The Mouse and the Motorcycle Page 5

  Early in the morning the smell of bacon drifting up from the kitchen brought back all Ralph’s dreams of the ground floor. It was not long until he was embarrassed to discover that Keith was awake and was lying quietly in bed watching him.

  “Hi,” said Keith.

  “Oh, hello.” Ralph wished he had returned to the mousehole before dawn. “Well, I guess it’s about time for me to go home to bed.”

  Keith sat up. “Don’t go yet. Wait until my folks get up.”

  Ralph leaped to the floor. “I didn’t think you would want to talk to me after I lost your motorcycle.”

  “I may never have another chance to talk to a mouse.”

  Ralph was flattered. It had never occurred to him that a boy would consider talking to a mouse anything special.

  “What would you like for breakfast?” asked Keith.

  “You mean we still get room service? After what I did?”

  “Sure.” Keith pulled his knees up under his chin and wrapped his arms around his legs.

  “You mean you aren’t mad at me anymore?” asked Ralph.

  “I guess you might say I’m mad but not real mad,” Keith decided. “I’ve been lying here thinking. It wouldn’t be right for me to be real mad, because I get into messes myself. My mom and dad tell me I don’t stop to use my head.”

  Ralph nodded. “I guess that’s my trouble, too. I don’t stop to use my head.”

  “They say I’m in too much of a hurry,” said Keith. “They say I don’t want to take time to learn to do things properly.”

  Ralph nodded again. He understood. If he had waited until he had learned to ride the motorcycle he would never have ridden off the bedside table into the wastebasket.

  “I’ll never forget the first time I rode a bicycle with hand brakes,” reminisced Keith. “I took right off down a hill. I had always ridden bicycles with foot brakes, and when I got going too fast I tried to put on foot brakes only there weren’t any.”

  “What happened?” Ralph was fascinated.

  “By the time I remembered to use the hand brakes I hit a tree and took an awful spill.”

  Somehow, this story made Ralph feel better. He was not the only one who got into trouble.

  “The hard part is,” continued Keith, “I am in a hurry. I don’t want to do kid things. I want to do big things. Real things. I want to grow up.”

  “You look pretty grown up to me,” said Ralph.

  “Maybe to a mouse,” conceded Keith, “but I want to look grown up to grown-ups.”

  “So do I,” said Ralph with feeling. “I want to grow up and go down to the ground floor.”

  “Everybody tells me to be patient,” said Keith, “but I don’t want to be patient.”

  “Me neither,” agreed Ralph. Someone stirred next door in Room 216. “Well, I guess I better be running along,” said Ralph. “Say, about that breakfast—”

  “Sure. What do you want?”

  “How about some bacon?” suggested Ralph, remembering the fragrance that had floated up to the windowsill.

  “And some toast?”

  “With jelly,” agreed Ralph, and ran off to the mousehole, eager to tell his family things were not so bad after all. They were still entitled to room service.

  But when Ralph reached the mousehole he found pandemonium. His brothers and sisters and cousins were huddled together squeaking with fright. His mother picked up a bunch of shredded Kleenex and put it down again, only to pick up another bunch as if she did not know what to do with it. Uncle Lester and Aunt Dorothy were there, too, stuffing crumbs into their mouths as if they expected never to eat again.

  “Dear me,” Ralph’s mother was saying, “whatever shall we—oh Ralph, there you are at last. Where on earth have you been? Never mind. We haven’t time—”

  “Time for what?” asked Ralph. “What’s going on around here anyway?”

  “The housekeeper…your Uncle Lester…the sheets. Oh, do be quiet, everybody.” Ralph’s mother was so agitated she could not tell her son what was wrong.

  Uncle Lester swallowed a mouthful of crumbs. “It’s like this, Ralph. The housekeeper discovered a hamperful of sheets and towels and pillowcases with holes chewed in them.”

  Oh-oh, thought Ralph. Whatever had happened was all his fault. He might have known.

  “I heard her telephoning the manager about it from her office,” continued Uncle Lester. “The manager came up and called in all the maids and the bellboys and everyone had to look at the holes chewed in the sheets. It was quite a powwow.”

  The motorcycle, thought Ralph. What happened to the motorcycle? There might be a chance it did not go to the laundry after all. “You didn’t happen to see a motorcycle in the housekeeper’s office, did you?” he ventured.

  “I was listening, not looking out,” said Uncle Lester. “I am not foolhardy like some people around here.”

  “Ralph, you know what this means.” His mother managed to pull herself together to say that much.

  “It means war on mice,” said Aunt Dorothy ominously.

  “It means traps, poisons,” said Uncle Lester. “Who knows? This time the management might even spend money on an exterminator. We shall have to flee. There is nothing else to do.”

  “And if we flee the owls will get us,” said Ralph’s mother, causing the brothers and sisters and cousins to set up an awful squeal. “Sh-h!” The mother mouse fluttered her paws in alarm.

  “Flee?” Ralph was bewildered. “Flee and leave room service?”

  “Room service!” exclaimed his mother. “How can we expect room service after you lost that poor boy’s motorcycle?”

  “It’s all right,” Ralph assured his mother, and could not resist adding rather grandly, “I’ve already ordered. Room service is bringing us bacon and toast with jelly.”

  This news silenced everyone. A breakfast of bacon and toast with jelly delivered to the mouse nest without first being dropped on the carpet was not to be abandoned lightly.

  “We want some jelly! We want some jelly!” all the little cousins began to squeak.

  “Be quiet!” ordered Uncle Lester. “Do you want them to find us?”

  Ralph knew that no matter what the others chose to do, he was not going to flee from the hotel, not until he found out what had happened to the motorcycle. He was very sure of this and all at once he felt calm and clearheaded as he had never felt before. He knew exactly what his family should do.

  “Be quiet, everybody,” Ralph ordered, standing up straight so all his relatives could see him. “I will tell you what we are going to do.”

  “See here, Ralph,” interrupted Uncle Lester. “You are pretty young to be giving orders to your elders.”

  “Now Lester,” said Aunt Dorothy. “Let’s listen to Ralph. After all, he has our food brought up by room service. No one else in the history of the family has managed that.”

  This silenced Uncle Lester and Ralph was allowed to continue. “What we should do is keep quiet for a few days.” Here he looked down at his little cousins, who for once in their lives were not squeaking. “I will arrange for room service to bring our meals so we won’t have to go scrabbling around in the woodwork or scrounging around in the rooms. That way we won’t be tempted to taste any poison food or go near any traps, and if the management doesn’t see or hear any of us for a few days, they will forget about us. They always do.”

  “Now just a minute,” said Uncle Lester. “This boy won’t be here long. You know how it is with people. Here today and gone tomorrow.”

  Ralph had the answer. “This is only Sunday. He will be here until Tuesday because Monday is the Fourth of July and his father says he won’t drive in holiday weekend traffic. He always brings us plenty and if we don’t stuff ourselves we can save enough to last until the management forgets us.”

  Uncle Lester nodded thoughtfully. “That seems like a sound idea.”

  “Yes, but Ralph, there is one thing that worries me,” said his mother. “How are we going to tip room
service? When people have a waiter bring food to the room they always give him a coin or two for his service. We haven’t any money.”

  Ralph had not thought of this.

  “If we are going to continue to accept room service we must do the right thing,” insisted his mother.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll think of something,” promised Ralph in the grand way he had acquired since he had ordered a meal sent up to the mouse nest.

  10

  An Anxious Night

  At first Ralph’s scheme worked. Keith delivered the promised bacon, toast, and jelly; the mice ate sparingly and laid aside the leftovers against the day Keith must leave the hotel. Ralph’s mother continued to worry about tipping room service. “I want to do the right thing,” she insisted. “There must be some way we could manage a tip.” The mice dared not leave the nest to search for small coins that might have rolled under beds and dressers.

  It was late in the afternoon when Ralph heard Keith and his parents returning to their rooms. Very quietly, so that his toenails did not make scrabbling sounds in the woodwork, he slipped to the knothole and peeped out in time to see Keith flop down on the bed.

  “Do I have to go down to the dining room for dinner?” Keith asked his mother and father. “I’m not hungry.”

  Oh-oh, thought Ralph. There goes dinner.

  “I told you not to eat that whole bag of peanuts so close to dinnertime,” said his father.

  “I didn’t eat all of it,” said Keith.

  That’s good, thought Ralph. At least there would be peanuts for dinner.

  “You’ll feel better after you get washed up for dinner,” said Mrs. Gridley. “Hurry along now.”

  When his parents had gone into Room 216, Ralph noticed that Keith seemed to drag himself off the bed. He walked to the washbasin, turned on the cold water, moistened his fingers, and wiped them over his face. Then he turned off the water and gave the middle of his face a swipe with a towel, which he returned to the towel rack in such a way that it immediately fell to the floor. Keith did not pick it up, but there was nothing unusual about this. Boys rarely picked up towels. What was unusual was that Keith returned to the bed, where he sat down and stared at the wall. He did not play with his cars, nor did he eat the rest of his peanuts. He just sat there.

  Ralph stuck his head out of the knothole. “Anything wrong?” he asked.

  “Oh, hi,” answered Keith listlessly. “I feel sort of awful.”

  “Say, that’s too bad.” Ralph ventured a little farther out of the knothole. “I know what you mean. Thinking about the motorcycle makes me feel awful, too.”

  “It’s not that kind of awful,” said Keith. “I feel awful in a different way. Sort of in my insides.”

  “Think you’ll make it to dinner?” asked Ralph.

  “Oh, I guess so.” There was no enthusiasm in Keith’s voice. “Anything I can bring you?”

  “Whatever is handy,” said Ralph, who hesitated to place an order when he could see Keith did not feel like going to dinner at all. “We are…sort of depending on you. The housekeeper found all those sheets I had to chew through to get out of the hamper, and I understand she got pretty excited about mice. We are lying low until the whole thing blows over.”

  A smile flickered across Keith’s face. “Don’t worry. I won’t let you down. I saved you some peanuts. I thought they might be handy for storing.”

  “Gee, thanks,” said Ralph.

  Keith got slowly off the bed and poked the peanuts, one by one, through the knothole. When he had finished Ralph popped out again and said, “Thanks a lot.”

  Keith smiled feebly and flopped down on the bed once more. Ralph went to work moving the peanuts away from the knothole to make room for whatever dinner Keith brought. He felt it would be fun to be surprised by the menu this time.

  It was something of a shock to find that dinner, which was stuffed through the knothole much earlier than Ralph expected, consisted of a couple of broken soda crackers.

  Ralph poked his head out to see if more was coming, but Keith was getting into his pajamas.

  “Aren’t you going to bed pretty early?” asked Ralph, realizing he had not heard Keith’s parents come in.

  “I felt so awful I couldn’t eat so they told me I had better come up and go to bed.” Keith tossed his shirt on the foot of the bed and pulled on his pajama top. When his head emerged, he said, “I’m sorry about your dinner. It was the best I could do. All I had was a little soup.”

  “That’s all right.” Ralph was beginning to be concerned. If the boy could not eat, neither could the mice. Keith fell into bed and Ralph ran off to report the news to his relatives.

  “What a shame,” said Ralph’s mother. “The poor boy!”

  “Oh dear, whatever shall we do?” cried Aunt Dorothy. “Our very lives depend on him.” The little cousins huddled together, big-eyed and frightened.

  “Yes, what about us?” asked Uncle Lester. “How are we going to manage if he doesn’t bring us our meals? It isn’t safe for us to go out pilfering when the housekeeper has declared war on mice.”

  “I knew it was a mistake to depend on people,” said Aunt Sissy.

  “We’ll manage somehow. We always have.” Ralph’s mother was trying to be brave, but Ralph could see how worried she was. “After all, he did bring us a supply of peanuts. We should be grateful for that.”

  “He didn’t bring many peanuts.” Uncle Lester did not sound the least bit grateful. “The greedy fellow is probably ill from stuffing himself with nuts he should have saved for us. Serves him right.”

  “Now Lester,” fussed Ralph’s mother. “The boy had a right to eat his own peanuts, but I do wish he hadn’t been quite so hungry.”

  Ralph returned to the knothole. Keith was lying in bed with his sports car in one hand. “How do you feel now?” asked Ralph.

  “Awful,” answered Keith.

  Before Ralph could reply, footsteps in the hall warned him that Keith’s parents were coming. He drew back inside the knothole where he could observe without being seen. Mrs. Gridley paused by her son’s bed and laid her hand on his forehead. “He does feel a little warm,” she remarked.

  “He’ll probably be all right in the morning,” said Mr. Gridley. “He just hiked too far in the sun this afternoon.”

  “I hope so.” The boy’s mother sounded less certain.

  Mr. Gridley filled a glass at the washbasin and brought it to Keith. “Here, Son, drink this.” When Keith had drunk the water he fell back on the pillow and closed his eyes. His parents went quietly into Room 216.

  When it was good and dark Ralph ventured through the knothole. He could hear Keith breathing deeply and he knew that he was asleep. Since he had no one to talk to, he found his little crash helmet where he had hidden it behind the curtain and, after he had adjusted the rubber band under his chin, he climbed up to the windowsill to look out into the world beyond the hotel and to dream about the lost motorcycle.

  From his perch on the windowsill Ralph saw that the parking lot held more cars than usual. This meant that the motels back on the highway were full and travelers had followed the sign pointing to the Mountain View Inn. He could hear the holiday weekend activity in the halls, too—people walking up and down, luggage being set with a thump on the floor, keys rattling in locks. Gradually, as the night wore on, the hotel grew silent, more silent than usual for now even the second-floor mice were quiet. There was no scurrying, scrabbling, or squeaking inside the walls.

  In the silence Keith tossed in his sleep and mumbled something that sounded like “motorcycle.” In a moment his mother slipped through the doorway, pulling her robe on over her nightgown. Ralph hid behind the curtain, peeping out just enough to see what was going to happen. She laid her hand on her son’s forehead and murmured, “Oh, dear.”

  Almost at once she was joined by Keith’s father, who was tying the belt to his bathrobe. “What’s the trouble?” he asked.

  “Keith has a fever,” answered the mother.
“He’s burning up.”

  Ralph was shocked. The boy really was sick. It was not too many peanuts or too much hiking. The boy was really and truly sick.

  The father turned on the lamp on the bedside table and he too laid his hand on the boy’s forehead. Keith opened his eyes. “I’m so hot,” he mumbled. “I want a drink.”

  His mother pulled back a blanket while the father brought a glass of water and held up his son’s head so he could drink part of it.

  Ralph watched anxiously, but this time he was not selfishly concerned about room service. He was concerned about Keith, the boy who had saved him from a terrible fate in the wastebasket and who had trusted him with his motorcycle, the boy who had forgiven him when he had lost that motorcycle and who had brought food, not only for Ralph, but for his whole family.

  “We had better give him an aspirin to bring down his temperature,” said Mrs. Gridley.

  Mr. Gridley started toward Room 216, stopped, and snapped his fingers as if he had just remembered something. “I took the last one back in Rock Springs, Wyoming,” he said. “I had a headache from driving toward the sun all afternoon. I meant to buy some more when we stopped, but I didn’t think of it again until now.”

  “I should have thought of it myself,” said Mrs. Gridley. “I knew we were almost out.”

  “Never mind. I’ll get some.” Mr. Gridley picked up the telephone, listened, shook it, listened again, and said, “That’s peculiar. The line seems to be dead.”

  “They must disconnect the switchboard at night,” said the mother, “but surely there is someone on duty at the desk downstairs. Every hotel has a night clerk.”