NOTHING MUCH HAPPENED THEN FOR A WHILE. IT NEVER DOES. Not at that time of year, with Christmas just a couple weeks away. If time goes faster at the speed of light, well, around now it’s riding on the back of a snail. An old snail.
In December there are two main things you do:
1. You wait.
2. You work on your Christmas list.
We’re always supposed to have our lists in by December 1. But how can you do that? That leaves twenty-four days to look in stores. Twenty-four days to see what other people have that you could use. Twenty-four days of TV commercials. Twenty-four days to change your mind. You can’t do it. So I always come up later with a revised version. And then a final revised version. And then an absolutely final revised version (with last-minute changes). I know I have to stop when Ham smiles, takes the list, nods, goes “Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm,” and then, still smiling, very, very neat and slow, tears the paper until it’s almost confetti, and drops the pieces back in my hand.
What bugs me more than anything else about a Christmas list is having to listen to somebody make comments on it. They can’t just take the thing and then just get or not get you the stuff. Oh no. It has to be, “Hey, whoa, hold it there. What is this?”
Or, “Didn’t we just get you one of these last year?”
Or, “Were you thinking of paying for half of this yourself?”
Naturally most of this kind of talk comes from Ham. That’s what I hate about him sometimes: he always has to say something about something. My mother’s not like that. She understands kids better. She’s more reasonable. That’s why I always try to give my list to her.
But she always lets Ham see it. (“Honey,” she says to me, “Ham has to see it. He’s the one that pays for all this, you know.”)
I hate it the most when he doesn’t say anything, but just starts laughing.
This year Ham’s big comment is, “What, no dinosaurs?” Each time I hand in an updated list I hear it. I even hear it other times too, like when I’m going to bed, or going to the bathroom. Anywhere. Anytime. Like a cuckoo. “What, no dinosaurs? What, no dinosaurs?”
This year I hadn’t asked to get dinosaurs, but I was going to give them. That’s what I decided to get Timmy for Christmas. Just a couple cheap ones. Like the ones everybody knows: brontosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex. I figure if I get him some of his own, maybe he’ll stop taking mine.
Except for anything that Cootyhead does, including breathing, there’s not many things that I hate more than Timmy taking my dinosaurs. It’s not that I can’t stand to share anything with him. It’s just that my dinosaurs aren’t toys. They’re a collection. They’re not to play with. They’re really good ones. They cost a lot. It took me a long time to get hold of them. I don’t have just the famous ones, like the ones I mentioned, and triceratops and stegosaurus. I have other ones. Ones you probably never heard of. Ones you never saw in a Japanese movie. Plateosaurus. Ornithomimus. Trachodon.
I had to move them from my room when my space station started getting too big, so I put them on a platform in the basement. I got cardboard and twigs and a papier-mâché volcano and stuff and made it look like sixty million years ago. And then I put the dinosaurs in. And in front of each one I made a little sign telling what it is.
All that—and nobody understands why I get all mad when I see one of them is missing and I go looking around and finally find it lying in the dirt outside. Or in the bathtub.
So Timmy goes bawling, if he’s playing with it when I find it and jerk it from him, and my mother goes, “Well, he didn’t hurt it, did he?”
“I don’t care,” I tell her. “That’s beside the point.”
“He was only playing with it.”
“It’s not to play with. It’s not a toy.”
“Well, it looks like a toy to him. Don’t you think?”
“It’s not. It’s my col-lec-tion!”
“I know, I know,” she nods and looks at Timmy. “Now, Timmy, you know these are Jason’s collection. They’re not toys. You do not take them out of the basement—”
“Off the platform—” I go.
“Don’t touch them—”
“Don’t touch them—”
“Ever.”
“Ever. Never never never touch them—not even with the tippy-tip-tip of your tippy-nippy nose. Understand?”
So my mother’s there tweaking Timmy’s nose and he’s there laughing and everybody’s having a great old time except me, who’s standing there fuming with a dirty dinosaur in my hand. As you can see, my mother is really rough. She’d make a great Marine drill sergeant.
So naturally, he keeps taking my dinosaurs.
When I told my mother what I was getting Timmy for Christmas, she goes, “Jason, why don’t you just let him have yours. You don’t play with them anymore.”
She still didn’t understand. “I know I don’t play with them,” I said. “You’re not supposed to. They’re a collection. You’re supposed to look at them.”
“You’re supposed to add to them too, aren’t you?”
“I almost have them all,” I told her. “I can’t find any more.”
“I never see you looking at them.”
“I can’t help that. I do look.”
“Don’t get smart.”
“I do.”
“You took them out of your room.”
“Yeah—to make room for the space station. You’re the one that said it was a flophouse up there.”
“Flophouse? Did I say that?”
“Forget it,” I said. I walked away.
She calls. “Jason.”
“What?”
“You got them in the toy departments, didn’t you?”
Screams. Fists. Atomic bombs.
So, to get Ham to stop saying “What, no dinosaurs?” and to show my mother I was still interested in them, I grabbed my Christmas list back and added to it in giant red letters:
PODOKESAURUS
When people think of dinosaurs they think of the biggest animals that ever roamed the earth. But that’s not the whole truth. Dinosaurs came in all sizes. There were medium-size ones. And little ones too. The littlest dinosaur was podokesaurus. It wasn’t much bigger than a chicken. Imagine little dinosaurs running around a barnyard. Or seeing them all lined up under plastic wrap on the meat counter at the A&P. Imagine.
Like I said, I just did it to get Ham and Mom off my back. I know they won’t be able to find a podokesaurus. I never could. But that doesn’t mean I’m giving up either. Podokesaurus is still the only one missing from my collection—or at least the only one I really care about—and even though when I grow up I might lose some of my interest, no matter where I am or what I’m doing, I’ll always keep an eye out for the chicken-size dinosaur.
Well, I won. Sort of. Ham knocked off the dinosaur stuff, all right. He started in with a new one: “Aha: clothes!”
On the last Saturday night before Christmas we had to go to a play. One that Ham was in. Except for Timmy—he got a babysitter. I told my mother I’d be glad to babysit, but she dragged me and Cootyhead along.
It was in an old barn. At least it used to be a barn. They took out the hay and the cowpoop and put in these crummy old benches and this dinky stage without even a curtain. And that’s supposed to be a theater. I always thought Ham acted in a real theater. Velvet curtain. Strings of lightbulbs. Posters. Uh-uh. It’s a barn.
The play was too long. It was about this salesman. That was Ham. I never figured out what he was supposed to be selling. His name was Willy.
Ham’s voice sounded funny. It was lower. And they made his hair gray. He had a wife and two sons. They were pretty much grown up, but they were still living at home. One of them was named Biff, I think. He kept talking about going out west and having a ranch.
The whole thing didn’t make any sense. I mean, nothing happened. Biff talked about going out west, and Willy was going off selling something, and then he lost his job and then he begged his boss to give it back but he wouldn’t, and every once in a while this old dude in a suit pops out and goes, “Ah went intuh the jungle, and when Ah came out—bah God—Ah was rich!”
Another weird thing: people didn’t come onto the stage from the sides or behind. I mean, there wasn’t any backstage. They just stood at the end of the aisle between the benches where the audience (us) came in, and ran down the aisle and onto the stage from the front. Like I said, it wasn’t a real theater.
So I happen to be sitting on the end of our bench, next to the aisle, and we’re toward the back, and this one time I look over and up and who’s standing right next to me but Ham. About an inch away. He looked even goofier close up. They even made his eyebrows gray. His cheeks were orange.
I kept waiting for him to look down and give me one of his weird looks or clever comments. But he didn’t. He just stared straight ahead at the stage. His head was nodding a little and his Adam’s apple was going and his lips were moving. I knew he knew I was right there. The more he didn’t look at me the more I was tempted to tap him on the leg. I don’t know why. It just sort of made me mad, him acting like I wasn’t there. I was going to give him a shot in the knee and tell him, “Hey—who you trying to fool? You’re Ham.” Just then his whole face changes. He roars something from right over my head, tears down the aisle, and next thing you know there he is up on stage, in the spotlight.
At long last the end came. I was just about asleep by then. I only remember someone going, “We’re free… We’re free…” I was surprised at how loud the clapping got when they took their bows. Ham got the loudest.
When we were walking out I asked my mother, “What happened to Ham?”
“You mean Willy?”
“Yeah.”
“Weren’t you watching?”
“Yeah.”
“Well,” she said, “Willy dies.”
On the last day of school before Christmas I went to a basketball game. Not to see the game—we’re crummy in basketball—but to see Debbie Breen. She was cheerleading.
For a couple days after the snowball fight at Monroe, she was in school with a patch on her ear. It was really cute, because the patch stopped about halfway down her earlobe, so she could put her earring on.
One day I finally got up the nerve, and I said to her, “Hey, we got something in common.”
“What’s that?” she goes. It was the first time I looked her in the eye since I hit her. I could tell she never knew it was me.
I said, “We both had patches. Me on my eye, you on your ear.”
“Hey,” she goes, “that’s right!”
I was so surprised and happy by the way she acted—all excited and friendly—that all of a sudden I wanted to say all kinds of stuff. Stuff that was boiling inside me for days: It was me that hit you with the snowball and I hope you’ll forgive me now. I’d chop off my little finger to stop you from crying. Are you ready to come see my space station now? How about tonight? I think about you all the time. Do you ever think about me? You’re beautiful. Wanna go for a pizza? I wish I could give you a Christmas present. I’d get you anything you want. Do you like me? I love you. Do you think we could ever get married someday? Who were you with on Halloween?
But I didn’t say any of that. I said, “Go on any hayrides lately?”
And she said, “Kill any dragons lately?”
We laughed. It was like marshmallows melting together.
During the basketball game I watched every move she made. On the court cheering. On the bench. I liked seeing all that bare leg. During the winter about all you ever see is face. I imagined what she’d look like cheering in high school. Splits. Cartwheels. Handstands. Tights. She flicked her head a lot.
A couple girls were sitting behind me. I heard one of them say, “Who’s that one?”
And the other one said, “Debbie somebody.”
And the first one said, “She’s pretty.”
I smiled to myself: Yeah she’s pretty all right. That’s Debbie Breen. I went on a hayride with her. That’s right—that cheerleader. I roasted her hotdogs and marshmallows. We talk to each other. Yeah. She kinda likes me. She’s coming over to my house to see my space station. We’ll probably start going together pretty soon.
They did a cheer where each of the cheerleaders had one of the letters of our nickname: Bulldogs. Like the first one would jump up and yell: “Gimme a B!” and everybody in the stands yells: “B!”
Debbie had the second L. At least to everybody else she did. Not to me. I sort of sat back for the rest of the game, with my eyes half closed, and here’s what I saw in the middle of the court: Debbie Breen, hanging in the air, legs wide, arms to the lights, sweater bottom halfway up her stomach, screaming at the stands—at the world—with all her heart:
“GIMME A J!”
On the last day before Christmas I got sick. I threw up. I ached all over. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t believe it. Sick. Of all times! My mother kept bringing me tea and asking if I wanted soup and softboiled eggs. I couldn’t get out of bed. I was dying. God, no. Let me die after Christmas!
The head of my bed is next to the window overlooking the yard. Every once in a while I dragged my head up enough to look out. There was snow on the ground. Once I saw a squirrel go by. I kept looking, and in a minute he came back the other way. I kept looking and the squirrel kept doing it, back and forth, back and forth. Dug his own little trench in the snow. I could only see that corner of the yard, so I couldn’t tell where he was going or where he was coming from. I could only see him racing, and that’s what he was doing: racing. Like something was after him. I got tired and lay back down. When I looked again, later, there he was, back and forth, back and forth—racing, racing…
And then I got the weirdest, craziest feeling: the squirrel was trying to make me better. I didn’t know why, or how. I couldn’t see where he was coming from or going to. But there he was—back and forth, back and forth, racing, all day long—and I just couldn’t get that crazy idea out of my head.
And sure enough, next day, Christmas, I was better.