted the Nazi soldiers that a boy like him was in the forest. When a soldier found him, the dog bit the Nazi’s ankle, allowing the boy and the wiener dog to run deeper into the dense woods. At first, the forest seemed dark and scary, but then Leah found an abandoned hut for them to live in. And that was all well and good until one day a mysterious explosion sounded and the little dog ran away. Now the boy had been waiting for Leah for two days. And if that wasn’t bad enough, it had turned to winter and there were no berries or nuts.

  But the new wrinkle in all of it was that Hank didn’t cry or feel all a’a when listening to the story anymore. Because, now, Maisie sat right next to him. And Maisie spent the whole time drawing pictures of Nazi-fighting dogs.

  “That’s how you fight the man,” she whispered to him when she caught him watching her.

  He wrote her a note: “Are you saying the alien Mrs. Vera is actually a man?”

  Maisie wrote back, “Would that matter?”

  Hank thought about it. He printed, “I guess not. She’d still be a piece of work.”

  Maisie shrugged and started shading her picture.

  After that, Hank drew pictures too.

  And then there was another surprising development. At recess, he and Maisie started playing Jungle Book. Hank always played Mowgli, but Maisie switched off. Sometimes she played the funny bear, Baloo. Sometimes she played the wise panther, Bagheera. And sometimes she went entirely off script, playing elephants, monkeys—even, once, a very confused and lost kangaroo.

  “Me baby! Me baby! I can’t find me baby,” she said in something that maybe sounded a little like an Australian accent. “Oh, no! Here it is. It’s in me pocket. Hiya, man cub, is there anywhere in this bloody jungle where a kangaroo can get a cuppa?”

  That one threw Hank for a loop since he knew, of course, that Australian animals like kangaroos would never be found in the Indian jungle. But Maisie didn’t mind when Hank raised that very obvious problem.

  She just laughed and said, “Ha! Guess I can’t fool you. You’re right. I’m not a kangaroo. I’m really the evil tiger Shere Khan in disguise!” Her voice grew low and rumbly. “I’m gonna get you, man cub,” she said, chasing him across the field.

  At night, when Hank’s parents would ask about his day, Hank would tell them all about the trouble Mowgli had gotten into.

  Mom and Dad would break into big smiles and say things like, “It’s nice to have a friend, isn’t it?”

  And Hank had to agree. “Yes. Friends are even more fun than rocks.”

  “You should invite Maisie here,” said Mom more than once. “Friends take turns. I’m sure Mrs. Huang wouldn’t mind.”

  But Maisie never wanted to go to Hank’s house. If they went to Hank’s house they wouldn’t be able to include Booler, and Maisie said Booler would feel excluded if that happened.

  Hank understood. He knew a thing or two about feeling excluded. He knew there were birthday parties he wasn’t invited to, valentines he did not receive. It didn’t bother him too much. He had his rocks after all. And now he had Maisie. Still, those slights had not been painless, and he would never want Booler to feel the way he had felt on Saint Patrick’s Day, when one of the Jacobs offered everyone but Hank a dyed-green snickerdoodle.

  Then again, Hank liked his house. He liked the order of it, the predictability of it, the way it often smelled of the cinnamon applesauce that his dad cooked. Hank liked his bedroom and his giant bookcase of rocks and minerals. He wished he could share those things with his friends. That’s right: friends—plural. Because he realized Maisie wasn’t his only friend. Booler was his friend too.

  One day they were scanning Booler’s yard for dog poop. Maisie had two plastic produce bags. One was slipped on her hand. The other was held open. Each time she found some poop, she would pick it up with her plastic-bag-covered hand and drop it in the open bag.

  Hank was all excited to play Jungle Book because it was always especially fun when Booler got to be Mowgli’s wolf mom, Raksha. But this time Cowboy and Honey were in the yard too and, after giving Hank and Maisie a quick sniff and a lick, Cowboy and Honey started sniffing all around the fence, their noses pushed deep into the grass that had replaced all the mud and ice. Maisie’s eyes suddenly got very wide and her mouth became a perfect O.

  “Cowboy and Honey are Nazi soldiers,” she said dramatically. “I’m the boy from the book. Booler is my faithful wiener dog, Leah. When the big explosion happened in the book Leah didn’t actually run away. She ran to get help and guess what? She found you. You’re another wiener dog and your name is… Alberto.”

  She held the bag full of dog poop out in front of her. “We’ve been collecting all the land mines the Nazis hid. We have a secret way to do it without getting blown up.” She froze, a look of alarm on her face.

  “Shhh,” she whispered. “I think I hear Nazi soldiers.”

  Hank’s body stiffened. It was bad enough he had to listen to that book at school—and now to let it invade his free time? No way. “I don’t like that
book.”

  Maisie tiptoed over to Mr. Jorgensen’s trash can and threw away the bag of poop as well as the plastic bag she’d used to cover her hand. “Shhh. I better hide these. They can’t find out we’ve moved them.”

  Suddenly, she dropped to all fours and crawled over to Booler.

  Booler tapped his nose against Maisie’s nose and went, “Ruroo.”

  Louder—with real resolve—Hank repeated, “I don’t like that book.”

  Maisie crawled to him. “Shhhh. The Nazis will hear you, Alberto.”

  Yelling, his jaw pushed forward, he said, “I’m… I’m Mowgli!”

  Maisie crawled away from Hank and back to Booler, who had gone as far as the rope attached to his collar would take him and was looking intently at Cowboy and Honey, his nose twitching. When Maisie got close, she took Booler’s tug-of-war toy and held it up to her face. “Now, if I just adjust this stink bomb…”

  She fiddled with Booler’s toy and then threw it toward Cowboy and Honey, who looked at it briefly and went back to sniffing. “Hurry, Alberto, or the stink bomb will get you. It’s gonna be a bad one!”

  Hank stared at the dog toy. His hands spun wildly. What was she not understanding? This was their free time! This was the one guaranteed time they did not have to let the sad thoughts of the book in their minds. He would not play this game. There was no way he would play this game.

  A gigantic cracking sound broke the silence. Maisie had farted. It was the loudest fart Hank had ever heard. Shocked, he turned to Maisie with big eyes, his hands now limp at his sides.

  “I told you it was gonna be bad,” she said, laughing. “And it’s stinkyyyyyy.” She got up and ran to the other side of the tree. Booler followed her, tail wagging at this new mischief. A fraction of a second later the horrible scent of Maisie’s fart reached Hank’s nostrils.

  “It’s awful!” said Hank.

  “Are the Nazis running away?”

  Hank looked over at Cowboy and Honey. Sure enough, they had moseyed a little farther.

  “Yes,” he said with surprise. Something began to shift and lighten inside him as the sight of the dogs reminded him of the Nazi-fighting dog pictures they now drew at school. “This is how… we’re fighting the man!” he said, glee brightening his eyes.

  “They’re going down!” Maisie yelled. “Now we’ll finish them off with my other booby traps. Come on.”

  Hank ran to the other side of the tree. He crouched next to Maisie, who was pulling up handfuls of weeds. Booler pranced in place, eyes on Maisie.

  She pointed toward Booler’s empty food dish. “First, you bring them the soup in that bowl. Just be like, ‘Barkedy bark, I’m a nice dog bringing you soup just to be nice.’ Then, while they’re eating, I’ll sneak up and sprinkle this itching powder on them.”

  “Ruff,” said Hank, running to get the bowl.

  “Leah,” said Maisie, looking at Booler, “you stay here and guard our hut.”

  With a quick forward motion she bent down and kissed the top of Booler’s head. Then she turned to Hank. “Okay, Alberto. Let’s show those stinking Nazis what we can do.”

  Hank, dragging the food dish, crawled over to Honey and Cowboy. “Barkedy, bark, bark, bark.” He dropped the dish in front of the two dogs and sat back on his shins.

  “Ruff,” he said, tilting his head to one side and letting his tongue dangle from his mouth.

  From the other side, Maisie tiptoed over to Cowboy and Honey, whose lazily batting tails suggested that they were willing to play along and at least give the bowl a sniff. Giggling, Maisie sprinkled the loose weeds on the dogs’ backs and tiptoed away.

  “Oh my gosh, the Nazis are going crazy!” she said, giggling even more now and slapping her thighs. “That itching powder really works.”

  Hank gave a final “ruff” and then crawled back over to Maisie. “Bark, bark, bark.”

  “That’s right, Alberto,” said Maisie. “Look at them tear their clothes off! They itch so much! And now look! They’ve fallen in the river. And they’re naked! And they’re floating away!”

  She ran back to the very relaxed Cowboy and Honey, her arms outstretched and wobbly. Hank, on his knees, shuffled beside her.

  “And don’t you dare come back! If you come back you will die! And don’t hunt down people who have seizures, because it is evil and you will be cursed forever and ever.”

  Hank turned, confused. “The boy in the book doesn’t have seizures. The boy is Jewish. That’s why the Nazis are after him.”

  She dropped her hands to her sides. Her face was blank, and when she spoke her tone was stiff. “The Nazis killed people who had seizures too. They killed lots of people. Anybody who was different.”

  Hank let her words sink in. “Did they kill people with autism?”

  Maisie nodded. She was quiet for a moment. Then she scrunched her face tight. “But they’re not going to get us because we’re smarter than them.”

  She reached down and pulled up another handful of weeds. In a frenzied movement she threw the weeds at Cowboy and Honey. “This looks like itching powder but it’s actually a memory potion. Those stupid Nazis won’t even remember this forest.”

  She took a step forward. Chin held high, hands on her hips, she said, “Don’t worry, Alberto. We’re the heroes of this story and we’re taking those Nazis down.”

  There was a thud behind them. They turned to see Booler on the ground, his whole body shaking.

  “Booler!” yelled Maisie. She ran to him, dropping to the ground and running her hand across his flank. “It’s okay, boy. We’re here. It’s gonna be all right.” She sounded like Hank’s father when he put on his emergency-room-nurse voice—gentle but certain.

  But Hank was not so sure that he believed Maisie. It did not look like the dog would be all right. From his head to his tail, the dog thrashed up and down while his eyes stared blankly ahead and a thread of drool slid out of his mouth. “Is he having a seizure?”

  “Uh-huh,” said Maisie.

  “Can he hear us?” said Hank.

  She shook her head. “No. But he wants us here.”

  Hank sat next to Maisie. “It’s okay. It’s almost over,” he promised as he brushed the top of Booler’s forehead with his fingertips. “Is it almost over?” he asked Maisie.

  “Probably. They don’t last too long.”

  They sat half a minute more, maybe a little longer, until finally the seizure stopped. Booler blinked and looked around. Struggling just a bit, he rolled onto his belly and stood up. He took a few wobbly steps, then a few wobbly sniffs. Then he plopped back down on the ground next to Maisie. He nudged her hand with his nose, and when she started to pet him he rested his head on her knee. With a loud sigh, he closed his eyes and soon began to snore.

  They sat with him a while longer, just petting him.

  Without much enthusiasm, Maisie said, “Do you want to play the book some more?”

  Hank’s voice was soft. “No. Booler doesn’t like that game.”

  “No,” agreed Maisie. “He really doesn’t.”

  Hank took his three rocks from his pocket. “This is garnet,” he said to the sleeping dog. “This is adamite. This is a tiger’s-eye.”

  “Now you see why I wanted you to adopt Booler,” Maisie said. She didn’t sound like an emergency-room nurse anymore. She seemed liked the saddest, most defeated person he had ever heard. She reminded Hank a little bit of the boy.

  She said, “This is too scary for Booler. Imagine what it’s like when we’re not here.”

  Hank fumbled with the rocks in his hand. He took a deep sigh. He stood like Maisie had stood earlier—his chin up, his hands on his hips, the total Superman pose. “We’re the heroes of this story and those seizures are going down.”

  Maisie’s eyes grew bright. “That’s right.” She sniffled and her voice grew stronger. “Those seizures are going down and we’re gonna save Booler.”

  5.

  Their plan was brilliant and sneaky. Hank went up to his
dad on Saturday morning and said the words he had been practicing. “I’m going to the schoolyard to look for rocks.”

  Dad stood scrambling eggs in a pan. “Don’t you want breakfast?”

  He rolled back his shoulder, all Clark Kent–like. “I… um… I’m going to find some rocks. I’m a fan of rocks and also minerals.”

  His father chuckled. “So I’ve heard. But I think your mom would want you to have breakfast. Why don’t you eat some eggs and when Mom gets back from the grocery store I’ll go with you?”

  Hank swallowed. He had not expected this inquisition! “So I’m going to find some rocks now. At the school.” He rushed out the door and walked quickly, checking twice over his shoulder to make sure his dad wasn’t following.

  Immediately, he faced a problem. He was supposed to meet Maisie on the field so that he could actually be looking for rocks since it was much easier to tell people you were looking for rocks when you were actually looking for rocks. But the school gate was locked and there was no way he could get beyond it. His hand began to spin again as he bit down on his lip and mumbled, “Rocks, rocks, rocks.”

  Pebbles. They sparkled up at him from the dirt between the edge of the grass and the school windows. They would have to do. He bent down and started examining the find. They were, without doubt, some of the most unspectacular pebbles he had ever seen. But he examined them. That was the point. To look at rocks and wait.

  “Hank!”

  He looked up to find Booler and Maisie running toward him. Maisie had attached Booler’s collar to a cloth belt. She struggled to keep up with the powerful dog, who pulled and strained left and right with every passing bush or tree.

  “Booler is strong!” Maisie yelled. “He’s been like this the whole way. When I snuck into Mr. Jorgensen’s yard and told him I was there to liberate him, he was like, ‘Hallelujah! Get me out of here!’

  “He just started running. I said, ‘Slow down, boy, you’ll pull my arm out of its socket,’ but he was like, ‘No way! My life can finally begin!’ ”