Henry Huggins (4 page)

“Golly,” said Henry. “A penny apiece! How many do you want?”

“As many as you can catch. If I can't use them, some of the other men can.” He handed Henry the jar and the flashlight, got into his car, and drove away.

A penny apiece! There were one hundred pennies in a dollar, so it would take one thousand three hundred and ninety-five worms to pay for the football. And forty-one worms for the tax!

Henry went around the rosebushes and tiptoed across the grass. Because of the Doggie-B-Gone, Ribsy stayed on his own side of the rosebushes. Henry turned on the flashlight and sure enough, there on the grass was the end of a big fat worm. But when Henry bent to pick it up, it was gone.

He tiptoed farther across the grass and turned on the light again. This time he moved faster. He grabbed the end of the cold slippery worm. The other end was already in the ground. Henry pulled and the worm pulled. The worm stretched. It grew longer and thinner until it snapped out of Henry's hand and disappeared into the ground.

“Ugh!” said Henry.

The next time he moved still faster. He pounced on the worm before either end had a chance to get in the ground. He caught it! That's one penny, he thought.

After that it was easier. He caught most of the worms on the first pounce. Pretty soon he had caught sixty-two worms. Then he discovered he was running out of worms. Either he had caught all of Mr. Grumbie's worms or they had felt him walking around on the ground and had retired for the night. And he hadn't earned enough to pay for the football.

Just as Henry was wondering where he could find more worms, Mr. Grumbie came back from the store. “I caught sixty-two worms for you,” said Henry.

“Sixty-two! That's great!” Mr. Grumbie reached into his pants pocket and brought out a handful of change. He picked out a fifty-cent piece, a dime, and two pennies and gave them to Henry.

“Thank you,” said Henry politely. He wished he had caught more worms.

Mr. Grumbie started to go into the house and then stopped. “Say, Shorty,” he said to Henry, who was going back through the rosebushes, “I'll tell you what you can do. Sunday morning I'm going fishing with a bunch of men from my lodge. Quite a few of us are going and we can use all the worms you can catch. Tomorrow night you get someone to help you and catch enough for all of us.”

“Sure,” said Henry eagerly. “I'll catch hundreds of worms for you.”

“Swell! We can use them,” answered Mr. Grumbie as he went into the house.

Henry sat down on his front steps again. Because he needed so much money, he knew he would have to catch all the worms himself. That meant he would need a lot of wet lawn. His mother would be pleased, even surprised, to have him water the lawn, but his lawn and the Grumbies' lawn wouldn't be enough. Maybe he could ask all the people on the street to water their yards Saturday evening. However, if he did that, Beezus and Robert and the other kids would ask what he was doing. Henry was afraid they would want to earn money catching worms, too. He knew Beezus would want to. She was the kind of girl who would like catching worms.

Henry sat on the steps wishing he had acres and acres of wet lawn. He thought and thought about millions of wet green blades of grass with big fat worms peeping out from under them. The park! Of course, that was it! It was only a few blocks away and because September had been unusually warm this year, the grass in the park was watered every day. If his mother would let him stay up later than nine o'clock, he knew he could catch enough worms to pay for the football.

Henry went into the living room where his mother was knitting an Argyle sock.

“Mom, could I stay up later tomorrow night?” Henry told his mother the whole story.

Mrs. Huggins put down the sock. “Henry,” she sighed, “how do you manage to get yourself into such messes?”

“Well, gee,” said Henry, “I didn't do anything. I just threw this football and…”

“Yes, you told me,” his mother interrupted. “Yes, you may stay up tomorrow night, but for goodness' sake, Henry, after this do be careful with other people's belongings.”

Saturday was an anxious day for Henry. He wanted to avoid Scooter, but he also wanted to go to the park to make sure the grass was being watered. Unfortunately, he had to pass Scooter's house to reach the park. He walked on the other side of the street, but Scooter was in his front yard tightening the chain on his bicycle.

He shook his fist at Henry and yelled, “You get me that ball or I'll fix you!”

“You and who else?” Henry yelled back and kept on going. When he reached the park he was relieved to hear the swish of the sprinklers and see water spraying over the grass. He would earn thirteen dollars and ninety-five cents before he went to bed that night.

That evening Henry didn't wait for dessert. He borrowed his father's flashlight and several old mayonnaise jars and ran down the hill to the park. It was a warm night and the tennis courts and swimming pool were floodlighted. It was only beginning to get dark, but Henry hoped it might be dark enough under the bushes to start catching worms. He couldn't afford to waste time.

He passed the playground where he heard the children's shouts and the clank and clang of the rings and swings. Henry didn't stop. He had work to do. He went to the edge of the park where there were no lights and turned on his flashlight. Sure enough, there in the grass under a bush was a night crawler. Henry nabbed it and put it into his jar. Then he caught another. He caught worm after worm. Four hundred thirty-one, four hundred thirty-two, four hundred thirty-three. Henry was tired of pouncing. Henry was tired of worms.

When the lights of the swimming pool went off, Henry was still working. By the time that the lights at the tennis courts went off, Henry was very, very tired of worms. But he kept on. When he had added the one thousand one hundred and third worm to his collection he heard someone calling, “Henry! Henry! Where are you?” It was his mother.

“Here I am.” As Henry stood up to rest his aching back, he saw his mother and father walking along the path.

“My goodness, Henry,” Mrs. Huggins exclaimed. “Haven't you caught those worms yet? You can't stay out in the park alone all night.”

“But Mom, I don't have enough worms to pay for Scooter's football. And I promised to get him a new one this week. I have one thousand one hundred and three worms and I need to catch one thousand three hundred and thirty-one altogether. I had some money saved and I earned some last night.”

“Let's see. He needs two hundred and twenty-eight more. It shouldn't take long to catch them,” Mr. Huggins said to Mrs. Huggins. “After all, he promised. Let's help him.”

So Henry and his mother and father bent and pounced together. Henry felt a little uncomfortable to see his mother catching worms, but he was very, very glad when the one thousand three hundred and thirty-first worm was in the jar. He took his jars of worms to Mr. Grumbie, who paid him thirteen dollars and thirty-one cents. As Henry watched him turn the night crawlers into a box of dirt so they would live until Sunday, he thought he never wanted to see another worm.

He felt the money in his pocket. “I guess this ought to take care of old Scooter,” he said and, wishing he could spend it on a football for himself, he went home to bed.

Sunday morning Henry lay on his stomach on the living-room floor reading the funny papers. Usually he woke up early and read the funnies before his mother and father were awake, but this morning he was so tired from catching worms that he slept later than usual.

The doorbell rang and Mr. Huggins, who was reading the sports section and drinking coffee, put down his paper and answered the door.

Henry heard a strange man ask, “Excuse me, could you tell me who owns this football?”

Henry didn't wait for his father to answer. He ran to the door.

The man was holding Scooter's real cowhide football, stitched with nylon thread and laced with buckskin thongs!

“Golly!” said Henry. “That's the football I lost for Scooter McCarthy.”

The man handed it to Henry. “I'm sorry I couldn't stop when the ball landed in my car. I had to take my wife to the hospital in a hurry. I would have returned it sooner, but I couldn't leave the kids.”

“That's OK,” said Henry. “Gee, thanks for bringing it back.”

When the man had gone, Henry showed the football to his father. “See, Dad,” he said, “this is the kind of football I'm going to buy with my night crawler money.” Then he tucked the football under his arm as if he were running ninety yards for a touchdown and sprinted down the street to Scooter's house.

H
enry was glad he sat in the row by the windows in Room Four, because he could watch for snowflakes. Even though his father said they would probably have a green Christmas this year, Henry still hoped for snow. He was pretty sure the package hidden behind some boxes in the garage was the sled he wanted, a real Flexible Flyer.

While he sat at his desk looking out at the clouds for signs of snow, he was listening to Miss Roop talk about the Christmas operetta and thinking he had taken part in enough school plays for one semester.

In September he had been Second Indian in a play for the Westward Expansion Unit. That hadn't been too bad. He had stuck an old feather out of a duster in his hair and worn an auto robe his mother let him take to school. It was an easy part, because all he had to say was “Ugh!” First Indian and Third Indian also said “Ugh!” It really hadn't mattered which Indian said “Ugh!” Once all three said it at the same time.

Then in November Robert came down with mumps just before Book Week. At the last minute Henry had to wear a long cotton beard and read Robert's part, one of the seven dwarfs in a play called
Storyland Favorites Come to Life
. It was not a play that appealed to Henry, but at least he did not have to memorize any lines or do much practicing, because there wasn't time. During the performance he had to stop reading several times in order to take pieces of his beard out of his mouth.

His worst part had been in a Parent Teacher program for National Brush Your Teeth Week. Henry had been really disgusted that day. He had to wear his best trousers and a white shirt to school and he had to stay clean all day. Then he missed practicing with his football, because the meeting was after school. Worst of all, he had to stand up in front of all the mothers and teachers, bow, and recite:

The kids called him Sir Cuspidor for a long time after that.

Now Miss Roop was telling the class that the Christmas operetta was called
A Visit to Santa Claus
. It was about a mother and father and their two children who visited Santa Claus at the North Pole on Christmas Eve. Henry thought it was a dumb play. In the end it turned out that the little boy had dreamed the whole thing. Henry disliked stories that ended by being someone's dream.

Miss Roop said, “Since the whole school is giving the operetta, there won't be parts for everyone in our room.”

That's good, thought Henry. He slid way down in his seat so Miss Roop wouldn't notice him when she assigned parts.

Miss Roop continued. “Richard, Arthur, Ralph, and David will be four of Santa Claus's reindeer. The other four will be chosen from Room Five.” So far Henry was safe! He stayed down in his seat just to be sure. “Mary Jane, you are to have the part of the Dancing Doll. Beezus—uh, I mean Beatrice, you will be the Rag Doll.” Girls' parts. Henry felt a little safer. “Robert, you will be the Big Brown Dog,” Miss Roop went on. All the children laughed.

“Gr-r-r-r. Arf! Arf!” said Robert. The children laughed again.

When Miss Roop started to hand out the parts, Henry decided she had come to the end of the list. He sat up straight in his seat and looked out of the window at the sky. It looked darker. There might be snow before Christmas after all. He was glad he wouldn't have to stay in after school to rehearse
A Visit to Santa Claus
. He wanted to make snowmen and throw snowballs, since, of course, his mother and father would not give him the Flexible Flyer until Christmas. When he had his sled, he wanted to coast on the Thirty-third Street hill.

Miss Roop, holding one part in her hand, stood in front of the class again and smiled in Henry's direction. Just in case she was smiling at him, Henry quickly slid down in his seat again.

She
was
smiling at him. She said, “And the best part of all goes to Henry Huggins. Henry, you are the shortest boy in Room Four, so you are to have the part of Timmy, the little boy who dreams the whole story.” The class shouted with laughter.

A little boy! It was worse than anything Henry had imagined. He could never live down the part of a little boy! Sir Cuspid had been bad enough, but a little boy—the kids would never stop teasing him. “Miss Roop,” he said desperately, “there're lots of littler kids in the lower grades. Couldn't one of them have the part?”

“No, Henry. All the second and third grade boys are needed for the chorus of polar bears and the first grade boys are too little to learn so many lines.” She handed Henry his part. So many carbons had been typed at one time that the thin paper was almost too blurry to read.

Henry made out:

Henry groaned. It was even worse than he had expected. Pajamas! Good-night kiss! Did they think he was going to stand up there on the stage in front of all the girls in the school in his pajamas? And be kissed by some dumb old eighth grade girl who was supposed to be his mother? It was horrible even to think about.

He had to find a way out! Already Robert was whispering across the aisle, “Hey, Little Boy!”

Henry ignored him. Maybe if he did stretching exercises for a whole hour every morning he would grow fast enough to outgrow the part. No, that wouldn't work. There wasn't time. He would have to think of something else.

During the rest of the afternoon Henry had trouble keeping his mind on Social Studies. He was too busy trying to find a way out of playing Timmy, the Little Boy. When the last bell rang, he grabbed his beanie and raincoat from the cloakroom. He was first out of Room Four and first out of the school building.

Ribs was waiting under the fir tree out of the rain. “Come on, Ribsy,” Henry yelled, “let's keep ahead of the rest of the kids!”

But he wasn't quite fast enough. Beezus and Robert and Scooter were right behind him. “Hi there, Timmy!” they yelled. “How's the Little Boy?” Then they began to chant, “Henry is a Little Boy! Henry is a Little Boy!”

Henry slowed down. “Aw, shut up!” he yelled back. “You think you're smart, but you're not. You're just an old Rag Doll and a Brown Dog. And I'll bet Scooter is something dumb, too!”

“You wouldn't catch me being in any old operetta,” said Scooter loftily. “I'm on the stage crew. I get to pull the curtain and turn on the lights and paint the scenery and stuff.”

Mary Jane came skipping down the street, jumping across the puddles on the sidewalk. “Here comes the old Dancing Doll!” yelled Henry.

“Yes.” Mary Jane smiled proudly. “I'll wear my new ballet slippers and my pink taffeta party dress and have my hair curled.”

The other children were disappointed. They couldn't tease Mary Jane if she wanted to be a Dancing Doll. It gave Henry an idea. He waited until Scooter said, “I'll bet the Little Boy will look real cute in his pajamas. Are you going to wear the kind with feet in them, Little Boy?”

“Aw, you're just jealous because you don't have an important part like I have. I have the most important part in the whole operetta!”

“Don't be funny!” Scooter laughed. “I wouldn't learn all those lines and run around in front of a bunch of people in my pajamas for a million trillion dollars!”

It was a good idea but it didn't work. Henry would have to think of something else. Maybe he could pretend to be sick. No, that wouldn't do. His mother would make him go to bed and if it did happen to snow, he would have to stay in the house while all the other children were out sliding on the Thirty-third Street hill.

By the time Henry reached his house on Klickitat Street, he decided to say nothing about the operetta to his mother and father until he could work things out. He said hello to his mother, who was writing a letter on the typewriter, and then he went into the kitchen to fix himself a snack of peanut butter, jam, and pickle relish on graham crackers. He spread a cracker with peanut butter and gave it to Ribsy. Then he leaned against the refrigerator to munch and think.

Tap-tap-tap went the typewriter. Henry fixed himself another cracker. Tap-tap-tap. He heard his mother pull the sheet of paper out of the machine. Then he heard her go into the bedroom. The typewriter—that was it!

“Hey, Mom, can I use the typewriter?”

“
May
I use the typewriter.”

“May I use the typewriter?” asked Henry patiently.

“Yes, Henry, but don't pound too hard.”

Henry gulped down his graham cracker with peanut butter, jam, and pickle relish. He wiped his fingers on the seat of his jeans and went into the living room. There he sat down at the desk, took a sheet of paper from the drawer, and put it into the typewriter. He thought a while and then began to type. He didn't make the typewriter go tap-tap-tap the way his mother did. He made only one tap at a time and then, after a long pause while he looked for the right letter, he made another tap. He had to remind himself to push the extra key to make capital letters.

Henry worked a long time. Fortunately his mother did not pay any attention to his typing. Tap. Tap. Tap. At last it was finished. Henry pulled the paper out of the typewriter and read:

Somehow it didn't look the way he had thought it would. The capitals were not in the right places. He knew
much
wasn't spelled with a
j
or
yours
with a
z
. His fingers had just put themselves on the wrong keys. Henry tore his letter into little pieces and threw them in the fireplace. He ran another piece of paper into the typewriter and started again. Tap. Tap. Tap. When the second letter was finished, it read:

Henry studied it. Those capitals again. He pushed the thing too soon or not soon enough. And who ever heard of a word like
ezcude?
Or
doat?
His fingers just didn't hit the right keys. No, the letter was not a finished product. Henry tore this one up, too, and threw it in the fireplace. He would have to think of something else.

When rehearsals started after school the next day, Henry still had not thought of a way out.

Miss Roop said that today the children would read their parts, but by next week they must have them memorized. “Henry, you and Alice are on the stage first,” she directed. Alice was the eighth grade girl who was to play the part of Timmy's mother. “Come on, Henry, don't waste time.”