by Han Nolan
I got up from my desk and headed back downstairs to the kitchen, thinking that he probably would say that he had no intention of writing a play for me and that would let me off the hook, too. Why should I write a play for an old penguin who calls me lazy and stupid, anyway?
I could hear Dad and Monsieur Vichy talking, and I heard my name. I tiptoed around to the other entrance, going through the butler's pantry to listen at the swinging door there.
"... always baiting her. I don't like it, Henri." Dad pounded the stovetop for emphasis, something he did often. It scared people until they got used to his flaring tempers.
"But it will be good for her, non? You need to keep a young fille like your Esther busy or she will get into trouble, I know."
"She'll get frustrated and angry with herself. She can't write a play. She needs to be busy in sports. She can play ball. You should have challenged her in something that she could succeed in."
"But we were not talking ball; we were talking plays. She has insulted my play. It happened naturellement. What could I do?"
"You didn't have to sink to her level."
Mother and Dad must have discussed this sinking-to-my-level thing before, since it seemed to be their catchphrase for other people's behavior when they interacted with me, and I didn't like it. And the whole play-ball thing just sent me through the roof. That's all anyone thought I could do. "You'll make a nice gym teacher someday," my mother has said to me smugly, time and again, thinking she had put me in my future place all neat and tidy. She wasn't going to worry about me. I would play ball the rest of my ball-bouncing life!
The sad truth was, I wasn't all that good at ball sports. I was just better at it than I was at just about anything else. I mean, I could kick a ball or hit it with a bat or occasionally sink it in a basket, but I was no great athlete like Babe Didrickson.
Listening to my father explaining to Monsieur Vichy how I could never write a play made me feel so low I wanted to just curl up in a ball and let someone use me for basketball practice. I didn't want to hear any more of their discussion, so I swallowed hard, stood up straight, and pushed through the swinging door of the butler's pantry, and entered the kitchen.
"Hey," I said, glaring at Monsieur Vichy, my voice louder than I intended and the swinging door making a thwunk, thwunk sound behind me. I knew I had startled them both, and I was glad.
I said, "If I'm going to write a play, then you'll have to write one, too. And with a plot for a change. A real plot, not your whacked-out weirdo intellectual stuff, but a real plot. Okay?"
I waited for Monsieur Vichy's protest. I waited for him to talk his and my way out of this whole deal. I saw him glance up at my father and wink. Then he looked at me and said, "Mais bien sûr, but of course. I will write my play with a plot, as you say, and you will write yours. We shall shake on it, non?" He held out his sweaty, pasty hand for me to shake.
I stuck my hand out and shook his with one quick shake, then I let go and rubbed my hand on my shorts.
"And the due date will be?" he said.
"Um." I hesitated, wondering how I had managed to dig myself into it even deeper than before. How could I not write a play if he was going to write one? It would be like cheating. "How about the last week in August?" I said, finally. "Rough draft," I added, hoping that he wouldn't hold me to my previous claim of being able to produce a final draft in a little over two months.
"Très bien. It's a deal, as you say." Monsieur nodded, removed his cigar from his mouth, and spit into his candy tin. And with that, the deal was sealed.
ELEVEN
Back up in my room, I decided to climb into bed, prop myself up with my pillows, and work on my play all night. Since I didn't know what King-Roy had planned to do with the gun he'd pulled out of the trash, I figured I had better stay up and listen, in case he decided to shoot everybody in their sleep. Not that I thought he really would, but if he did, it would be my fault and I couldn't live with a murder rampage on my conscience. I thought I would listen for his door creaking open or his footsteps in the hallway and scream bloody murder and wake the household up if I heard anything.
That was my plan, to stay up all night, but I must have fallen asleep, because I found myself waking up to the sound of birds outside my window and the weight of something heavy pressed against my back. I opened my eyes. Someone was sleeping on my bed with me. King-Roy Johnson's face flashed into my mind, and I sprang from my bed and spun around and shouted, "Aha!"
Pip lifted his head up from my bed and said, "Wha—?" "Pip, what are you doing here?" I asked, relieved that it was just Pip.
He sat up on his elbows and said, "You people never lock your doors at night."
"That's because we don't have any keys. But Pip, what are you doing here?"
Pip pointed to the front of his track-team T-shirt and said, "Training for cross-country, remember? You said you'd train with me. Or is that off, too, now that we're fighting?"
I smacked my head. "I forgot all about that. What time is it?"
Pip sat up and yawned. Then, looking at his watch, he said, "Five fifteen; we're fifteen minutes late for the first day of training. I wrote up a schedule; you want to see it?" Pip reached back into the waistband of his shorts and pulled out a sheet of paper.
"Wait a minute and let me get dressed first." I ducked into my closet and pulled the string above my head for some light. I searched on the floor for some loose-fitting shorts and a bra and a T-shirt and put them on. While I dressed in the closet, I said, "Hey, Pip, I'm sorry about yesterday. That was stupid—really stupid. What I said came out all wrong and I'm sorry."
I had hoped that he would apologize, too, and say that the boys at school really didn't make fun of me and my hair, but he didn't.
All he said was "Yeah, it was stupid," and the way he said it made me think he hadn't even heard me.
I stepped out of the closet and saw Pip reading from my notebook the one sentence I had managed to write for my play. When he saw me he smiled, then read the sentence out loud.
"As the curtain rises on a dimly lit stage, there is the distant sound of the ocean." He looked up. "What's this?"
"I really stuck my foot in it this time," I said. "I told Monsieur Vichy how even I could write a play better than his silly stuff, and now I have to write one to prove it. You know I've always loved the sound of waves crashing. What do you think?"
He looked at me sitting on the floor putting on my socks and sneakers and said, "What comes next?"
"I don't know. I can't think of anything except waves. You're good at writing," I said, standing up and making sure I had on the same shoes. One time I went to school with two different shoes on by mistake, and my homeroom teacher kept me after school for two days because, she said, I was trying to be a smart aleck, and she didn't care for class clowns.
"You could help me write a play, couldn't you, Pip?"
Pip set my notebook back down on my desk and said, "I don't write fiction; I write letters. I don't make things up, and anyway" —he turned around and looked straight at me— "I thought you didn't want me around this summer."
I sighed, pulled the rubber band I wore off my wrist, and grabbed my hair into a ponytail. "Pip, if you were listening, you would have heard me. I said I'm sorry about yesterday. I didn't mean what I said. I do want you around. I always want you around. It's just—well, I want something this summer. I don't know what it is. I want to feel something—something different." I wound the rubber band around one more time to make the ponytail extra tight and headed for the door.
Pip shoved his glasses up on his nose. "You really want me around, then?" he asked, following me to the door.
I smiled at him. "I need you, Pip. I have something I want to tell you—about King-Roy."
"Oh, King-Roy. So what's this killer like, anyway?"
"I'll tell you outside while we're running," I said, whispering since we had stepped out into the hallway.
Once outside, we stood together beneath the porch li
ght, and Pip pulled his running schedule out of the waistband of his shorts. He unfolded the piece of paper and said, "My New Zealand pen pal wrote me about this incredible coach they have there. This coach trained Peter Snell and Murray Halberg."
Pip had pen pals all over the world. He collected them the way other people collected stamps. He loved letter writing, and he loved having friends from so many different countries. They were always telling him about the latest and greatest things going on in their countries and Pip would tell them about President Kennedy and life in these United States as he saw it.
When he said the names Peter Snell and Murray Halberg, Pip's eyes flashed owllike at me, as if this were the greatest news he'd ever shared with me.
"Who are they?" I asked.
Pip's eyes got even wider. "Who are they? They're only the two nineteen sixty Olympic gold medalists in track. Look at this." Pip handed me his schedule. "I plan to run fifty miles a week."
"Fifty miles! What for? You only race two or three miles, don't you?"
Pip nodded. "That's the beauty of this plan. You run big miles, like fourteen miles in one run." He pointed to week six of his training schedule, where he had placed fourteen miles beneath the word Saturday. "You get faster by running longer. My pen pal Leslie now runs faster than I do, and he used to be slower. This is his exact schedule. Just think. I might be able to beat out Pete Finny next fall."
I looked at Pip's dreamy expression. "I can't run that, can I?" I asked him.
Pip blinked. "You don't have to. You can run the first two or three miles and get me started, and I'll run the rest. I build up to it. See?"
He showed me his schedule again, and I saw that his longest runs in the first week were four miles long. The second week they jumped to six, the third week they jumped to eight miles and so on, up to fourteen miles by week six. I said, "If you're going to do it, then I'm going to do it, too."
Pip's mouth dropped open. He said, "But you can't. You just said you couldn't, and anyway, girls can't run too long or their plumbing will fall out."
"Our plumbing?"
Pip's face turned red. "You know, your ... your uterus. It falls out. Isn't that why girls can't run? That's why girls don't have a track team, isn't it?"
I was laughing and pointing at Pip. "You should see your face. You look so embarrassed. Our plumbing!"
Pip didn't join in. He had on his serious face, which somehow always made his glasses look way too big for his head. "But isn't that true? It will fall out?"
I stopped laughing. "If you're running fourteen miles, then I'm running them, too."
"But what's the point? You can't use it for anything." He folded up his schedule. "I shouldn't have shown you this. I should have just run on my own. Now it'll be my fault if you lose your, you know, uterus and can't have a baby."
"A baby! Who wants a baby? I'm fourteen, for Pete's sake."
Pip ran his hand through his hair, making it stand up on top. "We're going to want a baby someday, aren't we? I mean, aren't we?"
"Pip!" I said, turning away from him, then turning back.
"Well, aren't we?"
"You never give up. I'm not marrying you. It would be like marrying my brother."
"Well, I'm not your brother." Pip turned and ran down the porch steps, out toward the polar bear rock and the woods beyond.
I ran after him. "Pip, wait."
"I suppose you're going to marry the killer, then, huh?" he shouted back over his shoulder.
"Pip!" I ran as fast as I could to catch up with him, so I was panting hard when I said, "I wanted to talk to you about him. About King-Roy."
Pip slowed down. "What about him," he said with anger in his voice.
"I don't know if he's wonderful or scary or what." We were almost to the woods, and I could smell the pines and the clean moist smell of the bark and new leaves on the maples and poplars.
"So what's so wonderful about him?" Pip asked, slowing down even more, so that we could hold a conversation while we ran.
"I didn't say he was wonderful. I said he might be. I don't know. I think he understands me. We understand each other, or, well, he talks to me. He talks to me like a grown-up, not like a child."
Pip brushed past a bush, and I followed behind for a second until we had entered the woods and were on the path leading to the big and little ponds. "I know you better than anybody," Pip said, the pitch of his voice rising. "I understand you. I talk to you. What can he know in one day?"
"It's just, I don't know. There's something in him—we're alike, I think. We're like two peas in a pod."
Pip picked up his speed again and I stayed with him, keeping my eye out for roots and rocks along the path so that I wouldn't trip over them.
Pip asked, "How are you alike, exactly?"
"Oh, Pip, I don't know. We've both had struggles with school and reading and all that. You know, when I stayed back."
"When you stayed back? What kind of thing is that to build a relationship on? That's history, anyway. That happened a long time ago. You're a great student now, and you're smart, too."
"I'm okay. I'm just an okay student." We were on a steep hill that led up and around a boulder, then down toward the big pond. I was in front, which I knew Pip hated because he said he couldn't see around me, so I slowed down and let him pass.
As Pip caught up, then ran by me, he said, "Maybe compared to a genius you're just okay, but you're smart, Esther. You practically make straight A's every year, and you're wise. Stewart and Sophia aren't wise. If you ask me, that Sophia's going to end up in a nuthouse one day, and Stewart's going to be a ballerina no matter how hard your parents try to shove him into musicals instead."
"Auntie Pie says I'm already crazy. She calls me the white tornado." I caught up with Pip again, where the path widened, and we ran side by side.
"You're the only sane one in your family, Esther. Don't you know that?"
I glanced at Pip. His glasses had slid down to the end of his nose. "You're blinded by love, Pip," I said, "and anyway, that's what's so great about King-Roy." Pip had picked up his speed so that we were almost racing when we got to the pond.
Pip waited until we had reached the tag boulder, a large rock that the winner around the pond had to tag first in order to claim the win, and then he said, panting, "What? What's so great?"
I tagged the boulder and kept running, and Pip followed.
I said, "It's our history. You say it's old news, my staying back in school, but it's not to me, and King-Roy gets that. He understands. I live with staying back every day—in school, with all the kids in my old grade looking down on me and calling me stupid, and at home, with Mother making me take summer lessons, or now giving up on me and telling me I'm going to be a gym teacher."
"Gym teachers are smart. I might want to be a gym teacher someday, maybe," Pip said.
I swatted Pip. "No you won't. You're going to work for the United Nations or that new Peace Corps thing President Kennedy started. You said so, remember?"
"I can be a gym teacher, too, if I want," Pip said, "and anyway, if you think you and King-Roy share a history, then maybe you are crazy. Don't you know what's going on down there in the South? Just last month little kids were getting torn apart by dogs and sprayed with fire hoses all because Negroes want the right to vote and eat in restaurants. Believe me, you don't share any history with a Negro."
I clicked my teeth. "You just don't get it, Pip," I said. I felt irritated with him. I hated it when he got logical on me. I knew what I meant, and I didn't want to have to try to explain it to Pip. I picked up my pace and tried to run ahead, but Pip picked up his and stayed right there with me. I sped up some more and so did Pip until we were all-out racing again, up and down and around through the woods, crossing over our property boundary to the little pond, around the pond and back through the woods, taking a different path toward home. We ran neck and neck, shoulder to shoulder, until I jammed my foot into a root and went flying. When I landed, I skidded along the grou
nd for a couple of feet and finally stopped. I lay still for a few seconds, breathing hard and taking note of what hurt. My hands, elbows, hip bones, and knees burned and stung, my left shoulder ached; and my nose was running or bleeding, I didn't know which.
Pip knelt down beside me and touched my head. He always had the lightest, gentlest touch. "Are you okay, Esther?" he asked, panting near my ear. I could feel the heat of his body above me.
I rolled over, wiping my nose as I rolled, to see if it was bleeding. It wasn't. I sniffed. "I'm okay."
"What hurts?" Pip asked, looking down at my bloody knees.
"Everything," I said. I sat up and lifted my arms to show him my hands and elbows. "Everything hurts."
"That was dumb of us," Pip said, sitting back on his legs. "We weren't even halfway through today's run and we were racing. From now on, no more racing."
"Sorry," I said. I started to get up but Pip held me back. "Just sit there a minute, why don't you."
I sat back down. "You said yourself that we still had more than half the run left. I don't want to get cold."
"You can take it easy just for a second," Pip said, taking my hands in his and turning them palms up to look at them. They were bright red and smudged with dirt, but the skin wasn't torn.
Then out of the clear blue sky he said, "What's scary?"
I took my hands back. "Huh?"
"You said King-Roy was scary, too. What's so scary about him?"
I brought my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. I could smell the blood and dirt embedded in them. It smelled like rust.
I lowered my voice as though I thought King-Roy might be hiding behind a tree and said, "He brought a gun with him. He's got a gun."
"A gun!" Pip sprang back, falling off his knees as though I were holding the gun on him right at that moment. "Do your parents know?"