Беверли Клири - Dear Mr. Henshaw / Дорогой мистер Хеншоу. 7-8 классы

To be continued unless we get the TV fixed.

Mr. Henshaw:

If our TV was fixed I would be watching “Highway Patrol,” but it isn’t, so here are some more answers from my stupid brain. (Ha-ha.)

5. Do you have any pets?

I do not have any pets. (My teacher says always answer questions in full sentences.) When Mom and Dad got divorced and Mom got me, Dad took Bandit because Mom said that she couldn’t work and look after a dog, and Dad said that he likes to take Bandit in his truck because it helps him to stay awake on long hauls if he has his dog to talk to. I really miss Bandit, but I guess he’s happier with Dad. Like the father said in Ways to Amuse a Dog, dogs get bored if they stay in the house all day. That is what Bandit would do with Mom and me.

Bandit likes to ride. That’s how we got him. He just jumped into Dad’s cab at a truck stop in Nevada and sat there. He had a red bandanna around his neck instead of a collar, so we called him Bandit.

Sometimes I lie awake at night listening to the gas station ping-pinging and thinking about Dad and Bandit hauling tomatoes or cotton on Interstate 5, and I am glad that Bandit is there to keep Dad awake. Have you ever seen Interstate 5? It is straight and boring with nothing much but fields. It is so boring that the cattle in the fields don’t even moo. They just stand there.

My hand is tired from all this writing again. I’ll get to No. 6 next time. Mom says not to worry about the postage, so I can’t use that as an excuse for not answering.

Mr. Henshaw:

Here we go again. I’ll never write another list of questions for an author to answer, no matter what the teacher says.

6. Do you like school?

School is OK, I guess. That’s where the kids are. The best thing about sixth grade in my new school is that if I do my best, I’ll finish it.

7. Who are your friends?

I don’t have many friends in my new school. Mom says that maybe I’m a loner, but I don’t know. A new boy in school has to be careful until he knows who’s who. Maybe I’m just a medium boy whom nobody pays much attention to. The only time anybody paid much attention to me was in my last school when I gave the book report on Ways to Amuse a Dog. After my report some people went to the library to get the book. The kids here pay more attention to my lunch than to me. They really want to see what I have in my lunch because Katy gives me such good things.

I wish somebody would invite me to their place sometime. After school I spend time kicking a soccer ball with some of the other kids so they won’t think I am a snob or anything, but nobody invites me anyway.

8. Who is your favorite teacher?

I don’t have a favorite teacher, but I really like Mr. Fridley. He’s the custodian. He’s always fair about who gets the milk first at lunchtime, and once when he had to clean after someone who got sick in the hall, he didn’t even look cross. He just said, “It looks like somebody’s made a mess,” and started putting sawdust around it. Mom got mad at Dad for making a mess too, but she didn’t mean throwing up. She meant that he stayed too long at that truck stop outside of town.

Two more questions to go. Maybe I won’t answer them. Ha-ha.

Mr. Henshaw:

OK, you win, because Mom is still nagging me, and I don’t have anything else to do. I’ll answer your last two questions even if I stay up all night.

9. What bothers you?

What bothers me about what? I don’t know what you mean. I guess I’m bothered by a lot of things. I am bothered when someone steals something out of my lunch bag. I don’t know enough about the people in the school to know who it can be. I am bothered about little kids with runny noses. I don’t mean I am fussy or anything like that. I don’t know why. I am just bothered.

I am bothered about walking to school slowly. The rule is that nobody should be on the school grounds until ten minutes before the first bell rings. Mom has an early class. The house is so lonely in the morning when she is gone that I can’t stand it and leave together with her. I don’t mind being alone after school, but I don’t like it in the morning before the fog lifts and our cottage seems dark and wet.

Mom tells me to go to school but to walk slowly which is hard work. Once I tried walking around every square in the sidewalk, but that was boring too. Sometimes I walk backwards except when I cross the street, but I still get to school so early that I have to hide behind the bushes so Mr. Fridley won’t see me.

I am bothered when my Dad telephones me and finishes by saying, “Well, keep your nose clean, kid.” Why can’t he say that he misses me, and why can’t he call me Leigh? I am bothered when he doesn’t phone at all which is most of the time. I have a book of road maps and try to follow his trips when I hear from him. When the TV worked I watched the weather on the news so I would know if he was driving through blizzards, tornadoes, hail or any of that fancy weather they have in other places of the U.S.

10. What do you wish?

I wish somebody would stop stealing the good stuff out of my lunch bag. I guess I wish a lot of other things, too. I wish someday Dad and Bandit would stop in front of our house in the rig with a big trailer. Dad would yell out of the cab, “Come on, Leigh. Jump in and I’ll take you to school.” Then I’d climb in and Bandit would wag his tail and lick my face. We’d drive off and all the men in the gas station would stare at us. Instead of going straight to school, we’d go along the freeway looking down on the tops of ordinary cars. Then we would turn around and go back to school just before the bell rang. I guess I wouldn’t look so medium then, sitting up there in the cab. I’d jump out, and Dad would say, “Bye, Leigh. See you,” and Bandit would give a little bark like good-bye. I’d say, “Drive carefully, Dad,” like I always do. Dad would take a minute to write in the truck’s logbook, “Drove my son to school.” Then the truck would drive away and all the kids would stare and wish their Dads drove big trucks, too.

There, Mr. Henshaw. That’s the end of your stupid questions. I hope you are happy about making me do all this extra work.

Dear Mr. Henshaw,

I am sorry I was rude in my last letter when I finished answering your questions. Maybe I was mad about other things, like Dad forgetting to send this month’s payment. Mom tried to phone him at the trailer park. He has his own phone in his trailer so the broker who gives him jobs can call him. I wish he still hauled sugar beets to the refinery here so he could come to see me. The judge in the divorce said that he has a right to see me.

When you answered my questions, you said that the way to be an author was to write. You underlined it twice. Well, I did a lot of writing, and you know what? Now that I think about it, it wasn’t so bad when it wasn’t for a book report or a report on some country in South America or anything where I had to look for things in the library. I even miss writing now that I’ve finished your questions. I get lonesome. Mom is working overtime at “Catering by Katy” because people give a lot of parties this time of year.

When I write a book maybe I’ll call it The Great Lunchbag Mystery, because I have a lot of trouble with my lunchbag. Mom doesn’t cook roasts and steaks now that Dad is gone, but she makes me good lunches with sandwiches on bread from the health food store with good filling spread all the way to the corners. Katy sends me little cheesecakes and other things she baked just for me.

Today I was supposed to have an egg. But at lunchtime when I opened my lunchbag, my egg was gone. We leave our lunchbags and boxes (mostly bags because no sixth-grader wants to carry a lunchbox) along the wall under our coat hooks at the back of the classroom behind a partition.

Are you writing another book? Please answer my letter so we can be pen pals.

Dear Mr. Henshaw,

I was surprised to get your postcard from Wyoming, because I thought you lived in Alaska.

Don’t worry. I get the message. You don’t have much time for answering letters. That’s OK with me, because I’m glad you are busy writing a book.

Something nice happened today. When I was walking around behind the bushes at school waiting for the ten minutes to come before the first bell rings, I was watching Mr. Fridley raise the flags. Maybe I better explain that the state flag of California is white with a brown bear in the middle. First Mr. Fridley raised the U.S. flag and then the California flag below it. I saw that the bear was upside down with his feet in the air. So I said, “Hey, Mr. Fridley, the bear is upside down.”

This is a new paragraph because Miss Martinez says there should be a new paragraph when a different person speaks. Mr. Fridley said, “Well, so it is. Would you like to turn him right side up?”

So I got to pull the flags down, turn the bear flag the right way and raise both flags again. Mr. Fridley said maybe I should come to school a few minutes early every morning to help him with the flags, but asked me to stop walking backwards because it made him nervous. So now I don’t have to walk quite so slow. It was nice to have somebody notice me. Nobody stole anything from my lunch today because I ate it on the way to school.

I am still thinking about what you said on your postcard about keeping a diary. Maybe I’ll try it.

Dear Mr. Henshaw,

I bought a composition book like you said. It is yellow and has a spiral. On the front I printed

DIARY OF LEIGH MARCUS BOTTS

PRIVATE – KEEP OUT

THIS MEANS YOU!!!!!

When I started to write in it, I didn’t know how to begin. I felt that I should write “Dear Composition Book” or “Dear Piece of Paper,” but that sounds stupid. The first page still looks the way I feel. Blank. I don’t think I can keep a diary. I don’t want to be a nuisance to you, but please tell me how to do it. I am stuck.

Dear Mr. Henshaw,

I got your postcard with the picture of the bears. Maybe I’ll do what you said and pretend my diary is a letter to somebody. I suppose I could pretend to write to Dad, but I wrote to him before and he never answered. Maybe I’ll pretend I am writing to you because when I answered all your questions, I always used the beginning “Dear Mr. Henshaw.” Don’t worry. I won’t send it to you.

Thanks for the tip. I know you’re busy.

Dear Mr. Pretend Henshaw,

This is a diary. I will keep it, not mail it.

If I eat my lunch on the way to school, I get hungry in the afternoon. Today I didn’t, so the two muffins Mom packed in my lunch were gone at lunch period. My sandwich was still there so I didn’t starve to death, but I surely missed those muffins. I can’t tell the teacher because it isn’t a good idea for a new boy in school to be a snitch.

All morning I try to keep track of who leaves his seat to go behind the partition where we keep our lunches, and I watch to see who leaves the room last at recess. I haven’t seen anybody chewing, but Miss Martinez is always telling me to face the front of the room. Anyway, the classroom door is usually open. Anybody could sneak in if we were all facing front and Miss Martinez was writing on the blackboard.

Hey, I just had an idea! Some authors write under made-up names. After Christmas vacation I’ll write a fake name on my lunchbag. That will fool the thief.

I guess I don’t have to sign my name to a diary letter the way I sign a real letter that I mail.

Dear Mr. Pretend Henshaw,

This is the first day of Christmas vacation. Still no package from Dad. I thought maybe he was bringing me a present instead of mailing it, so I asked Mom if she thought he might come to see us for Christmas.

She said, “We’re divorced. Remember?”

I remember all right. I remember all the time.

Dear Mr. Pretend Henshaw,

Still no package from Dad.

I keep thinking about last Christmas when we were in the mobile home before Dad bought the truck. He had to avoid the highway patrol to get home in time for Christmas. Mom cooked a turkey and a nice dinner. We had a small Christmas tree because there wasn’t enough room for a big one.

At dinner Dad said that when he was driving he often saw one shoe lying on the highway. He always wondered how it got there and what happened to the second shoe.

Mom said that one shoe sounded sad, like a country song. While we ate our mincemeat pie we all tried to make songs about lost shoes. I’ll never forget them.

Mine was worst:

Driving with a heavy loadI saw a shoe upon the roadSquashed like a toad.

Dad made this:

I saw a shoeWet with dewOn Highway 2.It made me blue.What will I do?

Mom’s song really made us laugh. It was the best:

A lonesome hiker was unluckyTo lose his boot around Kentucky.He hitched a ride with one foot dampDown the road to Angels Camp.

Stupid songs, but we had a lot of fun. Mom and Dad hadn’t laughed that much for a long time, and I hoped they would never stop. After that, when Dad came home, I asked if he had seen any shoes on the highway. He always had.

Dear Mr. Pretend Henshaw,