The Indian in the Cupboard (12 page)

The cowboy’s face fell. “Now, that ain’t fair. That plumb ain’t no ways fair,” he muttered. But hunger was getting the better of him anyway, so, grumbling and swearing under his breath, he turned back and marched to his side of the spoon. By this time Little Bear was seated cross-legged on the piece of paper, a hunk of bean in one hand and a mess of egg in the other, eating heartily. Seeing this, Boone lost no time in tucking in, eyeing the Indian, who ignored him.

“Whur’s mah cawfee?” he complained after he’d eaten a few bites. “Ah cain’t start the day till Ah’ve had mah jug o’ cawfee!”

Omri had completely forgotten about coffee, but he was beginning to be pretty well fed up with being bossed around by ungrateful little men, so he settled down to eat the remains of the food and simply said, “Well, you’ll have to start this one without any.”

Little Bear finished his breakfast and stood up.

“Now we fight,” he announced, and reached for his knife.

Omri expected Boone to leap up and run, but he didn’t. He just sat there munching bread and beans.

“Ah ain’t finished yit,” he said. “Ain’t gonna fight till Ah’m plumb full o’ vittles. So you kin jest sit down and wait, redskin.”

Omri laughed. “Good for you, Boone! Take it easy, Little Bear. Don’t forget your promise.”

Little Bear scowled. But he sat down again.

Boone ate and ate. It was hard not to suspect, after a while, that he was eating as much and as slowly as possible, to put off the moment when he would have to fight.

At last, very reluctantly, he scraped the last bit of egg from the spoon, wiped his hands on the sides of his trousers, and stood up. Little Bear was on his feet instantly. Omri stood ready to part them.

“Looka here, Injun,” said Boone. “If we’re gonna fight, we’re gonna fight fair. Probably ain’t even a word for ‘fair’ in your language, but Ah’m here to tell ya, with me it’s fight fair or don’t fight atall.”

“Little Bear fight fair, kill fair, scalp fair.”

“You ain’t gonna scalp nobody. Less’n ya take it off with yer teeth.”

For answer, Little Bear raised his knife, which flashed in the morning light. Omri, his hands on his knees, waited.

“Yeah, Ah see it. But you ain’t gonna have it much longer. And why aincha? Because Ah ain’t got one. Ah only got m’gun, and m’gun’s run plumb outa bullets. What Ah got, and all Ah got, is m’fists. Oh—and one other thing. Ah got mah hallucy-nation here.” He waved a hand at Omri without taking his eyes off Little Bear for a second. “And Ah know he don’t want to see this here purty red scalp o’ mine hangin’ from no stinkin’ redskin’s belt. So if Ah fight, it’s gonna be fist to fist, face to face—man to man, Injun! D’ja hear me? No weapons! Jest us two, and let’s see if a white man cain’t lick a red man in a fair fight. Less’n mebbe—jest mebbe—you ain’t red atall, but yeller?” And Boone stepped around the bowl of the spoon, threw his empty gun on the ground, and put up his fists like a boxer.

Little Bear was nonplused. He lowered his knife and stared at Boone. Whether Little Bear had completely understood the cowboy’s strange speech was doubtful, but he couldn’t
mistake the gesture of throwing the gun away. As Boone began to dance around him, fists up, making little mock jabs toward his face, Little Bear was getting madder and madder. He made a sudden swipe at him with his knife. Boone jumped back.

“Oh you naughty Injun! Ah see Ah’ll have to set mah hallucy-nation onto you!”

But Omri didn’t have to do anything. Little Bear had got the message. Throwing down the knife in a fury, he hurled himself onto Boone.

What followed was not a fist fight, or a wrestling match, or anything so well organized. It was just an all-in, no-holds-barred, two-man war. They rolled on the ground, pummeling, kicking, and butting with their heads. At one point Omri thought he saw Boone trying to bite. Maybe he succeeded, because Little Bear suddenly let him go and Boone rolled away swift as a barrel down a slope and onto his legs, and then, with a spring like a bowlegged panther, onto the Indian again. Feet first.

Little Bear let out a noise like “OOOF!” He caught Boone by both ankles and heaved him off. Little Bear picked up a clod of compost and flung it after him, catching him full in the face. Then Little Bear got up and ran at him, holding both fists together and swinging them as he had swung the battle-ax. They caught the cowboy a heavy whack on the ear, which sent him flying to one side. But as he flew, he caught Little Bear a blow in the chest with one boot. That left them both on the ground.

The next moment each of the men found himself pinned down by a giant finger.

“All right, boys. That’s enough,” said Omri, in his father’s firm end-of-the-fight voice. “It’s a draw. Now you must get cleaned up for school.”

H
e brought them a low type of egg cup full of hot water, and a corner of soap cut off a big cake, to wash with. They stood on each side of the “bowl.” Little Bear stripped off his bandolier, which left him naked to the waist. Then he lost no time plunging his arms in and began energetically rubbing the whole of the top part of his body with his wet hands, throwing water everywhere. He made a lot of noise about it and seemed to be enjoying himself, though he ignored the soap.

Boone was a different matter. Omri had already noticed that Boone was none too fussy about being clean, and in fact didn’t look as if he’d washed or shaved for weeks. Now he approached the hot water gingerly, eyeing Omri as if to see how little washing he could actually get away with.

“Come on, Boone! Off with that shirt, you can’t wash your neck with a shirt on,” said Omri briskly, echoing his mother.

With extreme reluctance, shivering theatrically, Boone dragged off his plaid shirt, keeping his hat on.

“I should think your hair could do with a wash too,” said Omri.

Boone stared at him.

“Wash mah
hair?”
he asked incredulously. “Washin’ hair’s fer
wimmin
, ’tain’t fer men!” But he did consent to rub his hands lightly over the piece of soap, although grimacing hideously as if it were some slimy dead thing, and wash at least the palms of his hands. Then he rinsed them hastily, smeared some water on his face, and reached for his shirt without even drying himself.

“Boone!” said Omri sternly. “Just look at Little Bear! You called him dirty, but at least he’s washing himself thoroughly! Now you just do something about your neck and—well, under your arms.”

Boone’s look was now one of stark horror.

“Under mah arms!”

“And
your chest, I should think. I’m not taking you to school all sweaty.”

“Hell! Don’t you go runnin’ down sweat! It’s sweat that keeps a man clean!”

After a lot of bullying, Omri managed to get him to wash at least a few more bits of himself.

“You’ll have to wash your clothes sometime, too,” he said.

But this was too much for Boone.

“Ain’t nobody gonna touch mah duds, and that’s final,” he said. “Ain’t bin washed since Ah bought ’em. Water takes all the stuffin’ outa good cloth, without all the dust ’n’ sweat they don’t keep ya warm no more.”

At last they were ready, and Omri pocketed them and ran down to breakfast. He felt tense with excitement. He’d never carried them around the house before. It was risky, but not so
risky as taking them to school—he felt that having family breakfast with them secretly in his pocket was like a training for taking them to school.

Breakfast in his house was often a dicey meal anyway, with everybody more or less bad-tempered. Today, for instance, Adiel had lost his football shorts and was blaming everybody in turn, and their mother had just discovered that Gillon, contrary to his assurances the night before when he had wanted to watch television, had not finished his homework. Their father was grumpy because he had wanted to do some gardening and it was raining yet again.

“I
know
I put them in the laundry basket,” Adiel was saying fretfully.

“If you did, I washed them, in which case they’re back in your top drawer,” said his mother. “But you didn’t, because I didn’t, and they’re not. Now listen to me, Gillon—”

“It’s only a bit of history, one mini little castle to draw, and a tiny paragraph to write,” said Gillon. “I can do it at school.”

“Stinking climate,” muttered their father. “Those onion sets will rot if I don’t get them in soon.”

“Gillon, did you borrow them?”

“I’ve got my own.”

Omri ate his cereal in silence, grinning to himself, hugging his secret. He slipped a couple of cornflakes into his pockets. “I bet Omri took them!” said Adiel suddenly.

Omri looked up. “Took what?”

“My
shorts.”

“What on earth would I want your shorts for?”

“It might be your idea of a joke to hide them,” Adiel retorted.

This was not as outrageous as it sounds. It had, until very recently, been a common form of revenge, when Adiel or
Gillon had been specially unbearable, for Omri to sneak some valuable possession and hide it.

Now, however, Omri felt very far away from such babyishness, and was quite insulted.

“Don’t be stupid,” he said.

“So you did,” said Adiel in triumph.

“I did not!”

“You’re red in the face—that’s proof you’re guilty!”

“I swear!” said Omri.

“They’re probably under your bed,” said their mother to Adiel. “Go up and have a look.”

“I have looked! I’ve looked everywhere.”

“Oh my God, it’s starting to hail now,” said their father despairingly. “So much for the apple blossom.”

Under cover of the moans that went up about the prospect of no apples in the autumn, and the exclamations about the size of the hailstones, Omri slipped his coat on and ran through the bouncing ice lumps to school. On the way he stopped under a protecting yew tree and took the little men out. He showed them each a large hailstone, which, to them, was the size of a football.

“Now, when we get to school,” said Omri, “you must lie very still and quiet in my pockets. I’m putting you in separate ones because I can’t risk any fighting or quarreling. If you’re seen I don’t know what will happen.”

“Danger?” asked Little Bear, his eyes gleaming.

“Yes. Not of death so much. You might be taken away from me. Then you’d never get back to your own time.”

“You mean we’d never wake up outa this here drunken dream,” said Boone.

“If that’s how you look at it—no.”

But Little Bear was staring at him very thoughtfully. “Own time,” he said musingly. “Very strange magic.”

Omri had never arrived at school with more apprehension in his heart, not even on spelling-test days. And yet he was excited too. Once he had taken a white mouse to school in his blazer pocket. He’d planned to do all sorts of fiendish things with it, like putting it up his teacher’s trouser leg (he had had a man teacher then), or down the back of a girl’s neck, or just putting it on the floor and letting it run around and throw the whole class into chaos. (He hadn’t actually dared do anything with it except let it peep out and make his neighbors giggle.) This time he had no such plans. All he was hoping was that he could get through the day without anybody finding out.

Patrick was waiting for him at the school gate.

“Have you got him?”

“Yes.”

His eyes lit up. “Give! I want him.”

“All right,” said Omri. “But you have to promise that you won’t show him to
anybody.”

Omri reached into his right-hand pocket, closed his fingers gently around Boone, and passed him into Patrick’s hand.

The moment Omri had let go of him, things started to happen.

A particularly nasty little girl called April, who had been right across the playground at the moment of the transaction, was at Patrick’s side about two seconds later.

“What’ve you got there then, what did he give you?” she asked in her raucous voice like a crow’s.

Patrick flushed red. “Nothing! Push off!” he said.

At once April pointed her witchy finger at him. “Lookit Patrick blu-shing, lookit Patrick blu-shing!” she squawked. Several other children speedily arrived on the scene (as a certain type of child will, whenever somebody is getting taunted) and soon Patrick and Omri found themselves surrounded.