Not-Just-Anybody Family (8 page)

“Which is it?” The policeman smiled.

“Yes.”

“Well, the Cards won. Braves won. Phillies lost.”

“Oh.”

Pap pulled back his lips in a smile. He swallowed so hard, his Adam’s apple bobbed up to his chin.

Now at last, the policeman was moving back down the cells and into the office. The door closed.

With a sigh of relief Pap started to get to his feet. He was at the first, bent-knee stage, when he heard the noises outside.

There were three of them: a muffled scream, a soft thud against the side of the building, and then a long, loud clanging noise as something hit the sidewalk. It clattered, and then there was silence.

Pap scrambled onto his bunk.

“What’s happened?” he called to the vent, “What’s happened?”

He waited with his mouth open, like a thirsty man waiting for raindrops.

“What’s happened? Please, somebody tell me what’s happened!”

His feet were digging into his thin mattress, his hands gripping the concrete wall. It looked exactly like he was climbing up the wall, except that he wasn’t getting any higher.

“What’s happened?”

There was a long pause. Minutes went by. Pap was so still, he could hear the ticking of his pocket watch. Then Pap saw the most beautiful sight of his life. A hand came through the vent and clutched the sill.

“Vern,” he asked, still not daring to hope, “is that you?”

“It’s me,” Vern answered.

Maggie was still waiting on the sidewalk, looking up at the lighted vent with her mouth open.

If she lived to be a hundred, she would never forget Vern’s desperate leap for the building. He had flung himself through the air, his arms and legs churning like an Olympic jumper’s. Then he slammed into the wall, and his thin hands gripped the ledge. He had hung there for what seemed to Vern and Maggie to be the longest minute and a half in the history of recorded time.

Maggie kept waiting for him to fall to the ground. Vern kept hanging there.

Maggie glanced around. She wished she had something to put under him to break his fall.

When Maggie saw the board, she got a brainstorm, the first of her life. “Hold on,” she yelled.

She took the fallen board, upended it, shoved it up against the wall, and gave Vern’s dangling feet a boost. It was all Vern needed.

One foot found a toehold. His other knee pushed his body out from the wall. He worked the toe of his shoe between the bricks, and he pulled himself up six inches. His toe moved up a brick.

Vern inched his way up the rest of the wall, moving as carefully as a mountain climber, his tennis shoes digging into the wall, his hands reaching into the vent. It was a slow, superhuman, agonizing effort that Maggie watched from directly below.

She watched Vern wiggle eel-like through the vent. He had to turn his head sideways, the vent was so small, and she turned her head sideways too. She had sucked in her breath as he, too, had done to get his chest through the vent. She pulled in her stomach as he went over the sill.

For a few seconds there had been just his thin legs sticking out of the vent. Then they disappeared in a scissors kick, and Vern was in the city jail.

The leap had been so exciting, and her part in it so spectacular, that Maggie had wanted to jump up and down and cheer. It had been like something out of the circus, the most exciting, successful moment of her entire life.

Now, however, with the realization that Vern was inside with Pap and that she was outside with nobody, all she felt was lonely.

“Vern!” she called softly.

It had been ten minutes since Vern’s legs had disappeared.

“Vern?”

Tears came to her eyes and spilled onto her cheeks. Usually when Maggie cried, she wiped her tears away with the ends of her braids. It was the best part of having braids. That and crossing them under her nose and making a mustache. Those were the only two reasons she went to all the trouble of making the braids. Now she was too miserable to care.

“Vern?”

Far above her, in the light of the vent, Vern’s small, round face appeared. Maggie lifted her arms like a mother urging her child to jump.

Vern said just one sentence before he slipped back into the jail and out of sight.

“Junior’s in Alderson General Hospital.”

In the jail Vern tumbled once again into Pap’s trembling arms, and the two of them sat down on the side of Pap’s bunk. The first few minutes of the reunion had been spent with Pap rubbing his hands over Vern, testing to make sure he was real, mumbling, “I knew you’d come. I knew you wouldn’t let me down.”

The next minutes were spent realizing that now, instead of having one family member in jail, they had two. After that, they hadn’t said anything, just sat enjoying the comfort of each other’s presence.

Finally Vern had broken the silence with “Maggie’s outside.”

“That’s what I figured,” Pap said.

Pap knew it wouldn’t be proper to bring a girl into the men’s half of city jail. Then, with a sudden lift of heart, he remembered Junior.

Junior had been worrying Pap ever since the policeman had told him Junior was in the hospital. Now the heavy lines between Pap’s brows eased. Things were working out all right after all. Maggie could take care of Junior.

“I’ll boost you up, and you yell out and tell her Junior’s in Alderson General Hospital.”

“That’s all?”

“She’ll know what to do.”

Vern had climbed on Pap’s old sloping shoulders, turned his head sideways, poked it through the vent, and looked down at Maggie’s pale face far below.

He called, “Junior’s in Alderson General Hospital.” Then he shimmied down Pap’s body as if it were a tree, and joined him on the bunk.

No one in the jail had awakened.

Pap, comforted at last, leaned back against the concrete block wall. Vern did too. Their eyes closed.

Vern opened his eyes. “I forgot something. Boost me up again, Pap.”

“Verrrrrrrrrn,” Maggie wailed. She stood with her head back like a howling dog. “What am I supposed to do nowwwwww?”

She looked down at the board at her feet. Maybe she could get it up the tree and across the gap to the ledge so Vern could come back across. She knew she couldn’t. It had taken all her strength to lift it up for that one short boost. Maybe she could do something terrible and get arrested. “Just put me in with my family,” she would tell the arresting officer, “—the Blossoms.” She would look so pitiful that—

At that moment, with tears of pity welling in her eyes, Maggie heard the clink of a coin at her feet. She brushed her tears away with her braids.

The clink was followed by another. Then money poured from the vent. It fell around her like rain—nickels, dimes, pennies, wadded-up dollar bills.

Even before the last coin hit the sidewalk, Maggie was on her hands and knees, gathering it in.

Maggie felt better. It was surprising how much more wonderful things looked when you were rich.

The money was in her jeans pocket—nineteen dollars and forty-nine cents. She had wrapped it up like a package, securely, with the dollar bills folded around the coins.

“Isn’t it late for you to be out by yourself ?” the bus driver asked.

Maggie was sitting on the long sideways seat behind him. Now that she had money, everything seemed to be going her way.

The bus had stopped. She had said, “By any chance do you go past Alderson Hospital?”

The bus driver had said, “I sure do.”

She said, “How much?”

He said, “Fifty.”

She said, “Just a minute.” She unwrapped her package of money, dropped the money in the slot, and here she was, on her way.

Life sure was easy when you had money.

“I asked,” the bus driver said again, “isn’t it late for you to be out by yourself?”

“Yes,” she admitted, “it is.”

“You got family in the hospital?”

“My little brother.”

“What’s wrong with him? Is he hurt, sick, or what?”

“Hurt, I think.”

The bus driver steered the bus around a corner, and Maggie leaned with the turn. She was the only passenger on the bus.

“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 j
ail. 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.

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.