Chapter the 9th
To Michael's surprise, Frank refused to acknowledge his presence the next morning when he approached the gang on the school playground. Toby and Tom greeted him with hard stares. Scott was not among them.
“Remember me?” Michael asked Frank coldly.
Frank turned around half way and looked at Michael out of the corner of his eye.
"Hmm. Face looks slightly familiar. Something of a chicken face, don't you think?"
"We've seen him drop in on the school once in a while," said Tom.
"Not that we jump for joy when he does," added Toby.
"ARE YOU MAD AT ME BECAUSE I TOOK A PEA-PICKING BUS YOU COULDN'T EVEN THINK OF RIDING?" Michael cried out at them.
That outburst turned dozens of heads their way. Frank, however, turned a deaf ear to Michael.
"The monster is roaring for its food," Frank said to his companions. "We had best move away from his cage. We can take care of him when the time comes."
“I’ll spit the three of you out after I’ve chewed you all into mince meat,” said Michael.
“You’ll need a dentist real bad when we’re through with you,” said Toby.
With that, Frank, Tom and Toby sauntered away, exaggerating their contempt for Michael. The fire in the pit of his stomach burned with extra ferocity at the exchange. It made his hands feel like claws and his mouth like that of a monster with very large, sharp teeth. When the time came, he would have no problem biting off their heads and spiking them on the schoolyard fence.
With the tardy bell only a few minutes away, Michael made his way into the school. It was usual for the other students to keep some distance from Michael, even though he had never actually hurt anyone, but this time the circle around him was noticeably larger than ever before. Michael tried to ignore the looks he was getting but he couldn’t help but notice them out of the corner of his eye. His face felt flushed when he woke up in the morning and now it felt downright feverish. By the time he reached the classroom for first period, he was beginning to fear his cheeks were on fire. The class mates closest to him looked at him apprehensively and leaned in the opposite direction.
Miss Gleason, his English teacher, was enough to make a healthy person sick. This morning, her entrance into the room sharped the pains in his stomach and chest. As usual, Miss Gleason proceeded to preach what her students called the "Gospel of Grammar according to Gleason,” this time belaboring the distinction between “lie and “lay.” The fire inside of Michael quickly reached the boiling point and he said out loud:
“It seems to me that the difference between the two words is that one is true and one is not.”
Several students laughed. Miss Gleason returned Michael’s fiery glare with an icy glare of her own.
“You may think all this is boring now, but one day, you will wake up and find that it is only through use of correct grammar that one communicate rightly to others.”
"What if there is nothing to say?" Michael asked.
“I have plenty to say, young man,” said Miss Gleason sharply.
“Ah! You have something to say to me. And you used proper grammar so that I will know what you have to say to me. I—subject—have—verb—plenty—direct object—to say—infinitive, unsplit. But what if there is no subject, no I, to have something to say in the first place? I mean, what if it is not clear what the I is or is not, so there is no specific content to the subject of the verb?"
“You—subject—are—verb—disrupting my class," said Miss Gleason with waning patience as several students grinned surreptitiously at each other.
"But maybe I am nobody—or maybe, I am two subjects,” Michael shot back. “What then? If I am two subjects, who is doing the interrupting? And who is not doing the interrupting? So what it boils down to is that I am both interrupting you, and not interrupting you. Therefore, I am doing nothing and nobody is having anything done to her or him. After all, how do I know you are enough of a direct object to be the object of interruption?”
"Your mouth is flapping, to begin with," said Miss Gleason. "Maybe this no subject or two subjects, or whatever is speaking to me had better return after school for detention."
"In that case, nobody and everybody will come, at any time or at no time."
Michael kept his peace for the rest of the class. With his head feeling like a whirlpool of fire and his stomach feeling as if it were being clawed, it was getting difficult for him to sustain his inspired thinking for very long at a time. He tuned out of Miss Gleason’s class and preened himself for standing up to her for the first time ever. Was he trying to get back to Carelin by talking like the people who lived there? he asked himself.
When the bell rang and Michael jumped up from his desk, the sharp pains spread from his stomach to his head, his hands, his back, even his feet. Out in the hall, he suddenly flew a foot or two off the ground. When two girls looked at him with alarm, Michael grabbed the nearest locker handle to anchor himself to the floor.
“Hey! Watch where you’re going!”
“Straight into your face, that’s where I’m going!” said Michael.
When Michael raised a hand, the boy’s expression turned from anger to fear and he ran down the hall in half a second. Other students screamed.
“WHO DO YOU THINK I AM, ELVIS PRESLEY?” yelled Michael.
“No, Puff the Magic Dragon,” answered a brave boy who scampered off as soon as the words were out of his mouth.
“Anybody want to be my breakfast?” asked Michael.
Everybody froze and backed away, allowing Michael to get to his next class in peace. He slid into his seat, whipped out his math book and opened it to the page called out by Mr. Farley to the tune of a big ripping sound. Mr. Farley fixed his eyes on Michael. Michael stared right back.
“Bullinger, will you please explain why you see fit to rip your math book to shreds?”
Michael looked down at his book. No question about it, it was in tatters. The book, however, was not the problem. Resting on top of the shredded book was his left hand. It was covered with golden scales and sharp tiny claws were growing out at the end. Michael swore to himself and hid the offending hand under his desk.
“The cosmos is ripping open,” Michael replied, “and you worry about the coherence of mathematical equations?”
“Bullinger, it just so happens that mathematics comprise the order of the universe.”
“Do you mean to say that the mathematical order says a book can’t catch fire without a due cause?” Michael asked in his deadpan voice, all the while concentrating hard on the book Mr. Farley was holding in his hand.
No sooner was the question asked then Mr. Farley screamed and dropped his book. Michael folded his arms and watched with perfect detachment as one boy ran for the fire extinguisher and two other brave boys helped their teacher stamp out the fire.
“Bullinger, go to the dean’s office,” Mr. Farley ordered when he had recovered sufficiently from that mishap.
“Do you mean you want me to report to the dean that I set fire to your math book while sitting in my chair halfway across the room from you?” Michael asked him.
Mr. Farley was reduced to helpless sputtering and he let the idea drop. It crossed Michael’s mind that meeting up with the dean might be fun just that once but then again, he might have been pressing his luck.
At lunch break, Michael found a place by himself in the corner where he could be alone to brood about his situation. The way he had managed to handle his teachers gave him much satisfaction, but the implications of what was happening were alarming. He was already down to just one hand that he could let others see. What would he do if some other part of his body not covered by his clothes should turn dragon. What if he should breathe fire? Burning down the school might be fun, but how would he control his fiery breath after that?
Michael was not left alone for as long as he wanted. Scott Simpson came limping over to Michael's corner. Michael gathered all of his dragon's mind- power to blast Scott to the other end of the lunch room. Scott staggered, almost dropped his tray, but continued inexorably in the direction he was walking until his tray clattered on the table next to Michael's. Michael looked away.
"What's wrong?" asked Scott, breaking through the Michael's barrier of silence.
"Nothing."
Scott lowered his head.
"Glad to hear it."
Michael fingered his hot dog but, with his stomach lurching, found his appetite escaping him.
"You—look sick or something," said Scott.
"So? You won't be so healthy yourself if you don't shut up."
Scott reflected for a moment, then decided that his health did not matter to him.
"I—I think you want to get back to that place you went to. Is that it?"
"What's it to you?"
Scott tried to eat his sandwich, but he was not hungry, either.
“Do they have any dragons there?" asked Scott.
"Of course they do,” Michael replied, anger flaring throughout his body. “What do you think I am?"
Before Michael could stop himself he thrust his claw into Scott's frightened face. Michael quickly drew it back under his shirt. But it was too late. He had betrayed himself, or his inner dragon had betrayed him.
"Michael!" gasped Scott. "You need help."
“Yea, but what kind of help will help me? What kind of help can you give me?”
"There might be something you can eat or drink that will make it go away,” Scott suggested. “Sure you didn't drink some dragon potion?"
"Course I'm sure." Then Michael remembered the fruit. "Course, dragons lay their eggs in the strangest ways. Anything round and golden could be a dragon's egg."
"And you—found a dragon's egg?" asked Scott as if he had lived in Carelin all his life.
“Of course I found a dragon’s egg. Not only did I find one, I ate it because I was hungry. What you going to do about it?"
"Help you."
“How?”
Scott stared into space for a long moment.
"Maybe it would help if you told me what happened to you while you were away," said Scott.
It was a shock to Michael that his story, so long held inside of him, burst out like a ball of fire. He described the bus ride and the way the will o' the wisp had tricked him out of the bus.
"They do that sort of thing," Scott remarked.
"How do you know?"
"Will o' the wisps have that reputation. Course you have to do some reading or listening to stories to find out these things. The only thing will o' the wisps like to do in life is lead people astray, especially at night. You should never follow one."
"Now you tell me."
"I didn't get the chance to tell you before," Scott said gently.
Michael swallowed his anger because the rest of his story was burning to get out. He went on to recount his truck ride with a cynical driver and his escape to the outskirts of Carelin. Under Scott's sympathetic eye, Michael found himself less ashamed then he thought he would be of the way he had acted during his strange journey. He described the odd evening with Uncle Martin, Aunt Edith and the children, and of how he had received such worthless sandwiches.
"You said the plate was still full after it was passed around?" asked Scott.
"Yea."
"Then it was a magic plate. You could have had anything you wanted."
"I realize that now."
Scott shoved his tray away from him.
"Don't worry, you'll get back there."
"How do you know?"
"You always get back to a place like that if you really want to. That's the way stories are."
"How do you know?"
Scott frowned in concentration.
"I haven't had much to do besides read stories," said Scott. "With all the yelling in my house before Dad went away, you need to do something to think of something else."
"Hmm. Nobody yells in my house, much," said Michael. "Nobody talks. It's like living in a tomb. And I don’t read anything. I don’t do anything."
“Now I read because the house is too quiet,” said Scott. “If Mom was dead and buried, she wouldn’t be doing less than she's doing now."
“My folks would be at home in her grave,” Michael muttered.
The warning bell went off.
“Going back to class?” asked Scott.
Michael shrugged.
“Might as well see what my dragon blood will do next.”
In history class, Michael's right shoulder suddenly stiffened. Michael brought his hand round to the shoulder to feel it. He was growing scales there.
"Michael, are you paying attention?" asked Mrs. Applebaum.
"No."
"And why not?"
"Because the present moment has become too complicated for me for me to complicate it further by contemplating the antecedents that go back to the ancient Greeks."
"Do you mean to say that you have forgotten the fact that we are now studying the Renaissance?" asked Mrs. Applebaum.
Michael's shoulder ached with stiffness, but Michael hardened his face before the teacher's hard look.
"Renaissance," Michael murmured. "Rebirth. You said it was a time of rebirth, didn't you?"
"So you have taken in something," said the teacher.
"Yes, that will be nice," added Michael. "Getting born again instead of being dead all the time. Guess we need a Renaissance today, don't we?"
Michael shrank back, not at his own question, but at the faint wisp of smoke he thought he saw float before his face as he spoke. He desperately willed the teacher to change the subject and leave him alone, and she did.
The minute school was out, Michael was two blocks away and still running before Miss Gleason could yell the word “detention.” He swooped down on his newspapers at the station and raced into his delivery route
“Hey! My paper’s ripped!” yelled a customer who was picking up his paper just at it hit the driveway.
“That’s the new look for the Milton Gazette,” Michael yelled back. “The word’s been ripped apart, why not the newspaper?”
Michael was way out of earshot before the customer could reply to that. Michael did sling his sack over his right shoulder, however, and make sure that he threw the papers with his remaining human hand. The scales on his shoulder were still tender and they ached under the weight, but the mounting energy inside him kept Michael moving along until he finished his route in record time.
By this time, the surge of energy within him was so great that Michael felt that he could fly home. He had just about made up his mind to take off regardless of what people thought of a paperboy flying across Milton when he noticed that Frank and Toby had cornered a pair of fifth graders in a corner park to entice them with the glories of smoking grass. One of the boys looked a little like Roger and a vision came to Michael of Roger laying down his violin for the sake of a joint. Michael’s fire, hot as a fire-breathing dragon, blazed inside of him. He leaped through the air at Frank and ran his claw down one side of his former buddy's face. Frank whipped out a handkerchief to wipe the blood off his face with as much dignity as he could muster. Toby turned paler than a laundered sheet. Michael stared hard at Frank and Toby as he gathered the two boys he had saved under his good arm like a mother hen.
“Go away and stay away," Michael ordered.
Frank stared at Michael, scarcely believing that his one time follower was standing up to him. Frank squared his shoulders to gather all his inner strength for an assault on Michael.
“Who are you to tell me that?" Frank asked.
"I AM MICHAEL BULLINGER, THAT'S WHO! AND I'M A FRESH-GROWN DRAGON WHO WILL CHEW YOU TO PIECES IF YOU DON'T DO WHAT I SAY!"
Frank and Toby shrank away from the fire in Michael's eyes. The two boys Michael was protecting also moved back. Frank gathered himself as best he could and put on a haughty face that was not convincing to Michael.
"We'll see about all this later," was Frank's parting shot as he led Toby away.
That left Michael with the two boys.
"And why were you two even thinking about buying that junk?" Michael asked them sharply.
The boys' faces went blank. One of them shrugged his shoulders.
"So bored with life you're ready to make a hash out of it to make it interesting?" Michael asked them.
The boys kept their distance, looking at Michael as if he were a monster. One of them started to sniffle.
"Believe it or not, there are other things to dream about," said Michael to his bewildered charges.
“Like what?” asked the other boy.
“Oh, dragons and unicorns," Michael replied. “Stuff like that.”
"Gosh!" exclaimed the boy who had stopped sniffling.
"What dragons?" asked the other.
"Dragons with golden scales who fly through the air and save people from all evil. At night, they spread their wings over sleeping children to give them all the sweet dreams their hearts can desire. Much better than dope can ever give you."
Michael couldn’t tell if either of the boys were taking in what he was saying or not. They both looked down at the ground and looked away. Taking the hint, Michael shuffled away.
“Thanks,” said one of the boys.
Michael didn’t look back. Once he had covered some distance, he looked at his claw. It was covered with blood and would need a washing when he got home.