by Betsy Byars
Alfie kept walking, watching his feet.
“Nothing against your mom,” Tree went on. “I just can’t imagine anybody wanting to have a conference with her.”
Alfie said nothing. He had made a terrible mistake in his talk with Mrs. Steinhart, one he regretted deeply. In the middle of the talk, he had abruptly decided to take her into his confidence and show her his comic strip about the dog. This had been for two reasons. First, he really liked Mrs. Steinhart, and, second, he did not want her to think he was just goofing off during Math.
“Wait a minute,” he had said.
He had hurried back to his desk and gotten his notebook. He had carried it to her, opened it, and carefully pulled out the comic strip. He had laid it before her like a fabric salesman.
“What’s this, Alfie?” She put on her glasses.
“It’s a comic strip, Mrs. Steinhart. I drew it myself.”
“This is what you were doing instead of your math problems?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She looked at the strip. Alfie watched to see if a smile would come over her face. It did, but it was too faint to count. When she looked at Alfie the smile was gone. “You like to draw, don’t you, Alfie, cartoons and things?”
“Yes.”
“But—” She got even more serious. She took off her eyeglasses. “But don’t you think, Alfie, that there are times to draw—we do have Art, you know.”
“I know,” he said quickly. The week before they had cut out and colored Indian symbols. School art was as different from cartoons as Science was from recess.
Mrs. Steinhart was still talking. “And then there are times for Math and for English and for Science.” She made it sound as exact as sorting mail.
He picked up his drawing and slid it back in the pocket of his notebook. “Yes.”
“Your cartoon is really very good, and I think there’s a lot of humor in it.”
“Thank you.”
“And you’ve made a good point about the way we live today. There are too many artificial things. I myself have started reading the labels on everything I buy.”
“Thank you.”
“Only you’re going to have to do your cartoons after class.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to see you drawing again.”
“You won’t.”
“Good.” She smiled at him, a big smile now, the one he had wanted to see earlier when she had first looked at his comic strip. “You’re a smart boy, Alfie, and I want you to do as well as I know you can.”
“That’s what I want too.” He paused. “Can I go now?”
He had stumbled over his feet as he left the room. All the time he had been drawing his cartoons, he had secretly felt that they were touched with genius. He had known that if he had shared them with other people, they would have been as delighted as he. Now he had shown them—to his mother, Pap, Mrs. Steinhart—and nothing had happened.
Beside him Tree was talking about a conference he had had with Mrs. Allen in first grade. “I didn’t know what I was doing, Alfie. I loved to make letters, see, but they didn’t have any meaning for me. Little b and little d were my favorites, but even they were just circles leaning against sticks.
“Anyhow, the way Mrs. Allen found out I was copying off other people—you’ll love this, Alfie—was because I’d copy their names too! I didn’t know it was their names. It was all just a bunch of circles and sticks to me but—”
Suddenly Alfie stopped. He said, “I got to go back. I left my notebook on Mrs. Steinhart’s desk.” He didn’t know how he could have done such a thing.
“Aw, you can get it tomorrow,” Tree said. “Anyway if you go back in there, she’ll say, ‘Oh, I’m glad you’re back because there are a few more points I’d like to make about your conduct.’”
“I got to go back.”
“I’ll lend you some paper if that’s—”
“I’ve got to have my notebook!”
Tree stopped and looked at him in disgust. “What you got to have—your pictures?” He made a scornful sound as he said the word pictures.
“What?” Alfie stopped walking.
“Your pictures. Those things you draw all the time. What are those things anyway?”
“I don’t draw.”
“I see you. Today you were drawing a dog. Yesterday it was a giant. Last week it was an octopus.”
Alfie stood without moving. He felt sick. He didn’t know anyone had been watching him. He said angrily, “I was not drawing a giant.”
“I saw you! Look, this is me, Tree. I can see everybody in the class.”
“You didn’t see me drawing a giant!”
“Well, all right,” Tree said, bending. “Maybe it was a picture of a huge enormous man.”
Alfie said nothing.
“Which, I may point out, is a giant.”
Alfie stared up at Tree. There was a hard moment between them. They had been friends since second grade, and yet the friendship had suddenly gone sour. They seemed to move apart, even though no footwork was involved.
“And today,” Tree went on in the same loud tone, “I guess you weren’t drawing a picture of a dog.”
Alfie said nothing.
“So, all right, maybe it was a picture of a canine.”
Alfie said nothing.
“Which, I may point out, is a dog!”
Without a word Alfie turned and started for home. When he got to the corner, Tree relented and called to him, “Oh, come on, Alfie, I’ll go back with you to get your notebook.”
Alfie kept walking.
“I was trying to keep you from going back for your sake. One conference a day is enough. Listen, I was thinking of you!”
Alfie did not turn around. He kept walking at the same pace like a robot. There was a silence. Alfie had almost reached the next block when Tree called, “All right, be that way!”
Chapter Seven
ALFIE WALKED SLOWLY UP the front path to his house. He stopped at the steps because he could hear his mother and Pap arguing in the living room. He knew there was no way he could get to the attic without being drawn into the fight.
“Well, I’ll tell you what you can do,” Pap was saying in a hurt, angry voice, “just get rid of me. That’s what you’re driving at. Send me to the poorhouse!”
“They don’t have the poorhouse any more and you know it.”
“The government’s even took that away from us,” Pap said. He was mournful now.
Alfie stood with his toes touching the bottom step. He looked down at his turned-in feet.
“Well, then send me to the Nursing Home for Christian Gentlemen,” Pap said.
“Whoo, you think they’d have you?” his mom snapped. “You do not quite qualify. Besides, that place costs over two hundred dollars a month.”
“Well, what do you want me to do then—just disappear? Want me to go off like some old tired elephant to the burial ground and—”
“Pap, don’t start in on the old-elephant routine now. I just can’t take it.” His mother’s tone changed abruptly. “All I want you to do,” she went on slowly, “is to help me.” She was wheedling now, trying to get Pap in a good mood.
“I ain’t cutting no hole in no wall.”
“Aw, Pap.”
Alfie sat down on the steps. He looked at the ground.
All the other houses they had lived in had had bushes by the door, hiding places. On Tenth Street there had been a regular tunnel behind the shrubbery. Alfie could duck through the low branches at the front door and come out by the back door without anybody seeing him. He missed that now. He would have liked someplace to crawl into, a place to wait out the storm.
His mother was saying, “You just don’t know how important this is to me, Pap.” Her voice sounded louder. Alfie imagined that she was close to the window now, perhaps ready to look out and see him sitting there. “Well, here’s Alfie,” she’d cry. “We’ll let him decide.” She loved to have a referee.
The thought made the air feel suddenly fresh and good again. He breathed deeply. His shoulders relaxed. A box of new paper, all different sizes and kinds, some sheets thin enough to trace through, others thick as cardboard—that was all he needed to bring back his good feeling. He imagined himself in the attic, sorting out the paper, putting it into piles, cutting off the letterheads and smudges. He began to walk faster. He remembered that the man had promised to save all the scrap paper for him. By now there was probably a mountain of it. He imagined himself falling into the mountain of paper the way farm people fell into haystacks. He—
“Hey, Alfie, where are you going?”
He turned and saw Alma coming down Grant Street. She had a bag of groceries in one arm and a carton of Cokes in the other. Her long hair was tied back with a scarf.
“I got to go downtown,” he called back. He wished he had thought to borrow a wagon from the little boy next door. He would probably need a truck to carry all the paper they’d saved for him.
“Did you hear the wonderful news?” she called.
Alfie could tell from the way she said the word wonderful that the news was very bad indeed.
“What’s happened?” He waited, toes touching, while she walked toward him. She set down the Cokes and shifted her bag of groceries to the other arm.
“Bubba’s coming home.”
“What?” He leaned forward a little.
“Bubba,” she repeated slowly, “our wonderful brother, and Maureen, his wonderful wife, are coming to live with us.”
“But that couldn’t be,” he sputtered. His words went too fast, like a speeded-up tape recorder. “Why would they be coming to live with us? They’ve got an apartment in Maidsville. Bubba’s job is there. He—”
“He got fired.”
“But how could that happen? What’s going on? I thought the man at the gas station really liked Bubba. That’s what Mom said. She said the man wanted Bubba to be like a son to him. She said he was going to let Bubba buy into the station. She said Bubba might even inherit the station when the man died.”
“Bubba took one of the cars at the gas station—borrowed it, he said—because he had to drive over and pick up Maureen at the doctor’s office. She’s going to have a baby, by the way. That’s another wonderful surprise. And coming back to the station in this borrowed car, he ran a stoplight and hit a police car broadside.”
“A police car?”
“Yeah, trust Bubba to go for the spectacular.”
“But if he borrowed the car—”
“Borrowing without asking, Alfie, is stealing.”
“But how could he do such a thing?”
“With Bubba it just comes naturally.” She sighed. She shifted the groceries again as if they were getting heavier. “Anyway, they’re going to live with us until Bubba can find another job, which is not going to be easy. It took him seven months—if you recall—to get the job in Maidsville and it was only because of Maureen’s dad that he got that.”
“But if he hit a police car, maybe they’ll arrest him,” Alfie said, speaking in a rush. “After all, a crime against a policeman is supposed to be worse than anything.”
Alma shook her head. “All he’s charged with is ignoring a stoplight and reckless driving.”
“But he stole the car from the station, didn’t he? That’s a crime.”
“The owner of the station is covering that up because he doesn’t want the bad publicity. He says that if Bubba pays for the damage—though what Bubba’s going to pay for it with, nobody has said.” She gave Alfie a hard look. “If you’ve got any money, hide it.”
“I haven’t.”
Alma looked past Alfie to the river, where some coal barges were moving slowly. “We’re never going to be free of Bubba,” she said in a low voice.
Alfie turned and looked at the barges too. He felt close to Alma for the first time in years. It was like on the Titanic, he thought or the Hindenburg, where perfect strangers suddenly became best friends. Mutual tragedy did bring people closer together. He reached out to take her groceries.
“Well, I got to get home,” she said, moving away before he could do it.
Suddenly Alfie’s mind turned to the crooked house—the two bedrooms, the living room, the bathroom, the kitchen. That’s all there was, he thought. The sofa in the living room didn’t even make into a bed.
“But where are they going to sleep?” Alfie asked, following her. He went over the sleeping arrangements. He and Pap shared one bedroom; Alma and his mother, the other. There was no room for Bubba and Maureen. His hopes rose. “There’s nowhere for them to sleep!”
“Mom’s going to fix up the attic.”
For a moment he felt as if he had been hit over the head with a hammer. He was paralyzed.
“The attic?” he muttered.
“Yeah, she’s got it all planned. She’s getting a window from Mr. Wilkins, and she’s talking Pap into cutting a hole in the eaves and installing it. Then she’s getting a double bed from Hill’s Used Furniture and my dressing table and—”
“But the attic belongs to me.” He stammered for the first time since he was three. His knees felt weak. In his mind the attic wavered like a desert mirage.
He had once watched an old apartment building on High Street being demolished. A huge ball had pounded into the walls, and they had crumbled. As the dust settled, Alfie could see pieces of people’s lives shimmering in the air—the old faded wallpapers they had chosen, the linoleum they had walked on. An old curtain had flapped from a third-story window. Finally everything had sunk into a mound of dust. His attic crumbled now in the same way, his cartoons fluttering down through the dusty air like autumn leaves.
“The attic used to be yours,” Alma corrected.
“No, it’s mine.”
“As soon as I get home with the cleaning stuff, Mom’s going to start on it, and tomorrow—if she can talk Pap into it—the window will be installed, and by noon it’ll be Bubba’s bedroom.”
“Mom wouldn’t do that to me.”
“Alfie, Mom would do anything for Bubba. Haven’t you learned that by now?”
“It’s my attic.”
“Nothing has ever been yours and mine, Alfie, not since the day we were born, not if Bubba wanted it. Do you remember the time Mom took my baby-sitting money to pay Bubba’s fine? Well, you probably don’t remember because it was two years ago, but I’ll never forget it. I was saving my money so I could go to Florida with the band, and my bank was almost full. I was so proud. And then I came in one night and put on the light and started over to put my baby-sitting money in the bank—remember I had a great big bank shaped like a globe? And I saw that it had been broken open. Pieces were all over the floor. I stopped. I couldn’t move. I thought a burglar had done it. I was getting ready to go next door to call the police. And then I saw Pap standing in the doorway, and he said, ‘Your ma had to have some money for Bubba. He’s in trouble with the police.’
“Well, I just stood there. I couldn’t move. I could see Mom’s shoe by the bank—she had cracked it open with the heel. And all of a sudden I went over and I took that shoe and I beat the rest of my bank until it was dust. Everything was dust. The Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific, Russia, Africa, the Fiji Islands.” She gave a sad laugh. “I guess I would still be there beating the world to dust if Pap hadn’t stopped me.
“Do you remember now? I think you cleaned up for me. And you have to remember me crying. I cried so hard Pap wanted to take me to the University Hospital. He thought I was cracking up.” She sighed. “I guess I was cracking up in a way because, Alfie, that bank really was the world to me in those days.”
“They’re not taking my attic.” His face looked so pale
and strained that Alma shifted her groceries to reach out and touch him.
“Hey, it’s not the end of the world,” she said. “It wasn’t for me. I admit it took me a long time to get over it. I still feel bad about it sometimes but—”
“They’re not going to take my attic.”
She shook his shoulder gently. “Hey, look, it’s—”
He glanced at her without seeing her. “Nobody’s going to take my attic.” Twisting away from her hand, he turned and began to run for home.
“Wait, Alfie,” Alma called. “Wait!” Clutching the groceries, she hurried after him.
Chapter Eight
AS HE RAN PAST the Hunters’ house, his mother stuck her head out the door and called to him. “Alfie!” He didn’t look at her. “Alfie, stop. Wait a minute! I’ve got some wonderful news.”
Alfie kept running. He took the steps in one bound, went down on his knees, got up, lunged for the screen door, pulled himself up by the knob, and entered. It was all one long awkward motion.
His mother started after him and called back to Mrs. Hunter, “I’ll send Alfie and Pap over for the chest of drawers after supper.” She paused to adjust her thong sandal. “And Bubba and Maureen will take real good care of it.”
Alfie plunged across the living room. He grabbed the ladder as a man being swept away in a flood grabs for a tree. He swayed in the current.
Pap loomed up in the kitchen doorway, filling it. He held a coffee mug in one hand, a jelly doughnut in the other. “Did you hear the news?” He paused to lick some jelly from the side of his thumb.
Alfie started up the ladder. He felt the pull of gravity for the first time in his life. His feet were lead. His pants were nailed to the floor. He would never reach the attic.
“Bubba’s coming home,” Pap said.
Alfie struggled for the next rung of the ladder. He swayed with the unseen current. He struck his head on the wall.
“Bubba and Maureen.”
Alfie reached up with one shaking hand. He pushed at the trap door. It was heavy. Usually it sprang open at his touch. Now it wouldn’t budge. He went up another rung of the ladder. He put his head to it. Goatlike, he began to shove the door open.
