Mr. Burke Is Berserk! (5 page)

“Ah'm crazier than a run-over coon!” shouted our health teacher, Ms. Leakey.

“Ah'm crazier than popcorn on a hot stove!” shouted Mr. Granite.

“Yee-ha!” shouted Ms. Coco.

Grown-ups are weird.

The teachers started digging holes all over the place and saying words I never heard of, like “tarnation” and “varmint” and “ornery.” Me and the other kids just watched them. At least it was better than going to class.

“Ah found me a nugget, y'all!” Miss Holly suddenly shouted. “Yee-ha!”

“A chicken nugget?” I asked.

“No, a
gold
nugget!”

That's funny. I always thought nuggets came from chickens. We all gathered around to look at Miss Holly's nugget.

“Look at the way it shines!” she said.

“That there nugget is as purty as a snake on stilts!” said Mrs. Roopy.

“Ah reckon this may be the biggest gold strike in over a hundred years,” said Mr. Burke.

The teachers let out a big “yee-ha” and started digging all over the place with even more excitement.

“Ah found one, too!” shouted Miss Small.

“So did Ah!” said Mr. Granite.

They were all uncovering gold. That's when a big black car pulled up to the playground. And you'll never believe who got out of it.

It was Mayor Hubble! And he was coming over.

Suddenly, all the teachers stopped digging. Mayor Hubble was staring at the teachers. The teachers were staring at Mayor Hubble. The kids were staring at the teachers and Mayor Hubble. Everybody was staring at each other. You could hear a pin drop.
^*

I was sure Mayor Hubble was going to tell them to stop digging and go back to class. But he didn't.

“Dig!” he hollered. “Keep digging!”

When I got to school the next day, the front door was locked. I went around to the playground, and it was filled with teachers. They were digging holes with shovels, pickaxes, and all kinds of mining equipment.

I met up with the guys and Alexia. Mrs. Roopy came by on a donkey.

“Where did you get a donkey?” Alexia asked her.

“It's not a donkey,” Mrs. Roopy said. “It's a burro. His name is Jose.”

“Where did you get a burro?” Michael asked.

“From Rent-A-Burro,” she said. “You can rent anything.”

As we got closer, we saw the weirdest thing in the history of the world. Mr. Macky, Mr. Burke, Mr. Docker, and Officer Spence all had long beards on their faces! None of them had beards the day before.

“How did you grow a beard so fast?” Ryan asked Mr. Macky.

“It's the gold fever!” he replied, a crazy look in his eyes. “It does that to a man.”

We sat and watched the teachers digging. They were all shouting “Yee-ha” and calling each other “pardner.” That's when annoying Andrea and Emily came over.

“This is terrible!” Andrea said. “The teachers should be inside the school helping us learn things, not out here digging for gold.”

“That's right,” said Emily.

What is their problem?

“Can you possibly be more boring?” asked Alexia.

“Yeah, take a chill pill,” I told Andrea. “We get a day off from school.”

Mr. Burke seemed to know a lot about gold mining, and he was telling the teachers where to dig and what to do.

“Ah reckon we need to dig a deeper hole to git at the gold,” he told them. “Fetch me the dynamite, fellers!”

“They're going to blow a hole in the playground?” asked Andrea. “That sounds dangerous. Is violence really necessary?”

“What do violins have to do with it?” I asked.

“Not ‘violins,' Arlo! ‘Violence'!”

Mr. Burke and Mr. Macky dug a deep hole where the monkey bars used to be and put sticks of dynamite in there. Then they stretched a wire from the hole to the other end of the playground.

“Y'all cover yer ears now,” Mr. Burke hollered. Then he yelled “Fire in the hole!” and pushed down on this handle thing that looked like a bicycle pump. We all covered our ears.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

There was a
huge
blast. Rocks and dirt went flying all over the place. It was awesome. We got to see it live and in person. You should have been there!

“WOW,” we all said, which is “MOM” upside down.

Blowing stuff up is
cool
. There should be a TV channel that shows nothing but stuff being blown up all day long.

The explosion blew a giant hole in the ground. The teachers all ran over yelling “Yee-ha.” They climbed into the hole with their shovels and picks.

“You kids wanna come down into the mine with me and poke around?” Mr. Burke asked us.

“Yeah!” said me and the guys and Alexia.

“I don't want to get my school clothes dirty,” said Andrea.

“Me neither,” said Emily.

“Can you possibly be more boring?” asked Alexia.

The rest of us climbed into the mine with Mr. Burke. It was dark down there, but some of the teachers had lights on their helmets, so we could see.

They were digging for a long time, but nobody found any gold. And then Mr. Burke suddenly hit something sharp with his shovel.

“Ah think Ah found somethin'!” he said.

“Is it gold?” I asked.

“No.”

“Is it silver?” asked Alexia.

“No,” Mr. Burke said as he looked at a shiny thing in his hand. “It's even
more
valuable than gold and silver. It's … gilver!”

“Gilver?” asked Ryan. “I never heard of gilver.”

“What's gilver?” asked Neil the nude kid.

“Gilver is a combination of gold 'n' silver,” Mr. Burke said excitedly.

“Yee-ha!” shouted Mr. Macky. “It's more valuable than gold. It's more valuable than silver. It's gilver!”

“Gilver!!”

“GILVER!!!”

In case you were wondering, all the teachers were shouting “Gilver.”

“This place is filled with the stuff!” said Mr. Burke. “It's a bonanza!”

“We hit pay dirt!” shouted Mr. Macky, jumping up and down and clicking his heels together. “There must be
millions
of dollars' worth of gilver down here!”

“Billions!” shouted Miss Small.

“Trillions!” shouted Mr. Granite.

“Do you have any idea what this means for our school?” said Mrs. Jafee. “We can bring back the art and music programs!”

“We can buy new computers and SMART Boards for every classroom!” shouted Mrs. Yonkers.

“We can turn the water fountains back on!” shouted Ms. Leakey.

“We can buy toilet paper for the bathroom!” shouted Miss Lazar.

“Yee-ha!” the rest of the teachers shouted.

All our problems were solved.

The teachers filled bag after bag with gilver and carried the bags out of the hole. Mr. Burke told us not to say a word about the gilver to anybody.

But it didn't matter. Thanks to all the yelling and shouting, word got out. Five minutes later, people with overalls and hard hats and shovels were streaming into the playground from all directions. Some of them came on dogsleds. Some were in covered wagons. I guess they rented them.

The next thing we knew, the playground was filled with tents and people making campfires, cooking vittles, and playing harmonicas. It was a real Kodak moment.

“Yee-ha!” one guy said. “Ah'm hankerin' to git me a heap of that gilver!”

“Hey, we were here first, you no-good rascal!” said Mr. Macky. “It's
our
gilver!”

“Finders keepers!” said another guy. “This is a public school, you varmint, so it's public property.”

It looked like a fight was going to break out. But that's when the weirdest thing in the history of the world happened.

“Channel 7 News is on its way!”

“Channel 7 News is on its way!!”