Me and Billy (3 page)

“You forgot to put in a half hour where we learn how to swim.”

“Don’t worry about swimming, Possum. I can swim.”

“Last time I saw you swimming you were three feet under the water and would have drowned if one of the Charity Ladies hadn’t come and hauled you out.”

“Nah, I wasn’t drowning. Nothing like drowning. Would have been swimming like a champ if I hadn’t of choked on some loose water.”

I gave him a look, but I didn’t say anything. You couldn’t talk Billy out of anything he didn’t want to be talked out of.

Well, the whole thing was making me plenty scared, all right. If anything went wrong and we got caught, we’d get whipped bloody and put on bread and water for a month. If we got away, there was nineteen
other things to worry about—starving, getting frozen to death, chewed up by wild dogs, and most likely of all, getting arrested for something Billy did. That was about as certain as anything. When you got down to it, I didn’t want to do it. But I saw that we were going to.

Both of us knew that the one doing the playacting would have to be Billy. I wasn’t any good at lying. Every time I tried it I’d start stammering and blushing, and the one I was lying to would say, “Give it a rest, Possum.” Oh, I wanted to be a good liar, like Billy, and tried practicing to myself. Practice helped; I got to where I could lie pretty easy when it was to myself, for I already knew I was lying and had got used to it. But when I tried it on somebody else, here came the stammering and blushing, and finally I gave it up.

So it would be Billy who acted sick, and me who would open the kitchen door and lean the ladder against the wall.

We needed a real dark night. We kept watching. Finally a day came when it started clouding over in the
middle of the afternoon. By supper time the whole sky was covered with gray, low-hanging clouds, puffy and rolling along at a good clip. We got a chance to talk a little when Cook set us to carrying slops out to the pig. “What are we going to do if it rains?” I said.

“It won’t rain,” Billy said.

“Well then, what are those gray clouds supposed to be?”

Billy looked up at them. “Maybe it won’t rain hard.”

But when I thought about it, I saw there was no choice. A dark night meant clouds, and clouds meant the chance of rain. “I guess we can stand getting wet,” I said.

We went to bed at nine as usual. Staff paraded around for a while with the dormitory door partly open so he could see that there was a head on every pillow, if you could call the thin sacks of feathers they gave us pillows. Then he went out and shut the door.

Staff didn’t care for hanging around the dormitory any more than we cared to have him there. I lay next to Billy. I figured I was too keyed up to go to sleep, but the next thing I knew Billy had hold of my arm and was whispering, “Wake up, Possum. I’m going to start.”

“I
was
awake,” I whispered back.

“No you weren’t. You were snoring.”

“Never mind that,” I said. “Just start.”

For a moment he was silent. Then he oozed out a low moan, sort of an owl sound. “Oooo, oooo.” I waited.
“Ooooo,” he went again, and then “aaaaw.” I had to admire him, for it sounded mighty real. “Aaaaw,” he went again, louder this time. Then, “Ooooo.”

I decided it was time for me to chime in. “What’s the matter, Billy?”

“Sssh,” he whispered. “Not yet. I’m just getting to the good part.”

Blame if he wasn’t having fun. That was Billy—nothing he liked better than putting one over on somebody. For him it was better than ginger cookies.

“Listen to this,” he whispered. Suddenly he cried out, “Aaaugh.” Then he went back to moaning again. “Oooo, oooh.”

I could hear a couple of boys sit up in bed. “Who’s that?” somebody said.

Now I had to get into it. “Are you OK, Billy?” I said fairly loud. It didn’t sound right to me, but nobody seemed to notice.

“I don’t feel so good, Possum. It hurts awful right here.”

“Where’s that, Billy?” The whole thing was making me blush, and I was glad it was dark in there.

“Right here,” Billy said. “Oooo. Right here on my left side. Don’t touch it.”

“Left side, Billy? Maybe you got an appendix attack.”

“What’s going on?” a boy said in the dark.

I jumped out of bed, wanting to quit the playacting as soon as I could. “Billy’s mighty sick. I think he’s having an appendix attack.”

“Oooo, oooo. Aaaugh.”

“I’ll get Deacon, Billy,” I said nice and loud. Quickly I slid into my clothes. The boys were all pretty much awake by now, and in the dim light coming in under the door I could see their shapes sitting up in the bed. I jumped into my shoes and, without waiting to tie the laces, made for the door. Some of the boys were out of bed now, going over toward Billy to get in on the excitement. In a moment I was in the hall. I hit the stairs and began to shout, “Come quick, come quick, Billy Foster’s dying of a appendix attack.” I pounded up the stairs to the third floor, where Deacon and his sister lived, making as much noise as I could. “Somebody come quick,” I shouted again.

As I hit the top of the stairs, the door to Deacon’s rooms swung open and Deacon’s sister stuck her head out. She was wearing a nightie covered with pink roses and a nightcap to match. “What’s this? What are you doing up at this hour of the night?”

“Billy Foster’s real sick, ma’am. His left side hurts so he can hardly touch it.”

“Left side?” she said sharply.

“Yes. Right here,” I said, pointing to where I figured my appendix was.

“There?” she said, poking at me. Just then the door opened wider and Deacon himself came into view. He was also wearing a nightshirt and nightcap, but without pink roses. “What’s all this? he said sternly.

“One of the boys is ill,” she said. “Nine times out of ten they’re malingering. Waking honest people in the middle of the night just to be annoying. But you’d better have a look.”

“If it isn’t one thing, it’s the next,” Deacon said. “Wait till I put on some clothes.” He disappeared.

Deacon’s sister went on standing there. I was stuck. Blame her, why didn’t she go down to tend to Billy? Two boys appeared at the bottom of the stairs. “Is somebody coming, Possum? Billy’s took real bad.”

“What a nuisance,” Deacon’s sister said.

“He’s thirsty as can be,” I said. “I better get him some water from the kitchen.”

She gave me a look. “If he’s having trouble with his internal organs, he shouldn’t drink anything.”

“Oh,” I said, trying to think of something else.

But she wasn’t paying attention to me. “I’d better have a look myself,” she said, more to herself than to me. “
He
won’t have the faintest notion what to do.” She shut the door to get dressed.

I turned and raced down for the kitchen. It was dark in there, but enough of a glow came from the coal stove so I could make my way to the kitchen door. I fumbled around and found the key under the knob. I gave it a twist and felt the lock click. I eased the door open, slipped through, and shut it again. Luckily it wasn’t raining yet. For a few seconds I stood there in the dark, feeling my heart thumping away like a drum and taking a couple of deep breaths. Nobody would
miss me right away. Not with the boys all milling around the dormitory—wouldn’t miss me for a while, not until they made a bed check, which they were bound to do once the excitement died down. Still, there wasn’t any time to waste. I trotted toward the barn, moving as quick as I could. It was almighty dark—we’d figured that right at least. I couldn’t see anything until it was a foot in front of me and kept stumbling over stones and tree roots. Once I ran smack into the lilac bush by the drive where it came up to the barn, and another time I came near ramming my head into a maple tree but saw it just in time.

Finally I was close enough to the barn to see the door. I heaved on it. It made a heavy, groaning sound as I slid it open a couple of feet. I prayed there was enough noise going on in the dorm to cover the sound. I slipped inside the barn, holding my hands in front of my face, just in case I stepped into a pitchfork or a pickax, and worked my way along to where the ladder went up to the loft.

I started to tip it down sideways, but it was heavier than I figured and it came crashing down and hit the barn floor with a bang. “Blame it,” I said aloud. I grabbed ahold of it and started dragging it out of there, grunting and sweating a good deal. I shoved the ladder through the door, and then I felt my way back to the rear of the barn, got a couple of horse blankets off the pile, and carried them outside. I slid the barn door shut and, clutching the blankets under one arm, lifted the
ladder with both hands and staggered through the blackness across the yard, stumbling and cursing and sweating.

Finally I saw the outline of the wall in front of me, lit up a little by the thin glow of gas lamps outside somewhere. I dropped the blankets and heaved the ladder until it was upright and leaned it against the wall. I picked up the blankets and put my foot on the bottom rung. Then I heard a sound in the dark, not more than five feet away. I jumped and near dropped the blankets. “Where in blazes are you, Possum?” came a whisper.

“Billy? How’d you get out?”

“Never mind that. Let’s go.”

I started up the ladder with the horse blankets, climbing as quick as I could. Suddenly the kitchen door crashed open, and there came a shout: “Come back here, boy, or I’ll beat you until you scream for mercy,” Deacon hollered. “You think you can fool me, but you can’t.”

I went on up the ladder to the top and dropped the horse blankets over the glass jutting from the top of the wall. I swung my head around to see where Billy was. Back toward the house a hand all by itself was swinging a lantern, making the shadows of the trees race around the yard. With my fist, I banged at the spurs of glass under the blanket, cracking some off under the heavy cloth. In a few seconds, a couple of
feet along the top of the wall was flat. “Where are you, boy?” came a cry.

Now Billy was up the ladder right behind me. “Hurry up,” he said in a low voice. I slid myself gingerly onto the wall, hoping that a piece of glass wouldn’t decide to poke itself into my stomach. Once more I looked back. The lantern was coming closer.

“Jump,” Billy said. I hadn’t figured on jumping from an eight-foot wall. I’d reckoned we’d pull the ladder up behind us and climb down the other side at our convenience. But there wasn’t time for that. I swiveled around, dropped my legs over the side, and grabbing hold of the edge as best I could, let myself dangle. I couldn’t see a blamed thing down below me. Praying I wasn’t over a ditch or a heap of stones, I let go.

The next thing I knew, I was lying on my back with the wind knocked out of me. “Watch out, Possum,” Billy said in a low voice. I rolled over out of the way just as Billy landed with a thump. “Ow,” he said.

I jumped to my feet. From behind the wall I heard Deacon shout, “Aha.” Then we were running up the street as fast as we ever ran, away from the Home, headed for glory.

We didn’t know where we were or where we were running to; we were just running along in the dim gaslight, down one street, up an alley, out the other, making a turn, going on for a couple of blocks, making another turn, zigzagging away from the Home. It didn’t seem real to me. I felt closed in on myself, and whatever was outside me—the cobblestones, the street lamps, the houses flashing by—wasn’t real, but was out of a dream. I couldn’t remember why I was running; I was just running.

On we went, minute after minute, until we were puffing and blowing so heavy it felt like our lungs were rubbed raw. Finally we couldn’t run anymore, and we stopped. We stood on a corner, dripping sweat and sucking in air with big fluttery gasps. “We made it,”
Billy gasped out. His eyes were shining, and he grabbed my hand and shook it. “We made it, Possum. They’ll never get us back there now.”

But I wasn’t so sure we were safe yet. “Sssh. Let’s listen.” We listened, but we didn’t hear any sound of running feet. Still, I was worried. “He’s bound to come after us. He doesn’t want to lose our stipend. I don’t know how much trouble he’ll go to get us back, but we best keep on moving, soon as we catch our breath.”

“Naw,” Billy said. “He’s probably put us out of his mind already. They’ll never catch us now.”

That was Billy. When he got confident like that people would generally go along with him. “Still, we better not take a chance,” I said.

Billy turned, and now I noticed that his face was pretty well scratched up. “Where’d you get all those scratches from, Billy?”

“I’ll tell you,” he said. “Let’s go.” We set off again, this time trotting along a little more reasonable. We had no idea where we were, but it didn’t much matter, so long as we made sure to keep the Home behind us. As we went, Billy told me the story.

“Well, Deacon, he came storming up, tucking in his shirt and shouting to the boys to cut the hollering and go back to their beds or he’d beat them all within an inch of their lives. But they were too heated up to stop clamoring around, for they figured I was going to die, and they wanted to stay close enough so they wouldn’t miss it. A couple of the little ones were crying,
but they still wanted to watch. I just lay there, moaning and groaning and trying to work up a decent sweat, and here came Deacon. He set himself down on the edge of the bed and said, ‘Where does it hurt, Billy?’ I showed him. He kind of took a poke at it with his finger, like he was testing a cake to see if it was done. I let out a holler that near took his head off. The little kids began to wail and the big ones let out a whoop, like they could see the end was near. To keep the clamor going long enough so’s you could get that ladder out of there, I shouted, ‘Look out, Deacon, I got to throw up.’ He leaped off the bed like he was stuck with a knife and yelled, ‘Open the window, one of you little fools.’ Some kid raced over and opened the window, and I staggered over to it, kind of coughing and gasping.

“I hit the window and looked out. Down below was that lilac bush that reaches near up to the windowsill. I made a noise like I was about to throw up. Then I pulled back in a little ways and had a quick look. Deacon had his back to me, heading out. I reckoned he was going to fetch his sister. So I put my head out the window again, leaned way out, put my arms across my face, and slid out into that lilac bush.”