Mudshark (2 page)

And Mudshark knew all this because he had overheard the nurse on the phone and seen her car insurance papers on her desk when he'd given her his updated immunization record.

He also knew that there was serious talk about the cook being sent to a Quiet Place for an Indeterminate Time if her recipes didn't start becoming less … creative. The nurse was alarmed. Every day there was a line of pale and shaky students sitting in her waiting room, clutching small pails and groaning.

The cool thing about Mudshark was that he not only
had
information, he knew how to
use
it.

One day he came back to his locker to discover that somebody had taped a sign to it:

He smiled and straightened the sign so it was perfectly level.

This is the principal
.
Would the custodian please report to the cafeteria with a shovel and a bucket and some extra-strength, reinforced garbage bags? And would those people late for assembly refrain from being late in the future? And if you see the gerbil, would you please try to herd it toward room two oh six?

One of the Death Ball players was a boy named Risdon Risdon. His first and last name were the same, it was said, because his father had also played a lot of Death Ball when he was young and had gotten too used to hearing every call repeated.

Risdon Risdon lost his right shoe while walking down the hallway and had continued walking for quite some time before discovering that (a) he didn't have a shoe and (b) he had no idea where he was going in the first place.

Hard-core Death Ball players were always losing articles of apparel and getting lost because they didn't pay much attention to anything besides the game. But Risdon Risdon was a legend in his own time because he had once failed to find the cafeteria while both double doors were open and people were yelling at him as he walked past.

Somehow, though, Risdon Risdon knew enough to go looking for Mudshark in the library, where so many important things happened.

Mudshark looked up from his book in surprise as Risdon Risdon limped over to him. It was of course nothing short of astonishing that Risdon Risdon was in the library in the first place, considering that Death Ball players spent all their free time during the school day in the cafeteria hunched over notebooks, tinkering with the brackets for the play-offs and carb-loading for strength and endurance.

Risdon Risdon glared down at his feet and bellowed, “Yo, Mud! My shoe is not here. On my right foot, dude. It escaped or something. Got any idea what happened to it? 'Cause I can't go to practice without both shoes.”

Mudshark knew that Risdon Risdon's shoe was by locker seventy-four on the right side of the hallway, where Mudshark had seen it flop, toe in to the wall, after third period when Risdon Risdon had become mesmerized by the sight of Amanda Gatto's gleaming hair and had tripped.

Risdon Risdon shuffled off to retrieve his shoe and, he hoped, catch another glimpse of Amanda and her shiny hair while the rest of the students in the library murmured quietly among themselves that Mudshark had a sixth sense or a third eye.

This is the principal
.
Would the custodian please bring a rag and a strainer and a set of tongs to the faculty restroom? And would whoever drew the picture of George Washington on the sidewalk with chalk please refrain from drawing that particular picture? George Washington, the Father of Our Country, did not wear shorts, have tattoos and chest hair, or smoke cigars. At least I don't think he did. And also refrain from startling the gerbil. When frightened, he reverts to a wild state and looks for a burrow to hide in, and since there are no burrows in the school building he will seek any dark hole. Thank you
.

Somewhere Up There, the higher levels of school administration decided that every classroom should have a live science project. Word came down asking for suggestions. A few were downright frightening, but the letter that received the most attention and prompted the subsequent hiring of a child psychologist whose job it was to visit classrooms throughout the district looking for Potential Cries for Help from Disaffected Youth read, “Body parts could be gathered from city morgues and, using duct tape and the clever manipulation of electricity, a human being could be manufactured.”

The school board ultimately decided: crayfish.

Packages of fertilized crayfish eggs arrived at Mudshark's school. They were placed in tanks of water so the crayfish would hatch and grow and young people could then understand the Miracle of Life as seen through the cycle of: boy crayfish meets girl crayfish, and then …

It turned out that the main lesson crayfish had to teach was Reproduction and Multiplication of a Species because crayfish are really good at making
babies. Pretty soon the classrooms at Mudshark's school were full of glass tanks, teeming with the Miracle of Life—two hundred sixty-five thousand, three hundred and seventeen miracles, to be exact.

The custodian was constantly trying to fit new tanks into the rooms, and everyone hoped that he was garnering huge overtime pay for the weekend and school vacation visits he made to clean the tanks and feed the crayfish, lest they die—which they would, an unfortunate and reeking discovery made immediately following the first three-day weekend of the school year.

So much Life made everyone nervous.

Kids got edgy. They moved their desks together in the center of the room. The teachers moved their desks in, too, and everyone huddled together, warily eyeing the numerous glass tanks that soon surrounded them, lining the walls of each and every classroom.

The custodian was looking haggard, since he had no time off.

So while it might be said that the Crayfish
Project was not a spectacular success—indeed, some teachers needed therapy after the horror of disposing of thousands of dead and decaying crayfish—there were some benefits.

Young people did learn a lot about the Inevitable Cycle of Life, which was sure to help them as they matured and got jobs as bankers and lawyers and car engine designers, then planned the sizes of their own families and immediately had their house pets spayed or neutered. There were also many new recipes for crayfish gumbo on the Internet.

One of the more interesting and long-lasting side effects of the crayfish experiment was that the librarian, Ms. Underdorf, decided to turn her library into a small, personal zoo.

There are many ways to describe Ms. Underdorf.

She was brilliant and joyous and she believed—probably correctly—that libraries contain the answers to all things, to
everything
, and that if you can't find the information you seek in the library, then such information probably does not exist in this or any parallel universe now or ever to be known.

She was thoughtful and kind and she always believed the best of everybody. She was, above all else, a master librarian and knew where to find any book on any subject in the shortest possible time.

And she was wonderfully unhinged. So when the School Administration Science Experiment Directive came down about crayfish, she embraced it with an enthusiasm any educational administrator would have found rewarding.

If a couple of crayfish were good, she thought, looking around at all the empty space in her library that suddenly seemed to cry out for cages and aquariums and terrariums, then other examples of more exotic living creatures would be better.

And so the Amazing Armadillo.

This is the principal
.
Would the custodian please report to the faculty restroom with a large stick, safety goggles and a respirator mask? And would whoever took the erasers from room two oh three please return them and refrain from removing erasers in the future? Also, while it is loose, and in spite of what I said in the last announcement, the gerbil is not, per se, a wild animal and will not, repeat, will not attack. So please refrain from screaming or otherwise panicking should you see said gerbil
.

Ms. Underdorf bought an armadillo from a man on a street corner who said he was a professional
armadillo salesman from Texas. Since Ms. Underdorf believed in everybody, she took him at his word and happily brought the little armadillo to school, sleeping soundly, she thought, rolled up in wood shavings in the corner of its glass tank.

She named it Sparky.

Sparky the Amazing Armadillo.

Ms. Underdorf spent long hours cooing soft words over Sparky's tank to help him have sweet dreams, because her research indicated that these particular armadillos were nocturnal. But when she asked the custodian about Sparky's nights, he said Sparky wasn't any more active in the evening hours, when the custodian was there to clean the library.

Ms. Underdorf never noticed that she was the only person in school who paid any attention to Sparky; after a curious glance by the student population the week he arrived, no one ventured near his table. The explosion of crayfish had curbed their interest in animal behavior.

After a while Ms. Underdorf became concerned because Sparky never unrolled and didn't even
waken to eat the special lumps of insects she supplied weekly. Armadillos were supposed to love those lumps. One day, when this had been going on for about four weeks, Mudshark noticed that, although Sparky wasn't eating, the spider population of the library was incredibly well fed. He wandered over to Sparky's tank and watched a line of spiders drop in, wrap up Sparky's food and scramble up the sides of the glass tank, stolen dinner in tow.

Mudshark took a close look at Sparky, reaching into the tank to nudge him. Mudshark's eyes widened in surprise.

Mudshark waited until he and Ms. Underdorf were the only people in the library. Then he said carefully, “Uh, Ms. Underdorf. Did you notice that Sparky is … um … special?”

“Of course he's special! Why, he's downright amazing; he was one of four identical babies born in his litter—all armadillos are born four at a time from one egg. Isn't that cunning?”

“Uh, no. I mean yes, that's clever, very utilitarian, and my family has an appreciation of the
multiple-birth phenomenon, as you well know, but what I was talking about, specifically, was that Sparky seems to have, well, it looks to me like a brass clasp is holding his stomach contents in place.”

Ms. Underdorf peered intently at Sparky. Mudshark's nudge had flipped him on his side and out of the burrow of wood shavings.

“Well, I'll be …,” she said. “Would you look at that! It's a purse! Sparky is actually a purse. Fine observation, Lyle.” She beamed proudly at Mudshark. And then she reached in, plucked Sparky out of the glass tank and snapped open the clasp. “Oh, look! A penny. This
is
my lucky day. Thank you, Lyle, for bringing this to my attention.” She smiled at Mudshark before taking Sparky to her office and unloading the contents of her old handbag into her new one.

Although Ms. Underdorf was thrilled with her new purse, she still wanted interesting and educational creatures in the library for the betterment of her students.