William S. and the Great Escape (12 page)

But once they reached Main Street everything changed. By then bright sunlight was slanting over the horizon to the east, up and down Main Street a few cars were going by, and on the sidewalk there was an occasional pedestrian. Most of them were men dressed in overalls, who hurried by without even looking. But then a woman in a waitress's white cap and apron came to a stop. “What's this?” she demanded. “Where are you kids going? Where are your folks?”

Looking frantic, Jancy turned to William. “Hey, it's okay,” he said, grinning. “Our car had a flat back there on Oak Street. Our dad is fixing it, but we have to get to the bus station and get them to wait. We have to hurry. Bye.”

The waitress didn't look entirely convinced. She continued to frown, but she did step aside and let them pass. A few minutes more and they had reached Carson's Candy Store and the bus station was only two blocks away. But up ahead, where Orchard Street crossed Main, there were more people.

William pulled Jancy after him into the store's entryway, and put down the knapsack and the suitcase.
“Okay,” he told Jancy, “here's where we really do have to split up. Do you think you can carry that thing the rest of the way by yourself?”

She nodded firmly. “I can,” she said. “I will.”

William grabbed Trixie and Buddy, one with each hand. “Now listen,” he said. “Buddy is going with me, and Trixie will stay here with Jancy. Just for a little while, and then they'll come too. But when we see each other at the bus stop, we have to pretend we don't know each other. Buddy, you have to act like you don't even see Jancy and Trixie. Okay? Got it?”

Buddy's “Why?” sounded normal enough, but Trixie's was whimpery and fearful. “Why do you have to go first?” she said. “I don't want you to. I want you to stay with us.”

“It's just for a while,” William tried to explain. “We'll all be together again when we get to Gold Beach.”

“But I want us all to be together always.” Trixie was sobbing now. “I don't want William and Buddy to go without us.”

But then Jancy whispered something in Trixie's ear, and Trixie nodded and sniffed, and Jancy went on whispering until Trixie wiped her eyes and began to smile. William never did find out exactly what Jancy said, but whatever it was, it worked. “Okay,” she said to William. “You first. You guys get to have the first turn.”

Throwing his knapsack over his shoulder, William
said, “Come on, Buddy,” and started down the sidewalk, but Buddy stayed right where he was, looking back and forth from William to Jancy. He went on looking one way and then the other until Trixie gave him a shove, and after he'd shoved her back he trotted after William.

A small crowd of people was gathered around the door to the Greyhound ticket office, but William managed to push his way through with one hand while keeping the knapsack over his shoulder and his other hand around Buddy's wrist. At the counter he had to put the knapsack down and use both hands to get his money out of his pocket, but he kept checking to see if Buddy was still there. He was. Good. And the other good news was that the clerk was not the same guy who had seen William in his rich-kid costume. And this clerk didn't seem at all interested in who William and Buddy were, or whether they were with their parents.

So far so good, but when William finished buying the tickets and started to lead Buddy to the waiting area, he noticed that Buddy was stumbling along with one hand covering his eyes. When they got to a bench, William lifted Buddy up on it and pulled his hand away. He didn't seem to be crying, but when William pulled his hand away he put it right back. “What are you doing?” William asked. “Do your eyes hurt?”

Buddy shook his head. “No,” he said. “I'm just not looking at Jancy and Trixie, like you said.”

William couldn't help smiling. “Well, they aren't here yet, so you don't need to cover your eyes.”

Buddy glanced around sneakily. “Not yet? When, Willum? When will they be here?”

“Pretty soon,” William said. “Pretty soon they'll come in to buy their tickets, and that's when we have to pretend we don't know them. I'll tell you when.”

Buddy nodded and put both his hands in his lap. But when William said, “They're coming now. They're going to the counter to buy their tickets,” Buddy quickly put both hands over his eyes. William couldn't decide whether to laugh or groan.

W
hen Jancy finished at the ticket counter, she and Trixie walked right past William and Buddy on their way to an empty bench, Jancy struggling with the heavy suitcase and Trixie with her head turned so far sideways that she looked like a painting on an Egyptian tomb. And Buddy still had his eyes covered. William decided that for the time being the best thing to do would be to ignore them, so he tried to concentrate on checking out the other people in the waiting area.

There were just five of them, and for the most part they didn't seem to be paying any special attention to him and Buddy, or to Jancy and Trixie, either. There was a youngish guy and a girl who were sitting close together and not looking at anyone except each other. No problem there. Then there were two older men. The one wearing a suit was reading the
Crownfield Daily
, and the guy in denim had his eyes shut most of the time. Probably all right, unless one or both or them had heard that the Crownfield police were looking for four missing kids.

The only person who seemed to be paying any attention to Jancy and Trixie was a grandmotherly-type woman, who stared at Trixie for a long time and then turned around to stare at Buddy.

William hoped it wasn't because she had any idea that they were the missing Baggetts. Not likely, he told himself. He could understand why she might stare at Trixie. People usually did until they were sure she wasn't really Shirley Temple. And as for Buddy, she was probably wondering why he had his hands over his eyes. He hoped that was all it was, anyway. He once again tried to pull Buddy's hands away from his eyes, but when Buddy glared at him and put them back up, he gave up and let them stay there—for the time being.

It probably wasn't quite half an hour, but it seemed like forever before a long blue and gray bus with the picture of the skinny dog on its side pulled up to the curb outside the ticket office.

William jumped up and, slinging his knapsack over his shoulder, dragged Buddy along behind him so fast they managed to be the first ones waiting on the curb. The bus was pretty full of mostly sleeping passengers, but there were some empty seats near the back, and that was where William headed. But it wasn't easy trying to hang on to Buddy's hand and at the same time avoid clobbering some sleeping passengers with the heavy lump
Shakespeare's Complete Works
made at the bottom of his knapsack.

Once he'd lifted Buddy onto the seat and stored his bag under it, the first thing he did was look out the window to see how Jancy and Trixie were doing. He was worried about the leather suitcase. There was no way Jancy was going to be able to lift it up onto the bus by herself. But then a back door opened and the driver got on carrying a familiar brown suitcase, and put it on a rack near the door. Problem solved. And then there they were. Jancy and Trixie were coming down the aisle. And because the bus was so crowded, they kept coming until they reached the first empty seats—which turned out to be right across the aisle from William and Buddy.

Another case of not being able to decide whether to laugh or groan. On the one hand, it was kind of good to be able to keep an eye on them. But on the other, it wasn't going to be easy to make the sleeping passengers believe the four of them weren't together, when they woke up and saw them there, practically side by side. The most nerve-racking part was trying to guess what kind of a mess Trixie and Buddy were going to make of the situation.

It didn't take long to find out. Right at first it was just more of the same, with Buddy refusing to take his hands away from his eyes, and Trixie, who had the aisle seat, keeping her head turned sharply away. Leaning forward, William caught Jancy's eye and did a quick shrug and grin, and Jancy grinned back. The whole thing would
have been funny if it hadn't been happening for such an unfunny reason.

As the bus started up and turned off Main Street onto Orchard, both Jancy and William got busy whispering to the little kids. William didn't know what Jancy was telling Trixie, but what he said to Buddy was, “Look, Buddy. Look at me. Take your hands down. Good. What we have to do now is just not talk to Jancy and Trixie. It's all right to look at them a little. Just don't stare at them for a long time or say anything to them. Nothing at all. Okay?”

Buddy was frowning. “Why?” he said.

William couldn't help grinning. For once it was a more or less necessary question. But not one that would be easy to answer so a four-year-old could understand it. “Well,” he began, “it's this way. We don't ever want to go back to live with Big Ed and Gertie. Do we?”

Buddy frowned and shook his head back and forth. Slowly at first but then harder. “No,” he said. “They hit me. Gertie hits me when I wet the bed. Big Ed hit me real bad when I kicked his beer over. I didn't mean to kick it, Willum.”

“I know you didn't mean to.” William was trying to keep his voice down to a low whisper. “So what we have to do is go live with our aunt in a town called Gold Beach.”

“I know that,” Buddy said. “With our ant in Gold
Beach.” His smooth, round forehead puckered into a worried frown. “Is our ant a red one? Red ants bite you.”

“Not that kind of ant,” William said. “There are two kinds of aunts, Buddy. One is a little bug with six legs that lives in a hole in the ground—”

“And bites,” Buddy interjected.

“Okay. And bites. But the other kind is a woman who's the sister of your dad or mom. Our mother was Aunt Fiona's sister. Got it?”

Buddy nodded a little uncertainly. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe I got it.”

“Sure you do. You and Trixie lived with her until you were two years old. And Trixie was four. You don't remember, but Trixie does, and she says it was real nice there. But Big Ed wants to get all of us back, so he's told people to watch for us so he can come and take all
four
of us kids back. Four of us. Two little kids and two big ones.”

Buddy thought that over and said, “I'm a big one.”

“Okay, you're pretty big, all right. But now listen. Four kids.” William held up Buddy's hand and counted on his fingers. “You and Trixie and Jancy and me. One, two, three, four. Got it?”

Buddy nodded.

“So we have to pretend we're not four kids from the same family.” He separated the fingers—two and two.
“We're pretending we're just two kids and two different kids from somewhere else and we don't even know each other. So people who see us won't tell Big Ed they saw four of us on our way to Gold Beach. Okay?”

Buddy's eyes opened wide, and he smiled triumphantly. “O-k-a-y,” he drawled, and then nodded firmly. “I got it.”

Whew! Big success. It looked like one more obstacle overcome—maybe. Knowing Buddy, it was hard to say for sure. But as time went by and the bus chugged along through the outskirts of Crownfield, and then out onto the highway between orchards and fields, Buddy went on acting like he really understood, talking to William and asking “Why?” a lot as usual, but not trying to say anything at all to Jancy and Trixie. And then he began to nod and went to sleep. When William risked a peek across the aisle, he saw that Trixie was sleeping too. Stealing a quick glance at Jancy, William raised his eyebrows and rolled his eyes in a “big relief” expression, and Jancy did it back.

William was half asleep himself, when the bus pulled into another station and stopped. “Okay everybody,” the driver was shouting. “Here we are in Harrisford. We'll be here for about half an hour. Nice little café right next door to the station. A good place for a quick breakfast, you people who got on in Los Angeles.”

While nearly all the other passengers were getting to
their feet, William sat tight, pretending to be still asleep. But then Buddy was poking him and saying, “Wake up, Willum. That bus driver said breakfuss.”

Opening his eyes, William said loudly, loud enough for Trixie to hear too, “He didn't mean us. He meant all the people who've been on the bus since last night. We haven't. We've already had breakfast. Remember? Remember the doughnuts?”

Buddy shook his head. “Not very much,” he said. “I don't remember them very much.”

William checked up and down the aisle. The only other passenger still on the bus was the old lady who had been so interested in Trixie and Buddy back in the Crownfield station, and she seemed to be asleep.

Putting his hand in front of his mouth, William whispered sideways in Jancy's direction. “You still got some money?”

“Yes,” Jancy whispered back.

“Okay. I'm going to take Buddy into the restroom and then I'll buy him something. Wait a minute and then you guys can come in too. Okay?”

So that's what they did. The little café right next to the station was packed with bus passengers. After a quick trip to the restroom, they made their way to the counter, where William ordered two strawberry ice-cream cones.

He and Buddy were on their way out the door just as Jancy and Trixie came in, which, for a moment, put
a big strain on the effort to ignore each other. Trixie was goggle-eyed. Ice-cream cones didn't happen at the Baggetts. She stared at Buddy's cone and his gloating, strawberry-smeared face. Before the door swung shut behind them, William heard the beginning of a typical Trixie whimper. But right at that moment William saw something that wiped the grin off his face.

Leaning against a streetlight pole, smoking a cigarette, was a guy whose pimply face, ducktail hairdo, and wide-legged, floppy pants looked vaguely familiar. Looked like he might be someone William had seen before and wouldn't have wanted to see again under any circumstances, but particularly not now. A guy who was, at the moment, staring hard—at William and Buddy.