Burning Questions of Bingo Brown (6 page)

But they couldn’t help themselves. They were too proud. Bingo could see their pride in the way they inflated themselves with air. They didn’t inflate like that very often.

“What does Mr. Markham have to say about all of this?” his mother asked after she had deflated.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? His students are in the middle of a rebellion and he has no comment?”

“He said we shouldn’t applaud anarchy and he said he was going to be out of town and wouldn’t be able to bail us out. That was about it.”

“You like Mr. Markham, don’t you?”

“Sure. Why wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know. I’ve heard varying reports.”

Bingo stopped making his shish kebab. “Like what?”

“Nothing specific. Some parents feel he isn’t,” she paused to find the right word, “let’s say
stable.”

“Nobody’s stable,” Bingo said. “Even I am not perfectly stable.”

“Oh, really?” She smiled. “Well, maybe
stable
was the wrong word. It was just little things, like last year he had students write letters persuading some girl to go out with him.”

“Well, we’ve never done that,” Bingo answered truthfully. “Anyway, he does stuff like that to make life interesting. What do you want him to assign—
My Summer Vacation?”

“No.”

“I should think you’d be glad I have a teacher I like for a change.”

“I am.”

“And that I am taking an active part in school politics.”

“I am.”

“Then,” Bingo said, “you should act like it.”

“Bravo, Bingo,” his father said.

Sleep, of course, was out of the question that night because he was so thrilled over the wear-in. Friday was shaping up to be the biggest day of his entire life.

There was only one worry. Since it was the biggest day of his life, he wasn’t sure he wanted to spend it in a shirt that said
MOZART FREAK
.

To be honest, he had worn that shirt at least once a week all last year, and he had started off the fall in it as well.
MOZART FREAK
wasn’t special any more. Certainly it was not worthy of Melissa’s Declaration of Independence. Nor of Harriet’s shirt. He had learned that afternoon that Harriet was wearing a shirt with dolphins on the front and underneath were the words
I HAVE A PORPOISE IN LIFE
.

Bingo tossed and turned. His Snoopy sheets became twisted and sweaty.

He got up at eleven, put on the light, and went through his bureau drawers, thinking that perhaps he had a shirt he’d forgotten about. He got up again at twelve. This time he went to his mom’s room and quietly opened her t-shirt drawer.

“What are you doing, Bingo?” she asked, lifting her head off the pillow.

“Nothing, Mom, go back to sleep.”

“What are you doing in my bureau drawer?”

“Nothing, Mom, just checking out your t-shirts.”

“At midnight?”

“Mom, everybody is wearing these great t-shirts tomorrow and I’m stuck with Mozart Freak. I’ve got to have something better. I’ve got to!”

“Well, you should have thought of that before midnight. Go back to bed.”

“Mom—”

“Go to bed, Bingo!” This was his father’s command-voice.

“Yes, sir.”

Bingo went to bed, but he couldn’t sleep. About one o’clock he made a decision. He would
create
a t-shirt. He would take a blank t-shirt, and he would write
WORDS
on it. That would be all, except that the O would be the not-allowed symbol: Ø.

He got out of bed. Unfortunately, the only blank t-shirts were in his father’s underwear drawer. Silently Bingo crept into his parents’ room, silently opened the drawer, withdrew the top t-shirt, and departed.

On the way back to his room, he slipped through the house, gathering Magic Markers from various drawers. In order to insure that the shirt was colorful, he was going to make each letter a different color. The Ø would be red.

Bingo set to work. As soon as he started he was electrified. The shirt was going to be beautiful, beautiful, and best of all was the fact that he hadn’t put cardboard inside the shirt before he started and so now the color was going through the material.

At last Bingo was finished. He draped his t-shirt over his dresser so that the first thing he would see in the morning was
WØRDS
. He stood for moment admiring the letters, the coloring, the—

“Bingo, are you still up?”

“No.”

“Then why is your light on?”

“I mean, yes, I’m up, but I’m going to bed right now.”

Bingo turned off the light. He fell across his crumpled Snoopy sheets. At last he was ready for the most thrilling day of his life.

“W
HAT DO YOU THINK?”

Bingo stood in the doorway to the kitchen in his
WØRDS
t-shirt. His parents put down their coffee cups and turned to look at him.

“Be honest now.”

“I thought you had decided to wear Mozart Freak,” his mom said.

“Mom, I told you last night it wasn’t special enough. Wait, you haven’t seen the back.” he turned slowly, revealing
SDRØW
. “Now what do you think?”

Many of his past creations had looked good on paper but had not worked out—like last Halloween. The disguise was perfect, but it took him a half hour to walk to the first house.
This
had worked out.

There was another long pause.

Finally his dad said, “It’s different.”

“Really? You aren’t just saying that?”

His mom said, “Your dad’s right. There won’t be another one like it.”

“Thanks.”

“Now sit down and have some breakfast.”

“Mom, I can’t eat. I’ve got to get to school!”

“Bingo, it won’t take five minutes to eat a bowl of cereal.”

“Mom, I’m late already. Everybody’s going to be there early, to get a good place. If I’m late, I’ll miss it.” The thought of that brought such anguish that he turned immediately and started for the door.

“Bingo, it’s not even seven o’clock yet, now come back here and—”

The slamming of the front door was her answer.

Every single person was already at school when Bingo got there. Every single person was wearing a t-shirt with something written on it. The schoolyard was ablaze with words. It was a dictionary come to life.

HELP, I’M BEING HELD PRISONER IN THIS SHIRT!

AVAILABLE FOR CLONING.

I AM SURROUNDED BY IDIOTS.

ARCHEOLOGY IS THE PITS.

ONLY LEFT-HANDED PEOPLE ARE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND.

Bingo had never enjoyed anything so much. His mouth hung open in admiration.

NOTICE: THE AREA BEHIND THIS SHIRT IS PROTECTED UNDER THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT.

I HAVE SOMETHING MONEY CAN’T BUY—POVERTY.

RANIUM—THE ONLY THING MISSING IS U.

COMPUTER CHIPS ARE SMALL BECAUSE COMPUTERS TAKE SMALL BYTES.

CAUTION: I KNOW KARATE AND A FEW OTHER ORIENTAL WORDS.

BE ALERT—THE WORLD NEEDS MORE LERTS.

SPLIT WOOD—NOT ATOMS.

STOP CONTINENTAL DRIFT.

BEAM ME UP SCOTTY. THERE IS NO INTELLIGENT LIFE DOWN HERE.

REALITY IS FOR THOSE WHO CAN’T FACE SCIENCE FICTION.

π
²
NO! PI ARE ROUND. CAKE ARE SQUARE.

Bingo’s long wandering path among his classmates brought him to the steps of the school. Billy Wentworth stood there alone, head and shoulders above the crowd. His eyes looked at some distant spot on the horizon.

He had on his newly purchased Rambo t-shirt. His combat boots and camouflage pants completed the outfit. His hands were behind his back. He was standing at what Bingo recognized from war movies as Parade Rest. He would draw an aerial view of it later in his journal.

Below him, the students milled around the schoolyard, admiring t-shirts and shivering with excitement and the chill of the fall morning. The October air was charged with electricity.

YOU QUACK ME UP.

DON’T BUG ME. THIS IS MY DO-NOTHING T-SHIRT!

I’M NOT OVERWEIGHT—I’M UNDERTALL.

HERE I COME … THERE I GO.

It was a measure of their excitement and dedication that not one of them had thought to bring books, homework, or lunches. These items no longer had any meaning. They were
wearing
the only items of lasting value.

The time ticked slowly by … seven-thirty … seven-forty. “What time is it now?” the kids without watches kept asking. Ten minutes to eight … five minutes to eight …

When eight o’clock came, Billy Wentworth shifted position. He stopped Parade Rest and turned sharply to face the front door.

As if on signal, the kids closed in around him. The only sounds were the coughs of the sick kids who had come to school anyway. “Mom, I’m just going for five minutes,” they had told their moms. Some of the moms were waiting across the street in station wagons, motors idling, so they could rush the invalids back to bed.

At eight-oh-five there was a metallic sound. The inside doors were being unlocked.

Roosevelt Middle School had two sets of doors. There were inside doors and then there was a little room which was never used, and then the outside doors. So there was going to be a lot of door unlocking before the main event.

The inside doors had now been opened. Bingo could see the shadow of a man in the room that was never used. The shadow moved toward the outside doors.

Bingo’s heart moved up into his throat. He had stopped breathing a long time ago.

Billy Wentworth was the only person in motion, and all he did was wipe his hands on the back of his camouflage pants as if he were getting ready for a fight.

Everyone on the school ground was frozen in place. Bingo was sandwiched between Melissa in her Declaration of Independence and Harriet in her
I HAVE A PORPOISE IN LIFE
, but he didn’t even notice he was between his two loves, didn’t even feel the warmth of their shoulders against his.

Now the outside doors were being unlocked. Now they were being opened.

No one breathed. No one moved.

A figure appeared in the doorway, a figure in a gray jumpsuit. It was the janitor!
The janitor!
THE JANITOR!

Their mouths dropped open. They blinked their eyes to clear their vision, and it was still THE JANITOR.

Now everybody started looking around at everybody else. The exact same burning questions were popped in every mind.

What’s going on here?

Where’s Boehmer?

What’s the janitor doing opening the doors?

How can this be the most thrilling day of our lives if Boehmer and Billy Wentworth don’t have a head-to-head confrontation?

Bingo briefly considered leading the crowd in a chant.
We want Boehmer! We want Boehmer!
Maybe he had gotten his father’s cheerleading gene after all.

Before he could put this plan into effect, however, Billy Wentworth turned around. He locked his hands over his head and gave the victory signal.

Through the sudden tears in Bingo’s eyes, he saw Billy Wentworth disappear through the outside doors, into the little room which was never used, through the inside doors and into the school.

Then he didn’t have to lead the crowd. They burst into a rousing cry that could be heard five miles away.

“YYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!”

And then in a rush, they happily followed their rebel leader inside.

B
INGO HAD THOUGHT THAT
his thrills were over for the day when he walked into the classroom and saw the substitute teacher.

“My name’s Miss Brownley,” a lady with a bushel-basket of hair said, “and I’m your substitute for the day.”

Mamie Lou put up her hand. “Miss Brownley?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s Mr. Boehmer?”

“The principal? I believe he had a staff meeting this morning. He’ll be in his office later.”

“Why wasn’t he at the door?”

“What door?”

“The front door! He was supposed to be at the front door! We weren’t supposed to wear shirts with writing on them and we did and he was supposed to send us home but he didn’t. Why?”

“I have no idea,” said Miss Brownley.

Yes, Bingo thought, the thrills were over for the day. Then at exactly ten twenty-three something happened that made the wear-in seem like child’s play. Melissa walked into his arms.

This was the first time that Melissa and Bingo had ever made real contact so Bingo would have been pleased even if their hands had bumped or she had stepped on his tennis shoe. To have her walk into his arms was like something out of a soap opera. It left him delirious.

The embrace came about in an unexpected way. To get the class to calm down, Miss Brownley asked them to write in their journals.

Everyone was too excited to think of something to write. Even Bingo had no burning questions.

“Let me make a suggestion,” Miss Brownley said. “Write about someone who has significantly changed your life—a teacher, a coach, perhaps one of your parents. It could even be someone on television …”

While Miss Brownley droned on, Bingo wrote a page and a half about the doctor who had been responsible for his being named Bingo. He ended with a question.
Who knows what kind of person I might have become had the doctor said, “Richard!” instead of “Bingo!”

He illustrated the piece with a picture of the doctor holding up the unfortunate baby. Even with all that, he was finished before anybody else. He immediately broke his pencil.

Bingo felt safe in doing this. Usually he didn’t break his pencil until he made it to the pencil sharpener, but Miss Brownley was new and had never seen him in action before.

He took his time getting to the pencil sharpener and leisurely checked out the people who had significantly changed the lives of his classmates.

No one’s lives had been changed very significantly. There was a kindergarten teacher called Miss Tiffany. A Little League coach. Mr. Rogers …