Horrible Harry and the Mud Gremlins Read online

  Harry pointed a finger at Mary. “I guarantee you the mushrooms are not ordinary. And they’re not boring. They’re ... stinkhorns.”

  “Stinkhorns?” we replied.

  “They’re slimy and smelly, too,” Harry added.

  Mary took a step back. “I bet I’ll hate them.”

  Harry nodded. “Probably. But if you hate them, you’ll have something to write about.”

  Mary made a tent with the tips of her fingers. “Hmmm,” she mumbled, tapping them slowly together. “Miss Mackle is expecting a story from me this afternoon. And it would be something different. I don’t want to let her down. Maybe I will make a quick visit to see the stinkhorns.”

  Then she added, “But if I do, I’m going last!”

  Hole in the Fence

  Sidney scooted under the fence while the rest of us made our human wall.

  “Act like nothing’s happening,” Mary snapped.

  Suddenly, we heard groans coming from Sidney. After he crawled back under the fence, he swayed back and forth. “Aauuugh, that smell.... Stinkhorns are so gross!” The next thing he did was fall flat on the playground like he was dead.

  “Get up, Sid!” Mary scolded. “You’ll call attention to what we’re doing!”

  Sidney acted like Mary was a drill sergeant. He jumped up, clicked his heels together, and joined our human wall. Dexter scooted through the hole, and then Ida went.

  When I looked at my watch, I noticed we didn’t have much recess left. “Song Lee,” I said, “you and I had better go together. There won’t be enough time otherwise.”

  Song Lee agreed. She and I scrambled under the fence then raced over to Harry. He was kneeling on the ground behind the tree. “Welcome to the kingdom of mushrooms, guys! Take a look at these babies.”

  Song Lee’s eyes were as big as mine!

  It was like nothing we had ever seen before. Ten mushrooms poked through the earth like white thumbs wearing olive green slimy helmets.

  “Stinkhorn mushrooms are cool, huh?” Harry exclaimed.

  Song Lee giggled and nodded. She loved slimy things, like Harry did. I wasn’t so crazy about them.

  “My grandma and I spotted a whole bunch of them on our hike last Sunday in the woods,” Harry explained. “She has this neat mushroom guidebook and is teaching me the names. Smell the top of them.”

  Song Lee kneeled down and put her nose real close. After she inhaled, she smiled at Harry. “I’ll take this one back with me to make a slide.”

  “Aaauughuuuuuuuugh!” I groaned. “These mushrooms smell worse than rotten eggs. No wonder the flies are buzzing around here.”

  “It’s a putrid smell,” Harry explained. “That’s what Grandma says.”

  The putrid smell didn’t seem to bother Song Lee. She used Harry’s magnifying glass to get an even closer look. “There are tiny holes in the stem, like sponge!”

  “Yeah,” Harry agreed.

  “Hurry up, you two!” Mary whispered. “The bell’s going to ring any minute now, and I won’t get a turn.”

  Song Lee ripped off a small part of the olive green cap as we hurried back under the fence.

  “Three years later,” Mary snarled, “it’s finally my turn!”

  We all watched Mary get down on her knees and try to squeeze under the wire fence. She had a little trouble, so we gave her rear end a nudge with the backs of our legs.

  She wasn’t gone long.

  When she returned, she had one comment. “I know why they call them stinkhorns. They stink!”

  Just as the bell rang, Harry popped up. We slapped each other five, then raced across the playground. “I told you it would be a piece of cake,” Harry bragged.

  When we got back to the classroom, we had fifteen minutes of activity time. No one said anything that made us nervous. Song Lee and I made another slide with the specimen from the stinkhorn.

  Harry got out the I encyclopedia for insects. He wanted to draw lice and ticks for the writing wall.

  Suddenly the teacher’s voice shattered our concentration. “Who’s tracking in all this mud on our brand-new yellow moon rug?” the teacher asked. “Just look at those dirty footprints! Where could they have come from? There’s no mud on the playground. It’s asphalt.”

  We all looked desperately at Harry.

  “The mud gremlins?” he mumbled.

  The Mud Gremlins

  Miss Mackle didn’t laugh when Harry said mud gremlins. We didn’t either. We all knew it was a big fat fib, but not one of us said a word.

  “Who are the mud gremlins?” Miss Mackle asked.

  Harry hemmed and hawed a bit. Then he explained. “When we don’t know who did something at my house, we usually blame it on the gremlins.

  My great grandfather Sam Spooger always told me that during World War II when things went wrong with his plane, everyone blamed it on the gremlins. They’re little creatures that mess things up.”

  Miss Mackle managed a small smile. “The gremlins, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Harry continued. “They even take things at my house, like socks and keys. I bet they tracked in mud on our classroom rug.”

  “I don’t think so,” the teacher replied. “Maybe they take your socks, Harry, but they didn’t track in this mud. Does anyone else have an explanation for this mess?”

  The class looked at the brown footprints that crossed over the yellow moon rug several times.

  Mary immediately went to her seat and started writing.

  Song Lee turned off the microscope and hurried over to her desk. When she put her head down, I knew what she was thinking.

  The same thing I was thinking.

  Telling a gremlin fib was one thing. Keeping the truth from our teacher was another. We all knew what the truth was, too! We were the ones who tracked in mud. We broke a school rule by going under the fence and into the empty lot without permission.

  The teacher waited patiently for someone to say something. It was a very long, uncomfortable silence.

  I could feel the goose bumps popping up on my arms. I could also feel the wet sweat dripping down the sides of my face.

  “I feel sick,” Song Lee blurted out. “Please, may I go to nurse’s office?”

  I knew it. Song Lee felt awful, too.

  Just as Song Lee got to the doorway, Mary jumped out of her seat. “Wait! We’ll all feel better if I read this now.”

  Song Lee turned around and listened with the rest of us.

  Mary cleared her throat, then read her paper.

  As soon as Mary read her story, Song Lee ran into the teacher’s arms. “I am a mud gremlin, too. I’m so sorry, Miss Mackle.”

  Dexter and I showed the teacher the bottoms of our shoes. “We did it, too,” we said. “We’re sorry.”

  “Me too,” Ida said.

  Sidney whispered something, but no one could hear him.

  Harry bowed his head. “It’s all my fault, Miss Mackle. I got everyone to go under the fence to see the fungi. I’m real sorry.”

  The teacher folded her arms as she looked at Harry. “Well,” she groaned, “I accept the apologies of the mud gremlins. Each one of you seems to have genuine remorse. I’m glad Mary and now the rest of you are telling me the truth. That’s what’s most important. But this is no laughing matter. You broke an important school rule. You went on that little science field trip without permission. There will be consequences. I’ll be calling your parents. And you’ll have to stay after school today”

  All of us nodded, while Harry reached for the hand broom. “I’ll start cleaning the dirt off the rug, Miss Mackle.”

  “I will help Harry,” Song Lee said reaching for the dustpan. She seemed to be feeling a little better.

  “I’ll help, too,” I said.

  That day after school, we did chores for one hour. Harry and I used scrub brushes to clean the new moon rug real well with soap and water. Then we washed the blackboards and all the desktops with big purple sponges.

  Song Lee, Ida, and Mary rearran
ged all the books in our two large book-cases. One was for fiction and the other was for nonfiction. Dexter and Sidney swept the floor and cleaned out the teacher’s closet.

  The worst part was facing our parents afterward.

  The best part was that the girls found more neat books about mushrooms and fungi in our own classroom library. And Sidney found a lunch bag that was in the teacher’s closet. Inside was an old orange. It had grown an amazing layer of green and white mold. Miss Mackle let us look at it with Harry’s magnifying necklace. Song Lee even made a slide of it.

  But the very best part was that Miss Mackle planned a visit to a nearby state park where there were all kinds of mushrooms, and everyone remembered to bring a permission slip. Even Harry.