The Amazing Flight of Darius Frobisher

by Bill Harley

  As he gazed at the charm, he heard a clanking and a whirring. He instantly recognized the sound of a pedal arm hitting the chain guard on every turn, and the clicking of a derailleur. It was someone riding a bicycle. He looked around. Where was the noise coming from? Darius ran around the house and peered up and down the street. No one was there. Now the sound was above him. He looked up into the sky.

  “Holy moly!” he gasped.

  There, forty feet above the houses, was an old man riding a bicycle unlike any Darius had ever seen. Extra parts had been attached to every available surface. Someone had welded forks to the fenders, and the forks held smaller wheels that spun upside down in the air. Strange wing-like contraptions extended from the handlebars and wheel hubs.

  Darius stared at the man flying the bicycle. A mane of white hair stuck out from underneath a black skateboard helmet. The man’s long, sky-blue coat fluttered in the wind behind him like a cape. The rider was humming loudly as the bike disappeared over the trees.

  Then it was over. What Darius had seen lasted no more than nine or ten seconds. He ran down the street, hoping for another look, just to make sure that what he had seen was real. But the sky was now empty; there was nothing but a few wispy clouds high overhead and a sparrow winging its way skyward.

  Because of his father’s adventures and stories, Darius had come to believe that almost anything was possible. But he had never imagined a flying bicycle.

  Maybe I saw it because it was really there, he thought, or maybe I saw it because I wanted to see it.

  Darius couldn’t be sure. “Maybe I’m just going crazy,” he said out loud.

  Maybe he was.

  Later that day, his head still reeling with the vision of a flying bicycle and the disappointment over the broken bike in the corner, Darius lay on his cot, staring at the basement ceiling. When he heard the floorboards creak over his head, he guessed that it was a quarter past two, and that his aunt was making her way to the front door to get the mail. He heard Aunt Inga’s voice. Although he couldn’t hear what she said, he could tell by the tone of her voice that she was scolding the mailman again. The door slammed, and the footsteps returned to the living room.

  It suddenly occurred to Darius that Miss Hastings hadn’t written him like she’d promised. Maybe she hadn’t had time at first after her move. Maybe she was walking to the post office to mail him a letter right now. Or maybe she had already written to him!

  Darius crept upstairs and peeped into the living room. Aunt Inga was back in her big chair, opening her mail, watching television, and nibbling on cookies. Darius knew this was not a good time to talk to his aunt. But there was never a good time to talk to her.

  “Aunt Inga,” he said as politely as he could, “has Miss Hastings written to me?”

  “What?” Aunt Inga said.

  “Has Miss Hastings written me any letters?” he asked, moving closer to her and trying to make himself heard over the raucous TV applause.

  “Fine,” Aunt Inga grumbled, looking up. “Now he thinks I’m in charge of mail delivery. How would I know if she has written? Have you gotten anything?”

  “No, but I just thought …” He paused for a moment, then said, “Maybe I should write to her.”

  “Do you know her address?” Aunt Inga asked.

  “Well, no. But maybe we could find it out.”

  “And how would we do that? I don’t know where she went. It would be a wild goose chase. You need to get on with your life and stop wishing things were what they used to be. You’re lucky you’re here. You have a roof over your head and plenty to eat. There’s a woman here on television who had to feed her children dog food. Have I ever fed you dog food?”

  “No …” said Darius, thinking about the plate of warmed-over pork patties and clammy green beans she’d left for him every evening since his arrival.

  “Exactly. Now please don’t disturb me.” She turned back to watching the program, fumbling in a bag for another cookie. Darius watched for a while—it was a talk show with people arguing about the horrible things they had done to each other.

  “That’s right,” Aunt Inga said to the talk show host. “You tell him. Running off like that without saying good-bye and taking the vacuum cleaner, too. I’d stick him in the slammer and throw away the key!”

  The television shows Aunt Inga watched only reinforced her belief that people were, by and large, rotten creatures. She looked back at Darius.

  “You see how the world is? What’s the point of trying to do any good? What do I get for all my pains? I take you in, and here you are worried about getting letters from some old woman. Always thinking of yourself, Mr. Snootypants.”

  Darius decided that if he ever got to be in charge, grown-ups would have to take a test to prove that they liked kids before they would be allowed to take care of them. Only nice people would raise children.

  Aunt Inga would have failed the test and had her license denied.

  Darius went into the kitchen to escape the lecture. But Aunt Inga only raised her voice. “Fine!” she shouted. “Go in there and eat my food, too. I knew that would happen. Why don’t you go outside and do something? You’ll never make anything of yourself sitting around here.”

  For once, Darius thought Aunt Inga was making sense. Glad for an excuse to get away from her, he slipped out the back door. Darius heard some whooping and shouting. He rounded the corner of the house just in time to see Anthony riding by furiously on his bicycle. In the middle of the street, directly in front of Aunt Inga’s, was a ramp made of a sheet of plywood, one end propped up on some milk crates.

  Anthony pedaled up the ramp at top speed. “Yee-haaaaah!” he yelled. The wheels spun wildly as the bike left the ramp and flew through the air. The bicycle landed, thump, thump, and Anthony careened down the street, then circled back for another try. Even though he had the very strong feeling that Anthony was showing off just to taunt him, Darius couldn’t help but watch. He longed for a bike of his own—one that he could ride, not that rusty wreck he’d found in the basement.

  “Too bad you don’t have a bike,” Anthony chortled as he circled around again. “If you did, you could fly like me. But maybe it’s just as well. You’d never be as good as I am.”

  Darius watched the older boy pop wheelies and weave up and down the street. Darius was desperate to ride. Finally, he got up enough courage to speak.

  “Anthony, can I ride your bike?”

  “No,” the boy replied, “I’m putting it away now and going inside. If you want, you can watch TV with me. But you can’t talk when the show’s on.”

  “What show are you going to watch?” Darius asked.

  “I don’t know,” Anthony answered, “Whatever’s on.”

  Darius didn’t want to watch television. But he was bored out of his mind, and he didn’t want to go back to Aunt Inga’s house.

  Anthony’s house was bigger than Aunt Inga’s, although most of the time the family didn’t need the extra space. Mr. Gritbun worked on top-secret computer projects and only came home once every three months for a shower and breakfast. During the school year, Anthony was at military school.

  You may be wondering why the Gritbuns sent their son away to school.

  Anthony Gritbun was, to put it mildly, a handful. At home, he rarely did what he was told and often did exactly what he was told not to do. I suppose that is one reason his parents sent him away. The other reason was this: Anthony’s father had gone to Crapper Military Academy, and he wanted his son to go there, too.

  “Look at me,” Mr. Gritbun had said one day during breakfast, just before he disappeared for another three months. “I turned out all right. A few years at Crapper will do wonders for our boy.”

  Anthony had spent the past nine months at Crapper, but so far it was hard to tell just what wonders the school had worked on him.

  Anthony led Darius into his bedroom and turned on the television. It was a stupid movie about a policeman who lost his job and fell in love with a
woman who was going to rob a bank because she needed money for her child who had to have an operation. There was much more kissing than there needed to be, and Darius was bored. Every time there was a commercial, Anthony stopped staring at the tube and jumped on Darius. He held him down and hit him on top of the head with his sharp knuckles.

  “Ouch!” said Darius. “Stop it! That hurts.”

  Anthony laughed. “They do it harder than that at school. Do you want to see what else they do?”

  “NO!!” Darius yelled. Just then, the commercial ended. Suddenly, Anthony climbed off Darius, sat back down, and stared at the set.

  At the next commercial, Anthony said, “Where was I? Oh, that’s right. The Laundry Job! Do you know what a Laundry Job is?”

  “No,” said Darius, “and I don’t want to—”

  Before he could finish, Anthony leapt onto Darius’s back, grabbed the back of Darius’s underpants and pulled on them until they reached almost over Darius’s head. Anthony guffawed. “That’s a Laundry Job, you worm. I learned it at school.” With Anthony sitting on top of him and his underwear stretched to its limit, Darius could only hold his breath and wait. When the commercial ended, Anthony climbed off of Darius and stared at the television again. Darius stuffed his stretched underwear back in his pants, then tiptoed out the door. Anthony’s eyes never left the TV screen.

  Darius walked through the living room and out the front door, which he closed quietly behind him. He decided that from then on he would avoid Anthony whenever possible.

  Avoiding Anthony and Aunt Inga meant that Darius spent most of his time in the basement or the backyard.

  Early every morning he worked on the old bike with a few rusty hand tools he had scavenged from Aunt Inga’s garage. On nice days, he dragged the bike out into the backyard, where he could work in the fresh air. About the time he thought his aunt would be waking up, he’d put away the bike and the tools and wait in the basement until she called him for breakfast.

  He’d then spend the next few hours on his cot, reading and rereading the books he’d brought with him. He had nearly memorized the adventure books. He stared at the maps in the atlas, imagining he was somewhere else. The book his father had read to him, Bullfinch’s Mythology, was difficult; he tried to imagine his father’s voice reading the words, and that made it easier.

  Darius was trapped. And he was bored. Bored as could be.

  Although you may not like to admit it, I’m sure you’ve been bored in the summer. There are too many hours in the day, and there is no way to get where you want to go to do something interesting. If you could drive and had an endless supply of money, you’d go to the water park on Monday, to the zoo on Tuesday, and to the beach on Wednesday, and you’d never get bored. But when you can’t drive and you don’t have much money, you stay at home and get bored. And you drive the people around you crazy. Even if they love you.

  But since the only person around was Aunt Inga, Darius thought he might go crazy. His aunt didn’t want Darius in the house, but she didn’t want him out of the house either. Really, she just didn’t want him anywhere. If he stayed in the basement, she would say, “Where have you been? You think you can just hide out down there without so much as a word as to what you’re doing? Here I am, so worried about what you’re up to that I can’t get anything else done.”

  Then, when he came upstairs and sat quietly while his aunt watched TV or made her phone calls, she would say, “Fine, Mr. Snootypants, you just sit there and stare at me. You don’t do anything worthwhile the whole day long. I don’t know why I put up with you. I’m here slaving away and you don’t lift a finger to help out.”

  Darius had read about slaves, and Aunt Inga didn’t appear to be slaving away at anything.

  After a while, Darius realized that he was going to disappoint her no matter what he did.

  So one day, just when he was about to go crazy with boredom, he slipped through the kitchen and called from the back door, “I’m going out!” Then he left before her tirade began.

  Darius waited at the corner of the house until he could hear Anthony at the other end of the street. When the coast was clear, he hurried in the opposite direction, past the neighboring houses and a gas station on the corner. Crossing a busy street, he wandered around for half an hour, but didn’t find a single park or even a shady spot where he could get out of the hot sun.

  Finally, Darius turned and headed to Aunt Inga’s. “I might as well give up,” he said to himself. “I could search forever in this neighborhood and nothing good would come of it.

  However, on the way back, something good did happen.

  Darius found the library

  6

  More Books and Bikes

  Darius hadn’t noticed the library before—maybe he just took a wrong turn, which became a right turn. The building stood back from the street, and a sidewalk, shaded by trees, led to its front doors.

  As soon as Darius walked into the library, he felt himself relax—it was quiet and cool, and people spoke softly in tones very different from the ones he heard from Aunt Inga.

  “May I help you?” a woman behind the desk asked.

  “No thank you,” Darius said. “I’m just looking.”

  He found the children’s section and started to look through the shelves of books. But after several minutes, an idea formed in his mind. He went up to the desk, where he saw a nameplate with “Ms. Gloria Bickerstaff” printed on it.

  “Excuse me, Ms. Bickerstaff,” he said.

  “Yes?” she answered brightly.

  “Do you have any maps?”

  “Of course we have maps. We have books and books of maps—they’re called atlases.”

  “Yes ma’am, I know that,” he said. “My name is Darius, and before my father disappeared, we had a map room in the house where I used to live.”

  “My goodness,” Ms. Bickerstaff said, catching her breath. “I’m sorry to hear about your father. But how wonderful to have a map room in your home. We have a map room here, too!”

  “You do? Honest?” Darius couldn’t believe his ears.

  “Honest,” she said, pointing past Darius’s shoulder. “Back to the left, through those doors.”

  Darius walked across the main room and peered through the doors. A globe stood in the corner of the small room. Copies of ancient maps covered one wall. He was delighted to see that the shelves held large books the size of card tables, and several atlases were spread across the reading tables, opened to maps much more detailed and colorful than the ones in his own book. And the smell! How he loved the glorious smell of books! He had known that smell his whole life. This was the closest he had felt to home since leaving Miss Hastings.

  Darius lost track of time in the map room. Finally, he found a map that showed both Aunt Inga’s and his old town. He used the map scale to measure the miles between the two.

  “Two hundred forty-six miles. Let’s see, if I rode a bike twenty-five miles a day …,” Darius muttered. He picked up a short yellow pencil and scribbled the numbers on a scrap piece of paper. “… it would take me ten days to get to Miss Hastings.”

  If he could find Miss Hastings!

  He wondered where she lived now.

  Darius left the map room and approached Ms. Bickerstaff’s desk again. She was reading a book. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said softly.

  The librarian looked up and smiled. “Yes, Darius,” she answered. Darius’s heart warmed at the sound of her kind voice saying his name.

  “Do you think you could help me find somebody? I’m looking for her address.”

  “Well, we could search for it on the computer. What’s her name?”

  “Miss Hastings. I know her first name is Grace.”

  “What town?”

  Darius told her the name of the town where he used to live.

  “Let’s see what we can find,” the librarian said. Darius followed Ms. Bickerstaff to the computer and stood by her side as her fingers flew over the keys. For all the
music and stories and maps and adventures in Darius’s life, he hadn’t had much experience with computers. He was glad to be with someone who had. His spirits rose as Ms. Bickerstaff continued to search. But finally, she shook her head.

  “I’m not finding anything, Darius,” Ms. Bickerstaff said. “Maybe she doesn’t have a new phone or address yet.”

  “Maybe not,” Darius said, his heart sinking. “She might be living with someone else. I’ll just have to keep looking.”

  Before he left, Ms. Bickerstaff gave Darius a library card, then helped him pick out an atlas and two books about travel adventures to take home. He wanted to take some of the large atlases, but Ms. Bickerstaff said he’d have to read them in the library. “Those are reference books. They stay here.”

  “I’d like to stay here, too,” said Darius.

  Ms. Bickerstaff laughed. She thought he was kidding. She didn’t know he really meant it.

  “Let me know if I can help with anything else, Darius,” she added.

  “Sure,” he answered. “Thanks.” As he headed out of the library, he could feel Ms. Bickerstaff watching him. Without even thinking, he reached in his pocket and pulled out the silver wings Miss Hastings had given him. “I’m going to find you!” he whispered.

  It seemed silly and ridiculous to think that he could fix the old bike in the basement, escape Aunt Inga, ride for ten days, find Miss Hastings, and run away with her.

  “It sure would help if the bike flew,” Darius said to himself, looking up at the sky. It seemed almost impossible that he would ever get there.

  But when you’re desperate, almost impossible is not bad odds.

  Darius should have stayed in the library. As he lugged the books up the back stairs into the house, he heard Aunt Inga’s voice over the blare of the television.

  “Where have you been?” she called.

  Darius stuck his head into the living room and found her holding her hand over the receiver of the phone.