Dorothy poured oil all over the Tin Woodman!
That just about settled it. Roderick didn’t bother much with the minor characters like Mary (= MA = Ozma), the story all seemed strong enough without them. Only one thing bothered him:
Oz kept acting like such a slippery character. It was almost as if he didn’t have any real power at all. As if he faked it.
Pa said there wasn’t any God, and both stories were hokum.
Ma said everybody was God, and no story was ever hokum.
Sister Oaf just got mad.
‘Blasphemy, and this close to Christmas!’
‘Well yeah I thought Father Warren was taking care of this kid. Been meaning to have another little pow- wow with him myself, Sister, only you know how it’s been what with trying to squeeze in a couple more basketball games before our Centre eats himself sick at Christmas and gets all outa shape, and what with trying to schedule early training for the baseball team. You know if I didn’t keep after these kids our whole sports programme would go right down the tubes…’
Sister Olaf twisted the rosary on her belt. ‘He seems to think he’s preparing for his First Communion right along with all the others, that’s the problem. Not even baptized, I wonder if he even understands what a sincere confession is, and anyway.’
‘Anyway?’
‘The poor little thing doesn’t even seem to have a mouth.’
‘He must eat somehow.’ Father O’Bride finished cleaning his rifle and squinted down the barrel at her.
‘Eat? I’m not so sure, Father. We never find him in the refectory at lunch hour, he’s always lurking around the playground by himself or just sitting reading the Bible — and once I caught him carrying out the garbage for Sister Mary Martha!’
‘Uh-oh, can’t have that. You put a stop to it?’
‘Of course, a child could hurt himself carrying those heavy cans. Besides, the Community agreed that since Sister Mary Martha is too old to teach, housework is her little duty. Her little cross. And she takes it up joyfully.’
Father O’Bride found such expressions embarrassing. He tugged at the neckband of his sweatshirt as though it were a tight white collar. ‘Little too joyfully, if you ask me. I mean, she keeps polishing that same spot in the hall out there, I darn near broke my neck on it this morning. None of my business, of course, up to Mother Sup — and of course we all think the Sisters are doing one heck of a great job here, batting a thous—’
‘Whether the poor little pagan eats or not, Father, he doesn’t seem ready to make his First. It’s hard to get through to him, he seems to get everything mixed up with fairy tales and robot stories and I don’t know what. When I started telling the class about the Flight into Egypt, he kept interrupting to ask about the Deadly Desert, and Dorothy and Toto — yes and wasn’t Bethlehem where the steel came from, the metallic conception he called it! The metallic conception!’
Father O’Bride hated dealing with out-of-bounds decisions like these. He looked up for inspiration, but saw only a poster advertising the sign of the cross. Superimposed on a boy was a baseball diamond. The legend said: BE SURE TO TOUCH ON ALL BASES. ‘Look, take him out of religion altogether for now, let Father Warren handle that department. Teamwork, right?’
‘All right, and—’
‘Who knows, kid might shape up by next season anyway. If not, well, we hold him in reserve, bench him but maybe let him work out once in a while with the A squad…’
Sister Olaf went back to her class, pausing to check on Sister Mary Martha. The old woman was once more polishing the same little spot of hall floor, already mirror-bright. Have to do something about her, poor old forgetful… sees her own face in it, her own lost… now as in a glass, darkly, but soon… slippery as glass… glass slipp — stop that! She shook herself out of it. nodded at the crouching figure, and passed on. Upstairs Father O’Bride kicked his office door shut, but not before she heard him say, ‘Call that a little thing do you Charlie? I’m trying to start spring training here and my boys gotta work out in uniforms with that on ’em?
The door slammed and there was no sound but the children’s choir practice.
A disappointment. All that work on the Bible stories and the catechism for nothing, just because of some lousy regulation. And Sister O. wouldn’t even tell him what the lousy regulation was just that he wasn’t going to have religion with the other kids any more, and he probably wouldn’t be making his First in May.
He guessed what the regulation was, something to do with his not being a meat person. Meat people got to die and go to the Emerald City and be happy with God forever and ever, and what did he get? Next to nothing. No matter how good he was, all he could count on was lousy Limbo, with a bunch of yelling babies around and nobody to talk to.
It didn’t seem fair, not after he’d worked so hard. Extra work, even, like when they had that bit about the Word becoming Flesh and he got to school early one morning and worked it all out on the blackboard:
WORD
wood
mood
moot
moat
MEAT
As usual, that made Sister O. real mad and she told him to stand in the corner and ask forgiveness and never call people meat again.
Heck they called them meat in Oz, anyway it was no worse than calling somebody a bunch of letters. She didn’t even care that he used ‘moot’ — a word half the kids didn’t even know was in the dictionary — nor that he was showing the whole thing right there, words turning into words.
Holy cow. Sister O. even threatened to yank him out of the Christmas play, just because he got mixed up in rehearsal and forgot his line (‘Here’s the frankincense, Jesus’) and said:
‘Jesus! Here’s the Frankenstein!’
Holy cow.
And here it was the last day of school before Christmas, the last afternoon of the last day, all he had now was this
Mrs Feeney, the old housekeeper, showed him into the study. She reminded Roderick a lot of Sister Mary Martha, except she moved faster and cleaned more stuff, and except she never smiled.
‘The Father will be here in a minute,’ she said. ‘Now you sit
‘The chair? I mean…’
‘Don’t give me no lip, neither.’ She went out, polishing doorknobs behind her. He sat for what seemed like a minute, then got up and went to see what was on the desk. A silver cigarette-box, candy dish and lighter — those would be Father Warren’s. A spring grip developer and an electronic thing for keeping golf scores — Father O’Bride’s. The other stuff could be anybody’s. A stack of blank magnetic cards, each one headed A.M.D.G., a desk- set in onyx plastic and a letter:
… His Grace notes your request for approval of the Holy Trinity School team name, ‘Hell Cats’, and asks me to write, strongly urging you to reconsider. Any association of the name of the Holy 
Trinity with Hell is to be avoided, being distasteful at least! Your 
alternative suggestion ‘Hep Cats’ is not all together acceptable either.
In these troubled times, the Church must avoid giving 
scandal even in small matters. World Communism is on the prowl, seeking whom it may devour, 
preying on
