The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson Page B

Charles had to stay after school. And so all the children stayed to watch him.”
    “What did he do?” I asked.
    “He just sat there,” Laurie said, climbing into his chair at the table. “Hi, Pop, y’old dust mop.”
    “Charles had to stay after school today,” I told my husband. “Everyone stayed with him.”
    “What does this Charles look like?” my husband asked Laurie. “What’s his other name?”
    “He’s bigger than me,” Laurie said. “And he doesn’t have any rubbers and he doesn’t ever wear a jacket.”
    Monday night was the first Parent-Teachers meeting, and only the fact that the baby had a cold kept me from going; I wanted passionately to meet Charles’s mother. On Tuesday Laurie remarked suddenly, “Our teacher had a friend come to see her in school today.”
    “Charles’s mother?” my husband and I asked simultaneously.
    “Naaah,” Laurie said scornfully. “It was a man who came and made us do exercises, we had to touch our toes. Look.” He climbed down from his chair and squatted down and touched his toes. “Like this,” he said. He got solemnly back into his chair and said, picking up his fork, “Charles didn’t even do exercises.”
    “That’s fine,” I said heartily. “Didn’t Charles want to do exercises?”
    “Naaah,” Laurie said. “Charles was so fresh to the teacher’s friend he wasn’t let do exercises.”
    “Fresh again?” I said.
    “He kicked the teacher’s friend,” Laurie said. “The teacher’s friend told Charles to touch his toes like I just did and Charles kicked him.”
    “What are they going to do about Charles, do you suppose?” Laurie’s father asked him.
    Laurie shrugged elaborately. “Throw him out of school, I guess,” he said.
    Wednesday and Thursday were routine; Charles yelled during story hour and hit a boy in the stomach and made him cry. On Friday Charles stayed after school again and so did all the other children.
    With the third week of kindergarten Charles was an institution in our family; the baby was being a Charles when she cried all afternoon; Laurie did a Charles when he filled his wagon full of mud and pulled it through the kitchen; even my husband, when he caught his elbow in the telephone cord and pulled telephone, ashtray, and a bowl of flowers off the table, said, after the first minute, “Looks like Charles.”
    During the third and fourth weeks it looked like a reformation in Charles; Laurie reported grimly at lunch on Thursday of the third week, “Charles was so good today the teacher gave him an apple.”
    “What?” I said, and my husband added warily, “You mean Charles?”
    “Charles,” Laurie said. “He gave the crayons around and he picked up the books afterward and the teacher said he was her helper.”
    “What happened?” I asked incredulously.
    “He was her helper, that’s all,” Laurie said, and shrugged.
    “Can this be true, about Charles?” I asked my husband that night. “Can something like this happen?”
    “Wait and see,” my husband said cynically. “When you’ve got a Charles to deal with, this may mean he’s only plotting.”
    He seemed to be wrong. For over a week Charles was the teacher’s helper; each day he handed things out and he picked things up; no one had to stay after school.
    “The P.T.A. meeting’s next week again,” I told my husband one evening. “I’m going to find Charles’s mother there.”
    “Ask her what happened to Charles,” my husband said. “I’d like to know.”
    “I’d like to know myself,” I said.
    On Friday of that week things were back to normal. “You know what Charles did today?” Laurie demanded at the lunch table, in a voice slightly awed. “He told a little girl to say a word and she said it and the teacher washed her mouth out with soap and Charles laughed.”
    “What word?” his father asked unwisely, and Laurie said, “I’ll have to whisper it to you, it’s so bad.” He got down off his chair and went around to his