Right to Receive

Calvin was always late and always had a story. Last April, covered in mud, he had explained to his teacher that he had seen a red-eyed tree frog and decided to follow it so he could share it with the class. When Ms. Ruth asked him how a red-eyed tree frog had found its way from its tropical habitat to an Illinois farm town, Calvin shrugged.

Today, Calvin figured he must be only about ten minutes late. Not bad. He cracked the schoolhouse door open. With a rehearsed ease, he leaned close to the opening. He would time his entrance with the turning of Ms. Ruth's back. She may not even notice him.

His teacher stood in the front of the dusty, wooden room. She looked unusually clean, and the class exceptionally calm.

"We have a very important guest this morning," she announced. Calvin couldn't help himself. He pushed the door open with both hands and immediately crossed them over one another. Upon turning around to see their classmate triumphantly silhouetted under the doorframe, the class stifled a wave of giggles.

Ms. Ruth would not be bested today. She lengthened her neck, pointed her nose to the raftered ceiling, and continued.

"As I was saying. We have a very important guest."

Something in the way she dragged out the word important made Calvin feel small. She hadn't let him tell her about the crow that had accosted him for his apple core. Or maybe this morning, he had seen a gnarled old witch beckoning him from the shadowy trees. He couldn't quite remember now.

His moment over, he trooped to the nearest desk and noticed a man in a suit standing in the shadows.

"He is traveling to schoolhouses all over Illinois to give an announcement" she proclaimed.

The man stepped forward, and the room sparkled as the sunlight beamed across suit buttons. The assortment of farm children all recognized money when they saw it. The wealth of the stranger mesmerized the class into stillness. The man was not as old or as fat as the men pictured in drawings of rich men. And his green eyes glinted with excitement.

"My name is Charles Flint," he started. "I am here on behalf of a group of scholars who are looking for great minds. We have grown tired of looking among grown men and women" he turned to Ms. Ruth. "Pardon me, madam, but the adult mind too often loses its appetite for creativity when the woes of the world begin to weigh it down."

Calvin noticed how Mr. Flint lengthened the pauses between each word as he approached the end of his sentence. His voice was captivating and he was aware of the effect. He grinned.

"I have a present for each of you" He gestured toward a stack of small, black notebooks on Ms. Ruth's desk.

"You may each take one notebook. There are a few words printed on the front cover. I would like you to consider this a writing prompt. You are to fill the pages with your response. I will be traveling through in exactly one week to collect your notebooks and check for any winners."

A curiosity splashed across the faces of the students. Calvin saw Bethany, a lanky teenage girl in the front row, raise her hand tentatively.

"Yes, dear?" asked the man, clearly delighted by her quizzical expression.

"Excuse me, sir. Did you say there was a winner? Is this a contest?"

"I prefer to think of it as a puzzle."

"But you said one of us might win," she blurted out, unable to contain her curiosity.

"That's right. It's a puzzle. And I'm looking for a winning student who can provide me a suitable solution."

"Is there a prize?" shouted Calvin's freckled friend Peter.

Mr. Flint looked up at all the students at once and said, "There is … a reward."

Ms. Ruth picked up one stack of notebooks and began handing them to the first row of students. Calvin watched as his teacher approached the corner where he and Peter's desk stood, holding one small black notebook in her hand. She glanced from Peter to Calvin and back again to Peter. She placed the last black notebook on Peter's desk.

Mr. Flint, aware that his performance was complete, surveyed the room and began to exit. As he passed by Calvin's desk, he did not slow down. But a small black notebook made its way from his vested pocket to Calvin's desk on his way out of the door.

Calvin stared at the sleek, leather book and the gold lettering embossed onto the cover.

Treasure is within, but it’s wrong to believe

Gifts are swift, so we must right to receive

That week, Calvin nearly forgot about the notebook as he busied himself with chores. On the night before Mr. Flint would return, he examined its leather. How could Mr. Flint afford so many of these books? Calvin would arrive at school tomorrow and proclaim he lost the notebook. It could fetch a dollar or two. He'd be rich.

He read the puzzle aloud in a search for meaning. The way the puzzle used words like gifts and treasure sounded familiar. They sounded like Sunday. Calvin began to sharpen a blunt pencil. His first act would be to copy the puzzle's words onto the first page.

After he finished, he examined his clumsy cursive loops. No closer to an answer, but he had filled half a page. Why were there so many pages? He didn't want to waste another moment thinking about the puzzling poem. He had a better idea, he’d fill the book with a story.

Calvin crossed out the word right and replaced it with the word write. Now, he thought, the prompt at least made sense to him.

His next words were ‘Once upon a time…’ and then he began filling the little notebook with words conjuring another world of knights in shining armor and fierce dragons guarding gold.

The morning sun was beginning to light up the sky as Calvin squeezed the final lines of the story on the last page. He wasn’t tired. Instead, he felt shared exhaustion with his characters, both concluding an epic adventure.

He dressed quickly and completed his morning chores around the farm with such tremendous speed that his mother checked his temperature before she let him leave for school.

On his way, Calvin spotted Bethany up ahead and jogged to catch up to her.

"Oh, hello, Calvin." She said.

"Hi Bethany," he said breathlessly, tired from the jog and the sleepless night.

"Is that Mr. Flint's notebook, Calvin? Are you going to turn it in?" She dared.

He looked at her blankly, not sure if he wanted to share his story with her.

"I wouldn't bother wasting Mr. Flint's time with your answer.” She waved the notebook in front of his face.

Calvin grabbed the book from her. All of the pages were blank except the first, where she had copied the cover's riddle, just like him. However, Bethany's riddle included an arrow between the words must and right extending down the page to one word: be.

His mouth formed the phrase "we must be right to receive." His heart sank. He already knew he would be wrong, but such an obvious answer irritated him.

He handed the notebook back to her and avoided her triumphant smirk, then turned and started for the schoolhouse alone.

The collection of the notebooks was unceremonious. Mr. Flint waited at the schoolhouse entrance with a burlap bag and instructed the students to scrawl their names and addresses on the inside cover. Then they each tossed them in the bag.

Calvin had anticipated Mr. Flint making a scene looking through the notebooks hunting for winners. Instead, he looked resigned. Transformed from optimist to pragmatist, Mr. Flint looked sure he hadn't found a winner here.

Walking home, Calvin couldn't remember the day's lesson. His mind had retraced his notebook's story all day, adding details to its characters and richness to its settings. Calvin approached his house wishing he had another fancy notebook to write in. He’d write about Mr. Flint or treasure or the contest or Bethany receiving a prize that turned out to be cursed. He could ask his parents to pick one up in town. They'd tell him there was something else, like flour or whiskey, they needed more. He’d begin his next story in his mind until he had paper.

There was a shiny black wagon flanked by two enormous chestnut horses parked outside his rickety yellow house. Three people came out of the house as he approached. First came his mother, whose face was overflowing with a broad smile. Next, his father with reading glasses uncharacteristically perched on the edge of his nose. His father's thumb held his page in a book. Only when Mr. Flint walked out did Calvin realize it was his black leather notebook. His story.

"Why do you have my story?" Calvin asked his father.

His father started to answer, but Mr. Flint interrupted, "He has your story because I gave it to him."

"What for?" Calvin turned to Mr. Flint.

"Because it is a wonderful story, Calvin," and he added, "a winning story."

"But I didn't even solve your puzzle, I just…wrote"

"Write," he winked at Calvin before finishing, "to receive."

"Receive what?" Calvin asked.

"Well, you've already received the most important thing—your writing. But the prize money is twenty-thousand dollars," Calvin's mother and father gasped. "And, if you'd like, an opportunity to study with a group of writers who can help you learn to tell more stories."

"I would love to!" Calvin turned to his parents and asked, "How many notebooks can I buy with twenty-thousand dollars?"