Runaway Ralph
Beverly Cleary
Runaway Ralph
Illustrated by Tracy Dockray
To Louis Darling
1916–1970
Contents
1. Ralph Hears a Distant Bugle
2. The Open Road
3. An Educational Toy
4. Chum
5. The Personul Mowse
6. A Thief in the Craft Shop
7. The Escape
8. Ralph Strikes a Bargain
9. A Dangerous Plan
About the Author
Other Books by Beverly Cleary
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
Ralph Hears a Distant Bugle
The small brown mouse named Ralph who was hiding under the grandfather clock did not have much longer to wait before he could ride his motorcycle. The clock had struck eight already, and then eight thirty.
Ralph was the only mouse in the Mountain View Inn, a run-down hotel in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, who owned a motorcycle. It was a mouse-sized red motorcycle, a present from a boy named Keith who had been a guest in Room 215 over the Fourth of July weekend. Ralph was proud of his motorcycle, but his brothers and sisters said he was selfish.
“I am not,” said Ralph. “Keith gave the motorcycle to me.”
That evening, while Ralph waited under the clock and watched the television set across the lobby, a man and a woman followed by a medium-sized boy walked into the hotel. They had the rumpled look of people who had driven many miles that day. The boy was wearing jeans, cowboy boots, and a white T-shirt with the words Happy Acres Camp stenciled across the front.
Ralph observed the boy with interest. He was the right kind of boy, a boy sure to like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Since the day Keith had left the hotel, Ralph had longed for crumbs of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
A grating, grinding noise came from the works of the grandfather clock. Ralph clapped his paws over his ears. The clock grumbled and groaned and managed to strike the hour. Nine o’clock! The time almost had come. The stroke of nine was followed by the slow sad notes of music that lingered and died mysteriously in the distance every night at this time.
“Did you hear that?” the man asked the boy. “It was the bugle at camp playing taps.”
So that’s what that music is, thought Ralph, who had puzzled over those notes all summer.
When the boy did not answer, his mother said, “Come on, Garf, cheer up. You’re going to have a lot of fun at camp.”
“Maybe,” answered Garf, “but I doubt it.”
The father looked annoyed. “You won’t have any fun if you take that attitude,” he said, and went to the desk to inquire about a room with an extra cot for the night.
Ralph could not understand the boy’s behavior. He had often heard other young guests wearing the same kind of white T-shirt speak of a place called camp, but unlike this boy they always sounded eager and excited about going there. Ralph did not know exactly what a camp was, but since medium-sized boys and girls went there, he thought it must be a place where people ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
The desk clerk summoned old Matt, the elderly bellboy and hotel handyman, to show the family to their room. As Matt picked up their suitcases and led the way to the elevator, he said to Garf, “Well, young fellow, what are you going to have for breakfast tomorrow? Apple pie or chocolate cake?” Matt, who was not always popular with parents, was always liked by children.
The boy smiled faintly at Matt’s joke as he followed the old man into the elevator. What that boy needs is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, thought Ralph.
When Matt returned to the lobby, Ralph watched him go out onto the hotel porch, where he stood for a few minutes among the empty rocking chairs for his nightly look at the stars before he retired for the night. The night clerk, a college student hired for the summer, came on duty and settled down on a couch to read a thick book. Ralph’s time almost had come. Sure enough, the clerk read a few pages and then lay down on the couch with the book facedown on his chest and closed his eyes.
Ralph was free for the night! He darted under the television set, where he had hidden his motorcycle and the crash helmet that Keith had made from half a Ping-Pong ball lined with thistledown. He already had polished the chrome on his motorcycle by licking his paws and rubbing them over the dull spots. Now he set his crash helmet on his head, snapped the rubber band under his chin to hold it in place, and taking care to keep his tail out of the spokes, mounted his motorcycle. Next he inhaled deeply and exhaling with a pb-pb-b-b-b sound, the only sound that will make a miniature motorcycle go, sped out from under the television set and across the carpet.
Pb-pb-b-b-b! Ralph rode across the lobby and into the hall. Up and down the hall zoomed Ralph, and the joy of speed made up for the long hours of hiding in dusty corners waiting for night to come.
Up and down the hall rode Ralph until he was too tired to take another big breath. Then he parked his motorcycle in a shadowy corner, hung his crash helmet on the handlebars, and flattening himself, slipped under a door into his favorite room in the inn. It was a stuffy room, never very light even in daytime, and locked when the last person left it at night. It was furnished with small tables and a row of high stools. The room was Ralph’s favorite because he always could find peanuts on the floor, sometimes popcorn, and once in a great while a stuffed olive. Tonight he gobbled his fill of peanuts, wishing he had a little grape jelly to go with them, and managed, in spite of being somewhat fatter than when he had entered, to squeeze out again.
Pb-pb-b-b-b. Daredevil Ralph rode perilously close to the dangling hand of the night clerk sleeping on the couch before he tore the length of the hall. Ralph was exhilarated by speed, danger, and his own daring. Pb-pb-b-b-b! Back to the lobby!
As Ralph paused to take another deep breath his sharp ears caught the approaching squeaks of his little brothers and sisters and cousins, who rarely ventured into the lobby because they were afraid of the stuffed deer heads on the walls and the stuffed owl on the mantelpiece of the stone fireplace. “Drat!” swore Ralph softly to himself. Ralph was in the process of taking a deep breath, so he could make a fast getaway, when his mother and Uncle Lester scurried from under a chair in front of him. Ralph’s deep breath came out in a poof, and his motorcycle stopped.
“Ralph,” said Uncle Lester, “it is time we had a talk.”
Ralph did not answer. He did not want to talk. Neither did he want to listen, but he knew that he could not avoid his uncle’s lecture. He only hoped it would end before the little mice managed to get down the stairs.
“You can’t go on living like this,” said Uncle Lester, “running around the lobby, watching television all day, and tearing around on that motorcycle all night.”
“Yes,” agreed Ralph’s mother, a most fearful mouse whose whiskers trembled constantly with fright. She was afraid of people, vacuum cleaners, owls, cats, traps, and poisoned grain. She quivered at the slightest sound.
Ralph stared at the carpet.
“Look at you,” said Uncle Lester. “Lint all over your whiskers.”
Ralph brushed at his whiskers with one paw.
“And you’re getting fat from eating peanuts you pick up in that—that place,” continued Uncle Lester. “A bar is no place for a young mouse.”
“You will fall in with evil companions,” said his mother. “They will lead you into trouble.”
“Nobody can lead me anyplace,” said Ralph, “because I can go faster on my bike.”
By now the little brothers and sisters and cousins had gathered to listen, wide-eyed with interest and pleasure.
One cousin, braver than the rest, said, “He thinks he’s big,
calling a motorcycle a bike.”
“Ralph, you are sure to break your neck if you keep on riding that thing,” said his mother.
“You said I could ride it,” said Ralph sullenly. “You said I could if I wore my crash helmet and kept both paws on the handle grips.”
“I know,” admitted his mother with a sigh. “I can’t imagine what I was thinking of.”
The grandfather clock began to grind and groan. All of Ralph’s family was alert, and when the clock began to strike they disappeared under chairs and behind draperies—all except Uncle Lester, and even he looked nervous.
“This is no life for a growing mouse,” said Uncle Lester. “It is time you moved back upstairs to the mouse nest and helped lay in supplies for the lean months between summer and the ski season. You know nobody comes to this old hotel to spill crumbs as long as there is a vacant room in one of the new motels out on the highway.”
The clock finished striking midnight, and Ralph’s relatives crept out of their hiding places.
“He won’t,” said one of the bigger little cousins. “He won’t because he’s selfish.”
“You keep out of this,” said Ralph.
“He is! He is! He’s just plain selfish!” squeaked the little brothers and sisters and cousins.
The night clerk stirred in his sleep, and all the mice froze into silence until the sound of snores came from the couch. All hotel mice know they are safe from people who are snoring. The argument continued.
“He keeps everything for himself,” complained a little brother.
“That’s right,” agreed another. “He never gives any of us a ride on his motorcycle.”
“Now Ralph,” said his mother, “it wouldn’t hurt you to give the little mice a ride once in a while.”
“I thought you said motorcycle riding was dangerous,” Ralph reminded his mother.
“That’s no way to talk to your mother,” said Uncle Lester. “You don’t have to speed. You can push your young relatives up and down the hall.”
“Push them!” squeaked Ralph in horror. Push little mice up and down the hall on his beautiful motorcycle with its plastic seat and its pair of shining chromium mufflers! What a shocking idea. A motorcycle was not a kiddy car.
“Now Ralph, sharing your motorcycle won’t hurt you one bit,” said his mother. “Don’t look so sulky.”
“Me first! Me first!” shrilled the little mice, pushing and shoving.
“Ralph, get that look off your face!”
Uncle Lester looked so stern that Ralph knew there was no way out. “Even the girls?” he asked.
“Of course,” said his mother. “Quiet, children, or you will wake up the night clerk.”
Ralph wished the little mice would wake up the night clerk, so he would have an excuse for hiding his motorcycle. However, his young relatives, who were, in Ralph’s opinion, a fearful bunch, were silenced, and there was nothing for Ralph to do but boost the nearest little one up onto the seat of the motorcycle. “Gimme the crash helmet,” demanded the passenger.
“What are you waiting for?” asked Uncle Lester. “Let him wear it.”
Ralph removed his treasured helmet, placed it on the head of his small passenger, and wheeled the awed little mouse down the hall and back. “More! More!” demanded the passenger.
“You had your turn.” Ralph spoke shortly as he looked with distaste at his young relatives scrambling all over one another in their eagerness to be next. There were so many of them. Pushing them up and down the hall would take him all night. “Come on,” he said crossly to his nearest cousin, as he clapped the crash helmet on his head and boosted him onto the plastic seat. “Let’s get it over with.”
“Faster!” demanded the cousin. “I want to go faster.”
“You be quiet!” said Ralph. “You wanted a ride, and you’re getting it.”
Ralph soon found that pushing the motorcycle along the bare floor at the edge of the hall was easier than pushing it through the carpet. Up and down the hall he trudged with one little mouse after another, while he longed to be riding off into the kitchen where the linoleum made the best speedway in the hotel.
Up and down the hall plodded Ralph with brothers, sisters, cousins. He grew more and more rebellious as the stars outside the hotel grew dim above the pine trees. The motorcycle was his. It was given to him by a boy to ride, not to use as a kiddy car for a lot of wiggly, squirmy little mice. A motorcycle was not a toy. Why couldn’t his mother and Uncle Lester understand? Because they were too old to understand. Too old and too timid, that was why.
Ralph felt sorry for himself, caught as he was between two generations of mice. (Most of his own litter had died from eating poisoned grain put out by a particularly disagreeable cook.) There was the older generation of mice, who worried about safety and being able to scrounge enough crumbs to tide them over the lean months between the summer season and the ski season. Then there was the younger generation of silly little mice, who were always busy wiggling, climbing all over one another, and gobbling up crumbs as fast as they were brought to the mouse nest. Nobody understood Ralph, which was his whole trouble.
Night was fading and the chirp of a bird out in the pines told Ralph that the hotel was about to come to life. The night clerk soon would awaken and close his book, and the cook soon would be rattling pans in the kitchen.
A cousin, braver than most, came running down the hall where Ralph was wearily pushing the motorcycle. “You aren’t fair,” he scolded. “You’ve given him three rides and some of the others two and me only one.”
Ralph stopped in his tracks. “Do you mean to stand there and tell me some of you have had more than one ride?”
“Yes,” was the answer. “And I’m going to tell Uncle Lester on you. Then you’ll really catch it.”
Ralph was too angry to squeak. He snatched his helmet from the head of his passenger, tipped him off onto the floor, and mounted his motorcycle while taking a deep breath. Pb-pb-b-b-b. Ralph shot down the hall into the lobby.
The first pale rays of morning sun filtered through the pines, which now were filled with joyously chirping birds. The night clerk stirred. All the little mice looked frightened and scuttled toward the stairs and the safety of their nests of shredded Kleenex. The night clerk sat up, yawned, stretched, and scratched his chest, giving Ralph just enough time to garage his motorcycle in the dark corner under the television set before the last shadow of night faded from the old hotel.
Ready to rest and filled with bitter thoughts, Ralph set his crash helmet on the dusty carpet and sat down with his back resting against the front wheel of his motorcycle. The grown-up mice should not make him use his beautiful motorcycle as a toy to amuse a lot of squirmy, ungrateful little relatives, who were growing up and soon would insist on riding by themselves. And Uncle Lester would insist that Ralph let them. Well, he wouldn’t. Never again would he use the motorcycle as a toy. He did not care what Uncle Lester or anyone said.
Ralph did not want to grow up to be a crumb-scrounging mouse like Uncle Lester. He did not want to settle down in a nest of shredded Kleenex behind the baseboard of the linen room. He wanted a life of speed and danger and excitement. He wanted to be free—free to do as he pleased and go when he pleased on his shiny red motorcycle.
The clock struck six, and in the distance Ralph heard the notes of the distant bugle, this time lively notes that seemed a summons to excitement and adventure and, now that he knew where the notes came from, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Before the notes had died away, Ralph heard the laughter and shouts of medium-sized boys and girls who must be about the age of Keith, the boy who had understood mice and who had given Ralph the motorcycle.
The rousing notes of the bugle and the laughter and shouting increased the feeling of rebellion within Ralph. As the last strains of the bugle call hovered in the clear mountain air, Ralph made up his mind. He knew now what he was going to do. He was going to run away.
2
The Open Road
Ralph listened as the manager of the hotel spoke sharply to the housekeeper about the cigarette ashes on the carpet. The housekeeper spoke even more sharply to the maid, who ran the vacuum cleaner so carelessly that Ralph was not even frightened. He was too busy thinking of the night that lay ahead. When the boy called Garf clumped across the lobby in his new cowboy boots on his way to Happy Acres Camp, Ralph longed to follow him out the front door and down the steps.
Late in the afternoon new guests straggled into the hotel. Some looked at the shabby furniture and dusty deer heads and left. Others, too tired from driving to look further, stayed. When the television set was turned on, Ralph polished the chrome on his motorcycle with his paws. When the set was silent, he napped, too excited to sleep soundly. At last the bugle in the distance played its slow sad notes, and old Matt left the front door open as he went out on the porch to look at the stars.
The moment had come! Ralph snapped his crash helmet in place. He grasped the handlebars and pushed his motorcycle out from its hiding place, avoiding the attention of the night clerk by guiding it along the edge of the baseboard to the front door. On the porch he mounted and with a vigorous pb-pb-b-b-b rode across the cracked concrete to Matt’s feet at the top of the steps.
“Hi,” said Ralph, who was able to talk to animals and to any human being who loved speed and motorcycles and who understood that the only way to make a miniature motorcycle go was to make a sputtering noise that sounded like a big motorcycle.