William S. and the Great Escape (3 page)

Miss Scott.
Someday, William thought he might write a really long essay on what he
thought
and
felt
about Miss Scott. All about how he had known how special she was that very first day of seventh-grade English. How she could make boring stuff like diagramming sentences into a kind of game, and even the mushiest poems sound so strong and important that you felt you might try to write one someday. That is, if you ever found someone you could feel that mushy about. And, of course, one of the most important things about Miss Scott had been
Shakespeare
and
The Tempest
.

Besides teaching English at Crownfield Junior High, Miss Scott taught drama at the high school, where every year she put on a couple of plays, and one of them was always by
William Shakespeare
. The actors were mostly high school students, but with a few especially talented nonstudents from elsewhere in the community. And last year, when skinny little William Baggett was only in seventh grade, Miss Scott had cast him as Ariel in the high school's production of
The Tempest
.

He didn't know why. He would have asked her, except he was afraid that if she thought it over she might change her mind. Of course, most of the rehearsals were held
after school, which left only a few times that she had to get him released from a class at the junior high. That never seemed to be a problem for Miss Scott. She not only managed to get William excused from his junior high classes whenever it was necessary, but she somehow understood, without him having to explain, why it
wasn't
necessary to inform his family that he was appearing in a play by
William Shakespeare
.

That had been a big relief. William could just imagine what might have happened if any of the older Baggetts had shown up to watch a member of their family come onstage dressed in tights and a filmy tunic and sing things like, “
Full fathom five thy father lies, Of his bones are coral made,
” while he bounded around the stage waving a wand that made all sorts of magical things seem to be happening.

So even though a lot of people said that the kid who played Ariel in last year's
Shakespeare
production had stolen the show—and even though there were four Baggett kids who were more or less enrolled at Crownfield High and managed to attend classes occasionally—if any Baggett had the slightest clue that William had played the part of Ariel, they never bothered to mention it when he was around.

When
The Tempest
was over and the school year nearly was, there had been the day when Miss Scott asked William to come to her office. He didn't think he'd done anything wrong, but he was still feeling a little bit
nervous as he pushed open the office door. But there she was, sitting at her desk, with lots of her silky blond hair piled up on top of her head, and wearing a very modern dress that, on her, somehow managed to look slightly
Shakespearean
. And smiling in a way that let him know he could stop worrying about what he might have done wrong.

“William,” she'd said, “I just want to be sure that you know how much I appreciated all your hard work this past semester. And also to tell you again how talented I think you are.” She was reaching into her desk as she went on, “I have a book here that I really think you should have.”

“A book?” William had asked, while in the back of his mind a few possibilities started flipping around. Possibilities like eighth-grade English grammar to help him get ready for next year. Or maybe something Crownfield eighth graders usually read in class, like
The Mill on the Floss
. But then Miss Scott was holding out this big five-pound package. A package that turned out to be
Doubleday's Complete Works of William Shakespeare, illustrated by Rockwell Kent
.

Thinking back to that very special day in June, William almost forgot about the heat of August as he reached over with both hands, pulled the heavy book closer, and opened it to where he'd left off—
Twelfth Night
, act one, scene three. Before that there'd been
The Tempest
, of course, which he'd known almost word for word by
the time the production was over. And then there had been
A Midsummer Night's Dream
, which Miss Scott had suggested he read next. Now that he'd read it carefully, William could see why.

A Midsummer Night's Dream
was easy to understand as soon as you managed to memorize which character was in love with which other character before they got love potions poured into their eyes. (Which, of course, changed everything so you had to start memorizing all over again.)

William did wonder if all the lovey-dovey scenes, and some of the magical stuff like fairies and a guy with a donkey's head, might turn off modern audiences— particularly teenage ones. But to William himself, some of the strange
Shakespearean
lines weren't all that different than things he heard all the time. For instance, when Egeus's daughter, Hermia, won't obey him, and he says, “
As she is mine, I may dispose of her
.”

Okay, that's a pretty weird thing for a father to say, but William could remember hearing Big Ed Baggett say, “You're my kid, and you'll do what I tell you or I'll knock your block off.”

But that was
A Midsummer Night's Dream
, and now he was starting on
Twelfth Night
. In fact, he'd been planning to spend some time tonight finding out what the character named Sir Toby Belch was all about. Except that now, because of Jancy, he had other things to do.

Reluctantly William closed the huge book, picked it up, and, pulling out his big knapsack, slowly slid
Shakespeare
down to the bottom of the bag. First things first.

He looked around. Off to his left was a whole stack of books that would have to be left behind. Beat up, ragged copies mostly that various people, mainly teachers, were going to throw away, and had let him have instead because they knew how much he liked to read. Everything from Peter Rabbit to
Ivanhoe.
But his knapsack would hold only so much—so good-bye, books. Someday, when he was rich and famous, he'd buy brand-new leather-bound copies of every one of them.

Next came getting his money out of its secret hiding place, which involved going down to the part of the attic where the slanted roof was so low you had to slither on your stomach. It was a difficult and dangerous maneuver. Dangerous because there weren't any floorboards in that part of the attic, and if you didn't keep your balance on the narrow crossbeams, you would land on the lath and plaster ceiling—and probably go right through. Right through the ceiling and wind up in one of the second-floor bedrooms, along with a lot of ancient dust and plaster. And, with his luck, probably right on top of one of the biggest Baggetts. It was a pretty hair-raising possibility, particularly if it were to happen while you were carrying a heavy cloth bag in your teeth. A bag that held your lifetime savings.

But he managed to stay safely on the crossbeams, and once he was back at his makeshift bed, he made a hollow in the bedding and emptied the whole bag into it. Nineteen one-dollar bills, and a whole lot of nickels, dimes, and quarters. He'd counted it fairly recently, but just to make sure, he did it again before he put it all away, right next to
Shakespeare
in the bottom of the bag. There it went. A whole lot of hard-earned money. Thirty-one dollars and seventeen cents.

So he himself was almost ready, but that left a whole lot of things that needed to be worked on. Things that Jancy might, or might not, have thought about or prepared for. Which made at least one more meeting in the hayloft necessary, and at least another day after that to get ready. William got back into a raggedy pair of jeans and a faded T-shirt that used to belong to one of the twins and went looking for Jancy.

I
t took until early the next morning for William and Jancy to finally manage another meeting in the hayloft. By then William had the trip, at least the first half of it, carefully planned. Cleverly planned, if he did say so himself. “‘
Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie
,'” he told himself, which was one of Miss Scott's favorite quotes. One that seemed to suggest that what you were inside might be worth something, no matter what family you'd been born into. For instance, straight-A brains might be good for something, even if some careless but all-powerful director, like God maybe, had cast you in the role of a Baggett. In the kind of family scene where, over the years, a good report card only got you punched out by Al and Andy for doing it just to show them up. But in this case he'd definitely thought up some
remedies
that were going to come in handy.

“So, I've been working on our getaway plan.” William started the next morning's session as soon as Jancy joined him in the moldy hay. “I think it'll work pretty well,
but there are still a couple of minor problems. Like, for instance, how and when all four of us are going to walk away from here carrying a bunch of luggage without anyone noticing. Have you thought about that?”

Jancy nodded quickly, stopped nodding, and began to shake her head. “Not very much,” she said. “How are we going to do it, William?”

“Well,
I've
been thinking about it, and what I think is that we have to leave in the middle of the night. Like maybe three o'clock in the morning.”

“Really?” Jancy gasped. “That early?”

“I'm afraid so. You know that during the day, any day till around midnight, this whole place is likely to be crawling with Baggetts, along with a bunch of their roughneck friends.”

Jancy shrugged and nodded. She also knew, of course, that even though Big Ed Baggett and a couple of the oldest boys had sort of on-again, off-again jobs, the off days seemed to happen a lot oftener than the on ones. And as for the four Baggetts who were supposed to be going to summer school at Crownfield High, they seemed to spend more time thinking up reasons why they couldn't go than they ever spent at school. Which meant that some of them would probably be hanging around too, ready to witness and trip up any daylight escape attempts.

“So it seems to me,” William continued, “that our
only chance would be to get everything packed and ready to go the night before, and then sneak out about three o'clock in the morning, when they're all pretty sure to be asleep.”

Jancy nodded firmly. “Okay, we can do that, can't we? Why not?”

“Yeah, I know. It sounds simple enough, but there are a couple of problems. Like, for instance, we don't have an alarm clock. How are we going to wake up at three o'clock?”

“I thought you had one.”

He nodded. “I used to. Well, I still have the clock, but the alarm part quit on me more than a year ago.”

“But all last year you woke me up every day, in time to catch the school bus. How'd you do that?”

William shrugged—and sneezed violently. Here came the hay fever again. “I don't know for sure,” he said. “It was like I got so used to a seven thirty alarm, I kind of grew one inside my brain.” He grinned ruefully. “The only thing is, I don't know how to change the setting to three in the morning. But don't worry. I think maybe I've figured out how I can be awake at three o'clock. And once the two of us are awake, Trixie won't be any problem. Trixie wakes up if you just look at her.”

“I know,” Jancy agreed. “Being looked at is what Trixie likes best.”

William couldn't help grinning. Trixie was a natural-born
show-off. “But that still leaves old ‘dead to the world' Buddy,” he said.

“Yeah.” Jancy saw the problem. “I didn't think about that.” She knew that William had to sleepwalk Buddy to the bathroom at least once every night so he wouldn't wet the bed and get beat on by Gertie the next morning. The problem was, Buddy was the world's most determined sleeper. Once he got to sleep that was pretty much it until the next morning, no matter what else was happening— or what else he was doing besides sleeping. Getting him to the bathroom seemed pretty impossible at first, but then William found out that by pulling the chunky kid to his feet and walking behind him, kind of halfway holding him up until they got to the bathroom, they could get the job done, even though Buddy was pretty unconscious during the whole operation. Which was all very well as far as it went, but it didn't seem likely that he and Jancy could sleepwalk a mumbling, stumbling Buddy all the way to the bus stop in downtown Crownfield. Especially when they would have to be carrying all their most important belongings at the same time.

But then Jancy had a good idea. “How about that tin wagon that used to be Andy's? I think I saw it down there in the barn.”

“Or maybe part of it?” William asked. “The last time I saw it, it only had three wheels.”

Jancy jumped to her feet and said she was going to
see, and before very long she'd found the wagon and then, not too much later, its missing wheel. By the time she'd gotten the wheel pretty much attached to the wagon— Jancy was amazingly handy at chores like that—William had come up with some clever ideas about how they ought to use it.

“We can take the wagon out to the road and stash it in the bushes,” he told Jancy. “And then tomorrow morning we'll just have to walk Buddy that far, and if he's still not awake we can dump him in the wagon and pull him the rest of the way.”

Jancy clapped her hands and then kept them together, the tips of her fingers touching her pointed chin. “I knew you'd be able to figure out everything,” she said. “Things like what time we ought to get started, and what to do about Buddy, and …”

She was still staring at William admiringly over the tips of her fingers when he asked, “And what?”