The Indian in the Cupboard (17 page)

“What’s up with you now? I’m trying to be nice. You got your silly old cupboard back.”

“It’s no good without the key.”

“Well, I’m sorry! It must have dropped out on the way up to the attic.”

On the way
up
to the attic! Omri hadn’t thought of that. “Will you help me find it?” he asked eagerly. “Please! It’s terribly important!”

“Oh … all right then.”

The four of them hunted for half an hour. They didn’t find it.

After that, Gillon and Adiel had to go out to some function at school, so Patrick and Omri had the television to themselves. They took out the two men and explained this new magic, and then they all watched together. First came a film about animals, which absolutely transfixed both the little men. Then a Western came on. Omri thought they ought to switch it off, but Boone, in particular, set up such a hullabaloo that eventually Omri said, “Oh—all right. Just for ten minutes, then.”

Little Bear was seated cross-legged on Omri’s knee, while Boone, who had somehow gravitated back to Patrick, preferred to stand in his breast pocket, leaning his elbows along the pocket top with his hat on the back of his head, chewing a lump of tobacco he had had on him. Patrick, who’d heard something of cowboys’ habits, said, “Don’t you dare spit! There are no spittoons here, you know.”

“Lemme listen to ’em talkin’, willya?” said Boone. “Ah jest cain’t git over how they
talk!”

Before the ten minutes was up, the Indians in the film started getting the worst of it. It was the usual sequence in which the pioneers’ wagons are drawn into a circle and the Indians are galloping around them while the outnumbered men of the wagon train fire muzzle-loading guns at them through the wagon wheels. Omri could sense Little Bear was getting restive and tense. As brave after brave bit the dust, he suddenly leaped to his feet.

“No good pictures!” he shouted.

“Watcha talkin’ about, Injun?” Boone yelled tauntingly across the chasm dividing him from Little Bear. “That’s how
it was! Mah maw and paw wuz in a fight like thet ’n’ mah paw tole me he done shot near ’nuff fifteen-twenny of them dirty savages!”

“White men move onto land! Use water! Kill animals!”

“So what? Let the best man win! And we won! Yippee!” he added as another television Indian went down with his horse on top of him.

Omri was looking at the screen when it happened. In a lull on the soundtrack he heard a thin faint whistling sound, and heard Boone grunt. He looked back at Boone swiftly, and his blood froze. The cowboy had an arrow sticking out of his chest.

For a couple of seconds he remained upright in Patrick’s breast pocket. Then, quite slowly, he fell forward.

Omri had often marveled at the way people in films, particularly girls and women, were given to letting out loud screams at dramatic or awful moments. Now he felt one rise in his own throat, and would have let it out if Little Bear had not cried out first.

Patrick, who had not noticed anything amiss till now, looked at Little Bear, saw where his bow arm was still pointing, and looked down at his own pocket. Over the top of it Boone hung, head down, as limp as a piece of knotted string.

“Boone! Boone!”

“No!” snapped Omri. “Don’t touch him!”

Ignoring Little Bear, who tumbled down his trouser leg to the floor as he moved, Omri very carefully lifted Boone clear between finger and thumb, and laid him across the palm of his hand. The cowboy lay face up with the arrow still sticking out of his chest.

“Is he—dead?” whispered Patrick in horror.

“I don’t know.”

“Shouldn’t we take the arrow out?”

“We can’t. Little Bear must.”

With infinite care and slowness, Omri laid his hand on the carpet. Boone lay perfectly still. With such a tiny body it was impossible to be sure whether the arrow was stuck in where his heart was, or a little higher up toward his shoulder—the arrow shaft was so fine you could only make it out by the minute cluster of feathers.

“Little Bear. Come here.”

Omri’s voice was steely, a voice Mr. Johnson himself might have envied—it commanded obedience.

Little Bear, scrambling to his feet after his fall, walked unsteadily to Omri’s hand.

“Get up there and see if you’ve killed him.”

Without a word, Little Bear climbed onto the edge of Omri’s hand and knelt down beside the prostrate Boone. He laid his ear against his chest just below the arrow. He listened, then straightened up, but without looking at either of the boys.

“Not killed,” he said sullenly.

Omri felt his breath go out in relief.

“Take the arrow out. Carefully. If he dies now, it’ll be doubly your fault.”

Little Bear put one hand on Boone’s chest with his fingers on either side of the arrow, and with the other took hold of the shaft where it went into Boone’s body.

“Blood come. Need stop up hole.”

Omri’s mother kept boxes of tissues in every room, mainly so nobody would have an excuse to sit sniffling. Patrick jumped up and brought this, tearing off a tiny corner and rolling it into a wad no bigger than a pinhead.

“Now it’s got germs on it from your hand,” said Omri.

“Where’s the disinfectant?”

“In the bathroom cupboard. Don’t let my mum see you!”

While Patrick was gone, Omri sat motionless and silent, his eyes fixed on Little Bear, still poised to pull out the arrow.

After a very long minute, the Indian muttered something. Omri bent his head low. “What?”

“Little Bear sorry.”

Omri straightened up, his heart cold and untouched.

“You’ll be a lot sorrier if you don’t save him,” was all he said.

Patrick raced back with the bottle of Listerine. He poured a drop into the lid and dipped the little ball of tissue into it. Then he held the cap close to Little Bear.

“Go on,” Omri ordered. “Pull it out.”

Little Bear seemed to brace himself. Then he began to tremble.

“Little Bear not do. Little Bear not doctor. Get doctor back. He know make wound good.”

“We can’t,” said Omri shortly. “The magic’s gone. You must do it. Do it now. Now, Little Bear!”

Again the Indian stiffened, closing his hand tightly around the arrow. Slowly and steadily he drew it out, and threw it aside. Then, as the blood welled out over Boone’s checked shirt, Little Bear swiftly squeezed the liquid out of the ball of tissue and pressed it against the wound.

“Use your knife now. Cut the dirty shirt away.”

Without hesitating, Little Bear obeyed. Boone lay still. His face under its tan had turned ashy gray.

“We need a bandage,” said Patrick.

“There’s nothing we could use, and we can’t move him to wrap it around him. We’ll have to use a tiny bit of Band-Aid.”

Again Patrick went to the bathroom. Again Omri, Little Bear, and Boone were left alone. Little Bear knelt now with his hands loose on his thighs, his head down. His shoulders rose and fell once. Was he sobbing? With shame, or fear? Or—could it be—sorrow?

Patrick returned with the box of Band-Aids and a pair of nail scissors. He cut out a square big enough to cover the whole of Boone’s chest, and Little Bear stuck it on with great care and even, Omri thought, tenderness.

“Now,” said Omri, “take off your chief’s cloak and cover him up warmly.”

This, too, Little Bear did uncomplainingly.

“We’ll take him upstairs and put him to bed,” said Omri. “Oh God, I wish we had that key and I could get that doctor back!”

As they walked slowly upstairs, he told Patrick about the First World War soldier he had brought to life to tend Little Bear’s leg wound.

“We’ve got to find that key!” said Patrick. “We’ve just got to!”

Little Bear, still at Boone’s side on Omri’s hand, said nothing.

In Omri’s room, Patrick made a bed for the cowboy from a folded handkerchief and another woolen square cut from Omri’s sweater. Omri slipped a bit of thin stiff card between Boone and his own hand, and on this he transferred the wounded man without too much disturbance, which might have started the bleeding again. He was still unconscious. Little Bear silently stood by. Suddenly he moved. Reaching up, he snatched off his chief’s headdress and threw it violently onto the ground. Before Omri could stop him, he began jumping on it, and in a second or two all the beautiful tall turkey feathers were bent and broken.

Leaving it lying there, Little Bear took off across the carpet, running as hard as he could over the deep woolen tufts, stumbling sometimes but running always in the direction of the seed box and his home. Patrick moved, but Omri said quietly, “Let him alone.”

O
mri and Patrick decided they must take it in turns to sit up all night with Boone. This was going to be tricky because of light showing under the door, but Omri unearthed the lopsided remains of a candle he had made himself from a candle-making kit.

“We can put it behind the dressing-up crate. Then the light won’t show.”

They got into their pajamas. Patrick was supposed to be sleeping on a folding bed, so they got it ready to avoid arousing suspicion.

When Omri’s mother came in to kiss them good night, they were both in bed, apparently reading. The fact that Omri was reading in semidarkness was nothing unusual; she was always at him about it.

“Oh Omri! Why
won’t
you switch your bedside light on? You’ll ruin your eyes.”

“It doesn’t work,” said Omri promptly.

“Yes it does. Daddy fixed it this morning. You know what was wrong with it?”

“What?” asked Omri impatiently, wishing, for once, that she would go.

“That wretched rat of Gillon’s had made a nest under the floorboards and lined it with bits of insulation it gnawed off the wires. It’s a wonder it didn’t electrocute itself.”

Omri sat up sharply.

“Do you mean it’s got loose?”

His mother gave a lopsided smile. “Where have you been keeping yourself? It’s been loose since last night—haven’t you noticed Gillon frantically looking for it? It seems to have taken up residence under your bed.”

“Under my bed!” Omri yelled, leaping out of it and dropping to his knees.

“It’s no use looking for it. I mean right under—under the floor. Daddy caught a glimpse of it today when he had the boards up, but he couldn’t catch it, of course. It’s a matter of waiting till it comes out for food, and then—”

But Omri wasn’t listening. A rat! That was all they needed.

“Mum, we’ve got to get it! We’ve got to!”

“Why? You’re not scared of it, are you?”

“Me—scared of that stupid rat? Of course not! But we’ve got to catch it!” said Omri desperately. He felt wild and furious. How could Gillon have let the thing go? The perils that a rat presented to his little men simply turned his blood cold. And why, of all rooms in the house, should it have chosen his?

He was tearing frantically at the edge of the carpet, trying to pull it back, when his mother hiked him to his feet.

“Omri, that carpet and those floorboards have been taken up once today, they’ve been put back once and everything tidied up. Rat or no rat, I’m not going through it all again tonight. Now get into bed and go to sleep.”

“But—”

“In
to
bed
, I said. Now!”

When she used that tone, there was no arguing with her. Omri got into bed, was kissed, and watched the light go off and the door close. As soon as her footsteps had faded, he leaped up again and so did Patrick.

“Now we must definitely stay awake all night. We mustn’t close our eyes for a moment,” said Omri.

He was hunting through his ancient collection of book matches for one out of which his father had
not
cut the matches. At last he found one, and lit the candle. They very gently moved Boone’s bed out of hiding onto the bedside table, set the candle beside it, and sat one on each side, watching Boone’s dreadfully ill-looking face. The pink square of Band-Aid moved fractionally up and down as he breathed—you could hardly see it. It was like watching the long hand of a clock moving—only the strongest concentration enabled them to detect the faint motion.

“Hadn’t we better move the seed box up here too?” whispered Patrick.