The TV Kid Read online

  Applause.

  “We’ll have hidden cameras in every room of the house to catch Lennie’s reactions, so you won’t want to miss our next show. Remember now, tune in next week to see what it’s going to be like for young Lennie in Haunted House Number Thirteen.”

  “Lennie?” his mom called from the motel office.

  “Yes’m?”

  “I’m taking some extra towels to three-sixteen. I’ll be right back.”

  “Yes’m.”

  “I’ll call out the questions then.”

  “Right.”

  He didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t want school-books and Science and his unfortunate position at the card table to intrude on his dream.

  He smiled to himself. He was thinking of entering the living room of the haunted house. What a sight he would be! His knees would be trembling, his heart pounding. His eyes would be rolling around in his head like marbles. He would be holding out his hands in a blindly terrified way. He would bump into Dracula.

  “Gut e-ven-ing!”

  Lennie would glance up. He wouldn’t have seen Dracula because of the black outfit. Now he would see the white face.

  “Velcome.”

  Lennie’s eyes, bulging almost out of their sockets, would see that Dracula’s fangs were bared. His black cape was raised. Dracula would bend low, aiming for Lennie’s neck.

  Lennie would scream, turn, run for the door, and crash right into Frankenstein’s monster. Before the huge, unmatched hands could close around Lennie’s throat, Lennie would scream again and make a headlong dash for the safety of the kitchen.

  He would lean against the pantry, eyes closed, catching his breath. His hands would be clutched over his pounding heart. Suddenly Lennie would feel something furry beside him. He would open his eyes. At that moment he would look out the window and see the full moon. A werewolfs moon. And the something furry beside him had to be ... Very slowly, making no sudden moves, Lennie would ease to the door. Then, abruptly, he would rush into the sewing room and slam the door.

  “I’m back, Lennie. Are you ready for me to call out the questions?”

  “No, leave me alone for a few more minutes.”

  “But—”

  “I’m almost through.”

  He began speeding up his dream. He thought of himself running out of the back door of the house into the yard. It would be dark despite the full moon, and in a panic Lennie would dash straight into Godzilla’s big toe.

  He thought of himself falling back, gasping with fright. He would stagger around Godzilla’s instep, and plunge straight into Mothra’s wings.

  After narrowly escaping being fluttered to death, he would have a long, panic-stricken dash to Scorpo, the scorpion as big as a Boeing 747. Lennie would cringe there, too scared to move, awaiting the fatal sting.

  At that moment a voice would come on the loudspeaker concealed in the trees. “Lennie, Lennie, can you hear me?”

  He would be too frightened to recognize his own name. “No, no, not Scorpo!” he would be sobbing. “Anyone but Scorpo! I’m allergic to stings.”

  “Lennie, can you hear me? This is Dink McLeod, and I’m here with our Give It a Spin audience, and, Lennie, we have had hidden cameras on you ever since you got to the Haunted House.”

  “You’ve had cameras on me?”

  “That’s right, Lennie.”

  “The whole time?”

  “Lennie, we got the whooooooole thing.”

  He would realize then what a pitiful sight he must be. Here he was cringing on the ground, sobbing at Scorpo’s feet like an infant. He would raise his head. He would give a shaky laugh. He would dry his eyes on his shirt.

  “Did you have hidden cameras in the house too?” he would ask.

  “That’s right, Lennie.”

  “In the—er—sewing room too?” He would remember how he had come into the sewing room and tried to hide behind the mummy, which in the dark had looked like a ragged sewing form.

  “The sewing room too. We’re just sorry you didn’t go upstairs, Lennie, because upstairs we had the Son of Frankenstein, and the Blob, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon.”

  “Gee, I’m sorry I didn’t get up there too.”

  “And now, Lennie—”

  “Lennie!” It was his mom. “Bring the book out on the porch. These two schoolteachers from Wilmington checked in, and they say they’ll help you.”

  “In a minute.”

  “They haven’t got all night, Lennie.” She sounded impatient.

  “I’m on my way.”

  He sat with his eyes closed, speeding up his dream even more.

  “And now, Lennie, we have a car waiting to bring you back to our studio to collect over three thousand dollars in cash and merchandise. How does that sound to you?”

  “Real good, sir.”

  “And, more important, you get another spin of the Vacation Wheel.”

  “Oh, well, never mind about that, sir. I’ll just take my cash and—”

  “We’ll leave it up to the audience. How many want to see Lennie come in and take his cash and merchandise?”

  Silence.

  “How many want to see him spin the Vacation Wheel?”

  Wild applause.

  “See, the audience is all with you, so come on in, Lennie, and give it a spin!”

  “Lennie! These schoolteachers are leaving for Nashville at seven o’clock in the morning!”

  “Yes’m.”

  Lennie rose. He picked up his book. As he carried it through the motel office to the porch, he went over the strange words for the first time ... petiole ... stipule....

  Chapter Four

  Lennie leaned over his desk, pencil in hand, waiting for the Science tests to be passed out. He always got a worried feeling when he was waiting to take a test. Even if he knew everything there was to know about a subject—something that had never happened—he knew he would still be worried.

  He erased a mark on his desk and then penciled it back. He beat out a rhythm from The Addams Family, snapping his fingers when he got to the two clicks. He jiggled his leg. He turned to the boy sitting next to him and said, “Hey, Frankie, is the petiole the stem or is the stipule the stem? I’m mixed up.”

  Frankie shrugged.

  He turned around. “Letty Bond, is—”

  “The petiole is the stem,” she said in a bored voice, “the stipules are extra leaves.” She clicked open her ballpoint pen.

  Lennie turned back to the front of the room and raised his hand. “Miss Markham?”

  “Yes, Lennie.”

  “Can we take our tests in pencil or do we have to have a ballpoint pen?”

  “Pencil’s fine.”

  “But can we use pen if we want to?” He asked this on behalf of Letty Bond, who, he thought, might be growing anxious.

  “Either one is fine.”

  Lennie’s throat was dry. The tests were coming. He put down his pencil, wiped his hands on his shirt, and picked up his pencil. He took the tests from the girl in front of him, selected the top one, and passed the rest to Letty Bond.

  “Well, here we go,” he said with false liveliness. He glanced at Letty Bond. She had already written her name at the top of the page and was ready to take on the first question.

  Lennie turned back to his desk. The test was mimeographed in purple ink, and for a moment Lennie had a vision of another red 23 at the top of his. He let out his breath in one long unhappy sigh. He felt like writing the 23 there and saving Miss Markham the trouble.

  Glancing down the page, he decided to skip the first part, which was fill-in-the-blanks, and go on to the second part, which was a plant with all the parts to be labeled. He had done that last night for the schoolteachers—two times.

  Very carefully he printed the word “petiole” in the line opposite the stem. Then he looked at the word. It looked wrong. Quickly he turned his pencil and erased the word. He wet his lips. He wanted to turn around and ask Letty Bond if she was sure the petiole was the
stem. It seemed to him ... Nervously he printed “petiole” back in the same space.

  He printed in four more words, and then he got up. With his eyes on his paper, he went to the teacher’s desk. “Miss Markham?”

  “Yes, Lennie.”

  “Is that word spelled right?”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t give you any help after the tests are passed out.”

  “Oh.” He stood there for a moment staring down at the word he had written. “Stupile.” He had never felt more miserable in his life. He gave Miss Markham a weak smile. He said, “I feel kind of stupile myself today.”

  “I do believe, though,” Miss Markham went on kindly, smiling back at him, “you should look at what you’ve written very carefully. There may be something wrong.”

  “Thank you, Miss Markham.”

  As Lennie hurried back to his desk, Miss Markham said, “Remember, spelling counts, class.”

  Lennie erased the word and respelled it. He filled in two more blanks and erased one. His test now had a worked-over look. He had worn through the paper in two places. He thought that anyone who thinks school isn’t hard ought to take a look at this paper.

  He bent over his desk, wet his pencil point, and filled in another blank. He went on to the multiple-choice section and filled in three of those. He glanced again at the word “stepile.”

  “Time’s up, class,” Miss Markham said.

  Lennie looked up, startled. He turned to Frankie. “Are you through?”

  Frankie shrugged.

  “Are you through, Letty Bond?”

  “I’ve been through since ten thirty,” she said. He glanced at her desk. She was writing a note to someone named Anne. It started out: “Am I bored!”

  Lennie spun around and glanced in desperation at his test. Only half of the blanks were filled. Quickly he began filling in the rest, guessing, putting anything down so that Miss Markham would see a full, completed sheet when she got to his test. That was bound to make a better impression.

  “Lennie.” It was Miss Markham.

  “Yes’m.” He kept writing. He did not have time to look up.

  “I have to have your test now.”

  “Yes’m.”

  “The next class is coming in.”

  “One more word.” In desperation Lennie kept writing. Cammie Hagerdorn was standing by his desk, waiting to take Lennie’s seat. Lennie looked up.

  “Hard, huh?” Cammie said.

  “Hard for me.” Lennie sighed. He got up, dropped his test on Miss Markham’s desk, and went out into the hall. Shoulders sagging, he went slowly to World Studies.

  Chapter Five

  “How’d you do on your Science test?” His mom didn’t glance up as he came in the office door. She was looking at the guest register. She was going over the names carefully, as if she were hoping they would multiply like amoebas and fill the page.

  “Oh, all right.”

  “Really?” She looked up, smiling.

  “I think so.”

  “I knew you’d do well.” She leaned forward on her arms. “And it wasn’t the schoolteachers either —it was all that studying you did.”

  He glanced at the TV set. Farmer Fred was on. He was yelling, “Pull up your milking stools, boys and girls, and get set for Farmer Fred and his cartooooons!”

  Slowly Lennie started back to his room. The sounds of the first cartoon washed over him. It was Tweetie Bird and Sylvester. Tweetie Bird was crying, “I did! I taw a putty tat!”

  His mom called, “Oh, Lennie, would you take a roll-away bed to three-fourteen?”

  “Yes’m.”

  As he came back through the office, pushing the bed, he saw that Sylvester was sawing a hole in the ceiling over Tweetie Bird’s cage. Lennie walked more slowly.

  “The bed, Lennie.”

  “Just let me see him fall to the floor.”

  Sylvester finished his circle in the ceiling and fell with a crash to the floor. He pulled himself up in the shape of a round paper doll.

  “I’m going,” he said before his mother could remind him again.

  He pushed the bed out the door. There were three rooms occupied at the motel that afternoon. A farmer with a station wagon of roosters was in 310. A salesman was in 316. A family of five had just checked into 314.

  Lennie knocked at the door. “Here’s the bed,” he called out.

  “Come in.”

  Lennie opened the door and pushed the bed into the room. The television was on, and Lennie glanced quickly at it to see if he could catch the ending of the Sylvester cartoon.

  On the screen a man in a chefs suit was teaching the number three by juggling three pizzas. “Three,”he said.

  A girl of about five was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching the chef. Her mouth was open a little.

  “Cartoons are on Channel Seven,” Lennie said as he unfolded the bed.

  The chef took another pizza and started juggling. “Four,” he said.

  “Will that be all?” Lennie asked formally.

  The woman nodded, and Lennie turned to the door. The chef cried, “Five!” and the woman said, “See what else is on.”

  Lennie turned. He said, “We get Farmer Fred’s Cartoons, Gilligan’s Island, Bonanza, and Mike Douglas.”

  “Oh. Thank you.”

  “Sure.”

  Lennie started back to the office. His mother was sitting in one of the webbed chairs on the porch. It was her favorite time of the day—when she could sit out and chat with the guests. Now she was talking to the salesman in 316.

  “I delivered the bed,” Lennie said.

  She turned to him, her face bright. “Lennie, guess what this man sells?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Encyclopedias!”

  “Oh.”

  “Why, you should have been here last night.” She turned back to the salesman. “We had a regular school going out here, didn’t we, Lennie?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked at him. She said, “Listen, you go on in and watch TV if you like.”

  “I thought I wasn’t allowed.”

  “You deserve it for doing so well on your Science test.”

  “Oh, all right.”

  Lennie went into the office and sank down on the plastic sofa. He reached for the TV knob. He began to feel a little better. He said to himself, I think I’ll see what Hoss and Little Joe are up to. He leaned back on the plastic. It felt good and cool. He put his feet up on the plastic coffee table. He sighed with contentment.

  Chapter Six

  Lennie came out the back door of the motel. Here lay the broken Fairy Land figures—the dwarfs and fairies that had been out in front of the motel until they crumbled. Lennie stepped around an armless Red Riding Hood and a headless fairy godmother.

  He climbed down the hill behind the motel and crossed the field. It was a Saturday, a bright October morning, and he had finished his chores at the motel. Usually he sat in the office on Saturday mornings and watched cartoons, but this morning he felt the need to get away.

  The day before he had gotten his Science test back, and he had made a 59. The thought of that 59 still made him feel sick. Only 11 more points and he would have passed like everyone else.

  As soon as he had seen that 59, he had thought there should be some kind of patent medicine for moments like this. This had to be worse than acid stomach and sinus headache and low backache all rolled into one.

  “For that uncomfortable feeling that comes when you fail your Science test, take Fail-Ease, the tablet that eases failure and makes you less afraid to fail the next time.”

  He would be on the commercial, sitting right at his desk in Science class, pale and sick. He would drop two Fail-Ease tablets into a glass of water, drink, and a wonderful feeling of relief would come over him. The lines of tension in his face would relax. Color would come back to his cheeks.

  The teacher would walk back to his desk. She would lean down, smiling, and say, “I hope you’ve learned, Lennie,
that with Fail-Ease you never have to feel the pain of failure again.”

  “Yes,” he would say, “for relief from the nagging pain of failure—” and then he and Miss Markham would smile at each other and say together, “take Fail-Ease, the failure reliever that requires no prescription.”

  The thought had raised Lennie’s spirits for a moment. Then Miss Markham had rapped on her desk and said, “I want these tests signed by one of your parents, students, and returned on Monday.”

  Lennie had brought his test home and stuck it in his sock drawer. His mom had been too busy to ask about it—they had had seven rooms occupied at the motel that night—but sooner or later she would. And even if she didn’t, Lennie would have to get her to sign it.

  It was something he couldn’t bear to do. When he disappointed his mother with his school work, her mouth got as sad as a clown’s.

  “This is our big chance, Lennie,” she had been saying ever since she had inherited the Fairy Land Motel from her father. They had been heading for the motel on a Trailways bus the first time she had said it. “This is our big chance, Lennie. All a person can hope to get in this life is one good chance.”

  He had nodded, smiling at her. He had been as pleased about inheriting the motel as she was.

  “Now we can live like other people,” she had said. She had begun to hum. Her favorite songs were about home and going home. Now she was humming “Country Roads.” She stopped humming long enough to say, “You’ll go to school regularly and make good grades—no more of this moving around.”

  They looked like people who moved around, Lennie thought, both in jeans and T-shirts, his mother’s hair frizzled and his own uncut. But no more.

  “And I’ll make a success of the motel. I promise you that.”

  “And I’ll be a success in school,” he’d said.

  As he sat there on the bus, he saw himself as the end of a TV show. All his problems and troubles were over. The last crisis had been passed. He and his mom were heading for home and happiness. It was as perfect as the ending of a Lassie show. He saw himself smiling while the credits rolled past his beaming face.