by Betsy Byars
8
In the backyard of the Mason house were swing sets and play equipment, because several years ago the Masons had had little children living with them. Carlie was on one of the swings, pumping herself so hard, the whole swing set was shaking.
Harvey was sitting on the back porch in his wheelchair. He had gotten interested in making as many lists about himself as he could, and Mrs. Mason had bought him a spiral notebook.
He had felt so good about the lists that he had begun to think that if his mother had made some lists about herself—well, maybe she could have found her identity without going off to make hammocks in Virginia.
Carlie stopped swinging. She walked over to the sandbox. “Want to see me make a froggie house?” she asked Harvey.
“No.”
“Why, Harvey, I thought all little kiddies liked to watch people make froggie houses.”
“Well, maybe little kiddies do.”
“Harvey, does this mean you’re no longer a little kiddie? Have you passed into puberty while I wasn’t looking?” She piled damp sand over her foot, eased her foot out and shook off the sand. “There. Now during the night, Harvey, a little froggie will come and live in this house.” She got up. “Oh, I’m bored,” she said. She stepped on the sand house and came over to the porch. She sat down on the steps. “Harvey?”
“What?”
“Have you ever thought of running away?”
He looked down at his broken legs. “Hardly,” he said.
She grinned. “Harvey?”
“Now what?”
“Have you ever thought of rolling away?”
He didn’t answer.
“I think about it all the time,” she said, looking down at her feet.
There was a silence, then Harvey cleared his throat and said, “‘Young and Restless’ is on television.” He found it hard to concentrate on his lists when Carlie was around. At any moment she might snatch the book from his hand. He especially did not want her to see that she was number three on the list of people he was afraid of.
“I know ‘Young and Restless’ is on,” she said. “I’m getting sick of that show.”
Actually the reason Carlie wasn’t watching television was because the mail had just come and there had been no letter from her mother. Eight days and not even a postcard.
“What’s this list about?” Carlie asked.
“It’s called ‘Books That I Have Enjoyed.’”
“Oh.” Carlie was disappointed.
“I’ve already got eighteen and I’m just getting started.”
“I could make up my list in two seconds. Hong Kong Nurse. That’s the only really good book I ever read. You ought to try it. After that I read Peace Corps Nurse and Nurse of the Yukon, but they weren’t as good. Not enough romance.”
“Carlie, would you help me with lunch?” Mrs. Mason called from the kitchen.
“The slave of the world is being summoned,” Carlie said. She got up slowly. She saw that Harvey had written two more titles on his list.
Harvey did not glance up. He was really enjoying this list. It didn’t bring back any unpleasant memories, not like the list called “Promises My Mother Broke.” That list had almost made him cry. Almost but not quite. It wasn’t as easy to cry as people thought.
Carlie walked to the door. “There was one other book I wanted to read—Appalachian Nurse—but I never could find it in the library. The good books are always checked out.”
Harvey was still writing.
At the door Carlie paused. “Harvey, when I do run away, will you miss me?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll give you a sample of life without me.” She went into the kitchen, then she called out the window, “Pretty bad, isn’t it, Harvey?”
He didn’t look up.
9
Mr. Mason was driving Thomas J into Maidsville to visit the Benson twins in the hospital.
“Can I come too?” Carlie asked.
“Not this time.”
“But I got a cousin in Maidsville,” she lied. “She runs a boutique and I want to see what kind of stuff she’s got.”
“You can go another time,” Mrs. Mason said. “They’re just going straight to the hospital and back.”
“Then I’ll just go straight to the boutique and back,” Carlie went on.
Harvey said, “Could I go? That’s just about seven blocks from my house.”
“No, Harvey,” Mrs. Mason said in a gentler voice.
“But I wouldn’t go home. I just want to stop at the Kentucky Fried Chicken place right across from the hospital. I could get some chicken while they’re visiting.”
“No.”
“I wouldn’t be any trouble.” Harvey moved forward in his wheelchair.
Harvey was addicted to Kentucky Fried Chicken. He ate it every night that his father didn’t get home for supper. Once he had eaten it thirty-two nights in a row.
He would pedal over on his bike, put the red-and-white-striped box in his bicycle basket and pedal home. He would eat in front of the TV watching his favorite programs. Now the thought of eating in his own living room made his mouth water for the chicken and the little cups of mashed potatoes and gravy.
“No.”
“Well, if you get a chance,” he rolled closer to Mr. Mason, “would you please bring me a box of chicken? Please! This is important.”
“That’s a good idea,” Mrs. Mason said. “Get a bucket of chicken. It’s too hot to cook.”
“If we have time,” Mr. Mason said.
Carlie and Harvey and Mrs. Mason stayed at the door watching Thomas J and Mr. Mason get in the car. Then Mrs. Mason turned.
“Well, how about it, Carlie?” she said. “You ready to learn to sew today?”
Carlie groaned. “I tried it once. I made an apron in Home Ec and I got a C-minus on it because the gathers were bunched. You have to have a certain kind of hands to sew.”
“Nonsense. I had two girls with me last year, and I taught them to sew in one afternoon. They made all kinds of nice clothes. Their pictures are on the mantel in the dresses they made.”
“What happened to them?”
“The sisters?”
“Yes.”
“Why, they went home—left two days before you and the boys got here. I hardly had time to change the sheets.”
“So that really happens sometimes—that people get to go home?”
“Yes, it really happens.” Mrs. Mason smiled. “Now, come on. We’ll start on a real easy halter top.”
“Come on, Harvey,” Carlie said. Harvey was still at the door looking down the empty street. “Don’t you want to see me in misery?” She followed Mrs. Mason down the hall. “You know, I wish I had a twin,” she said. “Then we could go around fooling people; like if some boy liked my twin, then I could pretend to be her and say all kinds of crazy things. It would really be fun to have a twin. She could take tests for me and—” She looked back over her shoulder. “Come on, Harvey.” She liked an audience. She always did better when people were watching her. “This may be your one and only chance to see me sew and I’m not kidding. Come on.”
“All right, what did I do wrong now?” Carlie asked, holding out the halter.
“Let’s see.” Mrs. Mason put down her own sewing. “Well, you took a dart on this side and you didn’t take one over here. That’s why it doesn’t fit.” Mrs. Mason began to take out Carlie’s seam.
Carlie watched Mrs. Mason rather than what she was doing. After a moment she said, “Do you mind if I ask you something?”
“No, go ahead.”
“Well, why didn’t you have children of your own, that’s what I’m wondering, instead of taking in strays?”
“I don’t think of you as strays, Carlie.” Mrs. Mason smiled. She put a pin into the cloth and then lowered it to her lap. “I did want children of my own—lots of them. My sister Helen has four children, Liz has five, but as it turned out, I couldn’t have any.” She picked up the cloth. �
�Now, Carlie, see, I’ve pinned the dart for you. Sew along this line.”
“But why didn’t you adopt a child?”
“Well, that’s what we were going to do. We even had our papers in. Only while we were waiting—this was a long time ago—they asked us to be foster parents. I didn’t want to at first, but—”
“Why not? I’m curious.”
“Well, I knew I would come to love the child and I knew the child would leave, and I didn’t think I could stand it. I wanted, you know, a child of my OWN, capital letters, who would never leave. Only nobody has that, Carlie.” She straightened. “Anyway, it’s worked out, Carlie, not the way I thought when I was your age, not the way I planned, but it has worked out.” She smiled. “Now sew your halter.”
10
Thomas J sat beside Mr. Mason on the front seat of the car, sliding a little on the plastic covers every time the car went around a curve. He had never visited anyone in a hospital before, and he had a dread about it.
“Why don’t you take them some candy?” Carlie had suggested. “That’s what I’d want if I was in the hospital.”
“They don’t believe in candy,” Thomas J had answered.
Carlie had stared at him like he didn’t have good sense. “Don’t believe in candy! How can they not believe in candy? There’s Mounds, Mr. Goodbars, Hershey’s, Sweetarts, Jujubes. I mean, I can understand how they wouldn’t believe in ghosts or something, but candy! How can anybody not believe in candy?”
“They just don’t. They don’t believe in soda pop. They don’t believe in chewing gum.”
“Whoo, they are nuts.” She had paused, then grinned. “Or don’t they believe in them either?”
As Thomas J sat there beside Mr. Mason he wished he did have a box of candy on his lap. One of those big silver-wrapped boxes of candy he’d seen in drugstores with a bow and a plastic rose on top. It would make it all easier.
“Here’s something for you,” he would say. And they, who had never believed in candy, would be overcome. It would be like people who didn’t believe in heaven suddenly finding themselves floating upward.
They got to the hospital and walked slowly down the green halls. It was an ugly green to Thomas J, nothing like the greens of nature. Suddenly Thomas J remembered the garden. He remembered the twins working, feeling the tomatoes, pulling off dead leaves, lifting their heads to the sun.
He stumbled in the hall. “It’ll be all right,” Mr. Mason said. He put his hand on Thomas J’s shoulder, not to push him forward, just to help him along, like planes refueling in the air.
“Three-twenty. This must be the room,” Mr. Mason said. They entered together.
The Benson twins lay in side-by-side beds, and beyond them was another woman reading a magazine. Thomas J moved between the twins’ beds.
The twins didn’t look like themselves. They had gotten thinner. They hardly made wrinkles in the covers.
“Hi,” Thomas J said.
“Thomas J, is that you?”
“Yes’m.” He had been afraid they wouldn’t know him. Sometimes at home they had forgotten him. He would go in for supper, and there would only be two places set at the kitchen table. “Why, Thomas J,” one of them would cry, “we forgot all about you. Get yourself a plate.”
“I’m here for a visit,” he added.
“Sister, it’s Thomas J.”
“I see him.”
There was a silence. Then both twins reached out their hands to him. He could never remember holding their hands before, and it made him feel strange. He glanced over his shoulder at Mr. Mason.
“Have you been back to the house?” one of the twins asked.
“Not since I left.”
“What?”
He turned back to the twins. “Not since I left.”
“Don’t let things go down.”
“Nome.”
“The peas are just coming in.”
“Yes’m.”
“You got to can the peas, Thomas J. You’ve seen us do it enough to know how.”
“I don’t remember, though. I don’t even know where the jars are at.”
“We’ll stop by on the way home and check on the peas,” Mr. Mason said.
“Get Papa’s gold watch,” one of the twins—Jefferson—said. “You know where it is.”
“Yes’m.”
“If people know it’s there, they’ll break in and steal it. Might have already.”
“Yes’m.”
“And the gold coins—there’s three of them—you know where they’re at.”
“Under the mattress.”
“Under my mattress,” Jefferson said.
There was a silence. Jefferson closed her eyes. Thomas J cleared his throat. “How are your hips?” he asked.
“They operated on us. Put pins in.”
“Oh.”
Now both of them closed their eyes. Thomas J took one step forward. He still held their hands.
Suddenly he wanted to ask about that morning, long ago, when he had come tottering up the road. He felt as if this might be his last chance. He had asked them for details before, but all they had said was “You just come up the drive, that’s all to tell.”
“But what did I have on?”
“Oh, let’s see. What was it, Sister?”
“A diaper and a shirt.”
“Do you still have them—the diaper and the shirt?” At the time he had thought there might be a clue there—a laundry mark or a name.
“No, we used them for dusting, but I do remember there was a dog’s picture on the shirt.”
“A dog?”
“Because I’ve seen him on TV. What is his name, Sister? You know who I’m talking about.”
“Lassie?”
“No, a cartoon dog. I’ll think of it in a minute. He’s white with—”
“But did you go out to the road and look for cars?” he had asked, interrupting.
“Sister did.”
“Did she see anybody?”
“No.”
“An accident or something?”
“There wasn’t a soul in sight.”
Later, one night when he was watching a Halloween special on TV, one of the twins had cried, “That’s the dog. That’s the dog that was on your shirt when we found you.” It was Snoopy.
The twins were asleep now. Their hands slipped from Thomas J’s. Thomas J took a step backward and bumped into Mr. Mason.
“Well, we might as well go, Thomas J,” he said.
“All right.”
At the foot of Jefferson’s bed, even though he knew they couldn’t hear him, he said, “I hope your hips get better.”
11
It gave Thomas J a sad feeling to go in the Bensons’ house. It seemed emptier than a house without any furniture.
He got the watch and the three coins, wrapped them in a handkerchief and put them in his pocket. Then, without looking at Mr. Mason he said, “I want to see how the peas are.”
He went to the back door, but he didn’t even have to step outside to see the garden was ruined. There had been no rain in three weeks, and the leaves on the plants were yellow. The vines were shriveled and dead. There were no tomatoes.
He and Mr. Mason looked over the sad scene. Mr. Mason said, “When you write the Bensons, I wouldn’t mention the garden. It isn’t likely they’re going to see it this year anyway.”
“I won’t.” He paused. “I couldn’t.”
When they were in the car and almost to the main road, Thomas J turned and looked back. “Wait just a minute,” he said. Mr. Mason stopped the car.
“Anything wrong?”
“No.”
Thomas J felt like this was the last time he would ever see this house. He wanted to imagine himself walking up the drive in a shirt and diaper. Lost. Abandoned. Dirty. Tear streaked probably—being left behind had to make a baby cry.
He tried to imagine the twins waiting on the porch, arms outstretched, then hurrying down the steps to hug him in his dirty shi
rt and diaper.
He couldn’t get a picture of it. “Let’s go,” he said.
They were halfway home when they remembered about the Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Harvey was on the front porch waiting for them. When he saw them get out of the car without the red-striped boxes, he felt like crying. He rolled himself back to his room and sat staring out the side window. There was nothing to see there but an uncut field.
“What’s wrong with you?” Carlie asked from the door. “Is the sight of me in my new halter too much for you?”
“Leave me alone.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“Leave me alone!”
Carlie took two steps into the room. “I can’t,” she said. “I get curious about what’s bugging people.” She sat down on the bottom bunk. “That’s because I’m going to be a nurse when I grow up and treat mentals.”
“I’m not a mental.”
“Huh, that’s what they all say.”
“Will you get out of here?”
Carlie stretched out on the bed, her chin resting on her hands. “Tell me what’s wrong and I’ll decide whether you’re a mental or not. Pretend I’m a nurse with a long beard. Tell me all.”
Through clenched teeth Harvey said, “If you must know, what’s wrong is that I wanted some Kentucky Fried Chicken and I’m not going to get any.”
“They didn’t get the chicken?” Carlie cried, sitting up. She was disappointed too. She liked bought food much better than home cooked. “I was really looking forward to that chicken.”
“Not like me.”
“Now we’ll probably have hamburgers,” Carlie said, “and they won’t be Big Macs either, you can bet on that. They’ll be cooked.”
“Carlie,” Mrs. Mason called, “give me a hand, will you? We’re going to grill some hamburgers in the backyard. It’ll be like a picnic.”
“See, what’d I tell you?” Carlie said. “I’ll probably get grease all over my new halter and I really worked on this thing too. You saw me.” At the door she turned and said, “I’ve judged your case, Harvey.” She grinned. “You aren’t a mental.”
“Thank you,” Harvey said.
