Rufus M. (5 page)

"Criminenty!" exclaimed Rufus when he saw Mr. Pennypepper, and he tore back to his place in line amid more loud cheers from the soldiers.

All of this inspired Mr. Pennypepper to make a little speech. He stood on the platform beside the train and, turning now to the soldiers and now to the children of the school, he said that one washcloth was a symbol. It was a

symbol representing how the people of Cranbury were behind our soldiers in the great combat overseas.

When the cheering that greeted Mr. Pennypepper's impromptu speech subsided, Room Four proceeded with the regular program. From then on everything went according to schedule. Nobody else had brought washcloths. Just asters and chrysanthemums. Finally the whole school sang songs, and at last the train began to move slowly, slowly, down the tracks.

Rufus happened to be standing near a telegraph pole. He quickly shinnied up it to see if he could see his soldier. There he was! And he saw Rufus, too! He mopped his face again with the washcloth and pointed to his chest. Rufus saw that he had pinned his name, RUFUS ML, to his khaki coat. Rufus laughed. This was some soldier! The train began to gather momentum now. Faster and faster it went, but Rufus's soldier hung way out of the window and waved his washcloth as long as you could see anything, until the train disappeared down the tracks and across the marsh.

"Good-bye, soldier!" yelled Rufus, and he slid down the pole.

Mr. Pennypepper started leading the classes back down the hill and away from the railroad station. All the children marched as far as Elm Street and there they were dismissed.

Rufus went straight home. He looked around for some string. He found some wound up in a ball in the pantry. It was red string. This would make a good washcloth, he thought, for he intended to make another one. Of course, he couldn't cast on. But Jane did that for him.

"What's this gonna be?" she asked.

"Washcloth," said Rufus. "A red one."

But Rufus did not have enough red string to make a whole washcloth, only enough for two or three rows. He did find some blue and some white string and he wondered how it would be to make a red-white-and-blue washcloth. Nobody could tell him. "Try it," they said. So every now and then he knit a row of white and then a row of blue. The trouble with this washcloth was that it had knots in it where he joined the red to the blue.

"You should learn to splice," said Joey, who could splice rope. But before Rufus finished his red-white-and-blue washcloth, one day the postman came right into Room Three.

"Is there a Rufus M. in this room?" he demanded, looking over his glasses at the class.

"Yes," yelled the whole class, pointing to Rufus.

"Here's mail for him," said the postman. And he handed Rufus a postcard.

Rufus was stunned. At first he could not move. The only time he had ever gotten a postcard before in his life was from Sylvie when she went away to Camp Lincoln for a week. And on Valentine's Day he got valentines but not from the letter man. They came under the door with a ring of the bell and stamping of feet on the porch. Come to think of it, nobody ever got letters right in school. Home was where letters came, if there were letters. At last he managed to stand up and go to the front of the room and take his postcard. He examined it a long time. It had a picture of a soldier laughing on it. He turned it over. It was addressed to Rufus M., Room Three, School, Cranbury, Conn., U.S.A. The message on it was this:

"The washcloth you knitted sure comes in handy. My buddies and I all take turns. Al."

A1—that was that soldier's name. Rufus smiled. He showed it to everybody and then he put it in his pocket and he kept it there always.

Rufus did not think about the invisible piano player all the time. He ate, drank, slept, went to school, went to Sunday School, read his postcard from the soldier Al, hiked up East Rock with Joey, and played, most of the time. Still, whenever he went past a certain house on Pleasant Street, he did think about the invisible piano player who lived there.

The Saybolts lived in this house: Mr. Saybolt, a motorman on the Bridgeport Express, and Mrs. Saybolt, his wife. She called all children "Tigers!" and chased them off her white sidewalk and out of her hedge chairs—two hedges in front of the porch she kept clipped in the shape of armchairs. She was a jolly lady on the whole, who sometimes laughed and talked to herself when she was hanging up the clothes. She just did not want children sitting in her hedge chairs. Rufus did not know whether the invisible piano player was named Saybolt or not. He had never seen him. So far as he knew, neither had anybody else ever seen him. This was natural since he was invisible.

It happened quite by accident that Rufus found out about the invisible piano player. Nobody told Rufus a word about him in advance.

One day Mama sent Rufus to the Saybolts' house with Mrs. Saybolt's new navy blue dress. It was not far, just around the corner. But Rufus was proud to go there with the new navy blue dress, because it was the first time that Mama had ever let him deliver any of her dressmaking alone. That meant he was a big fellow in the family now.

Rufus walked up on Mrs. Saybolt's porch. She wouldn't call him "Tiger," because he was here on business. Inside someone was playing the piano. Rufus rang the bell. Nobody answered the door. He rang again. Still no one answered. They couldn't all be out because somebody was playing the piano. Rufus supposed no one could hear the bell because the person playing the piano was making so much noise. The door was open, so Rufus stepped in. He stood for a moment in the hall.

"Hey," he called, in a lull in the music.

Nobody came. And the music began again, so Rufus stepped into the parlor expecting to see Mrs. Saybolt playing. Then he stood transfixed in the doorway. There was music coming from the piano. The keys were hopping up and down, playing a lively tune. But,
nobody was sitting at the piano playing it.

Rufus recognized in a flash what it was—an invisible piano player!

Rufus stood there, watching. He knew about invisible people. Certain people who wore certain cloaks were invisible. Jane had read him a story only this morning about one of these fellows. That one happened to be a prince, an invisible prince.

Rufus would have liked to stay there forever watching the invisible piano player, but just then Mrs. Saybolt came downstairs, scooped up her navy blue dress, pinned three dollars to a piece of paper, gave it to Rufus, and scooped him out the door, dropping two cents in his palm for himself. He didn't have a chance to ask one word about the fellow.

That was the first time that Rufus knew about the invisible piano player. But always after that when Rufus went past this house he thought about him, especially if he could hear him busy at the piano. When he wasn't playing the piano, Rufus wondered if he sat in the hedge chairs. He could sit there because Mrs. Saybolt could not see him. He wondered many things about the man. He wondered if you could feel an invisible man or if touching him would be like touching air. He asked Jane.

Jane thought a long time. Then she said she thought you could feel an invisible man. The only thing you couldn't do was see him. If he sneezed or coughed, she thought you could hear him. Hear him and feel him, that's what she thought.

This sounded sensible to Rufus. He wished Mama would send him to the Saybolts' house again, but right now Mama was not sewing for Mrs. Saybolt. Rufus hoped that someday he'd have a chance to go back to this house and look at the stool where the invisible piano player sat. Then he would try to touch him and really find out if you can feel an invisible man or not.

Going to school and coming home from school Rufus passed the Saybolts' house. Whenever he heard the invisible piano player, he paused to listen. This was the only invisible man he knew about outside of those fellows in books. And he was a smart man. To be invisible is smart in itself. But to be invisible and such a good piano player also was quite remarkable.
A Paderooski,
thought Rufus. This chap never missed a beat.
Tum-te-tum!
He never struck the wrong note, the way he and Jane did on their organ. He never had to practice exercises, either, the way Nancy Stokes did. He just played. Rufus admired him very much.

Rufus listened from outside and across the street as much as he could. But the opportunity to get inside the house again did not present itself for a long time. Then one day when he heard the invisible piano player he stopped to listen for a moment. He could hear him very well because the window on the porch was open. Mrs. Saybolt was nowhere in sight. So Rufus tiptoed up on the porch and looked through the open window. This was almost as good as being inside the house. And there was the invisible piano player as invisible as ever!

Rufus watched the keys hop up and down and he tried to imagine what the invisible piano player might look like if he didn't have his cloak of invisibility on.

All the while that Rufus was watching through the window he kept one ear cocked for Mrs. Saybolt, so he could run if she came and called him "Tiger!"

Then it occurred to Rufus that perhaps the reason the piano player stayed invisible was that he might be afraid of Mrs. Saybolt. In that case the invisible piano player might not be a man after all. He might be a boy like Rufus. He might be a boy who did not like to be called "Tiger!" and therefore made himself invisible.