The Landry News (3 page)

These kids didn't know that he and his wife had two daughters, a sophomore and a senior at the University of Illinois. Both girls were happy there, good students, doing well. But each of them had been accepted at top-notch colleges in Connecticut and Ohio and California, and each had chosen to go to the state school because that was the college their parents could afford. And Karl Larson couldn't forgive himself.

How could fifth-graders understand how hard it had been for him and his wife to take care of their aging parents over the past eight years—first hers and now his? The kids didn't know, they couldn't know.

So here he was. It was a Friday afternoon, and he was sitting alone in a dark house, waiting for his wife to fight her way home through the rush-hour traffic. After about fifteen minutes he finally gathered enough energy to get up and go to the kitchen and start cooking supper.

Later, after dinner, Mr. Larson told his wife about the editorial. He was expecting some sympathy, but he
should have known better. His wife was much too honest for that. It was one of the things he loved best about her. Barbara Larson leaned across the kitchen table and squeezed his arm and said, “Sounds like this little girl is looking for a teacher, Karl—that's all. She's just looking for a teacher.”

Mr. Larson tried to remember when he had stopped being a good teacher. But it wasn't like there was one particular moment you could point to. Teachers don't burn out all at once. It happens a little at a time, like the weariness that can overtake a person walking up a steep hill—you begin to get tired and you slow down, and then you feel like you just have to stop and sit and rest.

And that's how Karl Larson felt—overburdened and depressed. Some mornings he could barely get out of bed, and now this . . . this
editorial.
It didn't seem fair to be judged this way.

But still, could he blame anyone but himself? Were those kids
supposed
to know anything about him? Should anything outside of the classroom even matter to them? Should it have mattered to young Karl Larson that Mrs. Spellman was also this lady named Mabel who had a beer-drinking husband with a large hairy stomach? No. At school, Mabel was Mrs. Spellman, and she was a good teacher.

Karl Larson could see it clearly. The only reason
that he and those kids were together was to do the job—the job of schooling. The kids didn't need Karl Larson's life story. They needed
Mr. Larson,
the teacher.

So, over the weekend Karl Larson gradually faced the facts.
The Landry News
had told the truth. Mr. Larson the teacher was guilty as charged.

And Karl Larson knew he had to do something about it.

WHEN CARA FINISHED taping it back together late Friday afternoon, she left the first edition of
The Landry News
on
the kitchen table and went to her bedroom. She wanted to find the stack of newspapers she had made during fourth grade. When she came back with the small pile of earlier editions, her mother was standing at the table, reading the editorial about Mr. Larson.

Looking up, her mother said, “Let me guess: The teacher tore this up after he read it, right?”

Cara nodded.

“Cara, honey, you have done it this time.” Her mother scanned the patchwork newspaper and heaved a long, tired sigh. “Well, at least this is the only copy and Mr. Larson didn't run it down the hall to the principal—like some other teachers have done.”

Mrs. Landry dropped heavily onto one of the chairs beside the table. She looked at her daughter standing
there. “Now tell me, Cara: Are you angry at me? Is that why you do this? Because if you are trying to hurt me, I just want to tell you that it's working. It's working just great.”

Tears welled up in her mother's eyes, and Cara looked at her, unblinking. “No, Mother, I am not trying to hurt you. And you shouldn't be upset. This is just a newspaper. These are just facts, Mother.”

“Facts? Just look right here, young lady.” Joanna Landry stabbed a red fingernail at the editorial. “This is not just
facts.
You have unloosed your acid little tongue on this man and said mean and hurtful things here.”

Cara flinched at the accusation, but she jumped to defend herself. “It's an
editorial,
Mother, so it's
allowed
to have opinions in it. And all the opinions are based on facts. I didn't make any of that up. I never have made anything up. I just report the facts.
You
are the one who taught me to always tell the truth, remember? Well, I'm just telling the truth here.”

Mrs. Landry was outgunned, and she knew it. It had been years since she had won an argument with Cara, and she wasn't going to win this one. But having to admit that her daughter was only telling the truth did not make things any easier. Here they were only one month into a new school year in a new town, and Cara was already stirring the pot, stewing up trouble. Joanna Landry could feel her hair getting grayer by the minute.

She took a deep breath. “You may
call
it just telling the truth, but ever since your father left, you have gone out of your way to tell the truth in the most
hateful
way you know how. And it just makes me sad, Cara. It's not fair to me, and it's bad for you, and it just makes me
sad.”
And with that, Mrs. Landry stood up and went to her room and closed the door.

Cara's thin shoulders hunched together as she sat on the dinette chair, looking at the paper, waiting for the sobs to begin in her mother's bedroom.
She's wrong,
thought Cara.
This time, she's wrong.

But last year, it was like her mother said. Cara
had
been hateful—to everyone. When her dad left, Cara was sure it was because of her. Her mom and dad had always argued about money and about saving for Cara's college and about buying Cara better clothes, about taking Cara on a nice vacation. When her father left and filed for divorce, she thought it was because he didn't want to feel responsible for a family—for her.

It was just bad timing that turned Cara into an outlaw journalist. The week her father moved out, Cara's fourth-grade teacher had begun a unit on newspapers, and Cara seized hold of the idea with murder in her heart. She became a ferocious reporter—aloof, remote, detached. She turned a cold, hard eye on her classmates and teachers, saw their weaknesses and silliness, and used her strong language skills to lash out. She stuck
close to the truth, but the truth wasn't always pretty.

When she learned that a rather large teacher kept a desk drawer filled with candy bars and fatty treats, Cara wrote an editorial with the title, “Let's Chat about Fat.” The story got some laughs, but it was too mean, almost cruel. It did not win Cara any new friends, and it sent all her old friends ducking for cover.

When she noticed that the cafeteria staff would sometimes carry home leftovers at the end of the day, Cara blew the whistle in a banner headline: F
OOD
W
ORKERS
P
ERFORM
D
ISAPPEARING
A
CT
. But she hadn't done enough research. What they were doing was all legal and approved. The practice actually saved the school money by decreasing the garbage-disposal expenses. The principal made Cara go and apologize to the cafeteria workers. After that she thought it best to bring bag lunches to school.

Every week, somewhere in the school, Cara would put up the newest edition of
The Landry News,
and then wait for the consequences. After the story about the cafeteria workers, her research got more careful, and she was always sure of her facts. But the way she told her news stories was always designed to create a stir and get a reaction, and she was never disappointed. There were conferences with her mother and the principal, conferences with the principal and the school psychologist, and conferences with her mother and every one of her
teachers. And every conference would then become the subject of a sarcastic editorial, published in the very next edition of
The Landry News.

The only person who never showed up at a conference was the only person Cara really wanted to see: her dad.

Now as Cara sat at the kitchen table looking through the sheaf of fourth-grade editions, she had trouble imagining herself writing all this. So much anger. But this newest paper wasn't like the ones she had made last year. She was still sad, but she wasn't angry anymore. Things were better now.

Over the summer, she had started getting letters from her dad. He worked in Indianapolis now, and he had promised Cara that she could come and visit him there—maybe at Thanksgiving or Christmas. And he would be coming to Chicago pretty often, too. He had called to tell her he was sorry about the way things had worked out. He explained why he and her mom had split up. And it didn't have anything to do with her. Cara could see that now, and she could believe it was true, even if all the rest of it still didn't make any sense to her.

Cara tiptoed to her mother's door and listened. It was quiet. She knocked softly and her mom said, “Come on in, honey.”

Her mom was on the bed, sitting with her back against the headboard. Her old leather-bound Bible lay
open on her lap. There were some wadded tissues on the bedspread, and Joanna Landry swept them aside and patted the bed. Cara sat on the edge and took her mother's hand.

“Mom, I'm not writing the news because I'm angry. Honest. I'm really not mad anymore. I was. I was real mad last year, and I know I hurt a lot of people's feelings, and I'm sorry about that now. And I guess I should have stopped to think before I wrote this new editorial . . . and I'll tell Mr. Larson I'm sorry—I will. But I still think it's okay to tell the truth, and to publish it, too. I
like
being a reporter. It's something I'm
good
at, Mom.”

Her mother reached for a fresh tissue with her free hand and dabbed at her eyes. “Cara honey, you know I just want the best for you, that's all. I just don't want you to make things hard for yourself. I feel so bad already—about me and your dad, I mean. I know that's been tough on you, and you took it so hard. But it wasn't anything to do with you. Can you see that?”

Cara nodded. “I know. It just felt that way, that's all. And I'm sorry I gave you so much more to worry about, Mom. But . . . but don't you think it'll be all right to keep on making my newspaper—if I'm careful, and if I only report the truth?”

Her mom smiled. “Listen to this, Cara. It's from the book of Psalms.”

M
ERCY AND TRUTH ARE MET TOGETHER; RIGHTEOUSNESS AND PEACE HAVE KISSED
EACH OTHER. RUTH SHALL SPRING OUT OF THE EARTH; AND RIGHTEOUSNESS SHALL LOOK DOWN FROM HEAVEN.

Her mother smiled at her and said, “Truth is good, and it's all right to let the truth be known. But when you are publishing all that truth, just be sure there's some mercy, too. Then you'll be okay.”

At that quiet moment, safe at home, it all sounded so simple to Cara Landry. But the test would come on Monday.

AS CARA SAT in health class on Monday afternoon, she was sweating. She never sweated, not even during
gym. But this wasn't a hot sweat. It was a dry, sticky-mouthed sweat. A scared sweat.

It was also a mad-at-herself sweat. Cara hated feeling like a coward. She fumed at herself. “But that's what I am: a big, fat coward.”

Her mom had dropped her off at school early that morning. Cara had wanted to be there before the other kids arrived. She wanted to give a note to Mr. Larson.

Cara had spent most of Sunday night working on the note. She had ripped up about twenty pieces of paper trying to get it right. She practically knew it by heart:

Dear Mr. Larson:

I want to say I'm sorry for the part of
The Landry News
that was about you. Maybe I should not have surprised you by just sticking it up on the wall like that for everyone else to read. It's just that I like making newspapers. I try to print only what's true, but I guess sometimes I don't think enough about how that can make people feel.

I mean, I still think that what I said was pretty true, but I didn't mean to make you mad like that. So, I'm sorry.

Sincerely yours,

Cara L. Landry

At seven-thirty that morning Cara had been on her way through the halls, her shoes squeaking on the newly waxed floors. Cara had the note in her hand. She turned the comer, and there he was, coming out of room 145. As he turned to go the other way, toward the teachers' room, Cara wanted to call out, “Hey, Mr. Larson!” and then run right over, smile a little, and hand him the note. Instead she turned to stone, and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She flattened up against the lockers, then backed around the comer, making sure her rubber soles didn't squeak. She jammed the note into the pocket of her dress and ran out the nearest door to the playground.

All day long she had skulked around, making sure that wherever she was, Mr. Larson wasn't. LeeAnn had come with Betsy Lowenstein and three other girls to sit with her at lunch, and Cara had hardly said three words, she was so mad at herself. She just sat there like an idiot, chewing on her lower lip, and nodding and smiling once in a while as LeeAnn went on and on about how mad Mr. Larson had been on Friday.

But in ten minutes, there would be no escape. Unless . . . no. If she went to the nurse, the nurse would call her mom at her office, so that wouldn't work. And if she didn't go to class, then Mr. Larson would know she was a coward, and Joey DeLucca and LeeAnn Ennis would know she was a coward. And worst of all, Cara thought, “I would know that I am the biggest, fattest, weakest, lamest, chickenest
coward
who ever lived.”