“I see you, fella,” said Rufus, to reassure himself. Since there was no answer to this remark, only that same uncanny hopping up and down of the keys, Rufus began to feel bolder. He tapped where he supposed a shoulder would be if a man were sitting there. He felt nothing. He quickly touched the stool, ran his chubby hand all over it. He still felt nothing. Rufus’s spine tingled with excitement. He retreated across the room and stood under a big rubber plant. He had put his hand right through an invisible man! That was proof all right. An invisible man cannot be felt! He cannot be seen and he cannot be felt! He is like thin air and you can walk right through him or hundreds like him and never even know it.
Wait till he told Jane that! All the time she was going around thinking an invisible person can be felt. That’s not so. What would be the advantage anyway of being invisible if people bumped into you all the time? Rufus thought in disgust.
Poompety, poompety! From beneath the rubber plant Rufus watched the invisible musician, thinking of the hands that were making the keys hop up and down so fast, never forgetting a note. A Paderooski all right, thought Rufus. An invisible Paderooski, and he imagined him tossing his hair off his forehead.
All of a sudden in rushed Mrs. Saybolt. She dashed over to the piano and then she dashed out of the room again, fortunately without seeing Rufus. But when she left, the invisible man began to play faster. Goodness, how fast he went! Rufus got dizzy watching the keys pop up and down.
Then Mrs. Saybolt raced back into the room. Rufus guessed she did not like the fast way the invisible man was playing. Rufus could not see what she did to him, perhaps she rapped his knuckles, but when she left this time, the man (Rufus decided it must be a man; no boy could play that fast) began to play very slowly. Poo-oomp-ty, poo-mp. Instead of pelting down like raindrops, the keys rose and sank so slowly you would almost think there was another invisible man inside the piano trying to hold the notes back.
“Play slow, too, don’t you?” said Rufus, ruminating on this.
Once he had gone to the moving pictures. He had seen pictures of athletes racing and of a ballgame. Then they did tricks with the movie. They made it go lickety-cut. The racers looked as though they were running right out of the screen at you and you couldn’t help ducking so they wouldn’t step on you. Then they made the movie run very slowly. The runners looked as though they could scarcely pick up their feet, as though they were made of lead. And then they made the movie go backward. The runners were whisked back to their starting point, and in the baseball game the ball was sucked right back into the pitcher’s mitt. It was quite miraculous.
Now this invisible piano player was going so slowly that maybe the next thing he would do would be to play backward. He had played fast and he had played slow; also just right. But would he play backward, Rufus wondered. Could he?
“Hey, fella,” he said cautiously. “Could you play ‘My Country ’Tis of Thee’ backward?”
Then he felt ashamed of himself for asking such a question. How did he know this man could play “My Country ’Tis of Thee” forward, let alone backward. Just because he, Rufus, could play “My Country ’Tis of Thee” frontward very fast on the Moffats’ little organ did not mean that everybody else could play that song, too. And he himself had never tried it backward.
But this man was such a remarkable player! Rufus imagined that he could easily play backward as well as fast, slow, and just right.
Poompety, poomp! The invisible piano player struck the last note. He had finished what he was playing. Maybe he was tired now. Maybe that was why he was playing so slowly. The keys were still. There was silence for a moment and Rufus strained his eyes, hoping to see just the vaguest outline of the invisible man.
Then Rufus jumped! There was a sudden rattling noise inside the piano and a little slot above the keys sprang open, revealing the inner workings of the piano. Then came more rattling sounds and some round thing kept winding rapidly.
He’s going inside where the machinery is, that’s what! thought Rufus excitedly.
“Hey, is that your house, mister?” he asked.
There was no answer to this question.
Might be a boy after all, thought Rufus, because that hole is not very big. Might be about my size, he thought.
Rufus waited to see if the invisible piano player would come out and play again. But the keys remained still. No more hopping up and down. The man was through. And at this moment Rufus heard Mrs. Saybolt coming. He ran out of the door as fast as he could, leaving the astonished Mrs. Saybolt standing in the hall shouting “Tiger!”
“Wanted to hear the player,” Rufus called back as he ran down the street.
He tore home. He ran around to the backyard and crawled into the little chicken coop again to think about the invisible piano player. A man like that might be able to get through keyholes.
“Criminenty!” exclaimed Rufus aloud, at this thought.
Speaking out loud revealed his whereabouts to Joey, who had come to look for him.
“Hey, Rufe,” he said, “get your wagon. Just saw Mrs. Saybolt and she said we could have that big box that her new player piano came in.”
“She did!” said Rufus. And he added, “Did she say we could have him, too?”
Through Rufus’s mind flashed the vision of life in the Moffats’ house if they had an invisible person there, too. Where would he sleep? There were no extra beds. Just enough beds. He could sleep on the yellow couch maybe. On the other hand he might not need a bed at all. He could sleep in the air.
A chap like that in the house would not be an altogether pleasant addition to the family. For instance, he could eat all the dinner off their plates and they wouldn’t even see him doing it. If he ate as fast as he played the piano, there would be nothing left for the Moffats. Since he couldn’t be felt, they couldn’t grab hold of his wrist and stop him. Mama would have to divide the butter into six parts, and even at that how could they explain to him that in this house it was share and share alike? So Rufus was really quite relieved when Joe answered absentmindedly:
“Who? Said we could have the box, that’s all. Good box.”
“Yeah,” said Rufus, crawling out of the chicken coop. “That might be where he sleeps though, and where’s he gonna sleep if we take that away?”
“Who sleeps in that box?” asked Joe in disgust. “Nobody’d want to sleep in that old box.”
Now this was just the kind of a box that Rufus felt he would really like to sleep in himself. He could fix it up and have it for his own house. So he was really glad to know that the invisible piano player did not sleep in it. He probably did sleep inside the piano with the machinery after all. Rufus got his express wagon and he and Joey went down Pleasant Street to Mrs. Saybolt’s. While they were hoisting the big wooden crate sideways onto Rufus’s wagon and trying to balance it there, Mrs. Saybolt came out to lend a hand. Rufus and Joey did not run because she had asked them here.
“And this is the lad who loves music,” she said in a deep, hearty voice. She really was not bad close to. She just didn’t want people trying to sit in her hedge chairs. “Yes,” she repeated, “it’s a pleasure to see a boy his age who likes music that much,” and she fastened her eyes on Rufus. “Before you go now, come in and hear my player piano for a while.”
Rufus looked at Joey. Mrs. Saybolt was inviting them into her house to hear the invisible piano player! He glowed. Joey did not look so happy at the thought. Today was his day for dusting the pews. But who could say no to Mrs. Saybolt? Since ordinarily she chased you away, yelling “Tiger!” after you, when she wanted to be nice you had to be nice to her. That’s the way Joey figured anyway, so he and Rufus went indoors.
Mrs. Saybolt preceded them, and Rufus observed that she had already told the invisible piano player to play. He was slightly disappointed, because he thought this time he might have seen the fellow hop out of his house with part of his cloak not on him. Then Rufus might have seen an arm or a leg. But no, the fellow was already playing by
the time Joey and Rufus entered the parlor. Poomp-ty, poomp!
Mrs. Saybolt had a davenport instead of a couch or a sofa and Joey and Rufus sat on this. Mrs. Saybolt stood beside the piano and watched Rufus with an amiable smile.
“Plays nice, doesn’t it?”
It! thought Rufus.
“Sure does,” agreed Joey.
“Now I’ll play a march,” she said. She pushed a button, opened a little hole over the piano, took out a roll, put another in, and pushed another valve. The music began again. Rat-ta-tat! Boom! Boom!
Rufus looked at this proceeding with unbelieving eyes. The invisible piano player had been very real to him. And now instead of there being an invisible piano player the thing worked by machinery! Rufus felt cheated.
“Criminenty!” he exclaimed in disgust. “It’s a machine. It’s not an invisible piano player! Come on!” he said to Joe. “Let’s go!”
He tore out of the house and Joey followed him, giving Mrs. Saybolt an apologetic wave of the arm. They got their box and their wagon and teetered home with it, planning what they would do with such a good crate.
Mrs. Saybolt never could get Rufus to come in and listen to her player piano again. She coaxed him with cookies for a while. Then she gave up. She decided she must have made a mistake about Rufus loving music so much. She soon fell into the habit of calling him “Tiger!” again and chasing him off her white sidewalk.
As for Rufus, every time he went past that house and heard the piano playing his pulse beat very rapidly for a second as he thought of the invisible piano player, and then it calmed down completely when he reminded himself, Oh, a machine!
4
Rufus and the Fatal Four
Usually it made no difference whether or not Rufus was a left-handed person. In fact, now that the teacher had accepted this quirk in Rufus’s makeup, it was only awkward to be left-handed when somebody wanted to shake his right hand. So far no left-handed person had tried to shake hands with Rufus. Rufus hoped to meet one someday and then they would have a good left-handed shake.
But there was one occasion when it really was an asset to be left-handed, Rufus found. And that was in connection with the Fatal Four.
For some time Rufus had been seeing “The F. F.” on all of Janey’s notebooks and on the brown covers of her grammar and arithmetic books. He asked Jane what it meant. Jane said it was a secret. However, if Rufus would not tell anybody, the initials stood for the Fatal Four. More than that she would not say. Rufus assumed it had something to do with pirates. Therefore, he was really surprised when Jane, in a mood of confidence, further enlightened him to the extent of revealing that the Fatal Four was the name of a baseball team she belonged to that could beat anybody.
“Then,” she went on to explain, “if the Fatal Four gets tired of baseball, oh, not gets tired ’cause they’ll never do that, but if it should snow, and they couldn’t play anymore, they’ll still be the Fatal Four because it’s a good name the members can keep always. Baseball . . . football . . . no matter what. Or it could just be a club to eat cookies and drink punch made out of jelly and water.”
This all sounded good to Rufus, particularly the punch. He asked if he could join. Did it cost anything? Jane said she was sorry but the Fatal Four was all girls. However, she would try to bring him a cookie if they ever decided on punch and cookies instead of baseball. So for a time Rufus was not allowed to have anything to do with this team. But sometimes he went across the street to the big empty lot behind the library, sat down on a log, and watched them practice. There were a half dozen or so silvery gray old telephone poles piled up in one part of the lot. Bleachers, Rufus called them, and that was where he sat to watch the Fatal Four.
Jane and Nancy had organized the Fatal Four baseball team. At first Jane was worried that they were playing baseball in October when the time for baseball is spring. She thought it would be better if the Fatal Four started right in with punch and cookies on Tuesdays. But once they had begun playing baseball she wondered how she could ever have been so foolish. She loved baseball and could not understand how anybody was happy who did not play it every day.
Naturally, since Jane and Nancy had thought up this whole team, there was no reason why they should not take the two most important roles, the pitcher and the catcher, for themselves. Jane was the catcher. She accepted this position because she thought the name alone would automatically make her a good one. “Yes,” she said, “I’ll be catcher.” And she put her trust in the power of the title and the mitt to enable her to catch anything. Nancy was the pitcher. For a time they were the only members of the team, so they had to be the pitcher and the catcher, for in baseball that is the very least you can get along with. Soon, however, other girls in the neighborhood joined up.
“I’ll be the captain,” said Nancy. “Let’s take a vote.”
They took a vote and elected Nancy. Clara Pringle was the outfield to catch all flies. She never really had very much to do because there weren’t many flies hit and she sat in the long grass and waited for business. A girl named Hattie Wood was first base. That made four girls they had on the team and that was when they decided to call themselves the Fatal Four.
So far Rufus had had nothing to do with this team except to sit and watch. He did this gladly, however, for he considered that anything that called itself the Fatal Four was worthy of being watched, especially if there was that vague possibility of pink punch and cookies in the offing. He used to sit there pounding his fist into one of Joey’s old mitts, hoping they’d take him into the Four.
At first the Fatal Four baseball team practiced ardently every day. However, after a week or so Jane grew tired of chasing balls, since she rarely caught one. The mitt and the title of catcher had not produced the desired results.
“A backstop is what we need,” she told Nancy.
None of the girls was willing to be a backstop. Moreover, they were all needed where they were. Take Hattie Wood off first base and what kind of a team would they have? they asked themselves. An amateur team. The Fatal Four was anything but that, Nancy assured them. “But if you want a backstop, why not ask Rufus?” she suggested.
Now there was much arguing back and forth as to whether or not they should invite Rufus to be the backstop. He was not a girl and this team was supposed to be composed of girls only. But then everybody thought how nice it would be to have Rufus chasing balls for them, so they enthusiastically assented.
“After all,” said Jane, “a backstop is not really part of the team. It’s part of the grounds.”
So that clinched it and that was how Rufus came to be backstop for the Fatal Four baseball team. Rufus was happy over the arrangement. When they abandoned baseball for punch and cookies, he might be an accepted member. Moreover, the more practice he had, the sooner the big boys would take him into their team, he thought. Certainly if the pitcher of the boys’ baseball team had the same tendencies as Nancy, left-handed Rufus would be a tremendous asset.
Nancy used to be a rather good pitcher. But ever since the girls’ baseball team had been organized, Nancy had taken to practicing curves. Somehow these curves always shot the ball way to the left of the batter. The batter would move farther and farther to the left, hoping to catch up with Nancy’s curves. But it was no use. No matter how far to the left the batter edged, the farther to the left flew Nancy’s balls. Often the bases had to be moved several times during the game to catch up with the home plate. Frequently, by the end of the game, home plate was where the pitcher’s box originally had been, and vice versa. Nancy realized there was a flaw in her pitching which she would have to correct.
Meanwhile, it certainly was lucky the team now had a left-handed backstop, for Jane had a hard enough time catching just straight pitches, let alone these curves of Nancy’s that veered off to the left all the time. But Rufus had only to reach out his left arm farther and farther, and he caught most of them. What he didn’t catch he cheerfully ran for, over Mr. Buckle’s hen coop or in Mrs. Wood�
�s asparagus patch that had gone to seed, or he hunted between the long silvery logs that lay lined up in a corner of the field.
As a reward for his backstop duties Nancy pitched Rufus some curves, and since he was a left-handed batter, her balls that veered to the left were just perfect for him and it was only when Rufus was at the bat that Clara Pringle, picking goldenrod in the outfield, had anything to do in the game.
This convinced Nancy that there was nothing wrong with her pitching after all. The trouble lay with the material she was working with. “Slug at ’em, fellas,” she said. “Rufe hits ’em all.” And the girls, feeling rather ashamed, now tried harder, sometimes even turning around and batting left-handed as Rufus did, hoping to hit Nancy’s balls.
One Saturday morning Rufus was sitting in the driver’s seat of the old abandoned sleigh that was in the Moffats’ barn. He was thinking that if he had a pony next winter he could harness it to this old sleigh and go for a ride. Suddenly Nancy and Janey burst around from the front yard. Nancy was swinging her bat. She had her pitcher’s mitt on. Jane was pounding the baseball into Joey’s big catcher’s mitt, limbering it up.
“Come on, Rufe,” they yelled. “This is the day!”
“What! Punch and cookies?” exclaimed Rufus.
“No, we’re having a real game today. Not just practice,” they said.
For a long time Jane and Nancy had thought they were the only girls’ baseball team in Cranbury, in the world in fact. Then one day a girl accosted them after school. She said her name was Joyce Allen and that she was the captain of the Busy Bee baseball team, a team composed entirely of girls on the other side of town. She wanted to know whether or not Nancy, the captain of the F. F. team, would accept a challenge from her, the captain of the Busy Bee team, to play next Saturday. Nancy consulted with Jane and said “Yes.”
Rufus M. Page 4