Blossoms and the Green Phantom (11 page)

“Listen to me. I will let you go when you calm down and not a minute sooner.”

Junior stopped struggling. He stood there, looking down at the ground, breathing hard. Then he threw one agonized glance up at the Phantom.

“Junior.” His mother’s voice forced him to look back at her. “Junior, the reason you are not going to climb that tree is because if you fall and break those legs again, you will be crippled for the rest of your life. Nothing is worth that.”

“I’ll be glad to do it, Mrs. Blossom,” Ralphie said.

She turned to look at him. “But you have a bad leg too, don’t you, Ralphie?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t stop me from doing anything I want to do.” Then he said what he believed to be the truth. “If anybody can get it down, I can.”

“I’ll help,” Maggie said quickly.

Ralphie drew in his breath, taken completely by surprise at Maggie’s offer. He had offered to climb the tree because offering to do things for Junior had become almost a way of life. The thought that Maggie might climb with him had never even crossed his mind.

“Will you two be very careful?” Vicki Blossom asked.

“Yes,” Ralphie answered.

“Michael and I will help too.”

Ralphie’s delight in climbing a tree with Maggie dimmed at the thought of taking along her brother and his friend.

“No, thanks, Vern,” Ralphie said quickly, “it’s a two-man job. Mrs. Blossom, if we get too many people up there somebody might fall. I couldn’t be responsible.”

“Vern, you and Michael stay down here.” It was a Blossom order, and Ralphie sighed with quick relief.

“We’ll give you a boost.” Michael and Vern were already at the tree with their hands clasped together. Now that Junior saw those clasped hands, he was glad someone else was going to be boosted up this time.

Maggie got the first boost, then Ralphie. “Wait!” Mad Mary said. Everyone was so shocked to hear her actually say something that they stopped what they were doing.

Mad Mary crossed to the tree with long strides. “Here,” she said, “maybe this will help.”

She passed up her long stick with the crook on the end. Maggie took it. “Why, thank you.”

Then she handed it to Ralphie. “Thank you,” he said. He reached up and hooked it over an upper limb. “Let’s go.”

Ralphie was good in trees. Sometimes he even took off his leg to prove just how good he was, but obviously this was not the time to show off.

He got up the first two limbs like a shot so that he could lean down and offer his hand to Maggie. She took it. He glanced up. Ah, about ten more limbs, twelve if he went the hard way, twelve more offers of help. Ralphie hooked Mad Mary’s stick over the next limb and moved up.

“Mud, stop that,” Pap said, “let Dump go.”

Now that Maggie and Ralphie were out of sight in the tree, Pap had looked down. He did this mainly to give his neck muscles a rest, but the first thing he saw was Mud, holding Dump down on the ground with his paw.

“Stop it, Mud.”

Mud took his paw off Dump, and Dump ran to Pap. He put his thin paws on Pap’s knee. Pap leaned down and scratched him behind the ears. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Mud.”

Mud’s ears pulled back. His tail went between his legs.

“I been noticing how you been carrying on. You won’t let the puppy drink water out of your bowl and you won’t let him eat at all and now you won’t let him walk around. What’s wrong with you?”

Mud hung his head.

“Just go on,” Pap said. “Go on. If you can’t behave yourself, Mud, just go on back to the house.”

Mud took a few steps away from the people, toward the path where Pap was pointing.

“We’ll be glad to have your company if you can behave yourself, but if you can’t, just go on. I’m tired of watching you make this puppy’s life miserable.”

Mud went a few more steps. He sat down. He watched Pap patting the puppy. He waited for a long time for Pap to speak to him and tell him things were all right. When he didn’t, Mud turned and with his tail between his legs, he started for home.

Maggie was a good climber too, but that didn’t surprise Ralphie. He knew himself well enough to know he would never fall in love with a girl who was clumsy.

They got up to the level of the Phantom too quickly to suit Ralphie, and he had only himself to blame. He was in such a hurry for the next handhold, that he didn’t let the individual holds last long enough. What he should have done was—

Maggie broke into his thoughts. “Do you want to crawl out on that limb or this one?”

“I’ll take the one you don’t want,” he said graciously.

“I’ll go out on this one. I weigh less and …” She grinned and he could see her broken tooth up close for the first time. It was much more beautiful up close. It was like—he was sorry he wasn’t a more poetic person because it wasn’t like anything really except Maggie’s tooth. It was his favorite of her teeth, of course, but it was like nothing in the world but her tooth. He hardly heard the end of her sentence, “… since it’s the smallest …”

Junior called from the ground, “Are you there yet?”

“We’re there,” Maggie called back.

“Can you reach it?”

“Give us time,” Ralphie answered.

They inched out on their limbs and stopped when they were directly below the branch that held the Phantom. Ralphie reached out with Mad Mary’s cane and poked it. “It’s going to take more than this. Let’s shake.”

Maggie nodded. They reached up together and grabbed the limb. “Ready?” Ralphie asked.

Maggie nodded. Then she added, “Wait a minute, let me get a better grip.”

“Me too,” Ralphie said.

Maggie really wanted a better grip, but Ralphie just wanted a way to make the time in the tree with Maggie last longer. He wondered if all men loved women more in trees than they did on the ground, or if it was just him. Maybe it was the way the moonlight shone through the leaves on her face. Or maybe it was the fact that they seemed so much more alone at this moment than they had ever been before.

“I’m ready,” she said.

“Okay,” Ralphie said. “Go!”

They both began to shake, and it was one of the most exciting moments of Ralphie’s life. Maggie was laughing and leaves and twigs were falling all around them.

Maggie stretched forward and looked up. “It’s still there. Go again!”

They shook harder this time. Leaves and twigs rained around them. Maggie laughed aloud. Then she leaned forward to look.

“It’s free,” she cried. “It’s free!”

She had to keep leaning forward to watch the Phantom’s escape. Ralphie could see all right from where he was, but he found himself leaning forward too.

Instead of looking up at the Phantom, however, he looked down at Maggie’s face. Her eyes were shining. Her lips were smiling.

And to Ralphie’s amazement he bent his head and kissed her.

“Can you see it all right up there?” Junior yelled. “Can you guys see it?”

Ralphie tried to make his voice normal when he called back, “Yes.”

“It’s so beautiful,” Junior went on in an excited way, “and the breeze is just right. Come on down quick so you see it.”

“We can see real good from up here, Junior,” Maggie called back.

She looked down as she called to Junior, and all Ralphie could see was the top of her head, her center part, the braids swinging on either side of her face. She did not sound like a girl who had just been kissed. She sounded perfectly normal.

Ralphie knew that the one word he had managed had not sounded normal at all. He knew, too, that he did not look normal either. His face was on fire. The tips of his ears blazed.

Maggie glanced up and grinned. She did not look like a girl who had just been kissed either. It was exactly the same friendly grin she always gave him.

“Can you see all right?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“How do you know? You aren’t even looking.”

“Oh.” Ralphie actually looked through the leaves at the Phantom for the first time.

The Phantom was moving away on the wind, over the cliff, over the tallest trees, soaring toward the city of Alderson. “Wouldn’t it be funny,” Maggie said, “if people saw it and thought it was real.”

Ralphie still didn’t trust his voice to say more than one word at a time. “Yes.”

“Wouldn’t it be great if it got in the newspaper. UFO Sighted Over Alderson. Junior would be so thrilled.”

Ralphie cleared his throat. “He seems pretty thrilled as it is.”

“I know. I just think I would have died if it had gone wrong tonight. Last night was terrible. Last night was one of the worst nights of my life. You heard the things Mom said to me.”

Ralphie cleared his throat. “But tonight’s been all right, hasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate it?”

“Oh.” She thought a minute. “Ten.” Her answer thrilled him so much, he would have fallen out of the tree if he hadn’t been hooked on to a limb by Mad Mary’s cane.

“If you don’t watch out, Ralphie, you’re going to fall and ruin the whole thing.”

Ralphie regained his balance quickly. After that he pretended to watch the Phantom, but the Phantom was nothing compared to Maggie. He watched Maggie out of the sides of his eyes.

“We better start down,” Maggie said. “I promised Mom I’d do the refreshments. We’re having two flavors of Kool-Aid, pimento cheese sandwiches, and Oreos.”

Ralphie said, “What’s the hurry? Nobody will want to eat until the Phantom’s out of sight anyway.”

Maggie looked up at the sky and grinned. “It is out of sight.”

And before he could stop her, Maggie swung to the next lower limb and began climbing down. Even he couldn’t have done it so fast. With a sigh, he unhooked Mad Mary’s cane and started after her.

*     *     *

Below, on the ground, Junior said, “Wasn’t it just beautiful, wasn’t it beautiful? I think I can still see it, can you, Mom?”

“Maybe,” his mother said. She couldn’t, but she knew that Junior might still be seeing it in his mind, and she didn’t want to disturb the image.

Junior was seeing it in his mind, replaying it the way things were replayed on television. He was not replaying the whole thing. He started his motion with the Phantom breaking away from the tree. That had been the most spectacular part.

There had been a burst of leaves and twigs as if the Phantom itself were trying to pull free, and then it was free. It was in the air. It paused for a moment, and then immediately it began to gain height. It seemed to shoot straight up, more like a rocket than a balloon. And in five minutes the Phantom had actually become a part of the sky, something that had always belonged there, like the sun or the moon. It was as if he, Junior, had released the Phantom from captivity, and put it where it was meant to be.

“I wish everybody in the world could see it,” Junior said.

“Maybe they will,” his mom answered.

The Green Phantom, Junior thought, is my gift to the world.

Vern said, “Well, I can’t see it, can you, Michael?”

Michael said, “No.”

There was such regret in Michael’s voice that Vern glanced at him. It was the same regret he felt over not playing with the BB gun or the rod and reel. He felt a warmth toward Michael that for the first time had nothing to do with Michael’s possessions.

“Wait a minute,” Vicki Blossom said, “maybe you can’t see it, but Junior’s got better eyes than the rest of the family.”

This time when Junior looked, it was gone. “No,” he said, “it’s gone out into the world.”

His mother took his hand, and they walked to where Maggie was spreading out the night picnic. Actually, it wasn’t like walking, Junior thought, it was more pleasant than that. It was strolling.

“Did you really like it, Mom?” he asked on the way.

“I loved it. You know what it reminded me of ?”

“What?”

“The Fourth of July, only it was even better than fireworks.”

Since Junior dearly loved fireworks, this pleased him. He stopped strolling for a moment. His mother did too. “What is it, Junior?”

“If I ask you something, will you tell me the truth?”

“Of course.”

Junior had to ask this while the Phantom was still in his mother’s mind. This was the most important question of Junior’s life.

“Do you think Dad would have been proud of me?”

“Oh, yes,” his mother answered. And she repeated it so Junior knew she really did mean it. “Oh, yes.”

Mud was under the porch when the Blossom family came home from the launch. He rolled his eyes upward as they climbed the porch steps above him and a little dust sprinkled down through the floorboards. Mud did not lift his head. He was too miserable.

He heard the family cross the porch, open the door, go in the house. He heard the light steps of the puppy going in with them. He heard the excitement in the Blossoms’ voices as they got ready for bed.

“What was your favorite part, Maggie?”

“My favorite part, Junior, was when the Phantom broke out of the tree.”

“Mom, what was your favorite part?”

“Let’s see. I have so many favorites. But I think my very favorite was toward the end when the Phantom sort of blended in with the stars.”

“Pap, what was your very favorite part?”

“Getting home.”

Mud’s ear twitched when he heard Pap’s voice, but he kept his body curled into a ball, his head resting on his paws, his tail tucked between his legs. From time to time his body trembled.

This was Mud’s misery hole, and it perfectly fitted his body. He had made it over the years and he got in it every time Pap fussed at him or wanted to give him a bath or left him behind, but he had never needed it more than he did now. The worst thing in his life had happened. Pap had gotten a new dog.

The porch light went out and the little slits of light that had filtered through the cracks between the boards was gone. Mud was in darkness. He sighed and trembled. He felt worse than ever. As long as the light had been on, there had been a chance that Pap would open the door and call him inside. Now the house was silent. No one was going to call.

Mud stood his misery as long as he could. Then he lifted his head and began to howl softly. It wasn’t his usual howl. His usual howl could be heard for five miles. This was a wail of such sorrow that it barely penetrated the floorboards of the Blossoms’ house.