William S. and the Great Escape (6 page)

Clarice looked at him for a long moment before she nodded her head. “You have to leave tomorrow morning at six o'clock? Okay. I guess that will work out all right,” she said, speaking slowly. Very slowly, and looking at him out of the sides of her eyes, the way you would if you were in a play, and you were supposed to give the impression that you were trying to fool somebody. He hoped he was wrong, but he'd done enough acting to know how to do that kind of a sneaky look.

A little later, when the pancakes were all gone and Jancy and William were helping wash the dishes, Trixie kept pushing the kitchen door open and peeking into the next room. When Jancy told her to stop it, Trixie ran to Clarice and said, “Do I have to? Do I have to stop peeking?” She was giving Clarice the whole Trixie treatment, with dimples and batting eyelashes. It worked.

“Come on,” Clarice said. “You want to see some more of the house? Okay, if you promise not to touch anything.” So of course Trixie promised, and Buddy did too. But just to be on the safe side, William whispered to Jancy to keep her eye on Trixie while he watched Buddy.

The next room was a big dining room with a long table and lots of chairs, and then there was a parlor with
a fireplace and a kind of library at one end with at least a thousand books, or maybe even more. And upstairs they got to look at Clarice's bedroom and her own private bathroom, and then, best of all, something Clarice called “the playroom”: a whole room full of toys. Toys on shelves and on the floor and in chests and boxes. Stuffed toys and windup toys and things that ran on a track or rocked back and forth, and some others, like large dolls, that just sat there quietly and managed to look almost alive.

Ursa, who had been trotting along with them, stopped outside the door. When Jancy held the door open for him, he stepped back, and Clarice said, “He won't come in. My folks hired a trainer to teach him not to, because he used to chew up all the stuffed toys.”

William grinned. “You hear that?” he told the little kids. “No chewing on the stuffed toys.” Trixie looked insulted. “Or even touching.”

Trixie put her hands behind her back and walked slowly around the room. “I'm not touching,” she said. “See me, Clarice? See how I'm not touching?”

Buddy did and said almost the same thing. “See me, Clice. I'm not touching too. I'm not touching more better than Trixie.”

“Her name,” Trixie said firmly, “is Clarice.”

“That's what I said,” Buddy said. “See me, Clice. See me.”

But Clarice was looking at William, obviously waiting for a comment. “Not bad,” he told her, grinning.

“Just kid stuff,” she said. “I hardly ever come in here anymore.” She shrugged. “In fact, I never did spend much time in here. My folks thought I did, but they weren't around enough to notice.”

“They weren't around much?” William said. “Where were they?”

“Working.” Clarice shrugged again. “They have these big, important jobs. They're lawyers, both of them. They're very important people. Maybe you've heard of them. Jefferson and Adele Ogden, attorneys at law?”

William shook his head. He was confused, but interested. Somehow the boastful comments Clarice had made about her parents didn't fit with her sarcastic tone of voice. He was briefly curious—and might have been even more so, if he didn't have so much else on his mind. Things like how to get the little kids away from all the toys any time in the near future. “I don't know if this was a good idea,” he said to Clarice. “You may never get them to go back to the basement.” He motioned to where Trixie and Buddy were almost, but not quite, touching one thing after another.

“You may be right,” Clarice said, nodding and smiling. Smiling in a way that reminded William of something he'd noticed before. Which was that people who weren't particularly much to look at could look a
whole lot better when they smiled. She went on smiling for a moment before she said, “Okay, kids. If you go back to the basement right now, each of you can pick out one toy to take with you, as long as it's something that's not too breakable.”

Great joy and excitement, and a few minutes later they were all on their way downstairs, with Trixie clutching a Shirley Temple doll in a pink dress, and Buddy a tin clown that turned somersaults when you wound him up.

On their way through the kitchen, Clarice got a bunch of stuff out of the refrigerator and bread box and told William and Jancy they should take it down to the basement and make some sandwiches when it was lunchtime. “The stove down there doesn't work anymore,” she said. “But there are some dishes and knives and forks and like that in the cupboards. You'll have to make your own lunch, because I'll be gone for a while. Like maybe for two or three hours.”

“It will take you two or three hours,” Jancy asked, “to go shopping?”

It wasn't until then that Clarice explained that she really wasn't supposed to be home alone all day. “I'm supposed to spend most of the day with my aunt, who lives just a couple of blocks away. My folks think I spend most of every day there,” she said. “But usually I don't. My aunt doesn't care. Actually, she's my great-aunt and she's pretty old, and most of the time she's reading or
sleeping. She doesn't notice whether I'm there or not, except at lunchtime. So after I shop I'll have lunch with my aunt like always. I usually help make it, because my aunt's cook is giving me cooking lessons. But then I'll come right back here. Just be sure all of you stay right here in the basement until I get back. Okay?”

“What about Ursa?” Jancy asked. “Do you take him with you?”

“Not when I ride my bike,” Clarice said. “He's only supposed to go outside on a leash, because he runs away. He usually just stays in the house while I'm gone, but you can keep him down here with you in the basement if you want to, until I get back.”

Jancy did want to. “But can I take him out so he won't mess on the floor?” she asked.

Clarice shook her head. “No. Don't take him outside. You won't need to. He's used to waiting all day. The only time he has to go in a hurry is sometimes real early in the morning. That's how come I happened to find you guys this morning. Ursa woke me up and absolutely insisted that he had to go out right then, even though it was still pretty dark outside.” She thought for a moment and then went on. “Maybe he heard you. Maybe that's why he wanted to go so early.”

So it turned out that it was only because the dog named Ursa wanted to go outside early in the morning that the runaway Baggetts wound up spending the next
day at the Ogdens'. Except for the fact that he was anxious to get the running-away ordeal over and done with, William wasn't too upset about the delay. Not at that point, anyway.

The trip to the bus stop would be a lot easier tomorrow. There was enough bread and cheese and apples to make a pretty good lunch, and the little kids had the doll and the tin clown to play with for the rest of the day. Nothing to worry about—you might think.

You might also think that an expensive doll with eyes that opened and shut, and a tin clown that turned somersaults, would be enough to keep a six- and a four-year-old fairly happy for a few hours. They weren't, though, and that was how it happened that William started doing
The Tempest
in the Ogdens' basement.

I
t didn't happen right away. For the next hour or so, while the little kids played with their borrowed toys and Jancy played with Ursa, William got his
Complete Works
out of his knapsack. He started where he'd left off: act one, scene three of
Twelfth Night
, and it was pretty interesting. All about how Olivia's uncle, Sir Toby Belch, stayed out late and drank too much and had good-for-nothing friends. Probably a Baggett ancestor, William decided.

But it wasn't easy to keep his mind on what he was reading with all the other things that were going on in the basement. Jancy was talking to Ursa, Trixie was talking to the Shirley Temple doll and pretending to be the doll talking back to her, and the tin clown kept clanking up and down the cement floor. After a while, William gave up on
Shakespeare
for the time being and asked Jancy to help him make lunch. Making and eating the cheese sandwiches didn't take long, and then William was back to trying to ignore everything except
Shakespeare
.

But it got harder and harder to keep his mind on what he was reading. Trixie and Buddy got bored with the toys and started romping around the basement with Ursa. And when they were tired of that, they started whimpering and whining. Trixie whimpered and Buddy whined.

“Can we go play outside, Willum?” Buddy whined. And when William said no, he switched to “Why?” His all-time favorite word. William had kept count once— the score was thirty-seven whys in five minutes.

“Wow. They're driving me crazy,” William told Jancy.

“Yeah, me too,” she said. She tipped her head to one side and thought a moment. “Why don't you read to them?”

“Me?” William laughed. “I don't have anything to read—except
Shakespeare
.”

“I know that,” Jancy said. “Why don't you read Shakespeare?”

He laughed. “Read
Shakespeare
to those two? I don't think so.”

Jancy nodded. “Yeah, I know,” she said. “Most people couldn't. But I'll bet you could. When they don't understand, you could kind of act it out. You know, like you did in the play.”

That was a shock. “How'd you find out about the play?” he demanded.

Jancy grinned. “I saw you do it. Twice. I ditched class twice and snuck over to the high school all by myself. I sat way back in the last row, but I could tell that you were a really good Ariel, and everybody thought what you did was the best part of the whole play.”

William was amazed. “You never told me you saw it,” he said accusingly. “Why didn't you tell me?”

Jancy looked away. She didn't say anything for several minutes, and when she did, wide-eyed and solemn, it was just, “Why didn't
you
? Why didn't
you
tell
me
?”

There were things that might have been said. Things about how afraid he'd been that the rest of the Baggetts would find out and ruin everything, but he knew that wouldn't be good enough. Finally, all he said was, “I'm sorry I didn't tell you.”

Jancy grinned. “That's okay. I liked seeing it anyway. And I bet Trixie and Buddy will too.”

And that was how it happened that William began to read and recite, and actually act out, parts of
The Tempest
by
William Shakespeare
in the middle of the afternoon in the basement of a brown-shingled house on Gardenia Street.

Jancy had lined everybody up—the two kids, herself, and even Ursa—like the front row of an audience. When they were all in line and quiet, William began.

“The first scene of
The Tempest
,” he said, “takes place on a ship, and there's this tempest. That's like a really big storm, with thunder and lightning and high winds. And everybody thinks they're going to drown. Right at first there are just these sailors running around trying to fix the sails and—”

“And right there on the stage,” Jancy interrupted, “the actors who are pretending to be sailors are rocking back and forth like they're on a boat, and the big wind is blowing canvas sails and everything around all over the stage. It was real scary.” She turned to William. “How'd they do that, William?” she asked. “How'd they make a big wind like that blow indoors?”

“It's a wind machine,” William told her. “It's like a great big fan. Can I go on now?” They all nodded. He opened the big book to page 1299 and put it on the counter in the little kitchen, where he could remind himself what came next when he needed to. But he didn't read it word for word. Mostly he just did it the way he thought they might understand. Like, to begin with, “‘
Heigh my hearties. Take in the topsail or we run ourselves aground
.'”

He ran around then, pretending to be pulling on a rope that was taking in the sails, and leaning back and forth to make it look as if the floor was tilting under his feet. The little kids laughed and clapped.

“And now,” he said, “the wind is still blowing, but
four more men come onstage, all dressed up in fancy clothes like kings and other rich people. And one of them has a beard and gray hair because he is an old man named Gonzalo. He's a good guy. Then there's a king with a crown named Alonso, and a duke, who's almost as important as a king but not quite. And the duke's name is Antonio. Remember Antonio, because he's the bad guy. The other person is named Ferdinand, and he's the king's son and he's supposed to be young and very goodlooking. You got all that? Okay, action. First I'm going to be a bossy sailor called a boatswain, and he starts ordering the kings to stay down below. William squared his shoulders and stuck out his chin and said, “‘
I pray now, keep below. You mar our labour: Keep your/cabins: You do assist the storm
.'”

William began to recite by heart the argument between the old man named Gonzalo and the boatswain, where Gonzalo says, “‘
I have great comfort from this fellow: methinks he/hath no drowning mark upon him; his complexion is/ perfect gallows
.'”

He stopped when he could tell by the blank looks of his audience that they weren't getting it. “What that meant,” he told them, “is that Gonzalo is telling the bossy boatswain he looks like someone who was born to be hanged. You know what a gallows is, don't you? It's like this platform where they hang people.” William
pantomimed hanging, holding an imaginary rope above his tipped head and letting his tongue hang out. Gasps and giggles from his audience.