“But can we use pen if we want to?” He asked this on behalf of Letty Bond, who, he thought, might be growing anxious.
“Either one is fine.”
Lennie’s throat was dry. The tests were coming. He put down his pencil, wiped his hands on his shirt, and picked up his pencil. He took the tests from the girl in front of him, selected the top one, and passed the rest to Letty Bond.
“Well, here we go,” he said with false liveliness. He glanced at Letty Bond. She had already written her name at the top of the page and was ready to take on the first question.
Lennie turned back to his desk. The test was mimeographed in purple ink, and for a moment Lennie had a vision of another red 23 at the top of his. He let out his breath in one long unhappy sigh. He felt like writing the 23 there and saving Miss Markham the trouble.
Glancing down the page, he decided to skip the first part, which was fill-in-the-blanks, and go on to the second part, which was a plant with all the parts to be labeled. He had done that last night for the schoolteachers—two times.
Very carefully he printed the word “petiole” in the line opposite the stem. Then he looked at the word. It looked wrong. Quickly he turned his pencil and erased the word. He wet his lips. He wanted to turn around and ask Letty Bond if she was sure the petiole was the stem. It seemed to him ... Nervously he printed “petiole” back in the same space.
He printed in four more words, and then he got up. With his eyes on his paper, he went to the teacher’s desk. “Miss Markham?”
“Yes, Lennie.”
“Is that word spelled right?”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t give you any help after the tests are passed out.”
“Oh.” He stood there for a moment staring down at the word he had written. “Stupile.” He had never felt more miserable in his life. He gave Miss Markham a weak smile. He said, “I feel kind of stupile myself today.”
“I do believe, though,” Miss Markham went on kindly, smiling back at him, “you should look at what you’ve written
very
carefully. There may be something wrong.”
“Thank you, Miss Markham.”
As Lennie hurried back to his desk, Miss Markham said, “Remember, spelling counts, class.”
Lennie erased the word and respelled it. He filled in two more blanks and erased one. His test now had a worked-over look. He had worn through the paper in two places. He thought that anyone who thinks school isn’t hard ought to take a look at this paper.
He bent over his desk, wet his pencil point, and filled in another blank. He went on to the multiple-choice section and filled in three of those. He glanced again at the word “stepile.”
“Time’s up, class,” Miss Markham said.
Lennie looked up, startled. He turned to Frankie. “Are you through?”
Frankie shrugged.
“Are you through, Letty Bond?”
“I’ve been through since ten thirty,” she said. He glanced at her desk. She was writing a note to someone named Anne. It started out: “Am I bored!”
Lennie spun around and glanced in desperation at his test. Only half of the blanks were filled. Quickly he began filling in the rest, guessing, putting anything down so that Miss Markham would see a full, completed sheet when she got to his test. That was bound to make a better impression.
“Lennie.” It was Miss Markham.
“Yes’m.” He kept writing. He did not have time to look up.
“I have to have your test now.”
“Yes’m.”
“The next class is coming in.”
“One more word.” In desperation Lennie kept writing. Cammie Hagerdorn was standing by his desk, waiting to take Lennie’s seat. Lennie looked up.
“Hard, huh?” Cammie said.
“Hard for me.” Lennie sighed. He got up, dropped his test on Miss Markham’s desk, and went out into the hall. Shoulders sagging, he went slowly to World Studies.
Chapter Five
“H
ow’d you do on your Science test?” His mom didn’t glance up as he came in the office door. She was looking at the guest register. She was going over the names carefully, as if she were hoping they would multiply like amoebas and fill the page.
“Oh, all right.”
“Really?” She looked up, smiling.
“I think so.”
“I
knew
you’d do well.” She leaned forward on her arms. “And it wasn’t the schoolteachers either —it was all that studying you did.”
He glanced at the TV set. Farmer Fred was on. He was yelling, “Pull up your milking stools, boys and girls, and get set for Farmer Fred and his cartooooons!”
Slowly Lennie started back to his room. The sounds of the first cartoon washed over him. It was Tweetie Bird and Sylvester. Tweetie Bird was crying, “I
did!
I taw a
putty tat!
”
His mom called, “Oh, Lennie, would you take a roll-away bed to three-fourteen?”
“Yes’m.”
As he came back through the office, pushing the bed, he saw that Sylvester was sawing a hole in the ceiling over Tweetie Bird’s cage. Lennie walked more slowly.
“The bed, Lennie.”
“Just let me see him fall to the floor.”
Sylvester finished his circle in the ceiling and fell with a crash to the floor. He pulled himself up in the shape of a round paper doll.
“I’m
going
,” he said before his mother could remind him again.
He pushed the bed out the door. There were three rooms occupied at the motel that afternoon. A farmer with a station wagon of roosters was in 310. A salesman was in 316. A family of five had just checked into 314.
Lennie knocked at the door. “Here’s the bed,” he called out.
“Come in.”
Lennie opened the door and pushed the bed into the room. The television was on, and Lennie glanced quickly at it to see if he could catch the ending of the Sylvester cartoon.
On the screen a man in a chefs suit was teaching the number three by juggling three pizzas. “
Three,
”he said.
A girl of about five was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching the chef. Her mouth was open a little.
“Cartoons are on Channel Seven,” Lennie said as he unfolded the bed.
The chef took another pizza and started juggling. “
Four
,” he said.
“Will that be all?” Lennie asked formally.
The woman nodded, and Lennie turned to the door. The chef cried,
“Five!”
and the woman said, “See what else is on.”
Lennie turned. He said, “We get
Farmer Fred’s Cartoons, Gilligan’s Island, Bonanza,
and Mike Douglas.”
“Oh. Thank you.”
“Sure.”
Lennie started back to the office. His mother was sitting in one of the webbed chairs on the porch. It was her favorite time of the day—when she could sit out and chat with the guests. Now she was talking to the salesman in 316.
“I delivered the bed,” Lennie said.
She turned to him, her face bright. “Lennie, guess what this man sells?”
“I don’t know.”
“Encyclopedias!”
“Oh.”
“Why, you should have been here last night.” She turned back to the salesman. “We had a regular school going out here, didn’t we, Lennie?”
“Yes.”
She looked at him. She said, “Listen, you go on in and watch TV if you like.”
“I thought I wasn’t allowed.”
“You deserve it for doing so well on your Science test.”
“Oh, all right.”
Lennie went into the office and sank down on the plastic sofa. He reached for the TV knob. He began to feel a little better. He said to himself, I think I’ll see what Hoss and Little Joe are up to. He leaned back on the plastic. It felt good and cool. He put his feet up on the plastic coffee table. He sighed with contentment.
Chapter Six
L
ennie came out the back door of the motel. Here lay the broken Fairy Land figures—the dwarfs and fairies that had been out in front of the motel until they crumbled. Lennie stepped around an armless Red Riding Hood and a headless fairy godmother.
He climbed down the hill behind the motel and crossed the field. It was a Saturday, a bright October morning, and he had finished his chores at the motel. Usually he sat in the office on Saturday mornings and watched cartoons, but this morning he felt the need to get away.
The day before he had gotten his Science test back, and he had made a 59. The thought of that 59 still made him feel sick. Only 11 more points and he would have passed like everyone else.
As soon as he had seen that 59, he had thought there should be some kind of patent medicine for moments like this. This had to be worse than acid stomach and sinus headache and low backache all rolled into one.
“For that uncomfortable feeling that comes when you fail your Science test, take Fail-Ease, the tablet that eases failure and makes you less afraid to fail the next time.”
He would be on the commercial, sitting right at his desk in Science class, pale and sick. He would drop two Fail-Ease tablets into a glass of water, drink, and a wonderful feeling of relief would come over him. The lines of tension in his face would relax. Color would come back to his cheeks.
The teacher would walk back to his desk. She would lean down, smiling, and say, “I hope you’ve learned, Lennie, that with Fail-Ease you never have to feel the pain of failure again.”
“Yes,” he would say, “for relief from the nagging pain of failure—” and then he and Miss Markham would smile at each other and say together, “take Fail-Ease, the failure reliever that requires no prescription.”
The thought had raised Lennie’s spirits for a moment. Then Miss Markham had rapped on her desk and said, “I want these tests signed by one of your parents, students, and returned on Monday.”
Lennie had brought his test home and stuck it in his sock drawer. His mom had been too busy to ask about it—they had had seven rooms occupied at the motel that night—but sooner or later she would. And even if she didn’t, Lennie would have to get her to sign it.
It was something he couldn’t bear to do. When he disappointed his mother with his school work, her mouth got as sad as a clown’s.
“This is our big chance, Lennie,” she had been saying ever since she had inherited the Fairy Land Motel from her father. They had been heading for the motel on a Trailways bus the first time she had said it. “This is our big chance, Lennie. All a person can hope to get in this life is one good chance.”
He had nodded, smiling at her. He had been as pleased about inheriting the motel as she was.
“Now we can live like other people,” she had said. She had begun to hum. Her favorite songs were about home and going home. Now she was humming “Country Roads.” She stopped humming long enough to say, “You’ll go to school regularly and make good grades—no more of this moving around.”
They looked like people who moved around, Lennie thought, both in jeans and T-shirts, his mother’s hair frizzled and his own uncut. But no more.
“And I’ll make a success of the motel. I promise you that.”
“And I’ll be a success in school,” he’d said.
As he sat there on the bus, he saw himself as the end of a TV show. All his problems and troubles were over. The last crisis had been passed. He and his mom were heading for home and happiness. It was as perfect as the ending of a Lassie show. He saw himself smiling while the credits rolled past his beaming face.
Only that was the trouble with life, Lennie had found out later. He had expected things to change as quickly and dramatically as they did in bad-breath commercials—one gargle and a new life. It hadn’t worked that way.
In real life, Lennie found out, problems didn’t get wrapped up neatly between commercials. In real life you moved, and all the things that were wrong with you moved with you. If you couldn’t pass Science in Kentucky, then you wouldn’t be able to pass it in Tennessee either.
Lennie wondered if this happened to other people, like Presidents of the United States or famous TV stars. Did they get their lifelong ambition, thinking life would be perfect when they got to be President or when they got their own series, and then find out that all the things wrong with them were still wrong?
Lennie walked quickly down the hill. He had come this way so often that there was a faint path in the deep grass. He came to the maple trees—the leaves were solid gold now, and he walked up the next hill. At the top were the ruins of two old campfires, black circles like a puff of breath from a dragon.
The first time Lennie had seen the old fires, he had paused and planned a TV show about a dragon. Only one person, himself, knew about the dragon. He had trailed the dragon to his cave by following these double campfires, and the dragon and he had become friends.
The highlight of the program came when the townspeople arrived at the cave to kill the dragon, thinking him responsible for the recent slaughter of sheep.
“Get out of the way, son. We’re going in.”
“But the dragon’s my friend. He wouldn’t kill anything!”
“There’s seventeen sheep dead in the valley. Somebody killed them.”
“Well,
he
didn’t do it. He couldn’t.”
“Get out of the way, son. We got no quarrel with you.”
“But he
couldn’t
have killed the sheep, I tell you! He doesn’t have any
teeth!
”
“What?”
“He’s over two hundred years old, and all he eats is bananas and tomatoes and once in a while a real ripe apple.”
“Listen! The boy might be telling the truth! Seems to me my gran’daddy said there was a dragon around here when he was a boy.”
“Your gran’daddy Amos?”
“My gran’daddy Amos, and I recall him saying that dragon never hurt a fly.”
“Well, then, maybe it was
wolves
that got them sheep. If, as the boy and your gran’daddy says, the dragon’s harmless, we’ll let him be.”
That had been one of Lennie’s favorite dreams. It had rerun for days. But now he stepped between the old fires without noticing and went down the hill beneath the red beech trees. Here the grass was as soft and green as official grass. Then he came to the lake.