Me and Billy (2 page)

Nobody said anything. We were all thinking about the things you could do if you had some gold. I said, “If only you could have swum, Cook.”

“I’d have figured out a way to get that gold out of there, even if I couldn’t swim,” Billy said. “Poke it out with a stick or something.”

“How you gonna poke something off the bottom of a lake with a stick?” Cook said. “I was there; you wasn’t. Tried every durn thing I could think of. There wasn’t no way to do it, less’n you dove down and picked it up with your hands.”

The last time the Charity Ladies took us out for the Fourth of July picnic, me and Billy tried to swim. We sank to the bottom just like Cook did.

Billy said, “I’d of tied a rope to a tree so’s I could haul myself out with it.”

“Where you gettin’ that tree from, Billy?” Cook said. “Wasn’t one within half a mile. To say nothin’ of a rope. Didn’t have nothin’ but the clothes I was standin’ in and my pocketknife. Figured I could maybe scrape a couple of chunks out with a rake if I fixed it up with a long handle. Went down to this little town at the bottom of the mountains they call Wasted Gulch. Got me a rake, a rope, and such.”

“I thought you were lost,” I said. I figured that’d make Cook sore and he’d stop firing Billy up about that lake.

But it didn’t. He just gave me a hard look and went on. “Oh, I was lost, all right. Figured if I kept moving downhill, I had to come out of there sooner or later. Ate berries and turtles and such until I come out. Went on back up there with that rake. Couldn’t find the durn lake.” He tasted the beans again.

“There must have been some way to find it,” Billy said.

“Wouldn’t have made no difference. That lake plain disappeared on me.”

“That lake disappeared?” Billy said. “How can a lake disappear? A lake can’t disappear.”

“This one did. Searched all over them mountains for a week and couldn’t find it. That there lake disappeared itself.”

“Oh, come on, Cook,” Billy said.

Cook shook his head. “Don’t be such a smart mouth, Billy. You don’t know nothin’ about it. I was there; you wasn’t.” He lowered his voice. “It was witchery. It knowed I was comin’ back for its gold and it disappeared itself.”

Billy laughed. “You’re crazy, Cook. A lake can’t disappear itself.”

“Billy didn’t mean that, Cook,” I said.

It was too late. Cook snatched the big wooden spoon out of the bean pot and took a swipe at Billy. A half-dozen beans flew through the air.

Then we realized that Deacon Smith was standing at the kitchen door. “Cook,” he said in his sharp, high
voice. “I don’t want these worthless boys standing around like gentlemen of leisure. If you can’t keep them busy, I’ll find something else for them to do. Once more and somebody’s in for a licking.”

Cook pulled at the tuft of white hair that stuck up over his forehead. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“I thought I said I didn’t want these boys working together. One’s more worthless than the other.”

“They come in together. You can’t pry ’em apart.”

“Stick a toasting fork in their behinds and you’ll pry them apart fast enough. I don’t want them together.”

By this time we were back at the sink, heads down, scouring out pots and pans as hard and fast as we could. Deacon Smith liked nothing better than a chance to whip a boy with his thin cane. It was pie and ice cream to him.

The real name for the Home was Deacon Smith Home for Waifs. When the boys were feeling funny, which wasn’t too often, they called it Deacon Smith Home for Whipping, for Deacon and his sister took a good deal of pleasure in whipping boys when they could think of the least excuse. Billy came in for his share of it, all right. I usually could see it coming, and I’d warn him.

“I can’t help it, Possum. I got to do something bad every once in a while so as to feel comfortable with myself. I get to feeling itchy and scratchy if I don’t.”

“If it was only once in a while, it mightn’t be so bad. It’s more like once a week.”

“Nah. You’re always exaggerating, Possum.” The next thing we knew, Deacon’s sister would be all over
us shouting, “What are you two talking about?” And I’d be in for it along with Billy.

Oh, Deacon, he warned me about Billy often enough. “You stay away from Billy Foster, Possum. He’s corrupting you. One day you’ll get hanged alongside him.” It didn’t matter what Deacon said about Billy. Me and Billy had been together near every minute of every day and night since we came to the Home, and we generally found a way to keep together. Considering the way the other boys admired him, it made me proud to be Billy’s best friend.

So I knew if I didn’t talk Billy out of running off to find that lake of gold, I might have to go with him. We talked about it the next day when Staff set us to hoeing tomatoes and corn in the truck garden back of the barn. “Billy,” I said, “you can’t believe anything Cook says. He hasn’t got any brains at all. He can’t even tie his own shoes. He slips out of them at night without untying them so he doesn’t have to tie them in the morning. I saw him do it once.”

“That’s just it, Possum. Cook isn’t smart enough to make up a story like that.”

“Well, even so,” I said, “how come nobody else came along and cleaned that lake out?”

“They couldn’t find it,” Billy said.

“Billy, for blame’s sake, that lake didn’t disappear itself.”

“I never said it did. Cook couldn’t find it the second time. Wasn’t smart enough to leave a trail or notice
the landmarks. If somebody had cleaned that gold out of there, the story’d be everywhere.”

“Billy, we aren’t old enough to run off yet.”

“Sure we are. Possum, if we got out of here, you could fix yourself up with a birthday.”

“I don’t mind about that,” I said. I didn’t say I’d already fixed myself up with a birthday.

“Yes, you do. You could get a last name, too.”

That was another problem I had: I had no last name—the only kid in the world who didn’t have one, I figured, although I wasn’t sure about that. When they saw me curled up in the basket they started calling me Possum. Just put me down on the books like that—
Possum.
By the time I got big enough to understand about last names, it was too late. When I asked Deacon if I couldn’t have a last name, he told me I was an orphan and shouldn’t be asking for special favors; I should be grateful that somebody was willing to take me in and see that I got an education and fatback and beans regular as clockwork. He forgot to mention that the Charity Ladies gave him a stipend every month for the services he did us boys.

Not having a last name wasn’t so bad when it was only the boys, but it was troublesome with anyone else. Somebody like the Charity Ladies, or school inspectors, were always asking for my last name. When I told them I didn’t have one, they said it couldn’t be, everybody had a last name; and when I said I couldn’t help that, I didn’t have one, they gave each other funny
looks and wrote something down in their notebooks. I figure that what they wrote down wasn’t very polite. “Do you really think I could get fixed up with a last name on the outside, Billy?”

“Sure as I’m standing here.”

He was bound to answer something like that, but I figured it might be true. “How’d it work?”

“Oh,” he said, real easy, like he’d spent half his life getting last names for people. “You go to an office somewhere and pay them a dollar and they fix it up for you. Stamp it on some papers.”

“Where’d I get that dollar? I haven’t seen anything bigger than a nickel my whole life.”

“Why, from the gold, dummy. Once we find that gold we’re going to have bushel baskets full of dollars. Just take one out of a basket and give it to the fella in the office. Two minutes later you got a last name.”

Well, he didn’t know anything more about it than I did, but I figured there was some truth in it. Deacon, he was always going on mighty important about having to go downtown to see about somebody in this office or that office. There was bound to be an office for names. But I didn’t get a chance to think more about it right then because Staff came wheeling around the corner of the barn and shouted that if we didn’t start those hoes moving, we’d get something we weren’t looking for.

Well, I wanted to do it, and I didn’t. I didn’t know about that lake full of gold; maybe it was there and
maybe it wasn’t. But getting out of the Home and maybe getting a last name, too, would be worth about anything I could think of it. Besides, it’d be an adventure, especially doing it with Billy.

But running away would be scary. We didn’t know what the world outside was like—didn’t know if people were all mean like Deacon and his sister or if some of them were nice. I remember once when I was around six or seven, Cook took sick and wasn’t up to much. He sent me off to a store with two dollars and a wagon, to get a sack of beans. I tell you, it was a mighty strange feeling to be away from the Home, trundling along with that little wagon behind me. All at once I realized I could do anything I wanted—I could run, sing, sit down in the sun or look at the things in shopwindows I’d never seen before. So I ambled along, taking my time, looking around at things, and singing to myself. To top it off, the storekeeper gave me a piece of hard candy to suck on. I guess it tickled him to see a little fella come in with a wagon like that. He knew I was from the Home, of course, and took pity on me. I never forgot that.

So there were at least some nice people outside. But how many? And how’d we eat; where’d we sleep; how’d we stay dry in a rainstorm, warm in the snow? Cook told us once about some kids he knew who went to sleep in a barn when the temperature was down to zero; when they woke up in the morning they were
frozen to death. I could see easy enough that we might soon wish we were back in the Home eating molasses and bread—just longing for it, maybe.

What tipped it was Billy. Once he got outside, he was certain to get into trouble. Wouldn’t last a day. Two days at most. Outside, it wouldn’t just be a whipping. He could get half beat to death by somebody he stole something from, get arrested, and sent to jail for ten years—even hung if it was bad enough. And I saw where I couldn’t let him go out there and get hung. Besides, I was curious to see what it was like on the outside.

But I had to admit that there was more to it than that. Billy was bound and determined he would do it, maybe not right then, but pretty soon—maybe the next time he got a good licking from Deacon and his sister. There was a good chance he’d run off without me. And then where would I be, all alone in the Home without Billy? Oh, I was friendly enough with the other boys, leaving aside teasing me about my name. I’d have friends enough. But me and Billy were more like brothers—twins, you could say. About the same size, too, except that he had dark hair and mine was light. After all those years, I couldn’t see myself doing things without Billy, even if it meant trouble. That was it, more than anything.

It took us a while to figure out how to do it. The Home was just a big old brick building three stories
high. There was a barn out back, where the Deacon kept the horse and shay. Farther back was the henhouse and pigsty. Thinnest pig there ever was. Pigs were generally fed on kitchen scraps and table leftovers, but at the Home there weren’t any table leftovers and the boys stole the kitchen scraps before they got to the pig. There was a truck garden out back, too, where we grew corn and tomatoes and such. Not that we boys ever saw corn or tomatoes. That went upstairs to the Deacon, his sister, and Staff.

There was a brick wall around the whole thing, which was part of the problem, for they kept the front gate locked most of the time. We couldn’t climb over the wall during the day for we’d need a ladder for that, and it wasn’t likely Deacon would just nod and say good morning if he saw us going by with a ladder.

So we’d have to escape at night. The problem with that was that they locked the building up tight at bedtime—doors, windows, everything. We had a chance to talk about it a couple of days later when we were washing pots and pans—Cook had gone off to the supply room with Deacon’s sister to work up the food order. “There’s the loft ladder in the barn,” Billy said. “I don’t think it’s nailed there, just leaning against the wall.”

“There’s broken glass stuck into the top of the wall,” I said. We knew that, because you could see the top of the wall from our dormitory room on the second floor.

“We could throw a couple of horse blankets over it,” Billy said. “But how are we going to get out of the house at night?”

“Let’s think,” I said. We stopped washing pots and pans and pretended we were thinking. It didn’t do any good.

“Maybe we could talk Cook into leaving the kitchen door unlocked,” Billy said.

“He’d tell the first minute he could.”

“We could promise to bring him gold.”

“He wouldn’t believe us. He knows blamed well we wouldn’t bring him any gold.”

We thought some more. “I got an idea,” Billy said. “In the middle of the night, one of us could pretend to be sick. Pretend to be poisoned. And then when they were running around getting medicine or something, the other one could sneak away and unlock the kitchen door.”

“They wouldn’t believe anyone was poisoned. What could you get poisoned on around here?”

“Some mornings that coffee’d poison a horse,” Billy said. “Smells like old cabbage poured out of a boot.”

“They wouldn’t believe it unless all the boys who drank the coffee was poisoned.”

“Well, then, an appendix attack. Holler and hang on to your side like you could hardly bear it.” He was almost more excited about the fun of playacting than escaping. “Then the other one leaps out of bed and
shouts for Deacon. When they come rushing upstairs, the one that’s downstairs is getting the kitchen door open. Then he gets the ladder out of the barn, leans it against the wall, and goes over. By and by the sick one gets better, and when things have calmed down he slips away and goes over the wall, too.”

I stood there thinking about it. “I don’t know, Billy. There’s a lot that could go wrong with it.”

“Nah,” he said. “Nothing’s going to go wrong. It’s sure to work. And then we’ll be out of the Home. A week later we’ll be up there in those mountains by Plunket City scooping gold out of that lake by the bushel.”