by Betsy Byars
Only that was the trouble with life, Lennie had found out later. He had expected things to change as quickly and dramatically as they did in bad-breath commercials—one gargle and a new life. It hadn’t worked that way.
In real life, Lennie found out, problems didn’t get wrapped up neatly between commercials. In real life you moved, and all the things that were wrong with you moved with you. If you couldn’t pass Science in Kentucky, then you wouldn’t be able to pass it in Tennessee either.
Lennie wondered if this happened to other people, like Presidents of the United States or famous TV stars. Did they get their lifelong ambition, thinking life would be perfect when they got to be President or when they got their own series, and then find out that all the things wrong with them were still wrong?
Lennie walked quickly down the hill. He had come this way so often that there was a faint path in the deep grass. He came to the maple trees—the leaves were solid gold now, and he walked up the next hill. At the top were the ruins of two old campfires, black circles like a puff of breath from a dragon.
The first time Lennie had seen the old fires, he had paused and planned a TV show about a dragon. Only one person, himself, knew about the dragon. He had trailed the dragon to his cave by following these double campfires, and the dragon and he had become friends.
The highlight of the program came when the townspeople arrived at the cave to kill the dragon, thinking him responsible for the recent slaughter of sheep.
“Get out of the way, son. We’re going in.”
“But the dragon’s my friend. He wouldn’t kill anything!”
“There’s seventeen sheep dead in the valley. Somebody killed them.”
“Well, he didn’t do it. He couldn’t.”
“Get out of the way, son. We got no quarrel with you.”
“But he couldn’t have killed the sheep, I tell you! He doesn’t have any teeth!”
“What?”
“He’s over two hundred years old, and all he eats is bananas and tomatoes and once in a while a real ripe apple.”
“Listen! The boy might be telling the truth! Seems to me my gran’daddy said there was a dragon around here when he was a boy.”
“Your gran’daddy Amos?”
“My gran’daddy Amos, and I recall him saying that dragon never hurt a fly.”
“Well, then, maybe it was wolves that got them sheep. If, as the boy and your gran’daddy says, the dragon’s harmless, we’ll let him be.”
That had been one of Lennie’s favorite dreams. It had rerun for days. But now he stepped between the old fires without noticing and went down the hill beneath the red beech trees. Here the grass was as soft and green as official grass. Then he came to the lake.
He stood for a moment looking at the water, at the places where the reflection of trees turned the water red and gold. He looked at the houses. Each of them was closed for the winter. The lake was really his now.
Lennie went into the weeds and, pulling hard, brought out his boat. He eased it into the water.
The boat was old and heavy. Someone had abandoned it long ago because the seats were half rotten and the boards leaked. When Lennie had first seen the boat, weeds were growing inside. Purple flowers were poking up over the sides as if they were waiting for a ride.
Lennie got into the boat. Old and rotten as it was, it was still sturdy enough to get Lennie across the lake. The first time.he had pushed off in the boat, he had half expected to sink. He had imagined himself going down the way Coyote and Bugs Bunny and Sylvester did in old cartoons, just standing there, sinking, with a comical expression.
That was one thing he particularly liked about cartoon characters. When they walked out on a limb and the limb cracked, or they ran out on the air and then realized nothing was under them, they looked into the camera in such a comical way. If he had a camera on him, he could do the same thing.
For a moment he wished he were back at the motel watching the Saturday morning cartoons. Then, leaning on his oar, he pushed into deeper water. He began to row.
Lennie was not supposed to be here, because this was a private lake. It had been dammed up and filled for the benefit of the people who had houses here. No one else was allowed. But as long as nobody saw him—and there was nobody to see him now, he thought—it was all right. He kept rowing.
Lennie knew more about this lake and these houses than anybody else. There was not a house here that he had not entered at one time or another. Sometimes he went in through a window, sometimes through a door if he knew where the key was hidden. But however he got in, Lennie never took anything or did any damage. He just liked to look at other people’s things.
There was something about strange people’s houses that fascinated Lennie. Perhaps that was because he had never lived in a real house himself, only in apartments and trailers and motels.
Lennie’s favorite house was the stone one with the willow trees in front. His finest hours had been spent in the tiny back room of the stone house, sitting on the floor, warmed by the sun coming in the window, playing with twenty-five-year-old Tinker Toys or dealing out games of Circus Old Maid or Animal Rummy or looking through shoe boxes of stringless Yo-Yos and stones as smooth as bird’s eggs.
In the center of the lake he suddenly wished he were back at the motel again. He tried to lose himself in his thoughts.
What if the Partridge family’s bus had broken down and they were stranded, and while he was rowing across the lake he started singing and they heard him and asked him to join the group and gave him his own electric guitar. While he was imagining himself in a white fringed suit on the stage with the Partridges, he lost interest.
He shifted thoughts.
What if he were the last person on earth. He had seen that the week before on Thursday Night Movie. A plague had come and disintegrated everyone but one person. Now Lennie imagined himself that person, rowing across the lake, wondering what had happened to everyone else.
He rowed more slowly. His oars dragged in the water. He felt as lonely as if he really were the last person on earth.
To change his mood, he imagined a commercial. “To help that lonely feeling,” the announcer would say, “buy Friend, the doll that’s as big and as real as you are.”
He brightened. He imagined the announcer’s voice saying, “Yes, with Friend, you’ll always have someone to talk to.” There would be a shot of him and Friend talking and laughing on a park bench.
“With Friend, you’ll never have to go to the movies alone.” There would be a shot of him and Friend entering a theater. The announcer would say quietly, “And remember, Friend comes with a special ID card that lets him enter all movie theaters and sports events for half price.”
Lennie smiled. He began to row again. He felt better. He imagined the end of the commercial with him and Friend strolling along a country road. The announcer would say, “Yes, take Friend everywhere you go and—” Then a choir of a hundred voices would sing, “You’ll ne-ver be a-lone.”
Lennie was close to the shore now, and he eased up on his rowing. He drifted the rest of the way. When his boat touched shore, Lennie got out quickly. He pulled his boat up under the long waving branches of the willow tree. He started for the house.
Chapter Seven
Lennie was on the front porch of the stone house now. He peered in the window.
In his mind the announcer reminded him, “Whenever you enter an empty house, take Friend along. Yes, remember, no house is ever empty with Friend.”
He imagined Friend peering in the window too, glancing at Lennie, waiting.
“Let’s go in,” Lennie would say. Friend would nod in agreement. “Follow me.” Another nod and Friend would fall in behind.
“Remember,” the announcer would say, “with Friend there’s never an argument. He does what you want, goes where you go.”
The key to the front door was on top of the door molding, and Lennie took down the key and put it in the lock. He liked to enter with the k
ey because it gave him a feeling of belonging. Going in the window wasn’t as good.
He was lifting up on the doorknob when he heard a car on the road. He was startled. He thought everyone at the lake had gone back to their regular houses. He stood deer-like for a moment, one hand on the key ready to turn, one hand on the knob ready to lift.
Then his tension eased. It’s just somebody who made a wrong turn, he told himself. He took a step backward and caught sight of the car. It was a blue sedan, four houses away. Lennie could just see a glimpse of it shining through the trees, but he could see that the car was moving slowly up the road, pausing at each driveway.
Lennie glanced over his shoulder at the lake. He saw the willow trees. He saw the bow of his boat poking through the leaves. Then he glanced back at the car. It was at the A-frame now, three houses away.
Silently Lennie closed the screen door, leaving the key in the lock. Bending low, he crawled to the steps. Here he hesitated again. He didn’t think he could make it to his boat. And if he did, he knew he couldn’t row across the lake without being spotted.
In a crouch, he went around the porch. The car was two houses away now. It was behind the house with the artificial brick siding. And for the first time Lennie got a good look at the car. It was a police car.
His fear flared. He dodged quickly around the side of the house. He stood there a moment, flattened against the stones.
Lennie had never heard that the police patrolled this area. Maybe they didn’t as a usual thing, he thought. Maybe people had complained that their houses had been bothered. Maybe they had asked the police to keep an eye out. Maybe he was going to be arrested.
The car was next door now, pausing at the driveway. Lennie was afraid he had waited too long. He glanced around, panic-stricken.
Then in one fast move he fell to his stomach and wriggled into the crawl space under the house. It was damp and musty here, a maze of discarded items and old tools and unused building materials. Cold air moved under the house, and Lennie thought he heard something scamper.
Pulling himself along with his elbows, he scooted around a pile of shutters, a box of Mason Jars, and a watering can with the bottom rusted out. He was cold, and his jacket was back at the Fairy Land Motel, hanging on a hook in the office.
Lennie struck his head on a low water pipe and ducked. He was rubbing his head when he caught sight of the police car through the gap between some old plastic milk bottles and a tipped-over barrel. The police car slowed down and came to a stop at the driveway.
To calm himself, Lennie thought of Friend. It really wasn’t a bad idea, a product like Friend. Girls would always have someone to dance with at parties. Old people would never be caught talking to themselves. Right now he would feel a lot better with Friend sitting beside him.
“Whenever you feel afraid, reach for Friend. His hand is always there in a plastic so lifelike you can hardly tell it from the real thing.”
Lennie would touch the plastic hand, not for comfort, but to get Friend’s attention. “You go out,” he would whisper to Friend, “let them catch you.”
One nod and Friend would crawl out, willingly surrendering, his arms outstretched for the hand-cuffs.
Against his will Lennie’s mind turned from Friend. He could see the policeman now. He was standing by the car. He leaned down and spoke to the other policeman, who was working the radio. Lennie couldn’t hear what they were saying.
He inched forward so he could see the policeman a little better. He was a big man. He had probably been strong once, but he had started going downhill. Everything about him sagged—his arms, his stomach, his neck. The other cop—Lennie could see him now too—looked like Tiny Tim with a haircut.
It was so much like a television show that for a moment Lennie half expected to see the two cops framed in an eleven-inch black-and-white set. He wished suddenly it was a television program and that a commercial was about to come on. All Lennie would need would be sixty seconds to get away.
The two policemen spoke again. The big cop looked up at the sky.
Lennie waited. He crossed his fingers for luck.
The policeman looked down at his shoe. Lennie thought for a moment he was getting ready to step back into the patrol car. Lennie’s breath began to ease out in a long sigh of relief.
Then, abruptly, the policeman turned and headed straight for Lennie.
Chapter Eight
Lennie inched closer to the large pile of stones by the chimney. He crouched behind it. He couldn’t see the policeman now.
The stones he was leaning against were as round and smooth as cannon balls. These stones were what had first impressed Lennie about the house. He had felt that only very particular people would choose stones like these. Ordinary people would just settle for rough stones blasted out of a quarry. These stones—if Lennie knew anything about stones—had been hand-picked out of some creek where they had been worn smooth by about a thousand years of rippling water.
Lennie still couldn’t see the policeman, but he could hear his footsteps coming closer. The policeman tried the back door, paused, took two steps to the right. He was probably looking in the kitchen window now, Lennie thought, and then the policeman came down the steps and went around the right side of the house. Lennie pressed closer to the pile of stones and put his hand on one of them for comfort.
Slowly, as if he were pacing off a distance, the policeman walked to the front of the house. Lennie could see his legs now, the crease in his pants. His shoes were as shiny as Christmas tree ornaments. If Lennie crawled closer, he could see his face in them.
The policeman stopped, and for one terrible moment Lennie expected the policeman to drop down on all fours and peer past the trash to where Lennie crouched. Lennie’s face would shine in the darkness like a light bulb. “I see you, son, come on out.”
But the policeman moved on to the steps. He stood there a moment, shielded by the ferns. Then, one by one, he took the stairs. He went up as slowly as a trained bear.
Lennie was almost under the porch, so he could hear every move the policeman made. The policeman looked in the living-room window, peering in for a long time like a beggar. He took in the deerhead over the mantel, the faded sofa, the big oilcloth-covered table, the electric motor somebody had left on the daybed. Lennie knew that room by heart. And if the policeman wanted to, if he bent to the left, he could see into the back bedroom, Lennie’s room. He could see the chest where all Lennie’s favorite things were stored.
The policeman moved to the front door. He opened the screen.
There was a silence, and Lennie knew the policeman was looking at the key in the lock, wondering what it was doing there.
“Hey, Bert,” he called, “look here a minute.”
The second policeman got out of the car. He walked around the house and took the steps to the porch two at a time.
“Looks like somebody was going in.”
“Yeah, or trying to.”
“People ought not leave their keys just lying around, careless like.”
“Yeah, there ought to be a law.”
Lennie rubbed his hand over the smoothest of the stones. It was so smooth it could be an old dinosaur egg, Lennie thought. Here, under his hand, fossilized for a million years, could be an embryo dinosaur that had never even had a chance at life. The idea appealed to Lennie. In good faith some dinosaur had laid this egg, expecting a tiny bright green miniature of herself to pop out, and instead it had wound up as an imitation rock under somebody’s house.
It would make a nice television show, Lennie thought. The show would open with a shot of the rock under the house, and then very slowly the rock would begin to crack open and out would come the little dinosaur.
It could be as nice a farm series as Lassie, Lennie planned. Carol Burnett would be the farmer’s wife; Tim Conway, the farmer. They would be sitting at the kitchen table when the egg hatched. Carol Burnett would feel a tremor. Her chair would bobble. She’d say, “Did you feel something
?”
Tim Conway would not look up from his supper of noodles. “I didn’t feel nothing,” he’d say.
They’d go back to eating. The dinosaur below would have a growth spurt. His head would hit the floor. Carol Burnett’s chair would fall back three feet.
“Didn’t you feel something then?” she’d ask, struggling up.
“I didn’t feel nothing,” Tim Conway would say.
The dinosaur’s head would crack the floor, sending Carol Burnett into the stove. She would pull herself out. Her wig would be sideways, her bathrobe scorched. “Did you feel something then?”
“I didn’t feel nothing.”
Suddenly the dinosaur, full-grown, would explode through the kitchen floor. Tim Conway would be sent flying through space. He would go over the barn, through the chicken coop, past the silo, and into the wood pile. He would look up, dazed. “I think I felt something,” he’d say.
Afterward, Lennie thought, when the series got popular, the dinosaur could do Lassie-type things like saving babies and rescuing forest rangers.
Above him the policeman said, “Could be somebody inside.” Lennie forgot the TV show. The policeman’s foot moved and a little dust shifted down through the cracks in the boards.
“We better take a look.”
The policeman turned the key in the lock and pushed on the door. He didn’t know that you had to lift up on the knob, Lennie thought. Then, abruptly, the door opened and the two policemen entered the house.
Lennie couldn’t hear them as clearly now, but every now and then a board would creak, and Lennie would know they were in the kitchen, looking behind the hot-water heater. Or they were in Lennie’s bedroom or climbing the stairs to the second floor.
“Looks like everything’s in order,” Lennie heard the policeman say as he came out on the porch.
“Mr. Wilkins was right, I guess, about somebody going in these houses.”
“Yeah.”
“Probably some kids.”
“Nothing’s been taken, though. It doesn’t look like it, anyway.”