Blossom Promise (12 page)

Mud opened his mouth in a long yawn. His tongue curled out of his mouth. He struggled to turn over in the tight space between Pap and the side of the bed.

He looked long and hard at Pap’s face. He rubbed his face against the stiff bedspread. A whine of pleasure began deep in his chest. His tail thumped against the bed railing.

He began pulling himself toward Pap’s face. His long legs stretched out behind him, pushing him forward.

“Oh, we got to get him out of here,” Vicki Blossom said. “You know Mud. He’s going to start barking. Next thing you know he’ll want to run around in circles. Come on!”

She reached into the hospital bed. “Help me, somebody!”

Ralphie reached in with her. “I’ll do that. I’m taller.” He realized for the first time this was true. He hoped Maggie was watching.

He pulled Mud manfully into his arms. Mud struggled like a wild animal, but Ralphie held on. This was what love did to a man, he thought, gave him supernatural powers. Over his head, the get-well-soon balloons danced on their strings.

“I’ll get his feet,” Maggie offered. She reached in and grabbed Mud’s hind legs and held them together.

“No problem,” Ralphie said.

Mud was doing the dog paddle with his front feet, trying to get to Pap. “Sorry, Pal,” Ralphie told him. He could feel the dog’s hot eager breath through his clown suit. “Fun’s over for the night.”

Vicki Blossom peered out the door. “Come on,” she said.

The Blossom children ran down the hall. Ralphie and Maggie took the lead. Ralphie was hobbling so fast that his artificial leg seemed like something a person would snap on for extra speed.

Mud gave a sharp bark of protest as they passed the nurse’s station. The nurse stuck her head out a doorway to see what was happening.

“Ralphie! What are you doing with that dog? Ralphie! Come back here.”

Ralphie ran to the elevator and jabbed the button with his elbow. Mud was digging at Ralphie with his paws. Mud was a good digger, but Ralphie was a man.

In the distance, Ralphie heard the nurse coming closer. His heart was pounding so hard that he didn’t hear the hum of the approaching elevator.

The doors surprised him by sliding open. “Everybody on,” he said coolly.

He stepped inside. The Blossoms did too.

“Ralphie!” the nurse said.

“Just passing through,” he explained as the doors closed on her startled face.

The elevator moved down to the lobby, and Mud threw back his head and howled.

Mud barked at the screen door.

The Blossom family was at the supper table. Nobody got up to let him in.

He barked again.

This time Junior got up with a sigh and went to the door. He was eating a chicken leg.

“There is no need to open the door, Junior,” Maggie said. “Mud doesn’t want to come in. He wants somebody to drive him to the hospital to see Pap again.”

Through the screen Mud watched Junior hopefully. Junior opened the door. Mud barked again and backed up in the direction of the car.

Junior said, “No, Mud, you can’t go back to the hospital. Mom won’t take you.”

“That’s for sure,” Vicki Blossom said.

“And I’m not allowed to drive.”

Junior came back to the table. Vicki Blossom waited until he was seated. Then she said, “Guess what we’re going to do this summer, kids?”

All the Blossom kids looked at her, but nobody answered.

“Aren’t you even going to guess?” she went on. “Don’t you want to know?”

Junior couldn’t help himself. “I do,” he said.

“Well, this summer, soon as school’s out, we are going to get in the car and go on the circuit. We’re going to have the best time we ever had in our lives. We’re going to eat when we’re hungry and sleep when we’re tired. We’re not going to do one single thing we don’t feel like doing.”

“Will Pap be able to go too?” Junior asked. “I wouldn’t want to go without Pap.”

“Yes, Pap’s going too.” She paused and swallowed.

“Then, in the fall …”

She stopped completely. She put her lips together in the straightest line any of them had ever seen. Finally Junior couldn’t stand the suspense.

“What are we going to do in the fall?” he asked.

“In the fall, we’re going to settle down.”

All three children looked at their mom in astonishment. That was the last thing they had expected.

“Settle down? Us?” Maggie asked.

“Yes. Now don’t ask me how, because I don’t know how yet. I’m going to have to work it out. I could start a riding school—I’ve thought about that. You could help with the little kids.”

It was Maggie’s reaction she was watching for. When she saw it, she said defensively, “I mean it, Maggie. I’m going to do it.”

“I believe you,” Junior said.

“Anyway,” she went on, “we don’t have to worry about the details now. All we have to concentrate on is having a summer we’ll remember all our lives.”

“And when we settle down,” Junior said, catching her enthusiasm for the new life, “I can spend the night with Mary a lot, can’t I?”

“If she’ll have you.”

“And Maggie can see Ralphie all the time and Vern can see Michael!”

“If his mom’ll let me,” Vern said gloomily.

“She will,” Junior said confidently. He turned his delighted face from Maggie to Vern, then back to his mom. He was aware that Maggie and Vern didn’t look as happy as he did—Maggie looked almost suspicious, but they would see. It would work out. It always did.

Vicki Blossom got to her feet. She went into the living room and came back with her purse. She took out an envelope.

“I don’t know whether I ought to show you these or not,” she said.

“I want to see, no matter what,” Junior said.

Maggie said, “Show us what?”

“Well, when I was going through Pap’s things, looking for his insurance papers, I came across his old camera. There was film in it. Pap used to take a lot of pictures, remember, but he stopped the day your dad died.”

Vicki looked down at the envelope. “Twenty-four Hour Service,” it said.

“So I took the roll of film out of the camera and I took it to the drugstore. The man didn’t know whether the film would still be good after all this time, but he said he’d try.”

“Did they come out?”

Vicki opened the envelope and laid the pictures on the table. There were ten of them. Junior in his dad’s hat, Maggie on his shoulders, Vern and his dad playing poker on a picnic table, Vicki and Cotton laughing, some shots of the five of them …

“We look so young,” Maggie said, picking one up to look at it more closely.

“We were young,” Vicki Blossom said.

They passed the pictures around the table.

“I remember this one being taken,” Junior said.

“At the last minute, right before Pap took the picture, Dad switched hats with me. That’s why I have on the big hat and he has on the little one.”

“It would be nice if Pap was in some of them,” Vicki said.

“He’s not
in
them,” Junior said, “but he’s
part
of them. We wouldn’t have these pictures if it wasn’t for Pap. Can I have this one of me and Dad to keep?”

“Can I have this one?” Maggie asked.

Vern had already picked out the poker picture.

“Let’s see. There are ten. Each of you can have three. I want this one.” She slipped out the one of her and Cotton. “Now,” she said, “did I do right in showing them to you? Do you feel better or worse?”

“Better!” Junior said.

Maggie thought about it. “Better.”

Vern nodded.

Vern was on his absolute best behavior. Michael had called early that morning to say that the ban had been lifted. Vern could come over for two hours.

Vern had run the whole way.

From the minute he entered the kitchen, however, he was aware that the friendship was on probation. “I’ve got my eye on both of you,” was the way Michael’s mother greeted him.

After she went out of the kitchen at last, Michael asked, “What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. What can we do?”

“I don’t know.”

Vern went over the possibilities in his mind. He had to come up with something so safe, so uncontroversial, that even Michael’s mother could not find fault with it.

He straightened. “Do you know how to play poker?”

Michael shook his head.

“You want to learn?”

Michael nodded.

“We’ll play for matches. My dad taught me to play. It’s been a long time since I played, but it’s coming back to me. Where are your cards?”

“In the game room.”

They started down the stairs. “We’ll play five-card stud—nothing wild. High hand bets. Table stakes. No check raises.”

Vern continued reciting the basics as they descended to the game room.

“Three of a kind beats two pair. A straight beats three of a kind. A royal flush beats everything.”

On the bottom step, he stopped. A sudden thought astonished him. It was what Junior had said last night when they were looking at the old snapshots—that Pap wasn’t in the pictures but was still part of them.

That was true of his dad—right now. Vern had not played poker since his dad died, and yet as he explained the game to Michael his dad’s image rose up in his mind as distinctive and powerful as an atomic cloud.

“Are you going to play or not?” Michael asked.

Vern blinked. “Oh, yes.”

He crossed the marbleized vinyl floor. He settled himself on a card table chair and hooked his feet behind the chair legs.

He began shuffling the cards, flat on the table, the way his dad did.

“Don’t change the expression on your face when you look at your hole card,” he said as he began to deal. “It’ll ruin your odds.”

Junior was packing his paper bag again. At last he was going to spend the night with Mary. At last he was going to be something he had thought he would never be again—happy.

In one half hour he would be walking with Mary through the valley. He and Mary would pass through forests of hemlock and pines, over slopes thick with ferns, beside the high rock walls of the waterfall. It was a dream come true.

Mary would be in front with her cane. He would be behind with his stick. It was amazing the way the forest and bushes seemed to part for Mary, like something out of the Bible.

His mom looked in the door of his room. “Are you ready?”

“Almost,” Junior called cheerfully. “Did I tell you about her vultures, Mom?”

“Only two dozen times.”

“But vultures aren’t supposed to be beautiful and these are. I wish you could come with me and see them.”

“Maybe I will some other time.”

Junior glanced into his paper bag suitcase and checked the contents. The bag was new, but the contents were the same, except for the picture of him and his dad in each other’s hats. He wanted Mary to see that.

Satisfied, he folded the bag and tucked it under his arm. “I’m going to wait on the porch.”

“I’ll wait with you,” his mother said.

Maggie and Ralphie sat on the fence behind the barn. Ralphie had not seen Maggie smile in a long time. It had been so long that he couldn’t remember how she looked when she did smile.

“Are you glad you’re going on the rodeo circuit this summer?” he asked finally.

“Not really.”

“I thought you liked being a trick rider.”

“I did.”

She sighed, then she shrugged her shoulders. “My mom’s got a boyfriend,” she explained. “He’s a bull rider and his name’s Cody Gray. He goes around in a silver Cadillac convertible and thinks he’s big time.”

“You don’t like him?”

“That’s not the point.”

“What is the point?”

She shook her head. “It’s too hard to explain.”

“You could try.”

“Ralphie”—she turned to face him—“the truth is that my mom has never grown up.”

“Listen, you’re talking to somebody whose mom runs around in clown suits carrying balloons!”

Maggie smiled. It was not the grin Ralphie remembered, but it was better than nothing.

“I mean, Ralphie, she still wants the same things she wanted when she was eighteen years old. She says we’re just going back on the circuit this one last summer and then we’ll settle down for sure. Maybe she even believes it.”

“But you don’t.”

“I guess I’ve heard it too many times before,” Maggie said. She leaned back against the fence.

“You know, Ralphie,” she went on, “the people who are lucky grow up when they’re supposed to, not too fast, not too slow—on schedule. The people who aren’t lucky—well, they either never grow up, like my mom, or they grow up too fast.” She closed her eyes.

“Like you?”

She nodded.

Ralphie glanced down at his artificial leg. “I probably fall into the too-fast category myself.”

Maggie opened her eyes and gave him an understanding look. Then she straightened.

“Only, Ralphie, this time I’m going to see that it happens. I’m going to see that we do open a riding school. I’m going to see that we settle down whether my mom likes it or not. This is a Blossom promise to myself. I’m going to take over this family if I have to.”

“Mutiny!” Ralphie said.

“Exactly!” Maggie answered.

Ralphie squinted down at Maggie as if he were trying to stare right into her mind. To divert him, she grinned. This grin was more like he remembered.

“I wrote you a postcard,” she said.

“Did you? I never got it.”

“I never mailed it.”

“Well, that explains why I never got it. So what did it say? I’m interested.”

“Oh, it was just the ordinary everyday boring miss-you, wish-you-were-here postcard. I had to throw it away though. There was one word that ruined it.”

“What word?”

Maggie looked at him out of the sides of her eyes. “Well, the word was not ‘love’ if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“That’s exactly what I’m thinking,” Ralphie said. “I know you love me, Maggie. Why else would you ask me to smuggle your dog into the hospital? Why else would you climb up a tree with me? Why would you let me kiss you? You love me and you know it.”

Maggie’s only answer was that wide pointed-tooth grin.