Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing Read online

  My father put some on Fudge’s plate. Then he served himself. Fudge shoved a lot into his mouth at once. I waited, figuring he’d choke on it. Instead he said, “Oh . . . good!”

  My father beamed. Fudge wasn’t smart enough to fool my father. So he must have really liked it. But a kid that can eat flowers and swallow teeth wouldn’t know much about omelets anyway.

  Then my father sat down and tasted his super-duper concoction. He not only choked on it. He spit it out! “Oh no,” he said. “This is awful. Something went wrong. Maybe the eggs are rotten.”

  “Mom just bought them on Thursday,” I said.

  “Maybe it’s the mushrooms, then,” my father said.

  “Maybe it’s how you cooked it,” I suggested.

  My father jumped up from the table and threw the mushroom omelet into the garbage. Fudge started to cry. “Want more . . . MORE!”

  “No,” my father told him. “It wasn’t any good.”

  Fudge screamed, “EAT IT OR WEAR IT . . . EAT IT OR WEAR IT!” He flung his spoon across the room. It hit my mother’s favorite plant. The dirt spilled all over the kitchen floor.

  “Now you stop that!” my father yelled at Fudge. “I’m going to make us nice peanut butter sandwiches. Then you’re going to have a bath! Your mommy’s coming home tomorrow and we’re going to show her how well Daddy managed all by himself! Peter . . . where does your mother hide the peanut butter?”

  After supper my father bathed Fudge. The only thing he decided not to do were the dishes. He stacked them in the sink and left them for my mother.

  On Sunday afternoon we drove out to the airport to meet my mother’s plane. On the way there my father said wouldn’t it be fun if we kept all the things we did over the weekend a secret—just between the three of us—kind of a man’s secret. I agreed not to say a word. And my mother was so glad to see us that she didn’t even mention the dirty dishes in the sink.

  Six weeks later we were watching TV one night when the new Toddle-Bike commercial came on.

  “That’s me,” Fudge said.

  My mother looked up from the book she was reading. “He does look like you, Fudge, but that’s not really you.”

  “Oh yes,” Fudge said. “That’s me . . . see. . . .”

  My mother squinted and looked harder. “You know, Warren,” she told my father, “he really does look like Fudge.” Then she laughed. “Imagine another little boy like Fudgie!”

  “It’s Fudge all right!” I said.

  “It’s Fudge all right!” my brother repeated.

  “We didn’t tell you, dear,” my father said. “We thought you’d like to be surprised. But that is Fudge.”

  “WHAT?” my mother said, like she couldn’t believe it.

  “You see, Mom,” I began. “Remember that weekend you went to visit Aunt Linda?” Then I stopped and thought about all the things my mother didn’t know—

  Like the puddles Fudge splashed in.

  And the paper towels up his pants.

  And how he wanted to touch the bears.

  And the mushroom omelet.

  And Mr. Vincent and his big cigar.

  And Janet and her goldfish crackers.

  And I looked at my father and I started to laugh. So did he.

  10

  Dribble!

  I will never forget Friday, May tenth. It’s the most important day of my life. It didn’t start out that way. It started out ordinary. I went to school. I ate my lunch. I had gym. And then I walked home from school with Jimmy Fargo. We planned to meet at our special rock in the park as soon as we changed our clothes.

  In the elevator I told Henry I was glad summer was coming. Henry said he was too. When I got out at my floor I walked down the hall and opened the door to my apartment. I took off my jacket and hung it in the closet. I put my books on the hall table next to my mother’s purse. I went straight to my room to change my clothes and check Dribble.

  The first thing I noticed was my chain latch. It was unhooked. My bedroom door was open. And there was a chair smack in the middle of my doorway. I nearly tumbled over it. I ran to my dresser to check Dribble. He wasn’t there! His bowl with the rocks and water was there—but Dribble was gone.

  I got really scared. I thought, Maybe he died while I was at school and I didn’t know about it. So I rushed into the kitchen and hollered, “Mom . . . where’s Dribble?” My mother was baking something. My brother sat on the kitchen floor, banging pots and pans together. “Be quiet!” I yelled at Fudge. “I can’t hear anything with all that noise.”

  “What did you say, Peter?” my mother asked me.

  “I said I can’t find Dribble. Where is he?”

  “You mean he’s not in his bowl?” my mother asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Oh dear!” my mother said. “I hope he’s not crawling around somewhere. You know I don’t like the way he smells. I’m going to have a look in the bedrooms. You check in here, Peter.”

  My mother hurried off. I looked at my brother. He was smiling. “Fudge, do you know where Dribble is?” I asked calmly.

  Fudge kept smiling.

  “Did you take him? Did you, Fudge?” I asked not so calmly.

  Fudge giggled and covered his mouth with his hands.

  I yelled. “Where is he? What did you do with my turtle?”

  No answer from Fudge. He banged his pots and pans together again. I yanked the pots out of his hand. I tried to speak softly. “Now tell me where Dribble is. Just tell me where my turtle is. I won’t be mad if you tell me. Come on, Fudge . . . please.”

  Fudge looked up at me. “In tummy,” he said.

  “What do you mean, in tummy?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

  “Dribble in tummy!” he repeated.

  “What tummy?” I shouted at my brother.

  “This one,” Fudge said, rubbing his stomach. “Dribble in this tummy! Right here!”

  I decided to go along with his game. “Okay. How did he get in there, Fudge?” I asked.

  Fudge stood up. He jumped up and down and sang out, “I ATE HIM . . . ATE HIM . . . ATE HIM!” Then he ran out of the room.

  My mother came back into the kitchen. “Well, I just can’t find him anywhere,” she said. “I looked in all the dresser drawers and the bathroom cabinets and the shower and the tub and. . . .”

  “Mom,” I said, shaking my head. “How could you?”

  “How could I what, Peter?” Mom asked.

  “How could you let him do it?”

  “Let who do what, Peter?” Mom asked.

  “LET FUDGE EAT DRIBBLE!” I screamed.

  My mother started to mix whatever she was baking. “Don’t be silly, Peter,” she said. “Dribble is a turtle.”

  “HE ATE DRIBBLE!” I insisted.

  “Peter Warren Hatcher! STOP SAYING THAT!” Mom hollered.

  “Well, ask him. Go ahead and ask him,” I told her.

  Fudge was standing in the kitchen doorway with a big grin on his face. My mother picked him up and patted his head. “Fudgie,” she said to him, “tell Mommy where brother’s turtle is.”

  “In tummy,” Fudge said.

  “What tummy?” Mom asked.

  “MINE!” Fudge laughed.

  My mother put Fudge down on the kitchen counter where he couldn’t get away from her. “Oh, you’re fooling Mommy . . . right?”

  “No fool!” Fudge said.

  My mother turned very pale. “You really ate your brother’s turtle?”

  Big smile from Fudge.

  “YOU MEAN THAT YOU PUT HIM IN YOUR MOUTH AND CHEWED HIM UP . . . LIKE THIS?” Mom made believe she was chewing.

  “No,” Fudge said.

  A smile of relief crossed my mother’s fac
e. “Of course you didn’t. It’s just a joke.” She put Fudge down on the floor and gave me a look.

  Fudge babbled. “No chew. No chew. Gulp . . . gulp . . . all gone turtle. Down Fudge’s tummy.”

  Me and my mother stared at Fudge.

  “You didn’t!” Mom said.

  “Did so!” Fudge said.

  “No!” Mom shouted.

  “Yes!” Fudge shouted back.

  “Yes?” Mom asked weakly, holding onto a chair with both hands.

  “Yes!” Fudge beamed.

  My mother moaned and picked up my brother. “Oh no! My angel! My precious little baby! OH . . . NO. . . .”

  My mother didn’t stop to think about my turtle. She didn’t even give Dribble a thought. She didn’t even stop to wonder how my turtle liked being swallowed by my brother. She ran to the phone with Fudge tucked under one arm. I followed. Mom dialed the operator and cried, “Oh help! This is an emergency. My baby ate a turtle . . . STOP THAT LAUGHING,” my mother told the operator. “Send an ambulance right away—25 West 68th Street.”

  Mom hung up. She didn’t look too well. Tears were running down her face. She put Fudge down on the floor. I couldn’t understand why she was so upset. Fudge seemed just fine.

  “Help me, Peter,” Mom begged. “Get me blankets.”

  I ran into my brother’s room. I grabbed two blankets from Fudge’s bed. He was following me around with that silly grin on his face. I felt like giving him a pinch. How could he stand there looking so happy when he had my turtle inside him?

  I delivered the blankets to my mother. She wrapped Fudge up in them and ran to the front door. I followed and grabbed her purse from the hall table. I figured she’d be glad I thought of that.

  Out in the hall I pressed the elevator buzzer. We had to wait a few minutes. Mom paced up and down in front of the elevator. Fudge was cradled in her arms. He sucked his fingers and made that slurping noise I like. But all I could think of was Dribble.

  Finally, the elevator got to our floor. There were three people in it besides Henry. “This is an emergency,” Mom wailed. “The ambulance is waiting downstairs. Please hurry!”

  “Yes, Mrs. Hatcher. Of course,” Henry said. “I’ll run her down just as fast as I can. No other stops.”

  Someone poked me in the back. I turned around. It was Mrs. Rudder. “What’s the matter?” she whispered.

  “It’s my brother,” I whispered back. “He ate my turtle.”

  Mrs. Rudder whispered that to the man next to her and he whispered it to the lady next to him who whispered it to Henry. I faced front and pretended I didn’t hear anything.

  My mother turned around with Fudge in her arms and said, “That’s not funny. Not funny at all!”

  But Fudge said, “Funny, funny, funny Fudgie!”

  Everybody laughed. Everybody except my mother.

  The elevator door opened. Two men, dressed in white, were waiting with a stretcher. “This the baby?” one of them asked.

  “Yes. Yes it is,” Mom sobbed.

  “Don’t worry, lady. We’ll be to the hospital in no time.”

  “Come, Peter,” my mother said, tugging at my sleeve. “We’re going to ride in the ambulance with Fudge.”

  My mother and I climbed into the back of the blue ambulance. I was never in one before. It was neat. Fudge kneeled on a cot and peered out through the window. He waved at the crowd of people that had gathered on the sidewalk.

  One of the attendants sat in back with us. The other one was driving. “What seems to be the trouble, lady?” the attendant asked. “This kid looks pretty healthy to me.”

  “He swallowed a turtle,” my mother whispered.

  “He did WHAT?” the attendant asked.

  “Ate my turtle. That’s what!” I told him.

  My mother covered her face with her hanky and started to cry again.

  “Hey, Joe!” the attendant called to the driver. “Make it snappy . . . this one swallowed a turtle!”

  “That’s not funny!” Mom insisted. I didn’t think so either, considering it was my turtle!

  We arrived at the back door of the hospital. Fudge was whisked away by two nurses. My mother ran after him. “You wait here, young man,” another nurse called to me, pointing to a bench.

  I sat down on the hard, wooden bench. I didn’t have anything to do. There weren’t any books or magazines spread out, like when I go to Dr. Cone’s office. So I watched the clock and read all the signs on the walls. I found out I was in the emergency section of the hospital.

  After a while the nurse came back. She gave me some paper and crayons. “Here you are. Be a good boy and draw some pictures. Your mother will be out soon.”

  I wondered if she knew about Dribble and that’s why she was trying to be nice to me. I didn’t feel like drawing any pictures. I wondered what they were doing to Fudge in there. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad little guy after all. I remembered that Jimmy Fargo’s little cousin once swallowed the most valuable rock from Jimmy’s collection. And my mother told me that when I was a little kid I swallowed a quarter. Still . . . a quarter’s not like a turtle!

  I watched the clock on the wall for an hour and ten minutes. Then a door opened and my mother stepped out with Dr. Cone. I was surprised to see him. I didn’t know he worked in the hospital.

  “Hello, Peter,” he said.

  “Hello, Dr. Cone. Did you get my turtle?”

  “Not yet, Peter,” he said. “But I do have something to show you. Here are some X-rays of your brother.”

  I studied the X-rays as Dr. Cone pointed things out to me.

  “You see,” he said. “There’s your turtle . . . right there.”

  I looked hard. “Will Dribble be in there forever?” I asked.

  “No. Definitely not! We’ll get him out. We gave Fudge some medicine already. That should do the trick nicely.”

  “What kind of medicine?” I asked. “What trick?”

  “Castor oil, Peter,” my mother said. “Fudge took castor oil. And milk of magnesia. And prune juice too. Lots of that. All those things will help to get Dribble out of Fudge’s tummy.”

  “We just have to wait,” Dr. Cone said. “Probably until tomorrow or the day after. Fudge will have to spend the night here. But I don’t think he’s going to be swallowing anything that he isn’t supposed to be swallowing from now on.”

  “How about Dribble?” I asked. “Will Dribble be all right?” My mother and Dr. Cone looked at each other. I knew the answer before he shook his head and said, “I think you may have to get a new turtle, Peter.”

  “I don’t want a new turtle!” I said. Tears came to my eyes. I was embarrassed and wiped them away with the back of my hand. Then my nose started to run and I had to sniffle. “I want Dribble,” I said. “That’s the only turtle I want.”

  * * *

  My mother took me home in a taxi. She told me my father was on his way to the hospital to be with Fudge. When we got home she made me lamb chops for dinner, but I wasn’t very hungry. My father came home late that night. I was still up. My father looked gloomy. He whispered to my mother, “Not yet . . . nothing yet.”

  The next day was Saturday. No school. I spent the whole day in the hospital waiting room. There were plenty of people around. And magazines and books too. It wasn’t like the hard bench in the emergency hallway. It was more like a living room. I told everybody that my brother ate my turtle. They looked at me kind of funny. But nobody ever said they were sorry to hear about my turtle. Never once.

  My mother joined me for supper in the hospital coffee shop. I ordered a hamburger but I left most of it. Because right in the middle of supper my mother told me that if the medicine didn’t work soon Fudge might have to have an operation to get Dribble out of him. My mother didn’t eat anything.

 
; That night my grandmother came to stay with me. My mother and father stayed at the hospital with Fudge. Things were pretty dreary at home. Every hour the phone rang. It was my mother calling from the hospital with a report.

  “Not yet . . . I see,” Grandma repeated. “Nothing happening yet.”

  I was miserable. I was lonely. Grandma didn’t notice. I even missed Fudge banging his pots and pans together. In the middle of the night the phone rang again. It woke me up and I crept out into the hallway to hear what was going on.

  Grandma shouted, “Whoopee! It’s out! Good news at last.”

  She hung up and turned to me. “The medicine has finally worked, Peter. All that castor oil and milk of magnesia and prune juice finally worked. The turtle is out!”

  “Alive or dead?” I asked.

  “PETER WARREN HATCHER, WHAT A QUESTION!” Grandma shouted.

  So my brother no longer had a turtle inside of him. And I no longer had a turtle! I didn’t like Fudge as much as I thought I did before the phone rang.

  * * *

  The next morning Fudge came home from the hospital. My father carried him into the apartment. My mother’s arms were loaded with presents. All for Fudge! My mother put the presents down and kissed him. She said, “Fudgie can have anything he wants. Anything at all. Mommy’s so happy her baby’s all better!”

  It was disgusting. Presents and kisses and attention for Fudge. I couldn’t even look at him. He was having fun! He probably wasn’t even sorry he ate my turtle.

  That night my father came home with the biggest box of all. It wasn’t wrapped up or anything but I knew it was another present. I turned away from my father.

  “Peter,” he said. “This box is a surprise for you!”

  “Well, I don’t want another turtle,” I said. “Don’t think you can make me feel better with another turtle . . . because you can’t.”

  “Who said anything about a turtle, son?” Dad asked. “You see, Peter, your mother and I think you’ve been a good sport about the whole situation. After all, Dribble was your pet.”

  I looked up. Could I be hearing right? Did they really remember about me and Dribble? I put my hand inside the box. I felt something warm and soft and furry. I knew it was a dog, but I pretended to be surprised when he jumped up on my lap and licked me.