A Week in the Woods (4 page)

Being from such a rich family didn't make Mark feel like he was any better than the other kids at Hardy Elementary School. Not better, just different. So he kept his distance. No sense pretending. Three and a half months, and he'd be gone.
It's not like Whitson's going to turn into my hometown or something,
he told himself. Mark knew that from the start. First this crummy little school, then summer camp, then Runyon Academy. Gone.

Apart from their new company over in Lebanon and him going to school at Runyon Academy, Mark knew there was another major reason his parents had bought the big old house outside Whitson. It was because his mom liked different places and new projects. At least, she liked them for a while. The three years in Scarsdale had been the longest time Mark had ever lived in one home.

Since his parents spent most of their time at meetings and conferences or entertaining business associates at the house in Palm Beach, Mark knew what would happen when he started at boarding school.
Once he got settled at Runyon, Mark knew that the house and the old barn and the four hundred acres in Whitson would stop being home. No one would even call it that. Mom and Dad would start calling it “the New Hampshire place.” It would become just another place to visit for a while, like their Santa Fe place and their London place and their Palm Beach place. And now their Scarsdale place.

* * *

As math class ended the bell rang, and Mark jumped in his seat. The girl next to him giggled, just as she had on Thursday. Mark felt his face start to get hot. Ten days, and that harsh, metallic ringing still startled him. He couldn't get used to it. And he didn't want to get used to it. He didn't want to get used to anything at this school.

The math teacher began scribbling Monday's homework assignment onto the chalkboard, and kids began copying it down.

Not Mark. He pushed his chair back, picked up his backpack, and walked out into the noisy hallway. He took a left and headed for Mr. Maxwell's room. One more class, and week number two would be over. And then there would be only fourteen more.

Mr. Maxwell had developed a set of rules during his years as a fifth-grade science teacher. These were not rules for the students. They were rules for himself.

For example, he had discovered The Five-Minute Rule:
IF YOU WANT YOUR STUDENTS TO GET EXCITED ABOUT SOMETHING, NEVER TALK ABOUT IT FOR LONGER THAN FIVE MINUTES AT ONE TIME. BREAK THIS RULE, AND THE STUDENTS WILL THINK THAT YOU
AND
YOUR TOPIC ARE BORING AND STUPID.

He had also formulated his famous Lost-Homework Rule:
WHEN A STUDENT CLAIMS THAT HIS OR HER HOMEWORK IS LOST, ARRANGE WITH THE STUDENT'S PARENTS FOR AN AFTER-SCHOOL HOMEWORK SEARCH. GO WITH THE STUDENT TO WHEREVER THE ASSIGNMENT WAS LOST, AND TRY TO FIND IT.

The first student to experience The Lost-Homework
Rule was a boy named Timmy Weston. Timmy had announced that he had lost his science homework somewhere in his room at home. So Mr. Maxwell had called and gotten permission from Mrs. Weston to drive Timmy home after school and help him with his homework hunt. Even though Timmy and Mr. Maxwell looked for almost an hour, they never did find the mysteriously missing assignment.

So was The Lost-Homework Rule useless? Not at all. Mr. Maxwell had only needed to use that rule once. Timmy never lost another assignment, and neither did any other kid—in
any
of Mr. Maxwell's classes . . .
and it had been that way for twelve years!

Every kid in town heard about what had happened to Timmy. It had become a Whitson legend. Every kid knew that if you told Mr. Maxwell that your dog ate your homework, Fido better have actually eaten it, because that teacher was nuts, and he would come to your house after school with a doggie stomach pump and help you look for it.

There was one rule that Mr. Maxwell put to good use every single week. He called it The Friday Rule, and it was very simple:
BE SURE TO SAVE YOUR MOST INTERESTING MATERIAL FOR FRIDAY AFTERNOONS.

Friday, February 27th, was no exception to this rule, and when his last period fifth-graders came thundering in, Mr. Maxwell was ready for them. This afternoon they were going to have a little fun with chemistry.

Strictly speaking, chemistry wasn't part of the fifth-grade science curriculum. But the state guidelines did say that science teachers should “. . . foster a child's natural curiosity.” Today Mr. Maxwell was going to do better than that. With the help of a little basic chemistry, he was to going to show his students that science could be interesting, sometimes amazing. And maybe even a little scary.

This particular Friday, Mr. Maxwell had an additional goal. Sure, he wanted to put on a good show so he could end the week on an upbeat. And, yes, if he kept everyone interested, that would take care of the usual Friday afternoon silliness.

But today what he really wanted was to hook that new boy, to get Mark Chelmsley to sit up and take notice, get the boy to feel like he was part of the class.

The kid certainly seemed like a slacker. And he acted like a spoiled rich kid, too. But Mr. Maxwell had noticed something else. A lot of the time, the boy looked sad. Two weeks, and he hadn't made even one friend. This year's fifth-graders were some of the nicest children he'd taught in a long time, so Mr. Maxwell didn't think it was their fault. Had to be Mark's fault. He was keeping himself cut off on purpose.

Mr. Maxwell liked a good challenge, and getting a kid like Mark to loosen up and get with the program, that was part of what he loved about teaching.

As the kids came in and settled down, Mr. Maxwell began laying out his safety equipment on the Wonderboard. That's what he called the small black-topped lab table he'd tossed into the back of his pickup when the regional high school got its new science equipment. The Wonderboard wasn't fancy. It didn't have a sink with running water or a shiny gas valve for a Bunsen burner. Still, when Mr. Maxwell dragged that little table to the front of the room, the kids all knew what it meant: show time!

The bell rang, and Mr. Maxwell put on his white lab coat, a gift from his sister. As he began to button it up, the room fell silent. Pausing dramatically, Mr. Maxwell swept his eyes across the audience, and then he began.

“In the late afternoon of May sixth of the year 1937, a crowd had begun to gather at the naval air station in a town called Lakehurst, New Jersey. The people and the reporters were waiting for something. They were waiting for an airship. This was not some blimp with Snoopy painted on the side. This was not a flying billboard to advertise tires or to take pictures at the Super Bowl. This was a huge, silver-gray airship that had traveled all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, all the way from Germany. It was nearly as long as three football fields, and it was taller than a fifteen-story building. Four one-thousand-horsepower engines with twenty-foot propellers pulled it forward
through the air. And the name of this grand airship was the
Hindenburg.
”

Mr. Maxwell paused and glanced around. Twenty-four pairs of eyes were glued to his face. One pair wasn't. Mark Chelmsley was looking out the window at the falling snow.
Still, he's listening,
thought Mr. Maxwell.
He doesn't have his head down on his desk like yesterday. He's got to be listening.

Mr. Maxwell continued. “At seven twenty-five someone shouted, ‘There it is!' And they were right. It was the
Hindenburg,
gliding in to tie up at the huge metal mooring tower. But something was wrong. In fact, several things were wrong. And I'm going to show you one of the main things that was terribly, terribly wrong that cloudy spring evening.”

“First I'll need to put on these special rubber gloves, and my safety glasses, and my plastic face mask. And I'll also need to ask those of you in the first row of desks to push back at least two feet—so that you'll be out of
danger.
”

The kids in the front scooted their chairs into the aisles and backed up.

From a shelf under the table Mr. Maxwell pulled out a stoppered glass bottle. Holding it up he said, “This liquid is called hydrochloric acid. This acid is not like the friendly acid that you find in a glass of orange juice. This acid is
extremely
dangerous. It will eat through metal; it will burn through cloth; it can cause
blindness; and it will even burn through flesh and bone!”

The kids in front pushed their chairs back a little farther.

Mr. Maxwell put the acid bottle down on the tabletop. Reaching below again, he pulled out a flask, lifted it up to eye level, and shook it. Little gray chunks rattled around inside the flask, making a sound like gravel in a soda bottle. Pointing at the flask, Mr. Maxwell said, “This flask contains small pieces of a metal with an odd name: zinc. That's Z-I-N-C. It's one of the elements from the periodic table. That means it's a pure substance, not mixed with anything else at all. It's a soft metal, and you've probably seen it before without knowing it. If you've ever seen a metal trash barrel, most of them are made from steel that's covered with a thin coat of zinc. The zinc keeps the steel from rusting. Now, watch what happens when I pour hydrochloric acid into the flask.”

He lifted the stopper out of the acid bottle, and then slowly poured enough acid into the flask to cover the gray bits of zinc.

After about ten seconds, Mr. Maxwell asked, “Can anyone see what's happening?”

In the front row Jenny Rogers raised her hand, and when Mr. Maxwell nodded at her she pointed at the flask and said, “Bubbles!”

“Exactly!” boomed Mr. Maxwell. “Bubbles!”

He stoppered the acid bottle, put it away, and then reached into the pocket of his lab coat and pulled out a silver-colored balloon. The end of the balloon had been pulled around a black rubber stopper with one hole through it. Quickly Mr. Maxwell pushed the rubber stopper into the opening of the flask and then stepped back so he could observe the flask and the class at the same time.

Mark Chelmsley was still looking out the window.

As the rest of the class watched in silence, the silver balloon began to get bigger. In fifteen seconds it was the size of a grapefruit, and in thirty seconds it was as big as a soccer ball. Then Mr. Maxwell pinched the neck of the balloon shut with his thumb and index finger, and pulled the stopper out of the flask. Still pinching the balloon tightly, he pulled the rubber stopper out of the end and then tied the balloon shut. Reaching again into the pocket of his lab coat, he pulled out a long piece of string. One end of the string had a loop tied in it and the other end was tied to a half-kilogram weight. Slipping the loop over the end of the balloon, he pulled the slipknot tight and then let go. Instantly the balloon rose into the air, pulling the string into a straight white line. Mr. Maxwell placed the weight on the tabletop and stepped to one side.

“Now, back to the
Hindenburg.
The airship weighed many, many tons, but it had no rocket engines or airplane wings to keep it up in the air. How did it
stay aloft? Look at this balloon and think. When you think you know, raise your hand.”

By the time five seconds had passed, every kid had a hand in the air—except for one. Mark was slumped in his chair—elbow on his desk, chin propped on one palm—staring at the floor.

It was time to try the direct approach. Mr. Maxwell looked past all those waving hands and said, “Mark? Any idea how the
Hindenburg
stayed aloft?”

Mark tilted his chin up until his eyes met Mr. Maxwell's. Then he shrugged and looked away.

Mr. Maxwell smiled and said, “You must at least have an idea, Mark.”

Nothing. Mark kept his face toward the window.

Mr. Maxwell didn't let up. “C'mon, Mark. Make a guess.”

Mark turned and put both his hands on his desk. Looking right at Mr. Maxwell, he said, “Okay. Sure. Here's my guess. The airship stayed up because it was filled with a gas that was lighter than air. It was filled with hydrogen, same as that balloon, and you made the gas because there was a reaction between the acid and the zinc, and the bubbles were hydrogen gas. And your balloon is probably going to burn up with a big noise, because I bet that's what happened to the
Hindenburg.
I bet the hydrogen inside it blew up and a bunch of the passengers got killed.”

For a second or two Mr. Maxwell didn't know how
to react. Mark had just spoiled the best part of the demonstration. Thoughts swirled through his mind and Mr. Maxwell felt his anger stir. It was so clear Mark had done it on purpose. He had given away all the secrets and ruined the big finish of the Friday show.

Still, Mark had been pushed pretty hard.
By me,
thought Mr. Maxwell. And on the good side, it was the first time the boy had said something in class. Plus, what he'd said had been exactly right—about everything.

So that's what Mr. Maxwell focused on, the good side. He decided to try to keep Mark talking.

Mr. Maxwell nodded appreciatively. “So you know about the
Hindenburg
? Where'd you learn about it?”

Mark shrugged. “School. History class, I guess—Hitler and everything.”

“And do you remember how it started to burn, Mark?”

Mark shrugged and shook his head.

“Was it lightning, or maybe a careless smoker? Because you're right. Hydrogen gas is very light, but it is also very flammable. Remember how it happened, Mark?”

Another shrug and a head shake. Mark was done talking.

The other kids were getting restless, so Mr. Maxwell moved on. He got out a meter stick and
taped a wooden match to one end. He talked about the
Hindenburg
trying to land at the metal mooring tower.

Then he punched the Play button on a cassette boom box, and the room was filled with the sound of the classic radio broadcast of the
Hindenburg
disaster, with the announcer wailing, “Oh, the humanity, the humanity!” as he watched burning people fall to the ground.