Wanted . . . Mud Blossom (11 page)

“There!”

“Pap, that time he hit me when I was showing you where he hit me before! He's not playing fair.”

“Well, you didn't play fair when you kidnapped Scooty. There!”

“Thirty-second warning,” Pap called, eyeing his watch. “Twenty seconds … ten … three, two, one. All right, that's it. Shake hands.”

Vern and Junior met in the center of the ring and reluctantly shook hands.

“Let's go in the house and see about supper.”

Ralphie said, “Well, I guess I'd better be going if you guys are going to eat.”

Maggie said, “That's the first good idea you've had all day.”

She went in the house without looking back. Michael said, “Well, I guess I better be going.” He left, and Vern and Junior went into the house. Pap and Dump followed.

Vicki and Pap stood on the steps, talking until the phone rang. Then they started up the steps. Vicki got to the front door first and Pap called, “That could be the police.”

“It could be Rooney!” she called back.

Ralphie was left alone in the yard. He sighed.

Shoulders sagging, he went around the back of the house and picked up his bike. He could hear the Blossom family in the kitchen. The call was from a nurse at the hospital. “I'm going to see if they'll release her in my care,” Pap said.

Vicki Blossom said, “That's all we need.”

There didn't seem to be anything for Ralphie to do but go home. He threw one leg over his bike and pedaled off.

As he rounded the house, he saw Mud coming out from under the porch. Mud paused at the steps to move back and forth under the boards and let the porch scratch his back for him.

Then he went up the steps and barked at the screen door. Ralphie paused because it might be Maggie who would let Mud in. And Maggie might already be sorry she had been rude, and she might …

It was Maggie, but all she said was, “Come in, Mud.” Mud went in the house with the rest of the Blossoms.

Ralphie went home.

Ralphie was sitting beside the telephone in his kitchen. Ralphie was taking deep breaths. Ralphie had heard of the medical condition called hyperventilation, and he thought he might be suffering from it.

Ralphie was getting ready to call Maggie.

It was now four hours since Mud's murder trial. Ralphie figured that four hours was about the length of time it would take for Maggie to get her senses back.

She could not possibly hate him. Not him … not her.

She could be mad enough to claim she hated him. She could be mad enough to think she hated him.

But it couldn't last. Maggie might even be sitting at her phone now, just as he was sitting at his, trying to get up the nerve to call and apologize.

Ralphie wasn't going to put her through that humiliation.

He would call and he would come out with one of those brilliant statements he was famous for—like the one about the Bible.

Ralphie wasn't sure what this particular brilliant statement would be, but he was confident that as soon as he heard her “hello,” it would come. That was the good thing about having a brilliant mind—it came up with brilliance on its own.

Ralphie ran his hands through his curly hair, combing through the tangles. Then he wiped his hands on his jeans and reached for the phone.

Mud was in the kitchen trying to eat. He was having a hard time because Junior wouldn't leave him alone. Junior was hugging him and kissing him and talking to him.

Mud kept eating, but it wasn't easy.

“Mud, do you forgive me?” Junior was saying. “I'm sorry. I'm really and truly sorry.”

Mud rolled his eyes in Junior's direction as he chewed. He didn't like to be fooled with while he was eating, but Junior would not be shaken off.

“Please forgive me, Mud.” Junior raised the flap of Mud's ear so he could speak directly into the ear itself. “I'm sorry, Mud. Do you forgive me?”

“Naaw,” Vern said from the table. He said it in a dog's voice.

Junior threw him a dirty look.

Mud shook his head to get his ear out of Junior's hand. The ear came free, but Junior still clung to his neck.

“Do you like me again?”

“Naw.”

“Mom, make him stop! Because, Mud, I really, really like you. You're a good dog. Good, good dog.” Junior smoothed Mud's long ears back from his face. “I didn't mean those things I said. You're a good dog. You wouldn't eat my Scooty, would you?”

“Yaaw,” Vern growled.

“You better behave, Vern,” Junior snapped. “Or Mom will let me beat you up again, won't you, Mom?”

“No, I don't like all this fighting.” Vicki Blossom sighed. She wasn't eating in the hope that Rooney would still be able to take her out. “Why doesn't the phone ring? I—”

At that moment, as if on cue, the phone did ring.

“I'll get it,” Vicki Blossom said. She jumped to her feet and crossed her fingers.

She turned her eyes to the ceiling. “I hope it's Rooney! Please, please let that horse trial be over. Please, please let it be Rooney. Please, please let me get in my new pants suit and have some fun!”

Ralphie was holding the phone so tightly his knuckles were turning white.

Aha! The phone was answered in the middle of the second ring.

Ralphie smiled tightly to himself.

Maggie had probably been sitting by the phone, praying for him to call. Then, just when she had given up and started in a dejected way for her room, the phone HAD rung!

It's Ralphie! her happy heart had cried, soaring like a kite. It's a miracle. Ralphie, oh, Ralphie! I'm coming!

“Hello!” There was such eagerness, such hope, in her hello that Ralphie's heart soared too. He had never before heard her voice like that.

Overcome by the girlish-womanliness of her “hello” and by his own eagerness to put her at her ease, to prove at once that he had not taken her cruel words seriously, he decided not to be brilliant but to be something he had rarely been in his lifetime—truthful.

“I love you,” Ralphie said.

He was pleased with the way his voice sounded. Anytime a person said something he had never heard himself say before there was a certain risk that the words wouldn't sound right, but no movie star could have said “I love you” any better than …

Ralphie trailed off. There was a pause growing at the other end of the line.

For some reason, Ralphie thought of the radar-projected weather reports he saw occasionally on TV where a dangerous storm grew from a small white dot to a huge red pulsating storm system.

This pause was growing in the same uncontrollable, frightening way.

“Well, I'm glad somebody does,” the voice on the phone snapped.

It was Mrs. Blossom's voice.

Ralphie felt the blood begin to drain from his head, leaving his brow in an icy sweat. Then the blood drained from his neck, his chest, from his body, leaving him as cold as an icicle.

He didn't know where the blood had gone, because his whole entire body was cold, even his foot. Ralphie's shoulders began to shiver.

Ralphie let his lids close over his eyes.

He had told Mrs. Blossom that he loved her—Mrs. Blossom. M!R!S! Blossom. M**R** S B**L**O**—

But wait. Again, Ralphie stopped.

Maybe Mrs. Blossom hadn't recognized his voice. She didn't know how his “I love you's” sounded. She'd never heard one before. Nobody had. And it was going to be a long, long time, Ralphie thought, before anybody did again.

Ralphie opened his eyes. He was getting ready to very quickly, very quietly hang up the phone when he heard Mrs. Blossom put down her phone.

He didn't want to, but he kept listening. He listened while Mrs. Blossom moved away from the phone. He listened while she entered the kitchen. He listened while she began saying one terrible sentence after another.

“Maggie, it's for you. It's Ralphie. And guess what? He says he …”

Very quickly, very quietly, Ralphie hung up the telephone.

“Ralphie.”

The voice belonged to one of Ralphie's brothers.

Ralphie was in such misery he didn't know which brother it was. Anyway, Ralphie didn't care. They sounded alike, smelled alike, and Ralphie was not going to interrupt his misery by opening his eyes for the sight of a brother.

Besides, Ralphie was standing on his head so that his blood would run down into his brain and nourish it. Ralphie blamed his present condition on an undernourished brain. There was no other explanation for his telling Mrs. Blossom that—what he had told her.

“Ralphie.”

“What?”

“Will you make Beanie a parachute?”

“No.”

“Please.”

“Who's Beanie?” Ralphie still did not open his eyes.

“Beanie is Frank's little brother and Beanie says if we make him a parachute, he'll jump off the roof.”

“What roof?”

“The garage roof. He's already up there. And he says if we don't make him a parachute, he's going to jump off without one. We've got to get him a parachute. So will you?”

“No.”

“Mom gave us a sheet.”

“Does Mom know it's for a parachute?”

“No, she just asked if we were going to make anything dangerous.”

“You don't call a parachute dangerous?”

“No! This parachute would save Beanie's life!”

Ralphie's brain was nourished enough so that he could imagine his mom's voice saying, “You made a parachute out of my king-size sheet? Well, I'm going to king-size you.”

Ralphie still hadn't opened his eyes. Normally he would already have that parachute whipped out and attached to Beanie, but Ralphie wasn't normal. Indeed, Ralphie had never felt more subnormal in his life.

“Ralphie, telephone,” his mother called.

At that, Ralphie opened his eyes.

This was the moment he had been dreading. It had now been two long days since he told Mrs. Blossom he—since he told her what he told her—and he had known it was only a matter of time until Maggie called to taunt him.

“I'm not here,” he called.

He knew the caller was Maggie. She was the only person who ever called him, and Ralphie could never speak to Maggie again.

His mother appeared in the doorway. “Ralphie! I said the telephone is for you.”

“I'm not here.”

“Get off your head and go to the phone.”

“Mom, I'm letting blood go to my brain. My brain needs blood. It's not working right.”

“Well, I don't deny your brain's not working, after you pushed your brothers down the hill in a Maytag box. But you boys have to learn right now that I'm not going to lie on the telephone for you.”

Ralphie rolled his eyes to his brother. “Will you lie on the telephone for me?”

The brother said, “Sure, if you'll make the”—a sideways glance at his mother—“the you-know-what for Beanie.”

“He is not lying for you or anybody else! Now, get off your head. It's Maggie on the phone, and she says there's an emergency.”

“What kind of emergency?”

“She didn't say.”

Ralphie got off his head and went to the phone. He felt as if he were going to his own hanging.

He wiped his hands before he picked up the phone. He swallowed. He said “Hello,” then realized that in his nervousness he had not spoken aloud.

“Hello.”

“Oh, Ralphie,” Maggie said, “a terrible thing has happened.”

At those words, Ralphie felt the first faint lessening of misery. He realized that while he had been balancing on his head with his eyes closed, suffering the greatest misery of his life, even then his luck had been working. The Ralphie luck. Something terrible actually had happened.

“What?”

“We finally found out what happened to Mad Mary.”

“Oh?”

“She's in Alderson General Hospital.”

Now Ralphie's mind clicked into high gear. His thoughts raced. Maggie was going to ask him to bust Mad Mary out of Alderson General Hospital. It was bound to be that. After all, he had once busted Junior out of the same hospital, and smuggled Mud in.

And he, Ralphie, was going to say yes.

Never mind that Mad Mary was probably hooked up to a machine. He'd unhook her. Never mind that she probably couldn't walk. He'd stolen wheelchairs before. Never mind that the hospital had probably burned all her clothes. He'd sew her some if he had to.

Maggie was saying, “I didn't want to call you because, you know, I was afraid you'd think I was, you know, using you again.”

“No, no, it's all right. I want you to use me. Be my guest.”

“Well, if you're sure …”

“I am!”

Ralphie couldn't stand the suspense. Also he was beginning to feel a sort of enthusiasm for the caper.

“You want me to bust Mad Mary out of the hospital, right? And if that's what you want, that's what you'll get. I'll bust her out of Alderson so fast the nurses won't know she's gone—”

“No, no!” Maggie laughed. “No, she's getting out on her own. Well, Pap's getting her out. But she wants her cane—you know that long crook she walks with?”

“I remember,” Ralphie said.

Indeed, he could recall the exact feel of that cane. Mad Mary had loaned it to him and Maggie the night they climbed the tree after the Green Phantom. It was the night he had kissed Maggie. He wasn't likely to forget anything about that night.

“Well, see, what happened, Ralphie, was that Mad Mary passed out beside the road—right where we found her bag. Guess what she passed out from?”

“I couldn't.” Ralphie's blood was still racing from thoughts of hospital escapades and treetop embraces.

“Malnutrition and worms.”

“Well, that figures.”

“I knew it couldn't be good for her to eat stuff off the road! It's not nourishing! The doctor says from now on she has to buy her meat at Bi-Lo.”