by Betsy Byars
The cut over Mud’s eye still stung. He had taken care of it the best he could by licking his paw and wiping the cut, but that was never as satisfactory as a direct lick. From time to time he still tried to shake off the pain in his ear.
There was another “Good dog” from the Dumpster, and Mud’s tail made a low, unhappy sweep in the dust. He began to whine, and Pap called, “Mud, you too. Good dog, Mud.”
Suddenly, Mud lifted his ears. He heard the sound of a motorcycle in the distance. He crawled out from under the truck.
“Somebody coming, Mud?”
There were sounds of another struggle and then Pap’s face appeared over the side of the Dumpster. He was holding on to the Dumpster like a baby holding onto its crib.
Pap heard the motorcycle then. He knew it was useless, but he couldn’t help himself. He began yelling, “Help help help help help,” over and over.
There was something about this that Mud didn’t like. He had known from the moment Pap disappeared into the Dumpster that something was wrong, badly wrong, but he had not known how wrong until he heard the panic in Pap’s voice. This was something Mud had never heard before. Pap was afraid.
Mud threw back his head and began to howl. He was a good strong howler, and now there were three noises in the air—Mud’s howls, Pap’s helps, and the drone of the motorcycle.
The motorcycle went by in a roar. The two riders never glanced at the Dumpster. The noise of the motorcycle began to fade. Then it was gone.
Pap was the next to give up. His helps grew fainter and weaker, and then he sagged back into the garbage bag chair and was silent.
Mud kept howling. These were his howls of misery, and when Mud was really unhappy, he could howl for hours.
Dump pawed at Pap’s leg, asking to get back in his lap. After a moment, Pap picked him up. “There was two of them on the bike, Dump. Didn’t neither one of them see me.”
He patted Dump with one hand. With the other, he pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes.
CHAPTER 10
The Helium Hero
Everyone was just as impressed with his saying “Helium” as Junior had hoped they would be.
“Yes, helium,” he said again with a firm nod.
Actually, it was more than just being impressed. They were shocked, Junior thought happily. Even his mother was standing there with her mouth open. He knew this because he could feel her chin drop onto the top of his head.
Junior was delighted with their reaction. Everyone, seeing the unpainted air mattresses and the garbage bags, had probably thought that he, Junior, didn’t know what he was doing, that this was just another of Junior’s crazy inventions that wouldn’t work. With one word, he had changed all that.
He couldn’t help himself. He said the word one more time. “Helium.”
It was Vern who stopped Junior from saying it any more. “Helium!” He came two steps closer to his mom. “Mom, we can’t get helium!”
He felt he had to let her know this was completely impossible before she put him in charge of it. “Helium costs money—big money—and it comes in heavy cans like—” Vern sputtered for words and couldn’t find them. With his hands he measured out a large bomb-shaped object. “You can’t just go in a store and buy helium!”
Needing corroboration, he turned to the one person in the crowd he could count on. “Can you, Michael?”
Michael shook his head.
Vern turned back to his mother. “See, Mom?” he said.
The disbelief of Vern and Michael, his mother’s shocked chin resting on his head, did not worry Junior at all. He had expected this reaction. He would have been disappointed if it had been any other way.
He admitted to himself that a half hour ago these reactions might have sent him into another of those terrible crying fits. Not now. Anyway, he didn’t want to cry again for a long, long time. His eyes were still stinging from the last cry, and his nose was still swollen shut. If at all possible, Junior wanted to avoid crying for the rest of his life.
The difference was that Junior was now secure. He had become a Blossom promise, and that included even helium.
Vern looked around for help. “Talk to her, Maggie.”
Maggie felt terrible. She desperately wanted to help Junior. The sight of Junior crying because he was a failure had touched her deeply. It had caught her in the middle of feeling both happy and successful, selfishly happy and successful, it seemed now, and she would have done anything, anything to help Junior get the garbage bags and air mattresses airborne.
Now she was faced with the truth. She could not help Junior. None of them could. She avoided Junior’s hopeful smile.
“Mom, it’s true,” she said, misery in her face and voice. “I don’t even think you can get it. Maybe you even have to have a prescription. I don’t think ordinary people are allowed to have helium.”
There was a moment of silence. Every single person had now stated that helium was the most rare, the most impossible-to-obtain element in the world. This was exactly the moment Ralphie had been waiting for.
“I can get it,” he said.
Junior drew in his breath with surprise, then he smiled. He should have known all along it would be Ralphie. Ralphie specialized in the impossible.
Junior would never forget that wonderful moment in the hospital when Ralphie had accomplished the impossible for the first time.
Junior and Ralphie had been in side-by-side hospital beds. Junior was there because he had fallen off the barn roof and broken both his legs. Ralphie had fallen off a riding lawn mower three years earlier and cut his leg off, and now he was having another operation and getting a new artificial leg.
Junior had been desperate. Maggie was going to the courthouse for Pap’s trial and she wouldn’t take him.
“I can’t, Junior,” she had said. “Wheelchairs won’t fit on the bus.”
Everything she said made Junior more desperate. At the absolute peak of his desperation, Ralphie spoke up. And Ralphie had said the most wonderful words Junior had ever heard. “We could take a cab.”
One thing about Ralphie. He knew how to do the impossible and he knew how to do it with class. That had been the one and only cab ride of Junior’s life, and he would remember it forever.
“Where would you get helium?” Vern asked with a slight emphasis on the word you. He felt his friend Michael had somehow been belittled. If Michael’s family didn’t have helium, nobody would.
“From my mom.”
“Your mother has helium?” Vicki Blossom asked.
Vicki Blossom was just coming out of the shock of hearing the word helium herself. She knew nothing about helium. She didn’t even know if the word had one l or two, which she would have to find out before she could look it up in the Yellow Pages.
“Yes.”
“At your house?”
“Yes.”
“Your mom has helium?” She looked at him as if she thought he didn’t know the meaning of the word.
“Yes.”
“Helium?”
“Yes, Mrs. Blossom, helium!”
“What exactly does your mom do, Ralphie?”
As the questions and answers continued, Junior kept looking from Ralphie to his mom. It was like being at a tennis match.
“My mother,” Ralphie said, and from the way he said mother instead of mom, Junior knew Ralphie’s mother was a very, very important person indeed. As usual Ralphie did not let Junior down.
“My mother owns the Balloonerie.”
CHAPTER 11
A Bunch of Helium
Junior and Ralphie were in the barn, looking at the Green Phantom. Junior was beaming with pride, but Ralphie was not smiling.
“Of course, it’s not sprayed with the Day-Glo paint yet,” Junior said. He began walking around the Phantom so he could enjoy it from every angle. As he went, he rearranged the air mattresses into a better circle. “I just sprayed one tiny little dot—over here, see? Right there.” He pointed at the spot wit
h a dirty finger. “I wanted to make sure it was green enough.”
“I don’t think there’s any question that it’s green enough,” Ralphie said. Ralphie still had not smiled.
“I’m not going to spray the whole thing until it’s full of helium because if I do it now, see there are some wrinkles here and here, and the Day-Glo won’t get in the wrinkles. I want it to be perfect.”
“I’m sure you do,” Ralphie said. He put his hands in his pockets.
The Green Phantom was the least perfect thing Ralphie had ever seen in his life. On a scale of one to ten, it wasn’t even a one. Patched air mattresses in a triangle with collapsing garbage bags on top—it was like the stuff his little brothers were always making, only his little brothers at least understood that the stuff they made was pitiful. They even had the good sense to be ashamed of it. “Mom, Ralphie’s spying on us,” they’d cry if he even came close. And they didn’t expect their space junk to actually fly, they were happy just to sit in it and pretend to be flying.
Ralphie shook his head. The more he looked at the Phantom, as Junior insisted everyone call it, the more he realized that it was not going to take “some helium” to fill the Phantom. It was going to take a whole bunch of helium.
Ralphie cleared his throat. “Excuse me,” he said, “but were you planning to fill just the, er, air mattresses, or the garbage bags as well.”
“The whole thing,” Junior said happily. “The works.”
Ralphie said, “Mmm.”
“Why did you say that? Mmm.”
Ralphie could see that he had managed to get Junior worried. “Junior, don’t you know what happens to people who fill up both their mattresses and their garbage bags? Don’t you read Time magazine?”
“No, no. We don’t even take magazines.”
“I hate to be the one to break this to you, Junior, but people who fill up both their mattresses and their garbage bags float off and are never seen or heard from again. See, helium acts like a magnet, and you get too much of the stuff and it won’t let go of you and—”
At that moment, Ralphie looked up and saw Maggie standing in the door of the barn. “Is anything wrong?” she asked.
Junior said, “I don’t know. Ralphie says helium acts like a magnet and if I put too much inside, it will pull me off with it.”
Maggie smiled. “Junior, you know not to believe everything Ralphie says.”
Junior turned to Ralphie. “But you weren’t teasing when you said that your mom was the balloon lady, were you? She really does run the Balloonerie?”
“Yes, my mom runs the Balloonerie.”
“And you can get the helium?”
“I said I could, didn’t I?”
“Junior,” Maggie said, “you ought to know by now that when Ralphie says he can do something, it’s so.”
Ralphie thought he better leave while he was still the helium hero. He walked around the Phantom, as if avoiding any contact with the thing, and said to Maggie, “I’ll see you later.”
Junior followed Ralphie out of the barn. To make up for the fact that he had doubted Ralphie, he said, “If you wait till Pap comes, you can pick up the helium in the truck.”
“No, thanks,” Ralphie said.
“It would be a lot easier.”
“Not really,” Ralphie said. Since he was going to have to steal the helium, the theft would be a lot less conspicuous by bike.
He pushed off and began the long ride home.
Michael and Vern were getting a drink of water at the sink.
“Well, I’ll be going,” Michael said, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.
“Don’t forget to come back after supper,” Vern said. “Because Junior insists we have to do it tonight.”
“I know. I will.” He paused, obviously reluctant to continue. “Do you think your mom could call my mom?”
“What for?”
“To, you know, invite me?”
Vern had never heard of such an invitation, but he said, “I’ll ask.”
“Thanks.”
When Michael had gone, Vicki Blossom called, “You kids come in the living room. I want to talk to you.”
Vern came in from the kitchen, Maggie from the porch. Vicki Blossom was sitting on the blanket-covered sofa, with one hand resting on the telephone.
She reached out both hands and put one on Maggie and one on Vern. She looked at them seriously. “I want this night to be a success for Junior.”
“Mom, we do too,” Maggie said. Her mom was squeezing her and Vern together as if she were trying to make a tighter unit out of them. “Mom, I want it more than anything,” Maggie said. This was the truth. Until Junior started feeling like a success again, she couldn’t go back to her trick riding and enjoy her own success.
“It worries me that I can’t be there to help, but I cannot leave the phone while Pap’s missing.”
“We know that.”
“So you are taking my place. You two are Junior’s mother for the night.”
Their mom was holding them together so tightly now that when they answered, they did it in unison. One person spoke instead of two. “We will be.”
She hugged them. “That’s my kids.” She looked down at her watch, then at the phone. “Where, where can Pap be? Vern, do you have any idea?”
Vern shook his head.
“Where do you usually go?”
“All over the county, Mom.”
Vicki Blossom sighed. “Then I guess he could be anywhere.”
“Mom?” Vern asked.
“Don’t bother me unless it’s important.”
“It’s important to me.”
“What?”
“Would you call Michael’s mother and invite Michael to go with us tonight? His mom—”
“I will not tie up the phone with foolishness, and that is final. Now, go see if you can help Junior.”
CHAPTER 12
Ralphie’s Theft
“Where are you going, Ralphie?”
Ralphie paused in the doorway with his bedroll under his arm. He looked surprised. “I told you, Mom, I’m camping out at the Blossom’s farm tonight.”
“This is the first I’ve heard of any camp-out.”
“Mom, we’ve been planning it for a week.”
Ralphie was fairly sure he could get away with this lie. His mom had been upset all week. Another woman in town had started a rival balloon business, and the other woman was delivering her balloons while wearing a gorilla suit. Every time his mom saw a gorilla driving through town, with the backseat filled with balloons, it drove everything else out of her mind.
“Ralphie, you go over to the Blossoms too much. They’re going to get tired of you.”
“His mom invited me. His mom has excellent taste. She likes me.”
The phone rang at that moment, saving him. “Oh, go on, go on,” she said.
“Thanks.”
Ralphie went into the garage, unrolled his mattress, and put the canister of helium inside. Fortunately this was his mother’s spare canister. He would not have dared steal her only source of helium, because if she got an order and couldn’t fill it and the gorilla lady could, she would never forgive him.
“What are you doing with Mom’s helium?” a voice behind him asked. Ralphie turned, startled. It was Todd Lee, his youngest brother.
“Todd Lee, you’ve got eyes. What does it look like I’m doing?”
“Stealing Mom’s helium.”
“This happens to be a defective can of helium, and it could explode at any minute. If it explodes while you are standing there making stupid remarks, you will end up splattered all over Mom’s car, and you know how particular she is about the Blazer.”
“Mom!” Todd Lee yelled. He turned and flung open the door to the kitchen. “Ralphie’s stealing your—”
He didn’t get to finish because his mother threw a dish towel at him. “Will you kids stop bugging me for five minutes? You know who that was on the phone? That was an order for thirt
y-five message balloons, and after I had taken down the whole order, the man said, ‘Oh, by the way, you are the person who delivers in a gorilla suit, aren’t you?’ Now, get outside and stay there.”
Under his brother’s suspicious gaze, Ralphie finished rolling his mattress around the helium and put it in the wagon. He secured the wagon behind his bike.
To his brother he said, “If I were you, Todd Lee, I wouldn’t even mention helium.”
Then he got on his bike and set out for the Blossoms’ farm.
At seven-forty Ralphie pedaled up the Blossoms’ hill. He was feeling better. The initial shock of being caught stealing his mother’s helium had worn off. If his brother told on him, as he probably would, and if his mother demanded an explanation, Ralphie would do something so unusual, so refreshing, his mother would be stunned. Ralphie would tell the truth.
“Mom, it was a situation where I could not refuse. Junior Blossom—he was the one that was in the hospital with me, remember? He was the one I almost ruined by taking him to the courthouse when he had two broken legs? Well, furnishing the helium was my one chance to make up for that. I thought you would want me to.”
And then, “The reason I didn’t tell you was because you were upset by the gorilla woman and I did not want to add to your troubles.”
Anyway, if stealing helium was what it took to make Maggie smile at him, it would be worth it.
It was hard getting up the hill to the Blossoms with a can of helium behind his bike, but Ralphie tried not to let it show. Junior was the only one watching him, but Maggie might glance out the window at any moment.
Junior was shading his eyes so he could see if what Ralphie was towing was helium. It was! Even though it was wrapped in a bedroll, Junior knew it was helium.
“Mom! Mom! He got it. The helium’s here. Ralphie got the helium!”
“What’d you expect?” Ralphie stopped coolly beside the porch steps. “Where do you want it, Junior?”
Inside the house, Vicki Blossom was dialing the phone. “Hello, yes, officer, this is Vicki Blossom again. I called about an hour ago to ask if there had been any accidents reported in the county. … Nothing? Well, I guess that’s good, see, my father-in-law went off eight hours ago and he hasn’t come back and I am just worried to death.”