by Rosa Jordan
“Booker’s girlfriend, Melody. Here’s one of her.”
“You have a picture of Booker’s girlfriend?” Kate squealed.
“Let me see!” Luther demanded.
Justin took the snapshots from his dad and gave them to Kate, all except the last one, which he slid into his pocket.
“Wow!” his sister exclaimed when she saw the picture of Melody. “She’s even prettier than Ruby!”
Charlie gave Mom a sulky look. “You might have told me Booker was just a friend.”
“Hasn’t he always been?” Mom retorted. She grabbed Chip’s hand and walked off toward the house, trailed by Luther and Kate, who were still marveling over the photos.
For a minute Charlie stood looking after them like they were going to a party to which he hadn’t been invited. Then he noticed that Justin was already in the car and got in. Justin held out the last snapshot. “Here’s one of me,” he said. “Do you want it?”
Charlie looked at the picture a long time. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s a good one. It looks just like you.”
They were halfway to town before Charlie spoke. “So how was Atlanta?”
“Great. We got to go to a game. Mom said you took me to see a game at that same field when I was two years old.”
“I remember. When Booker was in college. We went to see him play.”
“I’d sure like to play there someday.”
“Yeah, well. Pretty tough competition, college sports.”
“I know. That’s why, well, I’ve been thinking.” Justin stopped, not knowing exactly how to break the news to his dad. Finally he blurted out, “This isn’t such a good time for me to be taking off.”
“What do you mean?” Charlie gave him a sharp look, then turned his eyes back to the road.
Justin swallowed hard. “I mean, I’d rather not leave right now.” He added quickly, “But I told Mom I wanted to go visit you later on.”
“What did she say to that?”
“She didn’t say anything. I mean, it’s my decision, right?”
“And this is what you’ve decided, to hang out in this backwater town?”
Justin took a deep breath. “I know it’s not much of a town, not compared to the places you go. But it’s, like, I’ve just made the varsity team, see? I’ve got a lot going on right now.”
Charlie swung into a parking spot near the movie theater and turned to Justin. “So you’re not interested in coming with me?” Charlie paused, then added, “A person doesn’t have to be a high-school graduate to make good money as a racetrack mechanic—not when he’s got an old man as well known as I am to teach him the ropes.”
Justin knew Charlie was a good teacher, and believed him when he said he could show him how to work on race cars. What Justin didn’t know was if he could ever learn to like car mechanics, which would mean spending most of his time in an oil-saturated garage. But how could he explain that to Charlie?
In a voice that was the closest Charlie had ever come to giving Justin a direct order, he said, “Make up your mind, boy. I’m leaving in a couple of days, and I won’t be back anytime soon.”
“I’d like to spend more time with you. But …” Justin hesitated, still searching for the right words. “Cars are your thing, Dad. Baseball’s mine. I figure I’ll get to play a whole lot more ball if I stay in one place. Maybe by next summer—”
“Look, I have no idea where I’ll be then. I really doubt—” Suddenly Charlie stopped speaking, as if he didn’t want to hear himself say what he was about to say.
Justin’s heart sank. The last time his father left he’d said he was coming back. But he didn’t, not for four long years. And he wasn’t even angry then. If he left mad, he might never come back. Just when Justin was beginning to feel totally hopeless, Charlie grinned. It wasn’t one of his natural, lighthearted grins, but at least it was there. “Oh, what the hell!” he said, slapping Justin on the knee. “Sure. Whenever.”
“Is that a promise?” Justin asked.
“That’s a promise. And here’s another one. If you ever come up to bat on that field in Atlanta, your old man will be there to see it!”
Justin’s stomach rumbled. Charlie laughed and glanced at his watch. “We’re way late for the show. What do you say we grab a pizza and catch the next one?”
33
LATER, ALLIGATOR
When Charlie dropped Justin off late that night, they gave each other fake punches on the arm. Justin would have hugged him, but he’d figured out long ago that Charlie wasn’t the hugging kind of dad.
“Later, alligator,” Charlie called as he backed out.
“After while, crocodile,” Justin answered.
The house was quiet. Mom had left a light on for him in the living room. Justin headed for the kitchen to get a glass of milk, glad to have a few minutes to himself.
He hadn’t finished pouring the milk when he heard bare feet padding into the kitchen behind him.
“Hi,” Kate said.
He shoved the carton back in the fridge. “Hi.”
Kate reached past him and took it out again to pour a glass of milk for herself. “You think he’ll come back?”
“Said he would.”
Kate leaned on the counter. “Last time he didn’t.”
“He did. It just took a while.”
“If it’s another four years, we’ll be grown.”
“Yeah.” Justin drained his glass. “Maybe it won’t be that long this time.”
Justin rinsed the empty milk glass and headed for his room. Kate took the hint and didn’t follow.
That’s why he didn’t find out about the rabbit until the next day. When he got home from school the following afternoon, they were all waiting, and all told him more or less at once.
“The rabbit’s gone,” said Chip.
“We couldn’t find him anywhere around the barn,” Luther added.
“We looked for him on Saturday and again Sunday before you and Mom got home,” Kate said. “We called and called but he never came.”
The three smaller children stood around him, waiting expectantly.
For what? Justin wondered. This was not his problem.
“There wasn’t anything to keep that rabbit there,” he pointed out. “You decided to set him free, so now he is. If he decided to leave, that was his choice.”
“Maybe he got lonesome and went looking for Little Billy,” Luther said in a mournful voice.
“And got lost,” Chip said sadly.
“And really, really hungry,” Lily worried.
“I don’t think rabbits get lost,” Justin told them. “If they’re not penned up they go wherever they like. Usually somewhere there’s food. Remember Peter Rabbit, in Mr. What’s-his-name’s garden?”
Justin shouldn’t have said that, because Lily promptly howled, “Oh no! What if he gets in my dad’s nursery?”
Justin rolled his eyes. “He wouldn’t have gone that far. There’s plenty of grass right there on the Old Place.”
“But he’s not there,” Luther moaned.
“So he’s not there!” Justin threw up his hands. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”
“You can help us look for him,” Kate insisted.
Justin’s heart sank. Once again he was getting dragged into something when he already had his hands full. “I can’t. At least, not during the week. I have ball practice every day, and when I get home, I’ve got to study. I can’t be running around looking for a rabbit.”
“What about Saturday?”
“Saturday morning we have our first official game of the season. And in the afternoon—” Justin didn’t say so, but he was hoping he’d do well enough in the game that the others would stop treating him like he didn’t deserve to be there and invite him to hang out with them. If that didn’t work out, he planned to stop by Brad’s, to see if maybe his mother would let him off the leash.
“Ruby told the little kids they could walk to town with us again on Saturday,” Kate explai
ned. “But of course, she’s having lunch with Mr. Jackson, and expects me to walk back with them.” Kate put on her most pleading voice. “Come on, Justin. Can’t you meet us at Miss Tutweiler’s after your game and then come with us to hunt for the rabbit?”
Justin wasn’t fooled by Kate’s show of concern for the rabbit. She hadn’t said a word about not getting to go to Atlanta with them, but he knew she wasn’t all that thrilled about having to stay behind. She’d had to look after the younger kids for four whole days, and now she was faced with another weekend of babysitting. Justin didn’t want babysitting detail any more than Kate, but he did feel that he owed her.
“All right,” Justin sighed. He hoped that if any other members of the team went to town after the game, they wouldn’t see him there surrounded, once again, by a tribe of seven-year-olds. The best way to keep that from happening was to herd them home as quickly as possible.
Brad was back in school, so every lunchtime Justin was able to practice catching his friend’s impossible throws. It paid off. During the Saturday game, he dived to catch a fly, rolled to his feet, and made a perfect throw to pick off a base runner. It earned him a slap on the back from Coach Donovan that almost knocked the breath out of him. He could still feel it as he cycled toward the restaurant, and it felt good. The older guys hadn’t invited him along after the game, but some of them had said things that made him feel, at long last, like he was one of them—or would be before the year was out.
He stopped at a traffic light and leaned on the handlebars, remembering how he’d dived for that ball, knowing before it smacked into his glove that it was his. Far up the block, in front of Miss Tutweiler’s hotel restaurant, he could see Chip, Luther, and Lily sitting on a bench eating ice cream. Actually, Chip and Luther were sitting on the bench and Lily was straddling the back. He didn’t see Kate and Ruby. They were probably inside talking to Miss Tutweiler, who bought most of their gourmet chocolates.
Then Justin saw something that caused his stomach to do a flip-flop. Mr. Grimsted was striding toward the restaurant. Chip, Luther, and Lily, busy trading licks on each other’s ice cream cones, hadn’t even seen him.
In the seconds before the light changed and Justin could get there, Grimsted marched up to the bench and grabbed Chip by the shoulder.
“Don’t think you brats are going to get away with it!” he bellowed. “That goat was worth a damned sight more than seventy-five dollars.”
“Hey! Leave him alone!” Justin yelled, but he was still a good distance away. As loudly as Chip was screeching, Grimsted probably couldn’t hear Justin anyway.
Lily stood up on the bench and jammed her ice cream cone on the top of Grimsted’s head. He gave her a shove and she fell off the bench onto her backside. Lily scrambled to her knees, wrapped herself around his leg, and sank her teeth into his thigh. Grimsted yelped and tried to swat her away, but Luther grabbed his arm and hung on.
“You!” Grimsted tried to shake Luther off. “I saw the back of your kinky head when you dropped that envelope in my mail slot!”
At that moment Ruby and Kate stepped out of Miss Tutweiler’s restaurant. “You low-life!” Ruby shouted. “Are you making racist remarks to my son again?”
Kate snatched her little brother out of Grimsted’s grip and hugged him to her. “Chip! You okay?”
Justin skidded up beside them and was off his bike in a flash. “Pick on somebody your own size!” he yelled, and bent down to help Lily.
The sidewalk was now crowded with passersby who had paused to see what all the commotion was about.
“Mr. Grimsted picks on little children,” Lily said tearfully.
“And abuses animals!” Chip said loudly.
“Keeps them locked in dark garages!” Luther shouted.
“Ah-ha!” Grimsted pointed at Luther. “That just proves—”
“Proves you better leave my kids alone,” Ruby said, getting right in his face the way only she could.
“Kids are my business,” Grimsted said, looking around at the crowd, hoping for some sympathy. “I make ‘em laugh. Good clean entertainment for nice kids. But kids like these—why, they ought to be in reform school!”
Justin finished brushing Lily off and looked up. Kate had her arms protectively around Chip and Luther. Ruby had one long red fingernail just inches from Grimsted’s nose. That was when Miss Tutweiler appeared in the doorway of her restaurant. She patted her white-blonde hair, tilted her powdered nose in the air, and asked in her most ladylike Southern drawl, “Ruby, dear, is this man mo-lesting you-all? You want me to call the po-lice?”
Suddenly Grimsted seemed to realize that everyone was looking at him in a not particularly friendly way. He made a sweeping gesture at the crowd. “Your kids are juvenile delinquents, and you’ve got the dumbest animals I ever saw!” he yelled into the startled faces of total strangers. “If you think I’m going to keep doing business in this hick town, you’re crazy!”
As he stomped away, Justin saw that Lily’s ice cream was still stuck in his hair.
34
FAMILIES
When Justin offered to walk the younger children home, Ruby gave him a big hug, which was almost enough to make up for his having missed out on a Saturday afternoon with his teammates. Then Ruby invited Kate to have lunch with her and Mr. Jackson, and Justin headed down the street, pushing his bike behind Luther, Chip, and Lily.
When they reached the nursery, Justin started to turn in.
“Hey,” Lily said, grabbing his arm. “Don’t you remember? You promised to help us hunt for the rabbit.”
“Okay,” he sighed, giving up on the idea of having any time to himself that afternoon. “Where do you want to start?”
“The Old Place,” Luther said.
“We’ve already looked there,” Lily objected.
“He might’ve come back,” Chip said hopefully.
“We’ll start there,” Justin decided, not feeling one bit hopeful.
They spread out and stomped through the weeds around what had once been the yard of the old house. Finding no sign of the rabbit, they moved to the thorn-filled pasture out back. All they got for their efforts were a lot of scratches on their arms and legs. Lily and Chip even went a little way into the woods, but Justin called them back after a few minutes. There were no trails and the brush was too thick. The four of them worked their way back toward the barn, watching the ground for rabbit droppings.
“Rabbit!” called Luther. “Here, rabbit!”
Justin wondered why they’d never given the rabbit a name. Maybe because it wasn’t really theirs. He kept on looking, but he was pretty sure they would never see that rabbit again.
As the heat and thorn scratches got the best of them, one by one the younger children gave up. Finally Justin quit, too. He climbed into the goat pen with the others and flopped down on the grass in the shade cast by the old barn.
“Where else can we look?” Luther asked.
Justin shrugged and resigned himself to listening to them whine. Then he remembered something that would take their minds off the lost rabbit. He hadn’t forgotten to tell them about seeing Little Billy in Atlanta, it was just that he’d been waiting for the right time, when they were all together with no grown-ups around. He was deciding whether to tell them right then or wait until Kate was with them, when Luther let out a yelp.
“Oh my gosh!” he cried. “Look!”
Everyone stared at Luther, then looked where he was pointing. There, not ten feet away, was the big white rabbit.
Behind it trailed six tiny bunnies, pure white, with pink eyes and pink-lined ears.
“Ohhhh!” Lily breathed. “He’s a girl!”
Chip thrust a hand into his pocket and brought out a fistful of peanuts. He crawled toward the rabbit. She didn’t run, but sat there, nose twitching. Chip arranged the peanuts in a small pile, and waited to see if she would eat them.
Lily reached into the pocket of her shorts and retrieved some corn chip crumbs, which she put next
to the peanuts. Luther inched forward and added a handful of something light brown.
“What’s that?” Justin asked in a low voice.
“Frosted Flakes,” Luther said. “It’s his—I mean, her—favorite thing.”
The big rabbit hopped forward and nibbled at each pile. The baby bunnies hung back, their little pink noses quivering. They didn’t seem much interested in people food.
“You know,” Lily said. “We never paid Mr. Grimsted for this rabbit.”
“And we’re not going to,” Chip said stubbornly. “Because she’s not ours and we didn’t keep her. We just helped her get away.”
Luther stretched out on his stomach, his face in the grass just inches from the rabbit. “You’re free now, Miz Rabbit,” he murmured. “You and all your babies. Forever and ever.”
They watched the rabbits awhile, until Justin jumped up. “Let’s go,” he said. “You all had ice cream in town, but I haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast. I’m so hungry I could eat a handful of soggy Frosted Flakes myself. Even if it was mixed with frog spit from the inside of Luther’s pocket.”
When they reached the Martin place, they found Kate getting ready to milk the goat. They told her about finding the rabbit, which by now they were all calling Miz Rabbit. They argued awhile over what to call the baby bunnies, then decided that there was no point in giving them names, since they were all white with pink noses, and it was impossible to tell them apart.
It was there at the goat pen that Justin finally got around to telling them about Little Billy becoming the mascot for Booker’s baseball team. He was glad he hadn’t just whispered the news to them as soon as he got home, but had waited for the exact right moment. This way he could describe in vivid detail just how Little Billy had looked surrounded by cheerleaders in their red-and-gold uniforms, leading the home team around that enormous green field.
“You should’ve seen the way he pranced when the crowd cheered,” Justin concluded. “He’s a natural show goat, just like Old Billy.”
“But where does he live?” Kate asked. “They’re not keeping him shut up in the field house between games, are they?”
