The Chalk Box Kid Read online

  He talked about radishes. “You can grow the ones that are round and red,” he said, “or you can grow the long white ones.” He drew a picture of each kind.

  He talked about flowers. He drew a sweet pea vine on a pole.

  “Next week,” he said, “I’ll bring some plants and seeds to school. There will be some for each of you. If you want to, you can have your own gardens.”

  That evening Gregory told Mother about Mr. Hiller. “I’m going to have a garden,” he said.

  “Gregory, I don’t think you can,” she said.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “There’s no place for one,” she said.

  He looked outside. There was concrete all around the house. He looked in the burned building. The floor there was concrete too.

  Mother was right. He had no place for a garden.

  He had wanted to plant all the things Mr. Hiller had drawn on the blackboard. The curly lettuce was what he liked best.

  He took a piece of chalk and drew a bunch on the wall. It was not very good. He drew another one. That was better. He drew more bunches of curly lettuce. He drew a long row of them. They looked good in a row.

  That was Friday. On Monday, Mr. Hiller came back to school. He brought plants and seeds. Girls and boys chose what they wanted. Ivy chose sweet pea seeds.

  Gregory stayed in his seat.

  Miss Perry asked him, “Don’t you want any?”

  “No, thank you,” he said. “I already have a garden.”

  Gregory’s garden was in the burned building. It was in the room with three walls.

  He had rubbed out the ship and the alligator he had drawn. They didn’t belong in a garden.

  He had made rows of vegetables across the walls. He had made sunflowers. He had put in poles with sweet peas on them.

  He made a path. The path led to a pool. He put a toad by the pool.

  “Come and see my garden,” he said to Mother.

  “You know I don’t like that burned building,” she said. “Can’t you find a better place to play?”

  “It isn’t ugly now,” he said. “I cleaned it up.”

  He asked his father, “Do you want to see my garden?”

  “Are there any strawberries?” asked Daddy.

  “I can put some in,” said Gregory.

  “You do that,” said Daddy. “Put in lots of strawberries. When they are ripe, I’ll come out and eat them with sugar and cream.”

  Gregory didn’t ask Uncle Max to look at his garden. Uncle Max would only laugh.

  —

  At school the girls and boys talked about their gardens.

  Miss Perry asked Gregory, “How is your garden?”

  “All right,” he said. Ivy was there, and he said to her, “I have poles with sweet peas on them.”

  Ivy said nothing. Miss Perry said, “That’s nice. What else do you have?”

  “Vegetables,” he told her. “And I have a path to the pool.”

  She looked surprised. “Your garden must be big.”

  “It is,” he said.

  And he had plans to make it bigger.

  He took the ladder out of the garage. He set it up in the garden room. When he was on the ladder, he could reach the top of the walls. Now he could have trees in his garden.

  He made a pear tree and a walnut tree. He made vines to hang from the branches. He made birds’ nests in the trees.

  It rained one night, and he lay awake. My garden will be gone, he thought.

  But it was not gone. Only a few vegetables were washed away.

  He was almost late to school that morning. He told the teacher, “I was working in my garden. The rain washed out some of my lettuce.”

  “You work in your garden a lot, don’t you?” said Miss Perry.

  “Yes, I do,” he said. “I may put in a fountain.”

  Vance was listening. At noon he asked Gregory, “So where is this garden with the fountain in it?”

  “I don’t have a fountain yet,” said Gregory.

  “You’re always talking about your garden. Where is it?” asked Vance.

  “Back of my house,” said Gregory.

  Afterward he saw some of the boys and girls with their heads together. They were looking at him and talking. He thought they were talking about him.

  When Gregory got home from school, he went straight to his garden. He was thinking about the fountain. The garden spread over three walls. He would have to take out something to make room for the fountain. But he liked to change things.

  He started to the garage to get the ladder. He stopped. There were footsteps outside the gate. Someone laughed. Someone went “Shh!”

  The gate opened. Boys and girls came pushing in. They were all from Room 3.

  Vance was the leader. He said, “We came to see your garden.”

  “Where is it?” asked one of the girls.

  “This is it,” said Vance.

  “It’s just a burned-out building,” said someone else.

  “Didn’t I tell you?” said Vance. “It’s nothing. It’s nothing at all.”

  He turned and walked out. The others followed him. And the last one out was Ivy!

  She looked back. She almost stopped. Then she was gone.

  That night Gregory wasn’t hungry. There was chocolate chip ice cream for dessert. It was his favorite, but he couldn’t eat it.

  Mother felt his forehead. “It feels hot. I think you should be in bed.”

  He went to bed. She sat with him.

  “Gregory, what’s wrong?” she asked.

  He began to tell her. “Some of the others at school have gardens. I said I had one too.”

  “Why did you say that?” she asked.

  “Because I do have one,” he said. “It isn’t like theirs, but it’s a garden.”

  “The one you made in the burned building?” she asked.

  “Yes. And after school they followed me home. They came in to look, and they said—”

  “What did they say?”

  “They said it was nothing at all. They thought I was just bragging.”

  “And you weren’t bragging?”

  “No, I wasn’t. Maybe I was pretending—a little—but I wasn’t bragging. They can think what they want to,” he said. “I don’t care!”

  But it was hard for him to go to school the next day. When he got there, he walked around the block before he went in. He was the last one in Room 3.

  Miss Perry smiled at him. He didn’t think she knew. But the others did. He could feel them looking at him.

  Ivy sat up front. Miss Perry spoke to her. “Are you going to make us a picture today?”

  Ivy had brought her leather case to school. She didn’t answer Miss Perry. She stood up and came straight to Gregory. She put the case down on his desk and went back to her seat.

  The room was still.

  Miss Perry looked puzzled. She asked, “Do you want Gregory to use your paints and brushes?”

  “They’re not mine,” said Ivy.

  “Of course they are,” said Miss Perry.

  “No,” said Ivy. “They’re Gregory’s.”

  “How could they be Gregory’s?” asked Miss Perry.

  “Because—because his pictures are better than mine,” said Ivy. “I saw them on the walls. And they’re better!”

  Miss Perry looked more puzzled than ever. “What walls? Gregory, do you know what she means?”

  He told her, “She means the walls in back of my house. I made a garden there—out of chalk.”

  “Out of chalk?” said Miss Perry.

  “That’s my garden,” he said. “That’s the one I talked about.”

  “I see.” Miss Perry came back and picked up the leather case. “This is yours, Ivy,” she said. “It’s part of your prize, and your name is on it. But if Gregory’s pictures are as good as you say, I can see why you want him to have a prize too.” She put the case down on Ivy’s desk.

  The bell rang. School began.

  —r />
  At noon Miss Perry said to Gregory, “I’d like to see these walls of yours. And I’m sure Miss Cartright would too. When may we see them?”

  “Anytime,” he said.

  “Today after school?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  They walked home with him after school, Miss Perry and Miss Cartright. He opened the gate for them.

  Miss Perry said, “Oh!”

  Miss Cartright said, “It really is a garden!”

  They looked at the walls and talked to each other. They sounded excited.

  “The pictures he did in art were nice, but nothing like this!” said Miss Cartright. “I heard him say a piece of paper wasn’t big enough. I think he needed a whole wall!”

  Miss Perry asked him, “Where did you get the idea for this?”

  “From Mr. Hiller,” he said.

  “I want him to see it,” said Miss Perry.

  —

  Mr. Hiller came to see the garden.

  “I’d like a picture of this,” he said. “A big picture to put up in the nursery. May I bring my camera over tomorrow?”

  “Yes,” said Gregory.

  On the way out Mr. Hiller met Daddy. Daddy had just come home from work.

  “Are you this boy’s father?” asked Mr. Hiller.

  “I am,” said Daddy.

  “I just saw Gregory’s garden,” said Mr. Hiller. “You must be proud.”

  “Proud?” said Daddy.

  “Yes, proud,” said Mr. Hiller, and he left.

  Mother came out. “Who was that?”

  “I don’t know,” said Daddy, “but I think we’d better see what is behind our house.”

  They went out into the burned building. Gregory went with them.

  Mother looked at the walls. “Oh, Gregory!”

  “We’ll have to get new clothes,” said Daddy.

  “New clothes?” asked Mother.

  “Yes,” said Daddy, “because our son is going to be famous and everybody will be looking at us.”

  Mother called Uncle Max, and he came out. He looked at the garden for a while. “First he was the Paintbrush Kid,” he said. “Now he’s the Chalk Box Kid.”

  It sounded like a joke, but Uncle Max wasn’t laughing. And that night, when Gregory went to bed, he saw his old pictures on the wall.

  “Where are your posters?” he asked his uncle.

  “I took them down,” said Uncle Max.

  —

  Things were different at school. Everyone he met was friendly. Even Vance was friendly. “There’s a picture of your garden down at the nursery,” he said. “Why don’t you go see it?”

  But the best thing of all happened one evening after school. Gregory was making a place for his fountain when Ivy came to the gate and looked in. A little boy was with her.

  “This is my brother Richard,” she said. “I brought him to see.”

  Gregory had piled up bricks and made places to sit. The three of them sat on the bricks in front of the walls.

  Ivy whispered to her brother, “This isn’t like our garden, Richard. This is different. This is somebody else’s garden.”

  “I see it,” said the little boy.

  Gregory told Ivy, “I’m putting in a fountain. Do you want to help me?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I might.”

  Then they were quiet, and they sat there for a long time.

  About the Author

  CLYDE ROBERT BULLA was born on a farm near King City, Missouri. He went to a one-room country school. Reading and writing were his favorite subjects, and by the time he was seven, he knew he wanted to be a writer. After years of writing magazine stories and novels and working on his hometown newspaper, he found that he really wanted to write for children. More than seventy of his books for boys and girls have been published.

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  Very carefully Gregory began to paint one side of the house. He mixed the colors as he went. He gave the boys white clothes. He gave the girls colored dresses—blue, green, and pink.

  Ivy helped with the faces. Richard painted in grass and sky.

  When they had finished, Uncle Pancho came out to look.

  “There I am,” he said. “With all my brothers and sisters.”

  “Do you like it?” asked Ivy.

  “I can paint over it,” said Gregory.

  “Paint over it? No, no, no!” cried the old man. “You must paint more!”