Ralph S. Mouse (3 page)

As Ralph had grown more sophisticated from listening to children, he came to understand that children moved. Schools stood still. Later on he learned that some grown-ups called “teachers” also went to school. Some of these teachers stayed in the hotel during the summer. As far as Ralph could see, teachers behaved like ordinary people except that, unlike parents, they said, “Oh, dear, school will soon be starting.”

Ralph found a clue as to what teachers did in that mysterious place from a television commercial shown several times a day. In it, a woman who said she was a teacher held a tube of toothpaste in her hand as she walked around saying, “Toothpaste doesn't excite me. Good checkups excite me.”

This remark puzzled Ralph, however. When he had lived upstairs, he had once tasted toothpaste when a careless guest left the cap off a tube. He found himself foaming and frothing at the mouth as he skittered around frantically trying to find water while one of the maids ran down the hall shrieking, “Mad mouse! Mad mouse!” No, Ralph could not agree with the television teacher. Toothpaste
was
exciting.

“This Miss K,” said Ralph, as Ryan reached the bus stop. “Is she OK?”

“Yeah, she's pretty good.” Ryan stamped his feet to keep them warm. “She thinks up interesting things to do for language arts. Like our school is named the Irwin J. Sneed Elementary School, and last week she had us write a composition about who we thought Irwin J. Sneed was and why the town of Cucaracha, California, named its school after him.” Ryan scooped up a handful of snow, squeezed it into a ball, and threw it at the branch of a pine tree. Snow slid off the branch and fell with a soft
plop
.

“Some kids made Irwin J. Sneed a monster from outer space,” continued Ryan, “but I made him a horse thief back in the gold-rush days when Cucaracha was a mining town. I said he was the first person to go to jail in Cucaracha, so they named the school after him. Miss K gets real excited about Cucaracha being a gold-rush town with a lot of history.”

“Oh,” said Ralph, puzzled. “Who was Irwin J. Sneed really?”

“Just some old guy on the school board when the school was built way back in the 1970s,” explained Ryan, as he made another snowball.

Ralph could make no sense of this information at all.

As the snowball made more snow plop from a branch to the ground, Ryan had a sudden thought. “I better be careful about talking to you at school, or people will think I'm nuts.”

“Maybe some of them could understand me,” suggested Ralph. “They might even like to see me ride my motorcycle.”

Ryan considered. “You better not go showing off. Somebody might steal your motorcycle, or maybe everybody would start bringing mice and motorcycles to school. I don't think that would be a good idea, a whole school full of mice tearing around on motorcycles. One mouse can get by, but not a lot of mice. You know how some people get all worked up about mice.”

As the school bus came rumbling down the highway, Ralph had to agree from his hotel experience that Ryan was right. One mouse, or even two or three, could get by. Many mice could not. “Say,” he said, “you don't suppose there are already mice in this place.”

“No,” said Ryan, as the bus stopped in front of him. “Mr. Costa keeps our school too clean for mice.”

Of course, Ralph's feelings were hurt.

“Remember to keep out of sight,” were Ryan's last words to Ralph as he climbed on the bus.

Deep inside the parka pocket, Ralph felt sad, brave and noble, frightened and bewildered. He felt sad because there had been no time to say good-bye to Matt. He felt brave and noble because his going out into the strange world would protect the safety of his little relatives. He felt frightened and bewildered because so much had happened so fast. Yet the inside of the pocket was cozy. In the deepest corner, Ralph found a dried-up raisin that would have made an excellent breakfast if he had not been so nervous about what lay ahead in that mysterious place, the Irwin J. Sneed Elementary School. He nipped a tiny bite of the raisin and told himself school must be safe because so many children went there. Of course, I will be all right, he told himself, pretending to be brave, but I will be careful to stay away from Miss K's toothpaste.

A
s Ryan hopped down the steps of the school bus, Ralph poked his nose out of his pocket and found himself in a crowd of children, all of them bundled up in hooded parkas or jackets and knit caps. Clouds of vapor came from their mouths as they shouted back and forth to one another. A tiny cloud formed in front of Ralph's nose, too.

A boy jumped out of a yellow tow truck and shouted, “So long, Dad!” Then, as the truck pulled away, he added, “So long, Arfy,” to the dog sitting next to the driver.

“Arf,” answered the dog, who looked like a kindly wolf.

That boy must be Brad, thought Ralph, as the children trampled snow on the playground on their way into the long one-story building that was the Irwin J. Sneed Elementary School.

Inside the building, the linoleum-floored hall, unlike the halls of the Mountain View Inn, was a broad smooth highway with no rough carpets to wear down the already thin tires of a little motorcycle. Ralph wondered how he could endure a whole day of waiting for night to come so he could race down that long hall. There would be no furniture to get in his way and no little relatives to make him feel guilty for not sharing his motorcycle. That hall was the perfect race-course Ralph had dreamed about ever since he had owned a motorcycle. With no one around to see him take spills, he could even rear back on one wheel to practice wheelies.

Ryan entered Room 5, a room different from any room Ralph had ever seen. Unlike the rooms at the inn, this one was furnished with many chairs and tables instead of beds. At the front, seated at a desk, was a woman Ralph knew must be Miss K. Her toothpaste was nowhere in sight.

At the rear of the room, Ryan hung his backpack on a hook. Then he removed his parka and hung it on the hook, too.

“Hey, don't leave me here all by myself,” squeaked Ralph, alarmed at being alone in such a strange place. “Take me with you.”

“Promise you'll stay out of sight?” whispered Ryan out of the corner of his mouth.

“Sure,” agreed Ralph.

Ryan started to poke Ralph into the pocket of his jeans until Ralph objected. “Hey! Not here. This place is too tight. You'll squash me when you sit down.”

“Sorry,” said Ryan, and he dropped Ralph into the breast pocket of his plaid flannel shirt.

No sooner had Ryan sat down at the table than he and the rest of Room 5 stood up again to recite some words about a flag and something about liberty and justice for all. Whatever it was, Ralph hoped mice were included.

Ryan sat down and began to shuffle books and papers while Miss K talked about numbers. Ralph tried to listen above the steady
lub-dub
,
lub-dub
of Ryan's heart, but soon he grew bored. Ryan's shirt was new and the flannel still fuzzy. Ralph nipped a hole in the front of the pocket for a better view and then, lulled by the muffled
lub-dub, lub-dub
and the steady rise and fall of Ryan's chest, fell asleep as if he were being rocked in a cradle. Because a heart does not strike the hours like a clock, Ralph slept until recess and again until lunchtime when Ryan remembered to slip a bit of sandwich into the pocket for his lunch.

Sometime in the afternoon Ralph awoke feeling hot, cramped, and restless. Maybe no one would notice if a small brown mouse poked his nose out for a breath of air. After a few whiffs, Ralph stuck his head all the way out to see what was going on. All heads, except one, were bent over papers on the tables. One girl was chewing her pencil and staring into space.

That's funny, thought Ralph. I didn't know people gnawed things too.

Unexpectedly, the girl turned her head and looked straight at Ralph. Then she tapped another girl on the shoulder and pointed.

Too late, Ralph ducked back into the pocket. He heard the girls whispering, and soon others were whispering too. Oh, oh, thought Ralph, feeling both guilty and doomed. He had broken his promise to stay out of sight. He was in trouble.

Miss K spoke. “Melissa, is something disturbing you?” she asked.

Melissa, thought Ralph. So that's the girl whose boot I'm supposed to live in.

“Not exactly, Miss K,” answered Melissa.

“There seems to be something going on that I don't know about,” persisted Miss K. “Won't someone let me in on it?”

“I—uh—thought I saw something move in Ryan's pocket,” admitted Melissa.

“Ryan, do you have something you wish to share with the class?” asked Miss K.

Ralph squeezed himself into a corner of the pocket as Ryan's heart began to beat faster, or rev up, as Ralph thought of it.

“No, not exactly,” Ryan told his teacher.

The class began to speak. “Yes, he does.” “He does too.” “I saw something and it moved.”

Ralph dug his claws into the flannel shirt as Miss K said, “Ryan, why don't you come to the front of the room and let us see what it is?”

Ralph started to chew through the side of the pocket closest to the heartbeat.

As Ryan walked to the front of the room, he reached into his pocket, grasped Ralph by the tail, and dragged him, clawing and struggling, out of the pocket. Ralph was so angry at this treatment he was squeakless. When Ryan set him on the palm of his hand, he turned his back to the class and sat quivering with rage and terror.

“What a beautiful mouse!” said Miss K, who was young and enthusiastic and eager to give her pupils learning experiences. “Class, gather around for a better look.”

I'm beautiful? thought Ralph. No adult, or child for that matter, had ever described him as beautiful. Far from it.

“Look at his perfect little paws,” said Miss K.

Ralph looked too as the class left their seats to crowd around. His paws looked like ordinary mouse paws to him, but now that she mentioned it, maybe….

“And his lovely little ears,” continued Miss K.

“Aw—” breathed the children. “He's cute.” “He's really neat.” “He's darling!”

Well, what do you know? Ralph perked up and stopped quaking. Shyly he turned to face the class.

One member of Room 5, however, did not admire Ralph. “He's just your standard brown mouse,” said Brad. “There are plenty more like him.”

“Where did you get your mouse, Ryan?” asked Miss K.

“At the hotel where I live,” explained Ryan. “He's a very smart mouse. His name is Ralph.”

“What's his last name?” someone asked.

“Mouse,” answered Ryan. “His name is Ralph S. Mouse. The
S
stands for Smart.”

“May I hold Ralph?” asked Miss K, and Ralph found himself transferred to a softer, cleaner hand. He sat up and began to groom his whiskers, always a good performance. He could see that Ryan was happy to be receiving so much attention from his classmates.

“Aw—” breathed the class again. “Look at him. He washes like a little cat.”

“Such a tiny scrap of life,” said Miss K. “He's a little miracle.”