Kate DiCamillo - Flora & Ulysses

What, Ulysses wondered, does the streetlight want to say?

He thought about William Spiver.

He thought about the word banished and the word homesick .

He imagined typing the words and watching them appear on the paper, letter by letter.

Flora had told him before she went to sleep that she thought it would be a good idea if he didn’t type anything for a while, at least not on her mother’s typewriter.

“It seems to provoke her,” she said. “I think your typing poems and flying around the kitchen kind of made her have a nervous collapse. Or something.”

She had said this, and then she had given him a sad look and closed the door to the bedroom. “I closed the door as a reminder, okay? No typewriter. No typing.”

Flora was dreaming.

She was sitting on the bank of a river. William Spiver was sitting beside her. The sun was shining, and a long way off, there was a sign, a neon sign. There was a word on the sign, but Flora couldn’t read it.

“What does the sign say?” Flora asked.

“What sign?” said William Spiver. “I’m temporarily blind.”

It was comforting to have William Spiver act just as annoying in a dream as he would in real life. Flora relaxed. She stared at the river. She had never seen anything so bright.

“If I were an explorer and I discovered this river, I would call it the Incandesto,” said Flora.

“Think of the universe as an accordion,” said William Spiver.

Flora felt a prick of irritation. “What does that mean?” she said.

“Can’t you hear it?” asked William Spiver. He tilted his head to one side. He listened.

Flora listened, too. It sounded as if someone a long way off were playing a toy piano.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” said William Spiver.

“It doesn’t sound much like an accordion to me,” said Flora.

“Oh, Flora Belle,” said William Spiver, “you’re so cynical. Of course it’s an accordion.”

The sign was closer. It had moved somehow. The neon letters were blinking on and off and on and off, spelling out the words WELCOME TO BLUNDERMEECEN.

“Wow,” said Flora.

“What?” said William Spiver.

“I can read the sign.”

“What does it say?”

“Welcome to Blundermeecen,” said Flora.

The piano music got louder. William Spiver took hold of her hand. They sat together on the banks of the Incandesto River, and Flora was perfectly happy.

She thought, I don’t feel homesick at all.

She thought, William Spiver is holding my hand!

And then she thought, I wonder where Ulysses is.

The kitchen was dark, lit only by the light above the stove. The squirrel was alone. But he had the strange feeling of not being alone. It was almost as if a cat were watching him.

Had Mr. Klaus tracked him down? Was he hiding in the shadows, waiting to exact his revenge? Cat revenge was a terrible thing. Cats never forgot an insult. Never. And to be thrown down a hallway (backward) by a squirrel was a terrible insult.

Ulysses held himself very still. He put his nose up in the air and sniffed, but he didn’t smell cat.

He smelled smoke.

Flora’s mother stepped out of the shadows and into the muted light of the kitchen.

“So,” she said, “I see you helped yourself to my typewriter again, put your little squirrel paws all over it.” She took another step forward. She put the cigarette in her mouth and reached out with both hands and yanked the paper from the typewriter.

The rollers screamed in protest.

Flora’s mother crumpled the poem (without looking at it, without reading one word of it) and dropped the paper on the floor.

“So,” she said.

She exhaled a ring of smoke, and the circle floated in the dim light of the kitchen, a beautiful, mysterious O. As he considered the cigarette smoke suspended in the air above him, Ulysses felt a wave of joy and sorrow, both things at once.

He loved the world. He loved all of it: smoke rings and lonely squids and giant donuts and Flora Belle Buckman’s round head and all the wonderful thoughts inside of it. He loved William Spiver and his expanding universe. He loved Mr. George Buckman and his hat and the way he looked when he laughed. He loved Dr. Meescham and her watery eyes and her jelly sandwiches. He loved Tootie, who had called him a poet. He loved the stupid little shepherdess. He even loved Mr. Klaus.

He loved the world, this world; he didn’t want to leave.

Flora’s mother reached past him and picked up a blank piece of paper and rolled it into the typewriter.

“You want to type?” she said.

He nodded. He did want to type. He loved typing.

“Okay, let’s type. You are going to type what I say.”

But that went against the whole point of typing, typing what someone else said.

“Dear Flora,” said Flora’s mother.

Ulysses shook his head.

“Dear Flora,” said Flora’s mother again in a louder, more insistent voice.

Ulysses looked up at her. Smoke exited her nostrils in two thin streams.

“Do it,” she said.

Slowly, slowly, the squirrel typed the words.

Dear Flora,

And then, stunned into a dumb willingness, he typed every terrible, untrue word that came out of Phyllis Buckman’s mouth.

The squirrel took dictation.

When he was finished, Flora’s mother stood over his shoulder, reading and nodding and saying, “That’s right, that’s right. That ought to do it. There are a few misspellings. But then, you’re a squirrel. Of course you’re going to misspell things.”

She lit another cigarette and leaned against the kitchen table and considered him. “I guess it’s time,” she said. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

And he did as she said. He waited.

She left the kitchen, and he simply sat there, unmoving. It was as if she had put a spell on him; it was as if typing the lies, the wrong words, had depleted him of all ability to act.

Once, long ago, in a garden in springtime, Ulysses had seen a squirrel made of stone: gray, hollow eyed, frozen. In his stone paws, he held a stone acorn that he would never get to consume. That squirrel was probably in the garden now, still holding that acorn, still waiting.

I am a stone squirrel, thought Ulysses. I can’t move.

He looked over at the words he had typed. They were untrue words. Several of them were misspelled. There was no joy in them, no love. And worst of all, they were words that would hurt Flora.

He turned slowly. He sniffed his tail. And as he sniffed, he remembered the words that Flora had shouted at him in the Giant Do-Nut. “Remember who you are! You’re Ulysses.”

This helpful advice had been followed by a single, powerful word: “Act.”

He heard the sound of footsteps.

What should he do? What action should he take?

He should type.