The Daring Escape of Beatrice and Peabody (18 page)

When it is time for recess, Miss Healy warns us, ‘You all better be doing more than standing in the dirt when I get out there.’

We are not sure what to do with ourselves. Jonathan goes over to the pine tree where Mrs Spriggs used to sit and pokes a stick to wedge off the bark. Robert and Thomas build another bridge. I watch Francine and her friends. I pull the yarn from my hair and my curls fall back against my diamond.

‘I just don’t see how come they get jump ropes and chalk for hopscotch,’ I tell Ruth Ellen.

‘Everyone’s afraid we’ll get hurt.’ She is trying to braid Susan’s hair, but Susan won’t stand still.

‘Phooey,’ I say, letting the word roll around on my tongue, feeling the coolness of the sound in my mouth. Hearing me sound just like Miss Healy makes Ruth Ellen laugh. And when Ruth Ellen laughs, Susan does, too.

Francine and her friends give up on hopscotch and race to the end of the field. I know what they are up to. They are copying Miss Healy.

‘Come on,’ I say, sprinting for the far woods. I am a
jackrabbit and I stretch my legs too far, and get myself off balance and nearly trip.

I slow down and check behind me and see Ruth Ellen and Susan standing by the wall and Jonathan is still poking at the bark. I hear Bobby telling me in my head how it may seem as if long strides will make you faster, but they really slow you down.

He may be right, but he didn’t know about Francine. She is standing off to the side now and is watching. I speed up.

I ignore all the things Bobby told me about running much slower than you need to so you can work up to fast. I push faster.

I pump my arms and now my chest hurts. The blood pumps in my head and I am dizzy. I don’t see the log until I trip on it and fall in a heap in the grass. I am hurt pretty bad, I tell myself as I roll around, holding my knees. I hear Francine hooting, and then Ruth Ellen is pulling me up and she and Susan are wiping the blood off my legs.

We get the bleeding stopped by the time recess is over, and we stand up against the building waiting for all the other kids to go inside. I pull my hair tight.

Francine looks me in the face. ‘You are nothing but a bunch of retards,’ she whispers so Miss Healy won’t hear. ‘And you, Beatrice, you will always be ugly and dirty as the sole of my shoe.’ She scuffs her shoe in the dirt to make sure I get her point, and when she thinks I have had long
enough to think about it, she shoots a pile of spit into my hair, already stretched tight over my diamond.

She laughs and then she and her friends walk into the building and Ruth Ellen reaches for me.

I feel the spit drip over my diamond and a hurricane whirls inside me. My toes tremble and then a tornado roars up through my belly and before I know it I am the eye of the storm.

I tell Ruth Ellen’s mama no thank you about the ride she is offering home from school, because when you are a tornado the only thing to do is be alone.

Peabody waits for me on the porch swing every day now and seeing him sitting with his ears all raised up as I turn the corner warms my heart about as much as anything. He wags his stumpy tail so hard he shakes his whole self and then he jumps off the swing, dives down the steps and leaps into my arms. I bury my face in his soft butterscotch fur and forget for a moment all about the storm inside me.

But tornadoes have a way of stirring up again, of coming back, of ripping through, and I tell Peabody how I need a plan. ‘But first we need a snack. And so does Cordelia.’

Mrs Swift and Mrs Potter are not in the house. It seems that every time I want to ask them about my mama they have disappeared.

I pull a tea biscuit for Peabody from the tin on top of the icebox and slice myself a piece of apple cake and pour some milk for both of us. I tuck an apple into the pocket
of my overalls for Cordelia.

My little pig has been growing these past few weeks from all the corn and she is getting rather plump. She is very interested in spending most of her time lying on her favourite pile of straw.

‘You need some exercise,’ I tell her, huffing and puffing to get her up and out of the gate. Luckily, there is a robin on the grass up ahead, and Cordelia changes her tune.

I run slowly and I let my dog and my pig get in front. Every time Cordelia wanders off to look at a red squirrel running along a stone wall or to see what a chickadee is chickadeeing about, I have to clap my hands and tap her on the backside with a stick like Bobby used to do at the Little Pig Race.

Peabody has no trouble. He is heading straight for Mrs Marsh’s chickens.

‘No. We are going the other way.’ When I finally get them both turned right, I tell them to just run and be quiet because I am thinking up a plan on how I am going to get Francine back.

Day after day I practise my running, over and over, again and again.

Cordelia needs quite a bit of encouragement. She is very slow. She is much more interested in her pile of straw or the carrot peels hiding at the bottom of her food bucket.

I tell her all about what Bobby told me:

You have to want to get better. You have to look for your own finish line and tell yourself you will cross it, and you have to keep trying and trying and you will find the strength deep inside yourself to keep going, and when you find it, you will be proud of yourself like never before.

Cordelia hardly listens. As soon as we get in the woods, she heads straight for a cluster of mushrooms, a dragonfly on a daisy, a clump of crows. After that, I leave her home. She doesn’t have the same motivation I do. She doesn’t know Francine.

Peabody, though, loves to run. We get so we can run all the way to Ruth Ellen’s, straight through the woods. I put one foot in front of the other and after a few days I can cover a lot of ground. Do not bounce, I remind myself. Push your arms out in front of you. Find your pace.

It feels good to stretch my legs out (but not too far) and feel the October sun shining all over my diamond and to let all the whirring inside of me grow quieter with each step. When I feel the blood pumping in my head, I slow down and push ahead with my dog bouncing along beside me. It is good to have a dog that loves to run.

Bobby was right. It turns out I love running in the woods. It is peaceful and the leaves crunch under my feet. There are many more birds to watch when you are in the woods. Plus, all this time I am thinking about an idea. It is a good one, I think. That’s the thing about running. You get very good ideas.

About halfway to Ruth Ellen’s, my chest starts heaving and my blood is pumping in my head and my legs start telling me to quit because they are hurting awful bad.

I am no quitter, I tell them, and I slow down to tortoise pace waiting for my second wind. Bobby said when I find it I will be stronger than I thought I was.

Peabody slows down, wondering when we can get going again, and I plod at a snail’s pace and then, slowly, slowly, I find it. I feel a surge of energy and I am a jackrabbit, darting; a deer, leaping; a horse, galloping. My legs scissor and my arms pump and my lungs pound strong and free now that they do not carry heavy buckets of water around any more.

As we run out of the woods and down the hill leading
to Ruth Ellen’s, the smile that spreads across my face hides my diamond. I laugh out loud because when I fly like this the sun can’t help but stick to the soles of my shoes.

Ruth Ellen and Sammy are out in the garden picking pumpkins. They are fighting.

‘It’s still green. You can’t pick that one,’ Ruth Ellen is saying when I run up and bend over double to catch my breath. Peabody darts off for the chickens. I try to stop him but I am too out of breath.

‘But I like the green ones,’ Sammy says.

‘The green ones are terrible in a pie. Mama will be mad.’

‘Why do you both always tell me what to do?’

Ruth Ellen stands up and skip-hops over and grabs Sammy’s hand and makes him stop picking the green pumpkin. He lets out a yelp for his mother. Then they see me. Peabody comes flying around the corner, chasing a chicken, and I flop onto the ground, too tired to do anything. Ruth Ellen’s mama hurries out to the porch and yells at Peabody to put the chicken down and get up on the porch this very minute and sit down and be still, and for some reason Peabody does what he is told. ‘Good boy. I shall get you some cake. Now, stay there!’

She looks over at me. ‘Hello, Bee!’ I wave and she goes inside for cake.

‘What’s wrong, Bee?’ Ruth Ellen’s face is red from bawling out her brother or from being in the sun so long picking pumpkins, I can’t tell which. It takes me a long while to get my breathing back. I stay flopped in the grass.

‘What happened to you?’ Ruth Ellen leaves Sammy and the pumpkins and hobbles out to me. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ I say, a big grin stretching across my face. ‘I … know … how … to … get back at her, Ruth Ellen. I’m going to race … Francine.’

Sammy comes over and lets out a wild hoot. ‘I can run fast. See?’ He jumps over the garden fence and flies down by the clothesline, screaming, ‘I am Jesse Owens. You can’t catch me. I am Jesse O-w-e-n-sssss.’

‘Why don’t you just leave Francine alone?’ Ruth Ellen goes back to loading a big pumpkin into her wheelbarrow. She makes her voice sharp. ‘You only make it worse for yourself.’

Worse for myself? I am still not breathing regular. Ruth Ellen picks another pumpkin. Sammy is flying up by the chicken coop and he dashes over the wooden tub his mama uses on wash day. ‘See?’ he says when he gets back up by me. ‘I am Jesse Owens.’

I smile at him. ‘Yes, you are.’

‘Well, I can’t run.’ Ruth Ellen heaves another pumpkin into the wheelbarrow.

‘I know that. I have to be the one to race her. She treats me the worst. You can coach us, Ruth Ellen. All Olympic runners need a good coach.’

She looks up like she is getting the wormy part of the apple. Which, I guess, she is. ‘I don’t want to be a coach!’

I can hardly believe my great idea is getting wrecked before I even start. And I know it is a great idea. Only great ideas come when you are running. It is the way of things.

I put myself in Ruth Ellen’s shoes for a bit and walk around in them for a while. Everything is uneven and feels different. I go and climb over the fence and help her pick. It is a very good year for pumpkins. There are lots of them.

‘What do you think we should do?’ I plop another pumpkin into the wheelbarrow.

‘Careful, Bee. You’ll crack them.’

She picks more pumpkins and doesn’t answer. ‘What do you think, Ruth Ellen?’ I ask again.

When she looks up her eyes are tearing up. ‘I’m tired of not being able to do what everyone else does.’ She yanks a pumpkin off the vine and throws it in the wheelbarrow, where it splits.

‘That’s why I have to run, Ruth Ellen. We have to show Francine that you can’t just hide children like us away so folks don’t have to look.’

Her mama calls us in for sweet potato pie after that.
As we are sitting around the table, me, Ruth Ellen, her mama and Sammy, they tell me stories about their papa: how he used to take them to the ocean and they would fly kites in the dunes, how they hunted for hours every Christmas for a tree and he always insisted on the most straggly one in need of a home, and how he taught Ruth Ellen and Sammy to catch trout without a worm. There are so many papa stories that I start feeling a little better, too. I lean back in my chair and think how being in this house fixes things.

Then I ask for another piece of sweet potato pie.

‘I bet we could whip you silly if we raced you.’ I make my tone real sharp and know-it-all when I am standing by the school building, waiting to go back to class. I want to get Francine’s goat.

‘You could never beat us,’ she says, stopping and scuffing the sole of her shoe in the dirt so I remember. She narrows her eyes. ‘Never.’

‘Let’s find out, then.’ I lean back against the wall like I am Al Capone and I like doing this. ‘Are you scared?’

She laughs. ‘I am not scared of you, Bee.’ She glances at her friends. ‘We will race you all.’ Ruth Ellen, Susan, Jonathan, Thomas and Robert crowd around me. Jonathan is poking a stick between the rough wood clapboards, Susan is wrapped around Ruth Ellen.

‘Are you afraid to race me alone?’ I spike my voice with dare.

Francine laughs. ‘No, Bee. I’m not afraid of you.’ Then she steps closer and whispers, ‘I would just die if I looked like you.’

I stare her down. Her voice is no longer tinkling bells. It is a hollow jug. If she thinks she is making me soft in the belly, she is wrong. I am past all that now.

I check my shoelaces over and over. ‘Double knots,’ I tell myself. ‘You will trip if you don’t tie them.’

I have been going over this for the last two days, making sure I remember everything Bobby taught me.

‘Don’t stop, keep going. Slow down if you have to, but don’t stop. No bouncing.’

‘You have to cheer for me like I am Jesse Owens,’ I tell everyone.

Robert says, ‘Who’s Jesse Owens?’ and then I have to tell them how Jesse Owens, the grandson of a slave, won four gold medals running in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

Miss Healy helps me mark a course that starts in the shade of the ball field and zips across the hopscotch squares and dashes over to our dirt spot, then shoots back to the shade. When we are alone at our third recess, without Francine and her friends watching, everyone helps me practise. Robert and Thomas fly their fighter bombers and Jonathan airplanes and Miss Healy bounces too much and we are all red in the face when we finish.

‘I think we need a fourth recess,’ Miss Healy says, and we stay and run the course again.

I tell Francine when she is in the bus line that we can wait a whole extra day so she can have a practice run. ‘I already tried it today, and I don’t want you telling me I didn’t win this race fair and square.’

She glares at me. She looks at my work boots and up to my overalls and finally stops at my face. ‘I don’t need to practise to beat someone like you, Bee.’

‘Fine by me.’ I hold my nose like someone is smelling awful bad and walk away.