Nicholson Baker: Substitute: Going to School With a Thousand Kids

“Nice going, Colleen,” I said.

Rianna had filled a page with red printing. Lulu, she said, packed a pickle sandwich in her backpack and went for a walk in the woods, where she encountered a huge spider, who told her to give him something. Lulu took out her sandwich and gave the spider her backpack, and she kept walking till she got to the brontosaurus’s house. He gave her a snack and a new backpack; she hugged him and returned home.

“Wow,” I said. “I like the pickle sandwich and the backpack. Only thing is huged —just add a g there. Excellent. How old are you?”

“Eight.”

Elijah had a happy ending: Lulu wished the brontosaurus a great brontosaurusy life and carried him home on her back. “At least, that’s the most I know of his life,” he said.

“Excellent job, man,” I said.

I went over to Jonas and Marshall. “Dudes, you’re pushing your hips together in the same chair. That’s bizarre and ridiculous. Marshall, sit over here.”

Porter’s ending was that Lulu invited the brontosaurus over for Christmas. The brontosaurus got a Great Dane as a present, and Lulu got a stuffed animal.

Porter said, “Mrs. Baker — I mean Mr. Baker — what do I do now?”

“Now just give it up,” I said. “You’re done. You’re so far done that you’re done beyond done.”

“What do I do?”

“Well, you’ve got Picture of the Day, Fluency Center, or Shuffle Center. What is Shuffle Center anyway?”

“It’s what Colleen’s doing, see her?” said Porter, pointing across the room. “So I do one of those three? What happens if I do all three?”

“Then you’ll just be in the stratosphere,” I said. “Get a whole book and read it and memorize it and say it to me backwards.”

Clayton said that when the brontosaurus came to eat strawberry three-layer cake he experienced a sugar rush and cracked his head open. Lulu brought him to the doctor and he was so happy that he tossed Lulu up in the air and she hit Jupiter. She came down stupider.

“Mr. Baker,” he said, “Devin is on the app store and he’s not supposed to be on the app store.”

“Should we bring in the app police?” I said.

Clayton made a siren sound and we strolled toward Devin, who got out of the app store at high speed.

“Quickly changed it, did you?” I said to Devin. “Do you remember the story about Lulu and the brontosaurus?”

“No.”

“You do not? Where the heck have you been all my life? They’ve been reading it aloud in this class.”

“I forget,” said Devin.

Imogen, whose desk was near Devin, had put her head down, feeling terrible. She sat up, coughed, turned on her Kindle, and summarized one of the endings of Lulu , in which the brontosaurus had cake and went home.

“I don’t like that story,” said Devin. “The girl has a big fat head.” It was true, in the illustrations she had a very large head. I told him to read some of the book.

Marshall had written about the dinosaur smashing his head on a lot of trees until Lulu smacked him in the face.

“Looks like you are done,” I said. “You can do Shuffleboard, Fluency Center, this and that.”

Colleen silently brought up the work she’d done in the Shuffle Center. an octopus is a boneless creature, she’d written. octopuses can grow at night. they can live for six months to a couple of years.

“Excellent,” I said. “I know you know this, but I’m just calling it to your attention. When you start a sentence, you want to start it with a capital, right?”

She nodded.

“You are in business,” I said. “Thank you very much for doing it. You are hot stuff.”

“Colleen’s hot stuff,” said Cecil. He’d written that the brontosaurus ate ten thousand cookies at Lulu’s party, then excused himself to go to the bathroom: when he came out he felt much better. Cecil’s deskmate Elijah was beside himself with hysterics over Cecil’s story.

“I’M LIKING THESE ENDINGS, FOLKS!” I said. “A LOT OF GOOD WORK HAPPENED TODAY.”

“Who did the longest one?” asked Myra.

“The longest one was by Rianna,” I said. “Very long and very detailed, and it involved a pickle sandwich. I saw ones that involved ten thousand cookies, ones that involved bathrooms, I saw ones that involved cake, celebrations, Christmases.”

Rianna, Myra, and Sabrina asked to go to the library.

I said, “You are very quiet workers, so I think you can go to the library, yes.” I gestured toward the back of the class, where Marshall was raising hell. “Look at this pandemonium. Pandemonium means ‘wild chaos.’ You are calm. Thank you.”

The intercom came on. “Mr. Baker? Can you please dismiss Jonas?”

Everyone said goodbye. Bye, Jonas, bye, Jonas, bye, Jonas!

“Good work today, Jonas,” I said.

Devin was whispering into the fan. Had he read any of the book? He had. “How did it seem?” I said.

“I can’t remember it. I don’t have a good memory.”

“Oh, okay,” I said. “That’s cool.”

We were entering the horrific end-of-day limbo time. I thought maybe it would be a good idea to have some music, but while I was talking to Kirstin about what to play, things went wrong in the back. Wayne and Devin were making an iPad action movie in which Devin pretended to stab Wayne with a pair of children’s scissors. Ms. Lamarche saw it happen and pushed herself up out of her chair. “ALL BOYS BACK THERE, I WANT YOU IN YOUR SEAT,” she said.

“Absolutely right,” I said.

“THAT WAS NOT SAFE,” said Ms. Lamarche.

“What did I do?” said Devin.

“What did you do?” said Ms. Lamarche. “You stood over him with a pair of scissors, doing like this to his head. THAT IS NOT OKAY.”

“It seems like toward the end of the day,” I said, “people begin to fall apart.”

“Oh, we do,” said Cecil.

“Especially him and him and him,” said Elijah, pointing to Marshall, Devin, and Wayne.

“I can fall apart,” said Marshall. He pretended to lose an arm.

I said, “So what can you do to keep it together?”

“We can eat golden apples,” said Wayne. (Golden apples are restorative in Minecraft.)

“Elastic bands!” said Marshall. “Glue? Staples?”

“Staple yourself together,” said Wayne. “Make all kinds of butts on you. Butt, butt, butt, butt, butt, butt.”

I said, “Your mission, and you don’t have a choice about whether or not to accept it, is to stand up, go over there, get a book, and read three pages in it, right this second.”

Colleen brought another piece of work up. She’d read a story about the Mayflower and drawn a picture of two of the people who died on the ship.

“Excellent. You’ve really been working hard this afternoon. Do you work this hard every day at school?”

Colleen nodded.

“Good.”

I looked at a book with Marshall and we found a picture of a large land animal. “So what is this thing?” I said.

“A bison?” said Marshall.

“A musk ox, for god’s sake. Can you believe it?”

“Have you ever seen a shaved yak?” asked Wayne. “I want to see a shaved yak. Shaved yak, shaved yak, shaved yak, shaved yak.”

I shushed him. “I haven’t seen you read a single page,” I said.

“Shaved yak, shaved yak,” echoed Marshall, more slowly.

“What are we supposed to be doing?” asked Porter.

“We’re supposed to be enriching our minds with education,” I said.

“I read three pages,” said Wayne.

I looked at him dubiously.

“What?” said Wayne. “I read fast.” He danced around, talking baby talk.

“Wayne, you’re off the chain,” I said.

Ms. Lamarche stood up. “OKAY, LET’S START PUTTING IPADS AWAY, PLEASE, AND START PICKING UP. FLOOR PEOPLE, PLEASE START PICKING UP. TECHNOLOGY PEOPLE, PLEASE MAKE SURE IPADS ARE PLUGGED IN.”