by Rosa Jordan
“Let me handle this, ma’am,” Sheriff Dallano said to Ruby, as he grabbed Grimsted’s arm.
Mom was right behind the sheriff, looking over his shoulder. “Stay in your room!” she called to Kate. “And close the door.”
Grimsted jerked his arm away from the sheriff and shoved him so hard that the big man toppled back into Mom. Mom fell backwards, too, knocking over a lamp. All of a sudden she and Sheriff Dallano were on the floor with pieces of broken lamp all around them. Justin forgot all about staying out of sight and ran to help his mother. She had fallen hard. The sheriff got to his feet looking befuddled. Ruby was still scuffling with Grimsted, trying to keep him from getting past her.
“Get your black butt outta my way!” Grimsted roared.
Just then the sheriff wrapped his beefy arm around Grimsted’s neck in a powerful hammerlock. Grimsted went down on his knees.
“Aaaarrrgggh!”
Slowly, like a workhorse hauling a heavy load, the sheriff dragged Grimsted toward the door. In his low, rumbling drawl he said, “I don’t know where you’re from, mister, but in these parts, we don’t use that kinda language around womenfolk.”
The sheriff paused at the door and tipped his hat toward Mom and Ruby. “Sorry about the disturbance, ladies.”
Justin heard the thump-thump-thump of Grimsted being dragged down the porch steps.
“You okay?” he asked Mom.
She nodded. When she saw him looking at the blood on her hand, she said, “It’s nothing. Just a nick. I guess I cut it on glass from the light bulb.”
“How about you?” Justin asked Ruby.
“I’m fine.” Ruby brushed herself off and headed toward the bathroom. “Or will be, as soon as I wash all the places where that brute touched me.”
Kate opened her door and peered out. “Are you all okay?” she asked in a scared voice.
“Yeah,” Justin said. “We’re fine.” But he didn’t feel fine. His heart was pounding so hard he felt like anybody who came close to him would hear it. As soon as the police car was out of sight, he found his bicycle pump and went outside. Luther, Chip, and Lily stood in a huddle next to the tire swing. Nobody seemed interested in swinging anymore.
Justin started filling the low tire, glad for something to do while his heart got back to normal. Luther came over and squatted next to him. Behind his glasses, the little boy’s brown eyes seemed enormous. “Is it dark in jail, Justin?” he asked in a low, frightened voice. “Or do they leave the lights on?”
“I’ve heard they leave the lights on all the time,” Justin said. “But I don’t really know. I’ve never seen the inside of a jail. C’mon, Luther. You’re never going to see the inside of a jail either, so stop worrying, okay?”
“Okay,” Luther said. But the fear was still in his eyes.
Justin disconnected the pump, screwed the cap back on the stem, and stood up. Chip and Lily were still standing near the swing. “You kids been down to feed Little Billy yet?”
“No,” Chip said. “Mom’s been around all day, and Ruby, too.”
“Why don’t we go now?” Lily asked. “They’re too busy to notice.” She motioned toward the house. Through the living room window they could see Kate, Mom, and Ruby sweeping up broken glass and picking up scattered pieces of pattern and fabric.
“I’ll go,” Justin said. “You guys better stay here. If Mom asks, tell her I went to test my bike tire to see if it’s still leaking air.”
Little Billy bleated when he saw Justin coming and followed him into the old barn. There wasn’t much left of the feed they’d hidden in the loft, Justin noticed. He would have to buy more soon.
That brought up another worry: money.
He poured the grain into the feeding pan, a rusty old cast-iron skillet they’d found in the weeds. Before Justin finished dumping the feed from can to pan, Little Billy had his nose in it. The big rabbit hopped up and stuck his twitchy pink nose into the skillet, eating right along with the goat. Little Billy didn’t seem to mind.
When the pan was empty, Little Billy butted Justin’s thigh. Next to food, what the small goat liked best was having the top of his head scratched where his new horns were just beginning to stick through.
Justin sat down in the sweet-smelling grass and scratched the goat’s head. The big white rabbit hopped around, ears flopping and nose twitching as it ate stray grains that had been dropped. Justin reached out and stroked the rabbit’s fur. It was amazingly soft. The late afternoon sun was warm on Justin’s back, and he knew it felt good to the animals, too. He was certain that they had done the right thing in rescuing them from Grimsted’s dark garage.
The problem was that no grown-up in the world would ever see it that way.
17
THE SPREAD FACTOR
It was weird. Justin couldn’t think of a single grown-up he could turn to with his problems, but it seemed like just about every grown-up he knew was getting involved—and not in particularly helpful ways.
The day after the scene with the sheriff and Mr. Grimsted, Kate told him that Ruby and Mr. Jackson had gotten into a big fight over him.
“You’re kidding!” Justin was sitting cross-legged on the ground beside his bike. The bike was upside down, minus one tire, the one that kept going flat. Justin was trying to find the leak by rotating the tube in a pan of water. “When was this?”
“Friday afternoon, while you were off with Dad. Mom was working late and I went down to the Wilsons’ to see Ruby. She was out on the porch with Mr. Jackson. They didn’t notice me at first. I guess they were too mad.”
“About what?” Justin asked. “What’s my life got to do with them?”
Kate squatted next to his upside-down bike and began spinning the wheel with the good tire. “Mr. Jackson said you were flunking math. Ruby said he ought to give you a passing grade anyway, so you wouldn’t get dropped from the ball team.”
Justin looked up in surprise. He’d always admired Ruby, but he thought of her as Kate’s friend. Mom’s friend, too, but not really his. He’d never talked to her seriously about anything.
Kate gave the wheel another spin. “Ruby said you needed to stay on the team in order to get a scholarship to college, and Mr. Jackson said if you didn’t get good grades in high school, you’d just flunk out of college when you got there. Ruby said he had an inflated notion of the importance of math. He called her an airhead, or something like that, and, well, that’s when they noticed I was there. I wasn’t eavesdropping or anything. Just standing at the bottom of the steps, trying to decide if I should stay or go.”
“Did you?”
“What?”
“Stay?” Justin put out his hand to stop Kate from spinning the tire.
She looked at him through the spokes. “Not long. But I told them you had problems. Not just studies, but real problems.”
“You what? What kind of problems did you tell them I had?” Justin asked in dismay.
“Not about Little Billy,” Kate said quickly. “About Dad, and about him wanting you to go live with him.”
“Awwwww!” Justin flopped backwards onto the ground. “I can’t believe you told them that!”
“You never told me not to!” Kate protested. “If you had asked me to keep it secret, I would’ve.”
“I didn’t think I had to ask you not to tell that,” Justin said. “It’s my business!
“Well, yes, I know, but—”
“What did they say?”
“Nothing. At least, nothing else about you. No, wait. Mr. Jackson did. He said, ‘That just proves my point. Justin has lost his focus.’ And Ruby said, ‘I think you’ve lost your focus, too, Mr. High-and-Mighty Math Teacher.’“
Kate wrapped her arms around herself the way she always did when she was upset. “Mr. Jackson looked like he’d been slapped,” Kate recalled. “And Ruby looked like she wanted to slap him, except she couldn’t because by then he’d gotten in his car and driven away. She went in the house crying.”
“I can’
t believe any of this,” Justin said, shaking his head. He submerged another section of the tube in the water. A tiny bubble floated to the top. He had finally found the pinhole leak. He would patch it tomorrow, and that would put a stop to the bike tire going flat. But somehow knowing he could solve that one small problem didn’t make him feel any better.
Like spilled milk, Justin’s problems kept spreading. The very next day, while Mom was still at work and Justin was outside patching the leaky tube, Lily came trotting up.
“Ruby and your mom just had this big fight about you,” she reported.
“Oh, great,” Justin said with a sinking heart. He was pretty sure Ruby would tell Mom what Kate had told her. “What did they say?”
“Ruby said your dad wanted you to go live with him. Your mom totally flipped out. She called him a ‘race rat’ and some other worse things, too.”
“Did Ruby stick up for him?” Justin asked in surprise. As far as he knew, Ruby had never even met Charlie.
“No, she stuck up for you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, first your mom said she never should’ve let you visit him. Then when she said if you went to live with him it’d be over her dead body, Ruby told her that where you live ought to be your decision.”
“Oh!” Justin was glad somebody saw it his way.
Lily was wound up. She wasn’t finished with her story. “Ruby started explaining why boys need to spend time with their dads, but your mom got all mad and told Ruby to mind her own business. Then she asked Ruby, ‘If you’re so big on boys and dads, how come I never see Luther with his dad then?’ Ruby didn’t even answer her. She just called Luther and told him to get home, she didn’t want him playing anywhere near these uptight honkies.” Lily stopped to take a breath. “What’s a honky anyway?”
“It’s a word you shouldn’t use,” Justin said. “It’s a race word that might hurt somebody’s feelings.”
“I guess it works,” Lily said. “It made your mom cry.”
Justin groaned. Didn’t he have enough problems without this? He didn’t want to hear any more. “Have you kids fed Little Billy this afternoon?” he asked, trying to think of a way to get rid of Lily without being too obvious.
“Long time ago,” she said. “When we first got home from school.”
“Oh. Then why don’t you go play with Chip? I think he’s in the duck pen, gathering the eggs.”
“Luther’s there, too,” Lily told him. “He’s just keeping out of sight so if his mother comes by she won’t see he’s still here.”
A short time later Mom came across the street from the nursery, but instead of going into the house she got into the car. On her way out to the road, she stopped by the duck pen and called, “Luther, I’m going down to your house. Come on, I’ll give you a ride home.”
Luther obviously didn’t want to go, but when Mom insisted, he got in the car. Justin wondered if Luther would get in trouble with Ruby just for riding home with Mom.
Justin finished patching the tube and replaced the tire on his bike, then went in to help Kate get supper started. After that he wandered back outside to wait for Mom to get home. He sat by his upside-down bike and spun the wheel around, the way Kate had the day before. It was getting dark, and he was worried. He wondered why Mom had gone to the Wilsons’ and what had happened down there.
Finally Mom pulled into the driveway and got out of the car. She walked over to Justin, carrying a basket of zucchini squash. “How’s the bike, son? Did you get the flat fixed?”
“Yes ma’am.” He lifted the bike and set it right side up. “Where’d you get the zucchini?”
“Ruby gave them to me. We—that is, uh, I said something that offended her, and she was sort of rude to me. I went over to apologize. She said she was sorry, too, and, well, it’s okay now.”
Justin shot her a quick look. Had Mom decided that Ruby was right, that he ought to go live with his dad? Somehow that upset Justin almost as much as the reverse. It was his life and he didn’t want people deciding anything about it behind his back!
Before Mom could say anything else, Justin rolled his bike over to the porch. “Supper’s ready,” he called, and hurried into the house before she could start quizzing him about what his dad had said.
Later, when Justin was trying to do his math homework, his mind kept drifting to his problems. There must be such a thing as a Spread Factor, he thought with a grim smile. It would explain how something, say, a glass of milk, could be an exact measurable amount, but if you spilled it, it spread out in a way that made it seem a lot bigger.
The Spread Factor would also explain why Mom always started off working a certain number of hours at her jobs, then gradually added more and more hours until neither she nor they knew exactly when she would get home. And it could also explain why the more Justin tried to catch up in math, the more he kept running into things that he didn’t understand.
Most of all, the Spread Factor would explain how his problems, which could be listed on half a single page of lined notepaper, once they got out, kept spreading like spilled milk, all over the neighborhood.
18
BRAD’S SITUATION
Saturday morning Justin phoned Brad to see if they could get together. Mrs. Beatty answered the phone and right away said Brad was grounded and couldn’t have visitors. Brad would be spending his Saturday washing windows, she told Justin. He was about to hang up when Mrs. Beatty asked if he’d be willing to help out. She even offered to pay him. Justin thanked Mrs. Beatty and said he’d be over in half an hour. He needed the money, and he and Brad could talk while they washed windows.
Brad looked awful, but he seemed really glad to see Justin. Mrs. Beatty had them stand on ladders to wash the outside of the windows while she polished the inside glass. They didn’t get a chance to say much. She did all the talking, mostly pointing out streaks they’d left on the glass. When she wasn’t complaining about their window-washing techniques, she was running down Brad’s dad.
Once Justin cracked a joke, and Brad laughed so hard he dropped his cloth.
“Will you be serious, Brad?” his mother yelled. “I swear, you are just like your father!”
Brad got real serious after that. He was obviously upset. Justin wondered how Mrs. Beatty could say such bad things about his dad and then say Brad was just like him. Besides, it wasn’t even true. Justin had never seen Brad’s father laugh about anything.
Later the two boys escaped up to Brad’s room for a few minutes and took turns using the binoculars to look into the mockingbird nest, which now held two babies. The parents flew back and forth feeding them, but the young ones never seemed to get enough.
“I wish I could feed them,” Brad said wistfully.
Justin didn’t tell Brad that feeding animals was one of his biggest problems. Baby birds might eat a lot, but not as much as a goat and a rabbit.
“Can you stay awhile?” Brad asked.
Before Justin could answer, Mrs. Beatty called from downstairs, “Time for you to go, Justin. You know Brad is grounded, and that means no visitors.”
“When are you coming back to school?” Justin asked quickly.
Brad shrugged his skinnier-than-ever shoulders. “Maybe never. Mother’s trying to get them to take me back, but my father thinks I ought to be sent to a military school. They’re still fighting about it. I can’t tell who’s winning.” He looked at Justin with sad brown eyes. It reminded Justin of the way Little Billy had looked at them when he was locked in the garage and thought he would never get out.
“Ah, they’ll let you come back after spring break,” Justin said, although he had no way of knowing if that was true. He turned to go, then thought of something that might make Brad feel a little better.
“You gotta come back. Now that I don’t have you there to practice with at lunchtime, my ball playing’s gone to pot.”
“Justin!” Brad’s mother called, her voice sharper than before.
When Justin got d
ownstairs Mrs. Beatty was standing there holding his jacket in one hand and a five-dollar bill in the other. “This is for your share of the work,” she said.
“Thanks,” Justin mumbled. He hopped on his bike, glad to be getting away. Brad’s house had plenty of windows, but in some ways it seemed worse than Grimsted’s garage.
19
THE CHASE
Justin biked directly to the feed store. He had the six dollars left over from the bus ticket—Charlie had told him to keep it—and the five dollars from washing windows, so he was able to buy a large bag of grain. He didn’t want to tie the bag onto the back of his bike where anybody could see it, so he asked the clerk for a cardboard box.
“The only box I have is pretty big,” the clerk said. “Why don’t you tie the bag directly onto the bike rack?”
“If I ride through a mud puddle it might get splashed,” Justin said. “Wet grain spoils.”
“True,” the clerk agreed, and gave Justin some twine to tie the oversized box onto the back of his bike.
Justin rode the long way to the Old Place, so he wouldn’t pass the nursery. He didn’t want Mom asking questions about the box later. He pedaled along a dirt road that ran between the cornfields. Usually riding along this road was like riding through a canyon of green because it was narrow and the corn grew tall on both sides. But most of the fields had recently been plowed for spring planting. The exposed soil was dark and rough.
Justin expected Chip, Luther, and Lily to be at the Old Place, but they were nowhere in sight. Kate, whom he hadn’t expected, was sitting in the grass, brushing Little Billy with her own hairbrush.
Justin braked to a stop. “Thought you went to town with Ruby.”
“We got back a while ago.” Kate stood up and cleaned the goat hair out of her brush.
“Where are the others?”
“Up in the loft.”
“They shouldn’t be climbing around up there. That old floor is so rotten they could fall through it.”
