William S. and the Great Escape (2 page)

“Okay. Running away to where?” William asked. “Where you planning to go?”

Jancy raised her head and jutted her small pointed chin. “To Gold Beach,” she said firmly. “I'm going to go to Gold Beach to live with our aunt Fiona.”

William shook his head doubtfully. “I wouldn't count on it,” he said. Fiona Hardison, their mother's sister, was a schoolteacher who lived in a little town on the northern California coast. A woman whom William and Jancy had met only once, right after their mother died, and that was four long years ago. “What makes you think Aunt Fiona would let you live with her?” William asked.

“Oh, she will,” Jancy said. “She'll be so happy to get Trixie and Buddy back, she'll be glad to have you and me, too.”

And that was how Jancy finally got around to mentioning an important minor detail. Not only would William and Jancy be running away together—they were going to be taking Trixie and Buddy with them.

U
nder the circumstances, Jancy's decision to give up on being a Baggett wasn't all that surprising. After all, she'd probably loved poor old Sweetie Pie more than any Baggett, except possibly William himself—and the two little kids, of course.

That was another thing about Jancy. She'd liked little things, the littler the better. Not that William, who was actually a year and a half older and a couple of inches taller than she was, could play that role very well. He wasn't really little, but according to popular opinion (Baggett opinion anyway), pretty much of a wimp. So maybe that's what made the difference with Jancy. William was aware that little and cute was way out ahead where Jancy was concerned, but skinny and wimpy might come in a close second.

That day in the hayloft, William's arguments got even more frantic after Jancy mentioned that her escape plan included Trixie and Buddy. “Holy Toledo, Jancy,” he said, when she let that minor detail slip out. “You
can't be serious. And I'll tell you right now that I am
very
serious about not helping commit a double kidnapping. You know what they do to kidnappers when they catch them. Like that guy who stole the Lindbergh baby. Zap!” He did an exaggerated quivering, stiff-limbed impression of an electric chair victim. Still no smile. He shrugged. “Anyway, I mean it. Count me out.”

“But you told me—,” Jancy was beginning when he interrupted.

“Okay, so I did say I was going to clear out, and I meant it. But I meant later. Like when I'm practically an adult. Like fourteen or fifteen. Not now, when I won't even be thirteen till next month. And as for you getting those two little kids all the way to Gold Beach? No way. Doing it all by yourself ? I mean, look at you.”

She did, and William did too. There she was, barely eleven years old, and small for her age. And at the moment—it was a blazing hot day—wearing one of Babe's outgrown sundresses. On Babe, who was fifteen, the dress had looked—well, kind of sexy, in a not very classy way. But on Jancy's skinny little stick of a body, it only made her look like the wrong end of a hard winter.

With the hay fever kicking in pretty badly, William had to stop to sneeze several times before he went on. “So I'm supposed to believe that what I'm looking at right this minute is a dangerous kidnapper who's going to nab two little kids and get them all the way to Gold Beach
without getting caught? More than a hundred miles from here? And even if you managed to get that far before the police caught up with you, what makes you think Aunt Fiona would let you stay? She didn't even answer the last time you wrote to her.”

“I know,” Jancy said. “But she did write me two letters that were all about how awful bad she felt when Big Ed took Buddy and Trixie away. Like how she'd had them and loved them for two years and would have kept them forever if Big Ed hadn't showed up all of a sudden to take them back.”

“Yeah, I
know
,” William said. “I remember.” What he knew, and would never forget, was that right after Buddy was born, their mother, Laura Hardison Baggett, died. Died very suddenly, leaving behind newborn Buddy and two-year-old Trixie to be taken care of by Big Ed and a bunch of Baggett teenagers. William had been eight years old at the time, and he remembered that final scene all too well. Especially when he was trying not to.

Back then Big Ed had been glad to let Aunt Fiona take Buddy and Trixie away to live with her. Let them go probably because there was no longer any Baggett left alive who was willing and able to change diapers. William had been willing to try, and he'd said so, but nobody would listen to him. So the two youngest Baggetts went to live with their mother's sister, who kept them for two years before Big Ed decided to take them back.

That happened right after he'd married Gertie, his third wife. What Big Ed told the welfare people was that he took the two little kids back because Gertie wanted to be a mother to them. As far as William could see, Gertie wasn't, and never had been, the least bit interested in being a mother to anyone. The way William figured, it was a lot more likely that President Roosevelt's new welfare plan had something to do with Big Ed's decision to have all his kids under the same roof. The New Deal plan that gave really poor families a certain amount of money for each of their children.

“Aunt Fiona probably didn't answer your letter,” William told Jancy, “because she was sure that if she got them back, Big Ed would just show up and grab them away again.”

“I know.” Jancy hung her head so that a bunch of her thick, streaky-blond hair swung down, hiding her small face. Jancy got teased about her hair—got called Mop Head and Rabbit Tail and even worse names. Actually, William thought her curly hair was her best feature, at least when it was clean and combed, which wasn't all that often. He'd told her so before, but now he said nothing at all, and after a while she said, “I know” again, in a faint weepy voice. “But I am leaving, for absolute sure and certain, and I just can't leave the poor little things here all alone.”

“Humph!” William snorted. “All alone? Not hardly.
Even with you gone, and maybe me too, that still leaves—let's see.” He pretended to count on his fingers. “Seven”—he stopped to sneeze—“that leaves eight big Baggetts, if you count Gertie.”

“Yeah, exactly,” Jancy said. “That's exactly why I can't leave Trixie and Buddy here.”

William got her point, and he couldn't help but agree, but just then another thought hit him. “I don't get it. What I don't get is why you'd
want
to bother with them. Well, Trixie maybe.” He could sort of understand that. Trixie was kind of hard to resist. “But Buddy? I mean, wasn't he the one who flushed the toilet?”

Her face still hidden by her hair, Jancy nodded. “I know,” she kind of gasped. And when she went on, her voice sounded wobbly. “But it wasn't his fault. Not really. Al, or else it was Andy—Buddy never can tell them apart—told him that a toilet is just the right size for a guinea pig bathtub, and when you flush, it's just like a guinea pig washing machine. It was that crummy twin's fault. I know it was awful dumb of Buddy to believe him, but he's only four years old. And who's going to tell him what else to not believe after both of us leave?”

William could tell she was crying by the sound of her voice, even though a heavy hunk of hair was hiding her face. “Crying won't do any good,” he said.

But of course it did. After a few minutes of listening to her sobs and watching her skinny little shoulders
shaking and quivering, he sighed and said, “Okay, okay. I'll think about it.” And he meant it, even though it didn't take much thought to figure out that one reason, even the main reason, that Jancy wanted him to run away too was because she knew about—

“Oh thank you, thank you, William.” Jancy interrupted his suspicious musings. And then her special talent for mind reading—at least where William was concerned— kicked in. “And it's not either because of your money,” she said. “All that money in your running-away piggy bank.”

William's snort was even louder. “My Getaway Fund is
not
in a piggy bank,” he said.

“Well, whatever you keep it in,” Jancy said quickly. “It's not because of your money. It's because you don't belong here either. You're not like the rest of them. You're not nearly as mean, and ever so much smarter and …”

William didn't have to listen to know the rest of what Jancy had to say. He'd heard her say it before when she wanted to get something out of him. But he also felt pretty sure that she said it because she knew it was true—at least the part about being smarter. But he still had a strong suspicion that his running-away money had a lot to do with it.

He shrugged. “Well, okay then, maybe I'm in. So what are your plans? I mean like
when
—and
how
?”

“When?” Jancy's smile, still tear wet, was wide and
beaming. “Well, as soon as ever I can. Tomorrow or else the next day, for sure.” She nodded again, so hard her curly mop bounced up and down. “Not a minute later.”

“Ookaaay,” William drawled the word out slowly. “But then comes
how
. How are you going to do it?”

“Well,” Jancy's big eyes rolled thoughtfully. “I guess I'll just …” Her voice trailed off to a whisper and then came slowly back. “Well, I'll just pack up all their clothes”—long pause—“and something to eat on the way, and then …”

“Yeah,” William prompted. “And then?”

Jancy's bony little face widened into a wobbly smile. “And then you'll decide what to do. You will, won't you, William?”

William shoved to the back of his mind a lot of troublesome unanswered questions concerning such things as
how
and
when
, and the even more serious one about what Aunt Fiona's reaction might be to their unannounced arrival. He sneezed again, wiped his nose on his sleeve, sighed, and said, “Yeah. Well, sort of looks like I'll have to.”

B
ack in the crumbling remains of what had once been a large farmhouse, the plumbing seemed to be working again, so what was left of Sweetie Pie must have moved on into the septic tank. So things were back to normal. Or, if not what most people would think of as normal, at least to “as usual.” There was the “as usual” fistfight between two of the big guys on the back porch, the “as usual” screams from Gertie for Babe and Jancy to come help in the kitchen. And some of the usual roars demanding peace and quiet from Big Ed Baggett. Roars that made Little Ed stop yelling at Rudy or whichever other brother he was beating on, without cutting down much on how many punches he was throwing. Twenty-year-old Little Ed was Big Ed's first kid, and people went on calling him Little Ed, even after he got to be as big as a horse.

Also, as usual, Jancy was busy scooting around trying to get her hands on something she could feed Trixie and Buddy. As for William, he was on the floor behind the
raggedy remains of what had once been a leather couch, eating a slightly raw bowlful of whatever it was Gertie was trying to cook. Something you might think of as beef stew if you were feeling optimistic.

When the bowl was empty, down to the last greasy drop, William peeked out, considering whether it might be possible to sneak into the kitchen and get a little more. In the end he decided against it. It looked like most of the Baggetts were there that evening, at least half a dozen of them. Whenever that many Baggetts crowded into a space where there wasn't room enough to have a real free-for-all, the only thing they could think of to do for entertainment was to pick out somebody to torment. And William knew who that was likely to be. Who, for instance, might get punched or kicked or swatted, or even picked up and kind of tossed around from one oversize Baggett to another.

Not being in the mood to be treated like a piece of playground equipment, William went the other way, scooting out the side door and up the stairs. And then on up the flimsy pull-down ladder that led to the dimly lit, slant-ceilinged attic that was his private living area. Not that the other Baggetts didn't know where he was. But most of the time they didn't bother him because of the dangerously decrepit ladder, and the fact that most of them were too big and awkward to squeeze through the small trap-door opening that led to the attic area.

There were other reasons too why William's space— it could hardly be called a room—was fairly private. Reasons that came and went with the seasons. Like, for instance, the fact that there was no heat in winter, and a certain amount of oozing dampness whenever it rained. And now, in August?

In August, William's attic usually provided the kind of heat that burned your eyes and throbbed in your ears, and made even the palms of your hands wet with sweat. Heat that on days like today would probably keep all the bigger Baggetts downstairs with their cold beers and electric fans.

William took off his shoes and most of his clothing before he collapsed on top of the lumpy nest of old quilts and sleeping bags that more or less served as a bed. But not before he had arranged some necessities within arm's reach. Things like his journal, his fountain pen, his water jar, and
Doubleday's Complete Works of William Shakespeare
.

Usually he spent some time on the journal first— the journal that had been suggested by Miss Scott as a summer project for anyone who was interested in writing or acting. You should write not just about the things that happened during the summer, Miss Scott had said, but what you
felt
and
thought
about those events, using dialogue whenever you could work it in. And then, if you were interested in acting, you should read what you'd written out loud—acting it out as you read. Like making your
voice soft and warm when you read the good things, and harsh and bitter when the words led in that direction. William had done quite a bit of reading-out-loud practice ever since school had let out earlier that summer.