The Indian in the Cupboard (16 page)

Omri was now fighting back tears. Quite a crowd had collected, much like the crowd in the art room—some of the same people, even—but his feelings were no longer so pleasant. He wished he could die or disappear.

“It’s no good trying to get around me by crying!” shouted Mr. Yapp. “Give me them back—right now, or I’ll call the police!”

All at once Patrick was beside him.

“They’re his,” he said. “I know they’re his because he showed them to me at school. A cowboy with a white hat and an Indian in a chief’s headdress. He told me he was coming to buy a new one. Omri wouldn’t steal.”

Mr. Yapp let go of Omri and looked at Patrick. He knew Patrick quite well, because it happened that Patrick’s brother had once been his paperboy.

“Will you vouch for him, then?”

“Course I will!” said Patrick staunchly. “I’m telling you, I saw ’em both this afternoon.”

But still the shopkeeper wasn’t absolutely convinced. “Let’s see if they fit your description,” he said.

Omri, who had been staring at Patrick as at some miraculous deliverer, felt his stomach drop into his shoes once more. But then he had an idea.

He reached both hands into his pockets. Then he held out one hand slowly, still closed, and everyone looked at it, though it was actually empty. The other hand he lifted to his
mouth as if to stifle a cough, and whispered into it, “Lie still! Don’t move!
Plastic!”
Then he put both hands before him and opened them.

The men played along beautifully. There they lay, side by side, stiff and stark, as like lifeless plastic figures as could possibly be. In any case Omri was taking no chances. He gave Mr. Yapp just long enough to see that they were dressed as Patrick had said before closing his fingers again.

Mr. Yapp grunted.

“Those aren’t from my shop anyhow,” he said. “All my Indian chiefs are sitting down, and that sort of cowboy is always on a horse. Well, I’m sorry, lad. You’ll have to excuse me, but you must admit, it did look suspicious.”

Omri managed a sickly smile. The crowd was melting away. Mr. Yapp shuffled back into the shop. Omri and Patrick were left alone on the pavement.

“Thanks,” said Omri. It came out as croaky as a frog.

“That’s okay. Have a Toffo.”

They had one each and walked along side by side. After a while they gave each other a quick grin.

“Let’s give them some.”

They stopped, took the men out, and gave them each some bits of the chocolate.

“That’s a reward,” said Patrick, “for playing dead.”

Little Bear then naturally demanded to know what it had all been about, and the boys explained as well as they could. Little Bear was quite intrigued.

“Man think Omri steal Little Bear?”

“Yes.”

“And Boone?”

Omri nodded.

“Omri fool to steal Boone!” roared Little Bear, laughing. Boone, stuffing himself with chocolate, gave him a dirty look.

“Where woman?” Little Bear asked eagerly.

“I’ve got her.”

“When make real?”

“Tonight.”

Patrick gave him a look of pure longing. But he didn’t say anything. They walked along again. They were getting near Omri’s house.

Omri was thinking. After a while he said, “Patrick, what about you staying the night?”

Patrick’s face lit up like a bulb.

“Could I? And see—”

“Yes.”

“Wow! Thanks!”

They ran the rest of the way home.

O
mri’s brothers were already sitting at the tea table when the two boys rushed in.

“Hi! What’s for tea?” Omri asked automatically.

Gillon and Adiel didn’t answer. Adiel had a funny smirk on his face. Omri hardly noticed.

“Let’s make a sandwich and eat it upstairs,” he suggested to Patrick.

They slapped some peanut butter on bread, poured mugs of milk, and hurried up the stairs to Omri’s room, whispering all the way.

“How long does it take?”

“Only a few minutes.”

“Can I see her?”

“Wait till we get upstairs!”

Omri opened the door—and stopped dead.

The white medicine cupboard was gone.

“Wh-where is it?” gasped Patrick.

Omri didn’t say a word. He turned and rushed downstairs again, with Patrick behind him.

“Okay, where’ve you hidden it?” he shouted as soon as he burst into the kitchen.

“I don’t know what you’re referring to,” said Adiel loftily.

“Yes you do! You’ve taken my cupboard!”

“And supposing I did. It was only to teach you a lesson. You’re always taking my things and hiding them. Now you’ll see how funny it
isn’t.”

“When did I last take anything of yours? Tell me one thing in the last
month!”

“My football shorts,” said Adiel promptly.

“I never touched your stupid shorts, I already swore I hadn’t!”

“I had to miss games again today because I didn’t have them,
and
I got a detention for it, so you can be grateful I’m only punishing you tit for tat and not bashing you in,” said Adiel with maddening calm.

Omri felt so furious he even wondered, for a moment, whether it was worth bashing
Adiel
in. But Adiel was enormous and it was hopeless. So after gazing at him for another moment with hate-filled eyes, Omri turned and dashed upstairs again, almost falling over Patrick on the way.

“What’ll you do?”

“Look for it, of course!”

He was turning Adiel’s room upside down like a madman when Adiel, slowly mounting the stairs in the direction of his homework, heard the racket and came running.

He stood in the doorway looking at the shambles of pulled-out
drawers, degutted cupboards, and furniture pulled awry.

“You LITTLE SWINE!” he howled, and dived at Omri. Omri fell to the ground with Adiel on top.

“I’ll tear everything—you’ve got to pieces—till you give it back to me!” Omri shouted in jerks as Adiel shook and pummeled him.

“Then cough up my shorts!”

“I HAVEN’T GOT YOUR STINKING SHORTS!” screamed Omri.

“Are these them?” asked a small voice in the background.

Adiel and Omri stopped fighting, and Adiel, sitting astride, twisted his neck to see. Patrick was just lifting a crumpled navy-blue object from behind a radiator.

Omri felt the anger go out of Adiel.

“Oh … yes. It is, as a matter of fact. How did they get there …?” But Omri knew perfectly well how: Adiel had hung them there to dry and they’d dropped off backward.

Adiel scrambled up looking distinctly sheepish. He even helped Omri to his feet.

“Well, but you have hidden things in the past,” he mumbled. “How was I to know?”

“Can I have my cupboard now?”

“Yeah, it’s up in the attic. I piled a whole lot of stuff on it.”

Omri and Patrick took the stairs to the attic two at a time.

They found the cupboard quite quickly, under a heap of bits and pieces. But Omri had carried it down to his room again before he made the fatal discovery.

“The key!”

The little twisted key with its red satin ribbon was missing.

Once again Omri ran into Adiel’s room, to find Adiel uncomplainingly putting things straight.

“What happened to the key?”

“What key?”

“There was a key in the cupboard door—with a red ribbon!”

“I didn’t notice.”

They went out and closed the door. Omri was now feeling desperate.

“We’ve got to find it. It doesn’t work without the key.”

They searched the attic till suppertime. Never had Omri so clearly seen the point of all his mother’s urgings to keep everything in its proper place. The attic was just a sort of glory hole, where they could play and leave a total mess, and that was what they always did, only clearing spaces when they needed them for a new layout or for some special game. And their way of clearing was just to shove things aside into ever more chaotic heaps.

Underneath the heaps were all the myriad little oddments that were small enough to filter through the bigger things-marbles, wheels of Matchbox cars, bits of Lego, small tools, parachute men, cards, and so on and so on, plus all sorts of fragments that could have been almost anything. At first they just raked through everything. But after a while Omri realized that they would have to clear up systematically. Otherwise it was like the old saying about looking for a needle in a haystack.

He found some boxes and they began sorting things into them—Lego here, parts of games there, water pistols, tricks and novelties in another. Bigger things they stacked neatly onto what his father rather bitterly called “the shelves provided,” which normally stood empty since everything was on the floor.

In an amazingly short time the floor was clear except for a few odd things they hadn’t found homes for, and a great deal of mud, dust, and sand.

“Where did all this come from?” asked Patrick.

“Oh, Gillon brought up boxes of it from the garden to make a desert scene,” said Omri. “Months ago. We might as well sweep it up.” He looked around. Despite his anxiety about the key, he felt a certain pride. The room looked entirely different—there was real playing space now.

He went downstairs and fetched a broom, a dustpan, and a soft brush.

“We’ll have to do this carefully,” he said. “It’d be terrible if we threw it away with the sand.”

“We could sieve it,” suggested Patrick.

“That’s a good idea! In the garden.”

They carried the sand out in a cardboard box and Omri borrowed his father’s large garden sieve. Omri held it and Patrick spooned in the sand and earth with a trowel. Several small treasures came to light, such as a ten pence piece. But no key.

Omri was in despair. He and Patrick sat down on the lawn under a tree, and Omri took the two little men out of his pocket.

“Where woman?” Little Bear asked instantly.

“Never mind the wimmin, whur’s the vittles?” asked the ever-hungry Boone grumpily.

Omri and Patrick fed them some more chocolate and, with a deep sense of misery, Omri produced the plastic Indian woman from his pocket. Little Bear stopped chewing his chocolate the moment he saw her and gazed in rapture. It was obvious he was half in love with her already. He reached out a hand and tenderly touched her plastic hair.

“Make real! Now!” he breathed.

“I can’t,” said Omri.

“Why can’t?” asked Little Bear sharply.

“The magic’s gone.”

Now Boone stopped eating too, and he and Little Bear exchanged a frightened look.

“Ya mean—ya cain’t send us back?” asked Boone in an awe-stricken whisper. “Never? We got to live in a giants’ world
forever?”

It was clear that Little Bear had been explaining matters.

“Don’t you like being with us?” asked Patrick.

“Wal … Ah wouldn’t want to hurt yer feelin’s none,” said Boone, “but jest think how you’d feel if Ah wuz as big to you as you are to me!”

“Little Bear?” asked Omri.

Little Bear dragged his eyes away from the plastic figure and fixed them—like little bright crumbs of black glass—on Omri.

“Omri good,” he pronounced at last. “But Little Bear Indian brave—Indian
chief
. How be brave, how be chief with no other Indians?”

Omri opened his mouth. If he had not lost the key, he might have rashly offered to bring to life an entire tribe of Indians, simply to keep Little Bear contented. Through his mind flashed the knowledge of what this meant. It wasn’t the fun, the novelty, the magic that mattered anymore. What mattered was that Little Bear should be happy. For that, he would take on almost anything.

They all sat quietly on the lawn. There seemed nothing more to say.

A movement near the back of the house caught Omri’s eye. It was his mother, coming out to hang up some wet clothes. He thought she moved as if she were tired and fed up. She stood for a moment on the back balcony, looking at the sky. Then she sighed and began pegging the clothes to the line.

On impulse Omri got up and went over to her.

“You—you haven’t found anything of mine, have you?” he asked.

“No—I don’t think so. What have you lost?”

But Omri was too ashamed to admit he’d lost the key she’d told him to be so careful of. “Oh nothing much,” he said.

He went back to Patrick, who was showing the men an ant. Boone was trying to pat his head, but it wasn’t very responsive.

“Well,” Omri said, “we might as well make the best of things. Why not bring the horses out and give the fellows a ride?”

This cheered everyone up and Omri ran up and brought the two horses down carefully in an empty box. Next Patrick stamped about two square feet of the lawn hard to give the horses a really good gallop. Quite a large black beetle alighted on the flattened part, and Little Bear shot it dead with an arrow. This cheered him up a bit more (though not much). While the horses grazed the fresh grass, he kept giving great lovesick sighs and Omri knew he was thinking of the woman.

“Maybe you’d rather not stay the night now,” Omri said to Patrick.

“I want to,” said Patrick. “If you don’t mind.”

Omri felt too upset to care one way or the other. When they were called in to supper he noticed that Adiel was trying to be friendly, but Omri wouldn’t speak to him. Afterward Adiel took him aside.