Dog Heaven (6 page)

M
y paper was in my pocket. I’d folded it down to the size of a postage stamp. I took it out, unfolded it, and looked up.

Mr. Purdy nodded.

“I want … a dog … maybe a small one, but not too small. I don’t want something that yaps and looks like a rat.”

Mr. Purdy laughed, and when everyone saw he thought it was funny, they laughed, too.

I went on, feeling braver. “Mr. Purdy should want me to have a dog because it will make me get better grades.”

Now the class really laughed. Julio whooped in the back.

Mr. Purdy held up his hands for quiet. “Just how might a dog make you do that, Calvin?”

“Well, see … if I have a dog I’ll be happier, and if I’m happier I’ll work harder, and if I work harder, I’ll get better grades. Get it?”

Mr. Purdy nodded. “If that’s all it takes to get better grades, I’m bringing everyone a dog tomorrow.”

Rubin started barking. The whole class joined in.

“Ssssssss,” Mr. Purdy hissed.

“Ssssssss,” everyone hissed back.

“I like your thinking, Calvin. And you grabbed my attention. We’ll talk about going deeper after we hear a few more essays, so hang on to your good thoughts.”

“I can do that.”

But which thoughts were the good ones?

After a few others read their papers, Mr. Purdy said, “Good work, all of you. You make me proud. Now it’s time to talk about revision.”

“Aww, man.”

“It’s too much work.”

“It’s junk.”

Mr. Purdy sat on his desk next to Manly Stanley’s resort. Manly was trying to climb the glass.

I grinned. Maybe Manly wrote a paper, too, and he was trying to get out so he could read it:
What I want so bad I can taste it is another big fat juicy cock-a-roach!

“This weekend,” Mr. Purdy said, “take what you’ve written and make it better. Especially your opening sentence. That sentence has to pick me up and shake me. You understand what I’m saying?”

Not really.

“For example,” Mr. Purdy went on. “Instead of Shayla saying she wants to take yoga lessons, she could open with something like this:
If you’ve ever seen someone twisted up like a pretzel, you know that yoga is an amazing practice
. See? Now we’re interested, because a person twisted up like a pretzel is unusual. We try to imagine it.”

Shayla nodded.

Mr. Purdy spread his hands. “Now, I know yoga isn’t about pretzels, but that word does create an interesting image. That’s what I want you to do with your opening sentences. Make them more interesting. Invent your own pretzels.”

A pretzel?

Boy, was I stumped.

A
fter school, Darci, Julio, Willy, Rubin, and I kicked across the grassy field, heading home.

I was thinking.

Sometimes Mr. Purdy was strange. Invent your own pretzel?

But it did get my attention.

Okay. So I could write:
A dog is like a pretzel
.

Dumb. No way is a dog like a pretzel.

Then I thought, Hey! Ledward’s pig!

A pig in a jeep would be a monster pretzel. I mean, who could resist wanting to hear more about
that?
So maybe Ledward’s pig was my pretzel.

But if I’m writing about a dog, how can I make a pig my pretzel?

I kicked a crushed pop can on the side of the road. It skittered past Darci and Julio, who were walking in front of me.

Julio looked back. “How come you so quiet?”

“I’m thinking.”

“About what?”

“Pretzels.”

Julio grunted.

Okay, I thought, how about this:
A dog is like a pig in a jeep, only he’s riding with a kid on a bike. The dog’s name is …

What is his name? I liked Streak.

Streak.

Yeah.

Ho!
The
second
I named that dog, he became real. Alive. Streak was a real dog. He was living somewhere right now. Or was Streak a girl dog? He or she was probably a puppy curled up in a cardboard box in somebody’s laundry room.

Streak.

Once I had that name, ideas came down like rain in the mountains. Let’s just say he’s a boy dog.

His name is Streak and his ears are flapping in the wind
.

Yeah, yeah, yeah!

I had to get home and write this stuff down before I forgot it. I grabbed Darci’s hand. “We got to run!”

Julio called after me. “What’s the hurry?”

“I just thought of my pretzel!”

I
sat at my desk and scribbled down everything I could remember. I read it out loud to see how it sounded. I fixed a few things and read it out loud again. Not too bad. My opening sentence would pick Mr. Purdy up and shake him!

Another thought started to itch. Ideas are
like that, fuzzy at first; you sort of feel them. Then they grow, and if you’re lucky, they pop your eyes open.

Hmmm.

If I do this right, I might be able to feed two birds with one crumb. I could get a good grade
and
… ho, yeah!… I could use my essay on Mom! To get a dog! For real!

This is genius!

That evening after dinner I hung around the kitchen. Mom and Stella were washing dishes.

“Here,” I said, handing Stella my plastic juice glass left over from breakfast. It had dried-up orange juice on the bottom.

Stella squinted and grabbed the glass.

Mom smiled. “Thank you for helping, Cal.”

“That’s what I’m here for.”

Stella rolled her eyes. “Spare me.”

Mom set the glass in the
soapy sink. “Did you get a letter from your mom today, Stella?”

“No.” It was almost a whisper.

Mom paused. “That’s too bad.”

And it was too bad. Stella hadn’t gotten anything from her mom in weeks, not even a birthday card. Stella had just turned sixteen.

Mom handed a plate to Stella to dry. “You know how slow the mail can be between Texas and the islands.”

Stella scoffed. “Yeah, the Pony Express has a problem with oceans.”

“Oh, Stella.”

“It’s okay. I don’t mind.”

Mom nodded. “Your hair looks lovely today, Stella. You should wear it up more often.”

Stella shrugged.

I looked for more stuff to help with. My cereal bowl was right where I’d left it that morning before school. A fly floated in the
evaporating milk at the bottom. I took the fly, wrapped it in a napkin to give to Manly Stanley on Monday, and stuffed it in my pocket.