Post 4

I’m on the last few pages of When Zachary Beaver Came to Town by Kimberly Willis Holt. So far in the book, Wayne, Cal’s older brother, died in the war of Vietnam. Cal’s mother broke down once military police showed up at her house to tell her the bad news. After that happened, Toby seemed to have pulled back from the real world, just like the rest of the town. He stayed in his house for about 4 days. Toby’s father went to Wayne’s awake but Toby couldn’t go. Instead of going to the awake, Toby goes to the Bowl-a-Rama to get away from everyone. Farris, the owner is there and he didn’t go either. Then the funeral happened; Toby didn’t go either. He went to go see Zachary Beaver. Zachary asked who died and Toby couldn’t tell him without choking up. After that, Cal showed up and was mad at Toby for not going to his brother’s funeral. Everyone in the whole town went but Toby. Cal and Toby didn’t speak for a while. After they resolved their differences, Cal and Toby had a plan; they were going to get Zachary Beaver baptized. They had Farris do it because Zachary didn’t want a lot of people showing up to think he was a freak.

There’s one main thing I really related to in this book. It was when Cal’s brother, Wayne died in war. My boyfriend is in the military so I’m always afraid he’ll get deployed and sent off to war. I know things are a lot different now then Vietnam, but I always have something like that in the back of my head. My whole extended family has a military background. All of my uncles were in the military and served over seas.