Shoebag Returns

by M. E. Kerr

  Miss Rattray held her head so very high, she never saw Butter. If she had, Stanley would have been in more trouble, for cats were not allowed anywhere but the kitchen.

  “Why,” she asked, “does the Better Club bother you?”

  “It bothers me that I’m not in it,” Stanley said.

  “But all through life there will be some clubs you will not be in. That is just a fact of life, dear boy.”

  “That is why I started my own club,” said Stanley.

  “Life is not that simple, Sweetsong. You have already been admitted to a girls’ school, when there was never a boy admitted here before you. You cannot have everything.”

  Stanley could hear Butter’s purring from under the bed.

  He raised his voice to drown out the sound. “I have always had everything,” he said. “I even have a Rolls Royce back at Castle Sweet.”

  “But you are not there. You are here!” said Miss Rattray. “And you have made fun of the Betters by calling yourself the Butters. And now you are raising your voice to me, which is rude!”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am.”

  WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!

  “The Betters know better than to raise their voices at me, which is why they are better!”

  “Why else are they better?” Stanley said over Butter’s purring.

  “They mind, for one thing!” Miss Rattray’s own voice was raised now.

  WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!

  “They would never dream of sneaking down to the swimming pool, which is what I suspect you did, when you left these around the corner in the Changing Room!”

  Miss Rattray tossed the clothing on Stanley’s bed.

  She stood and lumbered toward the door.

  “I will stop that banging right now!” she said. “And you will call a halt to this Butter Club right now! I never want to hear of it again, Sweetsong! It is over! And so are quick dips in the pool, when there is no one there to supervise you!”

  WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!

  Miss Rattray paused a moment in the doorway. “I will not send you home, either. I give up trying to get the cook to use the new computer, and I give up trying to get certain alumnae to contribute to the building fund, but I do not give up on my students! I will not give up on you, Sweetsong! That is not my way!”

  Sixteen

  THURSDAY NIGHT AFTER THE lights out bell, Josephine Jiminez was admitted to the school infirmary. She was suffering from a major stomachache, brought on by eating twelve Butterfingers.

  “This is a disaster!” Stanley told Bagg, saying the word “disaster” in the same heavy tone his father had used the day moles invaded the great, green lawns of Castle Sweet. “The Butter Club is finished. Josephine Jiminez has come down with a bellyache. And the poor tarantula up in the Science Room will probably die from mishandling!”

  “Wait a minute! Hold your horses!” said Stuart Bagg. “There is always a way out of any disaster.”

  “Lucy Lightite doesn’t think so! Right after she saw you running naked from the Changing Room, she faxed her family to come and get her!”

  “She will get over it,” Bagg said. “And Josephine Jiminez will get over her bellyache, too. The only way to get on with it is to get over it!”

  “The Butter Club is finished, though,” Stanley moaned, sitting cross-legged on his bed in the dark, while Bagg looked through the closet for more clothes.

  “The Butter Club is alive and well,” said Bagg, slipping into a pair of Gap khakis. “The Butter Club must go underground, that’s all.”

  “How can you dress in the dark?” said Stanley. “That’s why you always forget your Hootie & The Blowfish T-shirt.”

  “That’s my lucky shirt, but sometimes I like a change. And I never knew a boy with so many clothes.”

  “Are you poor, Bagg?”

  “Where I come from clothes aren’t too important. It’s what’s above, not what’s below, it’s what you know.”

  Bagg was always at his best in the dark. He found a neat green Lands’ End shirt and pulled it over his head.

  “Don’t go swimming again, please,” said Stanley.

  “I won’t,” said Bagg, who had let him believe in Miss Rattray’s theory that someone had gone into the pool. The next time he used the Changing Room, he would hide his human clothes up in the rafters.

  “We can’t go underground. Josephine ate all the Butterfingers there were. We can’t wear one yellow sock or Miss Rattray will know. How will we have style? Or flair?” Stanley Sweetsong’s face was not a happy one.

  But Bagg was always an optimist.

  Bagg knew from experience never to give up.

  “You must have a secret location and do everything in secret,” he told Stanley. “You must have a secret handshake. And buy more Butterfingers!” Bagg’s nose twitched at the thought of Butterfinger crumbs.

  “I don’t think Josephine is up to it,” said Stanley. “And tomorrow her shrink comes. If we go underground, she may have to tell him about it.”

  “I don’t think she will, Stanley.”

  “But shrinks can get secrets out of you,” said Stanley. “My mother had a shrink once and when my father said don’t tell him what we’re worth or he’ll charge more, my mother said he’d only get it out of her. They’re very clever, Bagg. And we’ll never know if Josephine tells him.”

  “I’ll find out for you, Stanley.”

  “No one can find out what someone else tells a shrink,” Stanley said.

  “I can find out. What kind of a pal would I be if I couldn’t?”

  Now Bagg was dressed, and ready to sneak back to the Changing Room. It was risky enough scooting along the darkened corridors, but at least with clothes on he would not cause some frightened female to fax an SOS to her folks. He could pretend he was a friend who had visited Stanley and forgotten the time. Bagg would think of something if the occasion arose. The important thing was to get back to the Macintosh, before Drainboard began to fret. Then tomorrow, as Shoebag, he would sit in on Josephine’s session with her shrink.

  “Remember, Stanley: To get on with it, get over it. You have nothing to worry about anymore.”

  “But I can’t always stop. Right now I’m worrying about the tarantula. I feel so sorry for her, Bagg.”

  Stuart Bagg felt a shiver down the length of his body.

  He could not bring himself to discuss the tarantula. Of all arachnids, the tarantula was said to be the fiercest hunter. Its very hairs aided it in locating prey.

  Bagg could barely bring himself to discuss an ordinary spider, but a fearsome one like the tarantula made his human stomach turn … for once a roach, always a roach (except for Gregor Samsa).

  “Nevermind the tah-tah-tarantula,” Bagg managed to spit out the word somehow.

  “Have you seen her, Bagg?”

  “No, fortunately.”

  “She’s very beautiful,” said Stanley Sweetsong. “I think you’d feel fortunate to see her … Bagg? Bagg? … Are you still here?”

  He was not.

  Seventeen

  IT WAS FRIDAY.

  Stretched out on a couch in the infirmary was Josephine Jiminez.

  Behind her, in a large leather armchair, sat Dr. Dingle.

  “Do you want to tell me about the Butter Club?” he said.

  “I’m hungry. Do you have anything to eat?”

  “Now, Josephine, you know we never eat in our sessions. And you just recovered from stomach trouble.”

  “That was last night. I’m back to normal.”

  “We’ll see about that,” said Dr. Dingle, who was not fond of the word “normal.” In his profession it was not a money-producing word, and he rarely heard it when he didn’t sneeze. Perhaps he was slightly allergic to it.

  “Achoo!”

  “God bless you,” said Josephine.

  “Why don’t we end this session with a few words from you about the Butter Club,” he persisted.

  “Miss Rattray says there’s no such club. … Anyway, why don’t y
ou get Stanley Sweetsong in here? He’s been having nightmares about being put in one of Mr. Longo’s tanks.”

  “You are my client, dear, not Stanley Sweetsong. Have you had any interesting dreams?”

  His voice had such a plaintive sound, very like Josephine’s father’s every time he announced another transfer to a new Army post.

  “I dreamed,” Josephine began, “that on Career Day a famous actor came to talk to us in assembly, and guess what, Dr. Dingle?”

  “What?” the psychologist leaned forward, pencil ready over the pad he held on his lap.

  “He asked if he could see a performance of If You’re Not In, You’re Out!”

  Of course she had made all that up. She never remembered her dreams. And an actor was never invited to speak on Career Day. Just writers were. Just scientists were. Just lawyers were. Just accountants, musicians, and computer analysts. Just females were, never males!

  But Josephine felt sorry for Dr. Dingle in these sessions. She wanted to say something he could make notes about … and she had always wished she could meet a real live actor. How long could she continue writing and performing her plays without some notion of what one was like?

  “In your dream, did this famous actor see a performance of your play?” Dr. Dingle asked. “In this dream how did you feel when the actor asked to see it?”

  But Josephine was bored with the whole idea of this dream she never had. She uncrossed and crossed her legs, and put her palms behind her head and yawned.

  “Well?” Dr. Dingle asked again.

  “That’s all there was to the dream.”

  “How do you feel about that dream?”

  “I feel that we ought to have an actor come on Career Day, and I wish you’d tell Miss Rattray that.”

  Dr. Dingle made a note of it.

  “What else, Josephine?” Dr. Dingle asked.

  “Nothing. I feel quite normal today.”

  “Achoo!”

  “God bless you.”

  Up the wall, beside the couch, a cockroach had paused, his antennae quivering, his eyes alert, almost as though he understood every word being spoken.

  “We have a little visitor in here listening to everything we say,” Josephine said.

  The cockroach hurried away.

  “You know, Josephine,” said Dr. Dingle, “it is a good thing to have a lively imagination. Your little plays, your new little club, this little visitor you claim is present — all of that has its value. But —” he paused to rub his eyes, and take a deep breath.

  “But?” Josephine said.

  “But we must get to the bottom of things. Your rage, and your fears. The strange names you gave your dolls!”

  One thing Josephine Jiminez was not afraid of was bugs. She looked out for them whenever she could. She watched the cockroach until it disappeared down the side of the couch.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking about right now,” said Dr. Dingle, never one to give up on a client.

  “I’m thinking of what it would be like to be a cockroach.”

  “Aha! Is that what you feel like? Something shunned. Something no one wants around?” Dr. Dingle was sitting forward now, his eyes bright.

  Josephine said, “I never said I felt like one. I said I wondered what it would be like to be one.”

  “Wouldn’t you always be hungry? Wouldn’t you have rage? Wouldn’t you want to smash your dolls against the wall? Wouldn’t you fear that no one would want you in a club?”

  Josephine glanced up at the large clock on the infirmary wall. Three minutes to go before the session was over. Ten minutes to go before the nine members of the secret, new, underground, Butter Club met in the Music Room.

  Josephine Jiminez was its president.

  She had never been a president before, and while she would have liked to discuss her presidential problems with a shrink, she could not trust him not to tell Miss Rattray that the Butters had gone underground.

  He told Miss Rattray everything. Miss Rattray told Josephine’s parents everything. Josephine’s parents thanked Miss Rattray by giving gifts to the school, which they bought dirt cheap at the Army PX.

  The latest one had been a computer for the cook. On her way to her session with Dr. Dingle, Josephine had seen them crating it for return to her family, since Cook could not learn it, nor even bear to look at it.

  “Continue, please, Josephine.”

  “I’m thinking, Doctor.”

  Josephine would have to cope with club problems herself.

  On her own, she would have to deal with the fact that it would be very hard to be both the president of the Butters and the director, producer, and lead playwright of the Black Mask Theater.

  A lot would be expected of her!

  “If I were a cockroach,” Dr. Dingle was pleased as punch with his new insight, “I would want to be anything but a cockroach!”

  Josephine’s hands went from behind her head down to the pockets of her blazer. Had she kept the receipt for the new box of Butterfingers? Stanley had said there would be dues, so that she would be paid back for all that she was spending on the candy. She would have to decide the amount and collect it from the members.

  She had so much responsibility in her new situation.

  “Well, what about it, Josephine?” the doctor said. “Isn’t that how a cockroach thinks?”

  “I suppose,” Josephine answered, though she had lost the gist of the conversation by then.

  “Finally!” said Dr. Dingle. “Now we’re getting somewhere! Someday, if we continue to progress, you may forget all about your dolls. Or if you must have dolls, you might give them dolly names like Barbie, Suzy, or Betty Lou.”

  “My parents gave me those dolls,” said Josephine. “Every time we got transferred to a new post, I got one. I got Monroe when we moved to Fort Monroe. I got one when we moved to Alexandria, Virginia. I got one when we moved to Fort Sam Houston, and when we moved to Washington, DC. And when we moved to Arlington, Virginia; Heidelberg, Germany; Huntsville, Alabama, and Seoul, Korea. That’s how they got their names.”

  But Dr. Dingle was eyeing the clock, then shuffling papers as he always did at the end of a session.

  “Time is up!” he called out. “Never mind your dolls, Josephine. Next session we’ll talk more about why you feel like a cockroach!”

  Eighteen

  THERE WAS NOTHING AS exhausting as a session with a shrink!

  Shoebag longed to head for Josephine Jiminez’s room, where he could curl up for a brief nap in the ear of Monroe, the masked Kewpie doll.

  But first, he must stop by the Macintosh, for a brief game of hide-and-seek with Radio and Garbage Pail.

  As concerned as he was about his human friends, he was not one to forget his roach family.

  His human clothes were hidden in the Changing Room. That night after dark, he would become Bagg again. He would meet with Stanley, and tell him Josephine had not told the shrink anything about the underground Butters.

  Trudging past the Music Room, he saw the Butters heading in for their first meeting. And he saw Butter, the cat, sprawled on the piano top, licking his paws contentedly.

  But as he went down the steps leading to the kitchen, his antennae lifted, and his cerci shuddered.

  There was something in the air: something familiar and foul.

  He could hear Cook telling someone, “Don’t get that stuff in my kitchen! Hear me?”

  A man’s voice answered her, “Just tell me where the roaches were.”

  “I told you!” Cook was in her usual bad mood. “They were in the computer, but the computer is gone!”

  Gone? With his entire family inside?

  Shoebag’s reflexes quickened with the panic he felt throbbing under his shell.

  Not only was his family gone, but in an instant he knew the source of the foul odor.

  It was Zap! Cooks’s conversation was with the Zap man, the much feared world-class fumigator.

  ZAP ZAPS COCKROACHES DEAD!

  ZA
P … FOR THINGS THAT DON’T DESERVE TO LIVE!

  Shoebag would never forget those heartless slogans.

  As fast as his six legs could carry him, he fled under the door of the Changing Room.

  He must try to become Bagg again, only suddenly Shoebag felt himself falter. His tiny legs collapsed under him. He struggled for breath. With great effort he dragged himself back under the door to the hall.

  “Just do that little room where the computer was!” Cook was shouting at the Zap man.

  “I did the little room!”

  “What you did was the Changing Room!” the cook answered.

  Shoebag fastened himself against the light socket near the hall floor. He fell off it immediately, dizzy from the poisonous dose of Zap he had been exposed to in the Changing Room.

  Shell-side down, legs up, he struggled for the strength to flip over, and flee.

  “Close the kitchen door, Cook!” the Zap man called out. “I’m getting ready to zap the varmints!”

  “I just step on them!” Shoebag heard Cook say, and he wiggled his antennae weakly, in protest.

  Nineteen

  IT HAD BEEN TEN days since Stanley Sweetsong had seen Bagg. Sometimes he wondered if his pal had been only a mirage. Mr. Longo talked about optical illusions in science: sheets of water that seemed to appear in deserts. Tricks of the eye, aided by imagination.

  Had Stuart Bagg been such a thing? Could a mirage leave behind a Hootie & The Blowfish T-shirt?

  Now the October days in Pennsylvania had turned cold suddenly. But it was always nice and toasty in the Music Room. And thanks to Bagg the Music Room was not just warmth and rhythm. At certain times its operas and concertos masked the meetings of the underground Butters.

  The girls and Stanley Sweetsong gave one another the secret handshake with thumbs-up and touching.

  “Ahoy!” they chorused. “We’re Butter!”

  Josephine Jiminez called the meeting to order.

  “Attention everyone!” said Josephine Jiminez. “We will now have roll call. Ethel Lampert, a founding member, will take charge.”