Runaway Ralph (5 page)

“Don't stop now,” pleaded Ralph. “What happened?”

“—a great human hand, a hand that smelled of dog—”

Ralph shuddered.

“—reached in and picked up several of my brothers and sisters. Let me tell you, that
woke us all up in a hurry. We were terrified. We scrambled around, trying to hide behind our mother, under the wheel, in some cedar shavings, anyplace. I was slower than the rest, because, you see, I was cramped from being slept on by brothers and sisters, and so the hand, that terribly doggy hand, got me. It didn't matter. That hand got all us youngsters and turned us upside down in a most undignified fashion, and then we were put into two cages, boys in one and girls in another.”

“What for?” asked Ralph.

“Don't rush me,” said Chum, picking up a sunflower seed in his paws and cracking it with his teeth. When he had eaten the kernels, he continued. “Let me tell you, it was a terrible shock. Shortly after, the doggy hand picked up our cage and loaded it into what is called a station wagon.”

“I know.” Ralph was eager to show off
his knowledge. “I used to see them in the parking lot outside the hotel. They were always full of children and luggage and sometimes a dog or two.”

Chum ignored the interruption. “We soon found ours was not the only cage to go into the station wagon. Our sisters were loaded in beside us along with a box of turtles, a cage of rather downhearted canaries, and two large cages, one containing puppies and the other some very silly kittens. Oh yes, and a cage of white mice.”

“
White
mice,” said Ralph scornfully. “Anybody, not just owls, could see white mice in the dark.”

“Then the man with the doggy-smelling hands climbed into the front seat along with his wife, and we were off.”

“Where to?” asked Ralph.

“The county fair,” answered Chum, “and it was a terrible trip. Kittens mewed, puppies
whimpered, turtles scrabbled around in their box—”

“What's a county fair?” interrupted Ralph.

“A noisy place,” said Chum. “It's full of people yelling, children laughing and shrieking, machinery that whirls and spins and plays music, all sorts of animals that neigh and moo and baa. It was hot and dusty, and our cages were set out in a booth. By that time we hamsters were exhausted. It had been light for several hours, and we hadn't had a wink of sleep.”

“I know what you mean,” said Ralph with feeling.

“That was only the beginning,” continued Chum. “A steady stream of people, mostly children, passed our cages. Big, little, most of them sticky and all of them noisy. ‘Look, Mommy! Look, Daddy! Look at the darling little hamsters. I want one. Daddy,
buy me a hamster!' All morning long. Parents were better. ‘Don't be silly. Of course you can't have a hamster. You didn't take care of the last hamster you had. Come along. We don't have time to look at hamsters.' Then a whole busload of children, all of them wearing white T-shirts with letters across the front—”

“Camp T-shirts,” interrupted Ralph knowledgeably. “From Happy Acres.”

“—came crowding around the booth. They didn't have any parents with them so they bought pets.”

“You?” asked Ralph.

“Me,” said Chum. “I was bought by that grubby girl with freckles. To make a long story short, the doggy hand stuffed me into a hot little cardboard box with a few so-called air holes poked into it, and I spent the rest of the day being jounced around, peeked at, and fed bits of Karmel-Korn.”

“Sounds good,” said Ralph.

“Maybe to a mouse.” There was a touch of scorn in Chum's voice. “We rode in a bus to this camp, where a counselor put together a makeshift cage out of a bucket with a piece of screen bent over the top. After a few days the girl's family arrived. There was quite a fuss when the parents saw that their daughter owned a hamster, but her two little brothers set up such a howl that once more I was stuffed into a box with so-called air holes, and after more bouncing and jouncing I arrived at the family's house, where I was put into this cage where I have lived ever since. Poked at with pencils whenever the children's horrid little friends came over to play. Fed hamster food full of nasty little alfalfa pellets that I keep shoving out of my cage. You'd think they would catch on after a while, but no, they just keep on feeding me food mixed with alfalfa pellets. The
worst part of my life is that I never get a full day's sleep. Someone's always moving the cage to dust, rattling something against the bars, running the vacuum cleaner, practicing violin lessons. It's not an easy life, let me tell you.”

“But how did you get back to camp?” Ralph wanted to know.

“Last year when Lana was packing her duffle bag for camp, her mother said that since the people who ran the camp had let her buy me, they could put up with me for two weeks.
She
was tired of reminding Lana to feed me and clean my cage, and she wanted a vacation herself. She said the same thing this year. So here I am at camp for the third time. Oh well, at least it's a change, and nobody runs a vacuum cleaner or practices the violin near my cage.”

Ralph was silent. Chum had given him a lot to think about. Like Chum he sat swing
ing to and fro on his wheel, swinging and thinking. And as he swung and thought, something caught his eye.

It was the striped forepaw of Catso reaching through the hole in the rusty screen door. Ralph watched in frightened fascination. The screen bulged from the pressure of Catso's shoulder as the paw groped and
searched. The rusted screen stretched, and the evil paw with its claw unsheathed reached farther into the craft shop.

Where's Sam? thought Ralph in terror. Why isn't that watchdog watching? The paw withdrew, and Catso's face pressed into the hole. His evil green eyes searched the craft shop. Ralph shrank into a ball in the farthest corner of his cage until he heard a short bark from Sam and summoned his courage to look around. Catso was gone, but the hole in the rusty screen remained.

R
alph's life in the cage was never the same after the arrival of the hamster. Chum was picky about his food and fussy about his housekeeping. One corner of his cage had to be his bathroom, another his sleeping quarters, a third the storehouse for the food he liked. He was forever pushing, shoving, and stomping his cedar shavings. His exercise wheel rasped and creaked whenever he
ran, usually while Ralph was trying to nap. He had a particularly irritating way of gnawing noisily at the bars of his cage.

“Why do you do that?” asked Ralph. “You can't chew through metal.”

“I'm not trying to chew through the bars,” said Chum. “I'm wearing down my teeth.”

Ralph was astounded. “Don't you want teeth?” he asked, thinking how dependent he was upon his own sharp teeth.

“If I don't chew something hard, my teeth will grow so long I won't be able to eat,” Chum explained impatiently. “I chew the bars because Lana is too stupid to give me anything hard to chew.”

“Oh,” said Ralph, grateful that his teeth did not continue to grow. Chum had another habit that disturbed Ralph. He nipped at Lana whenever she tried to pick him up.

“That's not nice,” said Ralph one day, when he had seen Lana hastily withdraw her hand from her pet's cage. “That's biting the hand that feeds you.”

“I have some rights,” said Chum. “If I let Lana pick me up, I never would have any peace. Believe me, I know. I made the mistake of letting her pick me up just once, and when she tried to stuff me into a doll's sweater, I knew once was enough.”

Chum also sat for long periods of time swinging gently on his wheel and staring with unblinking eyes at nothing at all.

“Why do you sit there like that?” asked Ralph, who liked to be busy when he was awake.

“I'm thinking,” answered Chum.

“Thinking about what?” Ralph wanted to know.

“I am a philosopher,” said Chum. “I think about life.”

“Life?” Ralph was puzzled. “What do you mean?”

Chum sat staring into space so long that Ralph thought he was never going to answer. Finally the hamster said, “Take you for instance. Just where do you think you're going on that wheel?”

“No place, I guess,” admitted Ralph. “I never thought much about it.”

“See what I mean?” said Chum. “You run and you run and you're still in the same old cage.”

Ralph felt suddenly guilty, as if he had done something wrong, but was not sure what it was. “But I like running on my wheel,” he said, feeling that his answer was rather lame.

Chum did not bother to reply. He continued to sit, swinging, staring, thinking.

Ralph leaped to his wheel and began to run. His paws flew along the wires of the
wheel, pushing it faster and faster until he looped the loop. He ran on and on until he began to tire. His paws touched the wires more and more slowly until Ralph coasted to a stop. Then he, too, sat staring and motionless. Where was he going? No place,
that was where he was going. No place at all. With so many people feeding him, he was not even sure who owned him. Perhaps when the camp closed at the end of summer he would be turned out to the mercy of Catso and all those kittens. Drat Chum and his talk about life, thought Ralph crossly. He has spoiled all my fun.

Chum had still another habit disturbing to Ralph. Whenever his owner approached him with a bag of sunflower seeds, Chum suddenly appeared to change from a grouch into an agreeable pet. He climbed to the top of his cage, accepted sunflower seeds one by one, and stuffed them into his cheek pouches.

Feeding sunflower seeds to Chum became a daily event in the craft shop. The older campers and some of the counselors gathered around Lana to watch her feed Chum, and as she handed him the seeds
they would count. “Fourteen…fifteen…” Ralph watched while Chum's cheek pouches began to bulge. “Twenty-two…twenty-three…” Still Chum's face stretched.

The old show-off, thought Ralph. “Twenty-seven…twenty-eight…” Chum had grown so top-heavy that Ralph was sure he would never make it to thirty.

“Thirty…thirty-one…” chanted the campers. Chum was having such difficulty hanging on that Ralph scarcely could bear to watch. “Thirty-three…” Those paws were slipping. “Thirty-four…” Chum could no longer support his weight. He fell to the bottom of his cage with a thump that made Ralph cringe.

“Thirty-four!” shouted Lana, who enjoyed the attention her pet had received from older boys and girls. “That's Chum's record!”

“Maybe he'll hit thirty-five tomorrow,” someone said, as the campers lost interest in the hamster and went off to their riding lessons or back to their craft work.

Chum got to his feet rather groggily and went to the storehouse corner of his cage, where by placing his front paws behind his cheek pouches he pushed the seeds out of his mouth until they lay in a heap at his feet.

Ralph was disapproving of the whole performance. “That's quite an act,” he remarked. “Doesn't it hurt when you fall to the bottom of the cage?”

“Sure it hurts,” said Chum, as he pushed out the last sunflower seed. “But it's worth it.”

“Just to show off?” asked Ralph.

“No, stupid,” said Chum. “For the sunflower seeds. Sunflower seeds that I don't have to pick out from a lot of alfalfa pellets. I perform; she pays off in sunflower seeds.
That's the way it goes.”

“Yes, but you get hurt,” said Ralph.

“I hate alfalfa pellets,” answered Chum simply.

Ralph's turn came after lunch when the campers were in the dining hall singing a song that they obviously enjoyed but that Ralph found frightening.

Garf silently pushed open the screen door, and Ralph leaped from his wheel. Quickly Garf unlatched the door of the cage and extended a sunflower seed with his fingers. This time he was not singing, but Ralph still did not trust him. “Come on, fellow,” coaxed Garf. Ralph retreated to the corner of his cage behind his exercise wheel.

“Maybe next time,” whispered Garf, and
hurriedly cleaned the cage and refilled the water bottle while the campers sang on:

When the song was finished, the housekeeping for Ralph was completed, and Garf had slipped quickly and silently out of the craft shop without letting the screen door slam or squeak. Ralph stood on his hind legs holding the bars of his cage with his front paws and wishing Garf were a different kind of boy.

Almost at once the screen door opened again, and Aunt Jill with her arm around Garf's shoulders brought the boy back inside. “Sit down, Garf,” she said, and sat on a bench
beside one of the worktables. Scowling, the boy obeyed.

“What's the trouble, Garf?” asked Aunt Jill kindly.

What does she mean? Ralph wondered.

Garf stared at the floor.

“You know you have been breaking one of the camp rules,” said Aunt Jill. “Campers are not supposed to come into the craft shop without permission unless I am here or one of the counselors.”

So that is why he's always in a hurry, thought Ralph. He isn't supposed to be here. He not only likes bloodthirsty songs, he breaks rules.

Garf continued to stare at the floor.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” persisted the camp director.

“No,” said Garf suddenly. “Because I'm going to run away, and nobody is going to stop me!”

Aunt Jill appeared to take this news
calmly, but for some reason Ralph did not. He felt a shock of excitement. Don't do it, boy, he wanted to squeak. It won't get you anyplace. At the same time he realized that a boy who wanted to run away was sure to like motorcycles. Maybe he had misunderstood Garf. Maybe Garf liked speed and would know how to make a miniature motorcycle run.

“Is there someplace you especially want to go?” asked Aunt Jill.

“No,” said Garf. “Just away.”

Aunt Jill looked thoughtfully out the back window toward the barn and the riding ring before she turned to Garf and asked, “What do you want to do? What do you
really
want to do?”

Ralph gripped the bars of his cage and waited for the boy's answer. Catso's paw appeared through the hole in the screen door, but the human beings did not notice.
Ralph watched and listened.

The hole in the screen had stretched another half inch.

Garf picked up a scrap of plastic left over from someone's lanyard and twisted it around his fingers. “I can tell you one thing,” he burst out. “I don't want to braid any stupid lanyards! I've braided lanyards in Cub Scouts, I've braided lanyards at the YMCA, I've braided lanyards in the park during the summer, and I've braided lanyards in the after-school recreation program. Nobody needs more than one lanyard, and I'm fed up with lanyards!” After this outburst he sat staring at the floor, and when Aunt Jill remained silent, he went on. “And I want people to stop feeding my mouse. I caught him, and he's my mouse.”

That's good, thought Ralph, because if he runs away he might take me, and then maybe I can escape and find my motorcycle again.

“I think that can be arranged,” said Aunt Jill. “You've told me what you don't want to do and what you don't want other people to do. Now tell me what you want to do.”

Ralph could tell from Garf's silence that
this request was a difficult one. Aunt Jill seemed to have plenty of time to wait while he thought. Outside the craft shop some boys were gathering bamboo husks to float in the irrigation ditch. Ralph watched to see if they might uncover his crash helmet and motorcycle, but they did not go to the far side of the bamboo.

“Well…uh,” began Garf, and stopped.

Aunt Jill waited. So did Ralph, who noticed that Chum was also listening. Garf looked uncomfortable. Still Aunt Jill waited. Go on, say something, thought Ralph.

When Garf finally spoke he no longer sounded angry. “I guess…I guess I just want to be alone
once
in a while,” he said.

“You want to be alone,” repeated Aunt Jill.

“Yes,” said Garf. “At home I have to share my room with my big brother, who gets the top bunk and keeps his weight-lifting stuff all over the floor. And every time I go to our
room and shut the door, he comes in and starts playing those records I don't like. And after school and on Saturdays it's always Scouts or the Y or supervised recreation on the playground. My mom and dad say city kids have to be kept busy. And then they send me here.”

“So they sent you to camp,” said Aunt Jill, encouraging him to go on. “And you come into the craft shop to be alone.”

“Yes,” said Garf. “I don't like to sit around after meals with a bunch of kids singing
You Are My Sunshine
.”

But you come in here and sing about the rabbit banging mice on the head, thought Ralph.

“I don't like singing with other people,” said Garf, “because I can't carry a tune. I know I sing funny, and I don't like people turning around staring at me.”

“Nobody cares whether you can carry a
tune or not,” said Aunt Jill, “but if you don't want to sing, you don't have to. And we all need to be alone sometimes.”

For the first time Garf looked at the camp director.

“And I know something that might help,” Aunt Jill continued. “See that clump of bamboo over there? Any time you feel like being alone, you may go sit behind the bamboo as long as you wish.”

Garf looked as if he wanted to believe her.

“Remember, Garf,” said Aunt Jill, “it is possible to be alone in your thoughts even when there are others around.” She rose from the bench where she and the boy had been sitting and found a piece of cardboard and a felt pen from the supply shelves. “Now about your mouse. You take this pen and make a sign saying this is your mouse and no one else is to feed it. I'll sign it to make it
official, and we'll tack it up over his cage.”