Not-Just-Anybody Family

by Betsy Byars

“Where’s the rest of your family?”

  “Well, my other brother and my grandfather are in city jail.”

  “In jail? You’re putting me on.”

  “I wish I was.”

  “In jail?”

  “Yes, it’s true.”

  “What’d they do?”

  “I don’t know exactly what Pap did. Vern went in on his own, through the vent.”

  “Your brother busted into jail?”

  “That’s right. I helped him.”

  “Into jail? Now you’re messing with me.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “And you helped him?”

  “I gave him a boost.”

  “Man, this don’t happen. People don’t bust into jail. Who-all knows he’s in there?”

  “Just Pap.”

  “The police don’t know?”

  “Nope.”

  “Whoeee, they’ll have themselves a nice surprise in the morning. Be the first time anybody ever busted into jail. I know some people like to bust out.”

  “Me too,” said Maggie, thinking of Pap and Vern.

  “Bust into jail—that just don’t happen. Whoa, bus. Look, I’m ’bout to go past your stop. There’s Alderson General.”

  Maggie looked out the window at the four-story building. “Well, I thank you.”

  “You take care of yourself. You the only member of your family doing all right. Everybody else in jail, in the hospital.”

  “I will.”

  Maggie felt rich and special. She decided it was a great combination. She got up and, holding her hand over the comforting wad of money in her pocket, got off the bus.

  Junior was having the most wonderful, elegant dream of his life. He was in an orchestra, a huge orchestra, and he and all of the other musicians had on expensive black suits. The black suits were so expensive, they shone. They all—even the ladies—had on neckties.

  In their hands were miniature silver musical instruments that really played. The instruments were the most beautiful things Junior had ever seen in his life.

  The cymbals were the size of dimes. The piano was so small, the piano player had to poke the keys with toothpicks. The violins were one inch long; the bass fiddles, two inches. The orchestra leader had a baton like a straight pin.

  Junior, of course, had his harmonica. He was in the front row. He was standing up. He had his music on a silver stand. A spotlight shone on him.

  He was wiping his harmonica daintily on the lapel of his black suit, getting the spit off for the second number, when a voice said, “Junior.”

  Junior did not open his eyes.

  The orchestra leader was tapping his straight pin on his music stand. He lifted it in the air.

  “Junior!”

  The dream was too wonderful to lose. This was his one chance to be a star, to play in a real orchestra with chandeliers glowing and his black suit shining. This was the only time thousands of people in evening outfits would be smiling, waiting to clap for him. This was—

  “Junior! It’s me! Maggie!”

  Junior opened his eyes.

  CHAPTER 22

  Discoveries

  The policeman who did the one o’clock check of the city jail did not spot Vern. Vern was lying on the far side of Pap, against the wall, under the blanket, asleep. The two o’clock policeman didn’t see him either; neither did the three and four o’clock policemen.

  For three and a half hours Vern slept so soundly, he did not move one single time. Pap slept the same way. They might as well have been logs.

  At four-thirty Vern moved for the first time. He slung one foot out from under the blanket and it landed on Pap’s arm. Pap never even felt it.

  The five o’clock policeman came in eating a ham and fried egg sandwich. He had been on duty all night and he was tired.

  He just gave a quick check of the cells on the left, taking in with one glance the fact that everybody was in his bunk asleep. He turned his head, did the same quick sweep on the right.

  He was ready to go back to the desk when he noticed something weird in the last cell. What in the—Take a look at that!

  The old man’s foot was on his arm. How did he manage that?

  The policeman walked closer, his ham and fried egg sandwich forgotten in his hand. The only explanation he could think of was that the old man was some sort of contortionist, like the Living Pretzel whom the policeman had once seen in a sideshow.

  But wait! What in the—Would you take a look at that!

  There was a leg attached to the foot. It was a small leg. Too small.

  The officer had been a member of the police force for twenty years but he had never seen anything like this. He walked closer. He saw now that the leg went under the blanket where there was a large bump. Coming out of the top of the bump was a lot of rumpled sandy-colored hair.

  The officer unlocked the cell without making a sound. He entered. He pulled back the blanket so carefully, the sleepers never even felt it. He looked at Vern. He looked up at the open vent.

  He closed his eyes, shook his head, and a half smile came over his face. Well, we’ve had a jailbreak, he said to himself. He laid the blanket gently back over the sleeping boy.

  He went to the sergeant’s desk. He shook his head. “You ain’t going to believe this,” he said.

  Mud was hungry, and it was the first time in his life he had ever had to worry about food. His diet had always been simple. Whatever Pap ate, he ate. If Pap ate pancakes with syrup on them, he ate pancakes with syrup on them. If Pap ate stew, he ate stew.

  Mud was moving into the downtown section of the city now, and the houses were close together. There were no nice lawns, no side yards. There weren’t any swimming pools or fine shrubbery either.

  At one of the houses Mud paused. He smelled something of interest—a fishy smell. He lifted his nose, trying to find out where the smell was coming from.

  Mud was fond of fish. Sometimes when Pap caught a fish in the creek, he would put it in a bucket of creek water and let Mud recatch it.

  It was like bobbing for apples. Mud would thrust his whole head into the water, scramble around till he felt the fish in his mouth. Then he would come up.

  Pap’s laugh was Mud’s reward, that and a piece of fried fish later. Mud held these fish in his mouth so gently, there was never a tooth mark on them.

  Mud crossed the street. The smell seemed to be coming from this house … from this porch. Mud went up the steps. From this dish on this railing. Mud stood up and looked into the dish.

  Mud was a good stander. He could even take a few steps on his hind legs when it was necessary. Mostly he stood up so he could get a better look at something.

  It worked. Mud could see that the dish contained a ring of dark food, sort of smashed down into the bottom. He propped one foot on the banister and took the dish in his teeth. He set it down on the floor without a sound.

  Mud took one small bite of the fish stuff. The taste was nothing like Pap’s fish, and he stood looking at the dish with his brow drawn into wrinkles. He took a second bite.

  This was the worst food Mud had ever had in his entire life. It was barely edible. If he hadn’t been absolutely starved …

  Mud finished the cat food, went down the steps, and was once again on his way through the dark streets of Alderson.

  Ralphie opened his eyes and saw Maggie sitting cross-legged on the foot of Junior’s bed. Her green eyes were shining; one of her braids lay on her tanned shoulder, she was chewing on the other in her excitement. Her cheeks were pink. She was grinning. She had one jagged tooth.

  Even if she had not been telling the story of how she and Vern had busted into jail, Ralphie would have fallen in love with her. His heart was pumping hard, like the machines he’d seen occasionally through the doors of Intensive Care.

  “You busted into jail?” Ralphie asked. He worked his way up in bed until he was sitting. He hadn’t even bothered to push the control and bring the head of the bed up with him.


  Maggie had learned from the bus driver the shock value of her story. Already it was her favorite story in the world. She loved to tell it. Her eyes got brighter.

  “It was the only thing we could do. We had to.”

  “They had to,” Junior echoed in the same delighted voice. He held out his empty hands to show there was no alternative.

  “Pardon me for being nosy,” Ralphie said, “but why didn’t you just go in the police station and ask to see your grandfather?”

  Maggie looked at him as if he were crazy. He wished he hadn’t spoken. The tips of his ears turned red.

  “Anybody could have done that,” she said.

  “Yes, anybody,” piped Junior happily.

  “We Blossoms,” Maggie said proudly, “have never been just ‘anybody.’ ”

  Ralphie believed her. For the first time in his life he had nothing to say.

  CHAPTER 23

  Fame

  BOY BREAKS INTO CITY JAIL was the headline.

  The story took up two columns on the front page.

  BULLETIN:

  Last night a local juvenile broke into city jail by way of an old air vent. Using a board, which he placed in an elm tree beside the jail, he crossed to the vent. The size of the vent was approximately seven inches by fourteen inches.

  According to police, the boy entered city jail just before midnight and slept in the cell with his grandfather, Alexander “Pap” Blossom, Sr., who is in jail awaiting a hearing on a charge of maliciously disturbing the peace.

  Officer Canfield, the policeman who found the boy during his five o’clock rounds, admitted that it had been quite a surprise. “I knew soon as I saw him that he wasn’t supposed to be there. I went out and got the sergeant and took him in, and the sergeant was surprised too. He shook both the boy and the grandfather awake to find out what was going on.”

  When awakened, the grandfather asked one question, “What’s wrong?” The officer admitted that the boy was still in his grandfather’s cell but would be moved, he said, “as soon as we figure out what to do with him.”

  “We let him out for breakfast, but he wanted to go right back in afterward, so we let him. We’re taking it one hour at a time.”

  The grandfather’s hearing is scheduled for this afternoon.

  There was a large picture of Pap and Vern sitting on the bunk, side by side. Their hands were on their knees, their heads turned stiffly to the photographer. It was like a photograph taken fifty years ago.

  Neither one of them looked scared, unhappy, or regretful.

  Under the picture was the caption; “Local policemen caught off-guard by unique jailbreak.”

  “Hey, you weren’t kidding!” Ralphie said.

  Ralphie had been walking up and down the hall on his new leg, mainly in the hope of impressing Maggie. At the desk he had seen the morning newspaper.

  “I want to borrow this,” he said.

  He hurried back to the room, hopping spryly on his new leg. “There.” He threw the paper, headline up, on Junior’s bed.

  “That’s them!” Junior cried, drawing in his breath. “They’re famous!”

  “Give me that,” Maggie said.

  “What does it say?”

  “This is what it says.” Maggie snapped the newspaper open. She read the story aloud, stumbling only on the words juvenile and maliciously. When she was through, she held the paper at arm’s length and looked at the picture critically.

  Then she said, “That doesn’t look a thing like Vern, does it, Junior?”

  “Not a thing.” Junior was so glad to have Maggie with him that he had become her echo.

  “And they made Pap look like an old bum.”

  “A real old bum,” Junior said.

  Ralphie said, “Reporters try to take unflattering pictures. That’s part of their training. They throw the good pictures in the trash can.”

  For the first time Maggie looked at him with interest.

  “He tells lies,” Junior said quickly, seeing Maggie’s look. He did not want to share Maggie with anybody. “He told me he had watermelon seeds inside him and marbles in his head.”

  Ralphie’s ears turned red.

  “Maybe he lied about that,” Maggie admitted. She was beginning to like the boy with the artificial leg. “But he sure tells the truth about reporters.”

  “Maybe,” Junior conceded.

  Ralphie was so pleased with Maggie’s compliment that he hopped around the room on his artificial leg.

  “Stop that, Ralphie!” the nurse called from the door. “You’re supposed to walk on the leg, not jump on it. You’re going to bust those stitches.”

  “It doesn’t hurt at all,” Ralphie said, lying.

  CHAPTER 24

  Trucks and Cabs and I-85

  Mud did not know what to do about the Interstate. The only time he had been on I-85 before, he had been sitting beside Pap in the cab of the pickup, with wind that smelled of exhaust fumes whipping his ears back from his face.

  He had come to I-85 today at the peak of the midday traffic. He had turned down the exit ramp because the air in that direction smelled more familiar than the air in any other direction. Now he faced more traffic than he had ever seen in his life.

  He waited and watched. He knew he had to get across it—the air told him that—but he didn’t know how. The traffic was solid—a double line of trucks and cars and buses and vans, all exceeding the speed limit.

  He walked nervously back and forth, pacing, his eyes on the steady stream of traffic coming through the underpass. He breathed air thick with exhaust fumes. He blinked every time a truck threw gravel in his direction.

  Mud’s tongue was hanging out. His throat was dry. He had not had a drop of water for three hours, not since the cat-food snack. And the cat-food snack had left him thirsty.

  An hour ago he had come across a dust hole. With Mud, there was nothing to do with a dust hole but get in it and roll around. Mud preferred the back method. He lay on his back and twisted from side to side. His eyes closed in bliss, he moaned with pleasure.

  Afterward, refreshed, he got up and shook himself. A red cloud grew around him.

  As he left the dust hole he felt better but looked worse. To see him loping along the side of the road, a person would think Mud had never had a bath in his life. The bandanna around his neck looked like a dust rag.

  A small break came in the right lane. Mud started out, then darted back as a truck roared down the fast lane at seventy-five miles an hour. Mud crouched on the grass while fine gravel rained around him. He fell back to wait for another chance.

  He was going to get across I-85 if it killed him.

  “Well, I better be on my way,” Maggie said with studied casualness.

  Maggie had been in the hospital for twelve hours, and she could not have been happier if she had been in the ritziest hotel in New York City. Everything she wanted, or would ever want, was right here.

  She had just finished lunch. She had bought a pimento cheese sandwich from a vending machine, heated it miraculously in a small oven, and washed it down with an ice-cold Mello-Yello.

  Before that she had napped in the waiting room, on a long plastic sofa, while watching Let’s Make a Deal. She got to see a man dressed like a hot dog win a Westinghouse refrigerator. This was living.

  “Be on your way?” This was the worst news Ralphie had ever heard in his life. He was at her side in an instant.

  “Where are you going?”

  Maggie yawned. “To the courthouse, of course. My grandfather’s hearing is this afternoon.”

  “You’re going to the hearing?” Junior wailed.

  Junior was in a wheelchair for the first time, his legs propped in front of him. He rolled himself forward a few inches. “I want to go too.”

  “You can’t.”

  “I have to!”

  “No.”

  “I have to!”

  Junior could not bear to be left again. He had not even started to recover from being lef
t on the roof. That was the worst thing that had happened to him, worse even than the broken legs. Breaking legs he could stand; being left he couldn’t.

  “I’m sorry, Junior, I would never be able to get you on the bus,” Maggie said sensibly. “I rode the bus last night and there was not one single wheelchair person on it. There are no ramps, no—”

  “You can get me on. Please! I promise you can get me on,” Junior wailed.

  “Junior, you have two broken legs. You’re in a wheelchair!”

  “I’ll walk if you get me crutches. I promise I’ll walk. Please!” He would have gone down on his knees if he had been able to bend.

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll get my own crutches.”

  Junior propelled himself toward the door, but this was his first time in the wheelchair. The chair swerved into the foot of his bed.

  Junior hung his head in defeat. He began to cry. “I want to go! I want to go!”

  Maggie was softened by his tears. “I’ll tell you all about it when I get back. I’ll remember every single thing that happens. It’ll be just like being there.”

  Junior shook his head from side to side in a fit of rage and frustration too terrible to be expressed in any other way. “No! No! No! No—”

  It was Ralphie who stopped the explosion of no’s. He took one step forward on his artificial leg.

  “We,” he said. There was something in his quiet, take-charge voice that made Junior stop crying and look up. “We could take a cab,” Ralphie said.

  Maggie looked at him and her face lit up with Junior’s. At that moment they looked like brother and sister.

  Maggie threw her braids behind her back and grinned, showing her jagged tooth. “Why didn’t I think of that?” she said. “Of course! We’ll take a cab.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Going to Court

  “Gentleman to see you,” the policeman told Pap.

  Pap threw up his hands to protect himself. “No more reporters. I’m not talking to no more reporters.” His old head wagged tiredly from side to side, begging for mercy.

  “Me either,” said Vern who was sitting beside him.