When Ratboy Lived Next Door

by Chris Woodworth

  It was a pity Jell-O hadn’t landed on Willis, too. I’d have to think up something else for him.

  * * *

  After lunch we all filed back in for our history lesson.

  “Class, get out your history books, please, and turn to chapter 34.” Mrs. Warren was still smiling “the smile.” She’d been wearing it since Willis and Elliot had shown up this morning. It was a smile I’d seen before. She wore it on Parents’ Night or when the principal observed our class. I didn’t know a new student would rate the smile, but then we’d never had a new student before.

  “Willis, we are reading about the industrial revolution. If Bobby would be kind enough to let you borrow his book, I’d like you to read the first page, please.”

  Willis just sat there. Bobby hurried to find the page and handed him the book. Willis gave Bobby a lazy look, then crossed his arms instead of taking it.

  You could see the first crack in the smile. Mrs. Warren fingered her brooch and said, “Um, Willis, here at Maywood Grade School we stand up to read. I know different schools have different ways, but that’s our way. You may stand now and read the first page of chapter thirty-four.”

  Willis looked down at the fingernails on one of his hands as if checking to see whether it was nail-clipping time. The rest of us turned our heads from Willis to Mrs. Warren. Her face was as red as the lipstick she wore.

  “Willis, do you have a hearing problem that I wasn’t made aware of?” She seemed to genuinely hope he did.

  “No. I hear just fine.”

  “Then stand and read.”

  Nothing.

  “Now!”

  Willis crossed his arms and kept his eyes on the desk in front of him. The longer he sat and stared, the more irate Mrs. Warren looked. All three of her chins quivered as she marched her considerable self to the side of Bobby’s desk. For once I felt a little sorry for Bobby. He’d never been in the vicinity of trouble before. Even though it was Willis our teacher was after, I’ll bet Bobby darn near peed his pants.

  Mrs. Warren put both hands on the desk and her face right in Willis’s. She used her quiet voice, which was ever so much scarier than her loud voice.

  “Willis Merrill, I do not tolerate this kind of behavior in my classroom. When I ask a student to do something, that student had better do it or have a very good reason not to. You’re new today. In light of that, I’m giving you one more chance than I would anyone else. Is there a reason you refuse to read?”

  It was deadly quiet. I could hear the blood pounding in my ear. A quick look around the room told me that everyone’s eyes were locked on Willis. We all knew that when Mrs. Warren talked like that, the only thing that would save you was vomiting, right then and there. Anything short of that, you were a walking dead kid.

  Despite my feelings for Willis, I wished he’d just read and get it over with.

  “Willis,” Mrs. Warren tried again, “your choices are to read or visit the principal.”

  Willis slumped a little and raised his head. I was surprised to see him look so weary, like a person who’d been in too many battles. Then, almost as fast as it came, the expression left and he slowly sat back. First he looked at Bobby, then he looked around the room, and finally his eyes fell on Mrs. Warren.

  “What would you have done for fun today if it wasn’t for me comin’ to this school? Pulled wings off flies? Picked on Tubby here?” He pointed to Bobby. “Seems to me you oughta have better things to do than yank my chain.”

  “Huhhh!” Mrs. Warren’s intake of breath could be heard above all twenty-five of ours.

  “And how about you take a step back, ’cause that per-fume of yours is makin’ my eyes water.”

  Mrs. Warren’s hand shot out quicker than a serpent’s tongue. She grabbed Willis’s ear, twisted it, and pulled up. Willis had to either stand or knock her hand off his ear. I’d have bet the farm he would have fought her, but not being as dumb as I thought, he chose to stand. She didn’t let go either. “Now march!” she said, leading him out of the room.

  * * *

  When Mrs. Warren came back, she didn’t say one word about Willis. It drove everybody crazy wondering what happened to him. As far as I was concerned, no punishment was too severe. Willis was just plain ornery, and this time the whole sixth-grade class and Mrs. Warren had been there to see it.

  I’d been able to get my homework done at school while Mrs. Warren had Willis in the principal’s office, so I got home earlier than usual—just in time to see Willis and his coon take off. I ran upstairs and changed out of my school dress into some real clothes. Running back down, I swung wide over the newel post and jumped—but landed no closer than ever to the linen closet door. Since Nanna wasn’t in the kitchen, I grabbed a couple of buttermilk cookies and looked out the back door.

  Nanna was leaning over the fence holding a sack out to Mrs. Merrill. You’d have thought the sack had live snakes in it the way Mrs. Merrill held back, seemingly scared of touching it.

  I gently opened the door and crouched low beside the steps, listening to Nanna and Mrs. Merrill as I nibbled on a cookie.

  “Carolyn, it’s a shame to throw these seed potatoes and onion sets away. Please take them. We’ve got all we need in our garden.”

  “I just don’t know…” Mrs. Merrill said in that vague way she had.

  “Look over there.” Nanna pointed to where Mr. and Mrs. Ogle had had their garden. “The Ogles grew some of the biggest vegetables in town in that patch of ground. It may seem like work now, but it will be worth it once the garden starts producing.”

  “It’s not the work. It’s … I need to ask Boyd if it’s okay,” Mrs. Merrill said, looking down at her feet.

  “I’ll take that sack, ma’am.” We all turned when we heard Elliot’s voice. He cleared his throat and said, “Carolyn’s probably unsure about it because we don’t have any hoes or rakes.”

  “Well, land sakes,” Nanna said, “you can borrow ours if that’s all that’s keeping you from a garden!”

  “Ma’am, I would appreciate you lending me your garden tools, but I can’t do it unless you let me pay you back,” Elliot said. “How about if I weed your garden for the summer? Would that be a fair deal to you?”

  “Oh, honey, Mr. Carson takes care of the garden,” Nanna answered. “It’s really not necessary.”

  “Then I can’t accept your offer, ma’am.”

  I looked from Elliot back to Nanna. He was messing with Nanna’s job chart. She had some peculiar ideas about how our household should be run. Nanna did everything around our house and wouldn’t accept help from Mother or Daddy. She did, however, expect Mother to keep up the flower beds and Daddy to mow the lawn and do the vegetable garden. Come summer, I was to hang the clothes on the line. Heaven forbid if Mother made her own bed or pulled a weed as she walked by the garden.

  I figured it must really be important to Nanna that the Merrills have a garden when she said, “All right, Elliot, you have yourself a deal. I’m sure Mr. Carson could use your help in the garden. The shed is unlocked and you just help yourself to the tools. You’ll need to get busy, though. This is planting season.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. Thank you very much!” Elliot took the sack of dirty old seed potatoes from Nanna as if it were a really nice gift.

  “Well, then, I’ll go on in and finish cooking supper.” Nanna sounded plumb worn out from the work of talking them into a garden.

  I scooted around the corner of the house until Nanna was inside. There wasn’t any sign of Willis, and curiosity about what had happened to him at school was eating at me. I also wanted to know more about the Merrills. I decided to spy on them from my tree house.

  When I was in first grade, Daddy had built it for me in the old oak that grew right alongside the fence that separated our yard from the Ogles’. I hadn’t used it much last summer, and I hadn’t been in it at all this year. The tree house had a back wall and sides just high enough to hold up a roof. The front was wide open, so I would have a good vie
w of our new neighbors. If I slid to the back wall, they wouldn’t be able to see me.

  I climbed up and heaved myself onto the floor and pulled my legs in. At that moment, Elliot jumped over the fence to get a spade from our shed. When he got back to his own yard, Mrs. Merrill said, “Elliot, your pa won’t like it we didn’t ask his permission. You know how he is.”

  “We’ve got to eat, that’s all I know. I doubt Pa will notice a garden. We’ve been here three days and he hasn’t even looked at the other rooms in the house, just the one he eats in and the one he passes out in.”

  “Elliot!” Mrs. Merrill looked around as if to see if anyone had heard him.

  “Look, Carolyn, I hope Pa keeps this job, I really do. But you know that if he keeps the rent paid up, there won’t be a whole lot of money left. With a garden, at least we’ll have some food.”

  Rent? It never entered my head to think about how my family paid their bills and if there’d be enough food. It seemed funny to hear those words coming out of Elliot’s mouth. Mr. Merrill didn’t sound like too good a husband or dad from what they were saying. It made me think back to that time he chased Willis with a belt. Would he really have hit him?

  Elliot said, “I’ll look for odd jobs around town. We’ll have beans and tomato plants. It will be a nice garden. Don’t worry about it.”

  But Mrs. Merrill looked worried, all right. She looked scared to death. She had on a wrinkled green skirt and a matching jacket that looked, well, tired. When it was new, it was the sort of thing you’d wear to get fancied up, and here she was wearing it as a housedress.

  My ears perked up when I heard Elliot ask, “How did school go for Willis?”

  “Not too good. He brought home a letter from the principal. I think he was upset, but you know Willis—he wouldn’t talk about it. He took Zorro out of the cage and ran off.” Mrs. Merrill seemed about to cry when she said, “The principal wants one of his parents to come to school.”

  “Then you’ll have to go,” Elliot said.

  “I can’t.”

  “Then who will? You know Pa won’t. You’re our stepmother now. You’ll have to go tell them how it is with Willis.”

  How what is? I wanted to scream the question.

  “Your pa won’t like it. You know how mad he gets when he thinks I butt in with you boys.”

  Elliot was attacking the garden. “What I know is that they won’t listen to me because I’m not an adult. Pa won’t go, so it’ll have to be you.”

  Big tears welled in Mrs. Merrill’s eyes. Elliot said, “Don’t even tell Pa about the letter and everything will be fine. Just go on back in the house now.”

  Then she turned to go! I’d never seen anything like these people. If you didn’t know better, you would have thought Elliot was the grownup.

  * * *

  When Elliot was alone and busy turning over the dirt, I decided this was a good time to find out what had happened to Willis.

  “Hey!” I yelled from the treehouse.

  Elliot looked around, not seeing me. “Up here!” I called.

  “Hey, yourself,” Elliot said when he saw me, then went back to work.

  I climbed down the ladder and got the hoe out of the shed. Then I hopped the fence and began breaking up the dirt clods that Elliot had turned over. He stopped and looked at me.

  “This garden hasn’t been used since Mr. Ogle got sick. That was a few years back. It’s going to be hard work. I thought it would be neighborly to help.”

  Elliot watched me for a few more minutes, then finally said, “You don’t have to do this. I can manage. But if you want to be ‘neighborly,’ then I’ll say thanks.”

  Unlike Willis, Elliot seemed okay to me. He was nice but not overly much. He wasn’t one of those people who fawned all over you.

  Beth must have heard our voices. The back door slammed and she came running out. She stood hopping from her bare tiptoes back to her heels, sucking on that finger. She seemed excited but wouldn’t say a word until Elliot looked at her and smiled. Then she said, “Hi!”

  I didn’t care much for babies or little kids. They seemed like a lot of work. They almost never did what you wanted them to, and they always looked kind of dirty to me. Beth’s hair lay in strings, and I wondered if anyone ever washed her face. But it made me sad that she needed Elliot’s okay to talk to me.

  “Hey, Beth,” I said.

  Her excitement took over again. She thrust her doll out to me. It had an old rag wrapped around it. “She has clothes now!” she said.

  “Well, so she does.” I tried to think of something else to say. “Does this well-dressed baby have a name?”

  Beth stopped smiling and looked at the ground as if she was thinking real hard. I had the feeling no one had ever really played with her before. I thought of my Ginny and Betsy McCall dolls stuck away in my closet along with a hatbox full of doll clothes. Mother might not be one to show affection, unlike Daddy and Nanna, but she never hesitated to spend money. Every Christmas morning when I was younger, she gave me more doll clothes than any three kids ought to have—according to Nanna.

  It tugged at my heart that Beth didn’t know dolls should have clothes or names. I said, “We should call her Elizabeth. I’ve heard only very special babies get that name.”

  When I said that, she bounced up and down with sheer joy, clutching her doll to her. I was glad Mrs. Merrill had told us that Beth’s full name was Elizabeth.

  “I’m going to tell Mama her name!” she said, and she ran into the house.

  Elliot didn’t miss turning a shovel of dirt but he said, “That was a nice thing to say.”

  I kept working, too, but the ground didn’t seem as hard as it had when I started. We worked side by side for a while. When Elliot stopped to wipe his face with his shirtsleeve, I took the chance to talk about Willis. “Your brother is in my class at school.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I was surprised you’d sign up for school when it’s almost over for the year.”

  Elliot smiled. “You sound like Willis.” Then he got serious. “An education’s important. Just look around you. It’s the only way poor folks can get a good job.”

  I acted interested, but Elliot’s words reminded me of all the speeches Nanna and Daddy always gave me.

  I tried to get the subject back to Willis. “A funny thing happened today. He was in my class only for a while. Then he sort of disappeared.”

  Elliot went right back to the garden. “That a fact?” he asked.

  “Yep.” I went back to work, too. “I’m not sure, but I think he might be in trouble. He got sent to the principal’s office and we didn’t see him again for the entire day.”

  I didn’t think he was going to answer me. Finally he said, “It was probably a mistake putting him in sixth grade. Willis has an awful hard time reading.”

  “Heck, it’s not my favorite thing to do, either. I almost never read a book unless I have to.”

  “It’s not that he doesn’t want to. It’s that he can’t. For some reason the letters just don’t make sense to him. Some schools we’ve gone to put him in with kids his own age. Others bump him down a grade or two. Sounds like that’s what’ll happen here.”

  I lived in dread of flunking a grade. Willis was one of the tallest kids in our class. That would make it even worse. But after all I’d been through with Willis, I thought it sounded like good punishment for a bully. Still, I didn’t want to show Elliot my feelings, so I acted as if I felt bad about it. “Being set back a grade or two would be a hard thing.”

  Elliot cut in fast. “Willis will be all right. He might not read real good, but he’ll do okay. It’s not like he doesn’t have anybody to take care of him. He has me. I’ll always be there to look out for him.”

  Elliot was looking right at me with his blond hair hanging in his eyes. He had the most serious look I’d ever seen.

  I felt kind of flustered and said, “Yeah, you’re right. There’re worse things. He’ll be just fine.”
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  I wiped my hands on my pants. “Nanna’ll be wondering what happened to me. I ought to go in now.”

  I jumped back over the fence and ran all the way into the house and didn’t stop until I was in my bedroom. Grabbing the pillow off my bed, I wrapped my arms around it. It was the first time since I had learned about Robert that I didn’t run for the sock drawer to pull out his picture when I was upset. I carried the pillow over to my window and looked down at Elliot’s back as he worked the soil.

  There was something about the way he looked when he said, “He has me. I’ll always be there to look out for him,” that tore right into my heart. With his straight blond hair and bright blue eyes, Elliot didn’t look a thing like my picture of Robert. Yet he’d said exactly what I thought Robert would say about me if he had ever had the chance. It was what I pretended he said when I had his picture out.

  My heart pounded so hard that I squeezed the pillow tighter to my chest. My throat was tight and my eyes stung.

  It didn’t seem right that mean Willis Merrill should have a big brother in the here and now when all I had was a brother I couldn’t mention around my mother, a brother made up of nothing but an old photograph and borrowed memories.

  6

  Tuesday morning Willis came to school, but none of us could figure out where he went.

  After school he ran out the door as if a demon were on his trail. He must’ve beat it straight home to get his raccoon, because Zorro’s cage was empty when I got there. That suited me just fine. Still, I couldn’t help wondering about it.

  “Where did Willis take off to?” I asked Elliot when he came over to borrow our gardening tools.

  “Willis keeps to himself” was the only answer I got.

  Elliot was a hard worker. He was planting the seed potatoes and onion sets Nanna had given him. He said he also planned to grow pole beans, tomatoes, and turnips. After working in his garden, he came over to ours. I could tell that a weed wouldn’t stand a chance with Elliot around.

  I’d noticed that Elliot and Willis walked to school together. Willis hurried home, though, and Elliot came home alone. Since he didn’t have a bike, I stopped riding mine to school—waiting to leave the house until after Willis and Elliot were a block ahead of me. Lord knows, I didn’t want to walk to school with Willis! Then I only had to dawdle a little after school before Elliot came by and we walked home together.