The Book of Joby (15 page)

“I’d make just as good a knight as
Duane Westerlund,
” she muttered contemptuously.

One more hoist up, a short crawl, and she was at the base of the long branch that hung out over the clearing.

It hadn’t looked this high from below. For the first time, she hesitated. How on earth, she wondered, had they climbed clear to the top of that pine tree without having heart attacks?
Well,
she thought crossly,
if
they
can,
I
can!
She clung to the branch and began to wriggle on her belly away from the tree trunk. Halfway out it began to bounce and sway unpleasantly. She stopped to fend off a wave of panic before inching forward again. When she’d gone as far as she dared, she lay still for a moment, then sat up very carefully to straddle the branch. She looked down. Her position was good. Her confidence was not.

That’s when she noticed the ants. A thick dark trail of the little crawlers moved along the branch like miniature rush hour traffic, passing right beneath her! Or they had until she’d blocked their path with her body. Now they scattered everywhere in agitation; down her legs, up her arms.
Yuck!
No improvement in view or acoustics was worth this! Conceding defeat, she started turning around.

Suddenly, there was shouting from the woods nearby. Before she could react, Joby burst into the clearing, leaves tangled in his hair, his shirt torn in back, followed close behind by Benjamin and Kyle, then all the others. Joby ran straight to the trunk of her tree, slammed his hands against it, and shouted,
“Safe!”
He started laughing between gasps for breath. “You guys are the lousiest bunch of boar hunters I ever saw!”

“We
had
you!” Benjamin exclaimed. “Grabbin’ your shirt should count!”

“I said, I’d make it to the creek and back,” Joby insisted happily, beginning to catch his breath. “And that’s what I did.”

“You were
lucky
!” Kyle insisted.

“It’s not against the rules to be
lucky.
” Joby smiled.

Laura didn’t know what to do! There were ants all over her, she was half-turned around in the most awkward position imaginable, and she didn’t dare move. Some mean trick of perception made the ground seem terribly far away, while the boys seemed close enough to reach up and touch her. If she did
anything
now, they’d notice.

Soon the whole pack of them had gathered below her, teasing and congratulating one another for moves they’d made or failed to pull off during their hunt, in which Joby had evidently been the prey. To Laura’s relief, it seemed they were going to go have another hunt, which would give her the chance to get out of this tree. This time the red bandanna was tied around
Benjamin’s arm, but just as he was going to leave, several of the boys said they needed to rest first, and the whole group collapsed agreeably onto the ground beneath her. That’s when she was bitten. The ant’s tiny jaws were a searing needle in her armpit.

“Oh!”
she gasped.

The word was out of her mouth before she could catch it. Everyone looked up. A few of them stood.

“Laura Bayer!”
shouted Johnny Mayhew in disbelief.

“Laura?” said Joby. “What are you doing up there?”

“She’s
spyin’
on us!
That’s
what she’s
doin’
!” shouted Duane Westerlund. He picked up a pebble and hucked it at her as if chasing a squirrel or a blue jay away from their picnic.

Flinching back from Duane’s little missile, Laura lost her balance. Clutching at the empty air, she felt more surprise than fear. No one made a sound, and there was no time to think before she hit the ground with a sickening jolt, as if from some great distance. She knew something was wrong, but her brain seemed stuck and far away. Her glasses were gone. She wondered if she’d broken them and if she’d get in trouble for it. Had she told her mother she’d be home late? Did she have homework to do? All these thoughts passed ridiculously through her mind in an instant.

“Laura!”
Joby cried. Suddenly unfrozen, he and several others ran to look down at her in horror. “Laura, don’t move!”

She tried to sit up, and her left arm and shoulder were instantly lanced with a horrible fire. Hearing herself scream, she imagined white-hot sword blades slicing up her arm and racing for her head. She fell back onto the ground as if someone had pulled her plug. The boys above her looked sick. Some of them turned and ran away. Her vision shrank in, as if she were falling down a long dark tunnel away from Joby’s stricken face. There was just time to hear someone moan, “She’s turning
gray
!” and Peter Blackwell yell, “
Duane,
you
butt
! You’ve
killed her
!” Then the tunnel closed.

Joby walked slowly down the long shiny hallway with a bouquet of flowers in each hand. He was nicely dressed, his hair carefully combed. They said Laura was healing well, but even after two days, he was scared to see her arm again.

His parents had offered to come up with him, but he had left them in the lobby. After hearing what had happened, his mother had tried to forbid Joby
from ever climbing trees again. His father had told her that it wasn’t fair to make Joby stifle himself every time someone got hurt, which had only made his mother even more upset, and Joby just didn’t want them seeing Laura, and starting it up all over again.

It still made Joby shudder to remember how Laura had turned all pasty and passed out after the fall. He had thought she might really be dead. They’d been a long way from the nearest building, and her arm had looked so terrible bent back beside her like she had a second elbow. Bones and blood had erupted through her skin when she’d tried to sit up. Some of the guys had thrown up. After telling Benjamin and Kyle to run for help, he’d stayed beside her, petting her hair, afraid to touch anything else, telling her and himself that it would be okay. It had seemed to take forever for the emergency people to come in their big truck with Ben and Kyle in the front seat.

She had regained consciousness then, and Joby still couldn’t believe how brave she’d been. When one of the emergency guys had mentioned “giving her a hand,” she’d actually joked about needing a new one. She’d only screamed once, when they put a big plastic splint on her arm. Joby couldn’t imagine making jokes if it had been him. He figured he’d have screamed pretty much the whole time.

They said she was going to have to stay at the hospital until Monday, because there’d been dirt deep in her arm, and they were worried about infection. Joby was the first person to see her besides her folks, and he wondered what to expect as he found her room, and knocked softly on the door.

“Come in.”

She didn’t
sound
dead.

He pushed the door open to find her propped up in bed, watching a TV hung from the ceiling. There was a tube stuck in her left hand and another embedded in her cast, but other than that, she looked okay. When she saw who it was, her hazel eyes went wide behind the blue-framed glasses that had miraculously survived her fall, and she smiled brightly. Relief washed through Joby. He had wondered if she might be mad at him.

“Joby!”

“Hi, Laura.” He walked to her bedside, and handed her the small bunch of iris and freesia his mother had picked out. “These are from me.” Then he set the large bouquet of roses and carnations on the covers beside her. “And these are from Duane. . . . He’s real sorry, Laura.”

She looked uncertainly from Joby’s bouquet to Duane’s and asked, “Why doesn’t he come say so himself?”

Joby shrugged. “He’s scared. He knows you prob’ly hate him now.”

She snorted, and set the roses on her bedside table, then stuck her nose in Joby’s flowers, took a deep breath, and smiled again. “I don’t hate Duane,” she sighed. Then she grinned. “I heard Peter call him a butt.”

Both of them laughed.

“A lot of people think he’s kind of a jerk right now,” Joby said.

“That’s too bad,” she said, sounding like she meant it. “Tell him to come see me, Joby. Will you? He probably won’t believe I don’t hate him ’til I tell him so myself, and he probably won’t come see me unless you tell him to.”

Joby stared at her. She sounded . . . older. And something about her request made him feel proud, though he wasn’t sure why.

“I’ll tell him,” he said. “But I don’t think he’ll come.”

“He will if you tell him to.”

The pride in him swelled some more. He looked at her cast.

“Does it hurt a lot?”

“Yeah. Sometimes. But not too bad.”

“What were you
doing
up there, Laura?”

She looked embarrassed and glanced away. “Like Duane said. Spying.”

“Why?” Joby asked.

“ ’Cause I wanted to see what I had to do to be a knight,” she answered, still not looking at him.

Joby’s shoulders slumped. If girls could be knights, no boy would want to be one. He knew that. . . . but . . . she’d practically
died
trying to get in.

“I’ll try,” he said. The words just came out on their own. But as soon as he heard them he knew he couldn’t take them back.

“Try what?” Laura asked.

“To make them let you in,” he said, sure he was announcing the Roundtable’s death sentence.

First she smiled, then she looked down unhappily. “I can’t climb that pine tree, Joby. . . . I won’t pass the tests.”

“I couldn’t make jokes if my arm was broke,” he replied. “Far as I can see, that’ll work as good as climbin’ any tree. . . . I don’t think they’ll listen . . . but I’ll try.”

She beamed at him. “They’ll listen to
you,
Joby.”

Joby looked down, not wanting her to see that he wasn’t so sure.

“And if they don’t, it’s okay,” she added. “I don’t want to be in unless they want me. It’s just nice of you to try . . . and . . . and your flowers are much nicer than Duane’s.”

That clinched it. Joby would
have
to try.

As they rode back to St. Albee’s the next morning, Joby tried his idea out on Benjamin. After visiting Laura, he’d gone home and scoured his book on Arthur for anything that might help him make his case to the other knights. The solution, when he’d seen it, was so obvious it had made him laugh.

“So that’s my idea,” he concluded. “Whadaya think?”

“I think it’s awesome.” Benjamin grinned. “After what happened, they’d be jerks to say no. It’s
perfect
!”

“Good,” Joby said. “That’s what I thought too. I just hope it’s okay with Laura.”

“Hey, she’ll be in,” Benjamin said. “She’ll get to come to the meetings.”

The weekend had dawned threatening rain, and Joby wasn’t as excited about going to St. Albee’s as he had been before. The Roundtable had come to occupy nearly all the space inside him that churches and grails had claimed the week before. Still, they had promised Father Crombie.

At the seminary, they asked a man leaving the grounds where Father Crombie’s office was. He gave them a strange look, then said, “Go into that building, and ask for Father Richter. He can tell you.”

When they got to Father Richter’s office, they found a new priest behind a desk, who turned out
not
to be Father Richter, but called Father Richter on his desk phone. A moment later the office’s other door was opened by a middle-aged priest with thick glasses and thinning gray hair, who smiled, and said, “I’m Father Richter. You must be Benjamin and Joby! Please, come in.” Joby followed Benjamin toward the inner office, wondering why the other priest had called Richter on the phone when he could have just opened the door and talked to him.