William S. and the Great Escape (7 page)

“And Gonzalo says he is feeling safer now, because if the boatswain was born to be hanged, he can't die by drowning. So that means the boat probably isn't going to sink after all.” Jancy giggled, but the little kids still looked pretty vague.

William checked the book and told his audience, “The first scene ends with everybody still rocking back and forth in the storm, and then there's a big crashing sound like the boat just hit some rocks, and the curtain comes down real quick. And when it goes back up there are just two people onstage, sitting on a big rock on an island. One of them is an old man named Prospero and the other one is his beautiful daughter, Miranda. Miranda knows that her father can do magical things, so she's asking him if he caused the storm that sank the ship, because she feels sorry for the people who were in the boat. And then Prospero says to Miranda, ‘
Be collected:/ No more amazement: tell your piteous heart/There's no harm done
.' Which means that even though he did use magic to cause the storm, he hadn't let anybody drown. And that's when he tells Miranda to ‘
Ope thine ear
' because he's going to explain everything to her.”

It was right then that someone else said, “Oh, yes. I
remember that part now.” And there was Clarice, sitting on the top step.

William was embarrassed. He had no idea how long she'd been sitting there and how much she'd seen and heard. He watched her face as she got up, but it was hard to tell what she was thinking. When she got down the stairs she stopped long enough to say hello to Ursa and the kids before she looked at William and said, “Why don't you do the part where you sing and dance?”

“Yes,” Trixie and Buddy and even Jancy were saying. “Yes, sing and dance, William. Sing and dance.”

He shook his head, grinning. “I didn't really dance,” he told them. “Not like tap dancing or anything. I just twisted and twirled and jumped around and kind of halfway sang my lines. But I couldn't do it without a costume. You just can't do that kind of thing unless you're wearing a costume.” He gestured at his dirty blue jeans and ragged T-shirt. “I can't do it like this. Later. Okay?”

Trixie sighed. “When, then?” she asked. “Tomorrow? Will you sing and dance tomorrow?”

“Well, not tomorrow,” William said. “Tomorrow we'll be riding most of the day on the bus.” And then, because Trixie looked so disappointed, he added, “On the bus to Gold Beach. Remember?”

That helped. “Yes,” Trixie said. “Remember, Buddy?
Remember how nice it was there?” Buddy probably didn't, but he seemed to be willing to take Trixie's word for it. “Yeah,” he said eagerly. “Gold Beach.”

But then Clarice was pulling William aside and whispering in his ear. “Not tomorrow, I'm afraid,” she said. “It would be very dangerous for you to go down-town tomorrow.”

D
angerous? What do you mean?” William asked when Clarice said that it would be too dangerous for them to go to the downtown bus stop the next morning.

But she only put a finger to her lips and said, “I'll tell you later. Right now I need Jancy to help me make dinner for you guys. Come on, Jancy. We have to get your dinner over with, so the dishes and everything can be all cleaned up before my folks get home.”

“I'll come too,” William said, but Clarice said no, because someone had to babysit the kids in the basement until the food was ready, so they wouldn't run around the house and mess things up.

He tried to argue. To whisper urgently that you couldn't just tell a person that tomorrow would be dangerous, and then go off without explaining what you were talking about. But she wouldn't listen, and after she and Jancy went upstairs, he was left behind in the
basement with Trixie and Buddy, listening to them whine about how much they wanted to go upstairs too.

“Come on, William. Let's go up to that big kitchen. We won't bother anything,” Trixie said. “Tell Clarice we won't bother them while they're cooking dinner. Isn't that right, Buddy?”

“That's right,” Buddy said. “We won't bother the kitchen. Tell Clice we just want to go up all those stairs again. Way up to that toy room.”

That was what William was afraid of. Once they got in the house there was no telling where they'd wind up. “Nope,” he told them. “Not yet. Soon, but not quite yet.”

But they went on whining and begging until he finally offered to do the sailor on the sinking ship scene again if they'd shut up and be quiet. It worked, but it wasn't easy. William wound up reeling around being a sailor on a storm-tossed ship for so long that he was pretty seasick by the time Jancy finally came down to tell them dinner was ready.

The dinner was tuna and noodles. Not great, but better than most of the stuff Gertie managed to come up with. And there was more of it too, at least more than what was usually left when it finally got to be William's turn to fill his plate.

“Eat up,” Clarice said. “There's plenty. I won't be eating much because I'll have to eat again when my parents get home.”

“What will you and your parents have tonight?” Jancy asked. “What does your mom cook?”

“Nothing much,” Clarice said. “Usually they eat at a restaurant near where they work and bring me home some of it. My mom's too busy to do much cooking. Before times got so bad, we used to have a live-in cook like my aunt does.”

“Times got so bad?” William asked. “Even for lawyers?”

“Sure,” Clarice said sarcastically. “Haven't you heard about the Depression? There's a big one right now. Even lawyers are depressed when the times are so bad people don't have enough money to sue each other.”

William wasn't entirely sure he understood, but it was an interesting thing to think about. Or it would have been, if he still hadn't been so busy wondering what Clarice had meant when she said tomorrow would be dangerous. But he had to wait to find out until the food was gone. And then he had to wait some more while he and Jancy did the dishes and Clarice took the little kids up to pick out two more toys to borrow.

It wasn't until they were all back in the basement, with Trixie busy changing a baby doll's diaper and Buddy pushing a fancy toy car around in circles, that William finally managed to talk to Clarice alone. She was heading for the stairs when he grabbed her arm and whispered, “What did you mean about tomorrow being dangerous?
You'd better tell me, because we're leaving tomorrow morning no matter what. We have to.”

Pulling away, Clarice stared at William haughtily. “Why do you have to? You can go on hiding here a little longer.” She put her hands on her hips. “And you just better because …” She pulled William toward the stairs. “Because when I was downtown shopping, I noticed some things. Some important things.”

“Like what?” William asked.

“Well, like …” Her eyes were jittery again, and when William looked at her, she looked away. But in a minute she went on. “Well, like … a lot of police cars.”

“Police cars? Where?”

“All over town,” she said. “Outside the grocery store, and …” She paused, and then nodded. “And down by the Greyhound bus station.”

“Oh yeah?” A cold chill ran up the back of William's neck. “Around the bus station?” He stared at Clarice, and she stared back.

“Did it look like they were—well, looking for someone?”

Clarice nodded slowly. “Yeah,” she said. “I think so. And that isn't all.” She took a deep breath. “And—and there were posters, too. Yeah, there were posters pinned up on lampposts that said that four kids named Baggett were missing.” She paused and then, “Oh yeah. The posters said there was a reward. That there'd be a reward
for anybody who found them and told the police.”

That sounded bad. Really bad. What it probably meant was that Big Ed must have made the posters, or had someone else make them. “What did it say on the posters? There weren't pictures, were there? Pictures of us on the posters?”

Clarice shook her head. “No,” she said uncertainly. “No pictures. Just your names and how old you all are.”

“Holy Toledo,” William said. He was shocked, and his face must have shown it, because Clarice grabbed his arm and said, “What happened? Tell me about it.”

“What do you mean? I don't know what the police are doing. Or who made the posters.”

“No, I don't mean that,” Clarice said. “I mean, what happened that made you decide to run away?” Her eyes were jumpy again, and her whole face looked stretched tight by excitement. “Did they kill somebody? Did the Baggetts finally kill somebody? I heard my dad say he thought they probably would, sooner or later.”

William shook his head hard. “No,” he said. “No. That wasn't it at all. They didn't kill anyone. It was just that—”

He didn't realize that Jancy had come up behind him until he heard her voice saying, “Yes, they did.” She gave William a little shove. “Why don't you tell her? They killed Sweetie Pie. We ran away because they killed Sweetie Pie.”

“Wow!” Clarice's voice had sunk to a loud whisper. “I knew it. I just knew there must have been a murder.”

“Now, wait a minute,” William said. “There wasn't any murder. Sweetie Pie was just a guinea pig.”

It wasn't until he heard her gasp that William realized what he'd said, and he whirled around in time to see Jancy running across the room to throw herself facedown on her cot. Of course, he went after her.

It took a while. Sitting on the floor beside Jancy's cot, he patted her shoulder and told her he knew that Sweetie Pie was a lot more than
just
a guinea pig, and he shouldn't have put it that way. It wasn't until Jancy finally sat up and wiped the tears off her face and said she was okay, that he went back to where Clarice was waiting on the top stair.

He sat down beside her, and for a second or two they just looked at each other. Her eyes were still wide but not so fluttery looking, and after a minute she smiled—one of those strange, unexpected smiles. Nodding toward Jancy, she said, “That was good.”

“What?” William said. “What was good?”

“What you did just then. What you said to Jancy.” She paused and then went on, “Is Jancy her real name? It's not a normal-sounding name.”

“I know,” William said, grinning ruefully. “A lot of Baggetts have weird names. Big Ed named everybody. I think he'd decided to name the next one Johnny, but
when she turned out to be a girl he just changed it to Jancy.”

“Big Ed?” Clarice asked.

“Yeah. The Big Man. The Boss,” William said sarcastically.

“You mean your father?”

William shrugged. “You might put it that way,” he said.

Clarice nodded. “Well, anyway, it was nice what you said to Jancy. I heard you.”

“Oh.” William shrugged again. “Well, I shouldn't have said
just
a guinea pig. I mean, that guinea pig was the only pet Jancy ever had, and she was real crazy about it. And Sweetie Pie really
was
the reason we ran away when we did.” He grinned. “I mean, it was Jancy who decided. Oh, I'd thought about doing it for a long time, but I didn't have any definite plans until Jancy decided it had to be right away.”

Clarice nodded slowly. “Yes,” she said. “I've thought a lot about running away too, and why a person might do it.”

“You mean why we did it? I told you. It was what happened to Sweetie Pie that did it.”

“That's not what I meant,” she said. “What I meant was that I've thought about running away myself. About why I ought to do it.”

William stared at Clarice, and she looked back. The
tense, nervous flicker was there in her eyes again, but it wasn't quite the same. William was puzzled.

“Why would you want to—,” he was beginning to say, when she looked at her watch and jumped up.

“I'll tell you tomorrow,” she said. “Okay? Tomorrow I'll tell you why I almost ran away, if you tell me first. I mean why you
really
decided to. Before the guinea pig thing.”

William found himself agreeing. Tomorrow he would tell Clarice why he'd been planning to run away since he was about six years old. And she would tell him … what? He couldn't imagine.

She left then, and a few minutes later, as he was getting into his cot, Jancy sat up and motioned for him to come over, so he did. She wasn't crying anymore, but her eyelashes were still wet. “I won't be mad at you anymore,” she said, “if you tell me what you and Clarice were talking about.”

So he did. At least he told her the part about the police cars Clarice had seen in Crownfield, and how he'd decided they better not try to catch the bus tomorrow morning. But that was all. He didn't mention what Clarice had told him about running away. That could wait until he'd found out more about it himself.

T
he next day was Thursday, and just like the day before, they had to wait until Clarice's parents left for work before they went up to the kitchen for breakfast. The only difference was that while they were eating, Trixie kept asking why they weren't going to ride on the bus like William said. Of course that got Buddy started on the “why” thing too. From
why
weren't they going on the bus, he went on to
why
did they have to stay in the basement all day, and
why
did Clarice have so many toys, and
why
couldn't they pick out three toys to play with instead of just two, and
why
didn't everybody in the world have their own playroom with lots of toys? And a lot more.

At first Clarice seemed to think all the whys were amusing, but after a while she began to get glassy-eyed, and she interrupted Buddy's whys long enough to tell him that he could pick out three toys today, if he didn't say
why
one more time until he'd finished his breakfast. It worked. Both Buddy and Trixie ate silently and so fast
they almost choked themselves, and it wasn't long before they were all back in the kitchen, loaded down with toys, and Clarice was telling Jancy it was her turn to babysit the kids in the basement while William helped do the dishes.