The Well-Wishers (13 page)

And just as if they'd rehearsed it, Dicky and his followers linked themselves together in a human chain between the kids in the procession and the menacing high school boys, and stood there with their heels dug in, glaring toughly and daring the world to attack.

I saw Stinker's and Smoko's hands go to their pockets and come out with rocks in them. And I saw the new people peering in a scared way from their front windows.

And then, just as I was sure big trouble was coming, a wonderful thing happened.

Because it turned out that the rumor that had spread to the high school had reached the good kids as well as the gang of bullies. And now they acted accordingly.

Before a rock could cleave the air, two stalwart youths appeared, one on each side of Stinker, and pinioned his arms. And the same thing happened to Smoko and the rest of that whole crowd. And their pointless rocks fell helpless to the ground.

Leading the rescue party was the big smiling boy called Tom Corkery, and when I saw him, my pride and relief knew no bounds.

Tom Corkery is captain of the high school baseball team and president of the student council and just about everybody's hero for miles around, and to think that he had bothered to interfere and save the day made me feel as though my adventure were pretty important. And to crown it all, he came over to me afterwards.

"This was a good idea of yours, Willoughby," he told me, Willoughby being my last name.

"Thanks, Corkery, you were a big help," I said. And we shook hands.

And that just about made my day.

And the hapless bullies were hustled away, that they could nothing common do or mean upon that memorable scene, as the poet says.

With them out of the way and no further rifts to mar life's lute, as Laura put it, we proceeded as I had planned.

We placed the rosebushes arid dwarf evergreens around the lawn and the hardy perennials in the empty flower beds, as if they were already growing there. We grouped the apple trees to one side like a miniature orchard and massed the potted plants on the front steps.

When we'd finished, it looked pretty elegant, if I do say it myself, and just like a page out of
Better Homes and Gardens.
And the new family came out on the porch and stood looking around with expressions of wonder and delight.

And when Deborah saw the family, she realized for the first time why it was that the Smugs had tried to keep them from moving in.

Her voice rang out loud and clear. "Oh," she said, "is
that
all it was?"

"Yes," I told her, "that's all it was."

"Why, how perfectly silly!" said Deborah.

"Yes, wasn't it?" I said.

And I went up to the father of the family and made my best dancing-school bow. "Welcome to Silvermine Road," I told him.

"Thank you," he said. And we shook hands.

I will draw a veil over the scene that followed.

Because the mother of the family turned out to have thoughts that did not lie too deep for tears, and she cried buckets for sheer joy, and Laura joined in happily, and the youngest of the family's three children was a mere baby and when it saw the flowers it waved its arms and cooed, and we all felt sort of icky and yet noble, and if my own eyes seemed to be perspiring there for a second, why dwell on it now?

The father of the family asked us inside, and we went in for a bit, though it was rather a tight squeeze as there were sixty-three of us.

The furniture was standing around as if it didn't feel sure it belonged there yet, the way furniture always does on moving day. But you could tell that the rooms were going to look fine when they got used to themselves. There was a piano at one end of the living room, and it developed that the father was the one who played this, and after a little persuasion he played part of the "Moonlight Sonata" and it was keen.

After that we thanked him and said good-bye and that we hoped we'd see them all again soon.

And we went home to tell our parents and the Well-Wishers all about it.

It had been such an exciting afternoon that nobody felt much like getting back to normal all the rest of that day. I asked Mom if James and Laura and Lydia and Gordy and those of our grown-up friends who wanted to could stay at our house for potluck supper and she said why not? And afterwards we played charades. Dicky LeBaron wouldn't stay, though, and I was sorry. I was getting to like him better and better.

But I forind out later that there were parties that night all over town to celebrate.

What the Smugs and Stinker and Smoko did with their evening I would be the last to guess.

But even long after midnight, when everyone had gone home and I was in bed, I was still too keyed up to go to sleep. I kept going over the whole adventure in my mind. And I kept thinking about the clearing in the woods with the deserted garden and the tumbledown house, and the way I'd felt about them and the way our dog Alice had acted, and the way the magic had really begun percolating right at that minute, taking hold of my thoughts and giving me the idea of what to do.

It was so late when I finally dozed off that I almost didn't wake up in time for church. I did, though. Nearly everyone was there, including the new people. They were all smiles, except for the biggest little boy, who looked solemn.

And Mr. Chenoweth was wreathed in smiles, too, and preached a pretty good sermon on the text, "For lo, the flowers appear on the earth."

But I was impatient for next day, when Town Hall would be open. And on Monday as soon as school was out, I went straight there, to the department where they keep the old records. I had been there often before, to look up different things I was curious about. James laughs at me about this, and calls me Old Father Antiquary. But I am interested in my town and its history.

I found the deed for the new family's land and traced the ownership back, and the earliest known owner was somebody called Hagar Gryce. That was all Town Hall could tell me and it wasn't much.

But then I went to call on Miss Isabella King, as the oldest living inhabitant I knew, to see if she had ever heard of Hagar Gryce and could tell me about her. And she had and she did.

And when I heard what she had to say, I hurried to the red house where the others were waiting, and told
them.

"You see," I was saying a few minutes later, "this Hagar Gryce was a runaway slave who was saved by the Underground Railroad. And afterwards she lived there in an old log and fieldstone cabin and grew flowers and herbs. And the country people used to come to her and said she did magic cures. So you see it all connects. What's left of her magic must be still hanging around there where her old house used to be."

"It's kind of wonderful to think of it waiting all those years for you to come by," said Gordy.

"Waiting to help just the right people move in, too," said James.

"Maybe it was the magic that called them there in the first place," said Lydia.

Only Laura looked a little disappointed. "Then this magic didn't have anything to do with the well at
all?
"

"Sure it did," I said. "All magic must be part of the same family, mustn't it? It stands to reason. I wished on the well and the well sent me on to the nearest spot it knew where the right kind of magic was to fit this particular case."

"Like switching a car on to the next station," said Lydia.

"Like the Underground Railroad!" said James.

"Sure. It all connects," I said again.

"What's an Underground Railroad?" said Deborah.

"A subway train," said James, not wanting to go into all that now.

But Laura was looking happier again.

"Anyway," said Gordy, "this was just about the most important big good-turn adventure yet, I'd say,
however
the magic managed it. When you think what it really sort of stood for, I'd say it was better than the new school one, even. Or just as good as. Whadda
you
say:

"And now I suppose the magic's nearly over," sighed Lydia. "In books the big adventures always come just before the end."

"Hey!" said James. "It can't be, not yet. I haven't had my turn!"

"Neither have I," said Deborah.

We all laughed, because we hadn't been thinking of her as old enough to have a turn of her own. But we were wrong, as it turned out.

And Lydia was wrong about the magic being over, too. It wasn't, not by a long shot.

Even the adventure of the new family wasn't really finished. Not yet. Not quite. The new people had moved in, but they hadn't started living here yet.

It is Deborah that
that
story belongs to. Deborah and one other.

And now I'll let them tell about it in their own way.

This chapter is not really what the title says it is. Not exactly.

But the thing is that Deborah asked me to put her story down in words for her. I don't know why she chose me to be the one.

At first she did try dictating it to me, but that turned out to be too slow and we weren't getting anywhere. So she said, "I'll tell you what happened and you write it out."

So that is what I am doing, exactly as she told it.

Except that I come into the story, too, a little, and when I get to that part, I'll tell you about it just as it seemed to me.

I'm not going to say who this is, writing. But maybe you can guess who I am, as the story goes on. There is a pun in the title of the chapter that will help you to do that, maybe.

You might not think I would know what a pun is, but I do. Just because I talk hep talk some of the time does not mean that I don't understand good English. And I may have had my troubles in school, with this teacher and that one, but I am not dumb. And lately I am getting to like school more and more.

But to get back to the story.

After the day we all welcomed the new people to Silvermine Road, and the big deal
that
turned out to be, you would think everything would stay real cool for the new family from then on.

But such is not always the case.

It is when the big deals are over and the ordinary daily living starts that the real test comes. Ordinary daily living is not what most people are at their best at. And that goes for just about everybody in this story. Except maybe Deborah.

Where Deborah comes into it is that the oldest of the three children in the new family turned out to be six years old. And that meant he was in the first grade, and on Wednesday of that same week when he came to school for the first time he was put in Deborah's room.

His given name turned out to be Hannibal, and that's what started the trouble, in a way. But not really. Some of it was his own fault and some of it was other people's, and some of it was just human nature I guess.

That first morning Miss Silloway, the first-grade teacher, brought him into the class and introduced him.

"Children," she said, "this is Hannibal. And we're glad to have him with us, aren't we, class?"

"Yes, Miss Silloway," said the class.

"And you're glad to be with us, aren't you, Hannibal?" said Miss Silloway.

"No," said Hannibal.

"Oh, I think you are, really," said Miss Silloway.

"No," said Hannibal.

Miss Silloway frowned, but her mouth went on smiling. "Well, then, we'll just have to
make
Hannibal glad to be with us, won't we, class?"

"Yes, Miss Silloway," said the class, but not quite so enthusiastically.

"No," said Hannibal, at the same time.

Miss Silloway stopped smiling. "Sit down, Hannibal," she said.

Hannibal sat down.

But things went on being like that all morning. Hannibal sat there solemn and silent except when Miss Silloway called on him or asked him a question, and then he said, "No." And when recess came in the middle of the morning, he stood by himself at one end of the playground, doing nothing.

Deborah and some of the boys and girls went over to him.

"Wouldn't you like to play with us?" said Deborah.

"No," said Hannibal.

"Maybe later you will," said Deborah.

"No, I won't," said Hannibal.

"I guess maybe he'd rather be by himself at first," said Deborah to her friends. "I know how it is."

"No, you don't," said Hannibal.

"Yes, I do," said Deborah, smiling at him. And she and hey friends went back to their game of tag, and left Hannibal idly kicking at the pebbles of the playground.

But all the others were not so understanding. The first, second, and third grades all have recess together, and pretty soon some of the third-graders started clustering around Hannibal and teasing him.

That is the way some people always act when a person is different. I know all about it because I have been the one who was different, in my day. That's why I was so interested in the new family in the first place, and why I spent all my money on those chrysanthemums, because I know how being different feels.

Not that I am any angel. There have been other times when somebody else has been the different one and I have gone along with the heckling majority. Like the way we used to treat Gordy, just because he was rich and toothy and no good at games. But that is over and done with.

All the same, you can see how these kids felt. Those who had been
for
the new family were disappointed that Hannibal had turned out all cross and sulky and no fun. And those who had been against could now say, "You see?" and "I told you so."

It was Hannibal's name that they picked on first.

"What did you say your name was?" said somebody. "Hannibal or Annabelle?"

Hannibal mumbled something.

"What did he say?" said somebody else.

"He said Annabelle, didn't you, Annabelle?" said a horrid little girl with corkscrew curls called Mabel Timkin, whose father was one of the Smugs who hadn't wanted the new family there in the first place. "'Good gracious, Annabelle!'" she cried, dancing around Hannibal. "'Good gracious, Annabelle!'"

And others took up the cry.

"'Good gracious, Annabelle!'" they yelled. "Oh, Annabelle, say not so!"

And Mabel Timkin shrilled out, "Chase me, chase me, Annabelle; I've never been chased before!"