The Middle Moffat (11 page)

Ball-bearin' skates!

She paused. That's what she'd like. But, of course, they should send for something for all the family. She looked at the skates again. She wished she had them, for she was tired of borrowing one of Nancy's. She'd like to skate with two feet.

"I don't know," she said to Mama.

Mama was looking at her, smiling. "How about this pair of skates?" she asked.

So that's the way it was. Jane soon had a bright shiny pair of ball-bearing skates, and she and Nancy had many good times with all four feet on skates. They often skated on the white sidewalk in front of Wallie Bangs's house.

Usually when Wallie Bangs marched around the house he wouldn't even notice them.

Once in a while, though, he surprised them with a remark like this: "Skates working all right?"

Or he'd look at them with an earnest frown and say: "Might need just a little tightening here and there to make them A number one."

Nancy said, "Don't let him have our skates. We'll never get them back."

But sometimes Jane felt that if Wallie Bangs fixed her skates they'd go faster than lightning.

One day when Nancy was home practicing her music, Jane glided out onto Wallie Bangs's sidewalk. Wallie Bangs came marching around from the backyard with a battery in his hand. He didn't look at Janey. But he did take a sidelong look at Janey's skates. Jane thought he looked at her skates the way a doctor looks at a patient, figuring out what's wrong. There was a thoughtful pucker on his brow, but he said nothing. He marched past her.

Jane thought she might have hurt his feelings since she had never asked him to fix her skates.

"Hey," she yelled before he reached the corner. "Would you like to fix my skates?"

"Thought those skates needed a bit o' fixin'," Wallie Bangs said, stopping short.

Jane took them off and she laid them at Wallie's feet. In no time at all Wallie was marching around to the backyard with her skates, just the way she had seen him dozens of times with all the others. But Jane followed him. She ran to catch up with him.

"Will you put my name on them like the shoemaker does when he's fixin' my shoes?" she asked, pursuing him into the cellar.

"A lot of nonsense," said Wallie, dropping them on his workbench.

"But my skates are bran' new and I wouldn't want you to get them mixed up with Clara Pringle's," Jane pleaded.

"Very well, then. What's your name?" asked Wallie, taking out a worn black notebook filled with smudges, numbers, and expert calculations.

Jane was startled. He didn't even know who she was yet and she lived right next door. But then, she quickly reasoned, how could you expect a mechanical wizard to keep track of the neighbors?

"I'm Jane, the middle Moffat," she said.

"No foolishness now," he said. But he wrote "J. the m.m." in his book. Then in just a few minutes he had Jane's skates all apart.

Jane backed up the stairs and out. "J. the m.m.," she muttered.

Later she said to Joe, "Gee, you should see the things he's got down there!"

"Yeah, I been down," said Joe, nodding his head appreciatively.

But Nancy was not impressed. She said, "Oh, Jane! Now when'll you ever get your skates back?"

"Oh, he'll fix mine soon," said Jane reassuringly. "'Cause I live right next door."

But she watched Nancy skate off with a faint feeling of uneasiness. Her nice new ball-bearin' skates. When would she ever see them again?

She climbed onto the fence and she watched Wallie Bangs at work upon his motorcycle.
Sput! Sput!
He was as busy as ever on that. In spite of having a cellar full of skates, clocks, watches, and one earphone to fix, he still spent practically every second fixing his motorcycle. Either he took things apart, or he fixed his motorcycle. Two things. Nothing else.

Jane watched him. Wallie Bangs, the mechanical wizard!
Sput! Sput!
She wished he'd fix her skates first though, before he fixed that motorcycle. But goodness! What was she thinking? Fix little skates before a big motorcycle? Of course there wasn't any sense in that.

As days went on Jane missed her skates more and more. Nancy offered her one of hers now and again. But Janey refused. She was beginning to feel that she had made a mistake and that she should take the consequences.

One day Jane stood by the honeysuckle bush. Nancy had just skated out of the Moffats' front yard, backward. Jane glided up and down the lawn a few times, pretending she, too, was on her skates again. Her ball-bearin' skates ... Just then Wallie Bangs came marching around the yard, a few skates dangling from his right hand. He went down in the cellar with them.

"Stay there and fix those skates," said Jane angrily. But she didn't say it out loud. After all, he was the mechanical genius, and the whole school, in fact, the whole town, talked about him. Still, when she saw him mount the cellar stairs and approach his motorcycle, drop his trigonometry book,
thud!
on the; ground, her anger mounted again.

"Hey!" she said.

"Something need fixin'?" Wallie Bangs did not even look up. Just said, "Something need fixin'?" as he squatted down beside his motorcycle.

"My skates!" yelled Jane.

"Bring 'em over. Anything mechanical..."

"You got my skates! You've had 'em for two whole weeks! You could fix them!"

"On the contrary!"

"You could 'ave, too!" yelled Jane. And then she ran, heart in throat.

She sat down on the green wicker rocker on the porch, behind the hop vines, where Wallie Bangs could not see her. Here she was, a girl of ten, and she had yelled at the mechanical genius and asked when he was going to fix her skates. She wondered how she had dared. But it was easier the next day. And easier still the day after.

"Fix my skates," she'd yell the minute Wallie came marching around the house from school. And then she'd run. But Wallie acted as though he hadn't even heard. He'd press his chin deep down in his collar and study his motorcycle. In a little while Jane would screw up her courage again and dart back to the honeysuckle bush.

"Hey! Fix my skates!" she'd yell, and then scoot.

But Wallie looked neither to the left nor the right.

However, some of the other children in the neighborhood listened to Jane in amazement. What was this? Jane Moffat yelling at the mechanical wizard?

One day Clara Pringle wandered by, dragging Brud in his red tin express wagon. She heard Janey yell these words:

"Fix my skates, Wallie Bangs, if you're such a mechanical genius!"

And then Janey ran.

Clara Pringle watched. Nothing happened. The mechanical genius just kept on working as though nothing had been said. So Clara turned around and pulled Brud into Wallie Bangs's backyard. Pausing a good ten steps away from the mechanical genius, she said:

"Are my skates ready yet?"

Wallie Bangs replied with a long scientific discourse, which left Clara blinking. And, of course, still without her skates. But she hastily pushed Brud out of Wallie's backyard, when he said:

"What about that old wagon of yours? Goin' smoothly?"

"Run, Clara, run!" shouted Jane, who was watching proceedings from behind the honeysuckle bush.

And Clara escaped with Brud's express wagon.

Others came now to Wallie Bangs and asked for their skates. Some did as Janey did, shouted from a distance, "Hey, fix my skates!" And some were more polite. They went up to Wallie Bangs, frequently proffering him a stick of candy. He seemed to like "crispy crunches" the best, although he ate jelly beans or anything else with the same preoccupied mien.

"Wallie," they said, "would you mind putting my skates together? They may not have been perfect before, but at least I could skate on them. What good are they to me now, all apart and down in your cellar?"

But usually Wallie just shrugged his shoulders, pulled his gray sweater up in back so he wouldn't stretch it, and squatted down beside his motorcycle.
Sput! Sput!
He'd make the engine roar so loud everybody would jump out of the way, expecting it to go all by itself. Or he'd say, "Run along, children. Very busy now. As soon as possible I'll get at those skates!"

He'd say "skates" rather disdainfully, making the boy or girl feel like two cents for interrupting.

After a while the little girls grew tired of getting lectures on thermodynamics when all they wanted was their skates. The same with little boys and their dollar watches. More and more of them, like Jane, began to taunt Wallie Bangs every time they saw him, with a shout:

"Hey, fix my skates!"

These were not the boys and girls who proffered him

candy. These were the boys and girls who often gathered on Janey's back fence. They sat there and they watched Wallie Bangs at work.

"There he is!"

"Mechanical genius! Pooh!"

"Why doesn't he get anything fixed then?"

They sat there on the fence and they grew angry. This was perfect skating weather. And where were their skates? Down in Wallie Bangs's cellar, all apart.

They wondered what they could do. Wallie Bangs paid absolutely no attention to their taunts, their jibes, or their skates. What could they do?