Rufus M. (9 page)

"You don't suppose he batted it clear across Elm Street into that lot, do you?" asked Nancy incredulously.

"Might have," said Jane, not knowing whether to be proud or ashamed. And the two girls crossed the street to take a look, just in case Rufus had swung as mighty an arm as that.

Rufus did not join in the search. He ran around from base to base to home plate, again and again, in ever-widening circles until his course led him to the iceman. The iceman was one of his favorite people in Cranbury.

"Here," said Spec, "catch." And he threw the missing baseball to Rufus. "I yelled to the team that I caught the ball, but they couldn't hear me, I guess, what with whistles blowing and all the cheers. Some batter!" he said. "Keep it up, fella, and maybe next spring you can be batboy for the South End baseball team."

The iceman rolled a cigarette, using the last of the tobacco from his Bull Durham tobacco pouch, and he handed the empty bag to Rufus. "Here, fella," he said. "Put this in your pocket."

Rufus grinned, stuffed the pouch in his pocket, grabbed the ball, and tore off to the other end of the field, where Nancy and Jane, wearied and hot, had given up looking for the ball. Then they all went home to lunch.

"Goodness!" said Mama, when she saw Rufus and Jane. "What have you been playing to get so banged up?"

"Just baseball," said Jane, drinking a long glass of water thirstily.

After lunch Rufus went back across the street and sat down to watch the men dig out the cellar. He thought about being batboy for the South End baseball team and he pounded the old taped baseball into his fist, his left fist. And he thought about the Fatal Four. He was practically a member, and if the Fatal Four could not do without him for baseball, they'd naturally include him for punch and cookies if they ever reached that stage. He smiled to himself. The South End baseball team and the Fatal Four. That made two things he almost belonged to now.

Joey had a certain way he walked home from school. He did not walk up one street and down the next, turning sharp corners. He had it all figured out how he could cut catercorners across streets, how he could walk from the southeast corner of this one to the northwest corner of that one, and he knew that he saved at least one whole block, if not more, by walking home from school this way. Joey always walked; he never ran.

Jane always walked home from school with Nancy Stokes or she raced a trolley car. Rufus ran as fast as he could. He always was the first person out of the school yard, the first one up the street, and the first one home. That's because he was the hungriest boy in school and had to get home in a hurry. He could eat anything, though he preferred something like pie.

"You'll eat bread if you're so hungry," said Mama.

Sylvie didn't go to regular school anymore. She went to Art School on the trolley. But she did run home from the trolley. Joey was the only one who didn't run, and that was because he had this special way of walking home and measuring his steps and cutting across lots and studying how to get home by the shortest possible route. He did not stop along the way.

"Hi, Joey!" somebody would yell.

"Hi!"

"Want to play ball?"

"Can't," he'd answer, not looking away from the point he was heading for. If he looked, he might be tempted to stop. He had no time for ball. And on he went.

On one block Joey stayed right on the sidewalk and did not cut catercorners. There was a high board fence here and someone had drawn a lot of initials in white chalk. In one place there was a large chalk heart and inside of this there were the initials J. M. and M. J. with an arrow plunged recklessly through the whole.

J. M. could be Joey Moffat. M. J. could be Mary Jetting. He always wondered when he passed this fence who had drawn the heart with these initials in it. Mary Jetting was nobody he cared anything about, just a girl in some room or other at school. Room Nine, he thought. The chalk was beginning to wash off and the initials to grow faint. He never stopped to look at this heart on the fence, of course, but he liked to take a sidelong glance at it as he walked past. He'd punch the fellow in the nose if he knew who put it there though.

He turned into Elm Street and, as he did so, a long red open touring car sailed by.
My car,
thought Joey, and he remembered about Miss Myles, a teacher he had when he was in the first grade. This teacher still sent him letters and Christmas cards. He had not been the teacher's pet. Nobody was. But when he left Room One and went into Room Two, he still remembered his old teacher. He had found a picture of a long red automobile with a lady wearing a veil riding in it. This lady was supposed to be Miss Myles. And he was supposed to be the one driving the car. He had made Mama write on it, "I will take you for a ride in this kind of an automobile someday," and send it to Miss Myles. Now she always wrote asking when she was going to have that ride.

Sometimes she sent him a limerick she had made up. Once she stuck a real dime and a real raisin on the limerick instead of using the words
dime
and
raisin.
Rufus ate off the raisin before anyone could stop him but Joey had kept the dime for years, until one day, when Mama didn't have any money, he bought a loaf of bread with it. But you could still see the place on the paper where the dime had been stuck. He kept the limerick with his things. That was years ago and they still wrote cards and jokes. No more with dimes and raisins, though. That was just once. Mama made up Joey's jokes for him. But he drew plenty of pictures with long red automobiles that he was going to take Miss Myles riding in.

As Joey cut across a lot, not going by the winding path that many feet had trodden down, but seeing a shorter, straighter, more direct route through the grass, he thought he should visit Miss Myles. He'd been thinking this for a long time. She was a good friend and he had never visited her. He came up the slope and onto the sidewalk and scraped the grass and loose dirt off his shoes. Yes, he should visit her. "Hello, Miss Myles." "Hello, Joe. Well, when are you going to take me for that ride?" "Oh, someday." The talk would go like that.

Joe turned into the long walk that led to the Moffats' house. Phew! The way the leaves were falling! And he'd just raked them up yesterday. You could rake these leaves up sixteen times a day and there'd still be leaves. Then he wondered if he had done right to cross Green Street from Mrs. Park's driveway over to Mrs. Lane's driveway. He calculated he might possibly have saved more steps had he walked from corner to corner. He'd try it that way tomorrow. It would be good if he had a pedometer.

He went up on the porch, stepped over Mr. Abbot's rubbers, and went into the house. He didn't go into the dining room, where Mama or Sylvie was sewing on the machine, because he figured Mr. Abbot was in there, too. Mr. Abbot was the man who had just gotten Joey the job of dusting the pews of the church and helping the sexton. Supposing Mr. Abbot asked him if he had dusted the pews yet for this week. He'd have to say no, not so far. He planned to do that tomorrow.

Nobody was in the kitchen. Joe was looking for Jane, but first he took a piece of bread and, since he had eaten his share of butter this noon, he spread it with apple butter. Butter was scarce and Mama had to divide it. Then he went out the back door looking for Jane. There were two things he wanted to ask her before he went for his papers. Rufus was bent over beside the back stoop, making something. He was working hard with his hammer and nailing some big crates together. And there was Jane! She was sitting on the back fence, waiting for Nancy Stokes probably. Joe put his hands on the top of the fence and swung himself up.

"H'lo," he said.

"'Lo," said Jane.

They sat in silence for a while. One of the two things that Joe had in mind to ask her about was this: Was M. J. in Jane's room in school? He thought she came from that end of the hall. Oh, well, what was the sense asking? What difference did it make anyway? The other matter was easier to approach. Miss Myles and her limericks to him and his red automobiles to her were old stories to all the Moffats. They were all very much interested in Miss Myles and how she always remembered Joey.

"I thought someday I'd go and visit Miss Myles," said Joe.

"Miss Myles!"

"Yeah," said Joe.

"Gee, yeah," said Jane. "I think you should. She likes you."

"Yeah."

"When are you goin'?"

"I dunno."

"Well, I mean are you goin' soon? Or are you goin' to wait until you're grown-up and have that big red automobile?"

"Oh ... soon."

"Uh-hum."

Then they just sat there again for a while without saying anything, thinking.

Finally Joey said, "Do you want to go with me?"

"Do you want me to?"

"Yeah, I don't want to go alone."

"Sure, I'll go," said Jane. Somehow she felt honored. Joe was asking her to go with him to see a special friend of his. Miss Myles was not a special friend of any of the rest of the Moffats. She was not like Mr. Abbot, the curate, who took them all, even Mama, to the circus. Jane thought Joe was awfully nice to ask her to come along. "When'll we go?" she asked.

Joe thought for some minutes.

"How about tonight?" he said.

"After supper?"

"Yeah."

"Gee," said Jane. "That's a real visit, isn't it? Going after supper like that. It's a real call, that's what it is."

"Yeah," said Joe. "I thought we might go after supper." And he jumped down and went off to get his newspapers. It was time to deliver them.

So after supper they both washed their hands and faces and Joe wet his hair down so that it wouldn't stand up straight in the middle of his head like telegraph poles. Joe put on a clean blouse and Jane a clean dress, not her best dress but just a clean one. Then they told Mama where they were going. She seemed very pleased. She said to give her regards to Miss Myles and kissed them good-bye.

Rufus had been watching these preparations. "Can I go, too?" he asked. "I could wear my gloves."

Rufus was the only one of the four Moffats who had gloves to wear even when it was warm. He wore Hughie Pudge's old ones. They were all kid gloves and they just fitted him. The other Moffats wore mittens in the winter but they never wore anything on their hands at all unless it was cold. But Rufus had lots of these gloves that he could wear winter or summer. He rarely remembered about them but the preparations that Joe and Jane were making convinced him that tonight was the night for his kid gloves.

He followed Joe and Jane to the door. "Can I go, too?" he repeated, waving his kid gloves at them.

"No, fella," said Joe. "You can blow up my football."

"Right," said Rufus. He was happy to blow up Joe's football. He was not often permitted to do this.

Joe and Jane went out. It was a soft misty night in October. They looked back at the house. Mama had put the little lamp in the small, square, stained-glass window over the porch. The light shone gold and red through the mist and cast a warm glow. They turned down the street toward Elm Street.

"I hope we'll know what to talk about," said Jane. "When you pay a visit you have to talk."

"Yeah, I was thinkin' so, too," said Joe.

Joe certainly had been thinking about the conversation and planning what to talk about. There was plenty to talk about if he could say it. He wasn't good at talking, not to grown-ups.

"You should do most of the talkin'," said Jane, "because you're the one she likes. She doesn't even know me. I didn't even have her in Room One."

"Yeah..." said Joe.

"If you get stuck, I'll put in a word now and then if I can think of anything."

"Uh-huh," said Joe. And he fell silent, thinking about what he'd say. So far he could think of four things to say. First he would tell Miss Myles about a certain plan he had for raising silver foxes. He had read an ad in the
Popular Mechanics
at the library and it was as easy as pie. Anybody could get rich off silver foxes. When all the Moffats were rich off this business, he'd drive around someday, pick Miss Myles up in that long red automobile they talked about, and take her for a ride along the shore.