Chapter 11

Chapter 11 The Silence Was a Bulldozer metaphor (n) a figure of speech that says that one thing is another different thing as a way to compare the two and note their similarities; for example: "my mother is a battleship" or "school was a rollercoaster" Mrs. Overton was sitting at her desk when the class filed in on Friday morning. Evan thought she looked really tired. "How's Langston?" asked Christopher, dropping his completed love poem in the In basket on Mrs. Overton's desk. "Better. He was very sick yesterday. We spent the whole day at the animal hospital. He has pneumonia, which is serious for a cat as old as Langston. But the vet gave him some medicine

and said he's going to be fine." A bunch of kids were gathered around Mrs. Overton's desk to hear the latest on Langston's health and to hand in their love poems. Evan noticed another group, mostly girls, huddled around Jessie's desk. They wanted to know if Jessie had finished tallying the results of the survey, but Jessie wasn't giving anything away. Not yet. Slowly, Evan pulled a piece of paper out of his backpack. He wished the kids standing around the teacher's desk would go back to their seats. He watched as Adam casually dropped his poem into the basket, as if it were just another math assignment. Evan knew that Adam had written his poem about playing basketball and Paul had written about his family's sailboat. Malik had written a poem about a bug, which he had recited to everyone on the playground that morning:

I dug a bug from under the rug. The bug said hi and looked me in the eye. I hugged my bug. Bad idea! Bye-bye bug. Evan didn't think it really counted as a love poem, but it was pretty funny. He ambled over to Mrs. Overton's desk, his poem held low against his thigh. He watched and waited for the right moment, then slipped his poem, facedown, into the basket just before Nina and Ben put their poems on top of his. All morning, he'd gone back and forth: Should he hand in the poem about his grandmother or the one about the tepee in the woods on his grandma's farm? His mom said both were good, but it was the one about Grandma that made his heart beat fast and his mouth go dry. At the last minute, he'd decided to play it safe and hand in the one about the tepee.

Several of the kids were telling Mrs. Overton about the second mysterious appearance of the candy hearts when Salley interrupted. "Tell us the truth, Mrs. O. Are you the one who left the candy hearts?" "I am not," said Mrs. Overton solemnly. "Yeah, but that's what you'd say if you did leave the hearts," said Ryan, and several kids agreed. "That may be true, but I didn't leave them. And I'm glad there weren't any waiting on your desks this morning." Evan was glad, too. He did not want to get another box of hearts with the kind of message you could find at Wal-Mart. He decided that if any more mysterious candy hearts appeared, he would throw his box in the trash without even looking at it. "Morning Meeting, everyone," said Mrs. Overton, corralling them all to the rug. "Today, I have two poems in honor of my poor sick cat,

who is now on the mend." "Two poems!" shouted Jessie. "Give me a break!" "I bet you're going to read us another poem by Langston Hughes," said David. "No, but I think you'll see why I chose this poem, instead," said Mrs. Overton. "It's called 'Fog.'" She turned the easel paper with a giant flourish of her arm, as if she were unveiling a statue in the center of town. Salley read the poem out loud, and Evan followed the words silently. FOG by Carl Sandburg The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city

on silent haunches and then moves on. "It's a metaphor!" shouted Nina, pointing to the photo of Langston that said METAPHORS BE WITH YOU. Mrs. Overton had taught them how poets sometimes use one thing to mean something else. "Yes!" said Mrs. Overton. "What's the metaphor?" Almost half the class raised their hands. "The fog is a cat," answered Taffy. "That's just what fog is like," said Maddy. "It's like a cat, the way it creeps around." And Evan agreed. He had never thought about it before, but now he would always think of a cat when he saw fog creeping across his backyard. Jessie shook her head. "Fog is not like a cat. Not at all. Fog is vapor. It's drops of water in the air. A cat is an animal. It's a solid, and it's alive. The two are nothing alike."