When Ratboy Lived Next Door (16 page)

He brightened up again. I was turning to the reference section, when who should I see standing there but Mrs. Green. I was scared she'd say something embarrassing, but she just gave me a big wink and went on replacing books on the shelf.

Willis decided on a book about insects, with lots of pictures. Then we went to the front desk.

Mrs. Green came over and said, “Good morning, Lydia!”

“Morning,” I mumbled. This was the part I dreaded.

She held out her hand to Willis and said, “And good morning to you! I'm Mrs. Green.”

She squeezed Willis's hand and he was too surprised to pull back.

“And what is your name, young man?”

“Willis.”

“Oh! You must be Willis Merrill! I remember when you moved into town, and I'll bet you'll never guess how I remember such a thing.”

“No, I guess not.”

“I remember because I heard you had a pet raccoon and I said to myself, How interesting! How exotic! I've never had such an unusual pet. Now cats, oh, I have cats coming out my ears! And two dogs and a pet hamster in the summer. You see, my sister's a teacher and they keep a hamster in their classroom, but she travels in the summertime so I keep Recess for her. Recess is the hamster's name. They had a contest in her class and that's the name that won. Isn't that a cute name?”

“Uh, yes, Miz Green,” I said, hoping she'd stop her yammering.

“Tell me, Willis, what is your raccoon's name?”

“Zorro.”

“Zorro? How perfect! Oh, what a clever boy you are to name your masked pet after a masked crusader.”

Willis actually seemed to stand a little straighter. He didn't smile, but his expression softened into one that didn't spell trouble.

“Listen to me rattle on! Now, which one of you is checking this book out?”

“I'm the only one with a library card, Miz Green,” I said.

“Well! We can't have that!” She whisked the cover off her typewriter and sat down, rolling a card into the machine. “You both need library cards! Willis, tell me your address.”

Willis's head shot toward me as if he wasn't sure what to do.

I mouthed the words “It's okay.”

And for the second time since I'd known Willis, he looked really happy.

*   *   *

“So I get to keep this?”

“Yes, Willis,” I said for the hundredth time. “It's your card. You can check books out of the library all by yourself.”

“And they won't ask me if I can read 'em?”

“They don't care if you can read. They just care that you bring the books back two weeks later, okay?”

We were close to the Oasis when he said, “Can I stop at the restaurant and show Elliot?”

“You can show Elliot. You can show the Pope. You can even show President John F. Kennedy. I don't care!”

“No, I think I'll just show Elliot.”

He said goodbye and shot into the Oasis. As much as I would have liked to see Elliot, I was glad for the break from Willis.

I walked home to get my bike. I didn't know where I was going, but I was feeling restless and wanted the wind to blow all thoughts out of my mind.

There are only so many roads you can travel in Maywood. After a while I ended up downtown and saw Mrs. Merrill and Beth come out of the Laundromat.

“Hey, Beth! Hey, Mrs. Merrill! Doing some laundry?”

“No, no laundry.”

“Mama wrote lots of words and put them on the wall in here. Want to come see?” Beth pulled on my hand.

“Sure I do.” I didn't know what she was talking about, but I wanted to be polite. I let Beth lead me inside.

Mrs. Merrill pushed her bangs off her face, looking flustered. “I just hung a little sign up to let folks know I'm doing hair now. At my house. While Boyd's at work. A little part-time job, you might say.”

The sign gave directions to her house and said that the cost was whatever you wanted to pay. It also said Mrs. Merrill did hair only in the mornings.

“Wow! Ain't that something! And to think Nanna was your first customer.”

Mrs. Merrill turned her face in that shy way she had.

“I didn't know you could get a beautician's license here in Maywood.”

“Oh! You can't!” she said. “I'm not a real beautician at all. That's why I can't charge a set price. Without a license, I can only take what people offer me.”

“I didn't know,” I said.

“It's real important that you don't tell anyone I'm a beautician, Lydia. I'm just—” She stopped for a minute. “I'm just doing this on the quiet. To earn a little extra money.”

“Well, I won't tell anyone about it,” I said, wishing I hadn't said anything at all. Why was she doing it if it was such a big secret?

She seemed satisfied with my answer, though.

“Beth, come along,” she said. “We have to get home.”

I said goodbye and hopped back on my bike. I turned right at the library and heard someone call my name, but I didn't see anybody. It was probably Bobby Wayans. He lived a block away.

“Is that you, Bobby?”

“Nah, it ain't nobody but me, Lydia. Look up.”

I did, and there stood Willis on the roof of Esther's Dry Goods.

“Willis Merrill! What do you think you're doin'?”

“Come up and I'll show ya.”

“How do I do that? There's no ladder that I can see.”

From Main Street, the building was three stories high, but the roof stair-stepped to the second story. There was a room added on next to the alley, which was one story high. Willis was on the second story. He jumped to the first.

I yelled, “No!” thinking he'd break his danged neck, but he only jumped onto an upside-down burn barrel. Then he ran to the edge of the first story. Next to it was a telephone pole with metal spikes driven into the side for repairmen to climb. Willis took a leap from the building onto the pole and climbed as far down as the spikes allowed, then dropped to the ground.

He was so proud of himself, and I could tell he wanted me to be, too, but I said, “Do you realize how dangerous that is? You could have broken your neck.”

“But I didn't. Come on!”

“I'm not climbing up there.”

“Climbing up is the easy part.”

“I
know
that. But I'd have to swing like an ape to get down!”

“What if I made it easier to get down?”

Sometimes I wondered why I'd taken on this project of giving Willis “special handling.” Being around him was so tiring.

“How about you just tell me what it's like up there. And why you were up there to begin with.”

But he had already moved down the alley. He came back with two old busted-up crates that he stacked next to the building. Then came an old tire that he propped on top of them. Together they reached almost to the first roof.

“There! You can climb up the pole, but when it's time to come down, you can swing over the side, land on the tire and climb down the crates.”

“It looks awful rickety,” I said, even as I parked my bike. Being bored can have a strange effect on you. It gradually seemed like an okay thing to do—till I got to the telephone pole, that is.

“The spikes are too high. I can't reach.”

Willis suddenly grabbed me under the arms to lift me. “Ahh!” I yelled in surprise.

I lost my balance and my arms flew around in the air. I finally grabbed Willis's head. He couldn't see, so we staggered into the alley, where we both tumbled down.

“Dang it, Willis!” I lay there panting, but he was already up brushing himself off.

“Next time tell a person if you're going to grab them, for heaven's sake!”

He blinked and said, “Okay.”

“You scared me to death, you know.”

“Okay. You ready to climb up now?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“I'm gonna grab you now.”

“Okay, okay. Sheesh.”

This time I was ready and easily grabbed the spike. I climbed up the pole and jumped onto the first floor, with Willis right after me. He leaped onto the overturned burn barrel and reached a hand down for me. That's when I realized that I had yelled at him and this time he hadn't fought back.

Maybe being around him wasn't
all
that tiring.

*   *   *

We were on our stomachs looking over the edge of the building, which wasn't too comfortable, it being a tarred roof and all. I didn't complain, though, because Willis was enjoying it so much.

“Ain't it somethin' up here?”

“Yeah, it's pretty. You can see a lot of the town.”

“Right below us is an apartment. See that door over there?” He pointed to what looked like a shed built right on top of the roof.

“What's the shed for?” I asked.

“Ain't no shed. You go through its door into the apartment. Wouldn't it be somethin' to live there? You could just walk out onto the roof whenever you pleased.”

It made me nervous that we were on private property. “Maybe the folks who live here wouldn't like us being on their roof.”

“Door's locked and they've never come out before. Probably aren't even home.”

He rolled back over onto his stomach. “It feels safe up here—like nobody can hurt you.”

“Like on your roof at home?”

“Yeah. How'd you know about that?”

“I saw you one night. I've been wondering about it ever since.”

“Does your pa drink alcohol, Lydia?”

“Daddy? No.”

“Elliot says it makes good men act bad. He says it makes bad men act crazy. Like I said, alone on a roof, nobody can hurt you.”

It bothered me to think that Willis had a daddy who could hurt him.

Before I could say anything, he said, “Does this town have fireworks on the Fourth of July? 'Cause this'll be a great spot to watch them from.”

“No, everybody goes to Aylesville. They have a parade and a little carnival. It's a lot of fun.”

“Oh.” He looked disappointed. “Well, forget that. Look yonder. I can see right over the library roof onto the Laundromat wall. I reckon I got the best seat in town for the Free Show. Hey, Lydia, you want to watch the movie up here with me next Friday?”

“Well, maybe for part of it. It is a good view, but don't you want to be with the other kids?”

He grunted and pointed to a gash on his arm. “So's I can get more of these? No thanks.”

“Gee whiz, Willis! Did you get that when we fell just now?”

“Nah, ran into some boys. They was throwing rocks at me. That's why I was up here. It's my secret hiding place.”

He grinned, but I didn't think it was funny. “That's awful. I didn't know the other kids were trying to hurt you.”

“It's the same ol' thing. Happens everywhere we move. Being my friend is just fine till school starts. Once they find out I ain't all that smart, they don't want nothin' to do with me.”

I sat up and picked little pebbles off the roof, tossing them to the ground below. “You talking about Bobby Wayans? He's not worth worrying about.”

“Ain't just him. It's all them boys. Now that the school put me in Special Ed, they call me names, chase me and stuff.”

“What kind of names?”

“Oh, you know, ‘retard,' stuff like that.”

A lump was building in my stomach. I tied my shoe to give me someplace to look other than at him. Before, I would have said he deserved it. Heck, I might even have cheered those boys on. And I'd called him a name, too—Ratboy. It hurt too much to think about that.

“You know, they probably wouldn't have put you in Special Ed if you had just told them you had trouble reading. If you'd been nice to the principal instead of spitting in his face, they might've just held you back in sixth grade next year.”

“Ah, I don't think Special Ed is gonna be so bad. Nobody made fun of me. And the teacher? Mrs. Russell? She's right nice. She told me that my eyes don't see words like other folks' do. She said we'll work together, me and her, to get me readin'. She said I wasn't made like most people and that made me special. Hah! How about that?”

The lump was in my throat now, so I didn't answer him.

“The way I figure it,” he went on, “those boys who poke fun at a person for being in Special Ed got it all wrong. They just think I'm different. They skip clear over the ‘special' part.”

15

I rode toward home thinking about what Willis's life was like. It made my chest feel tight. I wondered if that was how Elliot felt when he heard me making fun of Willis. No wonder Elliot had stopped being my friend.

I rode past Mother's newspaper shop. I needed to be around someone who would be nice to me. I turned at the post office, thinking I'd head back toward Daddy's gas station, when I realized I hadn't gotten the mail for the past three days.

When I pulled it out of the post office box, right there on top I saw an envelope with tiny, curlicue writing and knew right away it was from Nanna. I was so excited I tore it open in the post office.

June 28, 1962

Dear Lydia,

I was so glad to receive your letter. Meant to write you sooner but Louise talks all the time and there is always something keeping me from doing what I want.

As for the buttermilk cookies, am glad you like them but left all my recipes there. Had a feeling Evelyn would need them. Don't know if the recipe is in the tin or stuck in one of the cookbooks. Afraid I'm not much help but you can find it if you look.

Am glad Carolyn is doing well, although was worried when you wrote of her husband's arrest. I do wish you'd written more about it, as it alarmed me so.

Hope you are well, too, Lydia. I miss you and your parents. Louise talks more than the three of you put together. It's funny how you forget things over time. She always was a talker.