by Betsy Byars
“We can come back later.”
“Right.”
Still they stood there. Why didn’t they go? Junior wanted to peer around his wings, but he was not going to do that until they were a million miles away. No, a billion miles away. If he just stayed absolutely still …
“What’s that up there on the roof?”
Junior’s heart stopped beating.
“Where?”
“Up there.”
Maybe they meant the house roof, Junior thought, his wings trembling so hard, it was as if they were real. His thoughts bounded frantically in his brain. Please let them mean the house roof. Please—
“Up there.”
“On the barn?”
“Yes.”
“Is it some kind of kite? What is that thing?”
“That’s what I was asking you.”
At that moment, the worst moment of his life, Junior felt himself begin to slide. He tried to catch himself. He gave one frantic lurch, but somehow this left him doubled over, his wings pinned beneath him.
He picked up speed. He might as well have been on a sled. He began a long, high-pitched scream. He was sliding facedown, and somehow this made it even scarier.
Another frantic lunge flipped him over, and he looked up into the blinding July sun. He was now on the very spot where he had stood with such hope only moments before.
He was at the edge of the roof, his legs dangling in space. He tottered there, as if on a seesaw, and then he went over.
As he fell his arms rose from his sides, and he began desperately to beat the air with them. He had a brief startlingly clear picture of himself taking flight, soaring over the policemen’s heads to the grassy clearing and then beyond, actually skimming the sky like a bird.
Good-bye, World.
The beautiful vision ended as he hit the hard ground at the feet of the startled policemen.
CHAPTER 4
Broken Wings
Vern and Maggie were creeping up on the house in the darkness. They were on their stomachs, edging forward on their elbows like soldiers.
The only sounds were the chirping of the crickets and tree frogs and the occasional whine of a hungry mosquito.
They paused in the shadows. Ahead of them the moonlight turned the clearing white.
“Well, their car’s gone,” Maggie said.
“Maybe it’s parked in a different place.”
“There are no lights on in the house,” she said, trying to make things better. “Wouldn’t they put lights on if they were inside?”
“Not if they were trying to catch us off-guard.”
“Oh.”
This exchange and Maggie’s soft “Oh” gave Vern a feeling of manliness, of being in charge. He felt he alone understood the wiles of policemen, the tricks they played on the innocent. It was going to be up to him to save them all.
He paused to give their secret whistle, to alert Junior they were in the yard. Bobwhite! Bobwhite! The whistle hung on the air like the actual song of a bird.
They waited.
There was no answering call from Junior.
“Stay here,” Vern said.
In a crouch he ran through the moonlit clearing and into the bushes around the house. These bushes were as old as the house—seventy years old; and they were so overgrown, a four-door car could disappear in their branches.
Vern ran around to the front of the house behind the bushes. He went up the steps silently, taking them one by one. From the top step he slipped across the porch.
The porch swing had been raised last fall. Pap stored it by pulling it up to the ceiling so it couldn’t bang against the house during winter storms. This spring he had not gotten around to letting it down.
Vern paused under the swing, listening.
Then he lifted his head and peered into the room. Everything was still.
He duck-walked to the door and paused at the screen door. Nothing looked out of order. The house smelled the way it always did. At this point he almost felt he could, like his grandfather and his grandfather’s dog, Mud, smell a stranger if one was inside.
In a soft voice he said, “Junior?”
There was no answer.
Vern opened the door and went inside.
Like a shadow he moved through the rooms. “Junior,” he said softly in each one. Junior might have hidden himself in a closet or under a bed.
It was too dark to see, but Vern knew every stick of furniture in every room. He could have gone through this house blindfolded. In his lifetime not one single piece of furniture had been bought, nothing had been recovered, nothing had been painted, no new curtains had been hung. He felt the comfort of the familiar, almost—it seemed—friendly sofas and beds and chairs.
He opened the basement door. “Junior.” There was the familiar smell of warm, fermenting mash, but no Junior.
In the back of the house Maggie waited with her chin resting on her hands. A mosquito, whining, landed on her cheek. She slapped it away.
It was too dark to see her green Magic Marker nails, but if she could have, it would not have brought her one bit of pleasure. She was going to scrub the green off as soon as she could get to the kitchen sink. Green nails were stupid and childish, and she somehow felt she had matured enormously just in the space of that afternoon.
Vern came through the darkness so silently that she gasped out loud when he dropped down beside her.
“I think they’re gone.”
“But where’s Junior?”
“I don’t know. He’s not in the house.”
“Do you think they caught Junior?”
The way she choked on the word caught made it sound like the worst thing that could happen to a person.
“Let’s check the barn. Maybe he got inside and hid in the straw. That’s what he should have done—that’s what I meant for him to do when I yelled ‘Hide!’ ” He added with a sigh, “Only, you know Junior.”
“Yes.”
“And keep quiet.”
“All I said was ‘Yes.’ ”
“Well, don’t say it so loud. Those policemen could be anywhere.”
“Anyway, I don’t think he could hide with those wings on his arms,” Maggie whispered.
Since this was the exact thing Vern was thinking, he said, “I asked you to be quiet.”
In silence they crossed the yard to the barn, running through the moonlit clearing. They slipped behind the old sagging door.
This door hadn’t been closed in five years. Even when their mom was home from the rodeo with her horse, Sandy Boy, they didn’t close the door. The patch of weeds that grew behind the door was stiff and thorny and reached to their waists.
“Ow,” said Maggie.
Vern looked at her in disgust, and she said, “Well, I stuck myself on a thorn.” She put her knuckle into her mouth to ease the pain.
Vern peered out around the barn door. “Come on, let’s go in.”
They slipped around the barn door and stopped short.
“Oh, Vernon,” Maggie said, using his full name for the first time in years.
She reached for his hand. He reached for hers, but they were so upset, they did not touch. Their hands grabbed the air.
For in the moonlight, just beneath the spot where Junior had stood poised for flight, lay two broken, twisted, ruined objects, the saddest objects either Maggie or Vern had ever seen.
“Wings,” they said together.
CHAPTER 5
2,147 Beer and Pop Cans
Pap was in the corner cell of the city jail. It was one o’clock in the morning, but Pap was not sleeping. He was sitting on his bunk, leaning over his knees, staring at nothing.
His brows were pulled low over his dark eyes. The blood was pumping so hard in his head, the blue veins were throbbing.
Pap was seventy-two years old, and this was the first time he had been arrested. It had been so upsetting that at first he had had to hold himself back from jumping up and actually trying to tear the bars
off his cell. If he had been a younger man, at the peak of his strength, that is exactly what he would have done.
Now he sat without moving, except for the veins pumping in his head, and his elbows, which trembled against his legs. He had been sitting like this for five hours.
The arrest had happened so fast, it still bewildered him to think about it.
He had been coming up Sumter Avenue, minding his own business, stopping for stop signs, red lights, and pedestrians. He had to do this because he had an expired license plate, and he did not want to call attention to himself.
He also had 2,147 beer and pop cans in the back of his truck in see-through plastic bags. This was the biggest haul Pap had ever made—the result of a July Fourth weekend bonanza.
It was such a mountain of cans that it caused heads to turn all up and down Sumter Avenue. Pap was proud of it. He got five cents for every can he brought in, and so in the back of his truck was $107.35 cold cash. He had multiplied it out on a brown paper bag. He couldn’t wait to get to the station and reap his rewards.
Beside him on the seat was his dog, Mud. Mud was also enjoying the ride. He was looking out the window, doing what Pap called smiling.
Mud had been Pap’s dog for ten years, and when Pap was feeling good, Mud felt good. When Pap was low, Mud crawled under the porch and would not come out even if somebody called “Supper!”
Pap turned the corner and started up the steepest part of Spring Street. He was whistling.
Suddenly the car in front of him unexpectedly stopped to back into a parking place. Pap didn’t crash into the back of the car, as he felt he certainly had a right to do, but he had to brake so hard that the back of the pickup truck flopped down.
Pap heard a soft, rustling thud as the first bag of beer and pop cans tumbled onto Spring Street. It was a slow-motion kind of thing; the bag just toppled slowly onto the street. Then there was a second thud, and a third.
Pap cussed and pulled up his hand brake, and the old Chevrolet truck shuddered and died. Pap got out to see the damage.
He stood in the middle of the street, hands braced on the small of his back. He looked at the sorry spectacle of his bags of cans lying on the street. He was wagging his head back and forth.
At that moment two teenaged boys in a Toyota cut around the corner. Pap turned with a frown. The boys ran into the bags like kids hitting a leaf pile. It looked to Pap like they had done it on purpose.
The boys were laughing. The driver threw the Toyota into reverse, U-turned, and took off.
Pap reached into the back of his truck for his shotgun. He fired one shot at the retreating Toyota, but he hit the traffic light down the street. It exploded and left some wires sizzled and popping over the Sumter Avenue intersection.
Two of the bags were busted, and Pap was standing over them, worrying about his $107.35, when he saw some people on the sidewalk. He turned to the people with a frown. He was thinking about asking for some help, even though asking for help was hard for him.
The people, however, thought he was pointing the shotgun at them. They divided. Half of them ran into the nearby Woolco, the other half into Winn Dixie.
The stupid fools! Couldn’t they see it was a single-barrel shotgun? All he had wanted was some help, and he didn’t even want that now; wouldn’t let them help if they asked. Stupid fools!
He was trying to gather up the cans and get them back into the truck by himself when the police arrived—two carloads, sirens screaming.
“What’s happened?” Pap wondered aloud. He thought maybe there was a bank robbery up the street.
But the police, guns out of their holsters, were advancing on him!
“Wait,” he said. He took two steps backward. “I ain’t done nothing. I just want to get my cans and get out of here. I just—”
They never let him finish. Two of the policemen grabbed him and shoved him facedown onto the bags of cans. Pap tried to get up.
The policemen were doing something to his arms. Pap didn’t want them to. Suddenly Pap felt the bags break, and he heard cans rolling.
“My cans!” Pap cried. He was struggling in the cans now, sending them on their way faster.
The policemen got him to his feet, took his shotgun, handcuffed him, and threw him into the back of a police car. At one time it would have taken the entire police force to do this, but that was before Pap became seventy-two years old.
They started the police car and drove away while the people were coming out of Woolco and Winn Dixie. One by one the people lined up to tell the policeman with the notepad about Pap threatening them.
All this time the 2,147 pop and beer cans were rolling down Spring Street, across the Sumter intersection, and through the municipal parking lot. From there they rolled into White Run Creek. They were clicking like wood chimes.
In White Run Creek they started downstream, bobbing with the currents, turning the creek silver where the sun hit them.
CHAPTER 6
See-Through Eyelids
It was Tuesday morning. Junior was dreaming, as he always did just before he woke up, that he could see through his eyelids.
This dream had become so real to Junior that he believed he could actually do it. Without opening his eyes, he could see his room and his window and the tree outside the window and the beautiful picture of his mother on Sandy Boy. In the picture his mother was leaning off the back of the horse, upside down, one foot in a strap behind the saddle. Sometimes Junior turned the picture around so he could see his mother right side up.
One time, in first grade, the teacher had said, “Now, boys and girls, I want you all to close your eyes because I want you to imagine something.”
Dutifully Junior had closed his eyes and he had, through his eyelids—he was willing to swear this on a stack of bibles—through his eyelids he had seen Mrs. Hodges adjust her brassiere.
This morning he knew, without opening the first eye, that he was somewhere he did not want to be. Beneath him the sheets were stiff and clean. There was a funny smell in the air. There was too much light. Somewhere outside the room a lot of people were doing stuff. Wheels were rolling. Ladies and men talking. A dread fell over him like a cover.
He opened his eyes and gasped with fear. It was the first time in his life he had awakened and not known where he was. He was either in a hospital or a prison, maybe a prison hospital. He had watched enough television to figure that out.
“I got to get out of here,” he muttered.
He tried to sling his legs over the side of the bed, but they wouldn’t go. It was as if his legs were actually attached to the foot of the bed. He sat up; threw back the sheet.
His legs were in white stiff things. They wouldn’t budge. It was yesterday all over again, only now it was his legs that wouldn’t work instead of his winged arms.
He began to cry. Under the white stiff things, where he couldn’t get at them, his legs hurt. They hurt a lot. Just trying to sling them over the side of the bed had made pain shoot through his whole body.
“What’s wrong?”
Junior couldn’t have been more startled if God had spoken to him. He had not even been aware that anyone else was in the room. He glanced around so fast, his neck popped.
A redheaded boy in the next bed was watching him with interest.
“I don’t know,” Junior gasped.
“You must have been in an accident.”
All the horror came back to him then. “I fell off a barrrrrrn,” he wailed. He flung himself back against his pillow.
“A barn?”
Junior twisted his head from side to side, too miserable now to speak.
“What were you doing on a barn? Making like a rooster? Er-er-errrrrrrrr-err!” The boy flapped his arms at his sides.
Junior nodded, dumb with misery and pain.
“You were playing rooster? No kidding? You could go on That’s Incredible.”
“I wasn’t playing rooster. I was trying to fly.”
“Did you?”
>
“Not farrrrr.”
“How far? Ten feet? Twenty?”
The distance was so short, Junior could measure it with his hands. He showed the boy a distance of about three feet, then he let his hands drop to his sides.
He wiped his tears on his bed sheet. “Where are we?” he asked the boy.
“Alderson General Hospital, fourth floor.”
Junior looked at the boy with grudging admiration. Here was someone who obviously knew a thing or two about hospitals.
“How did I get here?”
“They brought you down from the operating room last night, eleven o’clock. It woke me up. You were moaning. Oh, no, no, noooooooooo. Like that. The nurse said you broke both your legs, but she didn’t say how.”
“The barn.”
Pity crept into Junior’s voice. He wondered if he would ever again be able to say the word barn without wanting to weep.
“Don’t you remember anything?”
Junior shook his head.
“They must have knocked you out. Or did they just go ahead and set your legs while you were awake?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Well, you’d remember if they’d knocked you out. You know how they do it? The doctor takes a great big hammer and he hides it behind his back and then he says, ‘Look over there! Quick! What’s that?’ And when you look, he brings out the hammer and hits you over the head.”
“That’s not true,” Junior said.
“Yes, it is. You know what they did to me?”
“No.”
“They cut my head open and filled it with marbles. You can hear them rolling around when I shake my head.”
“That’s not true.”
“Prove it,” the boy said.
Junior was too busy going over his own memories to worry about the boy’s marbles. To himself he said, I was up on the barn and the police drove in the yard—I remember that, and I was hiding from them on the roof—I remember that, and I slipped.
To the boy he added, “If I had been able to go off the roof the way I’d planned, sort of launch myself, I could have escaped over the trees, but they got me all mixed up.” Again sorrow made his voice quiver. “It was the police that made me fall.”