Ralph S. Mouse Read online

  The class respected what Brad had tried to do, and Ralph was struck by a sudden thought: Brad was exactly the sort of boy who could understand a mouse who rode a motorcycle.

  To change the subject, Brad asked, “Is Ralph going to try to run the maze again?”

  “How about it, Ryan?” asked Miss K. “Did you bring Ralph to school today?”

  “He’s lost.” Ryan sounded worried. “He got mad because…Well, he got mad Friday afternoon and disappeared.”

  “I am not lost,” Ralph said to himself. “I know where I am, right here in this mitten.”

  A sigh of disappointment ran through Room 5. The class liked Ralph. Besides, watching a mouse in a maze was more fun than social studies or spelling.

  “Miss K,” said Gordon, “even if Ryan finds Ralph, I don’t think he should have to run the maze again. He proved there was a better way to get the peanut butter than running into dead ends.”

  Why, he’s right, thought Ralph, perked up by Gordon’s support. I’m smarter than I thought I was.

  “Class, do you agree?” asked Miss K, who liked her pupils to think.

  The class thought. Brad was first to speak. “In motocross racing, it’s against the rules to get off your bike. I think he cheated.”

  Several people were quick to point out that testing intelligence with a maze was not the same thing as racing on a bicycle, even a BMX.

  “Maybe he was too a-mazed to do it right,” suggested Melissa with a giggle.

  “Well, I think he proved he was Gifted and Talented.” Gloria spoke as if she had ended the discussion by using words the school used to describe children such as herself.

  Miss K asked for a show of hands. Twenty-one children agreed that Ralph had found a better way to run the maze. Five felt he cheated. Case settled. Ralph was an unusually smart mouse, something he had doubted only once in a while.

  “Speaking of solving problems,” said Miss K, “do you think fighting is a good way to settle arguments?”

  “No!” chorused the girls.

  Ryan defended himself. “Brad pushed me first. Besides, it wasn’t a fair fight, because I had Ralph in my pocket and didn’t want him to get hurt.”

  “What do you have to say, Brad?” Miss K asked.

  “He made me mad, always bragging about how smart his mouse is and then trying to make the maze easy.” Brad slid down in his chair. “Anyhow, how was I supposed to know he had his old mouse in his pocket?”

  Ryan muttered to Brad, “Just because you get to come to school in a tow truck you think you’re so big.”

  “Just because you get to live in a hotel you think you’re better than anybody,” mumbled Brad.

  These remarks were lost to the class because the girls, bored with the scuffle discussion, were waving their clippings from the Cucaracha Voice. “Miss K,” said Gloria, “I think that reporter was unfair. What she said about us was all wrong.”

  Some members of the class, protesting that their families did not subscribe to the Voice, demanded to know what the article said.

  Miss K read the headline aloud. Class Nabs Sneed Invader.

  What’s she talking about? wondered Ralph, moving from the mitten to Melissa’s overturned boot for a better view. What invader?

  Miss K continued. “Under Ralph’s picture, the story reads, ‘Friday afternoon the fifth-grade class of Miss Bambi Kuckenbacker at Irwin J. Sneed Elementary School exhibited a mouse, thought to be one of many mice overrunning their school. They also discussed the harm rodents do to crops and food supplies and the rapidity with which they multiply.’”

  There was a murmur of disapproval from the class as Miss K read on. “‘When informed of the mouse plague at the monthly meeting of the school board Friday evening, Superintendent Clyde R. Crossman promised a full investigation of conditions at Sneed.’”

  The class sat in outraged silence. Ralph was aghast. One tiny mouse an invader overrunning the whole school all by himself?

  Suddenly everyone had something to say. “Our exhibit wasn’t like that at all.” “We were having fun, and she made our school sound terrible.” “Poor little Ralph didn’t invade us. Ryan brought him to school.” “She made our school sound dirty, and Mr. Costa works hard.” “She was mean not to put our picture in the paper.” “She stayed about two minutes and didn’t understand what we were doing.”

  Gordon felt he was to blame for the story. “I didn’t mean to get Ralph investigated,” he said. “I just wrote facts I found in library books. I didn’t mean that Ralph personally ran around harming crops.”

  Just how am I going to be investigated? Ralph was beginning to wonder.

  Brad was pleased that someone else was in the wrong. “I think that reporter is a rat fink,” was his contribution to the discussion.

  Miss K asked if he couldn’t find a better way of expressing himself.

  After a moment, he said, “I think that reporter just said what she wanted to say and didn’t care about us.”

  One boy said, “My father says bad news sells more papers than good news.”

  Everyone agreed that the reporter’s saying bad things about their school in order to sell more copies of the Cucaracha Voice was mean, unfair, and just plain sneaky. They did good things at their school, and she should have said so.

  Melissa said, “I think we should all write letters to the paper and say the story wasn’t true and that there is, or was, only one mouse here.”

  “A splendid idea, Melissa,” said Miss K, always eager for a new project. “We can write letters for our Language Arts class. However, I think we should be careful that we tell the truth.”

  Of course, Room 5 would tell the truth. Room 5 always told the truth, except when they fibbed a little.

  Miss K continued. “Can we be sure that Ralph was the only mouse in school? Our principal told me that this morning, after reading the article in last night’s Voice, the cafeteria workers reported a hole in a bag of sugar and tail tracings in the spilled sugar. The fourth-grade teacher reported that seeds had disappeared from the mosaics her class had made, the librarian said the shredded material from the bags that books are mailed in has been scattered on the carpet, and the first-grade teacher said she found tooth marks in a jar of paste.”

  This information silenced the class but left Ralph burdened with guilt. He was just a little mouse trying to get along in the world. He had not meant to cause so much trouble.

  Melissa spoke out. “Maybe if there are other mice and we can catch Ralph again, we could find him a girlfriend and have a mouse wedding.”

  “Oh, yes,” said the girls, sighing.

  The boys were impolite about the suggestion. So was Ralph.

  “We don’t know where Ralph is,” was Miss K’s comment, “and perhaps we should wait to write our letters until after the investigation. After all, there may be more mice in the school.”

  The disappointed class, who had been planning the angry letters they would write to the newspaper, had to agree.

  “But Miss K,” said Gloria, “isn’t your name Heidi?”

  Miss K laughed. “Yes, it is.”

  “Then how come the reporter called you Bambi?” asked Gloria.

  “She must have confused her book characters,” was Miss K’s amused answer.

  Ralph saw nothing to be amused about. What would the investigation mean? Cats? An exterminator with traps and poisons? Fumigation with deadly fumes seeping through the halls? That new electronic mouser that made a noise only mice could hear and sent them screaming into the night?

  Ralph was sure of only one thing. He had to escape from Irwin J. Sneed Elementary School, and he had to escape soon.

  8

  Ralph Speaks

  Ralph was tired of skulking about, hiding in mittens and boots, scrounging glue-flavored seeds from fourth-grade mosaics, and eating sugar, which he had overheard children say rotted teeth. He was nervous about the mouse hunt that was about to begin at Sneed Elementary School, all because he had innoce
ntly wanted to leave the inn to save an old man’s job. Ralph felt that he was being blamed for everything that went wrong and that trying to be good was not worthwhile.

  Ralph left Melissa’s boot, because he did not want Ryan to find him. He slipped behind a row of textbooks on health in a bookcase under the window and sat there, pondering large problems such as the unfairness of life and the shortage of liberty and justice for well-meaning mice.

  Ralph longed to return to the inn, but he knew that even if he found a way to get there, he could never face the jeering little relatives. First they would demand to know what had happened to his motorcycle. Then they would tell him it served him right that it was broken, because he had been so selfish.

  But I’ve got to go someplace, Ralph decided. Perhaps he could move into a restaurant in Cucaracha. Now that the snow was melting, there was no longer any danger of being buried. However, his feet might freeze, or he might drown in dirty slush. He was too angry with Ryan to ask for help. What Ralph needed was transportation other, of course, than feet.

  Ralph tried to make plans. If he could somehow get hold of the pieces of his motorcycle, and if he could manage to nip off a strand of Miss K’s strong hair, perhaps he could tie his motorcycle together again.

  While Ralph sat brooding behind the books, he was not forgotten by Room 5, who found the problems of a mouse much more interesting than making sentences out of spelling words.

  Hands were raised and questions asked. “But Miss K, don’t you think we should try to find Ralph? Somebody might step on him.” “Miss K, how are they going to investigate the school for mice?” “Miss K, will they poison Ralph?”

  Miss K laid down her chalk and gave up trying to teach.

  “Miss K,” said Ryan. “I’m sure Ralph is the only mouse here. He could have done all those things by himself.”

  Ryan’s remark gave the class hope for Ralph. “I know what we could do,” said Melissa. “We could get him to walk across a stamp pad so he would leave purple footprints. That way we could see if he went to the cafeteria and the library and all those places.”

  Ralph groaned. Purple feet! That Melissa and her bright ideas.

  The class was quick to point out that the ink would soon wear off, that Ralph would have to keep running back to the stamp pad, which no mouse would do. Anyway, they would have to find him first.

  “Well, class,” said Miss K, “I can see that we are not going to get any work done until we find out more about the superintendent’s investigation. If you will promise to work quietly on your spelling sentences, I will go ask Mr. Tanner what he plans to do.”

  The class promised. Of course, they would work quietly. Didn’t they always work quietly when the teacher left the room? Ralph climbed to the top of a book to watch.

  As soon as Miss K left, Melissa, taking the precaution of leaving the door open, posted herself as a lookout. When the teacher was safely out of sight, everyone began to whisper at once. Wads of paper flew back and forth. Ryan pulled the broken motorcycle out of his pocket and said to Brad, “See what you did?”

  By standing on his hind legs on top of a book, Ralph was able to see the remains of his motorcycle. More than Miss K’s hair was needed to repair that wreck. His motorcycle was broken in two pieces, the muffler dangled, the spring forks were bent, the handlebars twisted. Ralph felt sick looking at it, sick and angry.

  Brad scowled. “Why don’t you buy him another? You’re a rich kid.”

  Why should he? thought Ralph. Brad was the one who broke it.

  “I’m not a rich kid.” Ryan was astonished by Brad’s remark.

  “Then how come you live in a hotel?” demanded Brad.

  “Because my mother works there,” said Ryan. “I eat in the kitchen with the maids and waitresses.”

  “Oh.” Obviously Brad had not known this. “Where’s your father?”

  “I don’t know.” Ryan was sensitive about this subject. “Someplace, I guess.”

  “Psst!” hissed Melissa, and scooted back to her seat.

  Quiet as mice, thought Ralph, as heads bent over spelling words.

  Miss K was smiling as she walked to the front of the room. The class looked up, waiting for her answer. “Mr. Crossman, the superintendent, telephoned Mr. Tanner this morning to ask about mice at Sneed,” she told her class. “Mr. Tanner said he didn’t think there was much to worry about, that the reporter got carried away. Mr. Crossman said that was good, because since people voted for Proposition 13 and taxes had been cut, the school district couldn’t afford an exterminator. Mr. Tanner told him not to worry, that he would have Mr. Costa set mousetraps overnight to see what happened. Mr. Crossman said there was enough money in the budget for five mousetraps.”

  Traps, thought Ralph. What a joke.

  “Was that the investigation?” someone asked. “One phone call?”

  Miss K laughed. “That was the investigation.”

  Even though the class was concerned for Ralph’s safety, everyone felt let down. They had expected some excitement. A team of men in white uniforms perhaps, and the school closed for several days.

  “If Mr. Costa doesn’t catch any mice, do we get to write our letters to the Cucaracha Voice?” asked Gloria.

  “That’s right,” agreed Miss K.

  “But what if Mr. Costa catches Ralph?” someone asked. Others voiced the same worry.

  Ralph was insulted. Hadn’t he proved his intelligence by finding a new way to run a maze? He knew all about traps. As soon as he was old enough to leave the nest, his mother had taken him to see a baited trap in the hotel kitchen and had explained its evils one by one.

  “We’ll just have to take that chance,” said Miss K. “Now please settle down and finish those spelling sentences.”

  Spelling sentences were all Room 5 did manage that morning. At lunchtime, some of the girls began to call, “Ralphie, where are you, Ralphie?” as they gathered up their lunch boxes.

  Ralphie! Ralph would never answer to such a silly name. He noticed Brad was the last to leave, as if he were not eager to join the others for lunch.

  Suddenly Ralph’s anger boiled over. He did not care if Brad looked lonely. He did not care if Brad found out he could talk. He was going to take matters into his own paws and tell that boy a thing or two.

  Ralph leaped lightly from the top of the book, dashed across the floor, and sprang up on Brad’s jeans. Desperately he clung by his toenails as Brad walked out of the room and slowly down the hall.

  Miss K locked the door of her room and caught up with Brad, put her arm around his shoulders, and said, “Is there something I can do to help?”

  “I’m OK,” was all Brad said.

  “If I can do anything, please let me know.” Miss K released Brad and went on down the hall.

  Neither had noticed the mouse clinging to Brad’s jeans. Ralph ran up Brad’s leg onto the front of his T-shirt.

  Finally Brad must have felt Ralph’s toenails, for he looked down.

  “You—you thug!” said Ralph. “You broke my motorcycle, my only way of getting out of this place. I’m too little to wade through slush, and anyway walking isn’t as much fun as riding my motorcycle, especially through puddles.”

  Brad stared at Ralph. “You can talk,” he said, as if he didn’t believe it.

  “Of course, I can talk,” said Ralph. “Not many people can understand me, but I can talk.”

  “How come I understand you?” asked Brad.

  “You’re the type. You’re lonesome, and you’re interested in cars and motorcycles. That’s the sort of person who understands me.” Brad seemed to be thinking this answer over as Ralph continued, “How come you’re lonesome? You’re not a new boy in school like Ryan.”

  “None of your business,” said Brad. Then, realizing he had admitted more than he intended, he contradicted himself. “I’m not lonesome.”

  “Aw, come on,” coaxed Ralph, who by now was genuinely curious. “You can tell me.”

  Brad was stubbornl
y silent.

  “I’m just a little mouse, you know,” Ralph reminded him.

  “Well, I live with my father and Arfy, my dog. My folks got divorced, and my mom doesn’t live with us anymore. It’s lonesome without her,” confessed Brad.

  “Oh, too bad.” Ralph was sympathetic. His own mother nagged him, but he missed her right now. “Ryan’s lonesome too, because he’s new here,” Ralph told Brad. “You two should get together.”

  Suddenly Brad laughed, the first time Ralph had ever heard him laugh. “I don’t believe this,” he said. “A mouse telling me what to do.”

  Ralph’s feelings were hurt. “Don’t believe it then,” he said, remembering his motorcycle.

  “Aw, don’t be mad.” Brad was sorry he had hurt Ralph’s feelings. “Let’s be friends.”

  “Why should we?” asked Ralph in his coldest squeak. “You wanted to make the maze too hard; you pushed my friend and broke my motorcycle. Why should we be friends?”

  “Because—” began Brad, and then he stopped. “Look. I didn’t know Ryan had a motorcycle in his pocket or you either. I thought he was a rich—Oh, never mind what I thought. Was that really your motorcycle?”

  “Yes, it was.” Ralph spoke in his crossest voice. “A boy gave it to me.”

  “Wow!” breathed Brad. “A mouse with a motorcycle! Can you ride it?”

  “Not when it’s broken,” said Ralph. “Now put me down and go eat your lunch. I need a little rest. Mice are supposed to be nocturnal, you know, and I need my sleep in the daytime.”

  “Miss K locked the door,” Brad reminded him, “and you shouldn’t be running around the halls where you can get stepped on.”

  “No problem. I can go under the door,” said Ralph.

  “Will you talk to me again?” asked Brad, as he used the hand not in the sling to set Ralph on the floor.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” answered Ralph. “It all depends.” With that noncommittal reply, he flattened himself and slipped under the door into the empty classroom. Inside, he entered what had become his home away from home, Melissa’s boot. He felt that he had only dozed off when Ryan’s hand closed around him.