How I Became a Writer and Oggie Learned to Drive

by Janet Taylor Lisle

  “Okay!” I said. “Thanks a lot!”

  I started out for home feeling pretty high. It wasn’t only that I’d caught the robber. Another thing was holding a gun like that in my hand, taking charge, and telling Mr. Wong to call the cops. Even if it wasn’t that much, I was proud I’d kept my cool and done it.

  I didn’t have long to feel good. About a block down the street, some dark figures stepped out from an alley and stood under a streetlight. I recognized the Night Riders who’d been in the store. From the way they watched me come, I knew they weren’t there by accident.

  “Hey big surprise! It’s the kid with the footwork,” one of them called out.

  “And look, he’s got the guy’s cap on,” another one added. He meant the hold-up man’s Blue Hawks cap which I’d decided to wear home.

  “That was some move, kid, tripping up that punk. You should be in the Olympics,” the first Rider said when I got close. You knew he didn’t mean it for a minute.

  “Thanks,” I said, and started to walk by.

  They wouldn’t let me through. Two of them stepped in front of me and two more stepped in behind. My whole heart lurched up in my throat and kind of stuck there.

  “So, kid. What’s the deal with you? You still go to school or what?” a tall guy asked. He was wearing shades, even though it was night, and a plain brown leather jacket instead of the Riders’ eagle one.

  “Yeah,” I said. I was having a little trouble taking in air.

  “That’s a problem you gotta work out, don’t you?” he said, very sarcastic.

  All the Night Riders laughed. I felt like a trapped bug. I wished I could fly on out of there.

  “Here’s another problem. How’d you like to make a little co-lateral?” Shades asked. He was the leader, it turned out. He did all the talking from then on.

  “What’s co-lateral?” I said.

  Everybody cracked up again. I could see they had this special language of their own that they used to embarrass people. That’s the level they were at.

  “Well, what is it?” I kind of gasped. The air had pretty much gone out of me, which is what it does when I get cornered. I was trying like mad to bring myself back to normal, but it wasn’t working too well. I kept looking at their belts, remembering what Oggie had said about the knife. I didn’t see it, though.

  “Money,” Shades said. He looked a few years older than the other Night Riders, as if he wasn’t really part of the gang but above it somehow. You could tell he’d been around. “I’ve got some work that needs doing. I’m asking if you want a job.”

  Well, I was about to say no. I mean, nobody in their right mind, whether they can breathe or not, would ever take a job with creeps like that. You’d probably end up dead or in the state penitentiary. But suddenly, I saw something red and leathery in the glare of the streetlight. It was in Shades’ shirt pocket, the one people usually keep their cigarettes in.

  “What kind of job?” I asked, just to buy time. I tried not to stare too hard at the pocket. I wanted to be sure. Finally, I got a good look. It was Oggie’s wallet, clear as clear.

  “We got a place over on Garden Street. Drop by tomorrow and we’ll work on it,” Shades said. “Number 5446. Apartment B-2. Come around back. I could use a kid like you—fast on your feet, good with a gun.” He gave me a wide grin. “Yeah, this is your lucky day. You’re a real soccer star.”

  The gang moved off toward Washington Boulevard. I went on down the sidewalk. After everything that had happened that night, I was kind of in shock, if you know what I mean. It wasn’t a matter of bringing myself back to normal anymore. Normal wasn’t even on the horizon. My whole mind was in a haywire state, and the worst thing was, nothing was over yet. In fact, everything was just beginning.

  The Truth Comes Out

  DAD WAS HOME WHEN I got back. I thought he’d be glad when he heard how I’d caught the hold-up man, but I was wrong as usual. You never can tell with him.

  By the time I walked in the door, he’d gotten the call from Mr. Wong and was running around yelling at Cyndi for sending me out so late, and at Oggie for still being awake. Then Mom phoned in the middle of everything and had to be told what happened. For a while, everybody was screaming at everybody at the top of their lungs. The neighbors probably thought we were trying to murder each other.

  Finally, things quieted down, but by then Oggie had the yeeks so bad he’d crawled under his bed. It’s serious when he does that because you know he won’t come out for hours. I handed him Bunny Two and we all, Dad and Cyndi and I, lay down on our stomachs so we could make eye contact and try to talk him out. But he was too upset. You can’t drag him out, either, or he just gets worse.

  “You go to bed,” I told Dad and Cyndi. “I’ll stay up with him. I’m still pretty zapped from everything, anyway.”

  “But honeybun, you’ve got school tomorrow! You need to get your rest!” Cyndi said, trying to sound like Mom. It burned me up when she pulled stuff like that.

  “He’s all right, leave him alone,” Dad snapped at her. “Archie’s the only one that can do anything when Oggie gets like this.”

  They went off to bed and I lay back down on my stomach and looked at Oggie again. He had Bunny over his face. I couldn’t see if he was still crying.

  First, I thought I’d tell him what happened with the hold-up man at the store. Then I decided that might upset him more, because it was the thing that had started all the yelling to begin with.

  Next I thought of telling him that I’d seen his wallet. I didn’t want him to know how I’d run into the Night Riders, though, or where I might be going the next day, in case he blabbed to Dad or Mom, so I put a block on that, too.

  “Hey, Oggie, I was trying to remember. Where were we with The Mysterious Mole People?” I asked him.

  Well, he knew as well as I did where we were. The last couple of nights, I’d been reading him some new parts I’d written in the closet. That closet was turning out to be great place to write. I’d been in there a few more times and the new stuff was pretty good, if I do say so.

  Amory and Alphonse had launched themselves on a full-scale expedition into the Mole People’s kingdom. The open slurp hole they’d found, and the footholds, were the perfect way in.

  They realized how risky it would be, though, and that one or the other might never come back, so before they went down, they swore a bond of eternal brotherhood. To make it real, they pricked their fingers with a safety pin Amory had and crossed their blood. Amory became part reptile, and Alphonse became part human, a big deal that neither would ever forget.

  Then Amory picked up Alphonse and tucked him inside his shirt, where the old turtle always rode during dangerous adventures. Step by step, they climbed down the slurp-hole footholds into the dark.

  For many days and nights, which were impossible to tell apart, Amory and Alphonse traveled around the Mole People’s underground tunnels, gathering information.

  They saw (from a safe distance, of course) that the Mole People were really shy creatures when they weren’t making slurp-hole attacks on the world above. Anger and fear caused them to rise up and become warlike.

  They saw that the Mole People still did have human feet, and spoke the remains of an English language. They had gone almost completely blind, though, like real moles. To make up for this, their sense of smell was razor sharp. Amory and Alphonse had to take dirt baths every day to erase the greasy human odors from their bodies.

  For a while, Amory and Alphonse were undiscovered. But finally came a day when they stumbled into a group of Mole People by mistake.

  “Hartungh! Who goes there?”

  “Only we! I mean us.”

  “Rumbfargh! Invaders! Sound the alarm!”

  In seconds, Mole Security Forces closed in from all sides and arrested them. The Forces imprisoned Amory in a deep pit lit only by horrible, bloodsucking glowworms that lived in the mud walls. He had to stay awake at all times, and be constantly on guard that the worms didn’t fall
on him, or he would have been sucked to a bloodless husk in one hour.

  Meanwhile, the Mysterious Mole People, alarmed out of their minds by being invaded, called a huge meeting to decide Amory’s fate.

  Oggie had heard all this. He was desperate to know what would happen next. He was just too stubborn to admit it.

  “Amory Ellington is certainly in a tight place,” I told him. “Did you notice he’s lost Alphonse? The Mysterious Mole People carried Alphonse off. They’re probably getting ready to make him into turtle soup or something.”

  Silence from Oggie. It was a listening silence, though. A listening silence is a lot quieter than the other kind. That’s because the person who’s listening is straining to hear something he thinks will be important, so he doesn’t move a muscle or even breathe very loud.

  “I guess you think Amory and Alphonse are goners,” I said. “I guess you think they’ll be trapped in the Mysterious Mole People’s kingdom forever and ever, never to return, so it’s not worth hearing any more about them.”

  Oggie’s eyes looked out over the top of Bunny’s ears. “No, I don’t,” he said in a quivery voice.

  “I bet you think Amory’s mother will never see him again. You probably think Amory will give up life as a human and turn into a Mole Person himself.”

  Oggie dropped Bunny and looked at me angrily. “No, I don’t!”

  “Well, good,” I said. “Because he doesn’t. Amory Ellington knows how to get out of situations like this. He knows how to get Alphonse out, too. He’s one sharp dude.”

  Oggie crawled out from underneath his bed. He lay down on top with Bunny flopped on his stomach.

  “Did you really trip up that robber at the store?” he asked.

  “Yeah. I didn’t mean to, though—don’t tell anybody.”

  Oggie glanced at me. “You mean he just tripped?”

  “Well, my foot was there, so I guess I did it somehow.”

  Oggie twisted one of Bunny’s ears around his finger. I could see he was working something out.

  “Maybe the Mysterious Mole People helped you,” he said at last. He gave me a humorous look.

  “How’s that?”

  “They didn’t have time to do a slurp on the robber, so they put your foot in the way and tripped him up.”

  I had to laugh. “Maybe,” I said. We both grinned at each other.

  Right then, in a flash, I saw that Oggie knew the Mysterious Mole People weren’t real. He was making a joke about them, that’s what told me.

  “Wow!” I said. “You are one cool kid.”

  I’d always thought Oggie believed the story was true, that he had to believe if it was going to work for him. Well, maybe he did believe it in the beginning, but he didn’t now.

  He knew the Mysterious Mole People weren’t really there, living under the ground, slurping bad guys. BUT HE DIDN’T CARE! He still wanted to hear about them. They meant something to him that realness didn’t come into. That got the writer in me pretty excited. I could see I was on to some hot stuff.

  A lot of people think that fiction stories aren’t the truth, that a story isn’t worth reading if it didn’t really happen. But they’re wrong. The realest stories are the ones that are made up, because if you do it right, they go down deep to where the real truth is, below all the fake stuff lying around on the surface.

  I sat up on my knees by the bed and rested my arms next to Oggie.

  “Are you ready?” I asked him. “This is serious, you know. This story is big. It might get published.”

  “And make a lot of money,” Oggie said.

  “So you can buy a car,” I told him.

  “You’d give me your book money to buy a car?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said. “Why not? You’re the one who’s going to be driving.”

  Oggie opened his eyes up wide and stared at me for a second. Then he sucked in his breath and nodded.

  California

  “ARCHIE, I HEAR YOU’RE writing a story that you think is going to get published,” Dad said to me the next morning when I came down for breakfast. He sort of chuckled as if it was a joke.

  “Who told you that?” I asked.

  We were the only ones in the kitchen. Saturn was slow getting into orbit that day since we’d all been up so late the night before.

  “Oggie was filling us in last night while you were at the store,” Dad told me. “He said you’ve been telling it to him, but now you’re writing it down. Something about moles?” He kind of chuckled again. “Can I read it?”

  “No, you can’t,” I said.

  “Well, that’s not very friendly.”

  One of the problems writers have, in case you don’t know, is people always asking what you’re writing about. Then they want to read it, which is not a good idea. Nobody ever likes anything that somebody they know wrote, especially if it’s not published yet. The reason is, they don’t have any trust that you’ll be any good. Part of being a writer is getting people to trust you. When they finally do, they’ll relax and respect what you write with no problem at all.

  I read someplace that Edgar Allan Poe’s family hated his stuff at first. They thought his mind was polluted. Hans Christian Andersen was considered a freak until he finally got published. Then people came to respect him.

  “The story’s not finished yet, that’s why you can’t read it,” I said to Dad. I could tell by his voice that he probably wouldn’t trust me to write anything good in a hundred thousand years.

  “Oh, I see, I see. Well, when will it be done?”

  “Hard to tell. A year or two maybe.”

  That put him off the track. He didn’t ask again. Cyndi and Oggie came downstairs, and we got out the Frosted Flakes.

  On the way to school, I said, “Oggie, what were you doing telling Dad and Cyndi about The Mysterious Mole People? That’s our private story. It’ll get wrecked.”

  He hung his head. He knew he’d messed up.

  “I didn’t mean to,” he said.

  “They got it out of you, I guess.”

  “Yeah.” I could see he was sorry.

  “Well, don’t worry about it,” I told him. “Sometimes when people put pressure on you, you get nervous and start telling all kinds of stuff that’s private, just out of self-defense. It can happen to anyone. You didn’t say anything about your wallet, did you?”

  Oggie shook his head. “I’m trying not to,” he said.

  “Good. Keep trying. I’m getting closer. I just need a few more days.”

  Oggie nodded. He looked pretty sad, though, as if he didn’t believe me. After a minute, he said, “Archie? I forgot to tell you. I found out some more stuff about Dad and Cyndi last night.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like, Cyndi doesn’t want to get married.”

  “What?”

  “She told Dad she doesn’t want to, but she still wants to have the baby.”

  “WHAT?”

  “It’s a girl. She went and had a test.”

  “Oggie! Are you sure?”

  “I heard them talking. She wants to call it California.”

  “California! The BABY?”

  “Yup. Cyndi thinks California’s the best state in America. She lived there once. She’s going to name the baby after it.”

  Well, I just about croaked. I hardly knew what to say to Oggie. I mean, he shouldn’t even KNOW about babies being born without people getting married. He’s too little. He shouldn’t know how a baby can be named after a state just because its mother liked living there once. He might think the world is going crazy.

  “What did Dad say?”

  Oggie shrugged. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing! I don’t believe it.”

  “They got into a fight about what channel to watch, so they didn’t talk about it anymore.”

  I looked at Oggie’s face, but I couldn’t tell what he was feeling. Little kids are sort of turtle-like that way. You can’t always tell on the outside if something’s upsetting them insid
e or not.

  “Look, I’m sorry” I said when I dropped him off at kindergarten. “I’m sorry you have to go through all this. There’s bad stuff going down, don’t think I don’t know it. I guess we just have to get used to living with bad stuff for a while.”

  Oggie shrugged again. “It’s okay,” he said. “They can name her California if they want. The only thing is, I need to get my wallet back.”

  He gave me the hairy eyeball. I could see he really meant it.

  “Listen, it’s coming,” I told him. “That’s the one thing you don’t have to worry about. I’m getting it. Soon. Maybe even today.”

  “Good,” Oggie said, and walked into his classroom.

  Garden Street

  I SET OFF FOR GARDEN STREET THE MINUTE school got out that afternoon. The hold-up man’s Blue Hawks cap was pulled down on my eyes. That cap had gotten to be a big part of my outfit. I don’t know why, but I felt more professional in it. I could answer questions in class better when I wore it. I got a 78 on a math test when I wore it, too, which was a big record for me. I was hoping it would help me again.

  Going across Washington Boulevard wasn’t something I especially wanted to do. I knew I had to, though. Somehow, I was going to bring Oggie’s wallet back to him. He was depending on me to do it, just like I was depending on him not to tell Mom about him getting mugged. We were depending on each other, and neither one could let the other one down. That’s what things had come to. There was nobody else to count on.

  Oggie and me sticking together had gotten even more important lately because of something else that was happening. Dad and Cyndi weren’t getting along too well anymore.

  Anyone who’d been living around them could have seen it. Where they used to hold hands and call each other sweetie and honey, now they got into fights. They’d yell about which movie to watch on TV or what they were going to have for dinner. Dad said Cyndi’s panty hose made the bathroom look like a French underwear factory and Cyndi called him a born-again control freak. The way it looked, even with California on the way, things were starting to fall apart.