Беверли Клири - Dear Mr. Henshaw / Дорогой мистер Хеншоу. 7-8 классы

My story is about a giant man who drives a big truck, like the one my Dad drives. The man is made of wax, and every time he crosses the desert, he melts a little. He makes so many trips and melts so much he finally can’t drive the truck anymore. That is all that I have now. What should I do next?

The boys in my class who are writing about monsters kill all the bad guys on the last page. This ending doesn’t seem right to me. I don’t know why.

Please help.

P.S. Before I started writing the story, I wrote in my diary almost every day.

Dear Mr. Henshaw,

Thank you for answering my letter. I was surprised that you had trouble writing stories when you were my age. I think you are right. Maybe I am not ready to write a story. I understand what you mean. A character in a story should solve a problem or change in some way. I can see that a wax man who melts won’t be there to solve anything and melting isn’t the change you mean. I think somebody could make candles out of him on the last page. That would change him of course, but that is not the ending I want.

I asked Miss Martinez if I had to write a story for Young Writers, and she said I could write a poem or a description.

P.S. I bought a copy of Ways to Amuse a Dog at a sale. I hope you don’t mind.

I am not writing my diary because of working on my story and writing to Mr. Henshaw (really, not just pretend). I also bought a new notebook because I had finished the first one.

That same day I bought a used black lunchbox in the thrift shop down the street and started bringing my lunch in it. The kids were surprised, but nobody made fun of me, because a black lunchbox isn’t the same as one of those square boxes covered with colorful stickers that younger children have. Some boys asked if the box was my Dad’s. I just smiled and said, “Where do you think I got it?” The next day my salami was gone, but I expected that. I’ll get that thief. I’ll make him really sorry that he ate all the best things in my lunch.

Next I went to the library for books on batteries. I got some easy books on electricity, really easy. I never thought about batteries before. All I know is that when you want to use a flashlight, the battery is usually dead.

I finally stopped writing my story about the giant wax man, which was really stupid. I wanted to write a poem about butterflies for Young Writers because a poem can be short, but it is hard to think about butterflies and burglar alarms at the same time, so I studied electricity books instead. The books didn’t say how to make an alarm in a lunchbox, but I learned a lot about batteries, switches and wires, so I think I can do it myself.

Back to the poem tonight. The only rhyme I can think of for “butterfly” is “flutter by.” I can think of rhymes like “trees” and “breeze” which are very boring, and then I think of “wheeze” and “sneeze.” A poem about butterflies wheezing and sneezing seems silly, and anyway some girls are already writing poems about monarch butterflies that flutter by.

Sometimes I start a letter to Dad to thank him for the twenty dollars, but I can’t finish it. I don’t know why.

Today I took my lunchbox and Dad’s twenty dollars to the hardware store and looked around. I found a switch, a little battery and a doorbell. While I was looking around for the wire, a man asked if he could help me. He was a nice old gentleman who said, “What are you planning to make, son?” Son . He called me son, and my Dad calls me kid. I didn’t want to tell the man, but when he looked at the things I was holding, he smiled and said, “Trouble with your lunch, right?” I nodded and said, “I’m trying to make a burglar alarm.”

He said, “That’s what I guessed. I had workmen in here with the same problem.”

He said that I needed another battery and gave me some tips. After I paid for the things and was leaving, he said, “Good luck, son.”

I ran home with all the things I bought. First I made a sign on my door that said:

KEEP OUT

MOM

THAT MEANS YOU

Then I went to work to connect one wire from the battery to the switch and another to the doorbell. It took some time to do it right. Then I fixed the battery and the switch in one corner of the lunchbox and the doorbell in another. I closed the box just enough so I could put my hand inside and push the button on the switch. Then I took my hand out and closed the box.

When I opened the box, my burglar alarm worked! That bell inside the box was ringing so loudly that Mom came to my door. “Leigh, what is going on in there?” she shouted.

I let her in and showed her my burglar alarm. She laughed and said that it was a great invention.

I can’t wait until Monday.

Today Mom packed my lunch, and we tried the alarm to see if it still worked. It did, good and loud. When I came to school, Mr. Fridley said, “Nice to see you smiling, Leigh. You should do it more often.”

I put my lunchbox behind the partition and waited. I waited all morning for the alarm to go off. Miss Martinez asked if I had my mind on my work. I pretended I did, but all the time I was really waiting for my alarm to go off so I could run back behind the partition and catch the thief. When nothing happened, I began to worry. Maybe something broke on the way to school.

Lunchtime came. Still nothing happened. We all took our lunches and went to the cafeteria. When I put my box on the table in front of me, I understood that I had a problem, a big problem. If I opened the box now, the alarm might go off.

“Why aren’t you eating?” Barry asked me.

Everybody at the table looked at me. I wanted to say that I wasn’t hungry, but I was. I wanted to take my lunchbox out into the hall to open, but even there I couldn’t open it quietly. Finally I held my breath and I opened the box.

Wow! My alarm went off! It was so loud that everyone in the cafeteria looked around. I looked up and saw Mr. Fridley standing by the garbage can smiling at me. Then I turned the alarm off.

Suddenly everybody seemed to notice me. Even the principal came to look at my lunchbox. He said, “That’s a great invention you have there.”

“Thanks,” I said, happy that the principal liked my alarm.

Some teachers came to see what was going on, so I had to show again how my alarm worked. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who had problems with the lunchbox, because all the kids said that they wanted alarms, too. Barry said that he wanted an alarm like that on the door of his room at home. I began to feel like a hero. Maybe I’m not so medium after all.

But one thing bothers me. I still don’t know who the lunch thief was.

Today Barry asked me to come home with him to see if I could help him make a burglar alarm for his room because he has little sisters who take his stuff.

Barry lives in a big old house that is cheerful and messy with many little girls around. Barry didn’t have the right batteries, so we just looked at the models that he puts together.

I still don’t know what to write for Young Writers, but I was feeling so good that I finally wrote to Dad to thank him for the twenty dollars because I had found a good use for it even if I couldn’t save it to buy a typewriter. I didn’t say much.

I wonder if Dad will marry the pizza boy and his mother. I worry about that a lot.

This week some more kids came to school with lunchboxes with burglar alarms. At lunchtime, our cafeteria rang with the sound of burglar alarms. This didn’t last very long, and soon I didn’t even set my alarm. Nobody stole anything from my lunchbox anymore.

I never knew who the thief was, and now I am glad about it. If he had been caught, he would have been in trouble, big trouble. Maybe he was just somebody whose mother packed bad lunches. Or maybe he packed his own lunches and there was never anything good in the house to put in them.

I’m not saying that stealing from lunchboxes is right. I am saying that I’m glad I don’t know who the thief was, because I have to go to school with him.

Tonight I was looking at a piece of paper and trying to think of something to write for Young Writers when the phone rang. Mom told me to answer because she was washing her hair.

It was Dad. I felt sick, the way I always do when I hear his voice. “How’re you doing, kid?” he asked.

“Fine,” I said, thinking about my burglar alarm. “Great.”

“I got your letter,” he said.

“That’s good,” I said. I was so surprised by his call that I couldn’t think of anything to say. Then I asked, “Have you found another dog to take Bandit’s place?” I think what I really meant was, Have you found another boy to take my place?

“No, but I ask about him on my CB,” Dad told me. “He may be found.”

“I hope so.” This conversation was going nowhere. I really didn’t know what to say to my father. It was a shame.

Then Dad surprised me. He asked, “Do you miss your old Dad?”

I had to think a minute. I surely missed him, but I couldn’t say it. My silence bothered him because he asked, “Are you still there?”

“Sure, Dad, I miss you,” I told him. It was true, but not as true as it had been some time ago. I still wanted him to drive to our house in his big truck, but now I knew I couldn’t hope for it.

“Sorry I don’t visit you more often,” he said. “Is your mother around?”

“I’ll see,” I said. By then she was standing by the phone with her hair wet and a towel. She shook her head, because she didn’t want to talk to Dad.

“She’s washing her hair,” I said.

“Tell her that I’ll send your support payment next week,” he said. “Bye, kid. Keep your nose clean.”

“Bye, Dad,” I answered. “Drive carefully.” I guess he’ll never learn that my name is Leigh and that my nose is clean. Maybe he thinks that I’ll never learn that he drives carefully. He doesn’t really. He’s a good driver, but he speeds when he can. All truckers do.

After that I couldn’t think about Young Writers, so I took Ways to Amuse a Dog and read it again. I read harder books now, but I still feel good when I read that book. I wonder where Mr. Henshaw is.

Today is Saturday, so this morning I walked to the butterfly trees again. The grove was quiet and peaceful, and because the sun was shining, I stood there a long time, looking at the orange butterflies flying through the gray and green leaves and listening to the sound of the waves on the rocks. There aren’t as many butterflies now. Maybe they are going north for the summer. I thought I could write about them in prose, but on the way home I started thinking about Dad and one time when he took me along when he was hauling grapes to a winery and what a great day it had been.

Yesterday Miss Neely, the librarian, asked if I had written anything for the Young Writers’ Yearbook, because all writing should be handed in by tomorrow. When I told her I hadn’t, she said that I still had twenty-four hours to do it. So I did, because I really would like to meet a Famous Author. My story about the giant wax man went into the wastebasket. Next I tried to start a story called The Great Lunchbox Mystery , but I couldn’t make it into a story because I don’t know who the thief was, and I don’t want to know.