18th Emergency (10 page)

He walked slowly back to his street, holding the ice cube, which the lady had wrapped in a little square of cloth, against his lip.

As he rounded the corner, he saw Ezzie and Dick Fellini and Dutch Richards standing by the mailbox. Ezzie had his back to Mouse. He was saying to Dutch. “Aw, come on, gimme the ball. Don’t you want to see me do the trick?”

“Frankly, no.”

“Come on, Dutch. If
I
had a new ball and
you
wanted to do a trick with it, I’d—”

Mouse came up and lowered his ice cube. He said, “Well, I fought Hammerman.”

Dutch stopped bouncing the ball and Ezzie spun around, his trick forgotten. “You what? You fought Hammerman?” Ezzie asked incredulously.

Mouse nodded.

Ezzie straightened. “
You
fought Hammerman?”

“Yes.”

Mouse knew that Ezzie had had a secret fear that he, as Mouse’s best friend, might be called on to participate in the fight. Mouse knew Ezzie was especially afraid that he might have to take on Peachie, the boy in the black sweat shirt. Now it was hard for Ezzie to believe that this danger had passed.

“Where was this fight?” Ezzie asked. “What happened? Come on, tell me about it.”

“Well, it was in front of the Rialto,” Mouse said. His swollen lip made his voice sound strange, or perhaps it was the strangeness of what he was saying. He stopped and put the ice cube back against his lip.

The Saturday traffic seemed loud in the street. Two boys on motorcycles passed. Ezzie glanced impatiently at them for interrupting and then prompted eagerly, “So? Go on.”

“Well, I went over to the Rialto looking for Hammerman and—”

“You
went looking for
him?”
Ezzie asked.

“Let him tell it, Ezzie,” Dutch said.

“Well, I went over there looking for him,” Mouse continued, “and we met in front of the Rialto and had a short fight and now it’s over.” Mouse thought that those were the most comforting words he had ever heard.

“How short was the fight?” Ezzie asked. “I mean, in blows. How many blows, Mouse, do you remember, or was it so many that you couldn’t—”

“Five,” Mouse said.

“Five!” The hush of Ezzie’s voice made five the most important number there was.

“Two in the stomach, one on the breastbone, right about there.” He put his hand over the exact spot. “Two on the face.” There was no need to point out where those blows had landed.

“You took all those blows?”

Mouse nodded.

“Did you fall down, or what?”

“No, I didn’t fall. Well,” he said truthfully, “I would have fallen if the Rialto theater hadn’t been there, and I staggered around. But I never actually went down.”

Ezzie and Dutch and Dick were looking at him. It was a strange sensation for a minute. It was as if they were not looking at him at all, but at what was going on inside him. They had all four wanted X-ray eyes at one time or another, and now Mouse suddenly had the feeling that the other three had got them. He shrugged self-consciously and said, “Well, I better go get another ice cube. This one’s about gone.”

He started walking, and Ezzie left the others and followed him. He said, “Listen, I want to hear some more about this fight. What was it really like? I mean, did he say anything, or what? You haven’t told me
anything.”

Mouse turned and looked at Ezzie, squinting in the sunlight. He wet his swollen lip with his tongue and said, “It was just sort of an honorable thing, Ezzie.”

“A what?”

“An honorable thing.”

“Hammerman? Honorable?”

Mouse nodded. He knew that he was not going to be able to explain it to Ezzie. He wasn’t even sure he understood it himself now. But at the moment when he and Marv Hammerman had met in front of the Rialto, it had been clearly and simply a matter of honor.

He wanted to explain. He said, “Hammerman’s not like I thought, Ezzie, that’s all I’m trying to say.”

“Are we talking about the same Hammerman?” Ezzie’s face had gotten pinker with his puzzlement.

Mouse nodded. “Marv Hammerman.” He looked down at his tennis shoes which were splattered with blood. He couldn’t even see where he had written AIR VENT now. Still looking at his shoes he said, “I don’t even know what Hammerman
is
like. It’s strange, Ezzie, I can’t explain it in words.”

“Quit fooling now! What happened? How bad was it?” Ezzie threw out his hands in an old gesture of agitation he saw his grandfather use daily.
“Tell
me.”

“Well,” Mouse began and then he trailed off. He tried to think of something to tell Ezzie, but he couldn’t. He knew how Ezzie felt, cheated at not knowing the details of the ending. He had felt that way one time when he had been watching a television show. Right at the most exciting part a news bulletin about a hijacked airplane had come on, and Mouse never got to see how the story came out. His mother had said, “Well, you know the dog rescued the boy. Even
I
can tell you that.”

“Yes,” he had said, “but I wanted to see it happen.”

Mouse tried to smile with his swollen lip. He shrugged his shoulders. He said, “Well, Ezzie, he could have made it a lot worse.”

Ezzie could not understand what was happening, but for some reason, even though Mouse was no longer a tragic figure, no longer marked by destiny, he had not shrunk back to his normal size like Mr. Stein. Even standing there with a bloody jacket and a swollen lip and wet hair that still had the comb marks in it, Mouse seemed bigger. It was such a strong impression that Ezzie wondered if Mouse had actually gotten taller. He wanted to stand back to back with Mouse in front of a mirror and measure.

Mouse started slowly up the steps. Despite the light feeling of his body, his legs weren’t working as well as usual.

Ezzie said quickly, “I’ll get an ice cube for you.”

“I’m all right, Ez, I can—”

“No, I’ll get it. I want to.”

Ezzie went up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Mouse waited at the bottom, resting his weight on the metal banister. He felt strange. It wasn’t the swollen lip or the new part in his hair or the lightness of his body. He had sometimes wished in the past two days that he wasn’t himself, and it seemed now that this wish had come true. He almost had to remind himself who he was. I, Benjie Fawley, am alive and well. He let the air out of his lungs in a long sigh. I, Benjie Fawley, have survived.

Dick Fellini called, “Hey, Benjie, you guys want to play ball?” Fellini was bouncing the basketball, twisting it in such a way that it came back to him as it bounced.

He said, “Sure,” even though he was not sure his legs were going to cooperate in the plan.

“Well, come on then.”

“I’ll wait for Ezzie.”

Dutch and Dick Fellini waved and started down the sidewalk. Mouse waited by the stairs. “Ez, come on,” he called after a moment.

Ezzie appeared at the window. “Hey, can I have a bologna sandwich?”

“Yeah, if you’ll come on.”

“You want one?”

“No.” He realized suddenly he was hungry after all, and he called out, “Yeah, Ezzie, I want one.”

Ezzie came back to the window. “Mustard and relish? And there’s some lettuce in a plastic bag and a couple of okra pickles.”

“I don’t care, Ezzie, just make it and come on, will you?”

“I’m
coming,
only if you’re going to make a sandwich, then you might as well make a
sandwich.”

Mouse waited, and after a minute Ezzie came out of the apartment with the sandwiches. “The ice cube’s in my pocket,” he said. Mouse fished the ice cube out of Ezzie’s shirt pocket, brushed the lint off and twisted it into the square of cloth. Then he took his sandwich and said, “Let’s go.”

“Right.”

As they walked down the street, Ezzie took a bite of his sandwich, then turned it around to make sure the okra pickles weren’t going to fall out. He shook his head and said, “And you fought Hammerman.”

A passing bus blocked out the answer, which was, “Well, not really, Ezzie,” and anyway Ezzie was already starting to walk faster down the sidewalk, holding his sandwich in the crook of his arm for safety.

“Race you, Benjie,” Ezzie said. It surprised Ezzie for a moment that he had said Benjie instead of Mouse. Then he broke into a run.

Garbage Dog was sitting in the shadow of the steps, but as soon as he heard the sound of running, he got up and came out quickly. He looked down the street. He saw the two boys running toward him, and after a minute Garbage Dog started running too.

Garbage Dog ran down the middle of the sidewalk. He heard the boys getting closer behind him and he ran faster. He was getting worried. The boys caught up with him, the three of them ran a few steps together, and then the boys passed. Ears back, Garbage Dog began to run faster. His wild eyes rolled to the two boys because he didn’t know why they were running.

Then suddenly the boys slowed down to turn into the alley. Ezzie said, “Here, G. D.,” and dropped the crust of his sandwich. Garbage Dog managed to stop. He came back and circled the crust.

“And here’s something from me too.” Another piece of crust and a half slice of bologna.

Watching the boys, Garbage Dog began to eat. He saw the boys disappear laughing behind the bakery, and after a moment he hurried to join them.

Betsy Byars (b. 1928) is an award-winning author of more than sixty books for children and young adults, including
The Summer of the Swans
(1970), which earned the prestigious Newbery Medal. Byars also received the National Book Award for
The Night Swimmers
(1980) and an Edgar Award for
Wanted . . . Mud Blossom
(1991), among many other accolades. Her books have been translated into nineteen languages and she has fans all over the world.

Byars was born Betsy Cromer in Charlotte, North Carolina. Her father, George, was a manager at a cotton mill and her mother, Nan, was a homemaker. As a child, Betsy showed no strong interest in writing but had a deep love of animals and sense of adventure. She and her friends ran a backyard zoo that starred “trained cicadas,” box turtles, leeches, and other animals they found in nearby woods. She also claims to have ridden the world’s first skateboard, after neighborhood kids took the wheels off a roller skate and nailed them to a plank of wood.

After high school, Byars began studying mathematics at Furman University, but she soon switched to English and transferred to Queens College in Charlotte, where she began writing. She also met Edward Ford Byars, an engineering graduate student from Clemson University, whom she would marry after she graduated in 1950.

Between 1951 and 1956 Byars had three daughters—Laurie, Betsy, and Nan. While raising her family, Byars began submitting stories to magazines, including the
Saturday Evening Post
and
Look
. Her success in publishing warm, funny stories in national magazines led her to consider writing a book. Her son, Guy, was born in 1959, the same year she finished her first manuscript. After several rejections,
Clementine
(1962), a children’s story about a dragon made out of a sock, was published.

Following
Clementine
, Byars released a string of popular children’s and young adult titles including
The Summer of the Swans
, which earned her the Newbery Medal. She continued to build on her early success through the following decades with award-winning titles such as
The Eighteenth Emergency
(1973),
The Night Swimmers
, the popular Bingo Brown series, and the Blossom Family series. Many of Byars’s stories describe children and young adults with quirky families who are trying to find their own way in the world. Others address problems young people have with school, bullies, romance, or the loss of close family members. Byars has also collaborated with daughters Betsy and Laurie on children’s titles such as
My Dog, My Hero
(2000).

Aside from writing, Byars continues to live adventurously. Her husband, Ed, has been a pilot since his student days, and Byars obtained her own pilot’s license in 1983. The couple lives on an airstrip in Seneca, South Carolina. Their home is built over a hangar and the two pilots can taxi out and take off almost from their front yard.

Byars (bottom left) at age five, with her mother and her older sister, Nancy.