Blossoms and the Green Phantom (8 page)

Ralphie cleared his throat. “What Maggie didn’t tell you, Mrs. Blossom, was that Mr. Benson had a gun. It was pointed right at us. If we hadn’t left when we did, one or more of us might be dead.”

“You don’t die of rock salt wounds,” Vicki Blossom said, but she didn’t look at Ralphie. She wasn’t through with Maggie and Vern. She stood there, glaring at them, piercing the darkness with her glances. They were the ones she was furious with. Oh, she was furious with Ralphie, too, but Blossoms knew better than to run off and leave another Blossom.

Ralphie spoke again. He knew Mrs. Blossom had no interest in him, but he couldn’t help himself. He could see from the way Maggie’s shoulders were drawn up that she was getting ready to cry, and he did not want to see Maggie cry. He had seen her brush tears from her eyes with the tips of her braids and that had been bad enough, but if she cried …

“Mrs. Blossom, I’ll be glad to go back after him,” Ralphie said quickly, “I—”

“I’m going after him myself, thank you very much.”

Vicki Blossom came down the steps loudly. It was as if she had on combat boots instead of sneakers. There was a small space between Vern and Maggie, and she went right through it, pushing them to either side.

She strode past Ralphie without a glance and then strode—there was no other word for the way she was walking—down the road.

The children were so stunned by her fury that they were a little late starting after her. That was exactly what Vicki Blossom had been hoping they would do—start after her. She spun around.

She was in the shadows of the pine trees, so it was still impossible to see her eyes, but Ralphie had seen his own mom’s eyes under similar conditions, and he knew what they looked like.

“Oh no you don’t!”

The children stopped in their tracks.

“Oh no you don’t!”

She managed to put new meaning into the words this time, making it even more of a command. “You stay right where you are, every living, breathing one of you.”

That took in them all. No one moved a muscle.

“You left Junior. You deserted Junior. You abandoned Junior. And as far as I am concerned you aren’t worthy to help Junior. Junior doesn’t want your help.”

All of them knew this was a lie, but no one dared speak.

“What do you want us to do?” Maggie asked finally. Ralphie hated to hear her voice tremble like that.

“Can’t you even figure that out? Can’t you do one single thing for yourselves? No, I guess you can’t. You proved that tonight. I gave you a chance to do one simple thing for me, and you proved you cannot do anything, especially when courage and loyalty are called for.”

She drew in a long breath. “All right. Here it is. Maggie, you and Vern go in the house and sit by the phone and wait for Pap’s call. No courage will be called for. No loyalty. Just sit by the phone and answer it if it rings. Do you think you can do that? Do you think you can manage to do that one simple thing without messing up?”

“Yes.”

“And you”—she pointed at Ralphie—“you go home.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ralphie said.

Vicki Blossom turned and began striding down the road again. There was a pause, and then Ralphie manfully took command of the group. “We better,” he said, “do exactly what she said.”

Maggie hesitated a moment. She was holding her braids against her cheeks, so she would be ready for the tears when they came. Then she called, “Mom, please be careful. He really does have a gun.”

Without turning around, Vicki Blossom answered, “I can handle Benson.”

“I’m sorry!” Maggie called.

This time there was no answer. Maggie turned—she needed her braids now—and ran into the house.

Junior had not moved a single muscle except his throat muscle in fifteen minutes. He would not have moved that except that he was desperately afraid he was going to cough, and the only way for him to keep from coughing was to swallow. His swallows sounded, to him, as loud as gulps.

Fifteen minutes more passed slowly by. Junior had now been stranded on top of the chicken house for a long thirty minutes. Old man Benson had been sitting on the front porch with his double-barreled shotgun, waiting, for the same length of time.

In those thirty minutes, Junior had come to realize that the roof of a chicken house was a terrible place to be. It was such a terrible place that parents could even threaten their kids with it. “You behave yourself or I’m putting you up on top of a chicken house!”

Finally, finally, Junior heard old man Benson get up. He heard the rocking chair keep on rocking a little. He heard old man Benson walk to the edge of the porch. Then he heard old man Benson walk across the porch, open the door, go inside, and close the door behind him.

Junior had spent most of the thirty minutes on the chicken house praying for this to happen. “Please let him go in the house, please please let him go in the house, please please please let him go in the house.” He had added so many
pleases
, he had lost count.

So he felt a great moment of relief when his prayers were finally answered. He waited until the bedroom light went out, and then he allowed himself the quiet, muted cough that had been in his throat so long. As it turned out, it was not just one cough, it was a series of coughs.

Junior clapped his hand quickly over his mouth. The coughs kept coming.

Immediately he heard a ruffling of feathers beneath him. There were a couple of startled cackles, then the beating of wings, some miscellaneous
bruck-bruck-bruckkkkks
. He had come to particularly dread those
brucks
.

He swallowed his remaining coughs, and the chickens grew quieter. This did not give Junior a lot of comfort, however, because he now understood the situation. Old man Benson thinks we’ve all gone home, but THEY—that was how he thought of the chickens—THEY know better. They know one of us is still here, and they know it’s me.

Please let them think I’ve gone, he began to pray. Please please let them think I’ve gone. Please please please—

Junior broke off. His body hurt too much to go through all the
pleases
again. Even though the
pleases
had finally worked, he hurt too much.

Junior was lying on his stomach, and since the roof had a steep slope, Junior’s head was pointing toward the ground.

His hipbones hurt, his knees hurt, his ribs hurt. His toes really hurt. His toes were hooked over the peak of the roof to keep him from sliding down the slope. When Junior got off the roof, if he ever did, his toes would probably be frozen in this position, for days, weeks even, maybe for the rest of his life.

Tears kept filling his eyes, but because he was upside down, they couldn’t roll down his cheeks like tears were supposed to do. They dropped off his face between his eyebrows.

Junior’s left ear hurt too. It was pressed against the roof, and in the thirty minutes that he had spent on the roof, Junior had learned a lot about chickens through that ear.

It seemed to him that there were three hens who were causing all the trouble, and these three hens were making it impossible for any of the other chickens to sleep. And if the chickens didn’t sleep, Junior couldn’t move, and if Junior couldn’t move, Junior couldn’t get down, and if Junior couldn’t get down—

Junior broke off. It was exactly like a story Junior’s teacher had read them last year. Junior could hear his teacher saying the last, sad line of the story, “And Junior will not get home tonight.”

Junior’s mind kept going after his teacher’s sentence stopped. “And if Junior doesn’t get home tonight, Junior will still be up here in the morning when old man Benson comes out to feed the chickens.”

Junior shuddered slightly at the thought, and the three leaders of the chickens reacted with fluttering wings, more cries of
bruck-bruck-bruckkkk
. Oh, be quiet, Junior said, go to sleep. Lay some eggs. Haven’t you got anything better to do than squawk?

Maybe, Junior thought suddenly, I should just go for it. Maybe I should unhook my toes, pull my legs around and jump off the roof.

That was exactly what he would have done a year ago. But one of the last things the doctor had told Junior was no more jumping off high places. “You land hard on those legs again, and you’ll most likely be right back in the hospital.” Junior would almost rather be up on top of a chicken house than in the hospital.

And maybe, his dismal thoughts continued, if he let go with his toes, he might slide off the roof before he had a chance to turn himself around. He had a clear picture of himself, arms extended, plunging into the hard earth. Breaking both your arms couldn’t be much better than breaking both your legs.

Maybe, he thought, and another tear rolled off his eyebrow, maybe I should just do the sensible thing and stay up here for the rest of my life.

Pap was asleep, and Pap was having a nightmare. In his nightmare he was trapped in a garbage Dumpster, only the garbage Dumpster of his dream was filled with liquid garbage and Pap was drowning in it.

First the garbage had been up to his chest, then his chin, and now it was over his head. The garbage was like quicksand. It kept pulling him under. It was all Pap could do to come up for air.

Pap went down once, twice. He struggled up for one last breath. Then he was going down into the garbage for the last time.

At that moment Pap was awakened by being hit in the head with a bag of garbage. “What—what?” he cried. He batted at the air.

The plastic bag broke. Garbage rained around him. He reacted by trying to do what he had been trying to do in his nightmare—get his head above garbage.

His arms were swimming frantically through the loose garbage, but as in his nightmare, he couldn’t get high enough. He tried to push to the surface with his legs, but they were useless.

In a desperate move, Pap braced his hands on his knees. He forced himself to his feet.

Then Pap heard a woman scream.

That scream brought Pap back into the real world. He was in a Dumpster, but it wasn’t full of liquid garbage, just everyday real garbage. So the scream had to be real too. That meant someone was here! Someone was outside! Someone had thrown garbage on him!

“Wait! Help! Help! Help!”

Pap peered over the side of the Dumpster. A woman was backing away in openmouthed horror. When she saw his face, she screamed again and broke into a run for her car. He caught a glimpse of her terrified face as she ran through the car’s headlights.

“Please help me, please! I ain’t gonna hurt you. I can’t hurt nobody.”

The woman got into the car. She slammed the door and locked it. Then she peered at Pap through the windshield. She looked as if she’d seen a ghost.

Pap realized then how unkempt he must appear. He attempted to smooth his hair. Then he extended both his arms. “Please, lady, oh, please. Do the Christian thing.” He smoothed his hair again. “Help an old man. I’m dying, lady. I tell you I’m dying!”

The woman started the car.

Tears rolled down Pap’s cheeks. “Please, lady, please! I meant it when I said I’m dying. I can’t stand to be in this Dumpster no more. Help me, lady, help me.”

He had one last glimpse of the woman’s horrified expression as she turned the steering wheel. She drove out of the parking lot so fast that the tires spun in the loose sand.

“I can’t hurt nobody,” Pap called after her. He stretched out one hand. “I’m helpless.”

Pap watched until the taillights were specks in the distance. He kept standing there. He was so tired and worn down that he suspected he had told the truth when he had said he was dying.

“Well, there went another one,” Pap told Mud. He made an effort not to let his despair show in his voice. Mud was sensitive to sounds.

Then he sat down and told Dump the same thing in a lower, sadder voice. “There went another one.” Dump pawed Pap’s leg, asking to get back in Pap’s lap.

Pap picked him up without even knowing he did so. In his mind was the thought that had begun when the woman drove away. It would be a terrible, terrible thing for a man to die in a Dumpster.

Junior had decided to make his move. The chickens had not clucked loudly in at least five minutes, and Junior knew it was time. He had to do something, because it seemed to him the sky was beginning to get light in the east. The last thing in the world Junior wanted to hear was the crow of a rooster. Then it would all be over but the words “Climb down with your hands over your head.”

At last Junior had a plan. The plan came about because Junior remembered a wonderful thing. There had been a window on the side of the chicken house. He had seen it briefly on that incredibly fast boost up, but it was a window and Junior thought there was a little window ledge.

Junior’s plan was to swing down, feel for the ledge with his feet, put his feet firmly on the window ledge, and step down to the ground. The plan was foolproof if, he added, the ledge was there.

Junior knew there was a possibility it was not. Sometimes his eyes saw things that Junior wanted them to see. Like last Christmas, Junior had tiptoed down the steps in the middle of the night and his eyes had seen a red bicycle under the tree with his name on it. When he came down the next morning, the bicycle was not there.

Junior began moving snakelike toward the side of the chicken house. He began to breathe easier. He was going to make it. He knew he was. He would be home in his bed before morning.

In that moment of relief Junior realized that the lights had gone on once again in the Bensons’ bedroom. He glanced up, horrified. He had been so intent on his own silent, stealthy movements that he had forgotten about the house. He had been worrying about THEM, the chickens, when what he should have been worrying about was HIM. Was he coming back out? Had he seen Junior? Would he have his shotgun?

The porch lights went on. Old man Benson
was
coming back out. He would spot Junior for sure this time. He might even shoot before—

At that moment he heard something he had never expected to hear again in this world. He heard his mother’s voice. Then he realized that his mother was knocking at the door. “Open this door, Mr. Benson,” she was saying. “I mean to talk to you.”