Blossoms and the Green Phantom (3 page)

He threw a sideways glance at Mrs. Blossom. She was obviously not worried. She beamed with pride as her eyes followed Maggie and Sandy Boy around the field.

Maggie paused at the far side of the field. “Here I come!” she called. “Only, Ralphie, try to imagine me with music and satin, shining like the sun!”

That would be easy for Ralphie. He had never imagined her any other way.

Again she dug her heels into Sandy Boy. She and Sandy Boy came around the circle fast. As Maggie passed in front of Ralphie and her mom, she hooked her knee in the saddle and dropped off the side of the horse.

Her arms, her braids were flung over her head. She was grinning. She was the most beautiful thing Ralphie had ever seen in his life.

Ralphie applauded.

Junior lifted his head. He heard Maggie, Ralphie, and his mother coming up from the meadow. At last! Now they would see the Green Phantom. He could not wait for Pap and Vern.

He made a few adjustments on the sagging garbage bags and pulled the air mattresses into a circle. Every time he wasn’t looking, the three air mattresses bunched up into a pyramid. “Now, stay round like that,” he told them. He went outside the barn to wait.

He was standing there, smiling in anticipation, when his mother came around the barn. At that moment Junior heard her say something to Maggie that caused the smile to freeze on his face, because the words his mother said to Maggie were the very words he had always wanted her to say to him.

And the painful thing was that up until this moment, Junior had not known how much he needed to hear these words. He had not even known these words existed. And to hear his words said to someone else …

The words his mother had said to Maggie were, “Oh, love, your dad would be so proud of you.”

“What?” Junior said. The word came out sharply, as if someone had struck him on the back.

His mom smiled and hugged Maggie. “I was just telling Maggie how proud your dad would be of her.”

The words went to Junior’s heart like a knife. Every single day since his father had died four years ago, Junior had missed his father, every single night his father had visited Junior in his dreams and rubbed his hand over Junior’s head the way he used to do, “For luck.” Every single rainy afternoon Junior had taken out the old snapshots of his father and gone over them with a magnifying glass, but Junior had never once thought of trying to make his father proud.

Junior’s pink face paled. He had not even realized his father could be made proud. He felt cheated. All this time he could have—

Junior’s thoughts broke off with the terrible realization that he had done nothing his father could be proud of. Every one of his inventions had failed.

Last summer he had made himself wings, the best wings he could possibly make. The only place he had gone was twenty feet straight down.

The horror continued. Last month he had made the best coyote trap he could possibly make. Only he had not trapped a coyote. He had trapped himself and then Mud. He had trapped two members of his own family.

And if his dad had seen both of those failures—and Junior was pretty sure now that he had—then his dad would be the opposite of proud. And Junior knew his opposites. The opposite of proud was ashamed.

“Junior, you look pale,” his mother said. She let go of Maggie’s shoulders and came over to him. “Are you all right?”

“Not really,” he said. He was breathing through his mouth. His lips were pale, too, and dry. His blood pounded in his ears. His chest ached.

She put her hand on his forehead. “You don’t have any fever.”

“It’s worse than fever,” he muttered through his parched lips.

“What do you have? Is it your stomach?”

Junior shook his head. Tears filled his eyes. He put one hand over his heart.

“You have a pain in your chest?”

He shook his head. He turned one finger inward to point to the center of his chest.

“Your heart?”

He nodded.

“What kind of pain?”

He shook his head. It was the kind of thing that could never be told. If everyone knew that his father was ashamed of him, then they would be ashamed of him too.

“Junior.” His mother looked into his eyes. He turned his head away.

“Junior!”

Then a dam broke inside him. He couldn’t help himself. He told.

“Dad’s ashamed of me.” He began crying. It was like an explosion. His chest heaved with sobs. He couldn’t get them out fast enough. He could barely speak.

“Everything I do fails.” He gasped for breath. “I’m a terrible, terrible failure.” He began making little hand movements as if he was reaching for something. “Every single Blossom—” He tried swallowing back the sobs, but that didn’t work either. “Every single Blossom is a success but me.” He gasped again. “I can’t do anything right.” He put out his hands to show that he had tried his best and had still come up empty. “I’ve never done anything right.” Now came the worst of all. “And I never will!”

He gave up trying to continue and put his hands over his face. Instantly his mother’s arms were around him. This was the only place Junior had ever liked to be when he was crying, but even her arms couldn’t help him today.

“Junior!” she cried. She kissed him on top of the head again and again. “You are not a failure. You’re not a failure at all. You are a wonderful, wonderful boy.”

He shook his head against her.

“The whole family is proud of you.” She paused to hug him harder and rain more kisses on the top of his head. “You are just”—more kisses and tight hugs—“wonderful! You are the sweetest, kindest, most lovable boy in the world. We all love you very much, don’t we, everybody? You are a wonderful, wonderful boy!”

“No, I’m not,” he said, his voice muffled against her body. The unspilled sobs formed a solid knot of pain in his chest.

“You are too! Now, look at me.” She turned up his tear streaked face. “This isn’t like you at all, Junior. I want you to tell me what is wrong.”

He raised his hands again and let them fall. The word “Everything” burst from his lips.

“Everything is not wrong. Now, calm down and start at the beginning. No, don’t turn your head away. Look at me. What has happened?”

He made a sweeping gesture in the direction of the barn where his invention lay in the dust. He saw it through his tears. It looked so pitiful, he put his hands over his eyes. All of the air had now leaked out of the garbage bags, and the air mattresses were back in a triangle.

“Are you talking about your invention?”

Junior nodded, and then he shook his head because the word
invention
was too grand to use in connection with the pile of junk in the barn.

His mother turned slightly so she could look into the barn. “What is it, Junior?”

“See, you can’t tell.”

He burst into tears again. He couldn’t help it. He felt as if he were going to be spending the rest of his life trying to get rid of the terrible sobs stuck in his chest.

“Now, stop it, Junior. I mean it. Stop it!”

“I’m trying.”

“Stop it this minute. You can’t keep this up. You are going to make yourself sick. Now, have you got control of yourself?”

He nodded.

“Then tell me what that thing in the barn is. I have a right to know. I demand to know.”

When his mother spoke in that voice, he knew he had to answer.

“It is”—he paused to correct himself—“it was supposed to be a flying saucer.”

Vern and Michael were pedaling their bikes down the hill to the Blossom farm. Vern could see as soon as they crossed Snake Creek that his family was involved in some sort of crisis. They were in a tense cluster in front of the barn.

Vern’s spirits sank. He coasted through the pine trees. Blackbirds flew up, filling the air with the beating of wings and loud cries. When the calls of the blackbirds had faded into the distance, Vern heard a new, more troublesome sound—Junior’s sobs. Then Vern knew that, as usual, the family crisis involved Junior.

“Hold it a minute,” he told Michael.

Vern paused and got off his bike. He pretended to examine his bicycle chain; what he was really examining was his family.

The situation had to be bad because Maggie was wiping her eyes with her braids, and his mother was hugging Junior and kissing the top of his head. The only dry eyes in the group, apparently, were Ralphie’s, and Ralphie was looking down at the ground and shuffling his foot in the dust. Vern could see that Ralphie was uncomfortable, and Vern knew it took a lot to make Ralphie uncomfortable.

He glanced at his friend through the spokes of his bicycle wheel. Michael was watching the Blossom family with interest. He had one hand up, shading his eyes.

“My brother must have hurt himself,” Vern told Michael. He jiggled the bicycle chain as if testing it.

“That’s what I figured,” Michael said.

“My brother hurts himself a lot.”

“Mine too. He’s accident-prone.”

Vern sighed with relief. At last he and Michael had something in common—accident-prone little brothers. Vern threw his leg over his bike and shoved off. “I hope he wasn’t trying to fly off the roof again.”

Michael paused to say, “Your brother flew,
f-l-e-w,
flew off the roof ?”

“Tried to.”

“Wow.”

Vern glanced at Michael as he pulled up beside him. He wasn’t ready to add that Junior had landed at the feet of some policemen who had come to notify the family Pap had been arrested. Michael had been impressed by Vern’s friendship with Mad Mary and his brother’s flight off the barn. That was miracle enough for one day.

Vern bent over his handlebars. He had to pedal hard to get up the hill because his balloon tires were low. Michael pulled ahead easily but waited for him on the crest of the hill.

Vern pushed his bike over to Maggie. “What’s going on?” he asked in a low voice.

Maggie wiped more tears on the ends of her braids. “Junior thinks he’s a failure.”

“Junior?”

She nodded.

“He’s never thought that before.”

“Well, he does now.”

“What’s he failed at?”

“Everything.”

“Like what?”

“Like his invention.” Maggie pointed to the air mattress–garbage bag invention, which could be seen through the barn door.

“That’s his invention?”

“Yes.”

“He’s invented air mattresses?”

Maggie shot him a look of such fury that he stepped back. He glanced at Michael to see if Michael thought he’d been stupid. Michael gave him a look of understanding. Vern realized he and Michael had big sisters in common too.

“It is a flying saucer,” Maggie announced.

“Oh, well. I guess that figures.” Vern turned to Michael. In a low voice he said, “Usually his inventions look better than that. They don’t always do what they’re supposed to, but they look good. You should have seen his wings. They were neat.”

“Shh!” Maggie said.

Vicki Blossom was on her knees now, by Junior, wiping his tears on the hem of her shirt. “Now,” she was saying, “Junior Blossom, you get this through your head. You are not now, never have been, and never will be a failure.”

She paused to smooth his hair back from his face and straighten his clothes. Then she tucked his shirttail in. Every time she did one of these things, Junior felt a little better.

“You are not a failure and neither is your UFO. You are going to have the best flying saucer in the entire world. That is a promise—a promise from one Blossom to another.”

There was nothing in the world more binding than a Blossom promise. An awed stillness came over the Blossoms in the group.

Vicki Blossom got up. She turned Junior around and pulled him against her. They were facing Vern and Michael and Maggie and Ralphie. Then she made the promise even more binding.

“This boy,” she said, and she hugged Junior hard, “this boy is going to have the most beautiful, the most wonderful, the most spectacular UFO the world has ever seen.”

Pap came to his senses slowly. He was lying on his back in the Dumpster. His head was propped up on one side, and his feet were propped up on the other. His arms were outstretched.

For a moment Pap didn’t know where he was. He lay quietly, blinking his eyes open and shut on the unfamiliar sights in front of him. Then he remembered that sickening, cartwheel lunge that had sent him over the side of the Dumpster. Remembering it made him dizzy all over again.

He moaned, “I’m killed.” He closed his eyes in despair. “And my neck’s broke.”

Tears squeezed from his eyes. He lay for a moment, too miserable to move. Then, slowly, he put one hand to the back of his neck. He rubbed his spine gently to see how bad the break was. After a minute, he turned his head slightly from side to side.

“Well, my neck may not be broke,” he conceded, “but my knees are. Bound to be.”

He pulled himself up into a sitting position, with his legs straight out in front of him. He looked at his aching knees for a while before he tried to bend them. He could feel them throbbing against the legs of his pants. He pulled his right leg up, then his left.

“Well, they still bend, but I know they ain’t going to bear my weight.”

It took Pap five minutes to get to his feet. Then he had a moment of dizziness so great, he had to sit down on one of the bags of garbage. He bent forward and hung his head between his swollen knees.

As soon as Mud heard Pap stirring around in the Dumpster, he came out from under the truck. He gave that one questioning bark.

“I hear you,” Pap said weakly.

Mud barked again.

“I hear you! Let me get over this dizzy spell.”

Mud approached the Dumpster slowly. He paused to figure out the situation. His head was turned to the side. He whined softly.

“Yes, I’m in here,” Pap said.

Suddenly, in a blaze of inspiration, Mud began to dig. Red dirt flew in an arc behind his back.

“That won’t do no good,” Pap said. “You can’t tunnel through solid metal.” He turned his neck from side to side again, testing it.