Exotic Story For Kids to Learn Grammar
  By Sultan McGee

(The first of ten installments)

"When sorrows come, they come not single spies. But in battalions."

-Shakespeare

Bearpaw Junction
British Columbia

Otto Berger wiped his hands on his apron, put it away and got ready to open his bakery. On a normal morning, the savory aroma of fresh bread and pastry would creep up the walls and roll over the shop like invisible banks of fog, laced with the nutty fragrance of freshly brewed coffee. There were round tables inside, benches outside, and a long counter piled with donuts, bagels, pastry and fresh bread. Every morning except Sunday, Otto's Bakery was the place to go for coffee and rolls and the latest news, not to mention Otto's off-beat observations and lively arguments.

But this was not a normal morning. When Otto opened his doors at 6:30 sharp, his early-bird regulars were not in the mood for his usual greeting: "Good morning, everybody!"

"In a pig's eye!"

"Tell that to Emma Jeans."

"Spare me the laughs, Otto."

They calmed down when they smelled the coffee, but a raspy note of irritation lingered. They had the grim look of people who were wondering what new misfortune would strike next. Otto assumed it was mainly the weather and the missing monarchs making them cranky. In late spring this remote mountain valley in British Columbia was always a lavish place. The trees and bushes were alive with the golden-brown wings of the butterflies, shaking in the breeze. This year the weather had been fierce and the monarchs were late. A week earlier, a big storm had swept over the valley, and it had rained off and on ever since. The phones were still out. The road north of town was flooded. Mosquitoes were swarming over Otter Pond.

Then too, the town had been crackling with static about what to call the new school, which was scheduled to open in August. For some reason, maybe the weather, an ordinary issue had soured into angry arguments and insults. The old name wouldn't do. Junction Public was a poor, uninspired name even for the old two-story brick fortress with a tunnel-slide fire escape. The new school would be named for a worthy person. That was settled, but the three who qualified had names that raised objections. Ernestine Skipp had established and taught in the first school in the area; Ezra Junque was a pioneer trapper who'd founded and named Bearpaw Junction; Hoopatatkwa was a legendary figure whose name had been given to a lake in the region. Skipp School conveyed bad advice; Junque School would lower the scores and aspirations of the pupils; and Hoopatatkwa School was too hard for many people to pronounce and spell. The end of this debate was not in sight.

Meanwhile, a mysterious affliction had reared its head. Something was going around, like a bad cold, but with strange symptoms. It first struck Emma Jeans. That was the odd thing about it. She was tall and ramrod straight and always competent. She ran the library like a drill sergeant. No grace period for overdue books, no sleeping or eating inside, and no exceptions. When Edgar McNabb returned a novel with coffee stains on the dust jacket, she bawled him out so harshly he was too ashamed to go back. After that, he sent his son in to do his borrowing. As one might expect, Emma was a stickler about language and a reliable authority on points of style and usage. Along with her flawless speech, she had the voice of a singer and often read stories to children at school.

Emma's symptoms appeared early one Tuesday morning when she went into Zarinsky's Market with a grocery list. In those days, before supermarkets, you asked for everything and the grocer measured it out and wrapped it.

"I would like any pork chops," she said.

"Are you asking do I have any, Emma?"

"Of course not, Max, I can see them right there. I want any."

"Any? Why don't we settle on some? Three? Four?"

"Well, give me the four. Also, I need a molasses and the potatoes."

"Emma, how do you expect me to fill an order like that?"

"You must have the potatoes, don't you?"

"Of course, I have potatoes. How many? Or how much? Do you want a pound?" Emma ignored his question and went right on: "I also need onion and a few cooking oil. I must remember to buy some shovel at hardware store."

"Emma, you pick out what you want. I'll go sit in the back."

So Emma helped herself, and Max sat there thinking she'd lost a wheel on her wagon. What had happened to her?

Of course, Max couldn't keep this to himself. But when he told his story at Otto's, struggling to repeat Emma's exact words, no one believed him. "Nobody talks like that, Max, least of all Emma." Otto took the matter lightly. He said if the language of the town was under attack, Emma was like the elite guard, the green berets. If this menace had breached the walls at their strongest point of defense, the rest of them didn't have a chance. "We might as well turn in our verbs and surrender right now."

Emma wasn't aware that her speech was any different until she got home and told her husband, Fred, that Max had suddenly gone lazy or maybe taken ill. Then she mentioned that she'd "forgotten to get some shovel at hardware," and he had the same reaction as Max. Emma began to lose her sense of competence.

Then, two days later the same thing happened at the school, the second-to-last place anyone would expect. Meridian Clark, the teacher, was smart and also well educated, with an M.A. degree from the University of Toronto. She could list the order of English kings and the American presidents. There wasn't anything she couldn't spell, and she respected math as an art. What more could you ask from a teacher? Meridian was preparing her class for a fire drill.

"You must know what to do in case of the fire," she said.

"What fire? Is somebody having a fire?" The class looked puzzled.

"I want you to notice sign in a hall," she said.

"Is there another hall?"

"The sign says: IN CASE OF THE FIRE, BREAK A GLASS."

"Where do we get a glass?"

"Why should we break one?"

Meridian tried to explain. She was losing patience.

"You must break a glass. That's how you get to extinguisher."

"To extinguish her? Who is she?"

Now Meridian suspected she was being teased. Finally, Willis Scoop, an older student, interrupted: "What she means is the fire extinguisher is inside a glass case on the wall. You have to break the glass to get the extinguisher. Then take it out and use it."

Meridian, not accustomed to having her words explained by a pupil, guessed that something was wrong. She was getting a headache. That afternoon she went to see Ben Walters, the only licensed physician in town. Everyone called him Doc. Tall and rangy with thinning blond hair clipped short, he ran his three-room office by himself. He'd once majored in history and English, which interested Meridian, and he'd once climbed Mt. McKinley, which didn't. She thought it was a crazy thing to do. She liked walks and hikes. Climbing was for Dahl sheep and mountain goats. Meridian told him what had happened.

"Doc, I suddenly had a trouble explaining what to do in the fire drill. You know, break a glass to sound alarm."

Doc's eyes widened. He asked her to repeat. Same result. He realized she didn't know exactly what she'd said.

"Meridian, some of your words are missing or slipping around in the wrong places. Did you suffer a fall or injure your head in some way?"

"No." He checked her blood pressure and temperature and asked about any other symptoms. Nothing unusual there, either.

What to do about it? He never liked to admit, even to himself, that he was stumped. He had a well-deserved reputation as a confident and reliable physician. But Meridian was a real challenge. He needed time to figure out what was wrong. In his view, if you're headed toward the edge of a cliff, doing something is better than doing nothing. So he advised her to take multivitamins, cut down on caffeine and substitute herbal tea. These couldn't hurt and they might take her mind off the problem. Also, he advised her to take several days off and get plenty of sleep. "You might be a little stressed."

Otto, meanwhile, was still unworried. He treated the matter as a pleasant diversion. "This is the best attraction in British Columbia," he said. "If word gets out, tourists will be coming here in buses just to hear us talk. I'll have to open an annex to handle the business." It wasn't long, however, before he would have to eat his words.

In fact, his good humor was sorely tested almost immediately. He spent a sleepless night, stressed out by a nightmare in which the dough in his vat turned black, expanded out the door and rolled 15-feet deep along the entire street. He'd been carried along with it, upside down, trying to breathe, unable to cry out, right toward the rock quarry -- when he suddenly woke up. Otto realized the dream had blossomed out of anxieties he'd taken to bed with him. Was his bakery somehow related to this strange threat? Was he harboring some kind of microbe -- a virus, bacteria or fungus -- that was causing these mysterious symptoms? The next morning he sat down to his usual bowl of Alphabet Crackles and got another jolt. Some spilled on the table and he noticed an ominous pattern. One set spelled REGNAD. In his mood, it didn't take Otto long to figure that one out. When a second pattern spelled TOOT, he was sure the warning was directed at him. As a center of activity in town, his bakery might in some way be the culprit.

Otto sniffed around his flour bins, the sugar and the yeast. He looked at the other ingredients he'd been adding to his basic recipes. Were they safe? He wasn't taking anything for granted. He studied the packages carefully. The closer he looked, the more alarmed he got. He knew soybean oil, but what had they done to make it partially hydrogenated? Was it radioactive?

There was more. What about monoglyceride and diglyceride and sodium stearoyl lactylates? Holy Napoleon, he thought, what is this stuff? Even worse, there was calcium peroxide, monocalcium phosphate and calcium sulfate. Could there be a mistake? Weren't these for cleaning floors instead? Taking barnacles and rust off ships? Weren't these the ingredients that came with a WARNING: Do not pour down sinks. It will eat the pipes. Which one would protect bread against mold and which might turn your brain into oyster jello? Otto began to sweat.

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