Other Dover Books by Daniel Pinkwater

FOUR HOBOKEN STORIES

The Magic Moscow

Attila the Pun

Jolly Roger

Looking for Bobowicz

Copyright

Copyright © 1975, 1977, 1986, 1997, 2018 by Daniel Pinkwater

All rights reserved.

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition is a new compilation of the text from these previously published works: The Muffin Fiend (Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, New York, 1986), Wingman (Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1975), The Magic Goose (Scholastic, Inc., New York, 1997), and Fat Man from Space (Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1977).

International Standard Book Number

ISBN-13: 978-0-486-82260-0

ISBN-10: 0-486- 82260-5

Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications

82260501   2018

www.doverpublications.com

Contents

Preface

The Muffin Fiend

Wingman

The Magic Goose

Fat Men from Space

Preface

People ask authors, “How did you learn to write?” They even ask me. I usually give the same lame answers every other writer gives . . . read a lot, write a lot, imitate writers you like, take courses in school, force your friends and family to read what you write, or failing that, join a writers’ group where they have to be nice to one another. These are made-up answers. What really happens is writers notice that one day they’re writing, and when anyone asks how it happened, they reason backward from the fact and imagine what sorts of things might have made it happen. Actually, they have no idea.

I’m going to give you a straight answer. Sort of.

The reason it’s hard to explain or understand is that we’re talking about writing stuff for other people to read for amusement or instruction. It’s not a note to whomever you live with, reminding him that he’s supposed to pick up corn flakes, or a text to your friend asking if she wants to hang out after school. Everybody who is not illiterate can do writing like that—also read, also use language. Why, in the middle of reading, writing, and using language in the ordinary way, does someone start writing poems or stories or articles about the Louisiana Purchase? Sorry, I can’t tell you.

I remember thinking I would like to be able to write. I was in college. There was a big library and lots of professors around so, naturally, when I wanted to know something, I asked another kid. I asked James P. Kupetzenmacher, who was a year older and smarter than I was. “How do you learn to write?” I asked him.

“To be a writer, you have to know about form,” James P. Kupetzenmacher told me.

“What’s form?”

“I’m not sure, but I think it’s pretty important.”

“Do you think if I took some art courses I might learn what form is?”

“I don’t know. You could give it a try.”

At this college, anyone could sign up for any course they wanted. You didn’t have to have taken art to get into an art class. All the art I had taken was every Thursday for one semester in junior high school, a visiting art teacher would turn up. I enjoyed it, but we didn’t get terribly far . . . and then they switched us to a semester of music appreciation. But here at college, I could just sign up. They sold charcoal and newsprint pads and those fun stretchy erasers in the bookstore and, bang! I was an art student.

Now, remember, I was going to study art in order to get an idea of how to be a writer. But as things turned out, studying art was so interesting. Also, knowing I had no wish to be an artist and no talent was so liberating . . . it was impossible to fail at something I never thought I had a chance of success with . . . that it turned into a whole lot of fun and I forgot why I was studying it. Really, for a number of years I never remembered that I ever had any interest in writing.

But I thought about art all the time. There was a lot to learn, and I wanted to learn it. I even got so I could do actual works that were pretty near impossible to tell from real. I still had no talent, but it turns out you can get around that.

My teachers were real artists. Half of them were concerned about fame and success . . . and maybe making enough money so they wouldn’t have to teach. One of the things these teachers believed was that you need to have a trademark, or a style all your own, or some kind of gimmick so people will know it’s you. In other words, marketing.

If I say “soup cans” in this context, right away you know the painter I’m talking about. Even if you don’t know or care anything about painting, you know who it is. This guy was an influential artist and thought a lot of thoughts that turned out to make a difference. The designer of the cover of this book probably wasn’t thinking about the soup can artist, but his influence is there just the same. Of course, it wasn’t about soup cans. Nothing to do with soup cans. It could have been rubber boots or ostriches or anything at all. But it was the soup cans that caught on with the public.

“Oh yeah, the soup can guy!”

There are artists who aren’t identified with one thing or one sort of thing. Among painters, a good example is Picasso. He did everything: realism, abstraction, cubism (which he helped invent), ceramics, sculptures . . . everything! You can’t just say, “Oh yeah, the cubism guy!” because it makes as much sense to say the blue period guy, the pink period guy, the lithographs of bullfights guy, the frontwise-and-sideways-at-the-same-time portraits guy, et cetera, et cetera. . . .

In addition to asking how one became an artist, people are really curious about how art gets done. They want to know the recipe, the formula. People in general just love to think there’s a formula for everything, and if you follow the formula you’ll get results. Some of my teachers, mostly the same ones who believed in marketing, thought it was useful to show the viewer how you arrived at your own personal soup can . . . even if you didn’t really know. Let’s say you are feeling particularly good and you knock out a painting . . . it’s a naked lady, two parrots, a waterfall, and a pineapple . . . and it’s just great. You know it’s great. Anybody can see it’s great.

These particular teachers would tell you to make some crude pencil sketches, as though you were trying to work out aspects of the painting you’d already done—as though you hadn’t done it yet—then make some color sketches, maybe a couple of small canvases with the same images, but not quite all put together like the great painting. Why? Then people can look at it, and see how you arrived at the vision in the great painting. It’s fake. It’s inductive reasoning, like making up how you learned to write, but it makes sense if you want to be an artist and make a go of it . . . through marketing.

So did the soup can artist plan it all or stumble on to a good thing? And once he got attention, did he try to continue getting it by doing more things that fitted in with the soup can motif or did he just go where his interest and pleasure took him, and people came along because they shared his enjoyment? We can’t know.

What I know is the teachers I favored were not the ones who were all concerned about whether and how much marketing and symmetry an artist needed to think about. Remember, I knew I didn’t have any talent and was just taking a ride for fun, so no point in planning a career. The teachers I liked thought all you had to do was play and play your best. Sure, if you do a lot of work, certain themes and trademarks will come out, because you have certain interests and affections, but you don’t have to work at making those things happen. You don’t have to worry about making things fit with your image.

So it was, when I found out later that James P. Kupetzenmacher was right: a very good way to learn one art is by studying another art (or it doesn’t have to be an art as such; it can be furniture refinishing or livestock handling or playing gin rummy). It seemed natural to me that I could combine a story featuring my favorite composer as a character, a nonfunny story about a Chinese kid, a stupid science fiction story, and a total fantasy. They don’t go together. They’re different. It’s how I like things. The world has room for Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso. They’re both good, but I’m going with Picasso every time.

THE MUFFIN FIEND

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a real person. He was a musician, a composer of music, and a genius. One of the reasons people think he was a genius was he was able to compose seriously good music when he was just a little kid. He was wildly popular, like a modern rock star . . . this was in Europe, mostly in Vienna, Austria, in the 1700s. He is still pretty wildly popular today. This is mostly because he wrote even more seriously good music when he grew up. He is this author’s favorite composer, hands down, no question about it, nobody else even comes close.

Mozart seems to have been a nice guy. He liked to tell stupid jokes and hang around with his friends. He also had pets: a horse, a dog, and a bird. When the bird died, he held a funeral for it . . . this was when he was a grown-up. I got very excited when I found out Mozart’s favorite dish was leberklossen (liver dumplings) because that was a favorite dish of mine when I lived down the street from Shaffer’s restaurant in Hoboken, New Jersey, where it was served every Thursday. It’s little patties of chopped liver in a chicken broth with bits of bacon and sauerkraut. Sounds disgusting, I know, but it’s really good. You can trust Mozart . . . and me. I’m a genius too.

Mozart wrote some beautiful operas with the usual dopey sort of stories operas have. I always thought I could have written some librettos (which is the term for stories for operas), which Mozart might have liked. After all, we had pets, stupid jokes, and liver dumplings in common. However, the fact that he died in 1791 made it impossible for us to work together. So I did the next best thing and gave him a role in a story. If he were alive to read the story, I like to think he would have composed music to go with it and it would have turned into an opera.

Maybe you are a musical genius and you are reading this. Maybe you would like to take a whack at composing that opera. Please be aware that if you perform it anywhere without my permission, I will sue you.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the great composer, was sitting in his office one morning, when a stranger appeared at his door.

“Herr Mozart, I want you to help me solve a mystery,” the stranger said.

“Excellent!” said Mozart. “After composing great works of music, solving mysteries is my favorite activity.”

“As you know,” the stranger said, “Vienna is famous for pastries of all kinds.”

“That is why I live in Vienna,” said Mozart.

“You will be interested to know that there is a muffin fiend loose in the city,” said the stranger.

“A muffin fiend?” asked Mozart.

“Exactly,” said the stranger. “You do know what a muffin fiend is?”

“I used to know, but I forgot,” Mozart said. “Tell me again.”

“The muffin fiend is the most dangerous sort of criminal,” said the stranger. “Muffin fiends can barely resist pastry in any form—but most especially, they are mad for muffins!”

“This is most interesting,” said Mozart. “Tell me, who are you, and how is it that you know so much about these matters?”

“I am Inspector Charles LeChat of the French Police. I have followed the muffin fiend all the way from Paris.”

“And why is this muffin fiend so dangerous?”

“I will explain that—but first, may I suggest that we take some refreshment?”

“Of course,” said Mozart. “I usually have something about this time of morning myself.”

Mozart called to his wife. “Constanze! Please bring us some coffee and peach muffins.”

“You may have coffee,” said Frau Mozart, “but there are no peach muffins.”

“No peach? In that case, we will have cherry muffins,” said the composer.

“There are no cherry muffins,” replied Frau Mozart. “Also no cheese muffins, no raisin muffins, no gooseberry muffins, no custard muffins, no chocolate seven-layer muffins—in fact there is not a single muffin of any description to be had in all of Vienna.”

“Now I see why you are so anxious to stop this monster!” Mozart said.

“Indeed,” said Inspector LeChat, “as we speak my beloved city of Paris is utterly muffinless.”

“It is tragic,” said Mozart, “and now it appears that Vienna has suffered the same fate.”

“Herr Mozart, you are the greatest genius in Europe. Please say that you will help me stop this terrible muffin fiend.”

“I am now engaged in writing an opera, The Magic Prune. Even so, I will put aside this important work and help you stop this awful criminal,” said Mozart. “Have you tried all the usual things?”

“Yes. We have no record of any professional criminal with a taste for muffins—at least on this scale. All the places where a vast number of muffins might be hidden have been searched. All the roads have been watched, and spies in foreign ports have not been able to discover any large shipments, so we believe the fiend is not smuggling the muffins.”

“Then he’s eating them all?” asked Mozart.

“So I believe,” said LeChat.

“Remarkable. And why do you think it is only one man?”

“I think it is one man because he has been seen by several witnesses,” said the French policeman.

“He has been seen?”

“Yes. He has been seen at a number of muffin bakeries in Paris. He appears to be a nobleman, and sometimes gives his name as Don Pastrami. He orders huge quantities of muffins, and then ties the baker hand and foot, and usually locks him in a closet.”

“Fascinating,” said the great composer. “Let us employ logic here. A city the size of Vienna must produce many thousands of muffins each day. The greatest number of muffins ever consumed by a human within twenty-four hours is one thousand and three. I know this because it is my honor to have set that record.”

“Even in Paris we have heard of your accomplishment.”

“Since a great many more muffins than one thousand and three are disappearing, and since we have, for the moment, no choice but to assume that the so-called Don Pastrami is eating them all—it follows that Don Pastrami is not human,” Mozart explained.

“He appeared to be human,” said Inspector LeChat.

“So do a lot of people,” said Mozart. “Come! There’s no time to lose!”

“Where are we going?” asked the policeman.

“Why, to the great Municipal Muffin Bakery!” said the great composer.

The Municipal Muffin Bakery provided ovens for the poorer citizens of Vienna. Here those who could not afford to buy muffins could bake their own for a small fee.

When Mozart and Inspector LeChat arrived, a near-riot was in progress. An angry mob was arguing with the city official in charge of the ovens.

“Was ist los?” asked Mozart in the local dialect.

“Ah, Herr Mozart!” said the official. “The people are angry because they came this morning with their tins of muffin mix to be baked—and when the ovens were opened just now the muffins were gone!”

“We are too late!” shouted Inspector LeChat.

“Perhaps not,” said Mozart. “Has anything else unusual happened?” he asked the official.

“Only this,” the official replied, “there was a nobleman here earlier—one Don Pastrami. I thought it strange that a person of wealth, as he appeared to be, should come to bake his own muffins.”

“Where is this Don Pastrami now?” asked Mozart.

“I cannot say,” said the official. “He disappeared during the confusion.”

Mozart, meanwhile, had been looking into the window of one of the many bakeshops that lined the streets of Vienna. It was utterly empty. Not a single Viennese muffin was to be seen. It was a depressing sight. All that remained were the price cards. Apple muffins 2 pfennigs. Blueberry muffins 3 pfennigs. Walnut muffins 4 pfennigs. Gorgonzola muffins 1 pfennig.

“To the Wienerwald, without delay!” shouted the great genius.

“To the Vienna Woods? Why?” asked the puzzled LeChat.

“Because that is where I expect to find the elusive Don Pastrami.”

“But why the woods, and not the cellars of the town, or the waterfront, or some other place?”

“The muffin fiend will be in the woods because it is remote and isolated there. That is where we will find him—and some other surprising things as well. Inspector LeChat, summon a carriage!”

In the carriage Mozart unfolded to Inspector LeChat his amazing theory that the muffin fiend, sometimes known as Don Pastrami, was in fact not of this world. LeChat found the idea hard to grasp.

“Not of this world? You mean he’s dead? A ghost? A spirit?”

“No,” said Mozart.

“Ah, I see,” said the Frenchman. “By not of this world you mean not of the old world, comprised of Europe, Asia, and Africa. You mean to suggest that the muffin fiend is from the new world, meaning North or South America.”

“No, no—that’s not it,” said Mozart. “By saying that the muffin fiend is not of this world, I do not mean that he is not of the world of the living, nor do I mean that he is from any unfamiliar part of this planet. I mean that he is an extraterrestrial.”

“Extraterrestrial? Does that mean that he has extra toes?”

“It means that he comes not from Earth.”

“Not from Earth?”

“Not.”

“From not Earth?”

“I assure you.”

“Then from where?”

“From another planet.”

“There are other planets?”

“Oh, be quiet, you poorly informed French policeman!” said Mozart impatiently. “We’ve arrived in the Wienerwald.”

There was nothing out of the ordinary to be seen in the woods. The usual birds and animals were in evidence, and trees of course, and the odd peasant—but no muffin fiend.

“We have to trap him,” said Mozart, who then removed a tiny violin from the pocket of his coat.

“Oh, do you know the muffin fiend?” Inspector LeChat asked the odd peasant.

“I never heard of him,” the peasant replied.

“Well? Where is Don Pastrami?” Inspector LeChat asked Mozart.

“I used to play this when I was a very small boy,” Mozart said. Then producing a tiny bow, Mozart began to play.

“What is this music?” asked LeChat.

“It is the music of the spheres,” said Mozart. “It is cosmic music.”

“It doesn’t sound funny to me,” said LeChat.

“Cosmic, not comic!” Mozart shouted. “This music will bring the extraterrestrial to us.”

Mozart tuned up.

No one turned up.

Mozart fiddled.

Nothing happened.

LeChat listened.

No one appeared.

“I don’t think he’s coming.”

“He’s coming,” said Mozart, strumming.

“I think he’s going.”

“He’s not going,” said Mozart, bowing.

Then a being was seen, hiding behind one tree and then another, coming closer and closer to the tuneful Wolfgang.

Then, when the flitful figure was behind the nearest tree, Mozart put down his tiny violin and baritoned, “Don Pastrami! I’ve come to get you!”

“You’ll never get me!” sang Don Pastrami.

“You are the awful muffin fiend!”

Don Pastrami sang, “I am!”

Mozart:

“Why did you take the muffins?”

Don Pastrami:

“I did it. I felt like it. That’s all.”

Mozart:

“You must have had a reason.”

Don Pastrami:

“I didn’t have a reason. Go away.”

Mozart:

“Tell me. Tell me why you took the muffins.”

Don Pastrami:

“No!”

Mozart:

“Tell me!”

Don Pastrami:

“No!”

Mozart:

“Tell!”

Don Pastrami:

“No!”

Mozart:

“Tell!”

Don Pastrami:

“No!”

Mozart:

“Tell! Tell!”

Don Pastrami:

“No! No!”

Mozart:

“At least shake hands to show that you’re not chicken.”

Don Pastrami:

“O.K.” (Don Pastrami shakes hands with Mozart.) “Hey! What is this? I cannot get loose!”

Mozart:

“It’s Viennese jiujitsu—now will you confess?”

Don Pastrami:

“What choice do I have?

In the powerful grip of Mozart (who had mighty fingers from practicing the piano every day) the miserable Don Pastrami confessed: “I come from a far distant planet in a solar system you never heard of,” the apprehended Pastrami said.

“As I suspected!” said the excited genius. “But there is something else—something about your voice. I’ve heard that voice before.”

“For a time I was an opera singer. I used the name Apollo Grosso-Fortissimo.”

“Apollo Grosso-Fortissimo! The greatest operatic tenor ever to live, up to and including most of the eighteenth century!” Mozart exclaimed. “You are my fave! Why did you quit singing?”

“The singing was only a way to earn money to buy muffins. But soon I needed many more muffins, and had to resort to stealing them.”

“Such a muffin monkey! How can you eat so many?”

“I do not eat them Signor Mozart.”

“Not?”

“Not.”

“Not eat?”

“Not one even.”

“So, what do with um?”

“Keep um.”

“Keep um all?”

“Every one of um.”

“For why do you keep um?”

“Keep um for fuel.”

“For fuel?”

“Fuel.”

“Fuel for keep warm?”

“No, Fuel for go home.”

“Go home?”

“Go home. Don Pastrami go home!”

“Amazing,” said Mozart.

“You said it, buster,” said Don Pastrami.

“What do you think of all this?” Mozart asked Charles LeChat.

“By the bells of Notre Dame! It amazes!” said the Frenchman.

The extraterrestrial Don Pastrami led the composer and the policeman through the forest. In a clearing they found an enormous machine. “My spaceship,” said Don Pastrami.

“I don’t understand,” said LeChat.

“This is your ship?” asked Mozart.

“Yes.”

“And the muffins?”

“Are inside.” Don Pastrami led Mozart to the side of the ship and opened a little door.

“Ach, du Lieber!” Mozart exclaimed. “This thing is practically full of muffins!”

“They will power the spacecraft for my journey home,” said Don Pastrami. “Rocket fuel on my planet is in solid form and very similar to the muffins of Earth.”

“Do you have enough of these muffins to reach your planet?” Mozart asked.

“With the muffins I have stolen today, I have enough,” said the former Apollo Grosso-Fortissimo.

“Then go,” said Mozart.

“Wait!” shouted LeChat. “He is a criminal.”

“If he remains on Earth, he will only steal more muffins,” said Mozart. “Let’s give him a pass.”

“I don’t know. This goes against the code of a French policeman,” said Inspector LeChat.

“Be a sport,” Mozart said, “and I’ll dedicate a concerto to you.”

“Well—seeing that it’s you who’s asking,” Charles LeChat said.

“I’m going,” said the visitor from space. “Nice planet. I had a good time.”

“Drive carefully,” said Mozart.

Don Pastrami climbed into his spacecraft, which took off impressively.

“This has been my strangest case,” said Inspector Charles LeChat. “Now let’s go get some Viennese cooking.”

“I’d like to, but I have to go home and work on the Requiem,” Mozart said.

“Do that later,” said the French policeman. “For now come to a restaurant with me.”

“Well, all right,” said Mozart. “I am feeling hungry after solving this mystery.”

“Good man,” said LeChat. “Incidentally, how did you know that the man we sought was an extraterrestrial?”

“Remember when we were back at the Municipal Muffin Bakery?”

“Yes.”

“Remember when I looked in the bakeshop window?”

“Certainly.”

“And there were only price cards—and all the muffins were gone?”

“Yes, yes?”

“And even the Gorgonzola muffins were gone?”

“Yes, I do remember that.”

“That is when I knew the man we were after was not an inhabitant of this world.”

“How did you know that?” the detective asked the great genius.

“I knew that because no one on Earth would eat a Gorgonzola muffin.”

End

WINGMAN

For Mr. Yee and Mr. Yee

A neighbor of mine was a Chinese-American guy, who unsurprisingly had connections in the Chinese community in New York City. Thus he was on hand when a Chinese restaurant that had gone out of business was being broken up and he brought home a booth. This was, in my opinion, then and now, a brilliant thing to do.

There was a Formica table, pink in color, and two upholstered bench seats, just like you’d find in restaurants. He also brought home one of those napkin dispensers, some thick, chipped teacups, and little stainless steel teapots and sugar bowls. He set the booth up in his back room, hung a light over the table, and it was just like sitting in some diner or Chinese greasy chopstick restaurant.

Now he could sit in the booth, drinking tea, without having to take the subway or go anywhere. If he wanted to, he could cook Chinese food, which he knew how to do, and eat it in his booth. If he didn’t feel like cooking, he could call out for Chinese food to be delivered and eat that in his booth. Sometimes he would invite me to come up to his apartment and sit in his booth with him.

Sitting in the booth, my neighbor told me stories about growing up in Washington Heights, which is part of New York City, living in back of his father’s laundry, and about kids climbing the structure of the George Washington Bridge. I found these stories very interesting, and my neighbor agreed to take me for a tour of his old neighborhood, show me his old school, the family laundry, which was still there, and even show me kids climbing up into the girders of the George Washington Bridge. I brought my camera along, a 35mm Miranda, which took quite good pictures.

Then I wrote the story. In the story, A) everything is true; B) some things are true; or C) nothing is true. I am saying no more. I’ve given you a pretty good hint.

At school he was Donald Chen, but at home he was Chen Chi-Wing or Ah-Wing. Although he was born in New York, he didn’t know any English before he went to school. He had been going to school for a while now, and he knew English. Sometimes he wasn’t sure if he was Donald or Wing. He was sure that it was cold at home in winter and cold at school. He was sure he was the poorest kid in class. He was sure he was the only Chinese kid in Public School 132.

The cold didn’t bother him. He didn’t care how cold it got. He never wore a coat. Every day he went to school in the fresh white shirt his father washed and ironed for him the night before. He had a coat though. He wore it once, when the rumor spread that he didn’t have one. He just wore it one day, and made sure everybody saw it. After that he didn’t wear it anymore because the cold didn’t bother him.

When he was a very little kid, before he could remember, the whole family was together and they lived in Chinatown. He couldn’t remember anything about it. Now they lived in Washington Heights, and their mother was in the hospital, and they were poor, and he was the only Chinese kid in school. Sometimes his father took him to Chinatown. It was always warm there. There were lots of people in the streets, and there were good smells from restaurant kitchens. He would help his father get the groceries, and wait at the newsstand while his father talked to his friends, and played a game of Mah-Jongg. The newsstand belonged to an old guy called Oi-Lai Bok. Lai would talk to him, and let him read comics. Lai called him Ah-Wing.

Wing lived behind his father’s laundry with his little brother and sister. He ate and slept there, and he kept his comic books there in a lot of old wooden boxes. He got comics with money he made collecting bottles and helping in the laundry. He had over two thousand of them. It had taken a long time to get them, and he worked very hard for the money. But they were very important, so he didn’t mind working hard.

He had always loved comic books. He couldn’t remember when they hadn’t been a part of his life. They were the best part of his life. He could remember when his family had been thrown out by the landlord. It had happened twice before they came to the laundry. All their beds and chairs and clothing, and Wing’s comic books, were carried out and left in the street. Wing stayed with the furniture and his brother and sister while his father went to find someone to help them get a place to live. Reading about Hawkman, and Captain Marvel, and Mr. Scarlet helped him not to worry about things. Once he walked a hundred and twenty-four blocks because he had spent his subway fare on an old Flash comic. He never minded working hard when something was really important.

When he went to school he was Donald, and nothing very good ever happened to him there. He wouldn’t have gone at all, but his father wanted him to go. He liked to do the things his father wanted. When he was little, it seemed to him that his father was always carrying him. When he remembered being little, he remembered being carried by his father. He had begun to help his father, ironing handkerchiefs, when he was four years old. When he was five, he began to deliver shirts. His father always gave him work to do, but somehow he always made him like it. When he helped his father in the laundry, sometimes he felt as if his father were carrying him again. His father wanted him to go to school, so he went to school.

School had not been so bad at first. Then everybody found out about how poor Donald Chen was. On the last day of school before Thanksgiving, his teacher, Miss Spinrad, had five baskets of food next to her desk. She explained to the class that some children were very unfortunate, and that we should all be kind to them. The way she talked made Donald Chen feel very sorry for those children. He wished he had known about the baskets before, so he could have brought some comic books to put in them. Then Miss Spinrad called out the names of the five poor children who were going to get the baskets. Donald Chen did not hear the teacher call his name. When he looked up, she was standing in front of his desk. She was holding the basket. It was for him. Donald wanted to say no, but he couldn’t say anything. Everybody was looking at him. Miss Spinrad put the basket on his desk, and he took it home.

That night he saw his father cry. He also saw him jump up and down on a turkey, and throw a lot of groceries and cans of stuff into the garbage. Donald didn’t go back to school after Thanksgiving. His father didn’t know anything about it.

D onald had a schoolbag. Every morning he would fill it with comic books. Then he would start out for school, but he would turn right a block before the school and head for the river. It was only a few blocks, across Broadway, across Fort Washington Avenue, then down a little street to a footbridge across the Henry Hudson Parkway.

When Donald Chen, Chen Chi-Wing, crossed that footbridge, he entered a little park. There were trees there; the river flowed past, with the wild jungles of New Jersey on the other side. Stretching over everything, so big that he couldn’t see the whole thing at once, was the George Washington Bridge.

He knew how to climb the bridge. No other kid he knew was able to do it. The only hard part, really, was scrambling up the bottom part, which was like a wall. Once he got to the big steel beams, it was easy to go from one to the other. With his schoolbag hanging from his belt, he climbed. The steel beams, that looked like spider webs from the little park below the bridge, were big enough to walk on. They slanted up, meeting other beams—roads leading to roads.

He worked his way up to the place where the bridge curves out over the river. He could hear the cars and trucks rumbling over his head. The river flowed slowly beneath him, and boats passed underneath. Pigeons fluttered and sea gulls glided beneath and about him, but he didn’t pay much attention. He just checked these things when he arrived in the morning to make sure everything was still the same. Then he would open his schoolbag.

Donald read comic books all day. He read Skywolf, Captain Marvel, Spy Smasher, and Plastic Man. He read Batman, Airboy, The Spirit, and Superman. They were real people. They were strong. Everybody respected them. Crooks were afraid of them.

The steel beams of the bridge were made in the shape of a letter H. There was room for Donald to sit inside the H, and when he lay on his stomach, nobody could see him. As he read the comics, the rumbling of the cars on the bridge sounded farther away, and after a while it would fade out, and Donald would read his comics in silence.

In the afternoon, Donald would leave the bridge. It always made him sad to realize that school would be letting out, and it was time to go home. As he crossed the little footbridge over the highway, his feet felt heavy, as though he were tired. When he got home, his father would give him a bowl of vegetable soup, and Donald would do some work in the laundry. His father never caught on that Donald was not going to school.

Donald went to the bridge for a long time. It was getting to be real winter. It snowed a couple of times, but Donald never minded the cold. He put a few comic books under him, and was very comfortable.

When Donald met Wingman, he met him on the bridge. Donald looked up from the Aquaman story he was reading, and there was someone standing over him, legs apart, balancing on the edges of the beam. He had steel armor that covered his body, his arms and legs were bare, and he carried a long sword. On his head he wore a strange pointed helmet, and over his shoulders a cape made of gray feathers. It looked like a pair of wings. He seemed to shine all over. He was Chinese.

Donald held his breath. The shining figure looked stern and friendly at once. Suddenly, with a rush of feathers, the figure jumped off the beam. Donald felt his heart thump once, hard. He realized all at once that it was very high up and dangerous on the bridge; he had never thought about it before. At the same moment, he looked down over the side. The man in armor was gone. Donald knew he could not have fallen all that way at once. He looked up and saw something like a big gray bird disappear, flying into the sun.

Donald thought about what he had seen. It seemed that the winged man had just lighted on his particular beam by accident, as pigeons sometimes did, not knowing Donald was there. And just as the pigeons did, he had flown away when Donald had looked at him. Donald decided to be careful not to look at him if he came back. That way, maybe he would stay.

Donald was too excited to read anymore. Usually he could read comics anytime. He even read comics the two times his family had been kicked out of their apartment. He read comics the day his mother went to the hospital. But Wingman’s appearance excited him. He had never seen anything like him outside a comic book. Now he was impatient with the stories, and the colors looked dull.

Donald stopped reading and looked out over the river. The sky was blue and clear. A tugboat in the distance made puffs of white smoke. Sea gulls soared and dived, calling to one another. Donald noticed that his nose was running. He thought he might bring his jacket the next day.

Donald didn’t see Wingman again that day. He thought about him. He remembered every tiny moment. Sometimes he remembered so clearly that he could almost see him. Almost, but not quite. At night he dreamed Wingman’s appearance again and again.

The next day Donald climbed to his beam and opened his schoolbag. Police Comics Number 58: Plastic Man Meets the Green Terror; but he didn’t really read. He just turned the pages and waited for Wingman. He went through comic after comic, waiting. Then he got involved in a Captain Marvel story. Mr. Mind, a tiny worm in a general’s uniform, was the head of a gang called “Mr. Mind’s Monster Society of Evil,” and Captain Marvel was trying to stop them from stealing two magical black pearls. As Donald read, the bridge noises faded away and things became silent.

In the middle of a fight between Captain Marvel and Captain Nazi, Donald realized that Wingman was there. Donald remembered not to look at him. He saw Wingman’s feet balanced on the edges of the beam, and went back to his comic book, pretending to read, turning the pages slowly.

Donald’s heart was pounding. As he turned the pages of comic after comic, he would glance up and see the feet. He wanted to look at Wingman, but he was afraid of startling him. Then Wingman sat down. There was a rustle of feathers, and Donald knew that Wingman was sitting across the beam from him, his feet dangling toward the river. Donald looked up slowly. He took in every detail, the sword, the armor, the cape of gray feathers, Wingman’s face.

Wingman looked at Donald, smiled, and pushed himself off the beam. Donald looked down and saw Wingman falling, wrapped in his cape. He held his breath. Then the cape unfolded into two gray wings, and Wingman skimmed just above the river, like a sea gull. Then he soared up in a great loop backward, over the bridge. Donald turned and saw him coming from the other side, right toward Donald’s beam. As he approached, Wingman gathered his cape around him and hurtled right past Donald like a bullet. Then he spread his cape, and tilted his wings from side to side as though he were waving as he flew away, disappearing among the tall buildings of Manhattan.

Donald felt very happy. He felt as though he were flying too. He didn’t read any more comics that day. He sat on the bridge and remembered how Wingman looked flying over the river.

Donald put some sandwiches in his schoolbag in the morning. He went to the bridge and waited for Wingman. Once again he turned the pages of a comic book, not paying attention. Once again he got caught up in a story, this time about Plastic Man, caught by the police for a crime he did not commit. The bridge became silent as Donald read.

When Donald looked up, Wingman was there, sitting across the beam as he had the day before. He was looking out over the river, not noticing Donald. Donald sat for a long time looking at Wingman. Neither of them moved. Wingman appeared to be watching something too far away for Donald to see. Hours passed. Donald was content to study Wingman’s cape, sword, and armor. The bridge was silent. Wingman was more interesting than any comic. Wingman never moved. Even the river seemed to be standing still.

Then Donald felt a start, as though he had just come awake, although he hadn’t been sleeping. The bridge began to roar with traffic, the river began to move. Donald reached into his schoolbag and took out two sandwiches, salami and peanut butter combination. He put one on the beam next to Wingman and waited to see what would happen. Wingman didn’t move. He was still watching something far away. Donald held his own sandwich in his hand and waited.

Still looking into the distance, Wingman reached for the sandwich beside him. He held it in his hand and gave a strange cry. Donald jumped; his hair stood up. Wingman gave the call again, a sad sound that came from high up in his nose. It made Donald’s skin tingle.

Wingman’s eyes lifted. Donald looked out over the river and saw a big bird flying toward them fast. Very fast. As Donald looked, it got bigger and bigger; then it was right before them. It was as big as Donald himself. Its feathers were gray like those in Wingman’s cape. Its beak was black and hooked and sharp. An eagle! It landed between Donald and Wingman. Wingman unwrapped his sandwich and gave half to the bird. Then he took a bite from the other half, and looked at Donald. Donald gave half his sandwich to the bird too. It swallowed it in one gulp after shaking it in its beak. Donald and Wingman smiled at each other and ate their sandwiches.

For the rest of the afternoon, Donald and Wingman sat on the beam in the sunshine. The eagle practiced tightrope walking up and down the edge of the beam between them, sometimes spreading its wings to keep its balance. When it was time to go home, Donald smiled good-by to Wingman and climbed down the bridge. When he reached the bottom, he looked up. He could just see Wingman sitting on the beam. The eagle was flying in circles, under and over the bridge and making piercing cries again and again.

When Donald got home, his uncle Li-Noon was there. He was cooking. Whenever Uncle Noon came they had a feast. He had brought roast pork and lo mein noodles from Chinatown, and big oranges and dry sweet cakes. He also brought a little bottle of whiskey, and he and Donald’s father each had a drink out of little glasses. Donald’s father ironed in the laundry and Uncle Noon cut up vegetables in the kitchen, and they shouted to each other from room to room, talking Chinese too fast for the children to understand.

At supper Uncle Noon gave presents to the children. Wing’s sister got crayons, his little brother got a puzzle made of bent nails, and Donald got lucky money in a red envelope, and a comic book. It was one he had, but he could trade it.

Before he went to bed, Donald tried to draw a picture of Wingman and the eagle. He used his sister’s new crayons. He put it in his schoolbag to show Wingman the next day.

In the morning the truant officer caught him. A big man in a linty black suit was waiting for him in the laundry when he woke up. Donald’s father kept his back to Donald. Donald knew he was angry. When his father got mad, he would turn his back, and it was worse than anything. He never hit the children. Turning his back to them was much worse.

The truant officer put his hand on Donald’s shoulder. Donald began to cry, not because of the truant officer, but because his father was ashamed of him. He wanted to tell his father about how bad it was in school, about the bridge, and Wingman and the eagle, but it was no good. He had fooled his father, and that was the worst thing he could do to him. The truant officer said something to Donald. Donald couldn’t hear it. He was crying and all he could see through the tears were his father’s shoulders working as he folded shirts.

The truant officer was Mr. Bean, and he wasn’t a bad guy. He tried to be nice to Donald. He kept his hand on Donald’s shoulder as they walked in the street. Donald supposed it was to keep him from running away, but it felt friendly. He took Donald into the Bickford’s Cafeteria on Broadway and bought him breakfast.

“You’re not in such bad trouble, kid,” Mr. Bean said. “I’d like to know why you were cutting school. Maybe it’s a problem I can help you with.”

Donald stared at his tray. He was still feeling bad about his father. He wondered if it would be right to tell Mr. Bean about Wingman, and afternoons on the bridge.

“Why aren’t you eating your oatmeal?” Mr. Bean asked.

So that was what the gooey stuff was! Donald had never tasted oatmeal. He didn’t feel like tasting it now. It didn’t look very inviting.

“It’s good for you,” Mr. Bean said.

Donald tried to pick from among his good reasons for not eating the stuff. “It’ll make me sick.”

“Now you eat that!” Mr. Bean said. He meant it. Donald began to eat the oatmeal. He had a glimpse of the sad hopeless expression on Mr. Bean’s face as he vomited on the cafeteria table.

Donald was told to wait alone in a room next to the office, when they got to school. There was nothing in the room but some chairs around the walls and a noisy clock. The window was frosted so he couldn’t see out, and it had wire fencing on the outside. “Like a jail,” he thought. A pigeon was fluttering against the wires. Donald could see its shadow, hazy against the frosted glass. He felt uncomfortable. He wished he had brought some comics. He sat on one of the chairs and waited. He waited for an hour and twenty minutes. The clock ticked. Donald tried to think about Wingman. He would be on the bridge now. Donald tried to imagine that he was there too. It didn’t work. The loud ticking kept him from imagining.

The door opened and Mr. Frieda came in. Mr. Frieda was the one they sent you to when you got in trouble. Donald had met him before. Mr. Frieda wore wire eyeglasses that slid down his nose. Whenever they slid down, he would push them back with his middle finger. When he did this, he would stick his little red tongue out. The kids made fun of him behind his back, but he wasn’t funny when you met him.

“The fat is in the fire now, boy. The fat is in the fire. You get that, John Chinaman?” Mr. Frieda always wore the same necktie; the knot was black and shiny. “We don’t expect much from your kind, but we expect you to be here every day. You understand, boy?”

Donald wished he had a sword like Wingman’s.

“You savvy?”

Swish, the sword would go, and cut Mr. Frieda in two. “Yes, Mr. Frieda,” Donald said.

“Next time you catch it, Charlie Chan,” Mr. Frieda said. Donald wasn’t going to be punished; he had cut school day after day, but Mr. Frieda didn’t think he was worth bothering about.

Donald was sent back to his class. It was the last day of school before Christmas vacation. Donald had been away almost a month. The class was having its Christmas party. Donald had to sit in a chair in the corner wearing a sign that said truant. He didn’t even get to face the wall, but had to watch the other kids playing games and eating cake.

Donald walked home from school very slowly. His feet felt as though they each weighed a hundred pounds. He thought of going to the bridge after school to see if Wingman was still there, but he felt too sad and tired to climb.

Donald walked into the laundry. “The roast duck man came today,” his father said. His father didn’t stay mad. The roast duck man was someone who brought such things as lop cheong, pork sausage, roast duck, and fresh bok choy from Chinatown. He stopped at all the laundries. Donald was glad he had come that particular day; the roast duck made him feel a little better.

Donald’s father was looking at him. “Ah-Wing, some people are not very nice to us. Probably you have trouble with some people, but I want you to go to school just the same. When you get older you can punch them in the nose.”

All of a sudden Donald didn’t feel so bad. It didn’t matter so much about throwing up in the cafeteria, and Mr. Frieda with his dirty necktie, and having to sit in the corner during the class party. He finished his roast duck, and helped his father wrap ironed shirts. His father was singing a song he liked, “I don’t want her, you can have her, she’s too fat for me,” and Donald sang with him.

Donald didn’t feel altogether better about all that had happened. That night he had a bad dream. He dreamed he was walking toward the laundry late at night. Just before he reached the door, Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Wolfman jumped out of the shadows and began to chase him up St. Nicholas Avenue. There is a steep hill on St. Nicholas Avenue, and in the dream it turned into a cliff just as Donald reached the top. There he was, stuck between jumping and getting caught. Then he woke up. The dream worried him. It made him think of Mr. Bean, Mr. Frieda, and Miss Spinrad.

There was one good thing: there was no school for ten days. He could go to the bridge every day. The bridge was cold and gray. A little wet snow was falling, blowing about the girders. It made them slippery and hard to climb. Donald felt tired. The day was foggy, and he felt foggy in his head, too. When he got to his perch, the fog had hidden the city. He couldn’t see the water below. Donald huddled on the beam. The comic he tried to read was getting soggy, so he put it away and just sat, looking out into the pearly gray fog.

He thought about the trouble he’d gotten into at school. He felt bad about disappointing his father, he felt bad about being embarrassed, and about the nasty things Mr. Frieda had said. The worst thing, the thing that made him feel heavy all over, was the realization that now he was going to have to go to that rotten school every day.

Donald tried to think about Wingman. He could not remember what he looked like. Probably he had made him up. The noise from the cars and trucks overhead was a constant drumming. It felt to Donald as though it was coming from inside his head. He sat there for a long time, crying.

Wingman was not real. Comics were a waste of time. Donald was just what the kids called him in the schoolyard, a dumb chinky Chinaman. The same kids made fun of his father. They called him chink too, and ran away. They didn’t run away from Donald; he ran away from them. He began to feel the same way he felt when he woke up from the dream about Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Wolfman.

Suddenly Donald realized that he wasn’t going to be able to climb down. The bridge was starting to get icy—and, worse, he was scared. He couldn’t move. He was like a cat stuck in a tree. All he could do was shiver and think about how high he was. Donald studied the lumpy gray paint on the steel beam. He saw every crack and wrinkle and speck of soot. He watched the snowflakes land and melt and freeze. He couldn’t hear the traffic noise. He was bent over, staring at a little patch of paint, and he couldn’t straighten up, or even move his eyes. The wrinkled paint made mountains and valleys and rivers and towns. He watched the little map of bridge paint change from gray to red to green.

Green. There were green fields beneath him. The air was not so cold, and there was no more snow. A smooth strong arm was around his waist, and Donald could hear the faint rustle of feathers. Wingman was real! He was carrying Donald, and they were flying.

Donald liked it. He watched the countryside pass beneath them. Now and then a surge of warm air would rise, lifting them straight up. Donald felt perfectly comfortable. He felt as though he could almost fly by himself, without Wingman’s help.

The eagle was with them, flying in circles to keep from getting too far ahead. Wingman flew so slowly that they seemed to be hanging still sometimes. Donald felt good. He felt that he was where he belonged. Even the countryside looked familiar to him, although he knew he had never seen it before.

It didn’t look like New Jersey. There were strangely shaped hills, and little clusters of houses with roofs made of straw. Groups of people—men, women, and children—were working in the fields. They wore round hats, the kind Donald had seen in shop windows in Chinatown. No one looked up to be amazed at the strange sight of winged man, boy, and eagle passing silently above them.

Donald knew that China was very far from New York. His father had told him that it was so far away that once you left, it was impossible to go back. But this was China for sure.

The houses were getting more numerous and closer together now. Some of them had roofs of wood or tile, and there were lots of people and animals on the roads. They were coming to a city; Donald could see it in the distance. There were some tall buildings with tile roofs that turned up at the corners. There were houses with walled gardens. There were temples with carved ornaments covered with gold. In the center of the city was a big open space.

Wingman flew low and circled over the open space. It was a market. It reminded Donald of Chinatown. People were buying and selling groceries. Boys were helping their fathers carry baskets of vegetables, eggs, meat. Donald could hear them talking. He could smell things cooking, shu-mai and wonton. It made him hungry. There was a little boy eating what looked like a lotus root cake while he waited for his father, who talked with friends. It was like Chinatown, but bigger, sunnier, happier. Donald wished Wingman would put him down. He wanted to talk to the boy with the lotus root cake. He wanted to walk among the grocers’ stalls. He wanted to smell up close all the things cooking. He had the feeling that he would meet Oi-Lai Bok selling newspapers and comics in Chinese. Then someone saw them. There was a shout, and Wingman flapped his wings hard. They rose straight up, into the cold air. The city fell away so fast that Donald had a funny feeling in his stomach.

They flew over farms again, and hills. They were getting into a place where there were lots of hills. Some of them were very high, mountains almost. At times the peaks were as high as the tips of Wingman’s wings.

Some people were moving on a path, two men and a boy. They were leading a horse. They were high up, close to Donald and Wingman, and Donald could see their faces clearly. One of the men looked a lot like his uncle, Li-Noon, except that instead of an overcoat and a gray felt hat, this Li-Noon wore a long cloak of a beautiful blue color. It came almost to the ground, and at the bottom showed a little of another robe that the man had on underneath. It reminded Donald of the robe his mother used to wear in the mornings, before she had left them for the hospital. Then they had passed over them and they were out of sight before Donald had seen all he wanted to see of the man who looked like Uncle Noon.

It was getting foggy. The hills were real mountains now. Wingman landed Donald on a little bridge that connected two rocky cliff faces. A long way down, below the little bridge, there was a stream. Wingman stood on the bridge and flapped his wings twice. Then they became soft, and fell about his shoulders and were his cape of feathers again. He sat down on the bridge, his feet dangling over the side, and Donald sat down too.

He looked down at the river and heard a faint rushing noise. The noise got louder and louder as the fog closed in. It was getting cold, and late; the traffic overhead was getting heavier. Donald was back on the George Washington Bridge. Wingman was gone.

He was holding something in his hand. It was a gray feather. It could almost have been a pigeon feather, but Donald recognized it as one of the feathers from Wingman’s cape. He put it in his pocket.

Getting down from the icy bridge was not easy. Donald could not climb down the way he usually did. He had to slide down the slanting girders, or push himself along with his hands until he came to a place where he could drop to a lower level. He was constantly slipping and the ice hurt his hands.

The only way to get down the big wall part at the bottom was to slide down. When it wasn’t icy he could slide down slowly by dragging the rubber toes of his basketball shoes against the concrete, and sort of hugging it with his body and the palms of his hands. This time he just slid down like a brick. It was almost like falling straight down for ten or twelve feet.

When he hit the bottom, it knocked the wind out of him and he couldn’t move for a minute or two. The first thing he did when he could move his hand was to reach in his pocket and see if the feather was there. He hadn’t been afraid at all.

Donald got home too late to help his father. It was already time for supper. He was very hungry. There was soup, and chicken in soy sauce, vegetables, hot tea, and lotus root cakes for dessert. Donald ate three cakes.

“In China,” his father said, “those used to taste even better.”

“I thought so,” Donald said.

Donald had some Little Lulu comics that he kept to trade with. That night he made a deal with his sister. She got the Little Lulus, and Donald got her box of crayons.

When his sister and brother had gone to sleep, Donald began to draw in a Big Chief pencil tablet. He wanted to make a picture of everything he had seen in China. He began a picture of fields and hills, and worked on it until he was sleepy. He put the crayons and the tablet under his mattress, where no one would find them. He put Wingman’s feather there too.

During the night it snowed and rained and froze. In the morning the street was slick with ice. Cars and buses were slowly skidding sideways, and people were walking with tiny baby steps to keep from slipping. When Donald got to the little park, every tree was covered with ice. Even the tiniest twigs had a shining clear skin. The bridge was covered with ice too. Donald saw that there was no way he could climb it. He looked for Wingman and the eagle, but he could not see them.

The rest of the vacation was icy. When it wasn’t icy, it was raining and snowing. There wasn’t one day when it would have been possible for Donald to climb the bridge. He helped his father, spent time getting his comic book collection in order, and worked on the pictures of China in the Big Chief pencil tablet. One day Donald and some other kids slid down St. Nicholas Avenue on sleds made out of cardboard boxes. On Christmas Eve the family had a special supper. The best part was hot dumplings filled with minced pork, and dipped in plum sauce. Donald got a sweater from his father.

On Christmas Day the children stayed home, and their father took the train to visit their mother. Children were not allowed in the hospital. Donald had to take care of his brother and sister and fix their lunch. They were very quiet. It was raining outside. Donald read a lot of comics. There was Christmas music playing on the radio.

All of a sudden it was time for school to start again. It took Donald by surprise. The vacation had not worked out the way he had planned. He had hoped every day that he would be able to climb the bridge again. His notebook was almost full of pictures, and he wanted to fly with Wingman. He wanted to go to China, and now he would have to go to Public School 132.

He knew there was no way to get out of it. He had promised his father not to cut school again. When he woke up in the morning he hoped he was sick. He kept his eyes shut for at least five minutes and tried to make himself have a fever. It didn’t work; he didn’t feel sick; he just felt miserable.

He went to school. He didn’t expect things to be different from the way they had been. He was wrong. When he got to his classroom, Miss Spinrad was not there! At Miss Spinrad’s desk was a little woman with red hair and eyeglasses. She was younger than Miss Spinrad, and there was something strange about her face. Donald couldn’t figure out exactly what it was. Maybe it was because she was a little person; she almost seemed like one of the kids. Maybe it was because she looked human; Miss Spinrad looked like Frankenstein. Whatever it was, the other kids had noticed it too, because they were sitting quietly at their desks. That wasn’t the way they usually acted with a substitute teacher.

“My name is Mrs. Miller,” she said. “Miss Spinrad is sick, and will not be back this term. I will be your teacher.”

“Yaaay,” the kids shouted.

Mrs. Miller acted as though she thought school was supposed to be fun. None of the teachers Donald had ever had, and certainly not Miss Spinrad, had ever acted that way. At first it was confusing for Donald and the other kids. Mrs. Miller would do weird things, like asking the class what they felt like studying. And smiling at them.

She wanted to hear people read all the time. When Miss Spinrad had the kids read out loud, she would hold a little notebook in her hand. If someone made a mistake or got confused, she would smile to herself and write something in the notebook. She seemed to like it when kids got mixed up. She would always say, “You are the worst readers in the worst school in New York.”

It was true that most of the kids in the class couldn’t read very well, but they found that it was a lot easier to read for Mrs. Miller. She really wanted to hear them read, and she never left a kid choking on a word he couldn’t figure out. She always helped.

It turned out that Donald was the best reader in the class. Mrs. Miller asked him what he liked to read.

“Comics,” he told her.

Mrs. Miller asked him if he owned a lot of comics.

“About two thousand,” Donald said.

“Would you like to bring some to school?” Mrs. Miller asked.

Donald couldn’t believe it. Every time he had been caught with a comic book in school, it had meant a visit to Mr. Frieda, who always tore them up.

For part of every day, when the other kids worked on reading, Donald was allowed to sit at the back of the room, reading comics. As some of the other kids got better at reading, they were allowed to join Donald and read comics with him, and Donald was supposed to help them. Every day he brought twenty or thirty comics to school with him. All the kids wanted to join the group that got time off to read comics, so they all tried to get better at reading. At lunch, the kids who got to read the comics would sit together and talk about the stories.

Donald knew more about comics than anybody, and he was always in the center of the group. A couple of the other kids started collecting. Donald gave away some doubles, and sometimes he and the other kids would trade comics after school.

Wingman wasn’t around any more. Donald had looked for him on the bridge, but he was never there. After a while, Donald stopped looking for him. On weekends he would hang out with some kids from his class, going to bookstores that sold secondhand comics, or just fooling around. One day he paid a nickel for a perfect copy of Action Comics Number 1, which had the first Superman story ever. He felt good about that because now he had every number.

Donald’s whole class got to read comics, and after a while Mrs. Miller said that since they could read comics at home, it might be a good idea to quit reading them in school. Some of the kids complained, but Mrs. Miller said she would get them some good books to read instead. Donald had already decided that he liked comics better outside of school. Reading comics in class was fun at first, but in some way reading them there made it sort of official, and took some of the fun away.

Mrs. Miller had thought of something to take the place of the comics. On the same day she told the class that she had arranged for them to take some trips. That was really special. None of the kids had ever heard of a class taking a trip, certainly not a class from P.S. 132.

Mrs. Miller spoke to the kids about how she wanted them to behave on the trip, and told them to bring subway fare and their lunches, and to meet her outside of the school on the following Wednesday because they were going to spend the whole day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They were going on a trip! They were going on the subway! They weren’t even going inside the school! Everybody wished it was Wednesday.

For the next few days Mrs. Miller talked to the class about the museum, and the things they would see. None of the kids had ever been to a museum, and she wanted to prepare them for it.

None of them was prepared for how big it was. It was ten times as big as the school! The class stood lined up in twos outside the museum, at the bottom of the biggest, widest steps in the world.

“Follow me, class,” Mrs. Miller said, and the children toiled up the steps after her.

The class passed through a huge door into the biggest room anyone had ever seen. Their feet made clicking noises on the smooth floor, and there was an echo. Everybody tried out the echo by whistling and shouting, until Mrs. Miller reminded them that they were guests, and the museum people liked things quiet.

Donald had read stories in comics about museums; Batman was always catching crooks who were trying to steal a famous diamond or a gold statue from one. But this was real! There were real suits of armor, and old axes, swords, and spears. This was in a room hung with beautiful flags, and in the middle there was a dummy knight in real armor on a dummy horse. The horse had armor too. Mrs. Miller talked about the armor, and the people who had used it. The kids could almost hear the crashing and banging as soldiers fought with swords and shields.

Mrs. Miller led the class through a dark stone passage into a room that was arranged to look like an Egyptian tomb. There were mummies, and big stone statues of cats and birds. It was scary. Mrs. Miller talked about how old the things in that room were, thousands and thousands of years! She told them about life in ancient Egypt and about the tombs and mummies. The class was very quiet. Most of them had seen a movie about a mummy in a museum who comes to life. The boys whispered dares to each other to come back to the mummy room alone.

The museum was so full of wonderful things that it was hard to take. By the time the class went down to the basement to eat their lunches in a special room there, a lot of kids had blown their tops. It was just too much to see. It was too exciting. In their minds the kids were knights on horseback and mummies come to life. They were thrilled by pictures full of sunlight; they were full of sunlight too. They needed a chance to let off steam. It was a loud lunch.

After lunch the class went upstairs to look at the Chinese paintings. Donald was waiting for that. He had never heard about Chinese paintings until Mrs. Miller began telling her class about the things they would see in the museum. Donald had a special reason for wanting to see pictures of China.

The room was small, and the pictures, hung side by side, were painted on silk. They were not filled with sunlight like some of the paintings they had seen earlier; they were filled with mist and empty spaces. The class was quiet looking at the pictures, not because they were scary like the Egyptian things, but because there was something about these pictures that was like a little bird perched on your finger. If you were to make a sudden move, or even breathe, the bird might get frightened and fly away.

“These are not paintings of light; they are pictures of moments in time,” Mrs. Miller was saying. The class was hardly listening to her; they could see that for themselves.

Donald was searching for something in the paintings. He had seen mountains like this, and the same kind of little houses before. He was looking for a landmark, for something he had seen for sure that day he had flown over China. He found it. In a picture of trees and mountains and swirling fog, there were three tiny figures, two men and a boy. They were leading a horse. One of the men looked a lot like his uncle, Li-Noon.

Donald felt a rushing in his ears. He could hear the traffic on the George Washington Bridge. He could smell the trees in the misty mountain forest. He felt suspended in the air, as though Wingman were carrying him. He must have looked funny, because Mrs. Miller put her hand on his shoulder as she talked to the class about the picture. He felt her hand and the rushing went away. “Perhaps some ancestor of Donald Chen painted this picture, or maybe one of the people in the picture is Donald as he would have been in China nine hundred years ago.”

She had made an awfully good guess. Donald wanted to say something to Mrs. Miller, but he was too confused and excited to speak. The class was about to move on to another room, when Donald found his voice. “I want to stay here.”

Mrs. Miller told Donald he could stay with the Chinese paintings if he would promise not to leave the room; then she could find him when it was time to go home. Donald promised and the class filed out.

Donald was alone with the picture. There was something more he wanted to see in it. He studied the picture inch by inch. He looked at the leafy trees; he looked at the curious shapes of mountains. He looked at the three figures leading the horse. The horse was white. It had a beautiful silk cloth covering its back. Donald wondered why none of them rode the horse. He looked into the mist, the empty spaces. There was something else he wanted the picture to show him.

Then the mist began to move. It stopped being flat. It stopped being a picture. The painting was turning into a window. The people were real. Donald felt a cool breeze. He could also feel the heat of the horse’s body. Then it was flat again, a picture again. There was a little bench in the room, in front of the painting, and Donald went and sat down on it. He tried to make the painting turn into a window again. It stayed flat. Donald got tired of trying and just sat, gazing in the direction of the picture, thinking about nothing. The mist started swirling. “Hey! It’s real again!” he thought. The picture went flat that moment.

Donald discovered that he could play a game with the painting. As long as he looked at it, just looked without thinking or paying attention to anything in particular, the picture was real. It was alive. It moved. But, if he thought about any one thing, a part of the picture, Donald Chen, the bench, the room, anything, the picture went flat, was just a picture again. It was like watching something out of the corner of his eye, only he was looking right at it.

Donald played the game; soon he was getting better at it. At first he could only make the picture real for maybe a second at a time. After practicing, he was able to make it real for as long as he wanted. Then he discovered that he could think about separate things in the picture, but if he thought about himself thinking, it would all go flat again and he would have to start over.

Donald had known from the first that what he wanted was to make Wingman appear in the picture. Now he thought that maybe Wingman would only appear if he did not think about him. Donald discovered that it was very hard to keep from thinking of something once he knew what the something was. He kept trying.

He made some progress. He knew just where in the empty space Wingman would appear, but each time he tried, just before he would have been able to see him, he couldn’t help thinking, “I can almost see him!” and the painting would go flat.

“Donald, the class is ready to leave.” Mrs. Miller had come to get him. As they left the room, Donald glanced back at the painting. Wingman was flying over the mountains.

Donald wanted to tell Mrs. Miller what had happened, what he had seen in the picture. He wanted to know if other people saw things in pictures that way. He wanted to tell her about Wingman, and flying to China. In his mind he practiced different ways to tell her. None of the ways seemed right. He rode the subway and went home without saying anything. That night he couldn’t get to sleep. All the things that happened kept popping up in his mind. It was bothering him. He had to think of a way to let somebody else know. He wanted it to be Mrs. Miller. She had been the one to take him to the museum. She knew about pictures.

At the same time, Donald knew that he couldn’t just tell her that someone who was like a hero in a comic book had appeared to him eight stories up in the steel girders of the George Washington Bridge, had a pet eagle, took Donald flying, not just to China, but to China a thousand years ago. You can’t tell anybody things like that. Donald knew that it would be a bad mistake even to tell anyone that he had climbed the bridge.

He had to think of a way of telling her without letting her know that she had been told. He thought of a way to do it, just as he fell asleep. He dreamed the sort of dreams he always did, dreams in the shape of comic book stories, brightly colored panels one after another. In the morning, he didn’t know if he had dreamed it, or thought of it, or planned to do it all along. He took his notebook, the one with all his drawings, from under his mattress and put it in his schoolbag.

At the end of the day, Donald handed the notebook to Mrs. Miller and went home. He felt good; now someone else knew. When he got home his father was ironing sheets, and Donald thought about how much he liked the sweet, steamy, laundry smells. He was learning to cook. His father had left bok choy and onions and mushrooms for Donald to cut up. Later they cooked some chicken in the big bowl-shaped frying pan, poured in the vegetables Donald had cut, and served supper to the little kids.

At school the next day, Mrs. Miller asked Donald to stay after school. His friends thought he was going to be punished for something. They said they would wait for him outside, but Donald knew that she was going to say something about his pictures. He liked her for not talking about them in front of the class. Mrs. Miller never embarrassed people.

“Thank you, Donald, for letting me see these fine pictures,” she said. “Have you been drawing for a long time?”

Donald mumbled something. He was a little embarrassed after all.

“You know, most schools have Art as a regular subject, but this school . . . well, this school doesn’t. However, I went to the supply room and found these.” Mrs. Miller went to the cabinet. She took out a roll of big sheets of paper, yellowish and rough, and nearly as big as Donald himself when she unrolled them. She rolled them up again and handed them to Donald. She also gave him a box containing little jars of color and a brush.

“Since no one uses these things, I don’t see why you shouldn’t have them,” Mrs. Miller said. Donald was really embarrassed now. He was mumbling again.

“There is something you can do for me,” Mrs. Miller said. “Will you do a very good picture on one of these sheets of paper, and bring it to me? I will give it back to you after a while.”

“Sure,” Donald said. “That’s okay.” He was talking like a dumb jerk; he wanted to kick himself. He felt like crying or hugging Mrs. Miller. He took the paper and the box of paints and left, running.

Donald had to get his father’s help. The paper was too big to keep under the mattress. They arranged that Donald would cover the ironing table with newspaper in the evening, and do his painting there. His brother and sister were ordered to keep their hands off the painting stuff.

His father was very excited about the project. The first night Donald tried to paint, he kept looking over Donald’s shoulder to see how it was coming. Donald messed up a couple of sheets of paper just getting used to the paint. His father watched him. Every time he brushed a new color onto the paper, his father clapped and laughed as though he were watching fireworks. Donald started to laugh too, and they wound up laughing until their eyes were wet, especially his father’s.

Donald started to work on a serious painting the next night. He decided to paint the marketplace in the old Chinese city he had seen. He also put a dragon in the picture. He had seen a dragon in New York City just a few days before, in Chinatown with his father, brother, and sister. It was New Year’s—not January first, but Chinese New Year, which comes later—and he had seen a dragon dancing in the street. It was not really a dragon, but a lot of people dressed up as a dragon. Donald could see their feet. It was a little like a giant caterpillar. There were firecrackers going off everywhere, and the people inside made the dragon twist and turn and rear his head up in the air. Donald liked it a lot.

Donald painted the dragon dancing in the open square. He painted the buildings, and the vegetable stalls. He painted crowds of people watching the dragon; he made some of them look like people he knew. His father was carrying a stack of sheets; Uncle Noon had a big bottle of wine. He painted his brother and sister, and the three people from the picture in the museum, leading their horse. He painted exploding firecrackers the way they are shown in comic books, two red halves with a yellow flash between them. For good measure, he painted some up-in-the-sky fireworks. Above it all, very small, he painted Wingman and himself, flying in a corner of the sky.

When the picture was finished, he signed it, Chen Chi-Wing. His father put it in the window of the laundry on Saturday. All day long people came in to say nice things about the picture. Donald kept going out in the street to look at it. It was a pretty good picture, there was no doubt about it.

On Monday he took the picture to Mrs. Miller. He told her she could keep it, but she said she would keep it just for a while. When school was over that day, he saw her take the rolled-up picture out of the cabinet and take it with her.

Time passed in the ordinary way. Donald had some of the big sheets of paper left, and did some more pictures. He found a rare comic he had been looking for, Barney Baxter Four Color Number 20. He also made a couple of visits to the museum on his own. He was getting better at the game of letting the picture come to life, and he also tried it on different kinds of pictures. With some it worked, with some it didn’t. In school they were learning about the Indians who used to live right in his neighborhood before New York City was there. He liked that pretty well, and kept up with his homework. He hadn’t cut school or climbed the bridge for a long time.

So he was not prepared for the note Mrs. Miller gave him to take home. It said that the principal of P.S. 132 invited Donald and his father to meet him in his office the next morning. Mrs. Miller had said that she hoped it would be a pleasant surprise. Donald tried to remember if he ever heard of anything pleasant happening in the principal’s office. He hadn’t, so he spent some time trying to remember some crime for which he had not been caught.

In the morning he still had no idea what the principal had found out. His father was wearing his suit. He didn’t say anything one way or the other. They went to school together.

In the hall outside the principal’s office, there was a big glass case, almost as big as a store window. There was a fluorescent light inside it, but the light was always out. Donald had never seen anything on display in the case. This morning the light was on, and in the case, tacked to a big sheet of red construction paper, was Donald’s painting, the one he had given to Mrs. Miller.

Donald and his father began to smile. Mrs. Miller saw them through the open door of the office, and she and the principal, Mr. Toomey, came out into the hall. They both shook hands with Donald’s father, and Mr. Toomey shook hands with Donald. He called him Don.

Mrs. Miller explained that she had entered Donald’s picture in a city-wide school art contest. One hundred and nineteen schools had each sent a picture by one of the pupils, and Donald’s picture had been selected as the best of the hundred and nineteen.

Mr. Toomey shook hands with Donald again, and gave him his prize, which consisted of a blue ribbon, a sheet of paper with fancy writing on it saying Donald had won the contest, and a five-dollar bill. Donald’s father kept patting him on the back and saying, “Good boy.” Donald gave his father the prizes to take home.

Mrs. Miller told the class that they could see Donald’s picture outside the principal’s office. “Also,” she said, “Mr. Toomey has decided that we should have Art as a regular subject, so, starting next week, we will paint pictures on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.” After the cheering died down, the class settled to work on the old-time Indians of Manhattan.

Donald was looking out the window. Nobody else saw the bird, or if they did, they thought it was a pigeon and hardly looked at it. Donald watched the eagle glide and spiral higher and higher. Even after it was out of sight he heard its shrill cries.

THE MAGIC GOOSE

To Geese and other creatures of goodwill.

—DP & JP

Contents

1.Seymour

2.Magic

3.In the Kitchen

4.A Magic Activity

5.Night Flying

6.Magic Goose Land

7.Lost Goose

8.Nathaniel lnkblotter

9.Home Again

I have written several important works about or featuring chickens, but never a goose until now. The reader will be aware that goose literature (la littérature d’oie) is an important part of world culture, and this is my contribution. Of course, I do not expect to achieve the fame of a certain Mother (no relation), but I do my humble best to entertain and enlighten. I hope the reader will have a honking good time.

1. Seymour

M y name is Seymour Semolina, and I like to read. I read a lot. Twice a year, when my mother, Selma Semolina, and my father, Steven Semolina, go to parents’ night at school, my teacher, Mrs. Mulberry, tells them, “Seymour is a good reader.”

I not only read books in school, I read books on the bus, going to school and going home. I read comics and magazines. I read most of the newspaper every day. When I eat my breakfast, I read the cereal box. I read while listening to the radio. I read while watching TV. I read in the bathroom. When I ride in the family car, I read in the backseat. Sometimes I read two things at once. When I play baseball, I read while waiting for my turn at bat. Sometimes, I read while playing left field. I can also read while riding my bicycle, but my father made me promise not to, for fear of accidents. I am a reading fiend.

Saturdays, I go to the library. I read a book there—maybe two books. I usually check out five books and take them home.

Every night I read in bed. When my mother makes me turn out the light, I read under the covers with a flashlight.

I have two favorite books. One is The Haphazard House Junior Dictionary for Little Scholars. The other is Seymour and the Magic Pudding by my favorite author, Nathaniel Inkblotter. I like that book because it is about a kid named Seymour, just like me.

In Seymour and the Magic Pudding, this kid, Seymour, is in bed at night. He notices that something is in the room. He’s pretty sure it is a monster.

The monster says, “Are you scared?”

Seymour says, “No. I am not scared.”

The kids in stories like this are never scared.

The monster turns out to be a magic thing. It looks like a big pile of tapioca pudding, It says, “I have come to visit you. I will be your friend.”

Then Seymour and the magic pudding go out the window. Seymour’s parents do not wake up while all this is happening. They don’t have a clue.

Seymour and the magic pudding have an adventure. They fly through the air. They visit strange lands. They dance and play. In books like this, the kid always learns a lesson. Maybe it’s about how wonderful imagining things can be, or about how you should never be scared. In Seymour and the Magic Pudding, Seymour learns that tapioca is your friend.

Then the magic pudding brings him home. He winds up back in his bed.

“Will you ever come back?” Seymour asks the magic pudding.

“Yes, I will come back,” the magic pudding says. “I will be your friend. Now go to sleep.”

And Seymour goes to sleep.

It’s a heck of a book.

I wouldn’t mind if something like that happened to me.

2. Magic

My other favorite book, The Haphazard House Junior Dictionary for Little Scholars, is a killer. It’s got everything. I read it every night.

On this particular night, I was reading about fowl.

fowl \foul\ 1: a bird of any kind 2a: a domestic cock or hen; esp: an adult hen b: any of several domesticated or wild gallinaceous birds 3: the meat of fowl used as food

Fascinating. Next, I looked up “gallinaceous,” because that was a word I did not know.

gallinaceous \gal-in-ay-shus\: of or relating to an order (Galliformes) of heavy-bodied largely terrestrial birds, including the pheasants, turkeys, grouse, and the common domestic fowl

Then, I had to look up “terrestrial.” I almost knew what that meant, because I knew that an extraterrestrial is a being from outer space. It turned out that terrestrial means living on land or the earth.

You can’t beat The Haphazard House Junior Dictionary for Little Scholars. I wonder what sort of book Nathaniel Inkblotter would write if he had a copy.

After I had read for as long as I could, when I felt my eyes closing, I switched off the light, rolled over, and went to sleep.

One moment I was sleeping, and the next moment I was awake. At first, I thought I might be dreaming I was awake. I wiggled around. I was pretty sure I was awake. I kept my eyes shut. I could not remember waking up like this, in the dark. It was an odd feeling.

Plus, I had an odd feeling on top of the odd feeling. I felt a tingling all over my skin. My nose kept wrinkling, all by itself, as though it were trying to smell something—but at first there was nothing to smell. Then I thought I smelled a smell like the smell of my Uncle Dave. Uncle Dave smokes cheap cigars.

Something’s up, I thought.

I opened one eye.

I opened the other eye.

Something is in this room, I thought.

I sat up. “Who’s there?”

“Me. I’m here.”

“Who said that?” I said.

“I did.”

I looked around the room. I saw something pale and gray. It was in the corner. It was dim, and hard to see—but it was there. Something was certainly there.

“Are you a ghost?” I asked.

“Would you be scared if I were?” the dim gray thing asked.

“I’m not scared,” I said.

“I’m not a ghost.”

“Are you something magic?” I asked.

“I sure am,” the gray thing said.

“I’m turning on the light,” I said.

“Go right ahead.”

I turned on the light.

“You’re a goose!” I said.

“I am. You have a problem with that?”

It was a very large goose, larger than any goose I had ever heard of or imagined. This goose was larger than a large person. I was not sure whether I had actually ever seen a live goose before—but I’d seen pictures of geese, and a goose is what this was. In the light the goose was a beautiful gray. Its beak was orange. It smelled of cheap cigars.

“You aren’t a magic goose, by any chance?” I asked.

“A magic goose. Yes, indeed I am!” the goose said.

“This is good,” I said. “What magic can you do? What kind of special powers do you have?”

“I can speak English.”

“Excellent!” I said. “What else?”

“What else? What do you mean, ‘what else?’ You know any other geese who can talk?”

“I don’t know any geese at all,” I said.

“Well, if you had any experience with geese, you’d know that a talking one is fairly spectacular.”

“I agree,” I said. “But how about other magic powers? For example, can you take me flying? Can we visit strange lands? Can we dance and sing? Will I learn a lesson?”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” said the goose.

“You haven’t?” I asked.

“Nope.”

“But you are a magic goose,” I said. 1 am.

“So, what magic can you do?”

“I got into your room. I’m talking to you. Forget about geese—are you aware of any animals of any kind who can do that?”

“Well, no,” I agreed.

“See? Magic.”

“In stories, like Seymour and the Magic Pudding, for example, they go someplace.”

“Who does?”

“The kid and the magic thing,” I said.

“Oh.”

“Aren’t we going someplace?” I asked.

“We will go to the kitchen.”

“The kitchen?”

“Yes,” the goose said.

3. In the Kitchen

T he magic goose and I went to the kitchen. Just like in Seymour and the Magic Pudding, my mother, Selma Semolina, and my father, Steven Semolina, did not wake up.

When we got to the kitchen, I turned on the light. The goose looked around.

“Nice kitchen,” the goose said.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Let’s make soup,” the goose said.

“Goose soup?”

“Ha, ha. Very funny. We will make cornflakes soup.”

“Cornflakes soup?”

“Yes,” the magic goose said.

“How do you make that?”

“You put cornflakes in a bowl. Then you pour milk. Then you put sugar on. Then you eat it.”

“That’s not cornflakes soup! That’s cornflakes.”

“It’s wet. You eat it with a spoon. You eat it out of a bowl. I call that soup. If you ate them dry, out of the box, then you could say cornflakes.”

“That makes sense, I suppose,” I said.

“See? You learned something,” the goose said.

“This isn’t as good as in the book,” I said.

“Look, you are talking with a goose,” the goose said. “A goose who speaks English—a magic goose. I came to your room. I came in the night. I taught you the difference between cornflakes and cornflakes soup—and we’re going to make some. So stop complaining.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” the goose said. “Help me with the milk.”

I fixed some cornflakes soup for the goose.

I fixed some for myself.

We sat at the table and ate our cornflakes soup.

“That was good,” the goose said.

“Now what?” I asked.

“What do you mean, ‘now what?’” the goose asked.

“I mean, what happens now?” I said.

The goose thought. “We could have some more cornflakes soup. You want some more cornflakes soup?”

“No,” I said. “I’m full.”

The magic goose and I sat and looked at each other across the table. Neither of us said anything for a while.

“Do you want some more cornflakes soup?” I asked the goose.

“Not really,” the goose said.

We sat in silence. The goose looked around at the kitchen. I looked at the goose.

“Isn’t this fun?” the goose asked.

“I was just thinking,” I said. “Aside from the fact that you are a magic goose, it is sort of boring.”

“I don’t know how you can say that,” the goose said. “We’re practically having a party here.”

“You’ve never done this before, have you?” I asked.

“Done what?”

“The magic goose thing—coming into a kid’s room in the middle of the night—you’ve never done it before, am I right?”

“Well, not as such,” the goose said. “But I’d say I’m doing an excellent job.”

“You’ve never read any of the books about this sort of thing, have you?” I asked.

“Actually, geese don’t read much,” the goose said.

“Would you mind if I gave you some advice?” I asked.

“Not at all,” the goose said.

“Appearing in my room and being an English-speaking, six-foot-tall magic goose is all very well and good,” I said. “And you did that part very nicely.”

“Thank you,” said the goose.

“But you need to have some sort of a plan,” I said. “There ought to be a magic activity. It’s not enough just to come down to the kitchen and fix cornflakes.”

“Cornflakes soup,” said the goose.

“Whatever.”

4. A Magic Activity

I’d welcome any suggestions,” the goose said.

“Let me think a minute,” I said. “You can fly, I suppose.”

“I’m a goose.”

“How about this? I get on your back, and you take me flying?”

“It sounds unsafe,” the goose said.

“I hang on to your feathers,” I said.

“That might hurt,” said the goose.

“I take the belt from my bathrobe, tie it around your neck, and hold on to that, all right?”

“That would work,” said the goose.

“So you’ll take me flying?” I asked.

“For how long?”

“For a while! What does it matter? Do you have other kids to visit tonight?”

“No.”

“Do you have to be back in Magic Goose Land, or wherever you come from, at some special time?”

“No.”

“So let’s go already! By the way, where do you come from?”

“Magic Goose Land.”

I led the goose out into the backyard.

“Nice yard,” the goose said.

“Thanks,” I said. I took the belt from my bathrobe and tied it around the goose’s neck.

“Not too tight,” the goose said.

“Relax. I know what I’m doing,” I said. “How does that feel?”

“It feels okay,” the goose said. “What if it comes undone when we’re flying?”

“I did a square knot with a double fisherman’s bend,” I said. “There’s a whole section with illustrations about knots in The Haphazard House Junior Dictionary for Little Scholars. This won’t come undone.”

I climbed onto the goose’s back and took a tight hold of the bathrobe belt.

“Let’s go,” I said.

“It feels funny with you on my back,” the goose said.

“Just fly. You’ll get used to it.”

The goose spread its wings. I held tight.

This is exciting! I thought.

“I can’t do it,” said the goose.

“What do you mean, you can’t do it?” I asked.

“All of a sudden, I sort of forgot how to get off the ground,” the goose said. “It doesn’t feel right, with you sitting on my back.”

“Just fly,” I said. “Don’t think about me. Just fly the way you usually do.”

The goose flapped its wings. I felt a great rush of air. I held on extra tight. The goose flapped faster.

“We’re not moving,” I said.

“We’re not?” the goose asked.

“We’re not moving an inch,” I said.

“I can’t understand it,” the goose said. “Why can’t I get off the ground?”

“It’s because of the extra weight,” I said. “You’ll have to do a running takeoff.”

I climbed down off the goose’s back and led the goose by the bathrobe belt. I led him to the far end of the backyard.

“Now, what you have to do is start running and flapping,” I said.

“What will that do?” the goose asked.

“We’ll build up speed, running along the ground, and the movement of air under your wings will help us take off.”

“You think so?” the goose asked.

“I’m sure of it. That’s how airplanes take off.”

“How do you know so much?” the goose asked.

aviation \ay-vee-ay-shun\: the operation of heavier-than-air aircraft

“I read about it,” I said. “Now, let’s try it.”

The goose began to run. Its webbed feet slapped against the ground.

“Flap your wings! Flap your wings!” I shouted.

“Too many things to think about!” the goose shouted.

We got to the end of the yard.

“I have to rest for a minute,” the goose said. “I’m getting all confused.”

I waited while the goose stood quietly, composing himself.

“Ready to try again?” I asked him.

“Yes.”

“Let’s go back to the other end of the yard and try again,” I said. “This time, start flapping before you start running.”

“Why not just turn around and run the other way?” the goose asked.

“Because we have to run into the wind. It will help us take off.”

“You read about that, too?” the goose asked.

aeronautics \ay-ro-naw-tiks\: the art or science of flight

takeoff \tayk-awf\: a rise or leap from a surface in making a jump or flight or an ascent in an aircraft or in the launching of a rocket

windward: being in or facing the direction from which the wind is blowing—compare LEEWARD

“Yes,” I said.

The goose and I went back to the far end of the backyard. I climbed onto the goose’s back.

“This time, I will tell you what to do, and you will do it,” I said. “Ready?”

“Ready!” said the goose.

“Flap!” I shouted.

The goose flapped.

“Flap faster!”

The goose flapped faster.

“Flap very fast!”

“I’m flapping as fast as I can!” the goose shouted.

The goose was flapping its wings very-fast. I felt the rush of air, and dust and bits of grass were whirling around and hitting me in the face.

“Now, run!” I shouted.

The goose ran.

“Run faster! Flap harder!”

I heard the goose’s webbed feet slapping against the backyard grass. Then I felt the goose bob upward. The sound of the feet had changed from slapping to scratching. The goose was running on tiptoe. Another bob, and I could not hear the feet at all. Over the goose’s head I saw the backyard fence drop down and pass underneath us.

“We’re flying!”

5. Night Flying

This is definitely neat,” I said.

“It feels funny flying with someone on my back,” the goose said.

We were high above the neighborhood. I could see my house and my street. Things looked different from high in the air. It looked like a toy neighborhood. The houses were like toy houses, and the cars were like toy cars. The streetlights were like little flashlights, blinking through the trees.

“Neat!” I said. “Neat, neat.”

“I get to see stuff like this all the time,” the goose said. “I guess it is kind of neat, now that you mention it.”

“Let’s fly over my school!” I said.

“Which way is it?” the goose asked.

“Hang a left.”

The goose flew over the same streets I walked on going to school every day. There was the school building, with all its lights out.

“There it is! That’s my school!” I said.

“Nice school,” the goose said.

“Fly around it!”

The goose flew slowly around the school.

“This would be great if we could do it on a school morning,” I said. “You could fly me to school. The kids would go wild when they saw me arrive on a magic goose.”

“I suppose it would sort of blow their minds,” the goose said. “You want to fly around the school again?”

“No, let’s go up high!”

“Sure you won’t be scared?” the goose asked. “I can go pretty high.”

“I am not scared, and I will not be scared,” I said. “Go as high as you can.”

The goose flew in big circles, rising higher and higher. The streets and houses got smaller and smaller and soon were lost in the clouds. We were surrounded by stars and the night sky.

“Look how big the moon seems!” I said.

“It is big,” the goose said.

“Is this as high as you have ever gone?” I asked.

“I have never been this high,” the goose said. “I feel a little bit dizzy.”

“It’s cold up here,” I said. “But it’s neat.”

“I’m scared,” the goose said. “I’m going to fly lower down.”

“I’m not scared,” I said. “But if you want to go lower down, it’s all right with me.” I was not scared, not really, but I was feeling a little dizzy myself. I did not tell the goose.

“Thank you,” said the goose.

The goose slowly descended through the clouds, and we saw the lights and houses again.

“Look at the big buildings downtown!” I said. “Can we fly over there?”

“Why not?” said the goose.

The tall buildings were mostly dark. The goose flew between them. With the buildings on both sides, it was like flying through canyons, and I could feel how fast the goose was going.

“Yaaay! This is great!” I shouted.

“Watch this,” the goose said. “I can do loops!”

The goose flew loops and loop-the-loops between the tall buildings.

I held on tight.

“Do it again!” I shouted.

“Let’s go up to the tops of the buildings,” the goose said.

“Okay.”

The goose flew up until we were as high as the buildings. I noticed that it was very quiet. When I had been downtown before, it had always been during the day, and there had been lots of noise from buses and cars, engines and horns. Now, with the buildings mostly dark, there wasn’t a sound.

Then, I heard something. It was a sweet sound. “Do you hear that?” I asked the goose.

“That music?” the goose asked.

“Yes!” I said. “Where is it coming from?”

In one of the dark buildings, near the very top, there was a light in a window. The goose flew near to the window, and I could see a man sitting in a chair, with his feet on a desk, playing a clarinet.

“He’s good,” the goose said. “He must be someone who works late at night. I assume he’s taking a break to play some music. Maybe this is his nighttime lunch hour.”

“Let’s listen,” I said.

The goose landed on the roof of the building just across the street from the one in which the man was playing the clarinet. I climbed off the goose’s back, and we listened to the music. The man in the building went into a fast tune, and the goose and I began to tap our feet.

The moon cast a beautiful light on the deserted downtown, the clarinet music drifted between the skyscrapers, and I danced with the goose until the man in the window put his clarinet away and went back to working at the computer on his desk.

6. Magic Goose Land

Let’s fly out into the country,” I said.

“Suits me,” said the goose. “Climb on my back.”

The goose, with me on his back, hurled himself from the roof of the tall building, rose into the sky, and soon the lights of the city were far behind us.

“It’s dark out here,” the goose said. “There’s not much to see.”

“There’s a river,” I said. “You can see it shining in the moonlight.”

“So you can,” the goose said. “Sort of pretty, isn’t it?”

“What’s that smell?” I asked. I was smelling something very strong.

“You don’t know what that smell is?” the goose asked.

“No,” I said. “It’s pretty powerful. What is it?”

“I’ll show you,” the goose said.

The goose flew straight for the smell. It got stronger as we got closer.

“Phew! What is it?” I asked.

“You’ll see,” said the goose.

We landed in a big open place. There were hundreds and hundreds of geese standing around. It didn’t smell very nice.

“What is this place?” I asked.

“Magic Goose Land!” the goose said.

I looked around. The place was surrounded by a high fence. The hundreds and hundreds of geese were white, not gray like my goose.

“This is Magic Goose Land?” I asked.

“Neat, isn’t it?” the goose said.

“These geese are all magic?”

“Every one of them,” the goose said.

“They aren’t paying any attention to us,” I said.

“They’re just being polite,” the goose said. “It would be rude to make a fuss.”

“Do you know these geese?” I asked.

The goose looked around. “I don’t see anyone I actually know,” it said.

“Are you sure this is Magic Goose Land?” I asked.

“It does seem different somehow,” the goose said. “On the other hand, what else could it be?”

“I think this is a goose farm,” I said.

“A goose farm? What’s a goose farm?”

goose \gooss\ 1: any of numerous large waterfowl (family Anatidae) that are intermediate between the swans and ducks 2: SIMPLETON, DOLT

farm \farm\: a plot of land devoted to agricultural purposes, the raising of animals and esp. domestic livestock

“A goose farm is where they keep lots of geese.”

“So? How is that different from Magic Goose Land?” the goose asked.

“These geese aren’t magic,” I said.

“They aren’t?” asked the goose. “So what are they doing standing around here?”

“These geese,” I said, “are going to be eaten.”

“You’re kidding!”

“I’m afraid not,” I said.

“No, really. Be serious,” said the goose. “They’re going to be eaten? Who would do such a thing?”

“People,” I said. “People eat geese.”

The goose looked at me.

“Oh, not me! Not me! I have never eaten a goose! I don’t think anyone in my family has ever eaten a goose.”

“This is a joke in doubtful taste,” the goose said.

“It is not a joke,” I said.

“In that case, I think we should leave,” the goose said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Just a moment,” the goose said. He walked over to where a bunch of geese were standing around, not doing anything.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I don’t wish to alarm you, but I am informed that you are going to be eaten.”

“Honk,” said the farmyard goose.

“No, I really mean it,” my goose said. “I know it sounds silly, but you should really think about getting out of here.”

“Honk.”

“My friend and I would be happy to help you escape,” my goose said.

“What are you, some kind of magic goose?” the farm goose replied.

“Well, as a matter of fact. . .”

“Is that how you know so much?” the farm goose honked.

“Yes.”

“Well, I’ll tell you something, Mr. Magic Goose. You and your friend are crazy as bats. Who would eat a goose? It’s ridiculous! You might as well say that someone would eat a cow!”

The goose came back to where I was standing.

“Were you really serious when you said these geese are going to be eaten?” he asked.

“Yes, and have their feathers made into pillows,” I said.

“Pillows?”

goose down \goossdoun\: the soft feathers of a goose, used in making pillows and comforters

“That’s right,” I said.

“Very funny,” the goose said. “No wonder that other goose thought I was an idiot. You have a warped sense of humor.”

“I’m serious,” I said.

“Right,” said the goose. “Let’s go now.”

7. Lost Goose

Ipromise, those geese are going to be eaten,” I said to the goose as we flew away. “I wasn’t playing a joke on you.”

“You’ll say anything for a laugh, right?” the goose said. “I suppose I’d think it was funny, too, but I’ve got a problem that’s bothering me.”

“You do? What is it?” I asked.

“I don’t like to bother you,” said the goose.

“You won’t be bothering me,” I said. “We’re friends.”

“We are?”

“Of course we are. What is your problem?”

“You don’t happen to know how to get to Magic Goose Land, by any chance?” the goose asked me.

“You don’t know?”

“I just wondered if you knew,” the goose said.

“You thought the goose farm was Magic Goose Land,” I said.

“It was a mistake anybody could have made.”

“Do you remember how you got here?” I asked.

“Not precisely,” the goose said.

“You just turned up in my room, and you have no idea how you got there?”

“Yes,” the goose said.

“What do you remember about coming here?” I asked.

“Not much,” the goose said. “I sort of tend to live in the present moment. Geese are like that.”

“So, you’re completely lost.”

“I would say that I am completely lost,” the goose said.

“I thought geese were very good at traveling long distances and finding their way.”

“There are leaders and there are followers. I never paid much attention.”

“We could look for it on a map,” I said.

“What’s a map?”

map \map\: a representation usually on a flat surface of the whole or a part of an area

cartography \kar-tog-ruh-fee\: the science or art of making maps

“But I’m pretty sure it won’t be on a map,” I said. “This has to do with magic, and maps usually don’t.”

“Well, please don’t worry about it,” the goose said. “I will be fine.”

“We need to ask somebody,” I said.

“Could we ask your mother and father?” the goose asked.

“We could,” I said. “But I don’t think they’d know about Magic Goose Land. Besides, I’d have to explain why I was flying around with you when I was supposed to be asleep. I think we should ask somebody else.”

“Who?”

“I think we should ask Nathaniel Ink-blotter, author of Seymour and the Magic Pudding, my favorite book! He knows about magic things that turn up at night!”

“Fine. Let’s ask him,” the goose said. “Do you know where he lives?”

“I know how to find out,” I said. “Let’s look for a telephone booth. We can look him up in the directory.”

directory \duh-rek-tuh-ree\: an alphabetical or classified list (as of names and addresses): a phone book

8. Nathaniel Inkblotter

It turned out that Nathaniel Inkblotter, the famous author, lived in the Crummy Creek Trailer Park. The goose and I flew there. We found Mr. Inkblotter’s trailer. It had a rusted-up old car outside with a bumper sticker that said I’d rather be writing. All the windows of the trailer were dark.

“I forgot it was so late at night,” I said. “He must be sleeping. Maybe we should come back in the morning.”

“You forget I am a magic goose,” the goose said. “I will appear in his bedroom. It’s something I do well.”

“Good idea,” I said. “And he’ll probably like it. After all, he writes about stuff like that.”

I helped the goose clamber into an open window. He was heavy, and it was hard work. I had to sort of stuff him in. Then I waited outside Nathaniel Inkblotter’s trailer.

I heard a couple of thumps and crashes. Apparently the goose had bumped into things in the dark. Then, I heard nothing for a while.

A light came on, and I heard a blood-freezing scream.

“Oh, no! Bandits! Spare me! Don’t take my life! Take my money! Take my typewriter! Take my AM and FM radio! Take my electric waffle iron! But do not hurt me!”

That was Nathaniel Inkblotter. I could hear the goose talking.

“I am not a bandit. I am a magic goose.”

“Eeek! Evil spirits! Oh, no! Nooooo!” Nathaniel Inkblotter wailed.

“I am not evil,” the goose said. “I am an ordinary magic goose, and I do not want your electric waffle iron.”

“I am going into this closet,” I heard Nathaniel Inkblotter say. “And I am not coming out until you are gone. Depart, evil goose! I defy your dreadful powers!”

I heard a door slam.

“Mr. Inkblotter,” the goose said. “Please come out. My friend and I just want to ask your advice.”

“You have a fiend with you?” Nathaniel Inkblotter said from inside the closet. “I want you to know that I have in this closet a special fiend-bashing tennis racquet. If I whap you with this, you evil creature, it will all be over for you and your fiend, too, so avaunt, get it?”

avaunt \ah-vawnt\: away, hence, get lost!

The goose appeared at the door of the trailer.

“Seymour, maybe you could come in here and talk to Mr. Inkblotter. I think he dislikes me.”

I went inside the trailer. I made my way to the closet door and knocked.

“Mr. Inkblotter?”

“Go away, monster!” Nathaniel Inkblotter said.

“I am not a monster. I am a boy. I have a magic goose with me. We are sorry to wake you up like this. I read your book, Seymour and the Magic Pudding.”

“You read my book?”

“Yes. It is my favorite book,” I said.

“Oh. Really?” Nathaniel Inkblotter opened the closet door a tiny bit. “It’s your favorite book?”

“I must have read it fifteen times.”

He opened the door a little more.

“And you and that goose aren’t monsters?”

“No we are not,” I said. “Just a boy and a magic goose.”

Nathaniel Inkblotter stepped out of the closet. He was wearing pink pajamas and carrying the tennis racquet.

“You promise?”

“Word of honor,” I said.

“You like my book, do you?”

“I just love it,” I said.

Nathaniel Inkblotter put the tennis racquet into the closet.

“So, what can I do for you?” he asked.

9. Home Again

N athaniel Inkblotter and the goose decided to go looking for Magic Goose Land together. When he got over being terrified, Nathaniel Inkblotter was very happy to meet a magic goose. He also liked that my name was Seymour, like the boy in his book. We sat in the little kitchen of his trailer and had grape juice in glasses with cartoons on them.

“When will we start looking for Magic Goose Land?” the goose asked.

“We will leave at once,” Nathaniel Ink-blotter said. “We will go in my car, we will pull the trailer with us, and we will find Magic Goose Land if it takes until next October!”

We had one more glass of grape juice, and Nathaniel Inkblotter gave me an autographed copy of his new book, Seymour and the Talking Electric Waffle Iron. Then they drove me home.

When we got to my house, the goose came with me to the kitchen door. Nathaniel Inkblotter waited in the car.

“I will be going now,” the goose said. “Good-bye.”

“Will you come back?”

“Maybe,” said the goose. “Maybe not. Here. You can have this.”

The goose gave me something.

“What is this?”

“A present.”

It was a green plastic pickle.

“Blow it,” said the goose.

I blew it. It made a sound like the wind whistling through the goose’s wings.

“It’s a whistle!” I said.

“Yep.”

“Is it magic?” I asked.

“Well, you got it from a magic goose.”

“That’s true.”

“I’m going,” said the goose. “Thanks for the cornflakes soup.”

“You’re welcome. Thanks for the goose-back ride and the pickle whistle. I hope you and Nathaniel Inkblotter find Magic Goose Land.”

“Good-bye, kid.”

“Good-bye, goose.”

I went into the house. I washed the dishes we had used when we made cornflakes soup. I went back to my room. I looked at the pickle whistle.

A magic goose gave me this, I thought.

Nathaniel Inkblotter might write a story, I thought. He might call it Seymour, the Magic Goose, and the Green Plastic Pickle Whistle.

Then I went to sleep.

FAT MEN FROM SPACE

TO S. KILNISAN

(the biggest baby ever born in Budapest)

Without question, this is my most famous work. Is this because it is the best? Nah. I mean, it is nice, it is not bad, you will enjoy it, but I have written better things. And yet . . . everyone knows this one.

It has sold thousands of copies in various forms. In some communities, people dress up as fat space pirates and hold parades in honor of this story. The fat spaceman outfit is the fourth most popular Halloween costume year after year. Many babies are named after characters in the story. I have received unnerving photographs from young adults who have had tattoos based on the book (which I beg those reading these remarks not to consider doing). A major motion picture studio has bought film rights to this story for a very large sum and is negotiating with famous actors to appear in the picture.

To what do I attribute the enormous popularity of the story? I think it is the charm and adorableness, also the fashionable attire and evident personal sweetness of the spacemen. I modeled the characters after myself.

William went to the dentist. It wasn’t so bad—just a filling. The dentist said it wouldn’t hurt a bit, and it was almost true. William went home feeling a little bit numb. There was a funny sour taste in his mouth that made him think of electricity. When he sucked in his breath, the tooth with the new filling felt cold. He was able to eat his supper without any trouble, and after watching television with his mother and father, he went to bed.

One of the things William liked to do in bed, and wasn’t allowed to, was listen to the radio. William thought that if he had a little radio, with an earphone, he could listen in bed without bothering anybody. He mentioned this to his parents, and found out that not bothering anybody wasn’t the point. “I don’t want you listening to the radio when you should be sleeping,” his mother said. Sometimes William would turn on the radio on the table near his bed, very softly, and try to listen. Usually, his mother would hear it, and tell him to turn it off.

This particular night, after William had been to the dentist, he was lying in bed listening to the radio. He was listening to a talk show. A man who said he had taken a ride in a flying saucer was telling how the people from outer space were crazy about potato pancakes, and had come to Earth in search of millions of them, which they planned to freeze and take back to their own galaxy. It was a good show, and William was enjoying it. He was ready to drift off to sleep, when he realized that he had never turned the radio on. He checked this. He clicked on the radio next to his bed. It was tuned to a music station. He could still hear the man talking about the flying saucers, over the music. “Are you playing the radio?” his mother shouted from down the hall.

William turned off the radio. The flying-saucer man was still talking. “Can you hear the radio now?” he asked.

“No. Don’t turn it on again,” his mother said.

His mother could not hear the man talking about the flying saucers. Where was it coming from? William lay very quietly, trying to figure out where the radio program was coming from. It seemed to be coming from inside his head. “Maybe I’m imagining the whole thing,” he thought. “Maybe I’m going crazy.” It seemed like an ordinary radio program—there wasn’t anything crazy about it. He had heard the same talk show before. The announcer was telling people to buy the same bottled spring water, and canned hams, and pianos that always sponsored the program. It was a real radio program going on inside William’s head. It worried him. He rubbed the tip of his tongue against the new filling. The volume dropped very low. Wait a second! He did it again. The volume dropped. He pressed his tongue against the tooth. No radio program at all! It was the tooth! The one with the new filling was receiving radio programs! William clenched his teeth. The volume got louder.

“I told you to turn that off!” his mother shouted.

William got up. He went quietly out into the backyard. He clenched his teeth. The radio got louder. He clenched them harder. It got louder still. Keeping his teeth clenched, he pulled his lips back in a big grin. It got so loud that it made an echo. He could hear windows opening, and people shouting, “Turn that thing down!”

“. . . AND THEN THE CAPTAIN OF THE SPACECRAFT ASKED ME IF I KNEW WHERE THERE WERE A LOT OF POTATO PANCAKES,” the radio tooth said. William jumped up and down. This was wonderful. He didn’t know how it worked, but it was wonderful. He had a built-in radio.

William scurried back to bed before anyone could call the cops. He had waked up the whole neighborhood. He was barely able to lie still, he was so excited about his built-in radio. He decided it would be the most fun if he didn’t tell anybody about it for a while. Finally, he got tired of planning ways to use his radio tooth, and bored listening to the man talking about flying saucers and potato pancakes. He put his tongue over his tooth and went to sleep.

At breakfast, when William put a spoonful of cornflakes into his mouth, the spoon touched the tooth and changed the station. It had been playing news, but it changed to rock and roll. William took the spoon out—news. He put the spoon back—rock and roll. He tried a fork—news and country and western music at the same time. He put a butter knife into his mouth—classical music.

“William, will you stop playing with the silverware,” his father said, “and I think someone left a radio playing upstairs.” William put his tongue over his tooth. It wasn’t easy to finish breakfast and keep the radio from playing.

At school, William resisted the temptation to use his radio tooth to show off. There were a lot of kids standing around in the schoolyard, waiting for the bell to ring. William stayed by himself, chewing on the wire binding of his spiral notebook. Depending on where he bit into the wire, he could get different stations.

Mr. Wendel was William’s teacher. He didn’t stand for any nonsense, and because he was hard to fool, the kids tried to trick him all the time. Nobody ever succeeded. Kids were always planning to put glue on his chair, or substitute fake chalk made of soap. When these things were tried, Mr. Wendel always spotted the glue or the fake chalk, and turned the joke around by asking one of the kids to sit in his chair or write on the blackboard. Usually, he picked the kid who had thought of the trick in the first place.

Lots of kids in Mr. Wendel’s class had sent away at one time or another for a book on how to throw your voice. The book came with a little device to hold in your mouth, that was supposed to make it easy to throw your voice. The kids who didn’t actually swallow the little voice-throwers had them taken away by Mr. Wendel. It was hard to fool Mr. Wendel.

Other kids had read a book on mind power, and tried to hypnotize Mr. Wendel by staring at him and repeating silently, “Mr. Wendel, you are my slave. . . . My will is stronger.” Mr. Wendel’s will was stronger—and the kids who had tried to hypnotize him wound up with a new seat near the front of the room, and a note to their parents suggesting an eye examination.

In the classroom, William clenched his teeth. “. . . and then you add the graham crackers to the heated chicken fat. Add paprika, salt, and pepper . . .” It was a cooking program. All the kids giggled and looked around to see where the noise was coming from. William looked around too. Mr. Wendel didn’t say anything. “Garnish with banana slices in their skin. This festive dish will serve four . . .” Mr. Wendel walked up and down the aisles, trying to locate the sound. As Mr. Wendel got closer, William unclenched his teeth little by little, so that the sound of the radio got softer. As Mr. Wendel got farther away, he clenched his teeth gradually, so that the sound got louder. He was trying to control the volume so that it seemed to remain constant to Mr. Wendel, wherever he was. Mr. Wendel stopped. William put his tongue over his tooth.

“Melvyn, give me the radio,” Mr. Wendel said. He had picked on Melvyn Schwartz—the wrong kid! Nobody knew that he had picked wrong, except William, and Melvyn Schwartz. Mr. Wendel had never picked wrong before. Melvyn was delighted.

“Aw, geez, Mr. Wendel, it isn’t fair. You always pick on me,” Melvyn said. He was just warming up. “I demand my constitutional rights. You have no reason to accuse me. I demand a trial by a jury of my peers.”

“You are peerless, Melvyn,” Mr. Wendel said. “Give me the radio.”

“I protest,” Melvyn said, rising from his desk. “You are persecuting me because of my past misfortunes.” Melvyn was the one who had put glue on Mr. Wendel’s chair. “I want a lawyer!”

“You will have the best defense that money can buy,” Mr. Wendel said. “After that—Devil’s Island. Give me the radio.”

“I have no radio,” Melvyn said, trying to look shifty-eyed and guilty. The class was enjoying this. It was obvious to them that Melvyn was having a lot of fun.

“Melvyn, open your desk,” Mr. Wendel said.

“I demand to see your search warrant,” Melvyn said.

“Our principal, Mr. Feeney, will be glad to listen to your complaint about illegal search,” Mr. Wendel said. “Now, open your desk.”

“Storm trooper,” Melvyn said, and opened his desk. It was empty, except for Melvyn’s history book. “Didn’t I tell you?” Melvyn made a sweeping gesture to the class, which burst into loud applause.

William clenched his teeth, just a little. The radio played faintly.

“Melvyn, empty your pockets,” Mr. Wendel said. Melvyn emptied his pockets and turned them inside out. No radio. He smiled broadly at Mr. Wendel.

“Melvyn, I apologize for having suspected you,” Mr. Wendel said.

“I’ll never trust anyone in authority again,” Melvyn said.

William was clenching as hard as he could to get the volume high enough to be heard over the applause and laughter. Melvyn was taking bows from his seat.

“All right, who’s got the radio?” Mr. Wendel asked. A mistake—Mr. Wendel was stumped, and he had shown it. The celebration got louder and louder. “I’m going to step outside the room for a minute, and when I come back, I want everybody to be quiet and I want the radio to have stopped playing,” Mr. Wendel said. A miserable trick—it sometimes worked for old lady teachers—the class would think they were crying in the hall, and lay off out of sympathy. It didn’t work for Mr. Wendel.

When he came back, an announcer was saying, “In Chicago a kangaroo is still loose in the streets . . .”

Mr. Wendel was beaten. He fell back on another old tactic. “You are all suspended. You will leave school at once, and not come back until tomorrow with a note from your parents.”

The idea of a day off from school as a punishment didn’t fool anyone. The kids all said “Aww, fooey,” and “it isn’t fair,” as they were expected to, but in their hearts they were thanking the kid with the radio, whoever it was.

A group punishment was easy to explain at home. Every kid’s parents would automatically assume that some other kid, and not their little darling, had caused the disturbance.

On the way home with the other kids, William kept his tongue over his tooth and said nothing. Later, he planned to claim credit for the great thing he had done, but for now he was going to enjoy his tooth in secret.

It never occurred to William’s mother to ask if William had been one of the kids who misbehaved and got the whole class sent home. She went to the market, leaving William alone with his tooth. He was getting curious about it. Had the dentist put a little radio inside his tooth? Why would he do such a thing?

The dentist was a pretty nice guy. Maybe if William called him up and asked him . . . William looked up the dentist in his mother’s little leather telephone book. Dr. Horwitz. He dialed the number. Dr. Horwitz answered. “This is William Pedwee,” William said. “Can you tell me something about the tooth you filled for me yesterday?”

“I’ll tell you if I can,” Dr. Horwitz said.

“What I’d like to know is, why is my tooth receiving radio programs?”

“Your tooth is receiving radio programs? No kidding?” Dr. Horwitz sounded interested.

“Yes, it is,” William said. “Did you put a little radio in my tooth?”

“I may have,” Dr. Horwitz said, “but it wasn’t on purpose. Sometimes when we put a metal filling in a tooth, it reacts with a different kind of metal in another filling. It makes an electric current. It is just possible that a filling could have the properties of a radio receiver, or an old-fashioned crystal set. This isn’t a joke, is it, William?”

William told Dr. Horwitz that he was not joking. He gritted his teeth, and Dr. Horwitz heard, “Tonight at the civic wrestling arena . . . the Human Ape versus Doctor Death! Be sure to see this great match.”

“Was that the tooth?” Dr. Horwitz asked.

“That was it,” William said.

“Well, well,” Dr. Horwitz said, “I’ve heard of this happening—once in a million fillings—but it has never happened to me. Tell you what—come right over, and we’ll put a coating over that filling, and get rid of those radio programs for you.”

“Get rid of them?” William shouted. “Are you kidding? I like my tooth!”

“Oh, you like it, do you?” said Dr. Horwitz. “You just wanted some information. Well, enjoy your tooth, William. If you ever get tired of it, come see me, and we’ll fix it up.”

William thanked Dr. Horwitz and said good-by.

He was happier than ever about his radio tooth. One in a million, it was. William felt that he was a special person to have such a special tooth.

“And now the number-one tune on the charts, I’ll Never Forget Your Nose.” William listened to the music as he fished around in his dresser drawer for something to use as an antenna. He found a coil of wire that had come out of an old doorbell he had taken apart. He unwound a few feet of wire and clamped the end between his teeth. “And that’s the local news in the Trinidad, Colorado, area.” William knew he wasn’t anywhere near Colorado. He listened to the station—sure enough, it was a radio station in Trinidad, Colorado. He let go of the wire, and the station switched back to the familiar local one. “. . . and tonight be sure to tune in when Barry Garble talks to a man who has lived underwater for the past fifteen years.”

William thought of another trick to play with his tooth radio. He had just heard the back door slam. His mother was home from the market. William went downstairs to see her. There was a radio in the kitchen. To turn it on, you pushed a button. To turn it off, you pushed the same button again. William helped his mother put away the groceries. Then he asked her for a cookie and a glass of milk.

While his mother was getting a cookie, William clenched his teeth. “The President has a cold today, and did not come to work,” the tooth radio said.

William’s mother reached up and pushed the button to turn off the kitchen radio, which turned it on. “Are you tired? Depressed? Miserable? Stupid? Klunkie’s Pills, made with real extract of chopped chicken livers, will—”

She pushed the button again. William clenched his teeth. “The President’s physician said that the President should get plenty of rest, drink liquids, and stay out of drafts.”

William’s mother was getting annoyed. She pushed the button again hard. William unclenched his teeth. The kitchen radio came on. “Klunkie’s Pills cure asthma, chills, fever, and—”

She pushed the button so hard that the radio almost fell off the shelf. William clenched his teeth. “Back in 1957, President Eisenhower had a cold—”

She pushed the button. She was getting red in the face. “. . . malaria, mange, baldness, pimples, thrips—”

William’s mother pulled the plug. “What is wrong with this radio?” she said. “I’ll have your father look at it when he gets home.”

William was almost choking on the cookie. He was having a hard time not laughing. Before he left the room, he clenched his teeth for a couple of seconds. “President Coolidge had a cold in . . .”William’s mother looked at the dangling plug. William had to run upstairs so she wouldn’t hear him laughing.

When William’s father came home, he spent a lot of time whispering in the kitchen with William’s mother. That wasn’t usual, but William didn’t pay any special attention to it. At the supper table he noticed that his parents were smiling and winking at each other quite a lot. He thought they must be in an extra good mood.

“Something is wrong with the kitchen radio,” William’s mother said. William waited, and listened to the radio station inside his head. A station break was coming. He clenched. “This is WXXO Radio—”

“Did someone say radio?” William’s father asked.

William clenched. “. . . radio all day and all night—”

“Have some carrots,” William’s mother said.

William clenched his teeth as hard as he could. “AND NOW THE NEWS. TODAY A LARGE CARDBOARD CARTON OF FROZEN POTATO PANCAKES WAS SIGHTED FLOATING IN OUTER SPACE—”

“Do you want some more milk, William?” his mother said.

What was wrong? Why couldn’t his parents hear the radio? William had been clenching his teeth as hard as he could. The radio tooth was so loud it almost gave him a headache.

“You’ll never guess who I met downtown today,” William’s father said. “It was Dr. Horwitz, the dentist who takes care of William’s teeth.”

“He’s an awfully nice man,” William’s mother said. She was starting to giggle.

“Yes he is,” William’s father said, “a very nice man, and so interesting. He told me some fascinating things about dentistry.”

So that was it. Horwitz had finked. William decided that he was going to bite Dr. Horwitz’s finger one of these days.

“And guess who happened to come by while we were talking,” William’s father went on.

“Who was it, dear?” William’s mother was laughing so hard she could hardly talk.

“It was Mr. Wendel, William’s teacher,” his father said, “and he had something fascinating to tell us. It seems that someone in William’s class was playing a radio today, and Mr. Wendel just couldn’t find it. The poor man finally had to send the whole class home.”

“That certainly is fascinating,” William’s mother said. She was laughing so hard now that she had to hang onto the table to keep from falling out of her chair. “And what did Dr. Horwitz have to say about dentistry that was so fascinating?”

“It seems that Dr. Horwitz had just done a filling for one of his patients, and that filling turned out to work just like a radio.”

“Imagine that,” William’s mother said. “Was the patient anyone we know?”

“Now, let me think,” his father said. “I believe it was someone we know. Now who was it? Oh, yes! It was our very own son, William!”

William’s father and mother were both helpless with laughter. He hated it when they got this way. He was good and mad. Why did Dr. Horwitz have to go blabbing things? And why did Mr. Wendel have to turn up, and make things worse? Some day he was going to get even with those guys.

William’s parents were finished laughing, and were now at the wet-eyed and sighing stage. William got ready for the serious part.

“William, Mr. Wendel understands that there will be no more problems with radios in school,” his father said, “and Dr. Horwitz is of the opinion that your tooth will settle down in a day or two and stop receiving—but if it doesn’t, he can see you on Saturday and put a nice coating of epoxy on it. Meanwhile, no more tricks, and no listening to your tooth in bed. Now, see if you can get me the baseball scores on your molar, son.” At this point, William’s father collapsed into laughter again. William got up and walked straight out of the kitchen, into the backyard. He was disgusted. Adults never know a good thing when they see it. His tooth was one in a million, and his parents thought it was a big joke.

William stood in the backyard. He could hear his parents laughing inside the house. They thought the whole thing was funny. They didn’t care that they had just ruined everything for their only son. William was angry and miserable. It wasn’t going to be very much fun, having a one-in-a-million tooth, if it was going to be coated with epoxy in a few days. “If I ever have a little boy, and he is lucky enough to get a radio tooth, I’m going to do everything I can to help him enjoy it,” William thought.

William fished the piece of wire, the part of a taken-apart doorbell, out of his pocket. He played with the wire, idly, while standing in the backyard. It was a heavy, damp night. There was a storm brewing somewhere. Already, William could see a little glow in the sky now and then-lightning a long way off. He put one end of the wire in his mouth. “In East Trinidad, there will be a meeting of the Cowboy’s Mah Jong Club, behind the feed store at seven-thirty.” It was that station in Trinidad, Colorado. It was coming in very clear. William remembered that he had planned to try out a longer piece of wire. He had some up in his room, but he didn’t want to go back into the house. He didn’t want to see his mother and father. He was still mad at them. Then William had a bright idea.

All around the backyard was a metal chain-link fence. William could wrap one end of his piece of wire around a fence post, and the whole thing would act as one immense antenna. He cheered up. “I bet I get to hear China,” he said.

William twisted one end of his wire around a fence post. The other end he put in his mouth. Then he had a very unusual experience. He felt a thumping—like the thumping of a bass drum—and he heard a sort of rushing, buzzing noise. And he saw amazing colors, purple and red and blue. And his body did things all by itself. All these things seemed to be going on for a long time, but William knew they were happening very fast. And while all those things were happening, William was remembering all he knew about static electricity. He thought about when it is cold and dry, and you rub your feet on the carpet—and you touch the doorknob, and there is a snap, and you can see a little spark. It seemed to William that the chain-link fence had stored up a very big charge of static electricity, and William had bitten right into it. He noticed that he was lying in the grass and having a hard time catching his breath. Nothing hurt him, but he had a very funny taste in his mouth.

Then William noticed that his tooth was not receiving. At first, he thought the tooth had gone completely dead. Then he was able to hear some faint static. But there was no program. There was no WXXO. William clenched his teeth. The static got louder. William listened. He was lying in the grass, where he had landed when he got the shock. The static was kind of rhythmical, like music. It was interesting. William thought it was almost like a language.

The more William listened to the strange static, the more he felt that he could almost understand it. It wasn’t as though he could hear words coming through the crackling and whistling. It was the noise itself that had meaning. When William tried to listen hard, it was difficult to understand. When he just relaxed, and half-paid attention, it was almost possible to understand.

“William, we’re going now. We’ll be visiting across the street. Don’t lie there in the grass all evening.” It was William’s parents. A few months ago, there had been some big arguments about baby-sitters. William had finally persuaded his parents that he was old enough to be left by himself, at least when they were not going any farther away than the house of a neighbor across the street.

“I’ll go in soon,” William said. “I’m just looking at the sky.” He was not exactly lying. He was looking at the sky, while listening to the strange rhythmic static on his tooth. It looked as though it might not rain after all. The clouds were breaking up, and a few stars were showing.

The static was starting to make sense. It wasn’t like anything William had ever heard. He knew what the noises meant. He could tell the directions they came from. The noises were spacemen talking to one another.

Somehow, William’s tooth had been converted to receive the signals between the spacemen. Probably the charge of static electricity had done it. The static told William more than words ever did. He could tell that there were a number of different spacemen talking. Some were far away in spaceships, some were on the Earth. William could tell where the spacemen were in relation to one another. He could tell how fast they were moving, and in which direction. It was almost as if he could see the spaceships. It was like listening to a baseball game on the radio. He could see the players in their various positions. As new information came over the radio, William could move the players in his mind—play the game in his mind.

This was better than a baseball game. The field was thousands of miles—millions of miles. The players were spaceships that moved with such speed, they could go so fast and so far, that they would disappear in seconds and reappear in some other part of the sky. They reminded William of those bugs that scoot on the surface of water in summer.

William was listening to twenty or thirty conversations at once. He had no trouble sorting them out. He could tell where each spaceman was, and what he was talking about. Some of the conversations were about potato pancakes. Some spacemen were assembling huge piles of potato pancakes in remote places on Earth. Spaceships would come and collect the potato pancakes and speed away with them. Other conversations were about navigation, and spaceships keeping in touch with one another. Some of the conversations were about a boy, an earth-boy who was listening in. The spacemen knew that William was listening! It made him shiver.

One of the spaceships was getting closer! As it got closer, the static from the spaceship got louder and clearer. It seemed to William that the spaceship was getting bigger and bigger. It was zooming toward him. William decided to get up and go inside the house. He discovered that he couldn’t move. He couldn’t even twitch a finger. He could see the spaceship—a spot of light, a long way off. It was getting bigger and bigger. He could see it clearly. It was saucer-shaped, and glowing and spinning. The static from the spaceship was so loud that William couldn’t even hear his heart, which was pounding. Now the spaceship was directly over him, and falling. He was sure the thing was going to crush him. The static kept telling him not to be scared, but he was scared anyway. He was good and scared.

The saucer stopped falling, and just hung in the air, about twenty feet above him. William could see that it was made of metal. It had a reddish color, that changed to blue or green from time to time. It was spinning slowly, and rocking slightly from side to side. Up till now, William had not thought of screaming for help. He thought of it now, and gave it a try. The static was so loud that he couldn’t tell if anything was getting out.

He was still screaming, or trying to, when he started floating up. He was moving through the air slowly, as though something were drawing him up toward the spaceship, and he was spinning with the spaceship. It was a weird feeling. William didn’t like it. It must have taken about a minute for William to spin and float up to the saucer. When he had almost reached it, a hole appeared in the metal skin of the thing. It wasn’t like a door; it was a round hole that appeared in the metal, very small, and got larger as William got closer. As he passed through it, the hole closed again under him. He knew this because he found himself lying on a solid metal floor the moment he had gone through.

All around him were cardboard cartons. They were ordinary cartons, the kind that pile up behind the supermarket. They had advertising for cigarettes and toilet tissues printed on them. They were all different sizes and shapes, and they were all full of potato pancakes, fresh and frozen.

William discovered he could move again. He had a look at the room he was in. It was glowing with a greenish light that seemed to come from everywhere. The walls and floor and ceiling were made of metal. There was a little round thing on the ceiling, made of shiny metal. It was about the size of a tennis ball, and covered with little bumps. The room seemed to be a sort of storage room or closet.

“You have been captured by a spaceburger from the planet Spiegel.” It was the little round thing talking—a sort of loudspeaker. It was making the same sort of static noise that William had been receiving on his tooth. He understood it perfectly. “No harm will come to you. You will be treated fairly, and returned to your home,” the speaker went on. William was good and scared, even though the little round metal thing had told him that no harm would come to him.

“I want to go home,” William said.

“That is not possible at this time,” the speaker said, “but we will let you out of the storage hold.”

“Fine,” William said, “let me out.”

“First you must promise that you will not attempt to harm the spaceburger, and that you will abide by the regulations governing spacemen on board this craft.”

“I promise,” William said.

“Also you must promise not to tell anyone about the things you see and hear on the spaceburger,” the speaker said.

“I won’t say a word,” William said.

“In a few seconds a door will open, and you may go up the ladder,” the speaker said.

William was a little scared at the thought of meeting the spacemen. He had seen a lot of science-fiction movies. Maybe they were green and scaly, like lizards. Maybe they had heads like flies, with big weird fly-eyes. Maybe they were like green weeds, and talked in horrible whispers.

There was nothing to do but go and find out. A door opened—it just appeared in the wall, like the round hole William had floated through when he had been brought on board, and beyond it a ladder. William climbed the ladder. The ladder took him up into a metal corridor. It was glowing green like the storage hold, only brighter. It was hot in the corridor, and William could hear something buzzing. He had an idea that he was somewhere near the engine, or whatever made the spaceburger go.

William walked along the corridor until he came to the end. There weren’t any doors, just smooth metal walls, glowing green. At the end of the corridor was another round shiny metal speaker, like the one in the storage hold. “Are you out there?” the speaker said.

“Yes,” William said. A door appeared, and William stepped into a room. He could tell it was the control room of the spaceburger. It looked like the control room of all the spaceships he had seen in movies, and on TV. There were lots of TV screens and flashing lights, and panels of buttons and dials. There was also a deep-fryer and a soft ice cream machine.

The spacemen weren’t at all what William had expected. They looked like ordinary earth-people, except that they were fatter than most. William guessed that they weighed at least 350 pounds apiece. There were seven or eight of them. They didn’t have the sort of uniforms that William had always seen spacemen wearing in movies. All the spacemen were wearing plaid sport jackets, and dacron slacks. They had knitted neckties, and black-and-white shoes with thick rubber soles. They all had crew cuts and they all wore eyeglasses made of heavy black plastic. The only thing about their clothing that was sort of nifty and spacemanlike was their belts. The belts were wide and made out of white plastic. They had silver buckles in the shape of a cheeseburger with a bolt of lightning going through it. Some of the spacemen had tie clips with the same design.

“I am Hanam, the Captain of this spaceburger,” one of the spacemen said. “We apologize for having to capture you, but we had a bad experience not long ago. It seems one of our spaceburgers picked up an earth person, and, even though he promised not to say anything about it, as soon as he was released, he went on a radio program and blabbed about everything he had seen. We can’t take the chance that you’ll do the same thing—especially now, so close to the invasion.”

“Invasion?” William said. “Are you going to invade Earth?”

“Of course we are,” Hanam said. “Don’t you ever go to the movies? Spacemen always invade places. We have been collecting all the potato pancakes we can find and shipping them back to our leader, Sargon, on the planet Spiegel—they’re his favorite. Now that we have collected most of the potato pancakes, we are getting ready to invade.”

“But why do you want to invade Earth?” William asked. “We never did anything to hurt you.”

“Because we are pirates,” Hanam said, “space pirates. All we do is invade planets and take whatever we want. Then we go back to Spiegel, and have big celebrations. After a while, we go out and invade some more planets. It’s a lot of fun.”

“There aren’t very many of you,” William said.

“Oh, there are very many of us, all right.” Hanam said. “This is just a potato-pancake collecting ship. The main fleet will be arriving any time now. Then the fun begins.”

William was very worried by the things Hanam was saying. He was afraid the spacemen would hurt his mother and father. He had seen movies in which spacemen came to Earth with death rays and things that shot fire and turned people to mush. “Do you have death rays?” William asked, “Are you going to knock down all the tall buildings in Tokyo and Los Angeles?”

“Mercy, no,” Hanam said. “We don’t do anything nasty like that. All we do when we invade a planet is walk around and have a snack, and we don’t pay for it either. After a while we use up all the things we came to get, and then we enslave the local population, and get them to produce more of the things we like. That’s all. We don’t do anything destructive.”

Hanam seemed very friendly, but William still didn’t like the idea of Earth being invaded. “In other words you come to steal things,” William said.

“Plunder,” Hanam said, “plunder’s the word. It’s traditional.”

“Are you going to let me go home?” William asked.

“After we get started plundering, we’ll put you down near the place we picked you up,” Hanam said. “Meanwhile, just keep out of the way and enjoy your ride. Now I have to get back to work. You may look out the porthole if you like.”

William was standing near a round window in the side of the spaceburger. He walked over and looked out. What he saw was amazing. He could see the whole Earth—or most of it. The spaceburger had gotten very high since he had been taken on board. He could see North America, and parts of South America and Europe. It was like the globe in Mr. Wendel’s classroom, only the colors were much nicer. Everything was sort of shimmering and glowing, and reflecting the light of the moon. There were clouds like strings of yarn near the earth, and the oceans and big lakes shimmered beautifully. William really liked it. That is, he really liked the Earth—not just the sight he was enjoying. He felt that the Earth was a wonderful place. It was his home and he liked it. It made him feel sort of strange and sad. It made him feel sadder to think that the Earth was going to be invaded, and the people enslaved by these fat spacemen. William wondered what he could do about it—but he was just a kid. There was nothing he could do.

His radio tooth was starting to work again. He had been too busy to pay attention to it, but he had been vaguely aware of the fact that it hadn’t been receiving since he came on board the spaceburger. Now, standing near the glass or plastic window, it was starting to pick up faint signals again. William thought that maybe the metal spaceburger stopped the radio waves, but they could pass through the stuff the porthole was made of.

The signals were not as loud and clear as they had been on Earth, but if William clenched his teeth hard, he could make them out. There was the static-language of the spacemen communicating. Moving through space, William wasn’t able to make a mental picture of the movements of the spaceships as easily as before. He did get the impression of a lot of activity. There seemed to be more and more of the spaceburgers every minute. William strained to try and see them. Every now and then, he did see a brief flash of reflected light that might have been another spaceburger.

William could also hear the radio station on Earth that had always come through on his tooth. It was very faint, and he had to clench his teeth so hard to hear it that it gave him a headache. He could only keep it up for a few seconds at a time. The radio station was broadcasting news flashes, and they were very interesting.

“Flash—the millions of round objects falling slowly through space are not meteorites as previously thought, but have now been identified as fat men, wearing plaid sport jackets, falling slowly into our atmosphere. Stay tuned to this station for further reports on the amazing story.”

The invasion had started. William hoped his mother and father weren’t too scared.

“Reports from our affiliated stations seem to indicate that the fat men have started to land. It is estimated that there are hundreds of millions of them still in the sky. The fat men are landing in all parts of the world, but the greatest concentrations appear to be in California and New Jersey.”

William looked around. All the fat men, except Hanam, were buttoning their plaid sport jackets, and putting their black plastic-rimmed eyeglasses in their pockets-preparing to jump. Hanam was standing at the controls, operating the spaceburger. A door appeared in the side of the spaceburger, and the crew jumped out. William looked out the porthole and saw the fat men slowly tumbling their way toward Earth.

“There is widespread panic all over Earth, as the hordes of fat men from space continue to land. So far there have been no reports of hostile acts. The governments of all the countries of Earth have asked people to remain calm, and stay in their houses until the invaders express their intentions. We will keep you informed as this amazing story develops.”

William could see lots of other spaceburgers now. He saw hundreds of fat spacemen tumble by his porthole. There were spaceburgers dropping spacemen as far as William could see. The only clear places were over the oceans. Everywhere else, there were spacecraft and jumpers. It really was an amazing sight. William couldn’t remember ever seeing so many of anything.

“What do these fat men from space want? Is this the beginning of a war? Do they want to conquer the people of Earth?. . . It appears that, for the moment, they want hamburgers. . . . Crowds of fat men have surrounded roadside hamburger stands throughout the civilized world. . . . They are also consuming great quantities of pizza, and cupcakes wrapped in cellophane . . . and hot dogs . . . and ice cream bars . . . and jelly doughnuts . . . halvah . . . chocolate-covered marshmallows. . . . It seems that the invaders from space are after every sort of junk food. . . . Stand by for further bulletins.”

William was starting to get the picture now. He was beginning to understand what sort of pirates these were. The news bulletins were coming faster and faster now.

“No cars, trains, or buses are able to move because of gangs of fat men from space strolling on the roads, eating Twinkies and jumbo cheeseburgers. Airplanes all over the world are grounded by the fat men who are continuing to fall earthward . . .”

“It is next to impossible to make one’s way through any of the great cities of Earth because of the clutter of popsicle sticks and empty paper cups in the street . . .”

“Conditions of panic exist in many parts of the United States. Residents of most areas cannot get anything to eat but lean meat, fish, fruit, and vegetables . . .”

“A late-breaking bulletin from San Anselmo, California—fat men from space broke into a warehouse and ate sixty thousand frozen tacos . . .”

“On State Highway 22 in New Jersey, fat men from space held two sixteen-year-old girls captive for six hours at Burger World, until the girls had finished deep-frying 148,000 orders of breaded clams . . .”

“The Pentagon announced, a few minutes ago, that there is no more whipped cream left anywhere on Earth. General Fred Horsewhistle, speaking for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expressed the opinion that it may be necessary to use nuclear weapons against the fat men, whatever the cost. Stand by for further bulletins.”

William could see that the situation was very serious. The fat men from space were eating up all the junk food on Earth at a fantastic rate. What worried him was what Hanam had told him about enslaving the people of Earth to make more junk food for them, after they had eaten everything on Earth. He was alone in the spaceburger with Hanam, who was operating the controls, and munching on a frozen pizza. William wondered if he could overpower Hanam in some way, and get to Earth to warn everybody about what was going to happen next. He decided there was no way. He didn’t know how to operate the spaceburger, and besides Hanam was much bigger than he was. William just looked out of the porthole, and listened to his tooth.

“In Cleveland, Ohio, spacemen are preparing to dynamite the locked doors of the White Palace frozen hamburger vault, containing one-fourth of the hamburgers on Earth. Mankind will never recover from this massive onslaught against its hamburger reserves.”

The hours passed, and the news flashes continued. William had taken a nap, and Hanam had let him make himself a milkshake and a frozen Mexican dinner. When William looked out the porthole, the fat men were still continuing to fall through the sky.

“In Coney Island, New York, hot dog men made a brave attempt to defend Nathan’s famous hot dog stand against a large gang of fat spacemen. After a fierce battle, lasting several hours, the hot dog men were overpowered, and tied up with strings of their own hot dogs, forced to watch while the fat men devoured all the steamed corn, and French-fried potatoes. This is one of the most heartbreaking and tragic stories of the current emergency, and citizens of Brooklyn have already stated their intention to erect a monument to the brave hot dog men when normal conditions return . . .”

“A news flash—the White House has been invaded by the spacemen who have carried off the President’s private store of frozen Milky Way bars. As soon as Congress can make its way through the welter of empty fish-and-chips boxes that are obstructing traffic in the Capitol, it is expected that war will be declared against wherever the fat men come from.”

William thought this was getting serious. “You spacemen had better leave, before war is declared,” he said to Hanam.

“That doesn’t worry us,” Hanam said. “You don’t have any weapons that we can’t eat.”

It looked extremely bad for Earth. William had just heard that the fat men had found the Holloway’s Milk Duds factory in Chicago, and cleaned it out. Giant chocolate factories in Hershey, Pennsylvania, were deserted. Not a crumb or a person was left. Whole populations were making their way out of cities, stumbling on foot through the piles of wastepaper, cartons, and wrappers. Families tried to escape into the hills or the country, carrying a bag of marshmallows, or a Three Musketeers bar. In almost every case, squads of fat men intercepted the fugitives, and took away their last bit of junk food.

William knew that when the spacemen had gobbled all the cheeseburgers and pizzas and doughnuts, they would enslave the people of Earth and make them produce more things for the invaders to eat. It looked hopeless. It looked dismal. He looked at Hanam. Hanam was licking his fingers. He had just finished an ice-cream pop and a bottle of birch beer. He was idly working the levers and buttons that controlled the spaceburger. An orange light was flashing on the instrument panel, and a high-pitched beeper was beeping. It seemed to be a signal of some sort. Hanam shot a nervous look at William, and went back to minding the controls.

William looked out the porthole. There was a tremendous stirring in the space above Earth. It looked to William as though the fat men were falling upward. They were falling upward! They were tumbling up from Earth, just the way they had tumbled down. William looked at Hanam. Hanam looked worried and preoccupied. “What’s happening?” William asked. Hanam didn’t answer.

William tried to tune in on the static-language. There was so much talking going on that William had a hard time making out what was being said. Something about a potato pancake—the usual topic. Why all this activity, and excitement? William clenched and tuned in the radio station. “More reports are coming in every minute to the effect that the spacemen appear to be leaving Earth. This radio station will keep you informed of this surprising development.”

There was a thumping on the outside of the space-burger. A door appeared and first one, then another of the crew tumbled in. They seemed excited. Another thumping, and more spacemen came aboard. “What’s going on?” William asked.

“We’re leaving,” Hanam said. “As soon as the rest of the crew come aboard, we’ll be off for another solar system. You see, a message just came through from Sargon. There is a report of a giant potato pancake launched in space in the vicinity of the planet Ziegler. We’re going to go after it. It sounds like the biggest potato pancake ever sighted.”

“What about me?” William asked. “You said you were going to take me home.”

“There won’t be time for that,” Hanam said. “A potato pancake like this, a wild one floating in space, turns up once in fifty years. You’ll have to come along.”

“But when will you take me home?” William asked.

“We might come this way in six or seven hundred years,” Hanam answered. “We’ll drop you off then.”

“Six or seven hundred years!” William said. “I’ll be an old man by then! I want to go home now!”

“I don’t see how we can do that,” Hanam said. “We have to leave as soon as the last two crew members come aboard.”

“You promised to take me home!” William shouted. “I don’t want to go with you. I don’t want to go chasing a wild potato pancake in outer space for seven hundred years! I want to go home right now!”

“Well, the only thing I can suggest is that you float down,” Hanam said.

“I don’t know how to float down,” William said.

“There’s nothing to it, if you have a spacejacket,” Hanam said. “We can give you a spare, and drop you right away.”

Hanam reached into a locker and pulled out a plaid sport jacket. “Here, try this on,” he said.

William tried the jacket on. It was about fifty sizes too large. It came right down to his feet.

“All you have to do is jump,” Hanam said. A door appeared.

“I’m not sure I understand,” William said. Hanam pushed him out the door.

Once he got used to it, William liked falling through space. The only thing that bothered him was that he couldn’t tell if he was falling fast or slow. As he tumbled down, droves of fat spacemen passed him, falling in the other direction—falling upward. It took William quite a while to fall through space, and while he was falling he thought things over. If he understood it correctly, the plaid sport jacket was supposed to break his fall in some way. He hoped that was the way it worked. Otherwise, he was going to make a little hole in the ground when he hit.

William looked at the map of North America below him. He wondered if he would land anywhere near home. Gradually the map turned into a model railroad landscape of mountains and trees, towns and lakes. He knew he was falling slowly, like a snowflake, now. He felt like a snowflake—it was cold, high up in the atmosphere. William passed through clouds, slowly. The clouds were wet and unpleasant, not at all the way William thought they would feel. He pulled the plaid spacejacket tight around him.

As William got closer to Earth, he could see individual houses and cars. Now and then a few spacemen would float up past him. William guessed that most of them had already returned to their spaceburgers. William realized that his float-down was almost over, and he felt a little sad. It had been the best part of the whole experience.

William floated down, and landed on the sidewalk in front of his house! He gave a little push with his feet, and floated over the house into the backyard. He did one more experimental jump, straight up, of about a hundred feet, landed lightly, took off the spacejacket, folded it neatly, and went into the house.

Everything was normal inside the house, except that the door had been ripped off the freezer. William’s mother told him later that some fat men had broken in and taken all the TV dinners, the sugar-coated breakfast cereal, and the instant breakfast powder.

William’s parents were glad to see him. They had been worried about him, of course, but during the emergency it had been impossible to get in touch with the police. William’s father had tried to go out and look for him, but he never got past the enormous piles of Big Mac boxes in the road. So William’s mother and father just sat at home during most of the invasion from outer space, eating the shredded wheat and lettuce that the spacemen had left them, and hoping their son was all right.

William put the spacejacket carefully away in his closet. He didn’t have much time to enjoy it. School and most kinds of work had been suspended for several weeks, and the people on Earth devoted themselves to a massive effort to clean-up the litter. William and his parents were out every day with rakes and shovels, and came home tired every night to their green salad and wholegrain bread, milk, and sometimes meat. William and his parents got to enjoy the clean-up work, and even the experience of living without cheeseburgers and pizza. After the clean-up was finished, the government announced it would be at least a year before soda pop, taco chips, and a lot of other things were once again in general supply. There was almost no sugar anywhere on Earth, which turned out to be much less of a hardship than people expected.

William’s parents seemed to have forgotten about the radio tooth. William didn’t see any point in mentioning it to them. It still worked, although not as well as it had before the shock from the metal fence, and the adventure in the spaceburger. Sometimes the tooth would be silent for days at a time, and sometimes it would play fairly well. When William went to the dentist a year later, the tooth hadn’t played for almost a month, and Dr. Horwitz thought it would probably stop playing altogether after a while. He also told William that he had no new cavities—a common occurrence worldwide, since sugar was still scarce.

But the radio tooth was not entirely dead. Some nights it would play quite well, and on special nights—ones that were clear and cold—William could hear, behind the Barry Garble show, a kind of rhythmic static that was almost like a language.

About the Author

Daniel Pinkwater lives with his wife, the illustrator and novelist Jill Pinkwater, and several dogs and cats in a very old farmhouse in New York’s Hudson River Valley. Daniel has written about one hundred books, many of them good. Among his best-known works are Lizard Music (an American Library Association Notable Book), the picture book The Big Orange Splot, and Four Hoboken Stories.

www.doverpublications.com