Blossom Promise (10 page)

This time the excitement was heightened by all the screaming. Something big was happening at the creek. Mud wanted to get in on the action.

He arrived at the creek bank when Pap’s loop was whizzing in the air. Mud never took his eyes off it. Usually Pap had to calm him down with soft-spoken commands. “Take it easy, Mud. I’m not doing this for your amusement. No jumping. You’ve seen ropes before. Give me room.”

This time Pap didn’t say any of those things. His eyes watched something in the middle of the creek. Pap was intent.

Before Mud could see what had Pap’s attention, Pap stepped into the water. Instantly Mud did too. Pap threw the rope. Mud barked.

The rope seemed to fly like the flickers, in one long graceful arch. Then the rope landed, and Mud splashed into the creek, bent on retrieving it.

He swam. The current carried him swiftly downstream.

He crawled out. He shook himself. He ran back. As far as he was concerned, the action was still in the middle of the creek. He plunged into the water.

Again the current carried him downstream. He swam to the bank and climbed out. He shook himself and barked at the boys now disappearing around the bend.

Still barking, he ran back to Pap for instructions. He got there just as Pap stumbled up the bank. Pap grabbed a tree. Then with a sigh so low only Mud’s keen ears heard it, Pap slumped to the ground.

All this had been one wild, glorious moment for Mud. Now he stopped in his tracks.

Pap did not move. Mud didn’t move either.

The moment was frozen in time. Junior was in one place, Mud in another. Both of them concentrated on Pap.

Junior made the first move. He went over and started talking to Pap in a low, pleading voice. Junior was crying.

Mud’s tail slowly sagged between his legs. He stood statue-still. A worried crease came in his forehead.

Then Junior started yelling. He got up and walked backward, stumbling. He would have stepped on Mud if Mud had not dodged out of his way. Junior’s movements were so wild, so scary, that Mud finally ran to the truck and got between the front tires.

In the shelter of the truck, Mud began to pant. He shifted his worried gaze from Junior to Pap, back to Junior. From time to time he gave a sharp, anxious bark.

Now Junior was running. Mud moved back further under the truck. This time Junior kept running, all the way to the top of the hill and out of sight.

Mud hesitated for a moment. Then he came out. Keeping low to the ground, he crawled toward Pap.

Ten feet away from Pap he came to a halt. He did not want to go any farther. He was still crouched in that same spot, whining, when Mad Mary came over the hill.

“Shoo!” she said. She waved her cane. “Git!”

Normally Mud would have growled—he had never liked the wild way Mad Mary smelled. He didn’t trust anybody who smelled wild. Once he had even tried to attack her.

“Shoo! I said, Git!”

This time, Mud ran for the trees. He ran in a crouch, as if he had just received a powerful kick, as if more had gone out of him than just his instinct to chase Mad Mary.

He went deep into the woods, running hard. Then he circled around, and came back to the pines. This was the highest spot on the Blossoms’ farm.

Mud stood there, hidden in the shadows, sides heaving, watching with his golden eyes. The ambulance came, siren wailing. Pap was carried up the creek, over the bridge, and loaded into the ambulance. Then the ambulance drove away.

All this brought a double furrow to Mud’s brow. It was as deep as if it had been carved with a knife.

Time passed, but not for Mud. He kept standing in the trees, tail between his legs. Every time something new happened—like a strange woman bringing food, he watched intently, but the furrow between his brows never eased.

Finally dark came. The lights went off in the house. Mud watched by moonlight.

At ten o’clock Mud began to howl. Mud was a good howler. On one of his better nights, he could be heard for miles.

This time Mud’s howling was different. His howls were low, quiet, more like moans. They were so low that the people at the house never heard them above the rush of the creek.

Mud howled for a long time, his sharp nose pointing to the moon. About midnight, he began to shiver. It wasn’t because he was still wet from the creek, or that he was cold …

The shivers made him want to be in his misery hole. Mud moved toward the house. He kept his distance, like a fox scouting a chicken house. The house was dark and quiet, but someone was in the swing on the porch.

Mud stopped.

It was Mad Mary. He could smell her. It was the wild smell that usually brought up his hunting instinct, but that was gone. He was not the same dog who had flushed the flickers that afternoon and barked triumphantly as the birds wheeled into the sky. Tonight he only wanted to get in his hole.

He went to the back of the house and nosed his way through the thick shrubbery. Then, in a sort of tunnel he had created over the years, he made his way to the front porch.

He did not make a sound. He did not rustle a leaf.

“I smell wet dog,” Mad Mary said, but the rhythm of her swinging did not stop.

With his tail between his legs, Mud slipped behind the steps. There was his misery hole at last.

He turned around several times, circling as usual so that his body would be perfectly positioned. Then with a sigh he dropped his body into his dusty, well-worn misery hole.

“Tell me again,” Junior begged.

“Junior, I’ve told you ten times.”

“Just once more.”

“And then you’ll stop asking?”

“I’ll try to.”

Vicki Blossom said, “All right, but this is the last time.”

Junior leaned forward eagerly.

The Blossom family was on the front porch. Vicki Blossom was in a rocking chair. Maggie and Vern were on the steps. Junior was balanced on the porch railing in front of his mother.

“Pap is alive,” his mother recited. “He is lying in a bed in room 328. He is making the nurses’ lives miserable.”

“I want to see him,” Junior said.

“Junior, I explained that. You can talk to him on the phone tomorrow—maybe.”

“I need to see him.”

“Junior—”

“I need to!”

“Junior, don’t you believe me when I tell you Pap’s alive?”

“I’m trying to.”

Vicki Blossom sighed.

Maggie watched her mom critically. Ever since she and her mom had gotten home, she had felt like the oldest one in the family, the mother. The hatred she had felt for her mom in the Bar None Motel was gone, but a nagging irritation lingered. “Mom, the reason he can’t believe it is because the last time he saw Pap, Pap looked dead.”

“Well, I know that,” Vickie Blossom said.

Maggie turned away and pretended to be interested in the sunset.

“It sure is quiet around here,” Vicki Blossom said suddenly. “Where are the dogs?”

“Mom, you’re as bad as Junior,” Maggie snapped. “We’ve told you ten times. Mud is under the porch in his misery hole. Dump got bit by a snake.”

“How did that happen? I forget.”

“Well, he was under the house,” Junior said at once, “and he got bit and he ran off in the woods. Remember? Pap was telling me about his dog getting snake-bit when …”

“I wish I had a misery hole,” Vicki Blossom said. “I’d crawl in it myself right about now.” She lifted her hair up from her neck. “You know, this whole thing’s just beginning to hit me. There was so much to do—driving home, making sure Pap’s insurance was all right. I haven’t had time to think till right this minute. Make room for me, Mud!”

“I’ll check under the porch,” Maggie said, “and see if he’s still there.”

Maggie went down the steps and peered under the porch. “He’s still here.”

“Well, drag him out. He can be miserable up here with the rest of us.”

“Come on, Mud.”

Mud was curled into a tight ball. His eyes were shut. His nose was dry. His face had a sunken look. From time to time his shoulders trembled. He had been here like this for two and a half days.

“Come on, Mud.” Maggie tugged gently at his bandanna. Mud didn’t open his eyes.

Maggie thought about bodily pulling him out, but there was something formal in the way he had curled himself away from the world that stopped her.

“He doesn’t want to come, Mom.”

“You know what he probably does? He lies under there while we’re home so we’ll feel sorry for him. Then the minute we’re gone, he comes out and tools around.”

“I don’t think so,” Maggie said. “All the food we put is right where we left it. He hasn’t touched a thing.”

“Give him a piece of ham. That’ll bring him out. It sure was nice of Michael’s mother, Vern. She sent a Virginia ham and a congealed salad.” Vicki Blossom kept rocking, staring over the tops of the trees at the setting sun. “And Ralphie’s mom sent a deviled egg platter and two get-well-soon balloons. Everybody’s been real nice.”

“But she won’t let Michael play with me anymore,” Vern said. “She thinks I’m a bad influence.”

“You are not a bad influence.”

“She probably thinks it’s my fault that Pap had a heart attack, that if I hadn’t made the raft—”

“Vern, listen to me. What happened to Pap was not your fault, and Pap would not want you thinking that it was. That man loves you kids. He wants you to be happy. And right now, the thing you can do to help Pap get out of the hospital is to stop thinking you put him there. I mean it, Vern.”

“I’m trying,” Vern said.

Maggie came out of the house dangling a slice of ham. She went down the steps and waved it in front of Mud. He didn’t open his eyes.

“He’s not even interested in ham.”

“He did something like this before,” Vicki Blossom said. “Remember when Pap got arrested? Mud collapsed in front of a Dairy Queen. Remember that?”

“This is different,” Vern said. “Mud thinks Pap’s dead.”

Vickie Blossom said, “When Mud gets hungry enough, Mud’ll eat.”

Vern shook his head. “I lifted his eyelid yesterday, and, Mom, I couldn’t see his eye at all. It was like, well, he wasn’t in there anymore.”

“I don’t believe that,” Junior said. He went down the steps, and Maggie shifted to make room for him.

Junior drew in his breath. Mud seemed worse than he had just that morning when Junior put fresh water in his bowl. Mud reminded Junior of himself that awful afternoon when his head started floating off his body.

Hesitantly Junior reached out his hand. He raised Mud’s eyelid. The white showed bloodshot; the golden iris was rolled up into Mud’s head.

“Pap’s not dead,” he told the unseeing eye. “I thought he was, too, but now I think he’s not.”

Mud did not move.

“I would never lie to you, Mud. Pap is alive.”

“Save your breath,” Vicki Blossom said.

At nine o’clock the next morning Dump limped into the Blossoms’ yard on three legs. His left hind leg was swollen. The skin beneath the much-licked fur was red.

Junior was out on the porch steps, having a one-sided conversation with Mud. “Mud,” he was saying, “I’m going to get to talk to him on the phone, but I can’t bring the phone out here. The line won’t reach. You just have to believe me. You just have to!”

Just then Junior caught sight of Dump. He jumped to his feet.

“Mom! Everybody!” he called as he ran. “Dump’s back!”

“Yippee,” his mom said flatly from the kitchen.

Junior wanted to throw his arms around the dog, but he was afraid he’d hurt him. His hands fluttered over Dump. Finally he scratched him behind the ear with one finger.

“I’ll go get you something to eat,” he said. He ran to the steps and picked up the slice of ham. “I’m going to borrow this,” he told Mud. Then he ran across the yard, dusting the ham off on his pants. “Here,” he said.

Dump ate the ham out of Junior’s hand, and then he licked Junior’s palm.

“You’re just in time to help,” Junior told him. “Mud’s under the house and he won’t come out. He may even be dying. See, he thinks Pap is dead, and I’ve told him and told him that Pap’s alive, but he won’t listen. If anybody can get him out, it’s you. Come on. Hurry as fast as you possibly can.”

Ralphie was composing a letter to Maggie. He frequently started letters to her, but he never mailed them.

His mother passed behind him. “Are you actually writing a letter?” she asked. Quickly Ralphie turned the paper over, facedown on the table.

“I can write a letter if I want to,” he said.

“I’m surprised because I remember I had to physically threaten you to make you write your birthday thank-you notes.”

“That was because I got underwear.”

“You did not get underwear. And last week I watched you in complete misery because your teacher made you write to an author.”

“And then I didn’t get to send it,” Ralphie said.

“Perhaps that was because it started out, ‘I haven’t read any of your books, because your titles stink.’”

“Mom! You read over my shoulder.”

He waited, arms crossed over the sheet of paper, until she went out of the room. Then he turned the sheet of paper over. “Dear Maggie,” he read.

He paused and scratched his head with the end of his ballpoint pen.

“Ralphie, I asked you to help me with the balloons,” his mother called from the bedroom. Ralphie’s mother had a business called The Balloonerie. “I cannot get twenty-one balloons into the back of the station wagon and put on a clown suit at the same time.”

“Mom, I’m writing a letter. You saw that.”

“The letter can wait.”

Ralphie sighed. He got up from the table. “My next letter will be to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.”

“Put the four ‘Smile, it’s a nice day’ balloons in first. Those are my last deliveries. Then the fourteen ‘Happy Birthday’s—they’re for a party. Last to go in will be the Mickey Mouse, the Snoopy, and the ‘You’re somebody special.’”

“No ‘Drop Dead’s?”

“I will be glad when you learn to drive, Ralphie, so you can deliver balloons.”

“I’ll be glad when I can drive too,” he said.

Delivering balloons, he had already figured out, would give him the perfect excuse to stop by Maggie’s. “Oh, I had some balloon deliveries out this way,” he would say. Never mind that country people never had balloons delivered. Then he could add, “Want to ride along?”