by Betsy Byars
“I can’t reach that high.”
“Well, wait, let me stand up and I’ll bend the limb down to you.”
Vern got to his feet. His knees were trembling. Carefully he put his weight on the limb.
“Can you get it?”
Michael grabbed the limb. Vern bent and clutched him under the arm. Slowly, with Michael climbing and Vern pulling, Michael got out of the stream.
Vern scooted aside to make room. The boys rested for a moment, hearts pumping hard, chests heaving, heads throbbing, while the creek raged beneath them.
Finally Michael said, “We made it.” Then in a louder voice, “We made it!”
“I know.”
“We made it!”
“I know.”
He threw back his head. “We made it!”
Vern said, “You ready to climb to shore?”
“Yes.”
“Follow me.”
“You don’t seem to realize. Vern, we made it!”
“I realize.” He began crawling, hand over hand, up the trunk of the tree. “You coming, Michael?”
“I’m right behind you.”
Vern reached the thickest part of the trunk, and he got to his feet and walked the rest of the way. He jumped onto the wet ground and fell forward onto his knees.
He was in a stubble field, but even the stubbles felt good. Michael dropped beside him, and then both boys lay down, embracing the earth.
“We made it,” Michael said again. He felt the back of his head with one hand. “I’ve got a knock right there,” he said. “Do you?”
Vern didn’t check. He said, “I’ve got to get home.” As he spoke the words, his teeth chattered.
“Oh, sure,” Michael answered. “I’m sorry. For a minute I forgot about your grandfather.”
“I know.”
Vern got to his feet. His clothes were plastered to his body. His hair stuck to his face. He was shivering.
Michael scrambled to his feet too. “What do you think happened to him?” he asked. Vern looked so pitiful that Michael began to pull at his own clothes, to squeeze out the water, to run his hands over his hair, to make himself presentable.
“I don’t know.”
“Did he ever fall like that before?”
“No.”
“Maybe he fainted. My grandmother fainted in church one time. It was during a hymn.”
“Maybe it was a faint.” Vern began walking. He wrapped his arms around his body to control the shivering. “But I don’t think so.”
CHAPTER 19
Mad Mary and Junior
“You have got to let go of me, Junior,” Mad Mary said.
“I can’t!” Junior sobbed into her ragged clothes.
“Junior!”
“I can’t, I just can’t!”
She pushed him back so he had to look at her. He closed his eyes and shook his head blindly back and forth. He held her clothes so tightly that the old cloth ripped in his hands as he swayed.
“Junior, I have got to see to your grandfather. Now, you can either come with me or go up to the house. But let go!”
Junior did not answer so she said, “I mean it, Junior! We’re wasting time.”
Junior thought about it. “I’ll go with you.” His voice wavered. “But I can’t look.”
“That’s better. Junior, I got to make sure whether he’s dead or passed out.”
“I think he’s dead.”
“Well, don’t be too sure. I found a possum one time, took him home, got ready to skin him, and he blinked. I said, ‘Well, that blink just saved your life.’”
Junior stumbled down the hill, his face buried again in her clothes. He heard her say, “Shoo!” then, “Git!” and he knew they were passing Mud. Then they stopped, and Junior knew they were beside his grandfather.
Mad Mary knelt. Junior pulled her skirt tighter across his eyes.
“He’s not dead,” she said.
“What? What? How do you know?”
“His heart’s beating. You could have found that out, Junior, if you’d bothered to put your hand down his shirt instead of running off.”
“I couldn’t.”
“Now, listen to me real carefully, Junior. Are you listening?”
He nodded.
“Get your face out of my skirt.” She pulled the cloth away. “Junior, open your eyes.”
Junior squinted.
“You have a telephone, don’t you?”
He nodded.
“Go up to the house. Dial the operator. Tell the operator that you need the ambulance.”
Junior nodded.
“Tell her what your name is and where you live. Can you do that, Junior? This is real important.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to see if I can help your grandfather. Now go on. Hurry.”
Junior took a few backward steps, and then he turned and, once again, ran up the hill to the house.
Michael and Vern came around the bend. They were at the very spot where Pap had thrown them the rope.
“He’s still there,” Michael said, “I see his feet.”
Vern did not answer. “But there’s somebody with him,” Michael went on. “It’s that old lady.”
Michael stopped pulling at his clothes. He had been trying to prepare himself for that awful moment when his mother laid eyes on him. Now he stood still too.
“I wonder where Junior is,” he said.
Vern shook his head.
“Maybe he went for help.”
Vern lifted his shivering shoulders and let them fall.
“Anyway, I don’t think he’s dead, because she wouldn’t be working on him, would she?”
Vern didn’t answer.
“Why don’t you yell and ask if he’s all right?”
Vern shook his head.
“Want me to?”
Vern said, “No.”
All the way up the creek, Michael had been talking about how various members of his family had fainted exactly the way Pap had fainted, then they had come to and been fine. Finally Vern had allowed himself to believe that was the way it would be with Pap.
“We’ll go around the bend,” Michael said, “and Junior and Pap will be there together, perfectly all right. They’ll be the ones glad to see us!”
Now they had rounded the bend, and the dream was over. Pap lay where he had fallen, and bending over him, like an angel of darkness, was Mad Mary. The fact that she was there somehow made things worse instead of better.
And it’s my fault, Vern said to himself. This thought had been threatening like a storm for most of the walk, but Vern had allowed Michael’s hopeful tales to hold it off. Now the storm broke.
It’s my fault. If I had not made the raft, Pap wouldn’t be … He couldn’t even think the word.
He wrapped his arms around his chest.
“You want me to come home with you?” Michael asked. “Or maybe I should go home and get my mom. Would that be better? Maybe the rescue squad. What do you think?”
If only I had not made the raft … Why did I do that? Why didn’t I—
Michael touched Vern’s arm. “What do you think?”
“About what?”
“About whether I should go get my mom.”
For the first time in his life, Vern wanted Michael’s mom’s firmness. He ducked his head.
“Does that mean get her or not?”
“Get her.”
“If my dad’s home, I’ll get him too.”
Vern lifted his shoulders again and let them fall. He and Michael walked without speaking the half mile to the Houstons’ bridge. There Michael spoke again. “My mom’ll know what to do.”
Vern stepped onto the bridge. He hesitated because he was crossing more than water.
Then Michael said in a lower voice, “Vern, I know he’s not dead.”
Vern bobbed his head to show he’d heard, and then he started across. Through the cracks between the boards, he could see the water had a
lready begun to recede.
If only I had seen this bridge, Vern thought, maybe I could have grabbed it. Why didn’t I just …
Holding himself tighter, he jumped off the bridge and broke into a run for home.
CHAPTER 20
The Long, Long Night
Maggie picked up the phone and said “Hello.”
“Maggie, is that you?”
“Yes, it’s me.”
Maggie sank down onto a chair, directly in the blast from the window air conditioner.
“Who is this, Vern or Junior?” Maggie had never been able to tell their voices apart over the telephone.
“It’s Vern.”
“Vern, I am so glad you called. I am all by myself in this motel room and I am going crazy. I—”
“Where’s Mom?”
“Give me a chance and I’ll tell you. Mom has gone out with some bull rider named Cody Gray.”
“When will she be back?”
“How would I know? Late! She does this every night, Vern. I don’t even know where they go in that big silver convertible. I can’t figure out why Mom wanted me to come if all she was going to do was run off and leave me. Vern—”
Vern interrupted. “Pap had a heart attack.”
Maggie stopped in mid-sentence. “What?”
“He may die.”
The blast from the air conditioner was icy cold. Maggie’s knees began to tremble beneath her jeans. “Pap?”
“Yes.”
“How did it happen? When?”
“This afternoon. He was throwing a rope to me and Michael—we were out on the creek in a raft—and after he threw the rope, he just staggered up the bank and fell over. You and Mom better come home.”
“We will. But, listen, Vern, don’t hang up yet.” She sensed Vern was lowering the receiver. “Who’s staying with you and Junior?”
“Mary.”
“Mad Mary?”
“Yes.”
“Let me speak to Junior.”
“He’s asleep. He was real upset because he was with Pap when it—Oh, I don’t want to talk about it anymore. You’ll hear all about it when you get home.”
“Vern, don’t hang up,” she said again. Vern was known for his short phone conversations. Most of the time he never even said good-bye. “I’ve got to hear more about this. Did you talk to the doctor—”
She heard a dial tone. After a long minute, she put the phone back in its cradle.
She got up slowly and looked around the room as if she’d forgotten what she was doing there. Then, in a robotlike way, she began to get her clothes and put them in her suitcase. She packed her mom’s clothes in the same slow way.
She glanced around the room to make sure she wasn’t leaving anything. Then she went out and sat on the edge of a rusty lounge chair by the blue swimming pool.
People swam in the pool, got out, dried off, drank beer at the tables. Cars moved in and out of the parking lot. Late arrivals checked into the Bar None and found their rooms. Maggie noticed none of this.
She sat tensely, her arms wrapped around her knees, bathed in the red glow of the motel sign and the amber glow of the Bar-B-Q Barn. Her eyes watched the vacancy sign because that was where cars turned in from the highway.
At two thirty in the morning Cody’s silver Cadillac convertible pulled into the motel drive.
Maggie got to her feet instantly. She crossed the parking lot. Cody’s convertible stopped in front of room 104, taking up two slots. The motor was idling.
Neither her mother nor Cody noticed her. Her mother was kissing Cody good night when Maggie opened the car door.
The moon was high and full. The stars were out. A night breeze blew from the west.
Mad Mary was sitting on the porch, in the swing. It was after midnight, but Mary couldn’t sleep under a roof. Anyway, she loved the night sky. On nights like this she felt she could, with her naked eye, see stars scientists hadn’t even thought about.
She heard a knock on the front door. She knew it had to be Junior. No one else would knock to come out of a house.
“Come on out, Junior,” she said, “and join me.”
Junior came out on the porch in his mother’s pajamas. These were the pajamas he had packed so happily that morning for the spend-the-night.
His feet padded across the uneven plank flooring, and Junior took his place in the swing. He sat as close as he could to Mary, and she put her arm around his shoulder. She began to pat him in rhythm with the swing. “I thought you were asleep,” she said.
“I kept having bad dreams.”
“Well, sit out here and keep me company.”
“All right, if you want me to.”
“Look at the stars, Junior. That’ll make you feel better. It does me.”
“All right.” He would watch the stars if she wanted him to, but the only thing that made him feel better was being close to her.
Junior took a deep breath, inhaling her comforting woodsy smell. They watched the sky without speaking for a few minutes. Then Junior broke the silence.
“Did your grandfather ever almost die?” he asked.
“He did die,” Mary said. “I was just about your age when it happened too.”
“Did you see it happen?”
“Yes, I did. As a matter of fact, I was holding his hand.”
“You were?” Junior pulled back to look at her.
“In those days, Junior, it seemed important to be with somebody when they died. The whole family was there, standing around my grandfather’s bed. Folks don’t do that much anymore.” She glanced down at Junior’s moonlit face and changed the subject. “Your grandfather and I were in a school show one time. Did he ever tell you about that? He did rope tricks and I sang ‘Ave Maria.’”
Junior blinked his eyes. “He told me you sang, but not which song. Do you still know it?”
She shook her head. “My singing days are over, Junior.”
“Could you hum a little bit?”
She hummed a tune Junior had never heard before. Even when she was humming, she couldn’t make the high notes. When she stopped, Junior said, “That was nice.”
There was another of those long, comforting pauses. Junior cleared his throat. “Getting back to the subject of grandfathers … when your grandfather died, did it scare you?” he asked.
“No, Junior, it didn’t, but I was expecting him to die. My mother had a long talk with me before we went—about how Poppa Dear—that’s what we called him—Poppa Dear was dying and what I was supposed to do and how I was to behave.”
“I wish my mother had told me what to do,” Junior said. Mary hugged him.
“If you don’t want to talk about it,” Junior said, “that’s all right, but I’d like to hear some more.”
“Let’s see. We went in the bedroom, and, Junior, my grandfather’s bedroom was bigger than a lot of churches, and when we got over to the bed, it just happened that I was standing right by his hand. I don’t know why, but I reached out and took it. His eyes weren’t open, but for a while he held my hand back. Then all of a sudden, he just let go. That was how I knew he was gone.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway,” she went on in a different, firmer tone of voice, “don’t you let folks dying do to you what it did to me.”
“What?”
“Drive you away from people, make you go off and live by yourself in a cave.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” Junior said. “I couldn’t. I’d miss people too much.”
Mary hugged him again. “You’ve had about as bad a day as a boy your age can have, haven’t you?”
Junior rested his head on Mary’s shoulder. “I sure hope so,” he said.
CHAPTER 21
Going Home
“Well, I never thought Pap would do something like this to me,” Vicki Blossom said. She and Maggie were in the car, on their way home to Alderson. They had passed through a dust storm, and the windshield wipers were still wiping away the dust.
�
��Mom, he didn’t do anything to you. He had a heart attack!”
“Well, you know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t know what you mean. You act like he did it on purpose to stop you from having fun with Cody Gray!”
Vicki Blossom began driving faster, weaving in and out of interstate traffic. On either side of the highway were stretches of flat ground. Behind them the dust storm reached to the sky.
By evening the oil towers they were passing would have changed to trees. The brown fields would be green hills. By early morning they would be home.
Maggie blinked her eyes. She had been trying to cry ever since she had opened the convertible door and said, “Pap’s had a heart attack.”
“How bad?”
“I don’t know.”
Everything happened in a rush then. Her mother was out of the convertible, hugging her, crying, “Oh, no, not Pap. Oh—Junior and Vern. We got to pack.”
“I already did.”
Cody’s hand was on Vicki’s shoulder. “What you want me to do, hon? How can I help?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I can’t think.”
“I’ll check you out of the motel. I’ll look after Sandy Boy. You just throw your bags in the car and go.”
In five minutes Maggie was in the car. Through the window she could see Cody Gray pressing some money into her mom’s hand.
“I can’t take that, Cody.”
“Now, I don’t want to worry about you,” he said. “That car of yours is liable to quit. If it does, you rent another one and keep going.”
“I’ll pay you back.”
“You just take care of yourself. I don’t want anything happening to you.” He leaned down to look at Maggie through the car window. “You either, little lady.”
Then he straightened. “I’m real, real sorry.” There was a pause. Maggie looked in the sideview mirror. They were kissing.
“I’ll see you,” Cody said, “in—let’s see—Phoenix.”
“Oh, I hope so.”
“I’m counting on it.”
“Come on, Mom!”
Her mom got in the car, and they pulled out of the motel. Her mom held on to Cody’s hand out the window until they got past the swimming pool. “You taking me with you?” He laughed. Vicki Blossom let go and laughed too.
