Little Klein

Little Klein was born Harold Sylvester George Klein, but his brothers had already established themselves as a group, a clump, a gang of Kleins, and being too late to be one of the older group, Harold Sylvester George Klein’s given name hadn’t been uttered since his baptism. Maybe the label was a jinx, a prophecy: while Matthew, Mark, and Luke were the tallest in each of their classes and always at the low end of a seesaw pair, Little Klein was barely heavy enough to make the gate swing open when he stood on its rungs.

A leaf,
their mother said.
The boy is frail as a leaf; I won’t get too attached to him because the next wind could blow him clear to the next county, where another mother may decide to keep him as a doll for her girls to play with
.

When Little Klein got colds, as he often did, his mother warmed the teakettle day and night, muttering as she made cup after cup of tea,
This will be his end. I’m sure of it this time. Just take him, Lord, before he gets too far stuck to my heart
.

To keep their mother from worrying all day about their little brother, the Big Kleins took Little Klein with them everywhere except school and the river. Before he could walk, they passed him from shoulder to shoulder. From this perch, Little Klein saw his first crime: shoplifting cigarettes and chewing gum from Tim and Tom’s Market.

“Duck,” commanded Matthew as they slipped out the door.

On a knee his second crime: taking a joyride in Officer Linden’s squad car, Buddy the police dog licking his face in the backseat.

“Don’t let him bite you,” worried Mark.

And from under an arm his third crime: breaking into Widow Flom’s house on a rainy day while she was away at her brother’s.

“Slick as snot,” crowed Luke as he teased open the flimsy lock. The boys spent the afternoon feasting on her state fair pie entry and last year’s award-winning jam along with cheeses, root beer, and a shot of whiskey from the nearly empty bottle. This was passed over the youngest’s head. Their only slip in that crime was leaving behind a diaper from the nearly four-year-old Little, which narrowed Officer Linden’s search to the three hoodlums with a tot.

Though Widow Flom did not press charges (in fact, she was thrilled with what she took as a compliment to her cooking — you didn’t see hungry boys breaking into Nora Nettle’s house, now, did you? — as well as an omen for a good showing at the fair), Mother Klein was furious. The big boys might be spitting replicas of their father, but Little Klein still had a chance of being respectable. To expose her baby to lock picking and who knows what all, well, there wasn’t enough tea in a townful of cupboards to cure that sickness.

She took Little Klein, sent the others out for Ovaltine, and locked the door. She rocked her leaf back and forth, back and forth, clutching him to her as she railed at God.

“There,” she said. “You’ve gone and done it now. Now I full-up love this runt and you are not taking him away from me. You touch this boy and I declare . . . I’ll never . . . I’ll never speak to you again. Nope.”

Rock, rock, rock.

“No more ‘Shall We Gather at the River’ for you, no more ‘Praise God, from Whom All Blessings Flow.’ Nope. You steal this boy from me now, and I’ll take this glorious soprano you gave me and I’ll lend it to Satan’s show tunes.

“Got that?”

Rock, rock, rock.

“I said, got that, God?

“Humph.”

Then Little Klein burped, which Mother Klein took as a sign that God had indeed relented. God had spoken through Little Klein.

After the sun went down and he begged for his brothers, Mother Klein unlocked the door and let the Bigs back in without a word.

“Sorry, Ma,” said Matthew. “Won’t happen again.”

“I’m sorry, Mother,” said Mark. “I didn’t mean to. I mean I shouldn’t have. I mean —”

“Sorry, Ma,” interrupted Luke. “You aren’t going to ground me, are you?”

“Humph,” she replied, but when she tucked her smallest into the little bed next to hers and a frog jumped out from under her pillow, she laughed out loud.

“You urchins!” she called up the steps, and the next morning there was a hot breakfast on the table when they woke.

Little Klein’s whistling started back then, too. It was Sunday dinner, and as usual, no one could hear his thread-thin voice over his barrel-throated brothers.

“Pass the pickles,” he said without result. He stretched his four-year-old arm but could reach no farther than his milk glass, and Little Klein was hungry for a Sunday pickle.

“Pass the darn pickles,” he said, but even then no one heard him. Mark, the middle Big, lumped a clump of potatoes on Little Klein’s plate as the bowl was passed. Little eyed the pickles in the center of the table and licked his lips. He exhaled frustration, and to his surprise a large noise whooshed out. Mother Klein put down her fork and looked around.

“Not me!” said Luke, the one usually blamed for such things.

“There is no whistling at the table,” Mother Klein reminded them sternly.

Little Klein wriggled on his stack of books and licked his lips again. He inhaled. He exhaled, and this time he blew out a three-note tune.

Now everyone turned.

“Little Klein?” they gasped.

“Pass the darn pickles,” he said.

Matthew and Luke bellowed, they howled, while Mother Klein stared in stunned silence and Mark simply reached for the pickles.

“Oh no you don’t,” said Mother Klein, swatting his hand away.

“We say ‘pass.’ We say ‘pickles.’ We do
not,
do you understand,
not
say”— Mother Klein lowered her voice to a whisper —“
‘darn.’
Now. Try again. ‘Pass the pickles.’”

“Pass the . . . pickles.”

This sent Matthew and Luke into another fit. Mark looked solemnly at Mother, who said again, “
Please
pass the pickles.”

“I’m not hungry. Can we get a god? I mean a dog? Like Buddy?”

“Most certainly not. You are much too delicate to tolerate barking and licking and fur, to say nothing of your father, who says no.”

“Aw, Ma!” groaned Luke, who as the youngest Big was also the only one who got away with whining. “Dad’s always got stuff to sell. He won’t be home again till who knows when. What about us?”

“I may be excused,” said Little Klein. He slid off his chair and stood his back up against the basement door, as was his daily habit.

“Matthew, measure him again,” sighed Mother Klein. The oldest, biggest, curliest-haired Big got a pencil and a paint stick from a kitchen drawer. He held the flat stick over Little Klein’s head and drew a line. Little Klein stepped out and looked. Today’s line simply darkened the lines from all the yesterdays Little Klein could remember. The Matthew, Mark, and Luke lines crawled up toward the top of the door. His four-year-old line was barely higher than Matthew’s two-year-old marking.

Little Klein went to sit on the front step, the farthest he could roam without supervision. He tried his pucker again. A fine, high stream spilled forth. He trilled idly, making up tunes and whistling loud as he could. He closed his eyes, breathed deep, and attempted the longest note his lungs could manage. Just when his tiny chest threatened imminent collapse, a staccato racket coming his way broke Little Klein’s concentration. He opened his eyes to see four dogs coming from the east and five from the west, all barking, running . . . all going . . . wait,
coming,
right toward his yard, his step, him.

Little Klein scrambled backward, jumped for the screen door handle, missed, jumped again, and fell into the house just as the dogs crashed into the screen, yapping, barking, pleading for the whistling boy. He climbed up to look at the dogs from the safety of the other side of the door, but Mother Klein scooped Little Klein away, leaving the dogs to wrestle with one another.

While after that his body seemed to grow at the rate of a blade of grass in the shade, Little Klein’s whistle flourished. Kids didn’t pick on him at school because they knew that one terrible note would bring the teacher or, worse, a Big Klein running. In second grade, he was awarded the school talent trophy for his whistled medley of hymns in ragtime rhythm. And when he was nine, Little Klein’s whistle roused an unsuspecting hound.

LeRoy lived for smelling: socks, crotches, squirrel paths, dead fish. In his dreams his nose led him from one adventure to another. It was with this glorious snout that LeRoy chose his family.