The Kid in the Red Jacket (2 page)

Later we learned that cows were the only things Roger could draw. By the end of the year, Miss Filbert had taught him to stand them on two legs and dress them in clothes. Personally, I thought this was a big mistake. In kindergarten, every time Roger drew a picture of his family, it looked like they all had cow heads.

Before the move, I’d talked a lot of my worries over with Thornsberry and Roger. They hated my leaving almost as much as I did, but they tried to make me feel better about it.

“Come on, Howard,” said Thornsberry. “Maybe it won’t be as bad as you think.”

“How could it not be bad?” I asked glumly. “Didn’t you ever study about Massachusetts in history? The Pilgrims moved there, and by the first winter practically all of them were dead.”

Roger made a face. “I hate Pilgrims. I’ve hated them ever since my mother made me be one on Halloween. Remember that? She made me wear that stupid top hat and long black coat. Everyone thought I was Abraham Lincoln carrying a turkey.”

Thornsberry gave me a funny look. “You don’t really think you’re going to
die
there, do you, Howard?”

“Well, maybe not actually
die
,” I admitted. “But I’m going to have to go to a stupid new school, and that’s almost like dying.”

Every time I thought about it, my stomach tied itself in knots. “God, I can’t believe it. I’m actually going to have to be a new kid.”

Thornsberry and Roger groaned.

“We got a new kid in our room about a week ago,” Roger said. “No one can remember his name, so we just call him by the color of his shirt. On Thursday he was the kid in the green shirt. On Friday he wore a shirt with his name on it, so we called him the kid in the Kenneth shirt.”

Thornsberry hit Roger on the arm. “We’re supposed to be making him feel better, remember?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I replied. “It’s not like I don’t know what happens to new kids. I’ve had enough of them in my class to see how hard it is to fit in.”

“Yeah, but you won’t have any trouble, Howard,” said Roger. “It’s not like you’re a geek or anything. At school you’re practically even
popular.
”

“Sure, Howard,” added Roger. “You won’t have any trouble. You’ll see.”

Thinking about how nice they had tried to be
almost made me start to cry. My mother must have heard me sniffle or something, because she turned around.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, raising her eyebrows sympathetically.

“Everything,” I answered dismally. “Everything’s the matter.”

She just sighed and turned back around. A second later she threw over a granola bar.

Instead of saying thank you, I made a noise like a gorilla. She didn’t say anything, but I’m pretty sure she got the message.

We had turned onto the highway by then, so I spent the next couple of hours reading signs, trying to get my mind off the move. It wasn’t easy, though. Every few minutes, we’d pass a billboard with kids painted on it and I’d start wondering about the kids in Massachusetts. What would they be like? Would they dress the same way we did in Arizona? I hoped I would fit in. One time we had a German kid visit our school, and he wore a suit and a bow tie. He looked like a little grandfather or something.

Anyway, all I’ve got to say is that moving really stunk. And even though it’s over now, I still don’t blame myself for the way I acted about it. A lot of
mean stuff has been done to me—by my parents, by the moving men, and by my father’s stupid company. And even though sometimes you can control your anger, you can’t control your sadness. And that’s what I mostly was, I guess—sad. Sad about leaving my friends and my school and my room and my soccer team and a million other things.

If you’ve ever been sad,
really
sad, you know what I’m talking about. Sadness is with you all the time. Even when your friends are trying to make you laugh, sadness seems to be waiting right behind your smile.

    2   
Thanks to Gaylord’s screaming, the trip to Massachusetts drove us all crazy. I appreciated the job he did on my parents, but unfortunately I had to listen to him too. For the first two days he was pretty good, but by the time we got to Illinois, Gaylord decided he hated his car seat. He screamed from the minute he was strapped in until he cried himself to sleep. Then when he woke up and found he was still in the car seat, he screamed all over again.

At lunch my mother asked the waitress if she wanted to buy a baby. Everyone went “ha ha,” but I really think if the waitress could have come up with the cash, Gaylord would still be on the counter at Denny’s.

Anyway, when it came to my brother’s crying, my dad wasn’t exactly overflowing with patience. Every few minutes he’d turn around and yell,
“For heaven’s sake, Gaylord, would you knock it off
!” I’m not kidding. He yelled it about eighty times.

I think we were somewhere outside of Chicago when my father finally cracked. He pulled over to the side of the highway and told Gaylord to get out of the car. For a second my mother and I just sat there looking at my dad like he was nuts. I was pretty relieved when he finally calmed down and started smiling about it.

The only one who didn’t seem to be bothered by Gaylord’s screaming was my basset hound, Bill. He was sleeping in the back of our station wagon and never even woke up. I guess it’s understandable, though. He was on sleeping pills from the vet. Since Bill gets carsick, it was the only way to get him to Massachusetts without making a mess.

Actually the whole thing was pretty interesting.
My mother would slip him one of the sleeping pills in the morning and he would start getting groggy right away. First his legs would go limp, and then he would collapse before we could get him into the car. One morning a little kid was watching in the motel parking lot as my father tried to lift Bill into the car. He started running up and down the sidewalk, screaming, “Doggie dead! Doggie dead!”

I’ve always liked Bill. My mother says he stinks to high heaven, but it’s not because he’s dirty. He just has a strong dog odor. Anyone who ever pets him always ends up saying “pew.”

It took us five and a half days to finally get to Massachusetts. The town of Rosemont (our new home) was about an hour from the state line. Since it was probably going to be a couple of days before the movers arrived with our stuff, Dad had reserved a motel room.

Mom carried Gaylord inside and put him down on the bed. Right away he started kicking his feet and making baby noises. I think he was showing us how cute he was so no one would kill him for all the crying.

“Keep an eye on your brother for a few minutes,
will you, Howard?” asked Mom. “Dad and I have to run up to the motel office.”

You’d think I would have really minded watching such a brat. But even though Gaylord can get on your nerves sometimes, he’s probably as good as you can get for a baby. He’s all soft and white, of course, but he doesn’t seem to be a sissy baby. His infant seat tilted over backward once, and we found him in the living room, quietly standing on his head and looking at the ceiling.

He can actually even be fun once in a while. Like sometimes I’ll sit him on my lap and watch his head start bobbing around. Once I told my parents we should have named him Bob. After I said it, I laughed for about two hours. Finally, my father told me to please shut up.

As soon as my parents were gone, I sat down next to Gaylord and looked around us. “Geez, Gaylord, we’re really here. I mean it’s actually
happening
. We’re in a new state, all alone without any friends.…”

Gaylord rolled over and tried to grab his stuffed walrus. He has two favorite stuffed animals—Mr. Walrus and Mr. Giraffe. My mother named both of them. Clever, huh? I’m surprised she didn’t name Gaylord “Mr. Baby.”

Gaylord stuffed part of Mr. Walrus in his mouth and rolled back over.

“No wonder you don’t understand how bad this is,” I continued. “You got to bring your friends with you. But what about me? What am I supposed to do without Roger and Thornsberry?”

Gaylord made a squeaking sound.

“Oh, sure, I know I’ve got
you
. But let’s face facts, little fella, you’re two feet tall and you don’t understand English. No offense, but right now you’re more like a pet.”

My mother surprised me by opening the door. “You two having a nice little chat?” she asked cheerfully.

Quickly I jumped up from the bed. I hate it when she sneaks up on me like that. If I’m not careful, she’ll catch me doing something nice and think I’m “bouncing back.”

Just then the phone rang. It was the moving company.

“You’re kidding! That’s terrific!” my father exclaimed after a few seconds. “You mean they’ll actually be ready to unload tomorrow? Those drivers really must have put the pedal to the metal!”

I hate it when Dad tries to talk like a truck-driver. It never sounds natural. His handle on our
CB radio is Big Jake. The stupid part is, my father’s name is Clifford. Every time he says “Big Jake,” my mother falls over on the seat laughing. Once she was laughing so hard, my father had to turn the CB off so no truckers would hear.

After a few more calls to the electric company and the phone company, Dad took us over to the new house to make sure everything was ready. I didn’t want to go. I begged and begged to stay at the motel, but they wouldn’t let me.

I’m not sure why I hated going so much, but I’d been dreading it for a long time. I’d barely even looked at the pictures of it my parents had tried to show me. See, to me my old house wasn’t just a building. It was part of my family, kind of like my dog. And to stand around oohing and aahing over pictures of the new one would have been pretty heartless, if you ask me. It’s something a traitor would do.

I was right about the new house too. I knew it as soon as we pulled into the driveway. It didn’t look like part of our family at all! It was big and old and looked nothing like my Arizona house. It was made out of brick and was two stories tall. It had this giant porch that went almost the whole way around. You see houses like it on TV a lot.
There are usually a couple of people sitting outside in rocking chairs, talking about good old-fashioned lemonade.

Next to the front door was a plaque that read
BUILT 1768
.
When my mother saw it, she practically went nuts.

“Wow, Howard, look at that! 1768! This house is part of the history of our country! This’ll certainly be something to write Roger and Thorny about, won’t it?”

I sighed. I could just see the letter now:

Dear Roger and Thornsberry
,

Whoopee.

As soon as we were all inside, my father came up and patted me on the back. “This house is over two hundred years old, son. Maybe George Washington even slept here.”

If that was supposed to impress me, it didn’t. As a matter of fact, the thought of a dead president sleeping in my room sort of made me sick.

After that, my father took me on a tour of the house. In practically every room, he’d stop and tell
me to take a look at how much bigger it was than our old house. He was right, too. The rooms were gigantic. The whole
thing
sort of reminded me of a museum.
Tyrannosaurus rex
could watch TV in our living room and not even feel cramped.

But big doesn’t always mean better. Take my room, for instance. Just because it was big, my father tried to make it seem like the answer to a kid’s dreams or something. The school cafeteria’s big, but I wouldn’t want to sleep there.

“Can you believe the space in here, Howard?” Dad went on. “It’s at least twice the size of your old bedroom. Maybe even three times! You and your friends can really have some breathing room up here!”

“I don’t
have
any friends, Dad,” I replied smugly. “When you don’t have any friends, they don’t breathe that much.”

My father put his arm around me and squeezed gently. “You’ll make friends, son. You’ll make them. Meanwhile, why don’t you just give this place a chance, okay? Why don’t you stand here at the window and get to know the neighborhood while Mom and I check out the bathrooms.”

After he left, I sauntered over to the window and looked out. A huge oak tree stood nearby, and
its branches practically touched the windowpane. Looking through them, I could see almost every house on my block. They were all huge. And they all looked every bit as old as mine did. Some were brick and some were painted white with green or black shutters. The house on the corner was painted gray and dark red. It reminded me of a gigantic, old-fashioned dollhouse.

Near the gray house was a street sign. It was pretty far away, and the letters were just a blur. Squinting at it, I realized that for the first time in my life, I didn’t even know what street I lived on. This probably wouldn’t have worried a lot of kids, but it worried me. If you get lost and you don’t know the name of your street, you can end up living at the bus station, wearing plastic bags.

I strained my eyes until I brought the letters into focus.

“Hmmm, let’s see. C-H-E-S-T-E-R-P-E-W-E.” I looked hard, but no more letters came into view.

Quickly I ran to the doorway. “Hey, Dad, what’s the name of our street? I can see the letters, but I can’t pronounce it!” I shouted.

From somewhere down the hall came his answer.
“Chester Pewe!”

For a minute I just stood there, letting it slowly
sink in. After that, I panicked.

“Chester Pewe?”
I shouted. “Are you kidding me? I’m living on a street named
Chester Pewe?
Does anyone know how humiliating this is going to be? What kind of idiot would name a street
Chester Pewe?”

My mother stuck her head out a doorway. “It’s a name, Howard! He was probably one of the town’s founding fathers. Maybe even a Revolutionary War hero!”

Oh, that makes it a lot better
, I thought angrily. Some old pewie soldier names a street after himself, and now I have to live on it.

“Do you know what this is going to do to my future?” I shouted back down the hall. “I’ll never be able to write to Thornsberry or Roger or anyone! I’ll be too embarrassed to include my return address. And don’t think they wouldn’t laugh at it, either. They’d probably fall right over on the floor and never be able to get up.”