The Four-Story Mistake (7 page)

“Be careful now, Rush,” cautioned Cuffy. “I don't want no broken collarbones.”

“I know just what to do for a broken collarbone,” Mona said, with a glint in her eye. “They're teaching our class first aid at school.” Rush had an uncomfortable suspicion that she would welcome his breaking a bone just for the pleasure of treating it.

“Rest assured that
all
my bones will be guarded as carefully as rare jewels from the Indies,” said Rush. “I'm not going to have you fussing with my fractures, Mona, and putting my bones together upside down. Not a chance, pal, not a chance!”

Willy Sloper helped him with the house. There were a lot of crates, just as Father had said, and Rush and Willy made several trips up the hill carrying wood, saws, hammers and nails. Randy and Oliver were allowed to accompany them, staggering under armfuls of planks.

All Saturday and Sunday of the third weekend that the Melendys had been living in the Four-Story Mistake, the sound of hammer beats came from the woods; and finally on Sunday evening the tree house was finished. The whole family, Cuffy, Oliver, Isaac, everybody, went up the wooded hill to inspect it.

It was an excellent tree house. They all said so, even Father. It was a square, broad platform anchored to boughs twenty feet above the earth. There was a railing round it, and wires were bound from the corner posts about the branches beneath.

“Yessir,” Willy Sloper said, “can't nothin' much shake down that little roost without it's a hurricane. But I might need that ladder again sometime. You better build the foot pieces onto the trunk real soon.”

Rush kept forgetting about building the foot pieces. So many things were happening. Everyday they rattled off to school in the Motor. The Carthage people made quite a lot of fun of it. They called it the Jalopy, or the Aquarium, or the Caboose-that-Got-Left-Behind. The Melendys didn't mind. They knew it was a funny-looking old thing, but they were fond of it and it got them places without quite falling apart.

They had all made friends, and school was beginning to be very interesting to them. Mona was at the head of practically everything in her class except sports and mathematics. “I think I'm going to be president pretty soon, too,” she said modestly.

Rush was the best of his class in mathematics and history. “And if they had a music department, I'd be best in that,” he admitted with candor.

Randy excelled only in drawing, which they didn't have often. And poor Oliver wasn't at the head of anything at all in
his
class. He confessed it freely, thought for a minute, and brightened as he added, “But me and Joseph Bryan weigh more than anybody else!”

Home was nice, too. The queer old house was comfortable and spacious; even Randy had stopped being homesick. She had built a feeding-stand for birds on the roof outside the cupola. Each day she got up early, sprinkled bread crumbs there and millet seed, and watched them come: sparrows, of course, a greedy starling, big, savage bluejays, and all the rare, shy ones: tanagers, and cardinals, and fox-brown thrushes.

Mona had pinned up all her signed photographs of actors and actresses; she was also writing a play, and learning how to knit. Rush had found the right place for his piano, and spent hours practicing whenever he wasn't up in the tree house. And Oliver, when he didn't sneak down to the cellar room, spent most of his time courting colds in the brook.

Indian summer lasted a long time that year. So long into the autumn that the violet plants beside the brook believed that spring had come again and put out new blossoms. Each day the sun shone, the birds lingered, though the trees were turning, purely out of habit, and their rose and yellow and rust looked strange and beautiful above the brilliant green grass. It was a wonderful time: almost better than spring, really, because it was rarer. Each golden day was cherished to the full, for one had the feeling that each must be the last. Tomorrow it would be winter.

The Melendys went about in shorts and bare feet, breathing the air luxuriously and hating to go indoors. Hickory trees abounded on the place, and black walnuts and butternuts. The old orchard had a russet tree whose apples tasted sweeter and sharper and better than any apples the children had ever eaten. When they were at home, they were always biting and nibbling, breaking nuts with big stones, or wandering through the high, dry grass of the orchard looking for windfalls. “I loved the old house,” Randy said sadly. “But I'm afraid I'm going to love this one even better.”

One day Rush came home early from school. The man from Freebush's grocery store brought him home with the delivery. Two pounds of bacon, a roast of beef, a bushel of potatoes, six cans of peaches, and Rush arrived together at eleven-thirty in the morning.

“Why, what's the matter?” inquired Cuffy, wiping her hands on her apron. “Why're you home so early? Been bad?”

“No, Cuffy,” Rush said. “But Miss Holsinger thinks I've got a temperature. My throat's sore.”

“Throat's sore!” exclaimed Cuffy. “Why didn't you say so this morning? You come right in and go to bed. I'll give you some aspirin and a gargle.”

Rush followed her unhappily into the house. It was a lovely day and he hated to go to bed.

Except for when I swallow, I feel perfectly okay, he thought.

After a delicate invalid lunch, a long nap, and a half hour's perusal of his algebra book, Rush felt well and in need of entertainment. He went out on the landing and called for Cuffy. There was no answer. She had gone to Carthage in the Motor with Willy Sloper. Father was in New York, Rush knew; everybody else was at school. Even Isaac failed to respond to his whistle; Cuffy must have taken him to Carthage with her.

Disconsolately Rush went back to bed. Once more he studied his algebra book, unhappily. He looked at his other books in their cases, but he had read them all at least twice. He lay back on his pillow, but it felt full of lumps, and he wasn't sleepy.

“Darn it, I'm bored!” Rush said crossly to his room. The cool, white walls stared back at him indifferently. He rolled over and gazed gloomily out his window at the black boughs of the Norway spruce. Just about now the guys in his class would be out on the field for football practice. He hated like the dickens to miss it.

The dark branches lifted a little and swayed against the window. Rush sat up.

“No one's here to tell me not to. Why don't I try it?”

He got out of bed, put on his sweater, a bathrobe and a pair of felt slippers, and opened the window. Just as he had one leg over the sill, a thought occurred to him: he went back to his bed and buried a pillow under the blankets in a lifelike mound. “Just in case,” said Rush prudently. He returned to the window, straddled the sill and reached for the nearest spruce branch. It was quite easy. Feeling clever and adventurous, he reached back and closed his window. Then he continued his investigation of the tree; he had been meaning to do it for weeks. There were a great many scratchy needles and inconvenient twigs, but the boughs were not too far apart. Bleeding slightly from several scratches, with a tear in his bathrobe, and the greater portion of an abandoned bird's nest draped about his head and shoulders, Rush finally reached the bottom. First he brushed and shook himself and got rid of the pieces of bird's nest which had gone down his neck and felt exactly as if he were wearing a shirt made of shredded wheat. Then he ambled lightheartedly (and a little lightheadedly, too, owing to his temperature) across the lawn. It was delightful to know that everybody was away. The place was his and his alone. He sang to himself as he floated across the grass, and up into the woods. He sang a good, loud sea song that he was fond of:

“But OH it was a cruel sight

And grieved us full sore.

Sail HIGH sail LOW

And so-o sailed we,

To see them all a-drowning

As they tried to swim to shore—

A-sailing down all on the coast of HIGH Barbaree!”

He scrambled up Willy Sloper's ladder, hurdled the railing of the tree house, and sat down on the floor with his back pressed against the rough substantial trunk of the oak. It was good to rest after his recent exertion. He sat very still listening to the minute, distant ringing of the fever in his ears. Beyond it there were other sounds: the sounds of a warm fall day. Leaves dropped with a whisper to the earth, and acorns plopped like heavy drops of rain. A woodpecker rapped at the trunk of the tree above Rush's head. Another pecked near by, and another, and another, and another. The woods were full of a ghostly, hollow knocking as though dozens of brittle knuckles beat upon closed doors.

He lay down flat on his back and looked up into the purpling roof of leaves. How high it was, and beyond it how tremendous was the sky. Rush felt as though he were lying on the floor of the ocean, deep, deep down. Fathomless currents stirred the leaves, and rocked his cradle. By and by he was asleep.

At half past four everybody came home in the Motor. Randy, Mona, and Oliver played prisoner's base on the lawn. Cuffy peeked into Rush's room, thought that he was sleeping, and went down to the kitchen to get supper. Willy came with her to peel the potatoes and have a good talk.

At five-thirty a procession of slate-blue clouds rose out of the west and hid the setting sun. They were thick, huge, overpowering clouds full of a mean spirit. The surprise they brought with them was a vast, boisterous wind that burst unannounced upon the world, to tear the last of Indian summer into ribbons. The children ran indoors, Willy went down cellar to get wood for the fireplaces, and Cuffy hurried out to the clothesline and gathered up armfuls of bounding, devil-possessed clothes. High in the tree house Rush curled deeper into sleep, pulling his bathrobe close about him.

“How's Rush feeling, Cuffy?” asked Mona, setting the table.

“I guess he's all right,” Cuffy answered from the kitchen. “He's still asleep.”

She was right about that. Rush was still asleep. Only not where she thought he was. The wind blew harder and harder. It wrenched the shutters from their catches and slapped them against the house; it blew the smoke down the chimney, and tore branches from the trees. Up in the woods something fell to the earth with a loud crash.

Rush sat up suddenly, chilled and stiff. At first he couldn't remember where he was. He was lost in a frightening turmoil of dark and wind. The very earth was rocking beneath him and overhead all he could see was strange, tossing forms and driving clouds. Absolutely terrified he put out his hand and touched the rough, solid bark of the oak. The cold sweat of relief sprang out all over him. So it wasn't the end of the world, after all. It was only his own tree house rocking in a gale!

“Boy, I better scram back to bed,” Rush said to himself. “I wonder if I can climb up that spruce tree in the dark as easily as I came down it?” The thought exhausted him. Maybe he could sneak up the back stairs without being caught. He turned up the collar of his bathrobe, flung one leg over the rail, and reached out with his slippered foot for the top rung of Willy's ladder. His foot waved aimlessly at first, then searchingly, and at last frantically. There was no ladder.

“Well, gee,” Rush said. He waved his foot around some more, but it met only empty space. The ladder had blown over. That must have been what woke him up.

“I could jump,” he remarked without enthusiasm. He leaned over the railing and looked down. Jump? Twenty feet in the dark and into bushes? “You'd be a jackass to try it,” Rush admonished himself. “You'd break something or other, and first thing you know Mona'd be practicing her first aid on you. Not much.”

The next thing was to yell.

He leaned far out and shouted in the direction of the house. “Cuffy!” brayed Rush. “Oh, WILL-ee!”

But the wind and the woods were roaring like the entire Atlantic Ocean. Rush might have been a cricket chirping in a wilderness. He had yelled so hard and long that his already sore throat began to ache unbearably, and, discouraged, he sat down again on the platform, his back against the oak. There was nothing to do but wait. “Maybe I'll die up here; starve to death,” he mumbled, feeling sorry for himself; but the absurdity of the statement was apparent even to him. Sooner or later
somebody
would come. But by that time I'll be dead of exposure, Rush thought. That wasn't so amusing. The wind howled about him, cold and violent, and only the fever in his veins kept him warm. “I probably really will get pneumonia now,” he said, with a sort of triumphant gloom.

Far away, between leaves and branches, he could see the small, glittering lights of the house. They came and went, fitfully; a constellation of fireflies. Inside the house the family would be eating supper now—warm, cozy, and protected, not caring that he was alone, cold, shut out in the storm. Why didn't they come and find him? But there was a good answer to that, and Rush knew what it was. The answer was a pillow buried in a lifelike lump under the blankets of his bed. “You don't get away with much in this world,” observed Rush profoundly.