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  The Ears of Louis

  Constance C. Greene

  TO REBECCA, MAURA, AND JUDITH SULLIVAN

  1

  Louis had been doing fine in life until he hit first grade. He could crack his knuckles really loud, he could skip a stone over the water so it bounced five, sometimes six, times.

  He also wasn’t bad at mumblety peg.

  That was four years ago.

  Then cousin Marge came calling from Cincinnati. She and Louis’ mother were drinking tea in the living room when he got home from school.

  “My, my,” cousin Marge said, peering sharply at him, “haven’t seen you since you were a pup. You’ve grown some but not as much as I would’ve thought.”

  “I was never a pup,” Louis said.

  “Where do you suppose he got such big ears?” cousin Marge said, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Certainly not from my side of the family.”

  “Louis’ ears aren’t big,” his mother said in a stiff voice. “Besides, remember Clark Gable.”

  “Who’s Clark Gable?” Louis asked.

  “He was a famous movie star and very handsome,” his mother said. “He always got the girl.”

  The last thing in the world Louis wanted was to get the girl. Still, a famous movie star.

  Next, Louis could remember sliding down the slide at school. He closed his eyes against the rush of air and the ground crowding up at him. It was like flying.

  “Hey, Elephant Boy,” a voice said, “you’d better watch it. The wind gets tangled up in those ears, you might wind up in Alaska.”

  Louis had opened his eyes to a ring of mouths, all opened wide, laughing. He had put his hands over his ears to shut out the sound, or maybe to hide them. He wasn’t sure. All he knew was they were laughing at him.

  Louis thought that if he kept quiet and pretended he didn’t mind, they’d stop and life would be as it had been before.

  What made it worse was you’d never notice his mother and father’s ears, his brother Tom’s were teeny and his baby sister’s you could hardly see, they were so small. It was a wonder she heard anything at all.

  Some days were worse than others. On a bad day, Louis went home and kicked his bed until his toe throbbed. Then he hid the blanket Tom couldn’t go to sleep without and once, he even punched his baby sister in the stomach. Her stomach was so fat she hardly felt a thing. She blew spit bubbles at him which made him madder than before.

  Louis started taping his ears to the side of his head with Scotch tape. He’d wait until Tom fell asleep in the next bed. He didn’t want Tom to know. When he’d finished taping, he’d kneel down beside his bed and pray to God to make his ears small and his muscles big. In the morning, his ears were still big and his muscles small.

  It was a bad combination.

  Skinny Ernie was the worst. He’d lie in wait behind a tree, then pop out, shouting, “You’re some sweet kid, Sugar Bowl!”

  Louis would crack his knuckles, yell “Race you!” and run like the wind. Away from one tormentor and into the path of another.

  “Dumbo, Dumbo, how’s about a sack of peanuts for lunch?” someone else would taunt.

  That was why Louis needed big muscles. To knock their blocks off.

  After times like these, Louis always had the same dream. In it, he was winning a race. He was passing everybody, he was way out ahead. He was first crossing the finish line. Before he could stop himself, he took off into the air, the wind caught in his ears, and he dipped high and low, like a kite, on his way to Alaska.

  Down below, they were laughing again. The sound billowed up at him and his face was hot with shame. When he woke, his mother was standing by his bed.

  “What’s the matter, Louis? You were shouting in your sleep. Are you all right?” she asked anxiously.

  “I’m O.K.,” Louis mumbled, so she’d go away and leave him alone. “I’m fine.”

  2

  Louis’ friend Matthew lived far out in the country in a house so old the floors sloped. When Louis went to visit, he and Matthew put out their arms to balance themselves as they ran through the dining room into the downstairs bedroom. The windows were made of many panes of glass which had bubbles in them and there were wooden shutters which locked on the inside. Matthew said they were Indian shutters. Settlers locked them when the Indians attacked. Sometimes Louis and Matthew crouched down low in front of the windows, peering out into the night, imagining they saw a man carrying a tomahawk behind every tree. The sound of the television in the kitchen was very reassuring.

  The fireplaces in Matthew’s house were so large both Louis and Matthew and Jenny, Matthew’s sister, could all stand upright inside. Matthew’s room was on the third floor. It had only one window but that window looked out at an apple tree. That made up for a lot of things. Matthew had pried up a piece of one of the wide floor boards. Underneath was a space about six inches long and six inches wide. Just the right size to hide things in. It held some dried worms from last year, a box of marbles, a set of false teeth, three old eyeglass frames without glass and a number of other treasures.

  Louis and Matthew talked very little. Matthew’s father called them “the silent wonders.” They sat on the bank of the river that flowed through Matthew’s back yard for hours, staring into the water, counting stones on the river bottom. Or shading their eyes, like Daniel Boone, looking out into the woods for deer or a rattlesnake. Once in a while, they’d drop a string with a worm attached into the water, hoping for a fish to bite.

  Once, Matthew told Louis, he’d found a heron with a broken wing standing in the river. He and his father had thrown an old sheet over the heron’s head to keep him from panicking, and had taken him to the Humane Society.

  “What happened to him?” Louis wanted to know.

  “Probably when the wing got better, they let him go,” Matthew said. Louis hoped so. Matthew was an authority on wild life. He read books about bears and turtles and beavers. Bears sleep six months at a stretch and deer shed their antlers and grow a whole new pair, he told Louis.

  Every day after school Matthew set his Havaheart traps. He had two, one very small to catch rats, weasels, and chipmunks. The other, a birthday present, was bigger.

  “With that one,” Matthew said, “I might get a muskrat or a skunk.” Louis and Matthew often watched a muskrat family, father and mother leading the way, swim along the river bank sedately, in single file, the babies in a neat row, until they came to their home, a hole burrowed into the river bank. Louis thought watching that muskrat family was one of the best things he had ever done.

  Matthew never called anybody names. He took people for what they were. He never got wild and crazy, like some kids, running and shrieking and hitting people on the head. But the best thing about him was the way he looked. He had the roundest face Louis had ever seen. Matthew looked, Louis thought, like the man in the moon. Or like pictures he’d seen of the man in the moon in old storybooks. Before the astronauts got up there and found out there weren’t any living creatures on the moon. Louis was sorry to hear that. But maybe there were men who’d got word the astronauts were on their way so they hid in a crater or something. Matthew agreed with him that this was a possibility.

  Matthew was round all over. He had round pink cheeks and round gray eyes and a round stomach. Even his nose holes were round. If Louis could’ve looked like anyone he wanted, he would’ve chosen to look like Matthew.

  Last time he’d gone to play at Matthew’s, Louis had worn his football helmet. He’d decided to wear it all the time to hide his ears. Any
way, it was football season so he had a good excuse.

  They got some cookies and milk and took them to the river bank. Louis kept his helmet on while he ate.

  “Why do you keep that thing on all the time?” Matthew asked.

  “Because I’m sick and tired of being called Dumbo and Elephant Ears and all that junk,” Louis said.

  Matthew looked at the water.

  “Don’t pay any attention to them,” he finally said. “I think your ears are nice.”

  “Why?” Louis said.

  “Well,” said Matthew, “when the sun shines through them, they’re all pink and everything.”

  “Oh,” said Louis.

  3

  One day right after school started, Louis’ mother bought him three new turtleneck shirts. He wore the yellow one first. At lunch time, he hooked his new shirt over his ears and tucked it under his chin while he ate his egg salad sandwich.

  “What a slob!” skinny Ernie said. He unwrapped his marshmallow fluff sandwich. “Where’d you get such a pair of handles?” Ernie said, his mouth full of marshmallow fluff.

  Talk about slobs. If the bell hadn’t rung just then, Louis might’ve pushed the second half of Ernie’s sandwich in his face.

  Louis had orders to wait for Tom to walk him home. Tom was six and afraid of lots of things. Big dogs, roller coasters, and thunder and lightning among them.

  Louis walked so fast that day Tom had a tough time keeping up. When they got home, Louis’ mother asked him if he’d go next door to Mrs. Beeble’s to borrow an onion.

  There was nothing in the world Louis liked better than to be sent on an errand to Mrs. Beeble’s. Except for visiting Matthew. But he had had a hard day and he felt like giving his mother guff.

  “I don’t like onions,” he said.

  “We’re having stew and you can’t have stew without an onion,” his mother said. She smiled at him. “You look beautiful in your new shirt, Louis. But you’d look even more beautiful if you didn’t have egg salad all over your front. Why don’t you go and change into another shirt?”

  “Oh, Mom,” Louis turned the corners of his mouth down and frowned. He pretended he didn’t like it when his mother said he looked beautiful. Mothers thought their kids were beautiful even if they were as ugly as sin. Still, he couldn’t help smiling. He took the stairs three at a time and put on his new blue turtleneck and his football helmet and went next door to see Mrs. Beeble.

  Mrs. Beeble had taught Louis how to play poker. They used pink and white candy mints for poker chips. Whoever won got to eat all the chips. Mrs. Beeble had a terrible sweet tooth. Even sweeter than Louis’, which was going some. Also, she was a superior poker player.

  “You’ll have to get up pretty early in the morning to beat Bertha Beeble at poker,” she’d told him when they first started to play.

  That had been two years ago when Louis was only eight. He’d taken her at her word and set his alarm clock. The sun wasn’t even up when the clock went off and Louis hopped out of bed to check Mrs. Beeble’s house. The windows were dark. He’d been up pretty early in the morning but Mrs. Beeble still won.

  The best thing about playing poker, Louis thought, was arranging the cards. He liked fixing his in a little fan shape. He especially liked getting all one color. All hearts was best of all.

  The door opened even before he knocked. Mrs. Beeble was nearsighted without her glasses, which she always misplaced. She squinted at him.

  “It’s Louis, is it?” she said. “Your head is so big in that contraption I didn’t know you. Come on in and take that thing off. All that pressure, it’s enough to addle the brains.”

  They sat down at the kitchen table. Louis kept his helmet on.

  “You got time for a hand or two?” Mrs. Beeble asked, shuffling the cards in a professional way that Louis would never master.

  He nodded and Mrs. Beeble dealt with the speed of light. She arranged her cards the same way. Louis took much longer, especially when the cards were new and slippery, as they were today.

  “I have very few extravagances,” Mrs. Beeble had told Louis on numerous occasions, “except that I cannot stand old, limp playing cards. I treat myself to a new pack any time I feel like. I don’t crave a mink coat or a diamond ring. My little luxury is a new deck when I want.”

  Louis dropped his cards twice before he got them organized. He was sorry to see he had only two hearts, and all the rest were black. Mrs. Beeble wore the crafty expression that meant she had a good hand.

  “I bet two pinks,” she said.

  “How about three whites?” Louis put the mints in the center of the table.

  “I’ll raise you one pink,” Mrs. Beeble said, leaning in his direction.

  Louis hid his cards against his chest. You had to watch Mrs. Beeble. She had a tendency to cheat. She was very competitive, she had told Louis. Which meant she liked to win even more than he did. Carefully, Louis took a look at his hand.

  “I’ll raise you one,” he said, guarding his cards.

  “You don’t have to play ’em so close to the vest,” Mrs. Beeble said in a huff. “I wasn’t looking.”

  Mrs. Beeble won that hand and the next. She gobbled up all the pink mints. She would.

  “Is there any particular reason you keep that thing on inside the house?” Mrs. Beeble asked.

  Louis gathered up his hand. He could see a whole mess of red cards even before he got them in order. That was a good sign.

  “It’s my ears,” he said when he’d finally got things set to his liking. “I’m sick and tired of being called names. They tease me.” Louis started to shout. “Ernie calls me Dumbo and lots of other things. So I’m wearing my football helmet so they can’t see my ears.” He felt like throwing his cards against the wall but something told him Mrs. Beeble wouldn’t approve.

  “You’re among friends,” she said. “Your ears look all right to me. I subscribe to the theory that a man with good-sized ears is a man with character. It’s like being bald. Give me a bald man with good-sized ears any day in the week. I bet two pinks,” Mrs. Beeble said.

  Louis had to think for a minute. He didn’t like to talk and play poker at the same time. It was confusing.

  “Besides,” Mrs. Beeble said, “you ever hear of Clark Gable?”

  “Yeah,” Louis said glumly, “he always got the girl.”

  “Nothing wrong with that, is there? What’s your bet?” She leaned towards him.

  “I bet three whites,” Louis said.

  He won that hand and the next one.

  “Time to quit,” Mrs. Beeble said briskly. “Got to start my supper.” Louis had noticed she often had to start her supper or do some crocheting or make a telephone call just as he started to win.

  “I’ll tell you one thing, though, and that’s that that helmet won’t get rid of the problem,” she said, filling a huge pot with water. “They’ll still be there when you take it off. I’ll put on my thinking cap and come up with something better.”

  “What’re you having for supper?” Louis asked.

  “Spaghetti. With my super duper Bertha Beeble sauce,” she said. Mrs. Beeble had spaghetti about five nights a week. The other times she ate a soft-boiled egg and a dish of cottage cheese.

  “I fight the battle of the flesh constantly,” she told Louis. “I can’t afford to let down my defenses for one second.”

  “I almost forgot,” Louis said. “My mother says can she please borrow an onion?”

  Mrs. Beeble burrowed around in a tired-looking paper sack and came up with an onion with a long, pointy tail growing out of one end.

  “This one is a little long in the tooth,” she said, “but it’ll have to do.”

  Louis said goodbye and started home. He wondered if Mrs. Beeble minded eating supper alone every night. He didn’t think he’d like it. Except then he could chew with his mouth open, put his elbows on the table, and burp as much as he wanted. Maybe eating alone was fun. Once in a while.

  Onions with teeth? He’d
have to think about it a while to get used to the idea.

  4

  It was the end of September when Miss Carmichael told her fifth grade they could take their names off the fronts of their desks.

  “I’ve got you all committed to memory,” she said. “I know who you all are now.”

  Louis tore his name paper into tiny shreds and stuffed them into his lunch bag. That was a relief. He felt safer, more himself, without his name written on yellow paper in big black letters for the whole world to see.

  Calvin Leffert, who was the biggest kid in the whole school, almost as big as a small man, wiped his nose on his sleeve and said in a loud voice, “She doesn’t know who I am. Nobody knows who I am. My mother nor my father nor nobody.”

  “Calvin, that’s enough,” Miss Carmichael said. She was always telling Calvin that. For once, Louis had to agree with Calvin. Nobody knew who he, Louis, was, either.

  Miss Carmichael clasped her hands in front of her purple dress. Her fingernails matched her dress. So did her lipstick. Miss Carmichael was nobody’s fool, Louis thought.

  “I’d like each of you to write a story or a poem or draw a picture,” she said. “We’re going to have a school newspaper and we’d like each and every one of you to participate. Mr. Anderson will choose the best entries from each grade and they’ll be published in the first issue.”

  Mr. Anderson was the principal. He had big flat feet and a tiny mustache and looked like Adolf Hitler. The first day of school Louis had raised his arm and said “Achtung” under his breath to Mr. Anderson. He didn’t know what made him do it. He couldn’t stop himself. Fortunately, Mr. Anderson only frowned and said, “Move along, please.”

  The kids groaned and said “What a gross out” to Miss Carmichael’s suggestion. Amy Adams, who sat in front of Louis, waved a bunch of papers in the air.

  “These are poems I wrote,” Amy said. She reminded Louis of cousin Marge. There was something about the way she pursed her mouth and smiled. Louis concentrated on hypnotizing Amy. He pointed both hands with the fingers stuck straight out at Amy’s back. “Sleep, sleep,” he said in a singsong voice under his breath. Amy went right on talking about how she had a lot more poems at home she could bring in.