Not-Just-Anybody Family (12 page)

Beside the story, in the center column, was a police artist’s composite drawing of Mud. Mud had never had his picture taken, so this was the best they could do.

Vern, Maggie, and Pap had been satisfied with the likeness.

“That’s him,” Pap said.

“Yes, that’s exactly the way he looks,” Maggie had said, “when he’s feeling—” Tears filled her eyes. “—when he’s feeling happy.”

Vicki Blossom stopped for a hamburger at a diner just across the state line. She saw Mud’s face looking at her through the newspaper dispenser. She got out a quarter as quickly as she could.

She went into the diner reading.

“Well, what next?” she asked the man on the stool next to hers. She showed him the front page. “My daddy-in-law was arrested, my little boy busted into jail to get him out, and now there’s an all-points bulletin for our dog.”

“I hear the old man got off.”

She nodded. “That’s what they tell me. I’ve been calling the police and the hospital and the lawyer. I can’t get anybody. I’ll be home this afternoon to see things for myself.”

She ordered a hamburger and settled down to read the story.

“Look,” she said, “there’s all my kids. My youngest boy is in the wheelchair, two broken legs, and he’s grinning like it’s Christmas.

“There’s Maggie, my girl, and she’s got better sense than to take her little brother out of the hospital. She practically kidnapped him, according to the nurse. I don’t know who this boy is. That’s probably the cabdriver.”

She looked close at the third picture. “This—I almost didn’t recognize him with his hair combed—is my daddy-in-law, and this is my oldest boy, Vern. This man between them is the lawyer.”

She drank some coffee to get the strength to look at the newspaper some more. She shook her head.

“I can’t believe this. My whole family smeared across the front page of the state paper. I’m going to have to straighten every one of them out.”

Ralphie said, “Well, good-bye.”

“I wish you didn’t have to go.”

“I do, though. You heard my mom.”

Junior nodded.

“You and everybody else in the hospital,” Ralphie added.

Ralphie’s mom had come to take him home that morning. She was still mad. She said, “If you can get around that good, good enough to tramp downtown to the courthouse, you can get around good enough to go home.”

“I’ve got to have my therapy!” Ralphie had cried. “You want me to be a cripple?”

She pointed at him. “You”—it was like something Junior had seen once on a poster—“are going home.”

“Well, can I at least put my leg on?”

She was already storming down the hall. She did not answer.

“You want me to read the story about Mud one more time before I go?”

Junior nodded. This would make the eighth time, but Junior would never get tired of hearing it.

“‘Bulletin: Yesterday, following the release of Pap Blossom … ’”

The sight of his mom in the hospital doorway caused Junior to burst into tears.

She rushed to his bed. “Junior, let me look at you. I have been so worried. Darling, how are you?”

“I’m fine.”

“No, you aren’t. Let me see those legs.” She threw back the sheet. “Both of them. You broke both of them.” Tears came to her eyes too.

He nodded.

“Well, one good thing about our family is that our bones heal fast. Your dad broke seventeen bones in his lifetime and never spent one day in the hospital. He took the casts off himself.”

Junior’s mom always knew how to make him feel better. He wiped his tears on the sleeve of his pajamas. “Did they find Mud?”

The newspaper was still on his lap. He had shed so many tears on the composite drawing of Mud that the picture looked bubbly. Since Ralphie had gone, Junior had not had anyone to read the story to him, but he had looked at the pictures so much, he had them memorized.

The cheerful one of himself in his wheelchair was his favorite. He would feel better every time he looked at that one. Then he would see Mud, and tears would drop from his eyes. He was careful not to get any on his own picture.

“I don’t know, Junior. I haven’t been home. I drove straight to the hospital to see you. Sandy Boy’s outside in his trailer.”

“I went to the courthouse.”

“I know you did. I read about it in the newspaper.”

“The boy that was in that bed took me, but he’s gone home.”

“Well, you’ll be going home, too, now that I’m here to take care of you. I’m going right down and talk to the nurse.”

“Talk to the big redheaded one,” Junior called after her. “She’s the nicest.”

His mother disappeared around the door and started down the hall. There was a pause and then

Junior sat straight up in bed.

“Get my harmonica!” he yelled.

*     *     *

“I keep hearing something. Do you?” Maggie said. “It sounds like Mud, but he’s real far away.”

“You
think
you hear something.”

“No, I do.”

“You
wish
you heard something.” Vern corrected her because he wanted her to know he understood exactly how she felt. He had been hearing things himself. “Maybe it’s thunder.”

Maggie nodded. “Maybe.” She dropped down beside him on the steps. “Mom’s coming home this afternoon.”

“I know it. I was standing right beside you when the policeman told us.”

“I wish she’d hurry.”

Maggie stretched out her legs. As usual she had on boy’s clothes. She was older than Vern but smaller, so she got what he had outgrown. Today she had on a pair of his last summer’s shorts and a shirt so old, it didn’t have a button on it. Maggie had tied a knot in the shirttails to keep it closed.

After a long moment Maggie said, “You know, Vern, it wasn’t a stupid idea after all.”

“What?”

“Your idea. Busting into jail.”

Vern had come to that conclusion himself, but it was something he longed to hear about. “Why do you say that?” He shifted his feet and looked at Maggie out of the corners of his eyes.

“Well, because if you hadn’t busted into jail, Pap wouldn’t have gotten off, and Mom wouldn’t have seen the newspaper, and she wouldn’t be coming home. Why, if you hadn’t busted into jail, we’d be right back where we were the night outside the jail—desperate and helpless.”

Vern swallowed. He closed his eyes as if the world had suddenly gotten too bright to look at. He was speechless with pleasure.

“Vern,” she said, and then she added the most beautiful sentence Vern had ever heard, one he would never forget: “You are a hero.”

Vicki Blossom was fixing breakfast. She was fixing the family favorite: fried shredded wheat. She softened the shredded wheat in hot milk, and then she put it on the griddle, flattened it with the spatula, and fried it. The Blossoms ate it with lots of syrup.

“Annybody want seconds?” she asked. When nobody answered, she looked around. She couldn’t believe it. “Nobody?”

The three kids shook their heads.

“Well, all right. I’ll save these for Pap.”

At the moment Pap was off looking for Mud. All day yesterday and at dawn today he’d been in his pickup truck, riding around town, whistling out the window for Mud.

“You’re just wasting gas, Pap,” Vicki had told him.

“Not if I find him,” Pap answered. “It ain’t wasted if I find him.”

“Well, at least wait until the rain lets up.”

“I can whistle for him in the rain good as I can in the sunshine.”

And he had driven off, whistling. The rain coming in the window poured down his wrinkled face.

“All we need is for you to catch pneumonia!” she called after him.

Vicki watched her children at the table. “Are you kids still moping about that ugly dog?” She shook her spatula at them.

The Blossom kids looked down at their plates to keep from meeting her eyes.

“I’m ashamed of you kids. Count your blessings. Pap’s out of jail. Junior’s out of the hospital. I’m home, and you’re moping about Mud. If you can’t live without a dog, go to the pound this afternoon and get another one.”

“Mom!” Maggie looked up in shock. “That’s a terrible thing to suggest.”

“We could get a puppy,” Junior said. He liked the idea. “A puppy is not a dog.”

“It is, too, Junior,” Maggie said. “Anyway, it’s not our dog, Mom; it’s Pap’s. Mud lets us play with him, but he’s Pap’s dog. That’s why I feel bad. Pap really loves Mud.”

“Pap is old enough to hide his feelings. If he wouldn’t go around with that long, sad face, looking like he’d lost his best friend, whistling out the truck window like a lunatic, you wouldn’t feel bad. Shoot, I felt bad leaving the rodeo. The rodeo’s in my blood—you know that. But I didn’t mope around, making everybody else feel bad too. Pap needs to grow up.”

She slapped a flattened shredded wheat on her plate. It was one of the ones she had been saving for Pap. She sat at the table and ate it angrily, without syrup, cutting it up so hard with her fork that pieces shot off the plate.

Mud was rolling in a patch of wet Bermuda grass. He nosed his way through, rubbing his stinging eyes against the cool grass. He had spent the past eight hours rolling in whatever he could find—moss, leaves, dirt, mud, a small stream, a bank of ferns. None of it got rid of the smell.

His eyes still felt scratchy, but at least he could see now. After the spray hit his face, his eyes had watered so much and so long that a lot of the irritation had been washed away.

He twisted over and rubbed the other side of his face. Then he got up and shook himself. He saw a stand of pine trees, and he went over and rubbed his face against the rough bark. Turning, he did the other side.

It was nice under the pines. The branches shielded him from the rain. Like Pap, Mud had never cared much for rain.

He lay down and rolled in the pine needles, nosing them from side to side, still trying to get the scent off his face.

He rested a moment. Mud was exhausted. He had not had a real meal in four days. His ribs showed through his fur.

Still, there was something comforting about lying under these particular pine trees. He had lain here before. Maggie had pushed him under here one hot summer afternoon and said, “Now you’re the wolf and I’m Hiawatha. You stay under there until I come by and I don’t see you and I don’t know you’re there. Pretend like you’re going to eat me.”

He had waited on the soft bed of needles—waited, without understanding why, for the okay to come out. With the memory growing sharper, urging him on, Mud squirmed out from under the branches. He stood for a moment, smelling the air.

Then he began to bark wildly as he bounded through the woods. He leapt over bushes, logs, the creek. He charged down the ravine, up the other side. His shrill barks rang through the woods and echoed. The sound was continuous, like the ringing of bells on a joyous occasion.

“See if you can guess what this song is,” Junior said. He put his harmonica in his mouth. He kept it on a string around his neck because of Ralphie’s unfortunate experience. At least if he swallowed his harmonica, he could pull it back up.

“I’m tired of guessing,” Maggie said. “Let Vern guess this one.”

“They all sound the same to me,” Vern said.

“No, this one’s different.”

Junior began to play.

Vicki Blossom was at the sink, washing the breakfast dishes. She had just opened the window, and she was the first to hear Mud’s wild barking.

“Well, you kids can stop moping,” she said over her shoulder. “I hear Mud.”

She opened the back door and went out on the stoop, drying her hands. Maggie and Vern ran out too. Junior was desperately trying to maneuver his wheelchair around the kitchen furniture.

“Wait for me! I want to see too!”

Mud came out of the trees like a streak; he tore up the incline where the Blossoms threw the garbage; he leapt over the old tractor. He headed for the house.

Vicki threw back her head. “Oh, Lord, he’s been skunked. Get back in the house. Quick.” She held her nose. “Get back, Maggie. Close the screen door. Quick! Junior, get out of the way.” She spun his wheelchair around. “Close the door, Vern. Close it!” She reached around and slammed the door herself just as Mud hit the porch.

Mud leapt up and down, throwing himself at the door. His happy face appeared framed in the high glass pane every time he jumped.

When she had watched his face come into view seven or eight times, Maggie said, “I don’t care. I’m going out.”

She turned the knob and slipped through the door. “Me too,” Vern said.

“Well, you’re not coming back in this house, either one of you, if I catch one whiff of skunk on you or your clothing.”

“We know.”

Maggie and Vern threw their arms around Mud.

“Well, they can split us up,” Pap said. He was in the creek, washing Mud with heavy-duty detergent. “But we Blossoms always manage to get back together. That’s the good thing about being a Blossom.”

“One of the good things,” Maggie said.

This was Mud’s seventh bath. For the first two or three he had spent a lot of time trying to get out or shake the soap off, but now he was resigned to being washed.

He stood without moving. His ears were flat against his head. His tail was between his legs. His eyes rolled occasionally up to Pap.

“I hate it as bad as you do,” Pap told him.

Maggie and Vern sat on the bank, watching. Maggie had on another old outfit of Vern’s, and her braids were still wet. “Tomorrow,” her mom had told her, “I’ll make you a French braid. I learned how to do it in a beauty parlor in Pecos. Hey, maybe I’ll go to work in a beauty parlor. That always was my second love.”

Vern’s hair was wet, too, combed with a part. “You kids have got to start fixing yourselves up,” their mom told them. “Maggie, I’m getting you some dresses.”

“And cowboy boots.”

“We’ll see.”

“Okay, Mud, that’s probably about as good as we’re going to do.” Pap rinsed him off with a bucketful of water. Mud closed his eyes as Pap poured another bucket over his head.

“Go roll in the grass,” Pap told him. As soon as Mud heard the word
go
he went.