Leon and the Spitting Image (4 page)

It’s never a good idea to praise your own body parts. It’s an even worse idea when the body parts in question resemble a primordial fungus. Miss Hagmeyer must have sensed as much, because she quickly let go of her hair. “Now that we have established that I can hear
you,”
she said to the class, “it is time to find out whether you can hear
me.”

She tapped her blackboard motto. “I did not invent this nine-word phrase. A medieval master who trained apprentices composed it. Which is fitting, since our year together will concentrate on the Middle Ages, that period between the fifth and fifteenth century that gave the world horseshoes, hard soap, and the horizontal loom. And as you will soon discover, the Middle Ages emphasized discipline and charity. That
I
shall supply. The Middle Ages also put stock in obedience and diligence. That
you
shall provide. And by stitching together
my
discipline and
your
dutiful diligence, we will create a glorious tapestry of learning. Do all of you follow what I am saying?”

A hesitant round of “Yes, Miss Hagmeyers” filtered through the room.

“Good. Now some of you might be wondering: How will we create this glorious tapestry of learning? I shall answer that question by quoting another medieval saying. Listen closely. ‘I
hear
and I forget. I
see
and I remember. I
make
and I understand.’ In this class you will
make
. And by
making
you will
learn
. You will exercise your fingers and, by doing so, exercise your brains. That is the Classical way. That is the way of all apprentices wishing to become masters.”

Leon gulped. Mention of fingers never sounded promising.

Miss Hagmeyer walked over to her desk and grabbed the metal pointer. She held it up in the air
and said, “In short, I will make your minds and your fingers nimble by teaching you how to use this!”

And that’s when Leon learned the horrible truth. The metal pointer wasn’t a metal pointer.

It was a giant instructional sewing needle!

L
eon felt miserable as he left the classroom and headed for the gym. A whole year in the clutches of a teacher who threatened her class with a dagger-sized sewing needle? Something told him that Miss Hagmeyer’s projects would be a lot more demanding than macaroni necklaces. And for a student who had trouble writing neatly and tying his shoes that did not bode well.

“Okay, here’s the scoop,” said Lily-Matisse as she, Leon, and P.W. made their way to PE. “Mom told me the Hag is a total maniac.”

“No kidding,” said P.W. “What clued you in? The glass eyeballs? The weird things she made us recite? Maybe it was her nickel-sized earlobes?”

“The Hag’s earlobes are a lot bigger than nickels,” said Lily-Matisse. “They’re quarter sized at least.”

“Could we argue about lobe size later?” said Leon impatiently. “What did your mom tell you, Lily-Matisse?”

“Well, for starters, the Hag is totally obsessed by sewing. She’ll teach us math and English and stuff like that. But basically we’ll be using needles and pins
more than anything else. And you know those posters on the wall?”

“The surgery ones?” said P.W.

Lily-Matisse shook her head. “They’re not about surgery. They’re sewing instructions. And that big cabinet with the lock on it—the one Leon can touch from his desk? It’s
crammed
with cloth and tools and other sewing junk.”

“Great,” said Leon despairingly.

“And that’s not all,” Lily-Matisse said as she entered the gym. “You know her hair? How it’s super black and shiny? Mom says it’s a wig!”

“A wig?” said Leon.

“No way,” said P.W.

“Way,” said Lily-Matisse. “Mom heard the Hag adjusting it in the teachers’ lounge.”

“What do you mean,
heard?”
said P.W. skeptically.

“Mom’s pretty sure it’s attached with
Velcro.”

“Velcro?” said Leon.

P.W. dropped to one knee and started pulling at his sneaker strap.
Sccritchh! Sccritchh!
“Did it sound like this?”

Lily-Matisse made a face. “Cut it out, P.W. That’s gross.”

A shrill whistle blast put an end to P.W.’s sneaker concert.

Coach Skip Kasperitis was a whistle-happy ex-baseball player with a great big heart, a great big behind, and a
great big soft jowly face. But the most distinctive thing about the coach had nothing to do with any of those things. It had to do with a very unfortunate habit he’d picked up as a pitcher in the minor leagues.

That very unfortunate habit was tobacco.

Naturally the Classical School had a ban on
smoking
tobacco. But no one had thought to prohibit
chewing
it. And because of that oversight in the teacher handbook, Coach Kasperitis was able to indulge his unhealthy addiction.

Colleagues complained, of course, as did some parents. But the principal of the school, Hortensia Birdwhistle, turned a blind eye. She never liked raising a stink. Besides, she felt sorry for the coach. She knew he had cut back and that he was doing everything in his power to quit.

For a couple of months, when Leon was in second grade, the coach had tried gnawing on sunflower seeds instead of chomping on “chaw.” But that didn’t last. The wholesome substitute gave him headaches and drove the school janitor, Mr. Hankey, crazy.

“Hey, Skip!” Mr. Hankey complained. “It ain’t no picnic sweeping up sunflower husks. My gym’s
seedy
enough as it is, thank you very much!”

When Leon was in third grade, Coach Kasperitis had tried to break his habit by sticking tiny amounts of tobacco inside giant wads of bubble gum, a combination made famous by a legendary major league
ballplayer named Rod Carew. That experiment also caused problems.

The janitor again blew a gasket. “Hey, Skip, this ain’t called a
gum
nasium! Don’t count on me scraping Bazooka off the bleachers, you got that?”

Mr. Hankey didn’t have to worry. A couple of weeks into the gum-and-tobacco combo, the coach learned that the aforementioned legendary Rod Carew had spent a whopping $100,000 on dental work because of damage caused by the disgusting mix. So that was the end of that.

The coach eventually decided to chew his tobacco straight, in smaller and smaller amounts, less and less often. Still, no matter how much he cut down, his habit attracted attention. The reason, in a word, was
saliva
.

If you chew tobacco, you have to spit. There’s no getting around it. And given how Mr. Hankey had complained about the sunflower seeds and the bubble gum, Coach Kasperitis knew he had to come up with a surefire method for spit disposal.

Spittoons, those little brass spit pots often seen in cowboy movies, were out of the question. With kids and balls flying around the gym, an open container of teacher’s spit was an invitation to disaster. Nor could the coach expel his chaw into the gym’s water fountain. The mesh on the drain was too fine.

After a bit of testing, however, he worked out a simple method of waste management. He turned an
old pickle jar into a gob collector. Whenever the need arose, the coach would unscrew the jar and—
pffut!
—spit. This did wonders to get the students’ attention.

Pffut!
“Welcome back, guys!” Coach Kasperitis shouted as he resealed his pickle jar. “I hope all of you had championship summers! Guess how we’re going to start off the year?”

“Dodgeball!” the whole class yelled.

“You guys
are
sharp!” said the coach. “That’s absolutely right. Like I tell you every year, dodgeball teaches us an important life lesson. It teaches us that passion and practice are the secret to making magic.”

The coach placed his jar on the gym floor and reached into a canvas sack. “Now that you’ve entered the big leagues, you’re ready to handle this.” He extracted a blue ball.

“The Rhino,” he said. “A regulation-sized dodgeball just like the pros use. And in case you’re wondering where the ball gets its name, I will tell you what you’ll discover soon enough. Its skin is every bit as rough and tough as the skin on the genuine rhinos that stampede across Africa.”

Coach Kasperitis bounced the Rhino on
the floor a few times. “Okay, everybody. Pay attention. We’re going to ease back into things with a quick round of Team Multiple.”

The fourth graders all hollered happily, Leon louder than most.

“It’s your first day so I don’t want anyone overdoing it. You got that?”

The tepid response of the class convinced the coach that he needed to reinforce the point. “Just in case you
don’t
understand, I’m going to repeat the Kasperitis Code of Conduct. When you line up to choose sides there will be no backsies and no frontsies. Once play begins there will be no re-calls, no re-recalls, no replays, no redos, no puppy guarding, and no time-outs—unless authorized by me. Another thing—
absolutely no headsies
. I don’t want any bloody noses. They’re a mess to clean up and Mr. Hankey rides me plenty hard as it is.”

The coach bounced the Rhino. “Line balls are out,” he continued. “Automatic sudden death after ten minutes of play. And the most important rule … anyone remember?”

“No trash-talking,” said Antoinette primly.

“That’s exactly right,” the coach confirmed. “And no trash-talking means no teasing, no taunting, no insults of any kind. Right then. Let’s get started.”

He looked around the gym. “Jasprow. Lumpkin. Choose sides!”

Lily-Matisse put together her team based on friendship, which meant Leon and P.W. were her first-and second-round draft picks. Lumpkin took a different approach, giving preference to brute strength when assembling his squad.

Once the teams had lined up at opposite ends of the gym, the coach removed two more spanking new Rhinos from the sack and placed the three balls along the centerline. He then retreated with his pickle jar to the top row of the bleachers. With a short blast of his whistle, he started the first dodgeball game of the year.

It wasn’t one for the record books. Play proved unusually sloppy. Almost everyone dropped easy throws, missed simple outs, aimed terribly, failed to cover teammates.

Seven minutes into the game, only two players remained alive—Leon, who controlled two Rhinos, and Lumpkin, who controlled just one.

Take it slow, Leon said to himself as he maneuvered around the court. He faked a few times, advanced to the centerline, and threw one of his two balls.

Lumpkin dodged it.

Leon beat a quick retreat. But while dashing to safety, he tripped over a sneaker lace and accidentally kicked his backup Rhino across the centerline.

“Hey, klutzo!” Lumpkin shouted as soon as he saw
that Leon was vulnerable. “Ready for complete and total annihilation?” (Lumpkin had a limited vocabulary, except when it came to blood sports.)

The coach blew his whistle. “Lumpkin! What’d I say about trash-talk?”

“Sorry, Coach,” he said unconvincingly before returning his attention to Leon. Lumpkin plotted his attack slowly and methodically, clearly relishing the promise of public humiliation.

“Watch for his sidewinder!” P.W. warned from the bleachers.

Leon gave a nervous nod as he dodged about.

Lumpkin had a number of throws, but the most deadly in his arsenal was, without doubt, the low-flying waist-high toss called the sidewinder. When successfully launched, a sidewinder sent its victim straight to the school nurse. With the introduction of the Rhino, Leon speculated that it was probably safer to be charged by a
real
African rhino than to get in the way of one hurled by Henry Lumpkin.

For a few minutes Lumpkin forced Leon to jump and duck and twist by faking tosses this way and that. Then he stopped pretending and actually released one of the Rhinos.

I can catch this, Leon told himself as he tracked the surprisingly slow-moving ball.

He bent his knees and rounded his outstretched arms into a basket.

Bamm!

The incoming missile hit Leon’s chest and ricocheted toward the sidelines in a soft, gentle arc.

To win the game, all Leon had to do was catch the Rhino before it touched the ground. He took a few quick steps and cradled his arms.

WHAMM!!!

Out of nowhere, a
second
ball pegged Leon in the back.

Lumpkin’s strategy suddenly announced itself. The first, slow-moving toss had been nothing more than a decoy, used to distract Leon from the patented, highvelocity sidewinder.

The trap worked perfectly. The follow-up ball slammed Leon to the floor. And that meant, of course, he was out.

Leon felt like a total doofus as he stumbled off the court. That feeling stayed with him for the rest of the day, and it was still with him after dismissal.

Out on the front steps, Leon’s thoughts only darkened. Lumpkin
and
the Hag. Nine whole months of sewing and sidewinders! An entire school year of needles and noogies!

Leon felt so cruddy he didn’t even want to catch up with P.W. and Lily-Matisse. He waved good-bye to his friends and dashed straight to the curb, where he hailed a cab.