Shoebag

by M. E. Kerr

  “You dare to come to this memorial service?” said Under The Toaster. “You who would do nothing about the jumping spider? And now he has killed your little brother Coffee Cup.”

  “I hardly knew Coffee Cup. I only saw his two back legs once in my life, but I am terribly sorry, Papa.”

  “That’s not all. Right this moment, rolled up in the dragline, way way up on the electric clock, is your mother! She is being saved for the jumping spider’s breakfast!”

  “I’ll rescue her!” Shoebag cried out.

  “Watch that hot breath of yours!” his father told him. “I am only a few feet away from you! How are you going to rescue her without a ladder?”

  “I’ll find a ladder!” Shoebag said, and an enormous roll of thunder shook the house.

  Fifteen

  “PURRFECTION! THAT’S PRETTY SOFT! the purrfect toilet tissue!”

  Pretty Soft said her lines over and over to herself.

  Mildred was under the bed. She would probably never come out now that it was thundering. Pretty Soft had hoped to get some practice in, holding her at the right camera angle, but Mildred never cooperated, anyway, until the TV producer got the dope inside her. Then Mildred went limp, and you could do almost anything with her.

  Pretty Soft did not mind the storm, but there was something she did mind late that night.

  She could not forget what Gregor Samsa had said to her. Sometimes as she was practicing her part, the wrong words came to her head: words she should have spoken to him.

  “If I was so selfish, would I be working my way through college?”

  She should have said that.

  Or she should have said, “If I didn’t have a heart, how could I sell toilet paper to all of America?”

  “Maybe you can’t see anything in my face,” she should have said, “but viewers can, or I wouldn’t be a famous TV spokesgirl!”

  Pretty Soft tried to put him out of her mind, but it was hard for her to put someone out of her mind who had mirrors for eyes. She decided to concentrate until all thoughts of him were gone.

  “Purrrrfection!” she said again, aloud, “That’s Pretty Soft! The purrrfect—”

  Shoebag came running into her room without knocking.

  “Go back outside and knock!” she told him.

  “There isn’t time! I need a ladder!”

  “What is the matter with you, Shoebag? What if I’d been asleep, and you’d interrupted my beauty rest?”

  “Pretty Soft, please! I need a ladder. The jumping spider has captured a roach and taken it up into the electric clock!”

  “He probably wants it for his breakfast tomorrow,” said Pretty Soft.

  “But I must rescue it! I must capture it alive, to take to my science class tomorrow!”

  “Madam Grande de la Grande would never let me study roaches,” said Pretty Soft. “In my science lessons, I study caterpillars that turn into beautiful butterflies.”

  Now lightning danced across the sky through Pretty Soft’s window, and Mildred darted out from under the bed.

  “There’s no time for conversation!” said Shoebag. “What is Mildred doing loose?”

  “I always keep her with me the night before we make a commercial. Otherwise, she hides in the morning, the moment I get her cat case out.”

  “Will you please, please help me find a ladder? What if the jumping spider gets hungry and eats the roach for a late night picnic?” Shoebag was wringing his hands and pacing up and down the room in his pajamas and robe.

  Pretty Soft sat up straighter in her big pink bed.

  “Is Gregor Samsa in your science class?”

  “Of course he is!”

  “Then I will get you the ladder if you promise one thing.”

  “Anything!” Shoebag was close to tears. Pretty Soft had never felt that intense about any of her science assignments.

  “Promise me that you will tell Gregor Samsa I got the ladder for you.”

  “I promise you!” Shoebag said.

  “Not many people would get out of bed in the middle of the night to do this,” said Pretty Soft. “Only someone who is very unselfish would!”

  “You are right, Pretty Soft! It is very unselfish of you!”

  “Thank you, Shoebag,” Pretty Soft said. “Fetch me my robe over there on the chaise.”

  Down the stairs they went, with Mildred racing ahead of them.

  “Why can’t that cat stay back up in your room?” Shoebag said.

  “Maybe she wants the jumping spider for her own late night picnic.”

  “If I told Gregor that you killed it for her, he would think that was unselfish, too,” panted Shoe-bag, out-of-breath from running and from panic.

  “He would know I was not heartless, too, if I would kill for Mildred.”

  “But how would you ever kill it?” Shoebag shouted over his shoulder as he hurried along.

  “Easily! With a flyswatter!” said Pretty Soft. “There’s one on a hook in the closet, right behind the ladder.”

  “Make sure you don’t hurt the roach!”

  “I’ll go up on the ladder myself,” said Pretty Soft. “I’ll hand you down the roach, and then you pass the swatter up to me.”

  “You are a real pal, Pretty Soft!”

  “Remember to tell Gregor that he is not your only pal, and that I am not selfish and heartless.”

  “Oh, I will, Pretty Soft, I definitely will!”

  Shoebag helped Pretty Soft drag the ladder from the closet, across the floor, to the sink. The electric clock was directly above the sink.

  “Go sit in the corner, Mildred!” Shoebag hollered at the cat, who was nipping at his ankles.

  “Shhh! You’ll wake up Mom and Dad,” Pretty Soft cautioned Shoebag, “and there is no sense telling Mildred to do anything. Cats do as they please!”

  Mildred was sitting on the floor staring at Shoebag, her nose twitching.

  “Hold the ladder firmly!” said Pretty Soft. “Once I did a commercial on a ladder. I was handing down rolls of toilet paper from a closet and I was saying”

  “Never mind all that now!” Shoebag said. “I am too nervous.”

  Pretty Soft went up the rungs slowly, singing her favorite song softly, under her breath, “Six hundred sheets a roll and soft as any kitty.”

  “Be careful of the roach!” Shoebag whispered loudly.

  “I’m not even there yet! Look at all the dirty dishes mom left in the sink. You should wash them for her, Shoebag. I cannot do them for her, since it would give me dishpan hands.”

  Shoebag saw the crust of mashed potato on a pan, and said, “I’ll leave them there tonight. I’ll do them first thing in the morning.”

  After Shoebag got his mother safely inside his pocket, he would give her a treat.

  The rain was heavy on the roof, and he hoped there would be no more thunder, nothing that could distract Pretty Soft from her rescue mission.

  He hoped, too, that Under The Toaster was nearby watching. It would teach him that all people were not as cruel as he always said they were. And Drainboard—what would Drainboard think! Being saved from slaughter by a human being, for the second time!

  Shoebag was smiling, and his heart was pounding.

  “I see the roach all wrapped up,” said Pretty Soft, “and I see the jumping spider!”

  “Toss me the roach, please,” Shoebag said, and in a moment his mother came sailing down, and he caught her in his hand.

  “Blech!” said Pretty Soft. “That was icky! My hands have sticky stuff on them!”

  “That’s just dragline silk,” Shoebag reassured her. “Now let’s get that spider!”

  With Drainboard safely in his pocket he started to pass up the flyswatter.

  But Mildred knocked it from his hand as she leaped up the ladder. She was after the jumping spider, who was racing up the wall.

  Mildred’s sudden move startled Pretty Soft and Shoebag.

  Shoebag let go of the ladder for only a moment, but it was the very momen
t Pretty Soft tried to move out of Mildred’s way.

  The ladder swayed and fell to the kitchen floor, and Pretty Soft fell with it.

  “Waaaaaaaaaaaaa!” Pretty Soft was wailing.

  “EEEEEEEE, OOOOOOOW!” went Mildred, who was clinging to the electric clock.

  The jumping spider crawled behind a long fluorescent light bulb near the ceiling.

  Sixteen

  NEXT MORNING, SHOEBAG AND Mr. Biddle were leaving for school when the long white limousine pulled up in front of the apartment building on Beacon Hill.

  “I’m sorry,” Mr. Biddle told the uniformed chauffeur, “but my daughter won’t be going to the studio today. She is in no condition to be filmed.”

  Shoebag looked up at Pretty Soft’s window, where Mildred sat in front of the pink curtains, licking a paw contentedly.

  There was no sign of Pretty Soft,

  She would not show herself, Shoebag knew. She had a worse black eye than Shoebag’s, a swollen face, and puffed lip.

  “Go now to Madam Grande de la Grande’s,” said Mr. Biddle, “and bring her back here. Pretty Soft needs her.”

  “There will be an extra charge for that,” said the chauffeur. “That is not on my route.”

  “Just do it, please!” Mr. Biddle snapped, for all the Biddles, and Shoebag, too, had had no sleep, and were upset by Pretty Soft’s terrible accident.

  “I’ll never work again!” Pretty Soft had cried. “They’ll give the job to my stand-in, clever little Claudia Clapper!”

  Only Mildred was pleased to see her carrying case put back inside Pretty Soft’s closet. She had escaped being doped, and being subjected to the bright lights of the cameras. She was purring with joy, imagining the slinky Siamese cat taking over her role.

  Shoebag was sad that Pretty Soft was in such bad shape, and that she had missed her appointment, but he could not help feeling delighted that he’d restored Drainboard to roachdom. And he had given her a generous helping of crusty mashed potatoes, too!

  Never mind that the jumping spider was still loose! Shoebag had seen to it that his mother’s life was saved!

  As they walked down Beacon Hill together, Mr. Biddle said, “This was all your fault, Stuart, and I should be mad at you, but I’m not.”

  “I’m glad you’re not. Why aren’t you?”

  “It’s time for Pretty Soft to retire, that’s why.”

  “I thought people didn’t retire until they were sixty-five years old,” said Shoebag, who had heard something like that over television once.

  “Pretty Soft wouldn’t have lived to be sixty-five the way she was going. The whole thing got out of hand. Her mother and I thought it would be fun for her, and she could save her money for college, but soon it came to control her life. Enough is enough.”

  “Does that mean we don’t have to follow the rule anymore?”

  “It means the rule is out the window.”

  “What window is it out, sir?”

  “That’s just an expression, Stu. You have to bone up on your expressions. You’re a little weak in that department.”

  As soon as Shoebag arrived in the cloakroom at school, he saw a note hanging from his coat hook.

  What my father did to the alligator,

  I’ll do to you, a little later.

  “Fatso? Have you seen Gregor this morning?” Shoebag asked in assembly.

  “He’s in the gym, where they’re having a dress rehearsal of the school play,” said Fatso. “Don’t forget you’re sticking up for me.”

  “I’ll try,” Shoebag told him.

  “Don’t just try, Stuart Bagg. Do it. You promised and I’m counting on you.”

  After Mr. Doormatee told everyone he was their pal, the children rose and recited a verse he led them in.

  All things bright and beautiful,

  All creatures great and small,

  All things wise and wonderful,

  The Lord God made them all.

  “Remember that, boys and girls,” said their principal, “and don’t forget to drop your pennies in the can to save the seals.”

  Then Mr. Doormatee slammed his hand down on a fly that had been pestering him while he spoke.

  “Got it!” he said.

  As they sat having lunch in the cafeteria, Shoebag asked everyone in school who wasn’t liked, “Here’s a question for you. The good Lord made the bright and beautiful, the great and small, the wise and wonderful, but who made the rest of us?”

  “The good Lord made the rest of us, too,” said The Ghost, “but no one writes verses about it.”

  “That must mean all the writers are bright and beautiful, great and small, wise and wonderful,” said Fatso, “or we’d be mentioned.”

  “We should write our own verses then,” Shoebag said.

  “How can ordinary people write?” said Bark.

  “We wouldn’t know how, know how,” said Two Times.

  “We aren’t bright and we aren’t beautiful,” said Handles.

  “Look at my face with the black eye and the scratches, I look awful,” said Shoebag, “but here’s a line to rhyme: “Looks aren’t everything, this I know,” Two Times laughed.

  “Beauty won’t last, it’s like snow, it’s like snow.” The Ghost said, “Who decides that I am dull?” Fatso laughed. “Someone with a thicker skull.” “Ordinary people power!” Handles grinned. Bark finished with, “This is now our shining hour!” Never had the faces at that particular table in the school cafeteria glowed as they did at that moment. “A toast!” said Shoebag raising his container of chocolate milk. “Here’s to the rest of us. And here’s to the rest of them!”

  “Who’s the rest of them?” Fatso asked. “Alligators, snakes, rats, insects with antennae, things that live behind and under and in back of—our fellow critters that people step on, swat, and Zap!”

  “I hope you don’t mean things like mosquitoes?” said one at the table.

  “I hope you don’t mean flies, mean flies.”

  “And I hope you don’t mean worms!”

  “Well, I hope you don’t mean bedbugs!”

  “I just hope you don’t mean centipedes!”

  And then they all said, “We know you couldn’t mean cockroaches!”

  “The only thing I didn’t mean,” said Shoebag, “was a seven-legged, black jumping spider.”

  The world is very strange, Shoebag thought as he made his way down the hall after lunch. I am strange. We all are, for we cannot agree on who is all right and who is not. All we can do, it seems, is stick up for each other, and for ourselves.

  “Stuella?” a lilting, teasing voice called out, “Time to stick up for Fatso! Time to get a sock in the face!”

  Shoebag put his fists up as Mr. Biddle had taught him to.

  When Tuffy Buck came charging at him, Shoebag did not duck back, but headed right toward him, as Mr. Biddle had instructed, and he used the secret move.

  POW! POUGH! MRRRUMP!

  Shoebag landed on the hard wooden floor in the school corridor.

  Yes, the world is very strange, Shoebag thought. Not every lesson you learn in it helps, and you do not become a winner overnight.

  “There’s more where that came from!” Tuffy Buck called over his shoulder.

  Shoebag was sure there was.

  Seventeen

  MRS. BIDDLE WAS IN her studio painting when Shoebag got home from school.

  Quietly, in the dark kitchen, he took off his coat and put his bookbag on the kitchen chair.

  “Mama?” he whispered. “Are you in here?”

  “I’m right under the handle of the oven door, Son,” she answered, “and I have bad news.”

  “Who did the jumping spider get this time?”

  “No one, dear, but your father is not the same since Coffee Cup’s death. He says we are going to move. We are going to catch the next Universal Parcel truck out of here!”

  “But U.P. comes on Thursdays, Mama. That’s only two days away!”

  “He said he doesn�
��t care if we end up in Alaska! He cannot bear to live here any longer, with memories of Coffee Cup on every ledge and in every crevice.”

  “What will happen to me, Mama?”

  “You will have to live your life as a little person in the best way that you can.”

  “How can I do that with my family gone? I will worry myself sick about you!”

  “His mind is made up,” said Drainboard.

  “Yes, my mind is made up!” Under The Toaster said. “Our roach neighbors from next door will be moving in here. They will be happy to get away from the fat, hairy, brown brother of the black jumping spider.”

  Shoebag turned around. His father’s voice was coming from the calendar on the wall.

  “What will I do without my family, Papa?”

  “Kill the black jumping spider so the next family that moves in here will be able to make an arachnid-proof home for themselves. If you’d killed him before, we might still have little Coffee Cup with us.”

  “I am not that much of a person,” Shoebag said sadly.

  “I thought this was our home sweet home forever,” said Drainboard. “I thought I’d see my oldest son grow up to be a big roach, too, but now that’s all over.”

  “What if I do kill the black jumping spider? What if I get up the nerve to step on him?”

  “It’s too late now,” said Under The Toaster.

  “And you could never kill him, Son. We know that.”

  “I might! I’m going to try!”

  “It’s way too late,” said Under The Toaster. “Everytime I go up into the cupboard I see those coffee cups, and I remember my baby son when he was just a newborn nymph, crawling out of the seam of his egg case.”

  “What about your oldest son? What about me?” said Shoebag.

  “You don’t even look like a son of mine!” Under The Toaster complained.

  “But here I am!” Shoebag was shouting.

  Mrs. Biddle came out of her studio with a paintbrush in her hand. “Good!” she said. “I’m glad you’re here. You have company upstairs waiting for you, Stuart Bagg.”

  Eighteen

  MILDRED PACED BACK AND forth between Shoebag and Gregor Samsa, as they sat in the darkened living room, with the sun sinking through the window in the twilight sky.