As Mitchell watched, Alan Hibbler, who was also wearing a new quilted nylon jacket, seized two clumps of grass and pulled. The grass was strong and green and the soil was loose from the winter rains, conditions that made perfect grass bombs. “You cut that out!” yelled Mitchell, who had passed the vacant lot and was standing by a hedge.
“Make me!” Alan yelled back.
Mitchell realized he was at a disadvantage. He always seemed to be at a disadvantage when Alan was around. If he ran back up the hill to the vacant lot and pulled some grass bombs of his own, he could not hit Alan because it was almost impossible to hit anyone by throwing a grass bomb uphill. All he could do was shake his fist and yell, “You’re going to be sorry!” and go jogging on down the hill to school.
Thump! Another grass bomb hit Mitchell’s new jacket and bits of loose soil rolled down his neck. He grew angrier and angrier. Who did Alan think he was anyway?
Thump! Another grass bomb struck its target. Mitchell gritted his teeth. He thought of the smashed skateboard and the eucalyptus buds he had worked so hard to ignore. He thought of Alan whacking Amy’s piñata, and he thought of Alan leaning over the wall to spit in Amy’s hair. By the time Mitchell reached the school grounds he had both fists doubled up with his thumbs on the outside the way his father had shown him.
Mitchell waited inside the fence, and as soon as Alan set foot on the playground, he grabbed him.
Alan was taken by surprise. “Leggo!” he shouted, trying to pull away.
Mitchell hung on with his left hand and tried to swing at Alan with his right, but Alan kept backing away and Mitchell could not get a swing at him. “I’ve had enough of your bullying,” said Mitchell between clenched teeth. “You leave me and my sister alone.”
“You just make me,” said Alan with a sneer.
“Fight! Fight!” yelled the crowd that was gathering.
Mitchell threw his free arm around Alan to try to make him stand still only to find that when he hung on with both arms he could not hit. They struggled, getting nowhere like a pair of waltzing bears. Mitchell could even smell Alan’s hair oil and the newness of his nylon jacket. He began to feel ridiculous. He could neither hit nor let go.
Suddenly Alan wrenched away. Mitchell, his hands free at last, put up his fists and held his chin down the way men fought on television. The trouble was, Alan ducked. The shouts grew louder, and Mitchell grew more determined. He did not want Alan to beat him up in front of the whole school. Now Mitchell gritted his teeth and swung, hitting Alan on the chest. Mitchell had a fleeting feeling of triumph. If Alan had not been well padded by his quilted jacket, that blow might have hurt.
“Atta boy, Mitch. Pound him into the ground!” screamed Bernadette, but Mitchell ducked instead. He threw up his arm in time to ward off the blow that he saw coming and prepared to swing with his right fist. Sweat stood out on his face, and he could see sweat on Alan’s face, too. He wished he could stop and take off his nylon jacket. He swung, Alan stepped back, and Mitchell reached out and grabbed him by the jacket. There they were again, hanging on to one another like waltzing bears. Alan freed his right hand. Mitchell was not going to let go and give him a chance to swing. Alan pounded him on the back of his quilted jacket.
Then Mitchell felt a hand on his shoulder. “All right, boys,” said Mr. Greer, the principal, who was holding Alan by the shoulder, too. “Break it up.” Mitchell let go of his opponent and felt Alan release his grip.
“Aw, gee…that’s no fair….” The crowd was disappointed, and in a way so was Mitchell, because nothing had been settled. He wiped his arm across his forehead and wished he could have landed one more good hard punch on Alan.
“Now, boys,” said Mr. Greer, “I want you to remember this. Crowds would always rather watch a fight than be in one.”
“But he started it, Mr. Greer,” said Alan. “Honest. I was just standing there—”
“I did not!” Mitchell burst out as the bell rang. “You threw—”
“All right, boys,” said Mr. Greer. “It doesn’t matter who started it. It’s over. Now shake hands and go into your classes, and don’t let me catch you fighting again.”
Mitchell did not want to shake hands with Alan, but with Mr. Greer standing over him he had to. Alan, the old apple polisher, said, “Sure, Mr. Greer,” and appeared happy to shake hands.
“Aw, they didn’t even get started,” Mitchell heard someone complain, as the crowd surged toward their classrooms.
“Mitch, are you all right?” Amy asked anxiously when she was able to get to him.
“Sure. I’m all right.” Mitchell climbed the wooden steps to his temporary classroom. He felt hot and dirty, and it seemed as if he had left home a long time ago, but he had the satisfaction of knowing he was not afraid to stand up and fight Alan Hibbler. Maybe nobody had won, but now Alan knew Mitchell could stand up to him. Mitchell flopped into his seat. Just let Alan take off his quilted jacket and—
“Don’t worry, Mitch,” said Bernadette from across the aisle. “I know you could pound him into the ground.”
“Thanks,” muttered Mitchell, pulling his book report out of his hip pocket. He felt better than he had felt in a long time, even though the fight had not settled anything.
10
Showdown
Amy was in a difficult spot. She was avoiding Bernadette Stumpf, yet during the second week in January she and Bernadette, both members of the Agonizing Alligator Patrol of their Scout troop, were supposed to provide refreshments for the troop meeting. And how was Amy going to get together with a girl she was avoiding?
Amy could fight with her own brother, give him a push or a shove, but she did not want him to fight with anyone who might hurt him, and she did not like the way Bernadette cheered him on, jumping up and down and yelling, “Come on, Mitch! Pound him into the ground!” He wasn’t Bernadette’s brother. And anyway, wondered Amy, what kind of refreshments would a girl like Bernadette want to take to Scouts? Dill pickles? Purple cookies?
But if Amy did not know what to do, Bernadette did. She simply telephoned Amy one evening and said, “What are we going to do about those refreshments?”
“We could take butterscotch brownies,” suggested Amy, who liked to bake and who felt that brownies were appropriate because all the girls had been Brownies before they flew up to Scouts.
“I was thinking of chocolate-covered doughnuts,” said Bernadette. “I like frosting.”
The girls compromised on frosted chocolate cupcakes. Amy planned to bake her half in her own kitchen, but Bernadette changed this arrangement. “We can bake them at my house,” said Bernadette, taking charge. “My mother won’t care. Besides, we have such a big family we have lots of muffin tins.”
“But you have all those brothers,” said Amy, thinking of her own brother. “Won’t they hang around sticking their fingers in the frosting?”
Bernadette considered. “One has a paper route and one is going to the University and gets home late and one has this girl and doesn’t hang around the house much and one has a violin lesson on Monday after school and the other is always over at a friend’s house developing his muscles. Yes, it’s safe.”
So reluctantly Amy agreed to go to Bernadette’s house after school on Monday to bake cupcakes. She did, however, ask her mother to provide cake and frosting mixes as well as fluted paper cups for three dozen cupcakes, because she was doubtful of Bernadette’s ability to follow a recipe.
“You poor thing,” said Marla, when she heard what Amy was planning to do. “Be sure and tell us what her house is like.”
“You might have fun,” said Bonnie, trying to look on the cheerful side.
On Monday after school Amy walked home with Bernadette to a big old brown-shingled house in a canyon under some redwood trees. There was a go-cart in the garage, the body of an old car on the driveway, and a pair of hockey sticks beside the front door, which had been deeply scratched by a dog asking to be let in. Bernadette fished a key out of the mailbox and
unlocked the door.
The outside of the house should have prepared Amy for the inside, but when she stepped into the living room she had to remind herself she must be polite and not act surprised. The dusty upright piano was old and scarred, the couch and chairs were shabby, and the carpet was covered with dog hair. There was a coffee table at the side of the room, and on it rested the internal parts of a hi-fi—turntable, tubes, and wires. The speakers were suspended from the ceiling in two corners of the room. There was no television set but phonograph records were everywhere, in a cabinet, under the coffee table, on the couch. Amy had never seen so many phonograph records.
“My mother is a terrible housekeeper,” said Bernadette matter-of-factly.
Amy did not feel that she would be polite to agree out loud. Besides, she liked Bernadette’s living room. It had a used, comfortable look, and its windows framed a view of the bay through the redwood trees.
“She says she doesn’t need neatness,” continued Bernadette, not in the least apologetic.
“Doesn’t need neatness?” echoed Amy, who had never heard of such a thing. “I thought all grown-ups…needed neatness.” Certainly her own mother did, although she was not as bad as Marla’s mother about being neat.
“Not my mother,” said Bernadette, as she tossed her jacket onto a chair. “She says she has more important things to do than try to keep a house full of boys neat. She says it’s a losing battle.”
Amy was curious to know what Bernadette’s mother had to do that was more important than neatness. “Isn’t your mother home?” she asked.
“She’ll be home after a while,” said Bernadette. “She has a late class on Monday.”
“Where does she teach?” asked Amy, as she followed Bernadette into the kitchen, where she was not surprised to see breakfast dishes still sitting on an old-fashioned round table.
“Oh, my mother doesn’t teach,” said Bernadette. “She goes to school.”
“Goes to school?”
“Yes. Monday is her long day, because she has a chemistry lab.” Bernadette found a large mixing bowl in a cupboard and made space for it on the counter among the open cereal boxes and milky glasses. “She goes to the University and hopes to graduate this year if she can get through chemistry. I think she will. Two of my brothers are good in chemistry, and they are helping her.”
Amy, who had never heard of children helping their parents with homework, was full of more questions than she thought polite to ask about this topsy-turvy household. She finally selected the most important. “How come your mother is going to school?”
Bernadette turned on the oven, rummaged about in a cupboard for muffin tins, and all the while she chattered. “Mother got married before she finished college and had all us kids, and now she says with so many of us to educate she’s going to have to go to work to help Daddy out. She wants to finish college so she can get a really interesting job. Besides, she says housework is boring, and we are all old enough to take some responsibility around here.”
Amy did not know what she had expected at the Stumpfs’ house, but she had not expected a student mother. She had often heard mothers say they thought they would take a few courses at the University to keep their minds from getting rusty, and sometimes they even attended lectures, but Bernadette’s mother was the first one Amy had heard of who actually went so far as to do homework.
When Bernadette opened the refrigerator to take out the eggs, a dog began to scratch and whine at the back door, and she let a dignified old collie into the kitchen. Two small gray cats shot in through the door at the same time. “Hello, Buckley, old fellow,” she said, hugging the dog while the meowing cats wove themselves around her ankles.
Amy felt she could no longer stand there staring, so she got out the package of paper cups and set them into the muffin tins while Bernadette scooped a double handful of dry dog food out of a bag under the sink and dropped it into a dish beside the back door. Buckley began to eat and so did the cats, which crouched beneath his chin. The kitchen was filled with the sounds of many teeth gnawing and grinding.
While this activity was going on, Amy noticed what appeared to be two tennis balls inside a sock suspended from the light fixture in the middle of the kitchen. “Is that a sock?” she asked, not quite believing what she saw.
“Oh, that,” said Bernadette lightly. “My brother, the one who is always developing his muscles, uses it for a punching bag. We’re going to get him a real one for his birthday and put it in the garage. It’s an awful nuisance when we’re all trying to eat breakfast and pack lunches to have him standing there punching away at an old sock.”
Amy could see how a punching bag in the kitchen might be a nuisance. She stood by, feeling useless, while Bernadette dumped the boxes of cake mix into the bowl, added eggs, and measured water. For a wild moment Amy half expected Bernadette to imitate a book character, Pippi Longstocking, and beat the batter with a bath brush, but Bernadette produced a proper wooden spoon and began to beat with all her usual energy. By now Amy plainly realized that Bernadette was a girl who knew her way around a kitchen. “Isn’t there something I can do to help?” she asked.
“You can fill the paper cups with batter,” suggested Bernadette. “I want to get the meat loaf started.”
“Meat loaf?”
“Sure,” said Bernadette briskly, as she removed what looked to Amy like an enormous quantity of hamburger from the refrigerator. Buckley whimpered, and the two gray cats stood on their hind legs and clung to her skirt with their fore claws. “Yow,” said Bernadette, skillfully balancing the bundle of hamburger on one hand and unhooking the cats’ claws with the other. She tossed some meat into the animals’ dish as she talked. “I make meat loaf every Monday because Mother gets home so late. Meat loaf, baked potatoes, and squash. They all go into the oven at the same time.” She paused to consult a recipe for meat loaf on an oatmeal carton.
“I can cook some things, but not meat loaf.” Amy was trying to get an equal amount of batter into each paper cup and thinking, Wait till I tell Marla that Bernadette cooks meat loaf all by herself.
“Anyone who can read can cook,” said Bernadette a bit scornfully.
Amy wondered if they had needed to use mixes, after all. She was beginning to like Bernadette and so would Marla when she got to know her better. Marla would love Bernadette’s house, everything was so messy.
When the cupcakes came out of the oven to cool and the meat loaf went in, Amy prepared the instant frosting while Bernadette hacked up a large piece of squash with a cleaver. “If you keep both hands on the cleaver, you can’t cut yourself,” she exclaimed, noticing Amy’s look of alarm.
The cupcakes were cool enough to frost when Mrs. Stumpf came through the back door. “Hi, girls,” she said, and dropped a load of books and her raincoat onto a kitchen chair. Amy noticed she was dressed like a college girl in an olive-green sweater and skirt and flat-heeled shoes. Her straight hair, streaked with gray, was pulled back from her face and held in place by a wooden clasp.
“Mom, this is Amy Huff,” said Bernadette. “Mitchell’s twin sister.”
“Hello, Amy. I’m glad you could come over. We’ve heard a lot of nice things about the Huff twins.”
“Thank you,” said Amy shyly.
Mrs. Stumpf set a coffeepot on the stove to reheat. While she waited for the coffee to heat she set about stacking the breakfast dishes as if this chore were the usual thing to do at five o’clock in the afternoon.
“Mother says it’s inefficient to wash dishes more than once a day,” Bernadette explained. “Why go through all the motions three times when once is enough?”
“That’s right,” agreed Mrs. Stumpf. “And a waste of soap and hot water as well as motion.”
Amy thought this opinion over while she spread frosting on the cupcakes with a knife.
Mrs. Stumpf poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. “It feels good to sit down after standing in that lab all afternoon,” she said, as
both cats tried to jump on her lap. She held one and stroked the other with her foot after she had kicked off her shoe.
“Was chemistry lab hard?” asked Bernadette sympathetically.
“It was dreadful,” said Mrs. Stumpf. “I’m beginning to think that even with the boys helping me I won’t be able to get through.”
“Yes, you will,” said Bernadette. “You keep trying and you’ll make it.”
Amy almost laughed. She had heard this bit of encouragement often, but in her own house the grown-ups encouraged the children.
When the cupcakes were frosted and carefully packed in two shoe boxes, Mrs. Stumpf drove Amy and one box of cupcakes home in a Volkswagen bus. “You must come over to our house again,” she told Amy, when she had stopped the bus at the foot of the Huffs’ driveway.
“I’d like to and thank you for the nice time and the ride home,” Amy answered politely before she ran up her driveway. She couldn’t wait to telephone Marla.
Mitchell was in the kitchen looking in the oven and lifting the lids of the pans on the stove to see what they were going to have for dinner. “What was it like at Bernadette’s house?” he wanted to know, as soon as Amy came through the back door.
“Nice.” Amy set her box of cupcakes on the kitchen table. “Nice and messy. Bernadette says her mother doesn’t need neatness.”
“No kidding?” Mitchell was as surprised as Amy had been. “Are you going to tell Mom?”
Mitch and Amy Page 11
