Runaway Ralph Page 5

  “No,” said Garf. “Just away.”

  Aunt Jill looked thoughtfully out the back window toward the barn and the riding ring before she turned to Garf and asked, “What do you want to do? What do you really want to do?”

  Ralph gripped the bars of his cage and waited for the boy’s answer. Catso’s paw appeared through the hole in the screen door, but the human beings did not notice. Ralph watched and listened.

  The hole in the screen had stretched another half inch.

  Garf picked up a scrap of plastic left over from someone’s lanyard and twisted it around his fingers. “I can tell you one thing,” he burst out. “I don’t want to braid any stupid lanyards! I’ve braided lanyards in Cub Scouts, I’ve braided lanyards at the YMCA, I’ve braided lanyards in the park during the summer, and I’ve braided lanyards in the after-school recreation program. Nobody needs more than one lanyard, and I’m fed up with lanyards!” After this outburst he sat staring at the floor, and when Aunt Jill remained silent, he went on. “And I want people to stop feeding my mouse. I caught him, and he’s my mouse.”

  That’s good, thought Ralph, because if he runs away he might take me, and then maybe I can escape and find my motorcycle again.

  “I think that can be arranged,” said Aunt Jill. “You’ve told me what you don’t want to do and what you don’t want other people to do. Now tell me what you want to do.”

  Ralph could tell from Garf’s silence that this request was a difficult one. Aunt Jill seemed to have plenty of time to wait while he thought. Outside the craft shop some boys were gathering bamboo husks to float in the irrigation ditch. Ralph watched to see if they might uncover his crash helmet and motorcycle, but they did not go to the far side of the bamboo.

  “Well…uh,” began Garf, and stopped.

  Aunt Jill waited. So did Ralph, who noticed that Chum was also listening. Garf looked uncomfortable. Still Aunt Jill waited. Go on, say something, thought Ralph.

  When Garf finally spoke he no longer sounded angry. “I guess…I guess I just want to be alone once in a while,” he said.

  “You want to be alone,” repeated Aunt Jill.

  “Yes,” said Garf. “At home I have to share my room with my big brother, who gets the top bunk and keeps his weight-lifting stuff all over the floor. And every time I go to our room and shut the door, he comes in and starts playing those records I don’t like. And after school and on Saturdays it’s always Scouts or the Y or supervised recreation on the playground. My mom and dad say city kids have to be kept busy. And then they send me here.”

  “So they sent you to camp,” said Aunt Jill, encouraging him to go on. “And you come into the craft shop to be alone.”

  “Yes,” said Garf. “I don’t like to sit around after meals with a bunch of kids singing You Are My Sunshine.”

  But you come in here and sing about the rabbit banging mice on the head, thought Ralph.

  “I don’t like singing with other people,” said Garf, “because I can’t carry a tune. I know I sing funny, and I don’t like people turning around staring at me.”

  “Nobody cares whether you can carry a tune or not,” said Aunt Jill, “but if you don’t want to sing, you don’t have to. And we all need to be alone sometimes.”

  For the first time Garf looked at the camp director.

  “And I know something that might help,” Aunt Jill continued. “See that clump of bamboo over there? Any time you feel like being alone, you may go sit behind the bamboo as long as you wish.”

  Garf looked as if he wanted to believe her.

  “Remember, Garf,” said Aunt Jill, “it is possible to be alone in your thoughts even when there are others around.” She rose from the bench where she and the boy had been sitting and found a piece of cardboard and a felt pen from the supply shelves. “Now about your mouse. You take this pen and make a sign saying this is your mouse and no one else is to feed it. I’ll sign it to make it official, and we’ll tack it up over his cage.”

  Garf did not say anything, but he took the cardboard and the pen and settled down at a table to work. He found a ruler and marked straight lines on the cardboard to guide his printing. He worked a long time, ignoring the lanyard braiders, mosaic makers, and insect collectors who came and went. A few people paused to see what he was printing, but no one disturbed him.

  Ralph sat watching quietly as the sign progressed. Sometimes Garf paused to whisper rhymes to himself, “My, try, pry.” “Pow, how, mow.” “Read, lead, feed.” Then he would go on with his work. He printed a few letters, stared at the ceiling, whispered to himself, and printed a few more letters. Near the end he held up his work, studied it, and added something more. When at last he had laid down his pen and stood up, Aunt Jill came over to look at his sign:

  Pryvat! Keep Out!

  This Mowse Is the Personul Property of Garfield R. Jernigan

  If you Fead Him You Will Drop Ded.

  SIGNED….….

  Aunt Jill signed her name on the dotted line. “There!” she said. “That makes it an official Happy Acres Camp sign.” She found two thumbtacks, and Garf tacked his sign above Ralph’s cage.

  For the first time Ralph saw Garf grin, and when the boy left the craft shop, he did not sit behind the bamboo as Ralph had expected. He stopped to watch some campers who were jumping and bouncing on the trampoline under the direction of a counselor.

  Contented for the moment, Ralph made himself into a ball in the corner of his cage to enjoy a nap. He was not just any mouse. He was the personul mowse of Garfield R. Jernigan, a boy who wanted to run away, and the next time he was alone with his owner he would be brave and speak up no matter what dreadful song he sang.

  6

  A Thief in the Craft Shop

  At first the sign over Ralph’s cage was the cause of argument. “But Aunt Jill, how come Garf is the one who gets to feed the mouse?” the campers asked. “I want to feed the mouse, too.” “Why can’t I feed the mouse?” “It isn’t fair. Nobody else has a mouse.”

  Aunt Jill always gave the same answer. “Garf gets to feed the mouse because the mouse is his. He caught it in a butterfly net.”

  This policy inspired some of the campers to go mouse hunting—big-game hunting, they called it—with butterfly nets, but when no mice were caught, enthusiasm waned, and the campers gradually lost interest.

  Catso followed someone into the craft shop whenever he could, and whenever he succeeded, Aunt Jill said, “Someone had better put that cat out.”

  Usually Lana was the one who picked up Catso and held him with his face over her shoulder as if he were a baby. “Poor baby,” she crooned, patting Catso on the back as if she were burping an infant. Ralph found the smug look on Catso’s face most annoying.

  Garf was happy, but Ralph was not. The boy showed no signs of running away, and now that he abided by the rules, the two were never alone. The bars of Ralph’s cage enclosed a very small area, and no matter how fast he ran on his wheel, he remained in the same place. He began to sit motionless for long periods of time while he thought more and more about the freedom he had enjoyed back at the Mountain View Inn. He missed those long corridors and his exciting expeditions in search of food. What he had once called crumb scrounging now seemed a test of courage. He even came to admit that he missed his little brothers and sisters and cousins. They were nuisances, but they were livelier than a grumpy hamster. Perhaps he wouldn’t mind giving some of the little mice—boy mice, of course—short rides on his motorcycle after all.

  Most of all Ralph missed that motorcycle. He clutched the wires of his cage and, recalling the nights he had sped through the corridors of the old hotel while guests snored behind closed doors, tried to pretend they were the grips on his handlebars. Pb-pbb-b-b. Pb-pb-b-b-b. It was no use. The wires remained what they were—the bars of a small prison, higher but not as long as an economy-sized Kleenex box.

  Ralph grew listless. So great was his homesickness that choice tidbits from the dining hall tempted him less and less.
He sometimes skipped meals, preferring instead to curl up in a corner under some shredded paper where he dozed, dreaming of dark nights, smooth floors, and speed.

  “Cheer up,” said Chum. “You’ll get used to a cage.”

  Ralph did not answer. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts.

  Garf, on the other hand, no longer wanted to be alone. He came into the craft shop to tend Ralph while other campers were present, and soon he became interested in the tools in the shop and finally went to work with some other boys building wooden boats to float in the irrigation ditch.

  One long morning Ralph passed the time by watching a girl named Karen. Karen was one of the older campers, a girl twelve or thirteen years old with long blond hair, which, that morning, was wet. All the older girls washed their hair several times a week. Karen was making an old plastic bleach bottle into a piggy bank. She turned it on its side so the handle was on top, glued corks in place for legs, cut a slit under the handle, and painted eyes above the spout, which was now the piggy bank’s snout. Ralph noticed that Karen paused from time to time to scratch her left arm.

  Finally Karen set her paintbrush across the top of the paint jar and removed her wristwatch, which she laid on the shelf beside Ralph’s cage. He could hear it tick. She scratched the spot where the watch had been, returned to her painting, and then stopped to scratch again.

  “Karen, let me see your arm,” said Aunt Jill, who was showing a boy how to lace together a wallet. “Why, it looks to me as if you have poison oak. You had better go see the nurse about it. And be careful not to scratch it.”

  “But Aunt Jill, it feels so good to scratch,” said Karen, tossing back her hair.

  “I know, but scratching only spreads the poison oak and makes it worse,” said Aunt Jill. “Now run along and see the nurse. I’ll wash out your paintbrush for you. It’s almost time for the dinner bell.”

  When the bell rang for the noon meal and the craft shop was empty, Ralph felt his fur rise along his spine. Sure enough, just as he expected, there was the curious paw of Catso exploring the hole in the screen door. Then the pink nose appeared. Catso must have pushed hard, because the rusty screen gave way and the rest of his head appeared. Catso did not stop there. He pushed and wiggled until he got one shoulder and then the other through the hole. Then came Catso’s front feet followed by the rest of the beast. Catso was in the craft shop! Where was Sam? Ralph scuttled to the far corner of his cage, where he turned his back to the world and tried to make himself invisible. He heard Catso land lightly on the worktable beneath his cage and knew that this time there was no one to snatch the cat and shove him out the door.

  Ralph waited, but when nothing happened, he summoned the courage to peek over his shoulder. Catso was calmly washing himself and appeared not to notice. Ralph was not fooled for an instant. He knew Catso was aware of every move he made. Drat that cat, he thought bitterly, as his heart beat faster than the tick of the watch on the shelf beside his cage.

  Catso licked his right paw over and over with great care and began to wash his right ear. That’s right, thought Ralph. Take your time. He was worn out from bracing himself for the pounce that did not come. A real war of nerves, he thought, just what that cat wants. He’s got me where he wants me, and he knows it.

  Catso groomed his left paw, currying his fur neatly in the direction of his toes. He used his teeth to pull bits of dried mud from between his paw pads and then began to scrub his left ear. Well, come on, thought Ralph. Get it over. You don’t have to be so neat. He would just as soon be knocked off his shelf by a cat with dirty ears as a cat with clean ears.

  Catso finished washing, looked at Ralph, and glanced away. Ralph, who was familiar with that maneuver, thought, Here it comes! But this time Ralph was mistaken. Catso’s attention had been caught by the leather strap of the wristwatch hanging over the edge of the shelf. He tapped it with a curious paw and watched it swing back and forth. Ralph’s blood chilled as claws appeared from the exploring paw that batted the strap once more. Then the claws hooked the watch strap and dragged the watch down to the worktable. Why, that stupid cat actually thinks the watch band is a tail, thought Ralph in astonishment.

  Catso sat very still, listening to the watch tick. He batted it experimentally with his paw, but the watch lay as still as any terrified mouse. While Ralph watched in fascination, Catso picked up the watch in his mouth and, with the strap hanging down like a tail, leaped from the table to the floor, where he dropped the watch, batted it about, picked it up again, and slipped out through his hole in the screen door.

  Ralph ventured out of his corner and with shaking paws clung to the wires of his cage to see what happened next. Catso played with the watch awhile on the bamboo leaves, but when the cook with a pan of scraps in hand opened the kitchen door, the greedy animal dropped the watch and ran off to be fed. The watch slid on a smooth bamboo husk until it came to rest, hidden from sight, under some leaves.

  “Talk about close calls,” said Chum.

  “Stupid cat,” said Ralph in a weak voice.

  Ralph was dazed by the whole experience, but he noticed Garf leave the dining hall when the campers began to sing one of their favorite songs:

  “Up in the air, Junior Birdmen,

  Up in the air and upside down.

  Up in the air, Junior Birdmen,

  Keep your noses off the ground.”

  Come into the craft shop, Ralph pleaded silently.

  True to his promise to Aunt Jill, the boy did not enter the craft shop but sat alone with his thoughts, twirling idly in a tire suspended from one of the trees and singing to his private tune:

  “When you hear the doorbell ringing

  And see the badge of tin,

  You’ll know the Junior Birdmen

  Have turned their boxtops in.

  B—I—R—D—M—E—N! Yea!”

  Before long Karen, her left arm covered with white lotion, came running into the craft shop with two of her friends. “My watch!” she cried, sending Ralph scuttling into a corner. “It’s gone.”

  “Somebody must have taken it,” said one of her friends, an older girl who was wearing polished English riding boots.

  “I’ll bet it was that Garf Jernigan,” said the second friend.

  “I’ll bet it was, too,” said the girl in English riding boots.

  “I saw him leave the dining hall early.” She brushed dust from the toe of her boot. Girls who owned English riding boots were proud of them and shined them often.

  Karen tried to be fair. “We don’t know it was Garf, and we didn’t see him come in here.”

  The girls crowded out through the screen door to meet Aunt Jill, who had paused on her way to the shop to talk to someone. “Aunt Jill! Aunt Jill!” they cried. “Karen’s watch is gone!”

  “Aunt Jill, we have a mystery!” cried Lana, who had tagged after the older girls in her dirty cowboy boots. She liked the dirt on her boots, which showed she was not a newcomer to camp.

  Everyone wanted to hear about the missing watch. Campers crowded around Aunt Jill and the three girls. Through the open window Ralph could hear snatches of conversation. “Aunt Jill, I’m sure I left it on the shelf beside the mouse cage. I’m positive!” “—looked everyplace—” “And I saw Garf—” “—and it was my birthday present—” “—search the lodges—” “He sneaks out of the dining hall—” “—hasn’t even been excused from the table—” “Now, girls—” (This was Aunt Jill.) “Well, I don’t care. He acts funny—”

  That cat really has fixed things now, thought Ralph, as the campers gathered on the benches and at the old school desks under the walnut trees. One of the counselors led the singing, and then Aunt Jill stepped up on the platform. “Campers, I have some unhappy news today,” she began. “Karen’s watch is missing from the craft shop, where she is sure she laid it on a shelf. It was not an expensive watch, but it was a birthday present to Karen, and she would like very much to have it back.” Here Karen nodded her head vigorously, and
Aunt Jill went on. “We are not going to search the lodges as someone suggested. We are going to let the person who took the watch return it, because it is the right thing to do.”

  A lot Catso cares about doing the right thing, thought Ralph. He heard Garf who was sitting on the last bench say angrily to the boy in front of him, “What are you looking at me for?”

  Aunt Jill continued. “No one needs to know who took the watch. It can be returned to the shelf in the craft shop when no one is looking or to my desk in the office. We are not interested in who took the watch. We want it returned to Karen, because returning it is the right thing to do.”

  After Aunt Jill’s speech, the campers began to sing You Are My Sunshine. Garf slipped away from the rest of the campers and, as Aunt Jill had suggested, sat down by himself behind the clump of bamboo. This afternoon was the first time Ralph had seen him sit there.

  “You make me happy—” sang the campers.

  They haven’t made Garf happy, thought Ralph, wishing that Garf were sitting on the other side of the bamboo near the craft-shop door, where he might find the watch by accident.

  “That boy is really in trouble,” remarked Chum.

  Ralph turned in surprise. “I thought you were asleep under your cedar shavings,” he remarked.

  “That’s what I make them think,” said Chum. “I didn’t miss a thing.”

  “What is your opinion of the case?” asked Ralph, who knew the right words to use in such a situation from watching so many television programs in the lobby of the Mountain View Inn.

  “I think that boy is in a tight spot,” said Chum. “Everybody knows he used to come into the craft shop when no one was here, and they know he is still the first person to leave the dining hall, so naturally everyone thinks he took the watch. He obviously can’t return the watch, because he doesn’t know where it is, so of course everyone will think he is keeping it.”

  “That’s the way I had it figured,” agreed Ralph.