Audacity Jones to the Rescue

by Kirby Larson

  Audie suspected she should point out this flaw, but the Commodore was in such a state that she hesitated. It might be the one thing to send him completely over the edge. Yet, how would she feel if she went out in public with food on her new dress and no one told her? Audie uncrossed her ankles and stepped daintily over to the tea tray, removing her napkin and handing it to the Commodore.

  “What?” He glanced down. “Oh, just my luck. Everything’s all sixes and sevens.” The Commodore dabbed impatiently at the spot. “Better?”

  Audie leaned forward. “Almost.” Relying on yet another tip from Mrs. Paul’s handbook, she took the napkin from him, dipped it in the water glass, and finished the job.

  The Commodore inspected her efforts, nodding with approval. He looked at her as if he’d only then realized she was in the room. “Why aren’t you eating?” He took in her barely touched breakfast. “I can’t have you fainting from hunger again today.”

  “I had some toast.” Audie pushed at the crust on her plate. Her stomach was aflutter. Her task might seem small and insignificant, but it was still being asked of her by the President. Well, not directly of course, but one needn’t put too fine a point on such things. She had traveled all these miles and this was the day she was to fulfill her destiny. She stood a bit taller at the thought.

  The Commodore was shoveling in the last bite of steak when the buzzer sounded at the door. He waved to Audie to answer.

  “The car is ready, sir.” Cypher stood there, hat tucked under his left arm. Audie noticed a sheen of perspiration on his forehead and above his lip. Nerves at being late? Or something else? “I have already gathered Mrs. Finch.”

  The Commodore nodded, chewing vigorously as he wiped his hands on the linen napkin. He rose, shrugged into his jacket, and grabbed a last slurp of coffee. “Off we go, then.”

  Audie slipped into her own coat, buttoning it up to the neck, and then patted at the rosette Beatrice had pinned in her hair. She thought it added a festive touch.

  “Very good, sir.” Cypher stood aside to allow the Commodore, and then Audie, rucksack in hand, to pass. The Commodore had told her to take along her spare dress. “In case you get a spot on that one while you’re cooking,” he said. Beatrice had helped Audie fold the dress neatly into the rucksack. Audie’d thrown in her Reliable flashlight for good measure.

  As Cypher had stated, Mrs. Finch was already in the automobile. The Commodore seated himself up front and Audie slid in back. She caught a whiff of something fragrant. Tropical. Could it be gardenias?

  She glanced over at Mrs. Finch—Audie had to remind herself not to call her Madame Beaknose! She was knitting something—a blanket? a muffler? a sweater?—in the most hideous shade of yellow. The color put Audie to mind of some of the diapers she had changed when the triplets were infants.

  She thought to ask if Mrs. Finch was knitting the unidentifiable item for someone special but hesitated. She definitely belonged to the seen-not-heard school of thought regarding children.

  “I see you admiring my work.” Mrs. Finch paused in her click-click-clicking to loosen more yarn from the ball in the bag at her feet. “Idle hands are the devil’s playthings,” she added.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Audie nodded, swinging her legs.

  Mrs. Finch squinted. She raised an eyebrow.

  Audie stilled her legs. “Is that a—?”

  “Baby blanket, yes.” Mrs. Finch held up her handiwork. “For my nephew.”

  “He’ll be honored at such a gift.” Audie watched Mrs. Finch’s right hand slip the right needle into the loop of yarn on the left needle and then scoop that loop onto the right needle, all the while holding the yarn at the back of the stitch with her left forefinger. “That looks tricky,” she added.

  “Not at all.” Mrs. Finch sniffed. “I learned when I was younger than you.”

  “Really?” Audie gave her a look of admiration. “Was that in England, where you grew up?”

  “Yes.” Mrs. Finch started another row. “In Upper Puddlebury by the Sea. My sainted granny taught me. She was a jolly old bird, was Granny Finch.”

  Audie smiled at the little joke though Mrs. Finch didn’t seem aware she’d made one. “I read a book on knitting,” Audie said. “But I haven’t tried it myself yet. Maybe you could give me a lesson today.” It would be such fun to whip up hats for the triplets, or a muffler for Bimmy. Maybe pot holders for Cook and face cloths for Miss Maisie and the rest. She would’ve thought that, being from Upper Puddlebury by the Sea, Mrs. Finch would knit in the English style, rather than the Continental. She recognized the technique from the few tomes in the Punishment Room that had belonged to Mrs. Witherton: Knitting for the Refined Young Lady and The Joys of Purling. Perhaps Granny Finch was not originally from the United Kingdom, but from Germany, where such an approach to knitting was more generally employed. “If there’s time, that is.”

  Mrs. Finch scoffed. “Time! There won’t be any time for knitting once we don our aprons, girl.” She pointed a needle right at Audie’s heart. “You’re here to help cook and don’t you forget it.”

  Audie scootched across the seat toward the door. Away from Mrs. Finch and her pointy needle. “No, ma’am. I won’t.”

  The rest of the ride was quiet, except for Mrs. Finch’s click-click-clicking. Audie got a little pinch in her chest with each and every click. Soon enough, they were rolling up to the service entrance. Two bored guards glanced at the car. It was astonishing, really, that the President was protected in such an informal and flimsy manner. But that is absolutely the case. One of the guards held up his hand, indicating Cypher to stop.

  “Yes, officer?” Cypher’s voice was syrupy.

  “Business?”

  Mrs. Finch leaned forward in her seat. “You’ll get the business, if you don’t let us through. I’m the English cook.” Then she sat back, case closed.

  The younger of the two men looked bewildered. But the older one waved them through. As they rolled beyond the wrought-iron gates, Audie could hear the younger one say, “Soup? She’s here to make soup?”

  Mrs. Finch rolled up her knitting project and stuffed it in her bag. “Pull up over there,” she ordered Cypher, with a tap on his right shoulder. “That looks like the kitchen entrance.”

  He did as commanded.

  The Commodore hoisted himself out of the auto practically before it came to a stop. He opened the door for the backseat passengers, giving the appearance of someone in a hurry. “Well, Annie. Mind your p’s and q’s.”

  “Yes, sir.” Audie shivered in the chill morning air as she glanced around the courtyard. This clearly wasn’t the fanciest part of the White House—it was a service entrance after all. But to think she was standing on the drive that might have been tread upon by such great men of history like Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt and now President Taft. Her feet fairly tingled in her boots at such a notion. And even in this tucked-away corner, the grandeur of the nation’s First Home was evident. The entire of Miss Maisie’s School would fit in this one quadrangle!

  Mrs. Finch took the Commodore’s proffered hand and exited the car, as well. She gathered her bags. “Close your mouth, girl, and come along.” The cook started for the great arched doorway directly in front of them. Audie knew she should follow but her feet would not move. Through those doors and she—Audacity Jones!—would be inside the White House. Inside the home of the President of the United States! Walking floors across which had stepped dukes and prime ministers and kings and queens. The thought made her shiver all over again.

  The rumble of an automobile engine startled Audie out of her reverie. The Commodore and Cypher were preparing to depart. Mrs. Finch was out of sight. Probably already in the kitchen, wondering where Audie was.

  Audie shook herself out of her woolgathering and broke into a run to catch up. And crashed right into a boy on a bicycle.

  The foursome huddled in their hidey-hole under the stairs, letting Bimmy’s words filter over them like dust motes.

 
; Bimmy finally broke the silence with a giant exhaled breath. “I wouldn’t ask this of you unless it was important.”

  “Do you think it’s really, really important?” asked Violet.

  “As in imperative?” added Lilac.

  “Maybe you misunderstood what she said.” Lavender blinked back a tear. “How could the Punishment Room hold any answers?”

  “Now, girls.” Bimmy squared her shoulders. Her caramel-drop eyes bored into three identical pairs of pale blue ones. “Think of everything Audie has done for us.” At this declarative, she allowed for a period of quiet, so that each girl could reflect on what they had been given in friendship without ever a thought of anything in return.

  The triplets had been no bigger than paper dolls when their befrazzled parents left them in Miss Maisie’s care. No one in the house had had a moment’s sleep until Audie stepped forward and discovered that, though they were identical, the triplets were also three unique little beings. Violet needed a lovey to soothe her to sleep. So Audie sacrificed Percy to the cause, tucking the much-loved stuffed giraffe in the babe’s arms. Lilac liked being toasty warm, a problem Audie solved by giving up her own baby blanket, hand crocheted in exquisite pink stitches by her mother. Audie swaddled Lilac up so tight that she took on the appearance of a little baby frankfurter snuggled in a pink wool bun. And, as it turned out, Baby Lavender required music to fall asleep. She was especially fond of “The Old Gray Mare.” So Audie sang and sang and sang until the smallest of the triplets finally gave up her battle against slumber and cuddled with her sisters in their specially rigged-up crib for three.

  While the triplets’ memories cast back to their first days at Miss Maisie’s, Bimmy reflected upon her own arrival. Her folks were circus people, best known for a rather astonishing high-wire act involving a wheelbarrow, a goldfish bowl, and a tuba. After years of performing in fifth-rate circuses, their big break finally arrived: the chance to headline in the Sircus Swisse. All they had to do was accept the circus master’s three hard-fast rules: No dog acts, No bearded ladies (as a young man, his heart had been broken by Henriette the Hairy), and No children. Thus, four years previous, Bimmy had become Wayward Girl number 15, only six and ready to take a poke at the world before it could poke at her. Hers was the only dark face in the Swayzee sea of white. Bimmy had been standing in Miss Maisie’s parlor, planning her escape not ten minutes after her arrival, when Audie caught sight of her signing the School roster.

  “Look, Miss Maisie!” Audie had pointed at Bimmy, whose hands were already clenching into fists. “She’s our first lefty!” And that was it. The end of Bimmy being assaulted by cruel names wherever she went. Labels that made bile rise up in her throat to recall. No. Here, at Miss Maisie’s, in Swayzee, Indiana, she’d been dubbed Lefty. Or Southpaw. And her favorite, also bestowed by Audie: Best Chum. Not one of these nicknames did Bimmy mind wearing.

  Bimmy shook away those remembrances, along with an unexpected tear. “We each owe Audie so much. How can we deny her aid in her hour of need?”

  “But we don’t all need to go.” Lilac studied the tops of her worn boots. “Do we?”

  Her sisters exchanged glances.

  Bimmy nodded. “You’re right. It’s my idea.” She inhaled deeply, summoning every ounce of courage in her small body. This could not be any more difficult than walking the high wire without a net, could it? And that was a task she could do blindfolded. And had done so on countless occasions. Bimmy put one foot forward. But the Punishment Room. She gulped.

  “Oh, don’t be ridiculous.” Violet jumped up. “You’re not going alone. We’re in this together.”

  “We are?” whimpered Lavender.

  “All for one, and one for all!” Violet stuck out her hand, and the others placed theirs on top in ascending order.

  “It’s now or never.” Bimmy chewed on her bottom lip. “It’s—”

  “Bimmy, the more you talk, the harder it’s going to be.” Violet tugged her friend forward. “Let’s get it over with.”

  With clasped hands, the four Wayward Girls wobbled down the dusty carpet, turning left at the third cabbage rose past the dining hall, marching to their doom in the Punishment Room.

  Audie had never been kicked by a mule, but recent events had provided a reasonable approximation of that dubious pleasure. Her ears were ringing and her jaw throbbed—was that a loose tooth?—and she was acutely aware of every one of the two hundred and some odd bones in her body because each felt slightly out of joint, socket, or wherever else it belonged.

  “Are you all right?” A freckled face swam into view.

  She blinked.

  “Are you unconscious?”

  “Anything but.” Audie tried to stand but her legs went on strike. The freckle-faced boy grabbed her before she crumpled again.

  “Oh.” The boy groaned. “Am I going to catch it from Father. Mother, too.” He held on to Audie’s arm while she got her feet under her. “Let me help you inside.”

  “No, no,” Audie protested. “I’m fine.”

  The Commodore suddenly loomed over her. “That was a powerful collision. She might have suffered a concussion.”

  Mrs. Finch’s face bobbed into view. The expression upon it sat at the opposite spectrum from concern.

  The boy’s freckles bleached. “A concussion!”

  Before Audie could say anything more, Cypher swooped her up, and the boy led them—she, Cypher, Mrs. Finch, and the Commodore—through the arched doorway, away from the kitchen bustling with activity, into an office area. “Wait here,” he said before running off.

  “I’m fine,” Audie insisted but the Commodore tut-tutted her.

  “Can’t be too careful, my dear,” he said.

  Cypher didn’t say a word but from somewhere he brought Audie a glass of water. She took a grateful sip.

  A short time later, the freckle-faced boy barreled back into the room. “They’re coming,” he announced. A few steps behind him appeared a dapper-looking bald man wearing a concerned expression on his face and carrying a black doctor’s bag; two shakes of a lamb’s tail later, an extraordinarily stout man arrived, with kind blue eyes, a proud Roman nose, and a salt-and-pepper moustache that put Audie to mind of walrus whiskers.

  “What’s all this?” the portly man asked. “Charlie says he’s run you over.”

  “I’m fine,” Audie repeated for what seemed like the tenth time. “Really I am.”

  The portly man patted his forehead with a bright white handkerchief. Cypher found him a chair and he sat, breathing hard. “We’ll let Dr. Barker here make that decision, shall we?”

  Dr. Barker felt Audie’s arms and legs and listened to her lungs. He had her turn her head to the right and then to the left.

  “See—still firmly affixed to my neck,” she said. “Though I do seem to have lost my brand-new hat somewhere.”

  “Here it is.” The boy had gone back for it and was brushing it off. “Is it supposed to look like that?” he asked.

  Audie took it from him. The tip of the feather was broken clean off. Well, she hadn’t been fond of that feather anyway. Too fussy. She removed it from the hatband and replaced the chapeau on top of her head. “It suits me better now.”

  “You’re a pip.” The boy grinned. He had a nice smile. A nice face.

  “Actually, I’m a cook’s helper.” Audie glanced at Mrs. Finch, whose face looked practically vulture-like, and took another sip of water. She smoothed out her skirt. “And I’m perfectly fine. Mrs. Finch and I really need to get to work. The President will want his soup.”

  The adults in the room froze into a perplexing tableau. From their actions, Audie surmised that she’d said something wrong. But she hadn’t one clue as to what that was. Then the portly gentleman threw back his head and roared.

  “The President will want his soup, that he will.” He dabbed at his eyes, he was laughing so hard. “It’s a bit of a nuisance, I admit. But when you work as hard as I do, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to dine on on
e’s favorites at the end of the day.”

  The breath caught in Audie’s throat. “Y-y-y-ou’re—?”

  The portly man stood, stepped closer, and held out his hand. “William Taft, at your service.”

  Audie glanced over at the freckle-faced boy. He grinned again. She slowly stretched out her right hand. Her fingers disappeared into the President’s, hers David’s to his Goliath’s. They shook. “Audacity Jones,” she squeaked out.

  “Pleased to meet you, young lady.” The President released his grip, then patted her head. “Are you certain you’re not injured?”

  Yet one more time, Audie assured those gathered that she was fine.

  “All right, then. I have some work to do. And Charlie has a guest to entertain. One he seems to have forgotten all about.” The President fixed his kind blue eyes on his son in a disapproving manner.

  Audie recalled the newspaper mention of Dorothy Taft, paying a holiday visit to her aunt and uncle. From the sound of things, her cousin Charlie was being a neglectful host.

  The grin vanished from Charlie’s face. His head drooped. Even the lock of hair curled across his forehead seemed to droop. “Yes, Father.”

  Mrs. Finch was as hot as the stove by the time they got down to the kitchen. She was most displeased by the delay. “If I were ever to have children,” she said, “I would only have girls. Boys are such ruffians.”

  “Well, this has been a peach of an adventure thus far, Annie, wouldn’t you say?” Hat in hand, the Commodore beamed as if he had been personally responsible for arranging for Audie to meet the President.

  Mrs. Finch slammed a cupboard door shut, bestowing a look upon the Commodore that was difficult to decipher. Audie could not determine if she was displeased at his comment or if her stomach had gone peptic over the recent obstacle to completing the soup on time. Mrs. Finch then slammed a drawer for good measure. “It’s not proper for the likes of her to meet the President, if you get my drift,” she snapped at the Commodore.

  Audie quickly grabbed an apron and tied it around her waist, ready to work.