Wanted . . . Mud Blossom (7 page)

“Mom, I've got to go to the Blossoms. I promised.”

“You are going one place—to your room. You are grounded for the rest of the month.”

“Why? What did I do?”

“You almost killed your brothers. You pushed them off a cliff in a Maytag box.”

“I didn't.”

“I saw you.”

“Mom, listen, you couldn't have seen me push them because I didn't do it. Ask them if you don't believe me.”

“Did I push you guys?” Ralphie called down the hill. “Tell the truth.”

Ralphie didn't wait for the truth. He lowered his voice confidentially. “Mom, they asked me to push them; they begged me. But I said ‘No.' I said, ‘You'll get hurt.' Mom, they said, ‘We won't get hurt. We promise.' I still said ‘No.'

“So they said, ‘Just move us to the edge, Ralphie. Just to the edge.' I said, ‘What good would that do?'

“They said, ‘If we have to move ourselves, we can't see where we're going and we might topple over before we're ready. Then we really could get hurt.'

“That made sense and, Mom, you know me—Mr. Nice Guy—I moved them very carefully to the edge. I said, ‘You're sure you want to do this?' They said, ‘We're sure!' I stepped back. I said, ‘Don't blame me if you hurt yourselves.' They said, ‘We won't!' and over they went. If anybody ought to be punished, it's them!”

His mom didn't even look at him. Her eyes watched the brothers.

“Also, Mom,” Ralphie continued, “I had absolutely no idea that a mere Maytag box could …”

Ralphie trailed off. He had watched the Maytag box, containing his brothers, with real awe, and Ralphie was not easily awed. Ralphie hadn't known it was possible for a Maytag box to actually exceed the speed limit.

That box had gone eighty miles an hour. It could have won the Indy 500. If it hadn't run into the Wilsons' azaleas, it would still be going. It would be on the freeway, passing eighteen-wheelers.

Ralphie had been so astonished that he had not noticed his mother drive up. When he finally did look, he immediately held up both hands to show he had had no part in the event. His mother was in her clown suit because she had just returned from a balloon delivery—but clown makeup could not hide her displeasure.

She joined him in time to see the Maytag box come to rest against the azaleas. Then there was a long pause. Ralphie and his mother were frozen in place, neither wanting to go down the hill and find damaged bodies.

The Maytag box came to life. It wiggled. It spoke.

“Let's do it again!”

“Yeah!”

Only then, after he was sure his brothers were safe—only then, to his credit—did he say, “Well, I'm going to the Blossoms.”

Was his mom grateful for his good grace in waiting to see if his brothers were alive? No. Her displeasure worsened and turned to fury. If there was one thing worse than a displeased clown, it was an angry one.

Ralphie was glad Maggie was not here to see his mom as a full-blown ogress or Maggie might have resented even more her label as ogrette.

His brothers were halfway up the hill now, pulling the box behind them, ready for another run.

“I want to do it by myself this time,” one was saying.

“Then you can do it by yourself, all right?”

“Then we BOTH—”

Ralphie's mother cut short their plans as she had cut short Ralphie's.

“Give me that box!”

She took a few steps down the hill, reached the rest of the way, and tried to grab it from their hands.

“What are you doing?” they cried, so startled they slipped back down the hill and out of reach.

“And if I ever catch you in another Maytag box I'm going to Maytag you!”

The brothers weren't worried about being Maytaged.

Their mom used a lot of brand names for threats. “When I find out which one of you ate the Krispy Kremes, I'm going to Krispy Kreme you!”

She had, on different occasions, threatened to Rice Krispie them, Pepperidge Farm them, even Sara Lee them. They were worried about losing the box. Boxes this strong didn't come along every day.

“Mom, that's not fair,” they said. “Dad told us we could have the box.”

“I'll give you the box, all right.” She got her hands on the box and began to wrest it from them.

In a mature voice, speaking as if it were the first time he had said this, Ralphie said, “Mother, I'll be going to the Blossoms now.”

“Ralphie!” She spoke through clenched teeth. She wouldn't even look at him. “I do not want to hear one more word out of you. Is that clear?”

Ralphie nodded.

“Then answer me!”

“Yes, it's clear.”

“Then go on. Get out of here.”

“You're sure?”

“Yes, I'm sure. And don't come back till dark. I'm sick of the sight of all of you.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

Ralphie got on his bike and pedaled for the Blossoms' farm.

Behind him, his mom gained possession of the box and the brothers and began swatting them. So, this time the threat had been carried out. She was Maytaging them.

Ralphie pedaled faster.

There was one thing on Ralphie's mind—the flower. That flower. The flower he had put in Maggie's braid.

He didn't know the botanical name for it—it could be an unnamed weed for all he knew—still, to Ralphie, it was the most important flower there had ever been in the world.

Ralphie saw that flower as a symbol of his and Maggie's whole relationship, their whole future relationship.

What had Maggie done with that flower?

If, his thinking went, she had thrown it in the trash can or down the toilet or down the disposal—that was one thing. But suppose, just suppose, she had kept it. Suppose that while she was combing her hair, getting ready for bed, just suppose that while she was doing this, she had taken the flower and put it on top of her jewelry box!

The thought made Ralphie's heart race. He had never been in her bedroom, had never seen her dresser. He didn't even know if she had a jewelry box. But if she did have one and if there were a flower on top of it—that flower, THE flower—then she was as much in love with him as he was with her.

So Ralphie wasn't pedaling toward the Blossom farm. He was pedaling toward a flower and the answer to the most important question of his life.

Mud lifted his head. The yard was silent. He got up, stretched, shook, and peered around the apple crate.

As he started out, he paused to lift his leg on the old truck tire. He stretched again.

He ducked under the bathroom pipes, but paused to let them scratch his back, just above the tail on the spot that always needed scratching. Then he proceeded toward the steps.

He was moving into the sunlight when there was a sudden lunge in his direction. It was Junior.

Mud didn't pause to question why Junior was jumping at him, why Junior was twisting his fingers in his bandanna, why Junior was screaming, “Dirty rotten murderer. Now I got you, you filthy double-dirty rotten murderer.”

With one deft twist, Mud was out of his bandanna and out of Junior's grasp. He went back behind the apple crate, in a crouch. He stood looking back at Junior for a moment, trying to puzzle it out.

Maggie said, “Junior, if you get your eyes all swollen up, Mom's going to be mad. She's not going to want the horse detective to see you with swollen eyes.”

“I'm going to get that dog if it takes the rest of my life. You'll have to come out sometime, Mud, and when you do, you're going to get it!”

Mud watched Junior a moment more. Then he circled twice and dropped down in the dust, with his head resting on his paws, to wait for a more advantageous moment.

Mary lay without moving. The bed beneath her was hard, but it was not the good hard of the stone ledge in her cave. The air she breathed was cool, but it was not the natural cool of a cave. It was chemically cooled.

Her mind drifted from one unhappy comparison to another.

The noises were not the beautiful ones of nature—the rustling of a vulture's wings, the calls of forest birds, the faint rustle of a black snake in the corner of her cave. These noises were manmade, metallic, unpleasant.

In the midst of these thoughts, something Junior had once said drifted into her mind.

“You know what the scariest thing in the whole world is?” he had asked.

“Well, I imagine that would vary,” she had answered in a conversational tone. “Some folks are scared of one thing; some folks of another.”

“Yes, but—”

“For example, some people would be scared to spend the night in a cave, Junior, and I do that every night of my life. Some people would be scared of vultures, and they're my good friends.”

“Mine too, but I'm talking about the scariest thing that can happen to anybody! Anybody! You! Me! The President of the United States! Anybody!”

“What's that, Junior?”

Junior had put so much feeling into his words that he had to swallow before he could speak.

“The scariest thing in the whole world,” he went on, “is waking up and not knowing where you are.”

He paused to let the truth of his words sink in. Then he added, “It's happened to me two times.”

He held up two dirty fingers for emphasis. “So I know.”

“It never has happened to me, but I can see how it would be scary.”

Even though Mad Mary was at least sixty years older than Junior, she sometimes felt they were the same age.

“Very scary.”

“You want to tell me about it, Junior?”

Junior nodded. “I wouldn't mind.”

“Well, one time I was right here in your cave.”

Junior and Mad Mary were in the cave at the time of this conversation, so Junior pointed to the very spot—the ledge.

“You took me out of the coyote cage and brought me here while I was asleep. You put me right there and I woke up and it was so dark I thought I'd gone blind. I felt all around me and I felt stones and blankets and I didn't recognize those stones and blankets and I got up and I started crying and my crying didn't even sound like my crying. I got scareder and scareder and I started across the cave and I fell and I bit my lip and I tasted blood. I screamed and screamed and I would have kept on screaming but I felt your shoe … you probably don't remember this.”

“Oh, yes. I remember.”

“You do?”

“You're the only person that was ever in my cave. I'm not likely to forget anything about your visits.”

“Really?”

Junior appeared to be distracted by the compliment, so Mary said, “Go on, go on.”

“You know the rest.”

“I'd like to hear your side of it.”

“I felt your shoe and I thought it was Pap's; you wear the same kind of shoes.”

“Brogans.”

Junior nodded. “It was so, so dark, and then you struck a match and I looked up and saw—”

Junior broke off. Mary had seen that he was reluctant to describe what he had seen. Her face wasn't a pretty sight under the best conditions, and lit up by a match in a strange cave—well, children didn't call her a witch for nothing.

She remembered that Junior's eyes had rolled up into his head and he had fainted, which was probably the best thing that could have happened to him.

To change the subject, she said, “There was another time you woke up and didn't know where you were?”

“Oh, yes. Well, the other time it happened—waking up and not knowing where I was—you know where I was?”

“No.”

“In the hospital!”

“Was that when you fell off the barn and broke both your legs?”

“Yes! And I was just lying there with my eyes shut and, Mary, when I was little I used to be able to see through my eyelids. I really could do it. Nobody believes me but I could. One time our teacher told us to close our eyes so we could pretend something and I closed mine and through my eyelids I saw her adjust her brassiere. That really happened.”

“I believe you.”

“Anyway, this time I couldn't see through my eyelids and all I knew was that I was somewhere I really and truly didn't want to be!”

“I imagine that was scary.”

“I told you.” Junior nodded wisely. “It's the scariest thing in the whole world.”

As Mary relived that conversation, she knew a deep kinship with Junior. Tears squeezed through her closed eyelids.

As usual, Junior had spoken the truth that day. Waking up and not knowing where you are is the scariest thing that can happen to a person. She knew it for a fact, because now it had happened to her.

She knew three things about this place even without opening her eyes. It was somewhere she had never been before in her life. It was somewhere she had never wanted to be. It was somewhere she wanted to get out of.

She tried to raise her hand to her face. She felt so strange—all the strange sounds, strange smells, strange surroundings made her want to feel her features and make sure they were the same.

Her hands wouldn't raise. They were tied. She was tied down! Wherever she was, someone had tied her down so she couldn't get out.

Mad Mary couldn't put it off any longer. Mad

Mary decided to open her eyes.

“I'll never give it up. Never! Never Never!”

Pap said gently, “Can't you forgive the dog, Junior?”

Junior shook his head.

“Will you do it for me? For Pap?”

Again Junior shook his head.

“We don't know that he did it,” Pap argued gently. “We'll probably never know for sure.”

“We could cut him open with a butcher knife,” Junior suggested.

Junior was still on his knees, glaring into the depths under the house. He had Mud's bandanna wrapped around his wrist.

“Junior, if we get another hamster that looks exactly like Scooty, will you forgive Mud?” Maggie asked from the steps.