Not-Just-Anybody Family (14 page)

Byars with Ed and their four children in Marfa, Texas, in July 1968. The whole family gathered to cheer for Ed, who was flying in a ten-day national contest.

Byars at the Newbery Award dinner in 1971, where she won the Newbery Medal for
The Summer of the Swans
.

Byars with Laurie, Betsy, Nan, Guy, and Ed at her daughter Betsy’s wedding on December 17, 1977.

Byars in 1983 in South Carolina with her Yellow Bird, the plane in which she got her pilot’s license.

Byars and her husband in their J-3 Cub, which they flew from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific coast in March 1987, just like the characters in Byars’s novel
Coast to Coast.

Byars speaking at Waterstone’s Booksellers in Newcastle, England, in the late 1990s.

Byars and Ed in front of their house in Seneca, South Carolina, where they have lived since the mid-1990s.

Turn the page to continue reading from the Blossom Family Series

“I’m finished!” Junior called.

He walked to the barn door and looked out. No one was in sight.

“I’m finished! Hey, you can see it now! Where are you guys?”

No answer.

Junior walked out into the sunlight. He made a visor of one hand.

Nobody was in the yard.

“I said I’m finished,” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “You can see it now!”

Still no answer.

Junior sighed. All morning long he had been wasting valuable construction time keeping Maggie and Vern out of the barn, keeping them from seeing what he was working on. Every time he turned his back, one of them would try to sneak in the door. “Oh, no you don’t.” Or slip through the loose board in the back of the barn.

He must have said “Oh, no you don’t” at least a hundred times.

All the yelling had made his mom come out of the house. “What’s Junior doing in the barn?” he heard her say.

“I don’t know. He won’t let us see,” Maggie said. “He’s making something.”

“And he’s using all of Pap’s hog wire,” Vern said.

“Junior, are you making anything dangerous in there?”

“No’m.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“Well, I’ve had enough of your surprises. Come out here. We have just gotten through paying for your last summer’s surprise—flying off the barn. Come out here this minute.”

Junior appeared in the doorway of the barn. He had a hammer in one hand.

“I didn’t fly,” he explained, “I fell.”

“What are you making in there now?” Vicki Blossom’s hands went on her hips.

Junior sighed. He walked reluctantly to his mother and said, “I’m making a …” Then he lowered his voice and whispered the rest of it.

“A what?”

He sent a suspicious glance in Maggie and Vern’s direction to make sure they couldn’t hear. He cupped his hands around his mother’s ear. “A …” he said.

“But why? What for? Hurry up, Junior. I’ve got a customer inside. I’m cornrowing her hair and customers don’t grow on trees.”

Junior sighed again. “Remember last night? Remember …” He motioned for her to bend down again. This time he gave such a long explanation that Maggie and Vern started slipping to the back of the barn where the loose board was.

“Oh, no you don’t.”

He had run into the barn and thrown a tarp over his invention. “There! Spy all you want to.” From then on he’d worked strictly under the tarp. It had been hot under there and the air smelled of old oil, but Junior felt it was worth it.

Now, after all that, he was finished, and there was no one around to see what he had made.

Junior glanced down at his watch even though the watch was broken. According to this watch, the time was always 3:05. When Junior had first found the watch in the parking lot of Sears and strapped it on his arm, he’d kept hoping that one time he would glance down and it would say 3:06, but he had given up on that now. Still, he looked at his watch every time he was curious about the time, like right now. Maybe Maggie and Vern were eating lunch or something.

“Why do you wear that old broken watch?” Maggie had once asked. “It never gives you the right time.”

“It does too,” he had answered. “At three-oh-five in the afternoon and three-oh-five at night.”

Anyway, he liked the way he looked with a watch on his wrist.

He checked the time again. With a sigh, he walked back to the barn. He stood in the doorway, looking at the bulging tarp.

Well, if Maggie and Vern weren’t interested enough to wait, they just weren’t going to get to see it. He would set it up without them. It would serve them right.

He felt better after he had made that decision. He got the wheelbarrow from the corner and rolled it over to the tarp. He lifted the tarp dramatically, the way he had intended lifting it for Maggie and Vern.

He said, “Tadaaaa!”

He gasped with pleasure. Just in the few minutes it had been out of his sight, it had gotten more impressive. He was smitten with regret that Maggie and Vern weren’t there to admire it.

His invention was spectacular—as sturdy as if it had been made by a real carpenter. He walked around it. From every side it was a beautiful, professional job. The word
professional
said it all.

The hog wire was fitted over the top, nailed neatly into place; the nail heads hammered sideways over the wire for extra security. The corner boards had been put into place with screws—more security. Even he himself—the inventor—would not be able to get out if he was locked inside. That’s how professional it was.

“And,” he said, speaking aloud to his invention, “you’re going to make me rich.”

He loaded his creation awkwardly onto the wheelbarrow. It tipped and he straightened it with his knee. Hog wire took off some skin.

Now he really wished Maggie and Vern were there—this time to take a corner. Even without them the invention finally thudded solidly onto the wheelbarrow. Junior secured it with rope, making a bow on top as if it were a present.

He glanced out the barn door to make sure Maggie and Vern had not returned without his hearing them. That would be just like them—to spy on his invention and then run away without praising it. No, the yard was empty.

“Where are they?”

For a moment he considered pushing it just to the edge of the woods and waiting until they returned. That would give them a chance to see him, just a glimpse of him and his beautiful, professional creation, and then he would disappear into the woods.

He thought longingly of their envious cries: “Junior, what is that?” “Junior, where did you get that?” And the final, disbelieving “Is that what you were making? Come back, Junior. Please let us see.”

He lingered over the thought. He wanted to hear those words a lot, but he didn’t have time. There was still work to do. He glanced at his watch: 3:05. He would have to hurry to be finished by supper.

Quickly he pushed the wheelbarrow out of the barn. Legs flashing in the sunlight, he headed for the house. He ran in, and in a few minutes he ran out. There was a bulge in his back pocket.

Then Junior picked up the wheelbarrow handles and ran hard for the woods.