Rufus M. (18 page)

"Well," said Rufus, "they're gone. And here comes the
Richard Peckl
"he yelled.

It was time to go home. The three children wrapped the coats around their shivering shoulders and, completely water-soaked, they trod the hot pavement home.

Jane thought about her ring. Maybe a fish swallowed it. She would make everybody go very easy when they ate their fish, hoping it would turn up in one of them.

But she did forget about her ring for a time when she reached home and found that Mr. Abbot had brought a whole big wooden box full of fireworks. Night fireworks. Skyrockets, Roman candles, and pinwheels! Great big ones! And finally the nighttime did come, and one by one he and Joey set the things off into the air. Jane and Sylvie and Mama and Rufus sat on the porch and watched and burned sparklers, and they all exclaimed admiringly whenever a particularly pretty skyrocket spun up in the air with a hiss.

Mr. Buckle, the oldest inhabitant, shuffled up the path and sat down with them. He burned a sparkler, too, and between the skyrockets and Roman candles, he led Rufus and Jane through the whole battle of Bull Run.

It was truly a glorious evening. And Rufus stomped up to bed tired and happy and wondering how he could wait until the next Fourth of July. But when Jane went to bed, she closed her eyes to go to sleep and she tried to remember what it was that made her heart heavy. Oh, her little blue ring. It would be nice to go to Mama and tell her about losing the ring, and hear her say, "There, there." But Mama was talking to the big people and Jane finally fell asleep, thinking, "Perhaps the little mermaid has found it, the little mermaid in Andersen's fairy tale."

"Stay on, now," said Rufus as he settled the cardboard boy comfortably and safely on the back axle of his bike. His bike was really a tricycle, but of course he never called it that. "Stay on," he said, "and I'll take you for a ride." This cardboard boy was Rufus's friend and enemy. Friend when he needed a friend; enemy when he needed an enemy. Right now he was his friend and Rufus was taking him for a ride; a little ride down along the Green.

Rufus had picked the cardboard boy out of a pile of rubbish outside the grocery store. Apparently the grocer did not want him anymore. This cardboard boy was a familiar figure, for his picture was in every trolley car and newspaper. He was always offering a biscuit with a smile. The biscuits were cardboard, too, not real, the same as the cardboard boy. He had on his same yellow rubber raincoat, rain hat, and boots that he always wore in rain or shine.

Today that was a good thing, for it was a very misty day in the late summer. Lots of worms had come out of the ground and lay around on the sidewalks. It must have rained during the night though it wasn't raining now and hadn't rained all day. It was just misty. Very, very misty and very quiet. Rufus rode down Raven Avenue and his ears rang from the quiet. He swallowed hard and his ears seemed to pop open. He pedaled slowly down along the Green, trying hard not to run over any worms.

It's too bad I'm not goin' fishin',
thought Rufus.
Look at all the bait I'm wastin'.
The worms were just lying around tantalizing him. Rufus paused at the drinking trough for a drink and he surveyed the sidewalks. Half worms, quarter worms, and whole worms sprawled all over the place. Well, let them lie. He couldn't go fishing by himself. Mama didn't allow him to and the rest of the family was busy.

He got back on his bike. "Want to go home now? Or want to ride some more?" he asked his cardboard friend.

By rights Rufus should not go any farther than this on Raven Avenue, because this road led to Plum Beach, where there was an amusement park. None of the Moffats was supposed to go down there alone. Sometimes they all went together on Saturday nights to see the fireworks and to ride the merry-go-round. Or on a sultry Sunday afternoon they might stroll down there to hear the band concert. But alone none of them ever went.

Rufus was not even thinking about going to Plum Beach now. But while he was sitting on his bike, swinging the pedal around, undecided as to what to do or where to go, he thought he heard the merry-go-round. Not very loud, just the faintest, softest sound of the music of the merry-go-round. "Sh-sh-sh, listen!" he said and he strained his ears. You couldn't often hear the merry-go-round this far away. Just once in a great while on a day such as today was, misty, soft, and quiet. But even today you couldn't hear it well. Now you heard it and now it seemed to disappear.

The music, faint though it was, made Rufus think about Plum Beach. He remembered that every time he had ever been there it was always bright and gay and jolly. It was jolly even on days when a sudden thunderstorm scattered the crowds and made them dash, screaming and yelling, for the open trolleys, and it was exciting to watch the trolleys ride off, tipping precariously to one side as the throngs crowded the running boards and tried to get at least their heads inside.

Where Rufus was it was gloomy and quiet. But the faint strains of the merry-go-round seemed to say to him, "Here, it's fun." And then they faded out and Rufus pedaled slowly down another block, listening hard to catch them again.

"You hear the merry-go-round?" he asked his cardboard friend.

Rufus was fond of the merry-go-round. Who wasn't? But there was one horse in particular that he was very fond of. His name was Jimmy. He had his name, JIMMY, spelled out on his chest in red rubies. He was the only flying horse who had his name embroidered on him. A dappled-gray horse, he was.

"Want to see Jimmy?" Rufus asked the biscuit boy.

The cardboard boy had never been to Plum Beach. If Rufus took the boy down there and showed him Jimmy and came right back, there would be no harm in that. "And do you think that Plum Beach is a hard place to get to?" he asked the cardboard boy. "You do? Wrong. It's easy. Straight down this same street all the way. No corners to turn. Nothin'. And just as easy to come back, too. Nobody could get lost, not even a two-year-old."
Besides,
thought Rufus,
we don't need to go into the park at all. We can just stand at the edge, at the gate, and look and listen.
No, there was no harm in that at all. Just to the edge, that's what, and then home again.

"Come on," he said, putting a little steam into his pedaling. "Let's go. Hang on tight!"

Rufus rang his bell every few seconds. Since the top half of the bell was missing, it had a hollow rasping sound as though it had a cough. Rufus rode as fast as he could down Raven Avenue. Sometimes he stopped to listen for the merry-go-round, which sounded less and less faint the nearer he got to it. No, it wasn't exactly like going alone to Plum Beach to go with this cardboard boy. He was really company.

"You want to see Jimmy, don't you?" he murmured.

Rufus rode past the carbarn where all the yellow trolleys were lined up and he didn't stop to look. The only trolley he stopped to look at was the Bridgeport Express, which went sailing by. Now he could see the water of the Sound. Through the mist it was a dull gray.

Rufus had thought that the nearer he came to Plum Beach, the jollier the music would sound. The flying horses did sound louder, but they did not sound really jolly. In fact, they sounded disconsolate. Maybe he wasn't near enough to hear the fun and to smell the popcorn and peanuts. So he pedaled right up to the very gate of the amusement park. Yes, the water was gray and the day was gray and somebody had forgotten to turn off the electric lights over the gate that formed a circular sign, THE GREAT WHITE WAY, the name of the liveliest part of the park. But the pale electric lights looked no jollier than sparklers on the Fourth of July when you burn them in broad daylight instead of waiting for nighttime.

Still, it was probably lots of fun inside the Great White Way. Inside he could watch the people shoot-the-chute into the water with a scream and a splash; watch the roller-boiler-coaster swoop up and down and around, with people screaming and yelling happily as they careened around the curves and took the big drop. But most of all he could watch his favorite flying horse named Jimmy.

Rufus had thought he would be able to see Jimmy from the gate. But he couldn't. The big thermometer that was called the high-striker stood in the way. You hit a disk at the bottom of this thermometer with a sledgehammer and tried to make it ring the bell at the top. If you rang the bell you got a big cigar. Once Joey had made it go halfway up, to a line marked "Try a little harder." But Rufus was not interested in this big thermometer. He was interested in Jimmy.

"I's'pose you're not satisfied," said Rufus to the cardboard boy. "Now you want to go inside, I's'pose. Watch the people have fun."

The cardboard boy, of course, never answered Rufus. He just looked eagerly ahead, always with the same pleasant smile and his hand outstretched, offering a biscuit. But Rufus did not need an answer. He wanted to see the people have fun himself.

So Rufus rode through the gate and into the Great White Way. Here he expected gaiety, noise, music, laughing, and screaming. What he found was exactly the opposite. At first he did not realize this. The shoot-the-chute was going. The boats shot down into the water but nobody was in them. The roller-boller-coasters were tearing around. But nobody was in them, either. The Ferris wheel did have one single passenger. This was an old lady who had brought her knitting and was working away with an amiable smile as the Ferris wheel wound aimlessly around and around.

"See that lady?" said Rufus to the cardboard boy. "She can knit and ride at the same time."

Rufus rode on. He could hear the water swooshing in the Old Mill, but no shrieks of delight came from inside. And there was the merry-go-round! The music was playing and the horses were prancing but there was not one single rider. Even so Rufus's heart beat faster when he saw Jimmy gallop into sight and then disappear around the other side. And he smiled and said, "See him?"

Rufus sat there watching the different amusements going. The roller-boller-coaster rattled over the tracks and looked almost like his and Joey's toy trains when they set them going and then sat back and watched. In fact, it seemed as though somebody had set all these things in motion just to see them go.

Where was everybody who was supposed to be riding? That's what Rufus wanted to know. Whenever Rufus thought about Plum Beach, he thought of crowds of people. Now there was almost nobody around except the men who ran the place. They were keeping open from day to day, hoping to do a little more business before nailing everything up for the winter.

Rufus didn't know that things got nailed up at Plum Beach for the winter. He thought it was always noisy and jolly here. But gradually he began to realize that it was just as gloomy at the amusement park today as back in Cranbury, if not more so. In fact, it was so gloomy that Rufus hoped he would not come across Jolly Olga. Usually he liked her. It was Joey who didn't. But even Rufus did not care to see her today.

Jolly Olga was a great big lady about as high as the second story of a house. She was a hollow lady, made out of painted plaster. She was a fake. A fellow stood inside of her on stilts and made her walk and shake hands. She had been made for a carnival once and the people who ran Plum Beach liked her so much, they said, "Let her stay. Let her wander around and shake hands with the children."

Jolly Olga! You'd be walking along with an ice-cream cone or a box of Cracker Jacks and you'd be looking from side to side at the duck-shooting places, the penny arcades, or the Old Mill, then you'd turn around and there she'd be! Coming right toward you, nodding her great big head! Or you'd be watching the shoot-the-chute to see if you could spot Sylvie as she swooshed down into the pond, because the shoot-the-chute was Sylvie's favorite ride. And then you'd see Jolly Olga way across the pond and her shadow would ripple all the way back across the water at you.

Children were supposed to like Jolly Olga. Some did and some didn't. Joey was one of the ones who did not like her. He used to be scared of her. He used to try not to be scared because he knew she was a fake. But whenever she came around trying to shake hands with Moffats, he kept his eyes on the bicycle acrobats on the tightrope over the shoot-the-chute pond, or on the high-striker; and he pretended not to see her. He must have come upon her too suddenly once. She was so big that she could give a person quite a start if he wasn't expecting to see her. You could tell Joey she was nothing but a mask, an allover mask, but it made no difference. Still he shuddered at just the name of Jolly Olga.