Loser

On his first day of second grade, Donald asks the teacher how many more days of school there will be until he graduates. He loves to hear how endless school will be. His teacher, assuming he just wants to get learning over with, tells him, “You’ll be out of school soon enough” (50).

Donald continues to laugh easily. The other students goad him into laughing so they can watch him get in trouble with the teacher, Mrs. Biswell, who doesn’t really like children and sometimes wonders why she got into teaching. She hates sloppiness—Donald’s handwriting she calls “atrocious,” which he assumes is a compliment—and she loves brilliance, of which Donald displays none. She assumes Donald’s efforts to answer every question, usually wrongly, aren’t an expression of love for learning but attempts to taunt her.

One day, Mrs. Biswell arrives in class a bit late, and Donald is writing on the board with her chalk. This is forbidden, and Mrs. Biswell tells him to stop. Hurriedly, he picks up her eraser, the fancy one she bought specially and loves dearly, and begins to erase. She shouts at him to “Stop! Stop! Stop!” and the shock of it causes Donald to vomit on her eraser. She orders him to leave the room “and never come back!” (57)

Donald walks home. The principal scolds Mrs. Biswell and assures Mrs. Zinkoff that her son is welcome back. The next morning, Donald is at school before anyone else.

Mrs. Biswell buys a yellow bucket, gives it to Donald, and orders him to keep it with him at all times. He never throws up in it but uses it to keep interesting stones and bits of colored glass.

Donald loves that his dad is a mailman. He wants to be one, too, when he grows up, and he aches to visit him on “Take Your Kid to Work Day” (60). However, the post office forbids bringing children on the routes. Donald’s dad reckons that his son can visit him at the post office on a Sunday. Donald tells Andrew about his special day, but Andrew retorts that his own dad will take him to the bank where he works. They compete awhile over which of them has the better dad until Andrew becomes angry.

Donald’s dad gives him a stack of blank paper with envelopes, and Donald writes make-believe letters, addresses the envelopes, and draws stamps in crayon on the corners. He makes 100 of them. On the special Sunday, he carries the letters in his dad’s mail bag to the Clunker, and his dad drives them to a dentist’s office where Donald is to deliver his mail to the store and the houses beyond. Donald gets to wear his dad’s summer pith helmet. At day’s end, his dad will pay him five dollars. Donald is beside himself with joy.

He begins to deliver his pretend mail into mailboxes and mail slots. Sometimes he peeks through the mail slot even though his dad tells him not to do that. Sometimes he meets someone at a door, usually another kid. One of them, a sulking boy, snatches an envelope, makes fun of its pretend nature, tears it up, and stuffs it back in the mailbag. Donald decides to be “professional”; he smiles, says, “Nice to meet you,” and heads for the next house (69).

Donald imagines for a moment that all the houses contain wonders that disappear when you look through the mail slot.

Donald and his dad eat lunch in the Clunker: a baloney sandwich, an apple, and iced tea from a thermos that Donald pretends is coffee: “It’s the best lunch he’s ever had” (71). Despite the spring day, Donald hopes for a blizzard, or at least rain, so he can deliver mail in bad weather like his father. His dad tells him there are other dangers he must always face: “There’s biting dogs and wild cats. There’s banana peels you can slip on. There’s turtles you can trip over and break your nose. There’s rhinos” that might have escaped from the zoo (74). Donald is delighted.

Donald learns about the Waiting Man, who lives at 924 Willow and waits at the window for his brother, who went to fight in Vietnam 32 years earlier and never returned. As Donald continues his delivery rounds, no rhinos attack, but he sees the gray-haired Waiting Man, who stands at his window, staring into the distance.

An elderly lady with a walker thanks Donald for the mail; Donald salutes her. A short while later, he reaches into the bag to find nothing. He has delivered all his mail. “He cries all the way home” (77).

As third grade begins, Andrew and his family move away to a house just outside of town. Meanwhile, Donald has surgery to repair his stomach valve and misses three weeks of school. He hates waiting—he’s not allowed to do much more than sit on the sofa, watch TV, and read. He feels like he’s the Waiting Man.

He tries several times to sneak out and go back to school. His mom finally positions Polly’s playpen at the front door, where the toddler reliably shouts her only words—“Bye-bye!”—when Donald tries to escape.

He decides to bring school to him in the form of a test.

Unlike most kids, Donald doesn’t fear darkness—not the dark under the bed, the dark in the closet, nor even the dark inside drawers, which he can never see, no matter how fast he opens them. Only one darkness frightens him: the one down in the cellar, where the Furnace Monster lives. It hides behind the furnace until the people turn out the cellar light. Then it comes out.

He wouldn’t dare visit the cellar when it’s dark except that he’s bored silly after two weeks of recovery, and it occurs to him that this would be a good test to keep him occupied. For Donald, “If it occurs to him, he does it” (85).

One day, he opens the cellar door, switches on the cellar light, and peers down the stairs. Though terrified, he takes one cautious step down and sits, trying to screw up his courage. Then he takes another step, hears a noise from below, and bolts back up to the kitchen.

The next day, Donald tries again. While his mom is busy on the phone working her new telemarketing job, he advances three steps further down into the cellar, carrying with him a kitchen timer set for five minutes. When it goes off, it startles him and he hurries back up the stairs. On day three, without a timer, he makes it down all nine stairs to the cellar floor, counts to 100, and climbs back up the stairs, triumphant.

The test isn’t over yet. A few days after he gets his stitches out, he tries again. This time, he doesn’t turn on the cellar light, goes down three steps, counts to 100, and returns upstairs. The next day, he makes it to the sixth step. The day after, he gets to the bottom, counts to 100, screams the last number in terror, and dashes back up the stairs. His scream alerts his mom, who questions him, but he admits to nothing.

On the final day, Donald puts a sock in his mouth to muffle any screams, opens the cellar door, and closes it behind him. The darkness is absolute: He can’t see his hand in front of him. It’s as if he has disappeared. Slowly, he makes his way down the stairs, one at a time. At the seventh stair, he knows the Furnace Monster is right in front of him, waiting. He turns and bolts back up the stairs. He has failed his own test.

Four days later, he returns to school.