Part 9 (1/2)

For some reason it didn't look very funny. In fact, it seemed like anybody who had first thought up such a poem must have been crazy in the head.

I knew I shouldn't have been reading, and I decided to quit quick, which I did, only I saw one other thing just as my eyes were leaving the page, and it was:

”Things have come to a show down with the boys. I know I'm going to have to take drastic action soon.”

”What's '_drastic_' mean?” Dragonfly wanted to know, just as I turned away, and I knew he'd read what I'd read, so I said, ”I don't know, but whatever it is, I'll bet it'll hurt like everything.” I reached out my hand and laid it down flat on the opened diary, so I wouldn't read anything else, when Dragonfly said, ”Psst! Listen!”

We all listened for a half jiffy and things were so quiet in that still-half-smokey room we could hear only the crackling of the fire in the stove, when all of a sudden there was a step on the schoolhouse porch, and the door was thrust open and there stood Mr. Black himself, looking right straight at us.

11

Well, when four boys get caught doing something they're not sure they're supposed to be doing, they don't know what to do or what to say, and sometimes they start talking right away to explain _why_ they are doing what they're doing--which is what _we_ started to do--that is we _started_ to, but all of us talking at once didn't make sense, so we stopped. This is what we all said though: Dragonfly said, ”Good morning, Mr. Black!” which is what you say to a teacher when it _is_ morning and you are trying to be polite; Poetry said, ”Somebody wrote a crazy poem about you on the black, Mr. Blackboard, and I erased it”; Little Jim said, ”That certainly was a good sermon this morning, Mr.

Black”; and I, William Jasper Collins, with my torn trousers and my freckled face and my rumpled red hair and my mussed-up mind said, ”I hope you don't have to shoot him if he broke his leg. He didn't break it, did he?”

All of us said most of these things at the same time, while we were standing in a semi-circle around the unabridged dictionary with the open notebook on it.

Mr. Black was puffing and panting, he being Poetry-shaped as well as the stove, but he all of a sudden said, ”Wait, boys, don't move! I want to get your pictures, right where you are, and _as_ you are.”

Before we could decide to move or not to move, he whirled around, hurried over toward the shelf where we always set our dinner pails on school days, and came back with his camera which we hadn't noticed had been there. It was a very pretty camera and was the kind people used when they took a flashlight picture.

What on earth he wanted a picture of us for, I didn't know, unless it was so he could prove to anybody who didn't believe it, that we were a bunch of roughnecks. Quick as a blinding flash he had our picture taken, and then he whirled around like he wanted to take some more pictures, and stopped and stared at the Christmas tree which I had stood back up in the corner, with the popcorn and paper chains tangled up on it, and at the erased blackboard and at his desk which didn't have any chairs upside down on it, and he said, ”Who straightened up this room! Did you boys do that!”

”Yes, sir,” I said, ”we did; we wanted to prove to you that we didn't do it.”

”You WHAT!”

”We wanted to prove to you that we didn't _do_ it!” Little Jim said.

Mr. Black looked at Little Jim and at all of us like he thought we were even crazier than we felt, and he said, ”Prove you didn't do _what_?”

”That we didn't put the board across the--OUCH!” Dragonfly started to talk, but stopped his sentence with an OUCH when I quick kicked him on the s.h.i.+n.

Mr. Black's eyes opened wide. Then for the first time he seemed to notice that the fire was going again and that the stove wasn't smoking so he scratched his head above his left ear, hurried over to the stove with the camera in his hand, set his camera on his big desk, opened the stove's door and shut it again, and just stood there, looking first at the stove and then at us, and I wished I knew what he was thinking; then I noticed that his eyes glanced off in the direction of the blackboard and to the beech switches which were lying on a ledge at the top. I could just see myself and all of us getting a licking in about seven jiffies. I started to edge toward the door, but he must have guessed what I was thinking, 'cause he barked a command to me which was ”William Collins! Stop where you are!”

I stopped stock still, trembling inside of me, wondering what the word ”drastic” was going to mean.

Then Mr. Black barked to me, ”Go to the blackboard and get me those beech switches!” There was a tone of voice in his words which made me start toward the blackboard instead of toward the only door the schoolhouse had. I had to pa.s.s Dragonfly's open window which was still open, on account of there was still some smoke in the room. It would have been easy for me to make a dive out of that window but I didn't want to leave the gang alone there with an angry teacher. I also had to pa.s.s close to the unabridged dictionary, and I all of a quick sudden decided if I knew what the word ”_drastic_” meant, it might give me an idea what to do next, so I stopped, and quick turned the pages to the letter ”D” and was trying to find _drastic_, when Mr.

Black barked a question at me, and it was, ”Young MAN! _What_ are you _doing_?”

I jumped like I had been shot, but made myself say as calmly as I could, over my shoulder, ”I just wanted to look up an important word first. I'll get the switches in just a minute.”

”If the word is _punishment_,” Mr. Black said to me angrily, ”it's a _noun_, and it means _beech switches_.... You bring them to me!” And I knew I had to do it. I stopped looking in the dictionary, and feeling simply terrible inside of me, on account of not having done anything wrong on purpose, but knowing Mr. Black wouldn't believe us even if we told him, I got the switches and took them toward him, but was so nervous I dropped one of them.... Say, Little Jim who is very quick when he makes up his mind to do something, made a dive for the floor, picked up the switch I'd dropped and quick took the other one out of my hand, and handed them both to Mr. Black and said to him very politely, ”Here you are, sir, with all the old brown dead leaves gone--every one of them.”

”What on _earth_?” I thought, and looked at Little Jim's face and then at Mr. Black's.

Say our teacher's face had all of a sudden the queerest expression on it, and he looked at Little Jim like he wondered ”What on _earth_?”

himself.