Mostly Monty (4 page)

All the time he was eating, he watched the new Charlie. He would be a little bit sad to let him go, he thought. But he knew it was the right thing to do.

Monty’s parents stood next to him as he took the jar outside. He removed the lid. Monty waited, but Charlie didn’t fly out.

“Maybe Charlie wants to stay with me, even if he can fly away,” said Monty hopefully.

“Maybe he’s not quite ready to go yet,” said Monty’s mom. “But it’s time for you to leave for school. So let’s just rest the open jar on this window ledge.”

That seemed like a good plan. “Good-bye, Charlie,” Monty called as he picked up his backpack. “Maybe I’ll see you this afternoon.”

“And maybe you won’t,” said Monty’s dad. “If he’s gone, you’ll know he’s off having a good time using his new wings.”

As it turned out, Charlie was not in the jar when Monty returned home from school. But Monty wasn’t too sad about it. He thought that if he watched carefully, he might get to see Charlie flying by one day soon. He had another thought too. If he kept his eyes open, he was almost sure to find another caterpillar, which could move into the vacant jar at his house.

One Saturday morning, when Monty was outside searching for another caterpillar, he saw a huge pile of items sitting at the end of the driveway next door. There was an old chair with a cane bottom that had a hole in it, two old suitcases, a huge stack of old magazines, some old flowerpots, and a red wagon — except it was so rusty that in some places there was no paint on it at all. Monty admired the wagon. It might come in useful, he thought. Everything piled up the way it was made it appear as if his neighbor Mrs. Carlton might be waiting for the trash collectors. Monty decided to find out for sure.

He rang the doorbell.

“Why, hello, Monty,” exclaimed Mrs. Carlton. “I’m afraid I won’t be your neighbor much longer. But I will certainly miss your infectious smile.”

Infectious! Monty felt his face turning red. Did Mrs. Carlton think she could catch his asthma and get sick too? Asthma was not that kind of sickness. It was a little like the birthmark his classmate Ethan had on his eyelid. It was something he was born with.

“You don’t have to move away. I’m not infectious. You won’t get sick from me,” Monty insisted.

For a moment, Mrs. Carlton looked puzzled. Then she realized why Monty was concerned. “Of course I won’t get sick from you,” said his neighbor, giving Monty a hug. “When I said your smile was infectious, I meant that the smile is catching. When I see you smiling, it makes me want to do the same thing.”

Monty smiled at his neighbor and she smiled back at him.

“Why are you moving away?” he asked.

“I’ve decided this place is too big for me. And I want to move closer to my son and his family. So I’m clearing out the house, and then I’m putting it up for sale.”

“Does that mean you don’t want the wagon and the other stuff that’s outside?” Monty asked.

“It certainly does. The wagon belonged to my son when he was your age. Now he’s forty years old. That wagon is almost an antique.”

“Can I have it?” asked Monty.

“Of course,” his neighbor said. “In fact, come in and look around. Maybe there’s something else here that you want. I haven’t taken everything outside yet. It’s going to take me a long time to clear it all out.”

Monty went into Mrs. Carlton’s house. He’d been there before. Sometimes when his mother baked cookies or made a big pot of soup, she’d send Monty over with some as a gift. Once, he’d gone over and borrowed two eggs from Mrs. Carlton when his mother discovered that she didn’t have enough for the recipe she was preparing.

“Look at this,” said Mrs. Carlton.

Monty saw some boxes of puzzles, a pile of books, and an old teddy bear with a friendly smile. “Jeffrey told me last night to just throw it all out. For years, he insisted that I keep every single thing for his children. But now he says they’ve outgrown all this stuff,” said Mrs. Carlton.

Monty took everything. He took the puzzles, the books, and even the old teddy bear. It took three trips in and out of the house to fill the old wagon with all these new possessions. It was like finding hidden treasure, he thought happily. He pulled the wagon carefully toward home. He noticed that one of the wheels was wobbly. Maybe his dad could help him fix it, he thought.

“Look what I’ve got,” said Monty proudly to his parents.

“Wow!” exclaimed Mr. Morris, looking at all the stuff Monty had. “I think you hit the jackpot.”

Monty nodded happily.

“I guess you’d better count the pieces before you start putting any of those puzzles together. It would be terrible to put in a lot of work only to discover that you were missing a few important bits and couldn’t finish it,” said Mr. Morris.

“Good idea,” said Monty’s mom. “Let me smell that bear,” she said, looking at the teddy bear that Monty had brought home in the wagon.

“Smell it?” asked Monty. It had never occurred to him to do that.

Because of his asthma, his parents had made a point of not giving him stuffed toys when he was little. They worried that the lint they contained would not be good for him.

“Sometimes old stuffed toys get musty or moldy,” his mother explained. She picked up the bear and gave a sniff.

“Just as I thought,” she said, nodding. “I’m afraid this fellow has seen better days. He belongs in the trash.”

“That’s where he was going when I got him,” said Monty. “Can’t we put him in the washing machine? Maybe he’ll smell better then.”

“I’ll throw him in the next dark wash and we’ll see what happens,” his mother agreed. “He is a cute fellow. They did a much nicer job of making teddy bears in the old days,” she said, admiring the toy. “But aren’t you too old for stuffed animals?”

Monty thought for a moment. Was a first-grade boy too grown up for a teddy bear?

“Oh, no,” he said. “I like him. He has such a friendly face. And I always wanted a teddy bear.”

“What are those books?” Mr. Morris asked with interest. “Books are good even if they are old. And you certainly like to read,” he said, smiling at his son.

But a closer inspection of the books showed that they weren’t so good after all. Several of them were geography books that had been old even when Mrs. Carlton’s son was a boy. “Most of the countries in Africa have the wrong names,” said Mr. Morris as he flipped through the pages of one of the books. There was a science book, and it opened to a page that read,
Someday, in the distant future, it’s possible that man will walk on the moon.

“Uh-oh. That’s very old,” said Mrs. Morris. “The first man walked on the moon back in 1969. A good story can never become out of date, but an old nonfiction book can be filled with misinformation.”

“I guess I’ll put these books out with our garbage,” said Monty, sighing.

He looked at the first puzzle box. On the lid was a picture of an aquarium filled with many colorful fish. The box said 200 P
IECES
. That would be fun to do. Monty dumped the pieces out and began counting. The total came to only 187 pieces. Hoping he’d made a mistake, he counted again, and got only 185. “This has to go in the trash too,” he said sorrowfully. He checked the pieces in the other boxes. None of them was complete.