Dogs Don't Tell Jokes (6 page)

“What are you talking about?” protested Ira. “The only reason I’m even offering the deal is, I already have four Kirby Pucketts.”

Gary laughed.

They all looked at him.

“What’s the matter?” asked Ira. “Don’t you think it’s fair?”

That had nothing to do with it. He just thought Kirby Puckett was a funny name. He
thought of a joke about it being foul, not fair, but kept it to himself.

It felt good to not tell a joke, for once.

“What do you think, Goon?” asked Michael (or maybe Steve). “Should I do it?”

Gary shrugged. “Um …”

“You’re not going to listen to Goon, are you?” asked Steve (or maybe Michael).

“Sure. Whatever he says—I’ll do the opposite!”

They all laughed.

“So what do you think, Goon?”

“Um …”

He was saved by the bell.

“Well, gotta go,” said Gary. “See you later.”

He tried hanging out with different groups of people during recess and lunch. He even sat and listened to Janis Carr, Vicki Mathews, and Marsha Posey talk about giving each other permanents. Finally Vicki turned and demanded, “What are you doing here?”

He shrugged. He couldn’t think of anything to say, except a joke—“if you really want your permanents to be permanent, you should use concrete instead of hair spray”—but he kept it to himself.

He might as well have told them a joke because when he walked away, he heard them all laughing at him.

“Hey, Joe!” he shouted as he ran out onto the football field.

Joe was talking to Zack, but turned and smiled at Gary. “Hey, what’s happ’nin’, Goon?”

Gary shrugged and smiled.

Joe continued his conversation with Zack.

“So, how about throwing me a pass today?” said Gary. “No one ever guards me.”

“That’s because center’s not eligible,” said Zack. He and Joe laughed.

Joe patted Gary on the back. “You’re doing a great job hiking the ball. Keep it up.”

“Okay, Joe.”

The game started. After each play, Gary was the first one back in the huddle with Joe. “Good pass, Joe,” he said. Or, “Nice run.” Or, “That would have been a touchdown if he hadn’t tipped it.”

Joe kept having to move around him so he could talk to the other members of the team.

“So what are you going to call this time, pass
or run?” asked Gary. “How about a triple reverse?”

“Back off,” said Joe. “I’ll call the plays,”

“Sure, Joe. I understand. I was only trying to help.”

Joe put his hands in front of him, almost as if he was going to push Gary out of the way. “If you really want to help, the best thing you can do is just keep out of my face. Okay?”

“Okay, Joe.”

It got worse as the week wore on.

“I don’t like being called Goon anymore,” he told Matt Hughes.

“What, Goon?” asked Matt.

“Just call me Gary. Not Goon.”

“Okay, Goon,” said Matt.

“I said—”

“I heard you, Goon. I won’t call you Goon anymore. Okay, Goon?”

“How about Blubberhead?” asked Paul.

“Lard Butt?” suggested Ryan.

He shrugged and walked away.

He wasn’t exactly surprised. He knew he didn’t have any friends. It was just that he’d
never quite realized before that if he didn’t go up to people and tell them a joke, no one ever spoke to him. No one even said “Hi, Goon” to him in the hall.

But he’d made a deal with his parents, and he kept to it. He remembered a poem from a book he’d read when he was a little kid.

He told it to himself whenever he was feeling especially depressed, and it always managed to cheer him up a little bit.

After school, alone in his room, he was happy—making up jokes. It seemed the more miserable he was at school, the funnier the jokes. It was like the jokes were building up inside him all day long, bursting to get out. Like Rumpelstiltskin, that wretched soul who spun straw into gold, every evening Gary Boone spun his misery into humor.

He often made up jokes in the shower. He’d stay in there until all the hot water was gone, and then suddenly have to quickly wash himself under the freezing spray.

He never decided beforehand what his jokes would be about. He’d just start talking, and out they’d pop.

Wednesday was October 31, Halloween. He might have guessed he would make up jokes about ghosts or witches, but instead, on Halloween night he made up a Christmas joke. He thought it was his funniest joke yet, but then again, they were all hilarious.

He had no doubt he would win the talent show.

“Either that, or I’ll totally flip out and turn into some weirdo or something. Just sit in a corner and pick my nose all day.” He laughed. “Or maybe I’ll shave my head, get a machine gun, and blow away half the school. Ha. Ha.”

As they bury the dead the newsmen try to figure out why a young lad, only twelve years old, would do such a horrible thing
.

“He seemed harmless,” says a classmate
.

“He didn’t have a lot of friends. He kept to himself.
”

“He didn’t like baseball cards.
”

“He liked to tell jokes. I guess we should have laughed.
”

“I guess we should have laughed,” repeats the TV newsman, in a serious and ominous voice
.

Even Gary had to stop and wonder about himself for a moment after that one.

“Do you feel like an egg this morning?” his mother asked him Friday morning when he came down for breakfast.

He looked at her curiously. Was she testing him?

“No thanks,” he said. “I’ll have cereal.”

On his way to school, he suddenly stopped right in the crosswalk in the middle of the street in front of Floyd Hicks Junior High. He looked at the two-story building, the kids in the schoolyard, the buses in the parking lot. Until he stopped telling jokes, he’d never realized just how much he hated school.

A car honked at him.

He didn’t move.

Another car sped around him.

Why’d the Goon cross the road? he wondered.

“I don’t have a dog, but I’ve always wanted one. So I got a goldfish. His name’s Rover.

“I’ve taught him to fetch a stick. You know how some people throw sticks in the water for their dogs to chase. I throw a stick out of the water for Rover to chase.”

Gary stepped down from on top of his chair.

At first he thought a fish named Rover was a great idea, but now he couldn’t think of any more jokes. That was okay. That happened. He just had to go on to something else. Maybe a fish joke would pop into his head later. Maybe when he was sleeping. Sometimes when he woke up in the morning, he’d suddenly think of a new punch line for a joke he had started the night before.

He continued walking around his room. “Did I tell you about my father? He’s very handy around the house. Always fixing things. Yesterday he hooked up a new VCR. He also put in a garage door opener. It all works great. Except every time you push the button on the remote control to change the channel—the garage door opens.

“Last week he fixed the toilet and installed
a new light switch in the bathroom. Now if you want to flush the toilet, you have to flick the light switch. And if you want to turn on the light, you have to push the lever on the toilet.

“I have a sister named Sally. Everyone calls her Saloon. She’s disgusting, although I guess I shouldn’t say bad things about her.” Gary put his hand over his heart. “She’s in the hospital.

“She needs a tongue transplant.

“It’s ’cause she never stops talking. She’s sixteen years old and this will be her third tongue!

“She was talking on the phone to one of her boyfriends. She was in the middle of telling him how much she loved him, when her tongue flapped out of her mouth and onto the floor.

“I was there, sitting at the kitchen counter having a snack. It was disgusting. Not her tongue. I mean my sister saying, ‘I love you, sweetheart,’ right there on the kitchen phone while I was trying to eat.

“ ’Course, without her tongue it didn’t sound like, ‘I love you sweetheart.’ It sounded more like, ‘I uv you, wee-har.’

“Her boyfriend probably didn’t even notice.
They’re always talking baby talk to each other. I told you she was disgusting.

“Meanwhile, the tongue flapped around on the floor for a while, like a fish out of water, until it finally stopped and lay still.

“My dad came in to get a glass of milk and stepped right on it.

“Have any of you ever stepped on a tongue?

“No? Well, it’s like a banana peel, except thicker and more slippery. My dad desperately tried to hold on to the quart of milk as he went flying.”

No, not quart of milk. Half gallon. “Gallon of milk.” The more milk, the funnier.

“Meanwhile, my sister just went right on talking as she glared angrily at my father, who was lying on the floor in a pool of milk. Finally she held the phone aside and said, ‘I’m trying to talk on the phone, if you don’t mind!’ Except it sounded like, ‘I’m rying oo auk ah uh pho, if you o mi!’

“We tried to pick up the tongue, to show it to her, but it kept slipping through our fingers.

“Have any of you ever tried to pick up a tongue after it’s been covered in milk?

“No? Well, it’s like soap in a bathtub. Just
when you think you have it, it squishes out of your hand and goes shooting across the room.

“My sister finally hung up. As she walked across the kitchen floor I thought she was going to step on it too.

“ ‘Watch your tongue!’ said my father.

“She just gave him a dirty look, then bent down and picked it up. She had no problem picking it up because she has long fingernails.

“Then she slapped me across the face with it. She just kept hitting me, over and over again. She gave me a real tongue-lashing.

“My mother came in and said, ‘Hold your tongue, young lady.’

“So now she’s in the hospital, waiting for a suitable donor. This time she says she wants a giraffe tongue. She heard those are the best for kissing.

“Her old tongue is on my dad’s desk, stapled to his blotter. He keeps it moist and uses it for wetting stamps and envelopes.”

Gary knocked on the door to Angeline’s apartment. He was wearing a hat.

Gus answered the door.

“Hey, Gus, what’s cookin’?” said Gary.

“Mashed potatoes and gravy,” said Gus.

Gus was also wearing a hat.

Gus was probably older than Angeline’s father, but in a lot of ways he seemed more like a kid than an adult. He was Abel’s partner. Sometimes Gus drove the garbage truck while Abel picked up the garbage, but usually it was the other way around because Gus liked to look for what he called buried treasure.

Gus was wearing an Australian safari hat
with a camouflage band. Gary was wearing a black derby.

“Nice hat,” said Gus.

“Thanks,” said Gary. “I like yours, too.”

“Would you believe it?” asked Gus. “Someone actually threw it in the trash.”

“You’re lucky!” Gary said. “I paid three bucks for mine!”

Gary had been to Gus’s house once. It was full of incredible stuff that other people had thrown away.

Angeline came out of the bathroom wearing a pink cowgirl hat with little gold tassels dangling from the brim. “What’s cookin’, Gary?” she asked.

“Mashed potatoes and gravy.”

Abel had on a black beret.

They all went to the park and played croquet.

It was Gus’s croquet set. Just because one of the mallets was broken and a few of the wickets were missing, someone had actually thrown it in the trash. New wickets had since been made out of wire hangers (also thrown away), and if there weren’t enough mallets to go around, they simply shared.

The first time they played, Gus had to teach
everyone the rules. He said, “The first rule of croquet is, you have to wear a hat.” He had brought hats for everyone.

Now they all had their own hats. Gary stopped at a thrift store at least once a week to check out the hats. He was constantly adding to his collection.

They each had their own peculiar styles of playing croquet too. Gus would just wallop the ball as hard as he could on every shot, no matter how close he was to the wicket—although he hardly ever aimed for a wicket. When you play croquet, you usually aim either for a wicket or for somebody else’s ball. Gus almost always tried to hit somebody else.

Angeline would hold her mallet high above one shoulder and then swing down at the ball, like a pendulum, so that when she finished, the mallet would be high above the other shoulder. She alternated, one time hitting the ball from the right side, the next time from the left. The most important thing seemed to be not breaking the rhythm of the pendulum.

“I don’t see how you can swing like that,” said Gary, “and still always hit the ball so straight.”

Angeline shrugged. “You have to be the ball,” she explained.

“Huh?” said Gary.

“You’re being the mallet,” she said. “You have to try to be the ball.”

Abel would walk around like a golfer, studying the angles and the slope of the field. He thought about each shot a long time, and then finally took the shot. More times than not, he’d
just
miss the wicket. Sometimes he’d aim for someone else’s ball, but never his daughter’s.

Gary never held the mallet the same way twice. Sometimes he held it way down on the shaft, other times high up; sometimes with his left hand on top of his right, sometimes reversed. Sometimes he’d swing the mallet through his legs, other times off to the side. He once tried Angeline’s method, but missed the ball entirely.

He didn’t know how to “be the ball.” He had a hard enough time “being the mallet,” whatever that was supposed to mean.

“Okay, Gary,” said Gus. “I think I got you this time. Why’d Mrs. Snitzberry tiptoe past the medicine cabinet?”