Burning Questions of Bingo Brown (9 page)

Will I end up without even the desire for burning questions?

He did not get to finish, because Mr. Markham was asking for their attention.

“I see that some of you are through. Several of you have even attempted to hand in your papers.”

He stood up and walked around to the front of his desk.

“Now, gang, here’s part two of the test. I am going to ask you to grade the tests yourself. Put your hands down. Yes, you will grade your own test. No, I do not want you to exchange papers. I am putting you on your honor to grade your own paper. If you are capable of making up your own test, you are capable of grading it.

“When you are finished, you will hold up your graded paper so that I can record the grade. Please make your A’s large enough for me to read.

“Now are there questions? Yes, George.”

“Can we make up all our tests from now on?”

“We’ll see.”

All day long Bingo had a hard time concentrating. Every time Billy Wentworth shifted in his seat, Bingo steeled himself for something like, “I hear you’re spending the night with me, Worm Brain.”

“Yes, I hope you don’t mind,” he would answer.

“Well, I do mind, so what are you going to do about it,” he would say.

Then he would say, “I—”

“Bingo.”

“What? What?”

Bingo looked up. School was over. The classroom was empty except for Melissa and him.

Melissa said, “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“I’ve been worried about you all day.”

“Have you?”

“Yes, you didn’t go to the pencil sharpener even one time.”

“I didn’t really feel like it.”

“Is it because of what I told you?”

“What?”

“About Mr. Mark?”

“No, no, it wasn’t that.”

“I was worried because—you know—like sometimes you tell somebody something that worries you and it makes you feel better but it makes them feel worse, and I was worried that that was what I did to you.”

“No, you didn’t make me feel worse. You make me feel better.”

“Really? You mean that?”

“Yes.”

“Anyway, I found out Dawn’s last name.”

“You did?”

“It’s Monohan. I asked Mr. Mark and he told me.”

“Oh.”

“So now I don’t know whether to call her up or not. I’m really worried about Mr. Mark. If I knew she was his girlfriend, I’d feel better, wouldn’t you?”

“Maybe.”

“Because if she’s his girlfriend, she would be helping him through things, and if she’s not his girlfriend, then she wouldn’t.”

“Yes.”

“So what do you think? Should I call or not?”

“I think you should call.”

“Really? You aren’t just saying that because you know I want to call?”

“No.”

“Thank you, Bingo. I’ll let you know what I find out. Bye.”

“Bye.”

Bingo got up slowly. Now he knew he was sick. He didn’t even enjoy mixed-sex conversations anymore. With his head hanging, he started for home.

“M
R. MARK?”

“Yes, Bingo.”

“What are we supposed to do when our journals are full?”

“Well, let’s worry about that when they are full, all right?”

“Mine is.”

Mr. Mark looked up in surprise. “Your journal is full, Bingo?”

“Yes.”

“Did you use just one side of the paper?”

“Both sides.”

“Both sides are full?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Of writing?”

“Well, there are some illustrations.”

“But the journal is full?”

“Yes, sir. It’s been full for three days, but I didn’t have anything to write, so I wasn’t worried about it.”

“Is anybody else’s journal full?”

No hands went up.

“Is anybody else’s journal halfway full?”

No hands.

“A quarter full?”

Melissa put up her hand. Bingo glanced at her with gratitude.

“Well, Bingo, I guess I’ll stop by the store on the way home and get another volume for you. In the meantime, can you make do with a few sheets of loose paper?”

“I don’t have anything to write, Mr. Mark. I’m not even sure I’m ever going to write again.”

“Oh?”

“I just wanted to know what you wanted us to do when our notebooks were full.”

It was Friday. That night he would be sleeping in one of Billy Wentworth’s beds. Against his will, he began sketching the beds on the last page of his journal.

When he drew himself on the top bunk, the lead broke and shot, bullet-like, across the aisle.

He got up slowly and went to the pencil sharpener. It was the first time he had been to the pencil sharpener all week.

He was grinding away, worrying about the supper, the bunk beds. He had even started worrying about the poodle. At that moment Bingo’s thoughts were interrupted by a distinctive sound.

Bingo would have known that sound anywhere—the breaking of pencil lead. Bingo knew the pencil lead was Melissa’s. He ground slower.

He watched the floor. Reeboks with plaid shoelaces came into view. It was Melissa. He looked up.

“It’s a bad day for pencils.” She grinned and showed him the broken lead.

He said, “Obviously.”

He took out his pencil and blew off the shavings. He wished he had blown them in the opposite direction. However, Melissa didn’t seem upset that they landed on her. Bingo liked women who were not easily offended.

To give Melissa the opportunity to brush them off, he said, “I better empty this.”

He untwisted the pencil sharpener and went to the trash can. Mr. Markham said, “What are you doing, Bingo?”

“Emptying the pencil sharpener.”

“There’s nothing in it.”

“Oh. So there isn’t.”

Bingo went back to the pencil sharpener. Melissa had been waiting for him. She whispered, “I tried to call—” She glanced at Mr. Markham. “—you know who.”

“Who?”

“You know.”

With the eraser of her pencil, she wrote D A W N on the windowsill. Bingo said, “Oh.”

“But guess what?”

“What?”

“She’s got an unlisted number.”

Mr. Markham said, “What’s going on over there?”

“I was just going to my seat.”

“That sounds like the first good idea you’ve had all day, Bingo.”

Bingo said, “Excuse me,” to Melissa and started to squeeze past her. At that moment, something unexpected happened—something Bingo couldn’t have planned in a million years.

Harriet jumped up to sharpen her pencil and for a moment Bingo was sandwiched between them like the filling in an Oreo cookie.

Harriet said, “Bingo!” in a disgusted way, as if he had done it on purpose.

Bingo said, “Sorry.”

“Well, watch it.”

“I will from now on.”

“Bingo,” Mr. Markham said tiredly.

“These things happen,” Bingo explained. Then he went directly to his seat.

Well, now he had the answer to at least one of his questions. One mystery was solved.

He had been embraced by both girls at the same time, and when he drew the picture, he decorated Melissa with plus marks and Harriet with minuses.

When he got his new journal and if he survived the weekend, he would start a new section—
Questions that Burn No More.

If—he repeated for emphasis—he survived the weekend.

B
INGO LAY IN THE
top bunk bed. He had been there for ten minutes and he was miserable. He had to go to the bathroom.

He told himself that he could not possibly have to go again, that he had gone five times since supper. He reminded himself that he did not want to climb down from the top bunk, that there was no ladder.

The bunk-bed set was modern Western, and in going over the wagon wheel at the foot of the bed, Bingo had hurt himself on one of the spokes.

He had not cried out in pain—he was grateful for that—but he knew that if it happened again—and in the dark it was bound to—he would cry out.

It had been a very long evening. The only relief had come after supper when Bingo pretended to have forgotten something.

“I’ll be right back,” he told the Wentworths.

“You want Billy to go with you?”

“No, it won’t take me but a minute.”

He went home, unlocked the door, and walked through the painfully empty rooms. He went in the bathroom to look at himself in the mirror.

The face looking back at him was pitiful. He must have looked this bad when his parents left him. How could they have left?

Bingo recalled the last moment in the front yard. He had stood with his knapsack hanging from one hand, the other hand lifted in a farewell gesture.

“See you Sunday,” his mom called.

He nodded.

He hoped for one brief moment that they would turn and say, “Oh, it was just a joke, Bingo. You didn’t really think we’d leave you. Oh, he really thought we were going.”

“Bye!”

They got in the car and slammed the door. His mom was laughing. As they started down the street, she rolled down the window and blew the trumpet.

“Bingo?”

It was Billy Wentworth’s voice. Bingo could not let Wentworth see him looking at himself in the mirror. Quickly he flushed the toilet and came out in the hall.

“My dad’s taking me to the movies.
Rambo III.
Want to come?”

“Yes.”

“It’s better than
Rambo II,
but not as good as
Rambo.
Which one did you like best?” Billy asked as they crossed the lawn together.

“I liked them all the same.” Bingo had never seen either, but he instinctively knew he had spoken the truth.

While Bingo was reliving the experience of
Rambo III,
much of which he had watched with his eyes shut, a miracle happened.

Bingo fell asleep.

It was Saturday. Bingo heard the familiar sounds of cartoons. In his eagerness to be in front of the TV, he almost threw his feet over the side of the bed and jumped off.

He opened his eyes and was instantly grateful he had not leapt. If he had, he would have fallen six feet to Billy Wentworth’s floor and broken both his legs.

He spent a few moments looking at Billy Wentworth’s ceiling. This was the closest he had ever been to a ceiling. Then he leaned over the side of the bunk.

The bottom bunk was empty. That was something else to be grateful for. He would not have to climb over the wagon wheel with Billy watching him.

Bingo climbed down from the top bunk carefully. He found his clothes. He put them on. He went into the living room. Billy’s sister said, “Everybody’s in the kitchen,” without looking at him.

“Thank you.”

Mrs. Wentworth said, “Good morning, Bingo. We just fix our own breakfasts around here. There’s plenty of cereal. Help yourself.”

“I will.”

Mr. Wentworth was reading the paper, but he paused to say, “Midge tells me your parents went to Catawba College.”

“Yes, sir, they’ve gone back for homecoming.”

“Is that a Baptist college?”

“No sir, they both majored in marketing.”

Billy said, “Mr. Markham says there’s no point in going to college.”

“Oh, I’m sure Mr. Markham didn’t say that,” Mrs. Wentworth said mildly.

“Yes, he did, didn’t he, Bingo?”

“Maybe. I’ve missed a few things this past week.”

“He also said that by the time we got out of kindergarten we’d learned all we needed to know—to share, not to hit people, to say we’re sorry when we hurt somebody, and to hold hands when we go out in the world.”

Mr. Wentworth said, “That doesn’t mean there’s no point in going to college.”

“Well, he must not believe in going to college. He’s stopped teaching us, hasn’t he, Bingo? How are we going to get into college if he doesn’t teach us anything?”

“I don’t think he’s stopped teaching us,” Bingo said. “Maybe he’s slowed down a little.”

“Don’t exaggerate, Billy.”

“Mom, he doesn’t teach us a thing. He really doesn’t. We write in our journals, we make up our own tests, we even grade our own tests. Every single person gave themselves an A.”

“Now, Billy—”

“Mom, I’m not exaggerating. Am I, Bingo?”

“We did grade our own tests, Mrs. Wentworth, and there were a lot of A’s, but Mr. Markham does stuff like that to keep us interested.”

“I don’t think his elevator goes all the way to the top floor,” Billy said.

“How many times have you made your own tests?”

“Just once, but, Mom—”

Something cold touched Bingo’s ankle, and he quickly crossed his legs. It was the poodle again.

The poodle had an unsettling way of sniffing a certain spot on Bingo’s leg. Bingo couldn’t stand it—the touch of that little tiny cold nose, the brush of those whiskers …

Bingo was going home this morning and spraying his legs with insect repellent.

While he was there, he would call Melissa. At last he had a good reason to do that—to let her know that he was at Billy Wentworth’s. “I was afraid you might have tried to call me—to tell me something about Dawn—and you would worry when you didn’t get an answer,” he would say.

As it turned out, he didn’t even need a reason. She said, “Oh, I’m so glad to hear your voice, Bingo.”

“You are? I called because I was afraid you might have tried to call me—”

“I did. I called and called. I saw her.”

“You saw Dawn.”

“Yes. At Pizza Inn. She was having a small pepperoni with double cheese. She and a girlfriend were sharing.”

“Oh.”

“I went over and she didn’t know me at first. I had on a headband so I said that I was Melissa and I was in Mr. Markham’s room. I said, ‘Remember I talked to you when he went in the Winn Dixie for hotdogs?’”

“What did she say?”

“She said, ‘Oh, him,’ like that. I said, ‘Aren’t you his girlfriend anymore?’ She had told me she wasn’t, but I pretended I had forgotten. She said, ‘I never was his girlfriend. Never! He might say I was his girlfriend, but I wasn’t and I never will be.’ I said, ‘Do you ever see him anymore?’ She said, ‘Not if I can help it. I hear his motorcycle and I hide. I get down behind the sofa. He scares me.’ I didn’t know what to say so finally I said, ‘Did you get our letters? Our whole class wrote you letters.’”

“Maybe she wouldn’t take them.”

“She said, ‘Oh, those letters. They really upset me. Imagine him talking about me in front of the class. What did he tell you? Did he say he couldn’t go on living without me? Because I hate him saying that.’”