Animal, the Vegetable, and John D Jones

by Betsy Byars

  He was on Chapter Six of his book now. He was going to dedicate it to the girls.

  “To Deanie and Clara,” it would read, “without whose idiotic behavior I could never have written this chapter.” He was proud of that and circled the period at the end.

  The title was “How to Conceal the Fact That You Are an Idiot: Ten Simple, Basic Rules of Behavior That Will Conceal the Stupidity That Lurks in All of You.” He did not write “in All of Us” because he felt no stupidity lurked in him.

  He straightened, squaring his shoulders beneath his T-shirt. He was, he felt, back to his usual intelligent, superior self. A momentary setback—that was how he now thought of the events of the past days—the undeserved humiliation, the unfair scorn. Even Einstein must have had such days. After all, there were idiotic girls back then too.

  It was like having a disease, he decided, a disease that weakened you but then—this was the good part—made you immune, so that you never had to worry about getting that disease again.

  He looked up. Clara was in the water, struggling through the waves with her yellow float; Now she was holding it behind her like a cape. She turned sideways as the next wave hit, and the float turned over, showing its red underside.

  On the beach Deanie was doing something strange. She was standing in place, turning slowly with her arms out to the sides, her face lifted to the sun. It was like a slow, weary tribal dance.

  John D went back to watching Clara. She was beyond the breakers now, trying to get onto the float. She struggled, rose, and flopped onto the float sideways. She paused while the float rose on a swell. Then she threw one leg over the yellow plastic, then the other. She stretched out.

  With her hands on either side, she began to paddle idly, keeping herself just beyond the breakers, inside the swells.

  Since obviously the girls were going to be entertaining themselves in this juvenile fashion for hours—turning in place and lying on a float—John D went back to his writing.

  He was writing rule four for concealing stupidity. “Refrain from laughing at people.”

  He looked at what he had written for a moment. Then he added, “It is entirely possible that you will be laughing at someone more intelligent than yourself, someone far superior.” He hesitated, then added for emphasis, “I myself have been ridiculed. All great men have been. But truly intelligent people never laugh at others. It is a certain sign of stupidity.”

  He glanced up, over the shells the girls had found on the beach and lined along the porch railing—the conchs, the angel’s wings, the periwinkles, the olives, the green sand dollar.

  He remembered the pleasure of watching Clara’s smile fade as she had come running in calling, “Look! I found a green sand dollar!”

  “The reason it’s green,” he’d said quietly, “is because it’s still alive—or was.” A perfect put-down.

  He noticed that Deanie had now added arm movements to her endless, boring turning. She was flexing her arms in and out, possibly one of those cheerleading gestures she was so fond of, John D thought. While her arms pumped in and out, her feet continued their slow turning. She was like a mechanical doll gone wild—legs moving slower and slower, arms about to fly off her body.

  When he finished this chapter, he decided, he was going to write one called “How to Stop Being Boring.” Only he, who had never, ever, not once bored himself in his whole life, could write such a chapter without—he smiled—being boring.

  CLARA LAY WITH HER head resting on her arms. Her eyes were closed. The smooth, rhythmic rise and fall of the waves soothed her. She felt at peace for the first time since she had arrived at the beach. The world liked her after all, she thought. It had taken her, a troubled child, onto its lap and was rocking her, soothing her.

  She was glad she had found the float that morning in the hall closet, all bunched up in a plastic ball; glad she had spent the morning straightening it out, blowing it up. She smiled slightly. Puffy cheeks are good for something after all, she told herself.

  The sun was warm on her back. The water that lapped over the sides of the float was cool on her stomach. She dipped her hands into the water and made a few strokes to keep the float from drifting back into the breakers. Then she folded her arms back under her cheek.

  Overhead the gulls were crying. The sound seemed soothing now. She was sleepy, relaxed.

  She lifted her head. The float was in the same spot, had not drifted either way. She dipped her arms into the water, paddling slowly, idly. She watched the shore, the long white curving beach, the dunes blown up from the beach into a double line. The dunes had overtaken the trees in some places, and the twisted trunks stuck up in the sand.

  Clara closed her eyes. I think I’ll just stay out here until it’s time to go home, she thought. A week on a raft. She would write a book about it like John D—How I Avoided Embarrassment and Personal Misery and Attained Peace and a Union with Nature in Seven Days on a Raft: A Story of Inspiration and Courage by Clara Malcolm.

  She wondered idly what John D’s book was about. She knew he was writing one because she had seen Chapter Two at the top of a page, and then the words How to—Probably “How to Bring Misery and Discomfort to Those Around You,” she decided. “Twenty Ways to Make People Feel Awful, with a Special Pictorial Section on Insulting Looks.”

  And, she went on, her father’s book would be How to Have a Vacation with Your Daughters Without Noticing They Are Present. She frowned slightly, opened her eyes, and stared at the waves.

  And Delores. Clara paused, waiting to think of what her book would be. How to Ruin the Vacation of the Daughters of the Man You Love. It would be the shortest book in the world—one sentence. “Go along on their vacation.”

  Clara blinked her eyes against the glare. The salt spray had dried on her arms, giving a frosted look to her skin. She touched her arm with her tongue, tasted salt. She closed her eyes.

  She would put all the books together in a box, like a set, she decided, and the set would be called Two Weeks in—she paused—Two Weeks in the Wrong Place with the Wrong People. She sighed. At the Wrong Time for the Wrong Reasons.

  She lay without moving, her hands trailing in the water. She could hear the waves breaking on the shore, but it was like the distant boom of thunder. Her breathing grew regular. She drifted toward sleep. “Mnnn,” she sighed.

  On the shore Deanie continued to turn in place. Her eyes were closed, her face lifted to the sun. Her feet were wearing a circular pattern in the sand.

  On the porch John D continued writing his rules for concealing stupidity. He paused, pushed his glasses up on his nose, and waited for inspiration. Then, abruptly, he began writing again.

  Clara’s float, borne now as easily, as lightly, as a toy, moved, rose, fell, shifted, turned, and bobbed idly on the waves.

  JOHN D HAD COMPLETED rule five for concealing stupidity. It was “Avoid the physical appearance of a fool. Don’t let your mouth hang open. Don’t put your fingers in your nose. Don’t scratch your head when you’re thinking. Don’t spill food on yourself and others. Don’t wipe your nose on your shirt. Don’t say ‘Duh’ when you don’t know the answer.”

  He left space after his last Don’t because he knew he would think of a lot more.

  He looked up from his paper as satisfied as if he had eaten a five-course meal. He saw that Deanie had abandoned her arm movements and was standing quietly, facing south.

  As John D watched she took three steps and stopped when she faced west. She would have been looking right at the house and John D if her eyes had been open.

  “Boring,” John D said.

  He looked at the ocean, but he did not see Clara. He got to his feet. He glanced up and down the beach. She was not in sight. He moved to the edge of the porch so that he had a better view. No Clara.

  He felt foolish, like one of those parents who rush out to search frantically for the missing child who turns out to be watching TV at Billy’s house. He walked to the steps, opened the screen door, steppe
d outside. No Clara. He felt a sudden pang of anxiety.

  He walked quickly down the steps, past the clothesline of bathing suits. A lizard scurried across his path. A bird flew out of the sea grass. John D did not notice them. He stretched and strained like a tourist for a glimpse of the yellow float.

  Holding his pencil idly, like a forgotten cigar, he moved to the dunes. The wind blew his hair across his face. He brushed it aside. The pencil dropped unnoticed from his hand.

  Now, atop the dunes, he could see a mile in either direction. The beach was empty, a long flat stretch of white. Not even a fisherman in sight. Only Deanie, slowly turning in the afternoon sun, broke the view.

  John D raised one hand to shade his eyes and looked out to sea. He thought he saw a spot of yellow on the horizon. His eyes narrowed behind his heavy glasses. He lifted his glasses. He could see better from a distance without them.

  He stepped forward. No, it was gone—or else it had never been there.

  He resettled his glasses and ran down the dunes, slipping in the soft hot sand. He went down on one knee. He scrambled up, crossed the beach, and stopped in front of Deanie, who was now facing north. There was a faint smile on her face, as if she were listening to a favorite song.

  “Where’s your sister?” he asked abruptly.

  “Oh, don’t do that!” Deanie’s eyes snapped open. She put her hands over her bathing suit top. “You scared me to death! You should never, ever, come up on somebody who’s”—she hesitated, looking for the right word—“who’s thinking about something and yell at them.”

  “Where is Clara?”

  He was so close to her that he could smell the sickening odor of hot tanning butter and sweat. He wanted to shake some sense into her, but she was too disgusting to touch.

  “Clara? She’s—”

  Deanie turned to face the ocean and then she looked blankly up and down the beach. Her greased fingers were still clasped over her heart. Her eyes began to blink.

  “She was right here a minute ago—on the raft.”

  “I know that. I saw that. Where is she now?”

  “Are you sure she didn’t come up to the house?”

  “Yes, I am sure she didn’t come up to the house.”

  “Well, you don’t have to sound like that.”

  “I’ll sound anyway I want to.”

  “You think you are so perfect,” Deanie sneered. “You think you can come down here like Mr. Superiority and tell us—”

  “Don’t you realize,” he interrupted in a voice so cold that Deanie broke off her words and looked at him, “that while you have been out here turning around and around like a hunk of barbecue meat, your sister has been swept out to sea?”

  Deanie stepped backward out of the hole she had worn in the sand, leaving it between them. Her sudden silence, her blinking eyes, her gaping mouth, brought John D no satisfaction at all.

  CLARA AWOKE WITH A start as a spray of cold water slapped across her back. She lifted her head and looked around in irritation.

  She saw the swell of a wave rising behind her, the white crest of foam. For a moment Clara thought she had drifted into the breakers and was about to be washed up onto the beach. She looked ahead to see how close the beach was. She saw another wave.

  A cold fear gripped her. These were not the long gentle waves of the shore, but the dark choppy waters of the sea. Her shoulders tightened. She gasped air into her lungs. Slowly, holding on to the float with tight cold hands, she lifted her head.

  There were only waves, rising then falling to reveal more waves. She turned and glanced over her shoulder. A wave broke over her legs and sent cold spray across her back again. She ducked her head. She waited tensely, afraid to move.

  As the float rose on the crest of the next wave, she lifted her head and saw the faint gray line of the shore on the horizon. The solid hump of the hotels, stores, and houses at the end of the island told her how far away she had drifted.

  She began to paddle. Her arms dipped into the sea again and again, her cupped hands pulling through the cold water. She did not look up, just kept drawing her arms mechanically through the sea like a swimmer. Spray slapped across her face, but she did not stop to wipe it away. When she paused, finally, to rest her trembling arms, she looked up and saw the shore was no nearer.

  She put her head down. She lay with her eyes closed, blocking the sea, the waves, the distant island, from her mind.

  Suddenly the sun went behind a cloud, and Clara felt the chill of the wind. Her teeth began to chatter, her legs to shake. The float wiggled unsteadily, too, and Clara clutched the sides. She tried to breathe deeply, regularly. Stay calm, she told herself. A spray of water hit her face, and she spit out saltwater. Stay calm, she repeated.

  There was nothing gentle or comforting about the sea now. This was no mother comforting a child. This was a mean hang-on-if-you-can kind of motion.

  Suddenly Clara heard the sound of an engine. Her spirits surged. Her head snapped up. A boat was on the horizon.

  “Over here!” she screamed, waving her arm. “Help me. I’m over here!”

  It was a cabin cruiser, moving steadily toward the island, rolling slightly with the motion of the waves. Clara could see a man on deck, facing away from her, into the wind.

  “Help! I’m over here! Help!”

  How could he not hear her? Clara struggled to sit up on the float. “I’m over here. I’m—” Suddenly the float flexed over a wave and bucked like a horse. Clara yelped, flopped down, and clutched the plastic. When the motion of the float was steady again, she raised her head.

  “I’m over here!”

  The boat had already moved past her. She could smell the fumes from the exhaust. The sound of the engine was growing fainter. The man on deck had gone into the cabin.

  “Come back!” she yelled louder. “Help me! Come back!”

  The boat grew smaller, the sound fainter, and Clara’s shoulders sagged. Her nose began to run.

  Then she lowered her head and started crying, making no effort to wipe her wet face. “Why didn’t he see me?” she moaned.

  Suddenly a wave hit the float broadside. The float rose, dipped with a sickening lunge, and rose again. Clara felt her stomach twist with nausea. She tightened her hold. As the float rose again, she closed her eyes and waited for the sickness to pass.

  A second wave broke over the side of the float, and water filled her nostrils. She choked and gagged. And as she threw back her head for air she saw there was nothing in sight now but the sea. She was overcome with a kind of loneliness she had only read about.

  She twisted in a desperate move, churning the water with her hands, turning the float around. There was the island. The lighthouse. She felt a moment of relief.

  She thought she heard another boat. She raised her head. There had to be boats! There were hundreds in the marina. She waited, but the only sound she heard now was the waves.

  There was an unreal feeling to it all, she thought, as she searched the horizon for boats. Her eyes stung with salt and tears. It was as if she had gone to sleep in one ocean and awakened in another.

  She began to paddle again, moving her arms through the cold water. This made her feel better, more in control. She kept her head down so she could not see that she was not getting closer to the island. Indeed, the island seemed to be drifting farther away.

  “I STILL DO NOT believe Clara has been carried out to sea,” Deanie said stubbornly.

  “Then you are completely free to return to the beach house and resume your ridiculous sunbathing routine,” John D said.

  He did not bother to look at her. He felt he had already seen the two expressions she was capable of—pleasure in herself and irritation with others—and both annoyed him.

  Deanie and John D were walking down the middle of the deserted road that led to town and the only telephones on the island. No car had passed since they started walking.

  “You should have kept an eye on her,” John D said, watching the road ahea
d that still wavered with the day’s heat. On either side of the road grew beach peas and stunted goldenrod.

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you.”

  “You don’t have any right to speak to me like that.”

  “I’ll speak to you any way I choose.”

  She glanced at him, wanting to lecture him again on trying to act superior. Something about the set of his chin decided her against it.

  “Anyway,” she went on, “there was no reason to ‘keep an eye on her,’ as you put it. My sister is not a baby.”

  “Your sister was in a very miserable state of mind,” he said.

  “Clara?”

  “Yes, Clarrrra.” He clamped his lips shut as he heard his own tone of voice.

  “Clara was not miserable.”

  “She was too.”

  “She’s my sister, and I say she was not miserable!”

  They glared at each other over the sand-blown pavement. John D said, “One, she does not eat. Two, she does not talk. Three, she wants to be by herself all the time. Four, she went on the Space Cyclone knowing it would make her sick because she had to get away from everybody.”

  Deanie’s eyes blinked rapidly four times. “Well,” she said, “Mr. Expert on Human Behavior, if she was miserable, it was because you and your stupid mother wormed your way into our vacation.”

  “I myself was dragged here.”

  John D pushed his glasses up on his nose angrily. He stood and watched her walk away. The only sound was the slap of her thongs against the sandy pavement.

  Suddenly there was the sound of an approaching car. John D spun around. An old rusty Dodge was coming. John D held out his arms to keep it from passing.

  When the car lurched to a stop, John D said, “Could we get a ride into town? We think her sister’s been carried out to sea on a float. We need help.” He was proud his voice was calm.