The Four-Story Mistake (6 page)

“You're doing swell now, Ran,” Rush called. “How about going for a real ride?”

Oliver wisely preferred to stay at home and practice, but the rest of them walked their bicycles up the drive to the top of the hill, then they got on again and started on a voyage of discovery. Randy fell off twice, once when a squirrel ran across the road and once when she came to the stone gate, but as soon as she was out on the concrete highway she was able to manage better. The road under her wheels felt smooth as satin: She was flying, skimming effortlessly like a swallow near the earth. She kept her eyes fixed sternly on the road and stayed close to the right side. Mona and Rush grew small in the distance ahead of her.

“Hey, wait for
me!
” called Randy, but the words were blown away from her. Half elated, half afraid, she spun along the highway by herself. She didn't dare look at the cars that passed her: whisht, whisht, they went in a speedy gasp, leaving a wake of wind behind them. Fences flew by her, and houses, and cows, and trees, but she didn't see any of them. The road, the bicycle, the wind, were drawing her along faster and faster, and she had the feeling that she would never be able to stop. Ahead of her Mona and Rush swerved to the right and after a little while, when Randy got there, she swerved too.

And then her heart seemed to freeze in her chest: hard and cold as a snowball.

The long main street of Carthage sloped steeply away below her. She saw the houses and stores on each side, and the people and the cars, and the steeple on the church at the foot of the hill. Where, oh, where were Rush and Mona? Save me, save me, prayed Randy as the bicycle gathered speed. She couldn't remember how to stop or put on the brake: she just held on. In a sort of dreadful calm she rocketed down the hill expecting to die. Clear and sharp she saw an old lady and some chickens run across the street to get out of her way: she saw the Carthage traffic cop staring at her with his mouth open. He went by in a flash. She saw the broad blue back of a parked bus in front of her growing larger and larger, and more and more convincing like a close-up in the movies. Save me, murmured Randy once again before her front wheel met the back of the bus, and she flew over the handlebars head on into the license plate.

Everything was velvet-black, and deep, and still.

When she opened her eyes she was lying comfortably in the gutter looking up into the red face of the bus driver. He had his cap on the back of his head, and a pencil behind one ear, she noticed. There were a lot of other people around, too, all looking interested and solemn.

“You all right, kid?” said the bus driver. “Hurt anyplace?”

“My head hurts, kind of,” Randy replied dreamily. Something warm and wet ran down her cheek.

“The victim must be kept lying down,” said a lady with glasses. “That's what my first-aid book says. The victim
must
be kept lying down while someone calls a doctor.”

Randy sprang to her feet. “My
bike!
” she cried. “Is my bike all right?”

“The victim don't want to lay down,” cackled an old man in the crowd. Everybody laughed except the lady with glasses.

“But my new
bike!
” wailed Randy.

“Your bike's okay,” said the traffic cop, who had just arrived. “But you've got a bad cut on your forehead. My house's right across the street. You come on with me, and let my wife fix you up.” He gave her his handkerchief to hold against her forehead and led her across the street, supporting her with his arm. Randy felt proud and delicate; a sort of heroine; the victim of an accident!

“Poor little thing,” someone said.

“My, ain't she brave!” said someone else.

Now that she knew her bike was safe, Randy enjoyed it all very much.

“Hey, Ran, are you okay?” Rush came riding up, looking scared. Behind him she saw Mona's pale face.

“I guess I am,” Randy replied in a weak voice, leaning against the traffic cop. Then she straightened up. “I lost consciousness!” she added briskly.

“You just set out here on the porch a minute,” the traffic cop told Rush and Mona. “She'll be all right in a jiffy.” As the door closed, Randy could hear Rush saying to someone, “Yes, she's my sister. Never rode a bicycle before today.” He sounded very important.

The name of the traffic cop was Mr. Wheelwright (which Randy thought was a good name for him) and his wife, Mrs. Wheelwright, was a nice fat lady with a kind heart who took Randy under her wing with the greatest pleasure.

“Well, for pity's sake,” she kept clucking. “Why, you poor little mite. Why, you poor little
mite.
”

The Wheelwrights' house was very interesting, though rather dim because all the windows were smothered under a profusion of potted plants. There were red geraniums, and fuchsias whose blossoms hung from their stems like costly earrings, and great overgrown begonias, and calceolarias all covered with little speckled calico pocketbooks. There were ivies, too, and rubber plants, and lots of others that Randy couldn't name, all growing furiously like plants in an African jungle. Randy secretly wondered how they ever opened the windows in this house. Maybe they just didn't bother.

Besides the plants there seemed to be a great many animals: dogs and cats, and cages and cages of birds: canaries and lovebirds, chattering and singing beside the green windows. And when they went into the bathroom upstairs, where Mrs. Wheelwright bathed Randy's cut (quite a good cut, deep and long and bloody), Randy couldn't believe her eyes. There was an alligator in the bathtub!

“My goodness” was all she could say. The alligator was about two feet long and lay half out of the water on a soapstone block, with a Mona Lisa smile on his face.

Randy was so fascinated she hardly noticed the iodine biting into her wound.

“Ouch,” she said absently. “But where did you get him, Mrs. Wheelwright?”

“My sister, Ethelda, down in Florida sent him to us for a joke more'n twelve years ago. Ed, that's Mr. Wheelwright, figured the creature would die pretty soon; they usually do up here, you know. We sort of counted on it.”

She put a gauze dressing on the cut and plastered it down with adhesive tape.

“Well, but he didn't die,” she continued. “We fed him real good, and took care of him because after all we've got kinda soft hearts, and first thing you know he's feeling pert as a kitten, and he's got that great big grin on his face.”

She sighed as she closed the door of the medicine chest.

“In summer Ed puts him out in a tank in the yard. But in winter, now that he's getting s'big, we just have to keep him in the bathtub. It makes it awful inconvenient: we have to take our baths in the kitchen, just like there wasn't no modern conveniences in the place.”

“What's his name?” asked Randy.

“We call him Crusty,” replied Mrs. Wheelwright. She sighed again. “The Lord knows what we'll do with him when he outgrows the bathtub. Well, time to worry about it later. Now, honey, you come on downstairs and lay on the davenport for a while, and I'll find you a little bite to strengthen you. You can meet the rest of the family, too.”

Were there other people in the house? Randy had heard no voices. But the rest of the family turned out to be the animals: a very fat old dog, her daughter and grandson; three big grey Maltese cats, all brothers; two lovebirds, man and wife, and five canaries whose relationships were not explained.

The living room was full of things: tables, and lots of chairs, all with crocheted antimacassars; pictures and pennants and fans on the wall; a big melodeon at one end of the room with very old sheet music on it; and in the wide doorway there were portieres all made of beads which rattled like rain on a tin roof when Mrs. Wheelwright brushed against them. The place was so full of animals and plants and furniture that Mr. and Mrs. Wheelwright just walked around their house on little paths. It was rather a stuffy, crowded way to live, Randy thought, but very interesting and never lonesome. She lay quiet on the big, full-bodied couch that was covered with a stiff, stinging plush, like nettles. Mrs. Wheelwright brought her a frosted doughnut and a glass of root beer. The canaries sang madly, and the lovebirds screamed at each other in the customary way of lovebirds. One of the cats sat on the arm of the couch with his tail curled around his paws, and the oldest, fattest dog kept trying to sit up and beg, and falling over because of too much fat.

“That's Teeny,” Mrs. Wheelwright said proudly. “She's fourteen years old.”

“My sister Mona is almost fourteen, too,” Randy remarked. “But not so fat for her size.”

“My lands!” cried Mrs. Wheelwright in consternation. “Your brother and sister have been waiting outside all this time! They'd probably like some doughnuts, too.” Deftly she made her way between tables and chairs and over cats and dogs to the front door.

Rush and Mona came in looking hungry, and sat down behaving like company.

“Are you really all right, Ran, darling?” inquired Mona as Mrs. Wheelwright bustled into the kitchen, leaving the bead portieres rattling.

“I'm fine,” Randy said. “I like this place.”

Mrs. Wheelwright returned with more doughnuts and root beer.

“Your little sister got a pretty bad cut,” she told Rush and Mona.

“Oh, she's always doing something,” Rush said between mouthfuls, and during them. Randy blushed modestly. “She broke her collarbone when she was four, and she knocked out two front baby teeth when she fell off the rocking horse the same year. And then when she was six she got stuck in a revolving door and
last
year she almost got suffocated with coal gas, and—”

“And she fell out of a boat in Central Park in New York City, too,” added Mona. “Nobody
ever
does that.”

“Oh, it wasn't anything,” said Randy, feeling pleased.

“Yes, and she set the house on fire once by accident,” continued Rush. “And she was the only one of our family that got mumps the time we had mumps at school.”

“Well!” said Mrs. Wheelwright. “Things just seem to happen to you, don't they, honey?”

Then Mr. Wheelwright came in and offered to drive Randy home in the next-door neighbor's pickup truck. But no; Randy wanted to ride her bike.

“That's right,” said Rush approvingly. “After a crash they always make aviators fly again, so they won't lose their nerve.”

“Only don't get too far ahead of me,” begged Randy.

Before she left she thanked Mrs. Wheelwright. “Can I come and see you sometimes?” she asked.

“You come whenever you want to, honey,” Mrs. Wheelwright said. “Maybe you'd like to come on Thursdays when I let the birds fly around the house. Or maybe you'd like to come on Saturdays when I bake cookies.”

“Maybe I'd like to come both times,” Randy suggested greedily, and Mrs. Wheelwright seemed to think that was a good idea.

Randy enjoyed the ride home. Her bicycle appeared to be repentant of its past actions and took her docilely in at the gate, down the hill, and along the drive without a single fall.

“My lands!” cried Cuffy when she saw her. “You look like the Spirit of '76!”

“The Carthage traffic cop has an alligator in his bathtub!” Randy told her.

“The
what!
” Cuffy looked startled. “You sure your head feels all right?”

But Oliver, who was getting ready for his bath, said gloomily, “A bathtub's a good place for an alligator. Not for a boy like me. Alligators
like
water.”

That night Randy had her supper in bed: chicken broth, and toast, and lemon jelly. Just like a real invalid. And afterward everyone came up to see her. Mrs. Oliphant and Father made her promise to ride her bike only on the home grounds until she became more expert.

Before she turned out the light, Randy took inventory of her wounds. There were four dark bruises and a skinned knee on her right leg; five dark bruises and a scratched shin on her left. She also had a swollen wrist and a scraped elbow. But the crowning glory, the best wound, the one she valued above all others, was the deep cut on her forehead. Maybe it will leave a scar, she thought hopefully. Oh, if it only would: a distinguished little white scar that she could point to and say casually, “This? Oh, I got this the time I ran into the back of the bus.”

It had been a good day, a wonderful day. She had a new bicycle, she had made new friends, and probably she was going to have a scar.

CHAPTER V

Rock-a-bye Rush

Up on the hill in the woods there was an oak. Of course there were a lot of oaks; dozens of them. There were birch trees, too, with bark like torn satin, and hickory trees, and elms, and pines, and big silvery beeches that looked as if they'd been poured into molds. Thousands of trees, there were. But this oak was special.

Rush had been looking for the right tree for days, now. It had to be tall, for one thing; it had to have widespread branches not too near the earth, and it had to be strong. Also it had to grow on a hill. This was it.

Once long ago Rush had built a tree house in a place where the Melendys used to spend their summers, and he had never forgotten it. It had been his own private domain and nobody had been allowed to enter it without a special invitation extended by the architect. He remembered with pleasure the privacy and power he had felt in his tree house. He remembered the way it had creaked and swayed high among the branches; and how it bucked and leaped like a ship at sea whenever the wind was strong. It had been wonderful to lie on his back in that airy, gently rocking nest and look up into the living, complicated structure of leaves and branches. Why not do it all over again?

“Why not?” Father agreed. “There's a lot of wood out in the stable. Down in the furnace room, too, left over from crates. You ought to be able to find enough material.”