William S. and the Great Escape (15 page)

“They told me all four of you had disappeared several days before and nobody had seen you since, and they were sure that you must have come here. But of course you weren't here, and I hadn't heard a word from you. But when I tried to tell them so, they wouldn't believe me. They insisted on going through the whole house, looking in all the closets and under beds and even in cupboards, before they finally gave up and went away.” She sighed again, grabbed Buddy, and picked him up—a stiff, startled-looking Buddy—and hugged him hard as
she asked William, “Where
have
you been all this time?”

“We were on our way here,” William started to explain, “but we kind of stopped off for a few days at a … well, at a friend's house, and …”

“But couldn't you have phoned?” Aunt Fiona frowned at William and then at Jancy. Buddy was pushing her arms away, struggling to get down. “I've been so worried since I heard you were missing. I've been imagining all sorts of terrible things that might have happened to you.”

“I guess we could have phoned,” William said. “We should have, but we didn't know your phone number. And besides …” He paused, wondering if it would be all right to say what he was thinking, but then Jancy interrupted and said it for him.

Jancy flat-out told Aunt Fiona, “We were afraid that if we did, you'd tell us not to come.” Tears were flooding Jancy's big eyes, and her chin was beginning to quiver as she went on, “And we didn't have anywhere else in the whole world to go.”

For a moment Aunt Fiona stared from Jancy to William and back again, before she put Buddy down and grabbed them both at once and hugged them. And it was right then, with Aunt Fiona's arms around him and Jancy, that William began to let himself start to believe, just a little bit, that maybe this running-away thing might turn out all right after all. Still a pretty big maybe, because of the Baggett problem—the possibility
a bunch of Baggetts might show up again at any moment to take them back. But there would be time to worry about that later.

Right at the moment all he could think was how completely different everything seemed now that he'd met Aunt Fiona and was beginning to understand what she was really like. And to see how her old house with its shiny wood floors and good-smelling kitchen looked, smelled, and just plain felt so different from any of the places he'd ever lived as a Baggett.

“
O brave new world,/that has such people in't
,” William found himself thinking, one of his favorite lines from
The Tempest
, but one that, up until that moment, he'd never found much use for.

But now Aunt Fiona was saying to them, “Well, and so here you are, and I'm so glad to really meet both of you, at last.” She took a deep breath and shook her head slowly from side to side before she went on. “There's so much to talk about and make plans for, but I guess what we should do first and foremost is decide what we can do about dinner, and where you all are going to sleep tonight, and—”

“We won't take up a lot of room,” Jancy said quickly.

“No, we won't at all.” Trixie was bouncing up and down again and doing her dimpled smile. “At Clarice's house, Buddy and me slept in just one little old cot, and we didn't even kick each other. Not very much, anyway.”

And then Buddy got into the act by announcing proudly, “And I didn't wet the bed, either. Not even once.” Which for some reason made Aunt Fiona pick him up and hug him again.

“I just can't believe you,” she told him. “You've gotten to be so big, and you're talking like a grownup. You're not my little baby anymore, are you?” She kind of nuzzled her face against Buddy's neck. “Don't you remember when you were my baby, Buddy?”

“No.” Buddy shook his head solemnly. “I don't remember.” But he had stopped pushing her away and trying to get down. Instead he put one arm around Aunt Fiona's neck and said, “I don't remember, but maybe I'm going to.”

So then Aunt Fiona got out some pasta and sausages and added them to the good-smelling stuff that she was already cooking. And all the time she was cooking and setting the table for four more people, and later, when they were eating, she was talking and asking questions.

While they were still at the table, they told her about how they'd hidden in the basement at the Ogdens' house, and how Clarice had scared them into staying longer when they wanted to leave, by saying the police were looking for them, when they really weren't.

And when Aunt Fiona wondered why Clarice had done that, William quickly said, “I think it was just because she's a lonely person and she liked having some
people around to talk to for a change.” Then he frowned at Jancy and said firmly, “That's what I think, anyway.” Jancy got the message. She grinned slightly and ducked her head, but she kept her mouth shut.

It wasn't until later that evening, after the little kids had been put to bed, that Auntie—she'd said they could call her Auntie when they felt like it—began to tell William and Jancy about the day Ed Baggett came and took Buddy and Trixie away.

“It was the worst day of my life,” she told them. Her lips were quivering as she went on, “I'd had those two beautiful babies since right after Laura, your mother, died. Ever since Buddy was just a week old, and Trixie was only a toddler. I'd really come to think of them as my own. I never imagined for a minute that Ed would ever want them back, and then …” She stopped, shaking her head and biting her lip for a long moment, before she went on. “I never liked Ed Baggett. I had always been so terribly sorry Laura married him. But on that day I hated that man so much….”

She sighed and stopped again, and then Jancy brought up something that William had wondered about for a long time. Like always, Jancy was good at saying straight out what she was thinking about. “I wonder why our mama married Big Ed. I was only six when she died, but I remember her pretty well. She was always good to us, or at least she tried to be, except sometimes when Big Ed
was around, and she could only do just what he told her to.” Jancy shook her head and sighed. “I guess she was afraid of him, like everybody else.”

“I know. I've always wondered too,” Auntie said. “It's a complicated story. After Laura graduated from high school, she went to live with some cousins of ours in Crownfield, because the junior college there had such a good drama department. Laura was such a pretty girl, and she'd always wanted to be an actress.”

Jancy looked at William with raised eyebrows, and guessing what the eyebrows were suggesting, he grinned back at her and nodded—a nod that meant something about acting talent and where it might have come from.

But Aunt Fiona went right on. “I guess you know that the Crownfield schools have always had exceptional drama departments. Anyway, Laura was going to the college, but she was also doing some community service helping out families who were having difficulties, and somehow she got acquainted with Mabel Baggett. You know, Ed Baggett's first wife—the mother of the first six kids. The oldest one was—”

“Little Ed,” Jancy offered.

Auntie nodded. “Yes. Ed Junior was only about six years old, and there were three others before the twins, who were still infants when Mabel Baggett started having some kind of a nervous breakdown. She'd gotten to the point where she couldn't begin to take care of all those
children, and Laura started helping her out. Laura always loved babies.”

It was William's turn to raise an eyebrow and nod at Jancy. A nod that this time meant that being crazy about all sorts of little things might have come from the same place.

“And then Mabel Baggett disappeared. Left all her children, as well as Big Ed, and ran away back to wherever it was she came from.”

“Didn't Big Ed even go look for her?” William asked.

“Yes. Laura said he did. At least he went off for several months, and Laura took care of the children while he was gone. But when he came back, Mabel wasn't with him, and he said he'd gotten a divorce. Laura had finished her second year at the junior college by then, and she just went on taking care of the kids for several more months, when for some reason she decided to marry Ed Baggett. Our father was still alive at that time, and both he and I tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn't listen.” Auntie shook her head and sighed. “And then you were born, William, and then Jancy.”

“Did you ever go to see her?” Jancy asked.

“I tried,” Auntie said. “But Ed made it clear that I wasn't welcome. I guess he knew what my father and I thought of him, and it made him angry. And when he was angry, he took it out on Laura.”

The three of them sat there staring at each other for another minute or two before Aunt Fiona stood up and said, “It's late, and I know you must be very tired. Tomorrow we'll need to start making all sorts of plans, but in the meantime let's all go to bed.”

And so they did, with Jancy and Trixie sharing one twin bed in what Aunt Fiona called her guest room, while Buddy had the other all to himself.

And William S. Baggett had a deep bath in a clawfoot bathtub and then went to bed in a small corner room that had been his mother's when she was a little girl. A room with a braided rug on a shiny wood floor, and snow-white curtains on the windows.

E
ven though Gold Beach wasn't quite as hot as Crownfield, it wasn't exactly cool in William's room that night. But then a breeze began to breathe through the open windows. Only a gentle, silent sigh, but enough to move the moonlit curtains in and out.

Stretched out on the clean, soft bed, William watched the drifting curtains and tried not to think too much about how good it all looked and felt—just in case. In case it didn't last, and he'd wake up to find himself back on the floor of a hot, smelly attic in a house full of Baggetts. Back there, where a clean, soft bed would be only a thing to dream about. To dream, and then wake up and say, like Caliban did in act three, “
when I waked,/I cried to dream again
.”

The next morning, when his internal seven-thirty alarm went off, he awoke to the smell of coffee and bacon and hurried downstairs. And it was then, while he was helping Aunt Fiona with breakfast and the other kids weren't yet awake, the two of them started to face
up to the Ed Baggett problem, and what might happen if he showed up again.

At first Aunt Fiona said she thought he just might not. “I really do believe that when he was here on Thursday, he went away convinced that I was telling the truth— that you kids weren't here and that I hadn't even known about your disappearance. Of course, he didn't bother to apologize for the three of them stomping around my house in their dirty boots, looking through all my closets and cupboards. But he did say something about how he'd guessed wrong, and he'd have to guess again.”

“Did he say anything about the police?” William asked. “Like whether the police were looking for us?”

Aunt Fiona shook her head. “No. Not a thing.” She stopped setting the table and just stood there for a long minute, biting her lip and shaking her head before she said, “He didn't say anything about having reported you missing to anybody. Actually, I really doubt if he had. Not at that point, at any rate.”

William agreed. “Yeah. He probably thought he didn't need to, because he knew where we were, and he didn't need to hurry to come here and get us back. As long as it was before Mrs. Montgomery showed up again.”

“Mrs. Montgomery?” Aunt Fiona asked.

William grinned ruefully. “She's the social worker who comes to check on how many kids need New Deal money.”

Then too, there was that other reason William could believe that Big Ed had never reported them missing. That was how sure he now was that Clarice had made up all that stuff about police cars and posters. Made it all up, just to keep him—keep all four of them, that is—from trying to catch the bus for Gold Beach.

There was also the fact that if you knew anything at all about Big Ed, you'd know he absolutely never talked to policemen, except when they started it.

But still, when his aunt said, “So maybe, if we're lucky, we've seen the last of Ed Baggett,” William felt he had to tell her that he did have one kind of scary reason to believe they probably weren't going to be that lucky.

What he had to say was, “Well, maybe, but the thing is, I think there was a guy on the bus yesterday who used to hang around with Rudy and Little Ed. One of their deadbeat friends, who's been to the house at least once. I think he probably recognized all of us, especially Buddy. Buddy said he teased him and kind of hurt him. On the bus the guy stared at us, but he didn't say anything. And then he got off in Summerford.”

“Oh dear.” Aunt Fiona had a way of pressing her open right hand against her cheek when she was worried, and she was doing that now. “So you're thinking that he'll tell them that he saw you on your way here, but not until yesterday. Not until after they'd already been here looking for you. Oh dear.”

Watching how worried and frightened she was looking, William had a sinking feeling that she was going to say they couldn't stay after all. That she just couldn't face having Ed Baggett come stomping back into her house and find his kids here, after all. But then she took a deep breath and said, “Well, I guess we'd better start thinking of a way to handle things if and when they show up again.” She smiled and then sighed. “Like finding a foolproof hiding place where we can put all four of you and make everything look as if you were never here.”

William was amazed. What popped into his mind at that moment was, once again, the “
brave new world
” quote, but all he said was, “Yeah, that's a good idea. Do you think we can?”

They started working on finding a hiding place that same morning. Jancy helped, but the little kids, who were trying to do pick-up sticks on the kitchen table, weren't in on it at all.