Bridge to Terabithia (7 page)

Christmas was almost a month away, but at Jess's house the girls were already obsessed with it. This year Ellie and Brenda both had boyfriends at the consolidated high school and the problem of what to give them and what to expect from them was cause of endless speculation and fights. Fights, because as usual, their mother was complaining that there was hardly enough money to give the little girls something from Santa Claus, let alone a surplus to buy record albums or shirts for a pair of boys she'd never set eyes on.

“What are you giving your girl friend, Jess?” Brenda screwed her face up in that ugly way she had. He tried to ignore her. He was reading one of Leslie's books, and the adventures of an assistant pig keeper
were far more important to him than Brenda's sauce.

“Don't you know, Brenda?” Ellie joined in. “Jess ain't got no
girl
friend.”

“Well, you're right for once. Nobody with any sense would call that stick a
girl
.” Brenda pushed her face right into his and grinned the word “girl” through her big painted lips. Something huge and hot swelled right up inside of him, and if he hadn't jumped out of the chair and walked away, he would have smacked her.

He tried to figure out later what had made him so angry. Partly, of course, it made him furious that anyone as dumb as Brenda would think she could make fun of Leslie. Lord, it hurt his guts to realize that it was Brenda who was his blood sister, and that really, from anyone else's point of view, he and Leslie were not related at all. Maybe, he thought, I was a foundling, like in the stories. Way back when the creek had water in it, I came floating down it in a wicker basket waterproofed with pitch. My dad found me and brought me here because he'd always wanted a son and just had stupid daughters. My real parents and brothers and sisters live far away—
farther away than West Virginia or even Ohio. Somewhere I have a family who have rooms filled with nothing but books and who still grieve for their baby who was stolen.

He shook himself back to the source of his anger. He was angry, too, because it would soon be Christmas and he had nothing to give Leslie. It was not that she would expect something expensive; it was that he needed to give her something as much as he needed to eat when he was hungry.

He thought about making her a book of his drawings. He even stole paper and crayons from school to do it with. But nothing he drew seemed good enough, and he would end up scrawling across the half-finished page and poking it into the stove to burn up.

By the last week of school before the holiday, he was growing desperate. There was no one he could ask for help or advice. His dad had told him he would give him a dollar for each member of the family, but even if he cheated on the family presents, there was no way he could get from that enough to buy Leslie anything worth giving her. Besides, May
Belle had her heart set on a Barbie doll, and he had already promised to pool his money with Ellie and Brenda for that. Then the price had gone up, and he found he would have to go over into every one else's dollar to make up the full amount for May Belle. Somehow this year May Belle needed something special. She was always moping around. He and Leslie couldn't include her in their activities, but that was hard to explain to someone like May Belle. Why didn't she play with Joyce Ann? He couldn't be expected to entertain her all the time. Still—still, she ought to have the Barbie.

So there was no money, and he seemed paralyzed in his efforts to make anything for Leslie. She wouldn't be like Brenda or Ellie. She wouldn't laugh at him no matter what he gave her. But for his own sake he had to give her something that he could be proud of.

If he had the money, he'd buy her a TV. One of those tiny Japanese ones that she could keep in her own room without bothering Judy and Bill. It didn't seem fair with all their money that they'd gotten rid of the TV. It wasn't as if Leslie would watch the way
Brenda did—with her mouth open and her eyes bulging like a goldfish, hour after hour. But every once in a while, a person liked to watch. At least if she had one, it would be one less thing for the kids at school to sneer about. But, of course, there was no way that he could buy her a TV. It was pretty stupid of him even to think about it.

Lord, he was stupid. He gazed miserably out the window of the school bus. It was a wonder someone like Leslie would even give him the time of day. It was because there was no one else. If she had found anyone else at that dumb school—he was so stupid he had almost gone straight past the sign without catching on. But something in a corner of his head clicked, and he jumped up, pushing past Leslie and May Belle.

“See you later,” he mumbled, and shoved his way up the aisle through pair after pair of sprawling legs.

“Lemme off here, Miz Prentice, will you?”

“This ain't your stop.”

“Gotta do an errand for my mother,” he lied.

“Long as you don't get me into trouble.” She eased the brakes.

“No'm. Thanks.”

He swung off the bus before it had really stopped and ran back toward the sign.

“Puppies,” it said. “Free.”

 

Jess told Leslie to meet him at the castle stronghold on Christmas Eve afternoon. The rest of his family had gone to the Millsburg Plaza for last-minute shopping, but he stayed behind. The dog was a little brown-and-black thing with great brown eyes. Jess stole a ribbon from Brenda's drawer, and hurried across the field and down the hill with the puppy squirming in his arms. Before he got to the creek bed, it had licked his face raw and sent a stream down his jacket front, but he couldn't be mad. He tucked it tightly under his arm and swung across the creek as gently as he could. He could have walked through the gully. It would have been easier, but he couldn't escape the feeling that one must enter Terabithia only by the prescribed entrance. He couldn't let the puppy break the rules. It might mean bad luck for both of them.

At the stronghold he tied the ribbon around the
puppy's neck, laughing as it backed out of the loop and chewed at the ends of the ribbon. It was a clever, lively little thing—a present Jess could be proud of.

There was no mistaking the delight in Leslie's eyes. She dropped to her knees on the cold ground, picked the puppy up, and held it close to her face.

“Watch it,” Jess cautioned. “It sprays worse'n a water pistol.”

Leslie moved it out a little way. “Is it male or female?”

Once in a rare while there was something he could teach Leslie. “Boy,” he said happily.

“Then we'll name him Prince Terrien and make him the guardian of Terabithia.”

She put the puppy down and got to her feet.

“Where you going?”

“To the grove of the pines,” she answered. “This is a time of greatest joy.”

Later that afternoon Leslie gave Jess his present. It was a box of watercolors with twenty-four tubes of color and three brushes and a pad of heavy art paper.

“Lord,” he said. “Thank you.” He tried to think of a better way to say it, but he couldn't. “Thank you,” he repeated.

“It's not a great present like yours,” she said humbly, “but I hope you'll like it.”

He wanted to tell her how proud and good she made him feel, that the rest of Christmas didn't matter because today had been so good, but the words he needed weren't there. “Oh, yeah, yeah,” he said, and then got up on his knees and began to bark at Prince Terrien. The puppy raced around him in circles, yelping with delight.

Leslie began to laugh. It egged Jess on. Everything the dog did, he imitated, flopping down at last with his tongue lolling out. Leslie was laughing so hard she had trouble getting the words out. “You—
you're crazy. How will we teach him to be a noble guardian? You're turning him into a clown.”

“R-r-r-oof,”
wailed Prince Terrien, rolling his eyes skyward. Jess and Leslie both collapsed. They were in pain from the laughter.

“Maybe,” said Leslie at last. “We'd better make him court jester.”

“What about his name?”

“Oh, we'll let him keep his name. Even a prince”—this in her most Terabithian voice—“even a prince may be a fool.”

That night the glow of the afternoon stayed with him. Even his sisters' squabbling about when presents were to be opened did not touch him. He helped May Belle wrap her wretched little gifts and even sang “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” with her and Joyce Ann. Then Joyce Ann cried because they had no fireplace and Santa wouldn't be able to find the way, and suddenly he felt sorry for her going to Millsburg Plaza and seeing all those things and hoping that some guy in a red suit would give her all her dreams. May Belle at six was already too wise. She was just hoping for that stupid Barbie. He was
glad he'd splurged on it. Joyce Ann wouldn't care that he only had a hair clip for her. She would blame Santa, not him, for being cheap.

He put his arm awkwardly around Joyce Ann. “C'mon Joyce Ann. Don't cry. Old Santa knows the way. He don't need a chimney, does he, May Belle?” May Belle was watching him with her big, solemn eyes. Jess gave her a knowing wink over Joyce Ann's head. It melted her.

“Naw, Joyce Ann. He knows the way. He knows everything.” She squenched up her right cheek in a vain effort to return his wink. She was a good kid. He really liked old May Belle.

The next morning he helped her dress and undress her Barbie at least thirty times. Slithering the skinny dress over the doll's head and arms and snapping the tiny fasteners was more than her chubby six-year-old fingers could manage.

He had received a racing-car set, which he tried to run to please his father. It wasn't one of these big sets that they advertised on TV, but it was electric, and he knew his dad had put more money into it than he should have. But the silly cars kept falling
off at the curves until his father was cursing at them with impatience. Jess wanted it to be OK. He wanted so much for his dad to be proud of his present, the way he, Jess, had been proud of the puppy.

“It's really great. Really. I just ain't got the hang of it yet.” His face was red, and he kept shoving his hair back out of his eyes as he leaned over the plastic figure-eight track.

“Cheap junk.” His father kicked at the floor dangerously near the track. “Don't get nothing for your money these days.”

Joyce Ann was lying on her bed screaming because she had yanked the string out of her talking doll and it was no longer talking. Brenda had her lip stuck out because Ellie had gotten a pair of panty hose in her Christmas stocking and she had only bobby socks. Ellie wasn't helping matters, prancing around in her new hose, making a big show of helping Momma with the ham and sweet potatoes for dinner. Lord, sometimes Ellie was as snotty as Wanda Kay Moore.

“Jesse Oliver Aarons, Jr., if you can stop playing with those fool cars long enough to milk the cow, I'd be most appreciative. Miss Bessie don't take no
holiday, even if you do.”

Jess jumped up, pleased for an excuse to leave the track which he couldn't make work to his dad's satisfaction. His mother seemed not to notice the promptness of his response but went on in a complaining voice, “I don't know what I'd do without Ellie. She's the only one of you kids ever cares whether I live or die.” Ellie smiled like a plastic angel first at Jess and then at Brenda, who glared back.

Leslie must have been watching for him because as soon as he started across the yard he could see her running out of the old Perkins place, the puppy half tripping her as it chased circles around her.

They met at Miss Bessie's shed. “I thought you'd never come out this morning.”

“Yeah, well, Christmas, you know.”

Prince Terrien began to snap at Miss Bessie's hooves. She stamped in annoyance. Leslie picked him up, so Jess could milk. The puppy squirmed and licked, making it almost impossible for her to talk. She giggled happily. “Dumb dog,” she said proudly.

“Yeah.” It felt like Christmas again.

Mr. Burke had begun to repair the old Perkins place. After Christmas, Mrs. Burke was right in the middle of writing a book, so she wasn't available to help, which left Leslie the jobs of hunting and fetching. For all his smartness with politics and music, Mr. Burke was inclined to be absent-minded. He would put down the hammer to pick up the “How to” book and then lose the hammer between there and the project he was working on. Leslie was good at finding things for him, and he liked her company as well. When she came home from school and on the weekends, he wanted her around. Leslie explained all this to Jess.

Jess tried going to Terabithia alone, but it was no good. It needed Leslie to make the magic. He was afraid he would destroy everything by trying to force
the magic on his own, when it was plain that the magic was reluctant to come for him.

If he went home, either his mother was after him to do some chore or May Belle wanted him to play Barbie. Lord, he wished a million times he'd never helped buy that stupid doll. He'd no more than lie down on the floor to paint than May Belle would be after him to put an arm back on or snap up a dress. Joyce Ann was worse. She got a devilish delight out of sitting smack down on his rump when he was stretched out working. If he yelled at her to get the heck off him, she'd stick her index finger in the corner of her mouth and holler. Which would, of course, crank up his mother.

“Jesse Oliver! You leave that baby alone. Whatcha mean lying there in the middle of the floor doing nothing anyway? Didn't I tell you I couldn't cook supper before you chopped wood for the stove?”

Sometimes he would sneak down to the old Perkins place and find Prince Terrien crying on the porch, where Mr. Burke had exiled him. You couldn't blame the man. No one could get anything done with that animal grabbing his hand or jumping up
to lick his face. He'd take P.T. for a romp in the Burkes' upper field. If it was a mild day, Miss Bessie would be mooing nervously from across the fence. She couldn't seem to get used to the yipping and snapping. Or maybe it was the time of year—the last dregs of winter spoiling the taste of everything. Nobody, human or animal, seemed happy.

Except Leslie. She was crazy about fixing up that broken-down old wreck of a house. She loved being needed by her father. Half the time they were supposed to be working they were just yakking away. She was learning, she related glowingly at recess, to “understand” her father. It had never occurred to Jess that parents were meant to be understood any more than the safe at the Millsburg First National was sitting around begging him to crack it. Parents were what they were; it wasn't up to you to try to puzzle them out. There was something weird about a grown man wanting to be friends with his own child. He ought to have friends his own age and let her have hers.

Jess's feelings about Leslie's father poked up like a canker sore. You keep biting it, and it gets bigger and
worse instead of better. You spend a lot of time trying to keep your teeth away from it. Then sure as Christmas you forget the silly thing and chomp right down on it. Lord, that man got in his way. It even poisoned what time he did have with Leslie. She'd be sitting there bubbling away at recess, and it would be almost like the old times; then without warning, she'd say, “Bill thinks so and so.” Chomp. Right down on the old sore.

Finally, finally she noticed. It took her until February, and for a girl as smart as Leslie that was a long, long time.

“Why don't you like Bill?”

“Who said I didn't?”

“Jess Aarons. How stupid do you think I am?”

Pretty stupid—sometimes.
But what he actually said was, “What makes you think I don't like him?”

“Well, you never come to the house any more. At first I thought it was something I'd done. But it's not that. You still talk to me at school. Lots of times I see you in the field, playing with P.T., but you don't even come near the door.”

“You're always busy.” He was uncomfortably
aware of how much he sounded like Brenda when he said this.

“Well, for spaghetti sauce! You could offer to help, you know.”

It was like all the lights coming back on after an electrical storm. Lord, who was the stupid one?

Still, it took him a few days to feel comfortable around Leslie's father. Part of the problem was he didn't know what to call him. “Hey,” he'd say, and both Leslie and her father would turn around. “Uh, Mr. Burke?”

“I wish you'd call me Bill, Jess.”

“Yeah.” He fumbled around with the name for a couple more days, but it came more easily with practice. It also helped to know some things that Bill for all his brains and books didn't know. Jess found he was really useful to him, not a nuisance to be tolerated or set out on the porch like P.T.

“You're amazing,” Bill would say. “Where did you learn that, Jess?” Jess never quite knew how he knew things, so he'd shrug and let Bill and Leslie praise him to each other—though the work itself was praise enough.

First they ripped out the boards that covered the ancient fireplace, coming upon the rusty bricks like prospectors upon the mother lode. Next they got the old wallpaper off the living-room wall—all five garish layers of it. Sometimes as they lovingly patched and painted, they listened to Bill's records or sang, Leslie and Jess teaching Bill some of Miss Edmunds' songs and Bill teaching them some he knew. At other times they would talk. Jess listened wonderingly as Bill explained things that were going on in the world. If Momma could hear him, she'd swear he was another Walter Cronkite instead of “some hippie.” All the Burkes were smart. Not smart, maybe, about fixing things or growing things, but smart in a way Jess had never known real live people to be. Like one day while they were working, Judy came down and read out loud to them, mostly poetry and some of it in Italian which, of course, Jess couldn't understand, but he buried his head in the rich sound of the words and let himself be wrapped warmly around in the feel of the Burkes' brilliance.

They painted the living room gold. Leslie and Jess had wanted blue, but Bill held out for gold,
which turned out to be so beautiful that they were glad they had given in. The sun would slant in from the west in the late afternoon until the room was brimful of light.

Finally Bill rented a sander from Millsburg Plaza, and they took off the black floor paint down to the wide oak boards and refinished them.

“No rugs,” Bill said.

“No,” agreed Judy. “It would be like putting a veil on the Mona Lisa.”

When Bill and the children had finished razor-blading the last bits of paint off the windows and washed the panes, they called Judy down from her upstairs study to come and see. The four of them sat down on the floor and gazed around. It was gorgeous.

Leslie gave a deep satisfied sigh. “I love this room,” she said. “Don't you feel the golden enchantment of it? It is worthy to be”—Jess looked up in sudden alarm—“in a palace.” Relief. In such a mood, a person might even let a sworn secret slip. But she hadn't, not even to Bill and Judy, and he knew how she felt about her parents. She must have seen his anxiety because she winked at him across
Bill and Judy just as he sometimes winked at May Belle over Joyce Ann's head. Terabithia was still just for the two of them.

The next afternoon they called P.T. and headed for Terabithia. It had been more than a month since they had been there together, and as they neared the creek bed, they slowed down. Jess wasn't sure he still remembered how to be a king.

“We've been away for many years,” Leslie was whispering. “How do you suppose the kingdom has fared in our absence?”

“Where've we been?”

“Conquering the hostile savages on our northern borders,” she answered. “But the lines of communication have been broken, and thus we do not have tidings of our beloved homeland for many a full moon.” How was that for regular queen talk? Jess wished he could match it. “You think anything bad has happened?”

“We must have courage, my king. It may indeed be so.”

They swung silently across the creek bed. On the farther bank, Leslie picked up two sticks. “Thy sword,
sire,” she whispered.

Jess nodded. They hunched down and crept toward the stronghold like police detectives on TV.

“Hey, queen! Watch out! Behind you!”

Leslie whirled and began to duel the imaginary foe. Then more came rushing upon them and the shouts of the battle rang through Terabithia. The guardian of the realm raced about in happy puppy circles, too young as yet to comprehend the danger that surrounded them all.

“They have sounded the retreat!” the brave queen cried.

“Yey!”

“Drive them out utterly, so they may never return and prey upon our people.”

“Out you go! Out! Out!” All the way to the creek bed, they forced the enemy back, sweating under their winter jackets.

“At last. Terabithia is free once more.”

The king sat down on a log and wiped his face, but the queen did not let him rest long. “Sire, we must go at once to the grove of the pines and give thanks for our victory.”

Jess followed her into the grove, where they stood silently in the dim light.

“Who do we thank?” he whispered.

The question flickered across her face. “O God,” she began. She was more at home with magic than religion. “O Spirits of the Grove.”

“Thy right arm hast given us the victory.” He couldn't remember where he'd heard that one, but it seemed to fit. Leslie gave him a look of approval.

She took up the words. “Now grant protection to Terabithia, to all its people, and to us its rulers.”

“Aroooo.”

Jess tried hard not to smile. “And to its puppy dog.”

“And to Prince Terrien, its guardian and jester. Amen.”

“Amen.”

They both managed somehow to keep the giggles buttoned in until they got out of the sacred place.

 

A few days after the encounter with the enemies of Terabithia, they had an encounter of a different sort at school. Leslie came out at recess to tell Jess that she
had started into the girls' room only to be stopped by the sound of crying from one of the stalls. She lowered her voice. “This sounds crazy,” she said. “But from the feet, I'm sure it's Janice Avery in there.”

“You're kidding.” The picture of Janice Avery crying on the toilet seat was too much for Jess to imagine.

“Well, she's the only one in school that has Willard Hughes's name crossed out on her sneakers. Besides, the smoke is so thick in there you need a gas mask.”

“Are you sure she was crying?”

“Jess Aarons, I can tell if somebody's crying or not.”

Lord, what was the matter with him? Janice Avery had given him nothing but trouble, and now he was feeling responsible for her—like one of the Burkes' timber wolves or beached whales. “She didn't even cry when kids teased her 'bout Willard after the note.”

“Yeah. I know.”

He looked at her. “Well,” he said. “What should we do?”

“Do?” she asked. “What do you mean what should we do?”

How could he explain it to her? “Leslie. If she was an
animal
predator, we'd be obliged to try to help her.”

Leslie gave him a funny look.

“Well, you're the one who's always telling me I gotta care,” he said.

“But Janice Avery?”

“If she's crying, there gotta be something really wrong.”

“Well, what are you planning to do?”

He flushed. “I can't go into no girls' room.”

“Oh, I get it. You're going to send me into the shark's jaws. No, thank you, Mr. Aarons.”

“Leslie, I swear—I'd go in there if I could.” He really thought he would, too. “You ain't scared of her, are you, Leslie?” He didn't mean it in a daring way, he was just dumbfounded by the idea of Leslie being scared.

She flashed her eyes at him and tossed her head back in that proud way she had. “OK, I'm going in. But I want you to know, Jess Aarons, I think it's the dumbest idea you ever had in your life.”

He crept down the hall after her and hid behind the nearest alcove to the girls' room door. He ought
at least to be there to catch her when Janice kicked her out.

There was a quiet minute after the door swung shut behind Leslie. Then he heard Leslie saying something to Janice. Next a string of cuss words which were too loud to be blurred by the closed door. This was followed by some loud sobbing, not Leslie's, thank the Lord, and some sobbing and talking mixed up and—the bell.

He couldn't be caught staring at the door of the girls' room, but how could he leave? He'd be deserting in the line of fire. The rush of kids into the building settled it. He let himself be caught up in the stream and made his way to the basement steps, his brains still swirling with the sounds of cussing and sobbing.

Back in the fifth-grade classroom, he kept his eye glued on the door for Leslie. He half expected to see her come through flattened straight out like the coyote on
Road Runner.
But she came in smiling without so much as a black eye. She waltzed over to Mrs. Myers and whispered her excuse for being late, and Mrs. Myers beamed at her with what was becoming
known as the “Leslie Burke special.”