Read Blossoms Meet the Vulture Lady Online
Authors: Betsy Byars
Blossoms Meet the Vulture Lady
BETSY BYARS
Holiday House / New York
Chatting It Up: A Holiday House Reader’s Guide
Preview: Blossoms and the Green Phantom
The Thing Under the Tarp
“I’m finished!” Junior called.
He walked to the barn door and looked out. No one was in sight.
“I’m finished! Hey, you can see it now! Where are you guys?”
No answer.
Junior walked out into the sunlight. He made a visor of one hand.
Nobody was in the yard.
“I said I’m finished,” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “You can see it now!”
Still no answer.
Junior sighed. All morning long he had been wasting valuable construction time keeping Maggie and Vern out of the barn, keeping them from seeing what he was working on. Every time he turned his back, one of them would try to sneak in the door. “Oh, no you don’t.” Or slip through the loose board in the back of the barn.
He must have said “Oh, no you don’t” at least a hundred times.
All the yelling had made his mom come out of the house. “What’s Junior doing in the barn?” he heard her say.
“I don’t know. He won’t let us see,” Maggie said. “He’s making something.”
“And he’s using all of Pap’s hog wire,” Vern said.
“Junior, are you making anything dangerous in there?”
“No’m.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“Well, I’ve had enough of your surprises. Come out here. We have just gotten through paying for your last summer’s surprise—flying off the barn. Come out here this minute.”
Junior appeared in the doorway of the barn. He had a hammer in one hand.
“I didn’t fly,” he explained, “I fell.”
“What are you making in there now?” Vicki Blossom’s hands went on her hips.
Junior sighed. He walked reluctantly to his mother and said, “I’m making a …” Then he lowered his voice and whispered the rest of it.
“A what?”
He sent a suspicious glance in Maggie and Vern’s direction to make sure they couldn’t hear. He cupped his hands around his mother’s ear. “A …” he said.
“But why? What for? Hurry up, Junior. I’ve got a customer inside. I’m cornrowing her hair and customers don’t grow on trees.”
Junior sighed again. “Remember last night? Remember …” He motioned for her to bend down again. This time he gave such a long explanation that Maggie and Vern started slipping to the back of the barn where the loose board was.
“Oh, no you don’t.”
He had run into the barn and thrown a tarp over his invention. “There! Spy all you want to.” From then on he’d worked strictly under the tarp. It had been hot under there and the air smelled of old oil, but Junior felt it was worth it.
Now, after all that, he was finished, and there was no one around to see what he had made.
Junior glanced down at his watch even though the watch was broken. According to this watch, the time was always 3:05. When Junior had first found the watch in the parking lot of Sears and strapped it on his arm, he’d kept hoping that one time he would glance down and it would say 3:06, but he had given up on that now. Still, he looked at his watch every time he was curious about the time, like right now. Maybe Maggie and Vern were eating lunch or something.
“Why do you wear that old broken watch?” Maggie had once asked. “It never gives you the right time.”
“It does too,” he had answered. “At three-oh-five in the afternoon and three-oh-five at night.”
Anyway, he liked the way he looked with a watch on his wrist.
He checked the time again. With a sigh, he walked back to the barn. He stood in the doorway, looking at the bulging tarp.
Well, if Maggie and Vern weren’t interested enough to wait, they just weren’t going to get to see it. He would set it up without them. It would serve them right.
He felt better after he had made that decision. He got the wheelbarrow from the corner and rolled it over to the tarp. He lifted the tarp dramatically, the way he had intended lifting it for Maggie and Vern.
He said, “Tadaaaa!”
He gasped with pleasure. Just in the few minutes it had been out of his sight, it had gotten more impressive. He was smitten with regret that Maggie and Vern weren’t there to admire it.
His invention was spectacular—as sturdy as if it had been made by a real carpenter. He walked around it. From every side it was a beautiful, professional job. The word
professional
said it all.
The hog wire was fitted over the top, nailed neatly into place; the nail heads hammered sideways over the wire for extra security. The corner boards had been put into place with screws—more security. Even he himself—the inventor—would not be able to get out if he was locked inside. That’s how professional it was.
“And,” he said, speaking aloud to his invention, “you’re going to make me rich.”
He loaded his creation awkwardly onto the wheelbarrow. It tipped and he straightened it with his knee. Hog wire took off some skin.
Now he really wished Maggie and Vern were there—this time to take a corner. Even without them the invention finally thudded solidly onto the wheelbarrow. Junior secured it with rope, making a bow on top as if it were a present.
He glanced out the barn door to make sure Maggie and Vern had not returned without his hearing them. That would be just like them—to spy on his invention and then run away without praising it. No, the yard was empty.
“Where are they?”
For a moment he considered pushing it just to the edge of the woods and waiting until they returned. That would give them a chance to see him, just a glimpse of him and his beautiful, professional creation, and then he would disappear into the woods.
He thought longingly of their envious cries: “Junior, what is that?” “Junior, where did you get that?” And the final, disbelieving “Is that what you were making? Come back, Junior. Please let us see.”
He lingered over the thought. He wanted to hear those words a lot, but he didn’t have time. There was still work to do. He glanced at his watch: 3:05. He would have to hurry to be finished by supper.
Quickly he pushed the wheelbarrow out of the barn. Legs flashing in the sunlight, he headed for the house. He ran in, and in a few minutes he ran out. There was a bulge in his back pocket.
Then Junior picked up the wheelbarrow handles and ran hard for the woods.
Mad Mad Mary
“Go way! Shoo!”
Mad Mary stepped onto the highway. “Shoo!” She waved her arms. Her torn sleeves flapped in the still air.
The two vultures looked her way. They had the carcass of a rabbit between them. They had opened it quickly by pulling in opposite directions. One vulture dropped its part, the head, spread its wings as if to take to the air, and then changed its mind and folded them.
Mad Mary was still a hundred yards down the road, no real threat as yet. They knew Mad Mary and were used to competing with her for highway meat.
The vulture lowered its bald head to the rabbit.
But Mad Mary was running over the shimmering asphalt now, closing the distance. “I said ‘Shoo!’” She threatened them with her cane.
One vulture hissed. The other took a few steps across the road, but leisurely, like a barnyard turkey. The hissing vulture dug its beak quickly into the meat and picked at the dead rabbit. It got hold of a piece of intestine and pulled.
“I want that rabbit!”
Mad Mary flew at them. Now she was close enough to be a threat. Four more strides and she would be able to hook one of the vultures around the neck with the end of her long cane. Both vultures ran down the road, building up speed, and took to the air.
Mad Mary ran a few feet beyond the dead rabbit. She watched the vultures settle on the limb of a nearby tree. Then she eased the rabbit over with the toe of her boot.
“Fresh meat,” she muttered to herself.
Then she lifted her head. She heard the sound of an approaching truck.
Leaning down, she picked up the rabbit with one hand. The vultures had popped it open and pulled out part of the insides. Other than that, the rabbit was perfect. Mad Mary liked to get meat that hadn’t been run over five or six times. It was juicier.
Like the fat possum she had found last week and dined off for two days, the rabbit had just taken a light bump on the head from some rear tire. The body was still limber—couldn’t have been dead twenty minutes. She slid the rabbit down into her stained shoulder bag.
The truck was blaring its horn. The driver had spotted Mad Mary.
Mad Mary didn’t even glance in the truck’s direction. She walked leisurely to the edge of the road and stepped off into the grass. Then, head down, poking the ground with her long shepherd’s cane, she moved along with steady soldier strides.
The truck blew its horn again as it passed. Mad Mary felt the exhaust, the sting of dust, but she did not look up. There was nobody in the whole world that she wanted to see. She hadn’t even nodded to a living soul in three and a half years.
The vultures watched from separate limbs of a nearby dead tree. When the truck passed, they flew down to the spot where the rabbit had lain. They checked to see if Mad Mary had left them anything. Then, although she had not, they continued to walk around the damp spot on the highway for a few moments.
As they took to the air again, Mad Mary turned the curve of the highway, jumped the ditch, and headed into the woods.
The Hamburger Ball
“I just figured out what it is,” Maggie said.
She and Vern were at the creek. Maggie was sitting on the raised bank swinging her legs out over the water. Vern was making little rafts out of twigs and vines and sending them down the shallow, shifting current, watching them plunge over the waterfall.
“What what is?”
He released his fourth raft and frowned as it headed for the willow tree.
“I bet I know what Junior’s making.”
“What?”
His raft was caught against the roots of the tree. He could barely see it through the curtain of willow branches. He waded across, parted the branches, and got his raft.
Vern enjoyed making small things. He spent money every Saturday for a plastic model, but no matter how hard a model he got, he was always finished by Sunday.
“Well, if you’re not interested, I’m not going to waste my breath telling you,” Maggie said, turning away. She stuck a blade of grass in her mouth.
“I’m interested. What’s he making?”
“Oh, all right. He’s making a trap.”
“A trap?” Vern looked at her for the first time. “What kind of trap?”
“Coyote.”
“Come on. Even Junior’s got better sense than to set a trap for a coyote. That’s like setting a trap for a polar bear or …” He paused to repair a loose vine. “Or a crocodile.”
“Weren’t you listening last night at supper? Yesterday Pap heard on the news about a coyote that’s loose in the area. They think it got away from Farmer Brown’s Zoo, only Farmer Brown won’t admit it because it’s been killing people’s chickens and lambs, and he doesn’t want to have to pay.” She slung her braids behind her shoulders with one practiced shake of her head. “Junior wants the reward.”