Meet the Austins (15 page)
Authors: Madeleine L'engle
“Well,” I said at last, “maybe it comes down to muffins again.” (About muffins I will explain in just a minute.)
John nodded. “Sometimes being muffiny can be very tempting. Listen, Vicky, as soon as you're better let's have a meeting. Is it okay if I propose Maggy? As far as I'm concerned, she qualified this morning.”
I remembered Maggy's look as she'd gone down the hall to take her bath, so I said, “It's okay with me if you think it'll be okay with the others.”
“We've never turned down anybody anyone's put up, yet.”
“It's never been anybody who didn't belong here,” I said, “and Maggy's really only a visitor.”
“That's a muffiny remark if there ever was one,” John said.
I thought it over for a moment. “Yes, I guess it was.”
“Do I look awful?” he asked.
“Kind of like a prize-fighter.”
“That's one thing I'm not and never will be. Well, I'd better go get some clothes on.”
He'd just gone out the door when the phone rang and he headed into Mother and Daddy's room, bumping into things on the way.
I heard him say, “Dave! ⦠But you have measles! ⦠Well, it wasn't your father's fault ⦠No, if I'd done it differently, or something ⦠well, sure I'm not mad at him ⦠They home from church already? ⦠Well, sure, I'm mad at the others. I was so mad by the time they broke it up I was beginning
to enjoy the fight ⦠Listen, you'd better get back to bed. You don't want any secondary infections ⦠Sure. Be over to see you as soon as you're feeling better. Hey, Dave, I sure look a beaut, you ought to see me ⦠Okay. Bye.”
to enjoy the fight ⦠Listen, you'd better get back to bed. You don't want any secondary infections ⦠Sure. Be over to see you as soon as you're feeling better. Hey, Dave, I sure look a beaut, you ought to see me ⦠Okay. Bye.”
As he hung up I heard the door downstairs open, and Colette leaped off my bed and dashed down, barking her welcoming bark; and then there was the sound of a small herd of elephants and Suzy and Rob came dashing up the stairs. And then Mother and Daddy came along and then the telephone rang again, and it was the father of one of the kids in the fight, to complain about John's starting it! And the rest of the day was like that, a peaceful Sunday, all full of sound and fury.
Mr. Ulrich called, very upset, and Mother had to reassure him that John wasn't seriously hurt, and he really wasn't to blame, it was just one of those things. The father of another of the boys called up in a rage because John had given his boy a bloody nose, and Daddy told him off about that.
In between times Daddy cleaned up John's face and put a bandage over the cut above his eye, and told him not to read till his glasses were fixed. Maggy had a big scratch on one leg, but otherwise it was her clothes that got it; she was okay. And Mr. Jenkins called up, all worried, and Daddy had to calm him down. “Look, boys will be boys, and problems like this happen occasionally. Nobody was badly hurt, and maybe they've all learned a lesson. But let's not have the whole village get into a turmoil over it.” All in all, we had about as much Sunday peace and quiet as we'd have had at a three-ring circus. Mr. Jenkins came over with a big carton of ice cream from his store as a peace offering.
The next day one of the Granby boys got into real trouble. He “borrowed” one of the Hendricks' horses and the horse stepped into a hole and sprained its foot, and he was scared to tell the Hendricks he'd taken the horse and what had happened, but of course he didn't get away with it, and in the ensuing excitement John and the Sunday-school fight got forgotten. John got new glasses and his face unswelled and his cuts healed and things went back to normal.
A week later I went back to school, and so did Dave, and suddenly we were plunged into summer. It had been a long, cold, snowy, rainy spring. In fact, there was hardly any real spring to speak of at all, and then all at once at the end of May it was summer, with hot, sunny days and swimming in the pond after school, and we all went to sleep lying on top of our beds with the covers pulled down, and Mother and Daddy pulled our sheets up when they came upstairs at night.
On Friday at breakfast John asked if we could have a picnic up Hawk Mountain that night.
“Why, John? I don't see why not, but is it for anything special?”
“Yes,” he said. “Muffins. We want to take in a new member.”
“I see. Okay with the others?”
“The picnic or the member?”
“Both.”
“The picnic's fine. I haven't brought the member up yet.”
Maggy was putting her cereal dish in the sink, something it took her months to remember to do. Mother glanced at her. “Am I right in my guess as to the new member?”
John grinned. “Could be.”
“All right, John. Just don't make it too late for the little ones, will you? What do you want to take for supper?”
“Could you make us a big dish of baked beans with hot dogs cut up in it? You know the kind. If we start out with it good and hot it'll be okay. I thought I'd ask Dave and Betsey Ulrich to bring a salad, and Izzy and Nanny Jenkins can bring ice cream and Coke.” Izzy is Nanny's older sister and a good friend of John's.
“All right,” Mother said. “I'll drive you up at five and come for you at nine. Okay?”
“Thanks,” John said. “That'll be super.”
So at five we got in the car, the four of us and Maggy, and picked up Dave and Betsey, and Izzy and Nanny, and Pedro Xifra. John didn't ask Pedro to bring anything, because his parents don't have much money and aren't likely to. Mr. Xifra's a tenant farmer, and he stays on Creighton's farm and works long hard hours, with little time for his family. Pedro helps out as much as he can when he gets home from school and weekends. We knew he'd worked extra hard to be ready when we came for him.
First we stopped off for Dave and Betsey. Dave had a big wooden bowl with tomatoes and celery and Betsey a tea towel wrapped around lettuce and a big jar of dressing to pour over it. Luckily, at the last minute Mother'd remembered we'd need something to eat our food with, and off, so we had a stack of paper plates and cups and forks as well as our hot dish of beans. I think Mr. Ulrich still feels kind of bad about John,
because just as we were about to leave he came up from his lumber yard in Clovenford and handed us a big box of cookies. Then we went to get the Jenkinses. Mr. Jenkins put a big case of soda in the back of our station wagon, and Izzy and Nanny had ice cream packed in dry ice.
because just as we were about to leave he came up from his lumber yard in Clovenford and handed us a big box of cookies. Then we went to get the Jenkinses. Mr. Jenkins put a big case of soda in the back of our station wagon, and Izzy and Nanny had ice cream packed in dry ice.
Then we went to get Pedro. He's in the middle of a whole lot of kids. Their house is across the road from the barns, and needs painting, and last summer their stoop started to fall off, and it would have fallen off if Pedro hadn't fixed it.
He was waiting for us by the mailbox. He had a brown paper bag with him and he said he'd made egg-salad sandwiches. John said, “Oh, great, Pedro.” The eggs must have come from Pedro's own chickens.
Mother drove the station wagon, which was by now pretty jammed, up the dirt road to the top of Hawk, and we all tumbled out, carrying the picnic stuff. Mother waved and honked and took off, and John and Izzy got the picnic all organized, and we ate and talked and laughed and the evening was warm, but not hot, with a breeze cool enough so that we put on our sweaters or jackets.
When we'd cleaned everything up and put all the trash in the big trash can, John said, “You've probably all guessed what we're here for.”
“It looks like a meeting of the anti-muffin club,” Pedro said.
“How'd you guess? And I wanted a meeting because I'm proposing a new member.”
He was smiling, and I looked over at Maggy and she was sitting looking a little pink and flustered.
Pedro said, “If it's Maggy, I'm all for it,” and smiled at her.
Nanny said, “It must be Maggy, because all the rest of us are members.”
John said to Pedro, “We had a whopperoozo of a fight in the churchyard, and Maggy pitched in to help me, and didn't give a hoot what anybody thought.”
Pedro wasn't around at the fight, because his family goes to St. Francis Church in Clovenford.
Izzy asked, “Does she know about muffins? Do you, Maggy?”
Maggy said, “I like them when Aunt Victoria makes them for breakfast,” and everybody laughed, even Rob. One thing Rob's learned is that he couldn't belong, being so much younger than the rest of us, if he made any noise or disturbance, and he was so thrilled at being included in something that had so many big kids in it, that he sat quiet as a little mouse at all the meetings, with an expression so solemn it was funny. The main reason we let Rob be in the club was that it was a family thing, and then it got expanded, and if ever anybody was perfect anti-muffin material, it's Rob. Added to which, he really kind of started the club.
“We'd better tell her about muffins, then,” Nanny said. “That is, if she's really interested.”
“I'm not exactly hungry right now.” Maggy patted her stomach. “But I'm fascinated.” Her black hair was pushed back from her ears and it fell softly down to her shoulders. Her face looked white against it and her eyes were dark. Even though she had on jeans and an old red sweater that had once been mine, I thought that in comparison with the rest of us she looked very much a city person.
There was a pause while everybody waited for somebody
else to speak. Betsey said, “John or one of the Austins ought to tell her about it, because they started it.”
else to speak. Betsey said, “John or one of the Austins ought to tell her about it, because they started it.”
“Well,” John said, “Rob really started it. It was about a year ago, and Uncle Douglas was up for the weekend.”
John continued, “He came up without a girlfriend, but the weekend before, he came up
with
a girlfriend.”
with
a girlfriend.”
“Does he always bring his girlfriends up?” Maggy asked.
“Usually. We kind of look them over. Some of them we like and some of them we don't like, and we didn't like this one.”
“Sort of like Sally?” Maggy asked.
“Even worse, if you can believe it, and younger. She kept asking questions about the family, Mother's and Daddy's families,” I said, “wanting to know all about forebears and stuff.”
John started laughing. “Remember the aunt's sisters?”
I laughed, too. It was really hilarious. This girl kept talking about her ancestors, and Rob went to Mother and said, “Her aunt must have had an awful lot of sisters.”
So John told about that and we all laughed, the way you laugh an extra lot on a picnic when you've filled up with good food and are feeling warm and happy.
Maggy said, “I still don't know about muffins.”
So John explained. What happened was that Uncle Douglas came back the next weekend and told us that he and the girlfriend were through. And then he gave us a sort of lecture, about how we shouldn't worry about families and the right ethnic background (I looked at Pedro as John was explaining), but you should like them or dislike them for themselves. And Uncle Douglas went on to say that his ex-girlfriend thought that where people were born made them what they are.
Well, that same afternoon, about a year ago, Prunewhip had kittens. We knew she was going to have kittens, and we ran down to the cellar to her bed, but she wasn't there, and we looked in the garage and Daddy's office and under all the beds and in the closets and everywhere we could think of, but we couldn't find her. Then, when Mother went to turn on the oven for the muffins she was making, she noticed that the oven door was partway open, and she opened it all the way, and there was Prunewhip with five kittens! We'd had kittens all over the place, but never in the oven before, and Prunewhip looked very pleased with herself, and Mother said, ah, well, we'd do without the oven that evening.
And John said, a bit sarcastically, “Uncle Douglas, would your ex-girlfriend think the kittens were muffins because they were born in the oven?” Rob thought that was awfully funny and when he stopped laughing he started chanting.
“Kittens are muffins
In ovens and puffins.”
In ovens and puffins.”
Suzy interrupted and said, “They'd all have to be exactly alike, each one just like the other, instead of all different like Prunewhip's kittens.”
John said, suddenly serious, “I'd hate that. But that's what a lot of people wantâeverybody the same like a row of muffins.”
So that's how the muffin club got started. Maggy said, “Go on, tell me more.”
“Well, that's really it,” John said. “You can see how we went on from the kittens not being muffins because they were
born in the oven, to starting the anti-muffin club. Uncle Douglas says it will help us avoid the dangers of conformity.”
born in the oven, to starting the anti-muffin club. Uncle Douglas says it will help us avoid the dangers of conformity.”
Izzy lay on her back, looking up at the deepening sky. “Your Uncle Douglas is very nice, but most of the time I don't know what he's talking about.”
“All he means is that you shouldn't be afraid to be yourself, even if it means being different.”
“Like lots of grownups,” Betsey said. “Most of them. Always so worried about what somebody's going to think.”
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