“Let’s spread out the blanket so we can get at the grub,” he said.
So we did, and Ooma and Mrs. Clappers unpacked the food and the paper plates and plastic forks and stuff. “This is how to live, isn’t it?” Mr. Clappers said.
It was, all right. “Everything smells so good,” I said.
We sat and ate, and Mr. Clappers told us about all the places they’d been—the Grand Canyon, the Everglades in Florida where they had real alligators, Carlsbad Caverns; and we told them about places we’d been. In between times, I told Ooma to stop talking with her mouth full and not to eat with her fingers.
“Fergy,” Mr. Clappers said, “you’ve got a long way to go with Ooma’s table manners.”
“She’s just a child,” Mrs. Clappers said. “Give her time.”
Finally, we were full and got sort of quiet and just sat there looking out through the trees at the water. The sun was going down now. “It’s going to get chilly soon,” Mrs. Clappers said.
We were quiet again, and then suddenly Ooma blurted out, “I wish we could live with you.”
“Ooma,” I said.
Mr. and Mrs. Clappers didn’t say anything, but looked at each other. Finally, Mrs. Clappers said, “We talked about that a little, Ooma.”
“It’s not something you do without giving it a lot of thought,” Mr. Clappers said.
I couldn’t believe it. Did they really want us to come and live with them? Could we really do it? “I don’t know if J. P. and Gussie would let us,” I said.
“We could run away,” Ooma said.
“It’s not that easy,” Mr. Clappers said. “A thing like that would be up to the parents.”
I wondered: Would J. P. and Gussie ever agree to it? I wasn’t sure. It didn’t seem likely, but maybe they would. “I don’t know if they would like the idea.”
Mr. Clappers looked at me. “What do you think of it, Fergy?”
I didn’t know what to say. I knew it was wrong to say that I didn’t want to live with my own family anymore. Ooma was too young to understand that, but I knew that it was wrong. Kids were supposed to want to stay with their families, for if they didn’t want to, it meant that there was something wrong with their parents. Still, I didn’t want to mess up the chance. “Well, if J. P. and Gussie would agree, I think I would.”
Nobody said anything for a minute, and then Mr. Clappers nodded and said, “Let’s just think about it for a while.”
It was getting dark, and a breeze was coming up. I shivered. “We’d better get going while there’s still some light,” Mr. Clappers said. We packed all the plates and jars and forks into the picnic basket, folded up the blanket, went down to the boat, and headed back for the campgrounds. We were all sort of quiet, even Ooma. I sat next to her in the middle of the boat, wondering if it really would happen. What would J. P. and Gussie say if we asked them? Would they ever let us go?
We got back to our beach, hauled the boat up, and locked it to a tree with a chain. Then we walked up through the woods toward the Clapperses’ motor home, carrying the stuff. It was pretty dark now, and we couldn’t see the motor home through the woods. “That’s funny,” Mrs. Clappers said. “I thought I left a light on so we could find our way back.”
“I thought you did, too,” Mr. Clappers said. “Maybe the bulb burned out.” We kept on coming and then we reached the Clapperses’ campsite. There was no moon yet, but the stars were bright. We stood at the edge of the clearing in the faint shadows of the trees, staring. The motor home was gone.
SEVEN
WE STOOD THERE staring with our mouths open. It was like a house had suddenly disappeared. In the faint light, we could see the oblong patch of dead grass where the motor home had been. That was all. “I don’t believe it,” Mr. Clappers said. “Who on earth could have taken it? How do they think they’re going to get away with it?”
“Are you sure you locked it?” Mrs. Clappers said.
Mr. Clappers reached in his pocket, took out his keys, and stared at them in the starlight. “Pretty sure,” he said.
But I’d seen J. P. pick locks with pieces of wire and files. I felt terrible—sick and weak and ashamed. All that business about us getting to be friends of Mr. and Mrs. Clappers was just to get them away from the motor home for a while. It wouldn’t have taken long—maybe fifteen minutes to pick the lock and get into the motor home, and another fifteen minutes to cross the wires in the ignition system so they could start the engine. I’d seen J. P. do that, too.
Mr. Clappers set down the outboard motor, went over to the oblong patch of dead grass, and squatted down, looking for clues. There wouldn’t be any, I knew. J. P. was smart. I wondered what they’d done with it—driven off a good ways from there and hidden it down a woods road or something. As soon as we went back to our campsite, they’d grab Ooma and me and we’d take off. When Mr. and Mrs. Clappers realized that we’d taken off in the night without even saying good-bye, they’d know who’d taken their motor home, and they’d think we’d been in on the whole thing. After that, they’d hate us. Oh, I felt awful. But there was nothing I could say.
Mr. Clappers stood up and walked back to where the rest of us were standing in the starlit shadows of the woods. “Fergy, your folks must have heard them drive away. Maybe they know something. Let’s go up and ask them. We have to get somebody to give us a ride into town to the police station, anyway.”
I didn’t want to see J. P. I didn’t want to see him or Gussie or any of them. “I don’t know if they would have heard anything.”
“Maybe not,” Mr. Clappers said. “But let’s ask. Anyway, somebody can give us a lift into town.”
He started off through the woods toward our campsite, and there wasn’t anything to do but follow him. Mrs. Clappers came along behind, holding Ooma by the hand. I could see the flickering of a campfire up ahead and hear the sounds of voices. In a minute, we came out into the clearing where the van was. They’d got a fire going, and J. P. was bent over it, grilling a couple of steaks. I figured they’d taken the steaks out of the Clapperses’ freezer.
When J. P. saw us come out of the woods he straightened up. “Hello, there,” he said. “We were wondering where you’d gone to. We heard the motor home start up a little while ago.”
Mr. Clappers walked over to him. Now I could see his face in the light from the fire. He looked terrible, like somebody had died. I remembered that picture of their son. They would never see him anymore. “That wasn’t us,” he said. “We were out on the lake the whole time. Somebody stole it.”
“Stole it?” J. P. said. He straightened up and looked Mr. Clappers in the face. He really seemed surprised.
“Your trailer was stolen?” Trotsky said. She sounded surprised, too, and she came up to Mr. Clappers. I stood at the edge of the clearing. I wanted to be as far away from them as I could. Mrs. Clappers stood at the edge of the clearing, too, holding Ooma’s hand. Then I noticed that the Wiz wasn’t there. I figured he was driving as fast as he could out of the state in the motor home to someplace where we would meet him in a day or so.
“How long ago did you hear it?” Mr. Clappers asked J. P.
“Well, come to think of it, it could have been as much as an hour ago. I didn’t notice the time, actually.”
“It was at least an hour ago,” Trotsky said. “I remember wondering about it. I remember wondering if you were taking the kids into town for ice cream or something.” It was amazing to me what a good act they were putting on. They almost convinced me that they hadn’t stolen it, after all. Maybe I was wrong; maybe I was just jumping to conclusions. But I didn’t think so.
Now I realized that Gussie wasn’t joining in. She was sitting in the back of the van with her legs crossed, her chin in her hand. I wondered if she and J. P. had had a fight about something.
“It could be just kids joyriding,” J. P. said. “Maybe it’ll turn up in the morning by the side of the road somewhere.”
Mr. Clappers shook his head. “I doubt it,” he sa
id. “There’s a pretty good lock on the door. It would have taken an expert to pick it.”
J. P. shrugged. “They could have busted a window and got in that way.”
“I thought of that,” Mr. Clappers said. “I checked the ground. I didn’t find any broken glass.”
J. P. remembered the steaks and flipped them over on the grill. “Well, at least you’ve got insurance,” he said.
“Oh, yes, we’re covered,” Mr. Clappers said. “We can get the money back. But that place was our home. We liked it. It’s got a lot of irreplaceable stuff in it—our clothes, my favorite fishing rod, photographs.” I remembered the picture of his son again.
“Maybe you’ll get some of that stuff back. Sometimes thieves dump stuff like that.”
I wondered if there was any way I could send them that picture. At least that. It would be terrible for them not even to have a picture of their son anymore. But where would I send it to? I went on standing by the edge of the clearing, feeling awful. I wanted to turn around and run away, run down through the woods and keep on running as fast and as far away as I could go until I was gone from them. I wanted to go someplace where they could never find me. For suddenly I didn’t believe any of it anymore. I didn’t believe that J. P. was a great man and that his journals were going to be famous someday. I didn’t believe that we had a right to steal anything we wanted. I didn’t believe that the system was responsible for all our troubles. Mr. and Mrs. Clappers weren’t any system, they were just plain people, and they didn’t deserve to have their motor home stolen from them just because we needed it.
But I couldn’t run, because the minute I did, Mr. and Mrs. Clappers would realize that something funny was going on. They would begin to guess that we had stolen their motor home, and then there was no telling what J. P. would do. He might decide to do something bad to them so we could make our escape. So I went on standing at the edge of the clearing in the starlight.
The steaks were done, and J. P. took them off the fire. “Ooma, Fergy, come get something to eat.”
There wasn’t any way I was going to touch a bite of that steak. “I’m not hungry,” I said. “I had plenty to eat before.”
“Well, I am,” he said. He got out one of our tin plates, sat down on a carton, and began to eat. I figured he’d missed his supper because he’d been busy with the Wiz stealing the motor home. “There’s another steak,” he said. “Anybody want it? Trotsky? Gussie? How about it, Gussie?”
She went on sitting in the van. She didn’t say anything, just shook her head. So Trotsky got another plate and sat down and ate the steak. Mr. Clappers went on talking to J. P. about who might have taken the motor home, and what they ought to do next. And finally, it was arranged that Trotsky would drive them into town, so they could report the theft to the police and find a motel to stay in. Mrs. Clappers gave Ooma a hug, and they both waved to me, but they had too much on their minds to worry about us particularly. They didn’t realize that they would never see us again. So off they went with Trotsky, and I went on standing in the starlight at the edge of the clearing.
Now J. P. realized that something was wrong with me. He finished his steak and came on over to me. “What’s the matter with you, Fergy?”
“You stole the motor home.”
Suddenly Gussie shouted out from the back of the van, “I told you, J. P.”
J. P. snapped his head around. “You stay out of it, Gussie,” he shouted. He looked back at me. “Fergy—”
“I told you, J. P.,” Gussie shouted again. “I told you you were going too far.”
“You let me handle this,” he shouted over his shoulder. He looked back at me. Then he said, “We needed it. They have plenty of money. They have big pensions and social security. What right have the two of them to ride around in a big motor home like that while the six of us are crammed into one crummy van?”
He always had a way of putting things that confused me. But I was determined not to let him confuse me this time. “They worked for it,” I said. Ooma realized that we were talking about Mr. and Mrs. Clappers, and she came over to us.
“That’s the point, Fergy. They were willing to work for the system. We won’t. We refuse to contribute to a system that’s based on materialism and war. That’s why we don’t have any money, You can’t expect the system to reward us for challenging it, can you?”
Ooma put her thumb in her mouth. “They wanted us to come and live with them.”
I wished she hadn’t said that. “I don’t think they were serious,” I said. But I knew they had been.
“Yes, they were,” Ooma said. “They meant it.”
J. P. looked from one of us to the other in the starlight. “Live with them? Why, of all the damn nerve. First they swagger around flaunting their wealth, and then they try to steal our children.” He gave me a hard look. “What made you think we’d ever allow that, Fergy?”
I could see now that the whole idea had been crazy. There was never a chance that J. P. and Gussie would let us go. “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I didn’t. It was just an idea.”
He stared at me. “Would you have wanted to do that—leave us to live with strangers?”
Why couldn’t Ooma have kept her mouth shut? How was I going to answer a question like that? Could I tell him that I didn’t believe in him anymore? Could I tell him that I hated him for stealing the motor home? Could I tell him that I wanted to get as far away from him as I could? “They didn’t mean it. It was just an idea.”
“Yes, they did too mean it,” Ooma said. She just didn’t have any sense.
J. P. looked at her. “Would you have wanted that, Ooma—to leave us and live with the Clapperses?”
Suddenly she looked confused. She kept her thumb in her mouth, and her eyes looked around in the dark.
“Would you, Ooma?”
She shook her head, but she didn’t take her thumb out of her mouth or say anything. Suddenly J. P. put his arms around our shoulders. “Look, you two guys stop worrying about it. Let me do the worrying. Mr. and Mrs. Clappers have got insurance; they’ll get another motor home. We were within our rights to reclaim it. Just think how much fun we’re going to have with it.”
I wasn’t going to have much fun in it. I was going to feel lousy about being in it, for I would keep remembering Mrs. Clappers ladling out eggs and English muffins, and going fishing with Mr. Clappers. So I went and sat by the fire and stared into the flames, feeling confused and upset and wanting to cry more than anything, but not wanting to let J. P. know I was crying.
Trotsky came back with the van about an hour later. We put out the fire, loaded our stuff into the van, and left the campsite. “Where are we going to?” Ooma said.
“You’ll see,” J. P. said. I knew he didn’t want to say, because he was suspicious of me.
“Is the motor home ours now?” Ooma said.
“Yes,” J. P. said.
“Do you hear that, Fergy?” she said.
I didn’t say anything.
“You kids get some sleep,” J. P. said. “It’s late.” He didn’t want us getting into a conversation about it—that was clear. I was sick of him now, sick of stealing and sick of not being able to go to school and sick of all these lies about the system and J. P.’s great journals. All at once I knew I had to run away.
EIGHT
IT TOOK US three days to catch up to the Wiz. He’d raced out of Pennsylvania in a couple of hours that night and then wandered around through Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina until he was sure that nobody was following him. Then he’d driven into Spartanburg, South Carolina, and we met him there. J. P. and the Wiz bought some paint and changed the color of the motor home. They scraped off the Clapperses’ stickers saying GRAND CANYON, THE EVERGLADES, CARLSBAD CAVERNS, and so forth. Changing the registration was going to be more of a problem, though. J. P. and the Wiz talked about it. To get a new registration they would have to turn in the old one, which had the engine number on it. The chances were th
at it would be on some computer list of stolen vehicles and they’d be caught right there in the motor vehicle office. But they didn’t have to face that problem yet, for the old registration had a couple of months to run.
So J. P., Gussie, Ooma, and I moved into the motor home, and the Wiz and Trotsky had the other van all to themselves. We ate all our meals together in the motor home. Ooma was kind of thrilled about the whole thing. She seemed to have forgotten about Mrs. Clappers’s washing her face and putting her hair in pigtails and giving her breakfast every day. She got a kick out of sitting at the table playing cards or drinking a Coke while we were driving along. J. P. got a kick out of it, too. He liked driving it because the seat was high up and he could look down on the other cars that went by. He liked sitting there in the evening with a beer, watching the news on TV and pointing out to all of us what the system was doing to everybody. He was proud of having that fancy motor home, and sometimes as he drove along he’d get to singing—“Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Hey Jude,” “Mrs. Robinson,” stuff like that.
But I couldn’t stand it, and J. P. knew it. A couple of times he gave me a talking-to. The talking-tos didn’t work. I still felt rotten about stealing something from people who’d been so nice to us, and sick that they were bound to think that Ooma and I were in on it and had double-crossed them. Finally, after I would hardly talk to anybody for two or three days, J. P. blew up at me. “What makes you think you know all the answers, Fergy? What makes you think you’re so smart? Now, you cut out this sulking and grow up a little bit, or I’m going to do something about it.”
Suddenly Gussie said, “Leave him alone, J. P.”
“I don’t want to get it from you, either, Gussie,” J. P. said.
“You went too far this time, J. P.,” she said. “Keep it in mind that we’re all accomplices in this.”
“That’s right,” he snapped. “We’re a family. We’re all in it together. That’s the way it ought to be in a family.”
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