William S. and the Great Escape (14 page)

With Trixie and Buddy concentrating on their
hamburgers and milk shakes, there was a chance for William and Jancy to have a serious discussion about what was going to happen next. William grinned at Jancy and, just as a joke, began by saying, “You know it's not as far from here to Gold Beach as it was from the Baggett's to Crownfield. We could walk it, if we had that old three-wheeled wagon of yours to put the luggage in.”

Jancy didn't seem to be in the mood for kidding around. “It wasn't mine, and we don't,” she said coldly. “I thought you said we could go the rest of the way by taxicab.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I said that, and I guess we can. It'll be expensive, but I'm pretty sure I have enough.”

“Pretty sure?” Jancy asked sharply. “I thought you said you had plenty.”

“Oh, I do,” he reassured her. “I've got plenty. It's just that I hate …”

He kind of ran down then, but Jancy the mind reader finished the thought for him.

“You just hate to part with your precious getaway money, I guess.”

He grinned sheepishly. She was right, he supposed. He remembered how he used to make the dangerous trip, slithering down over the crossbeams in the attic, even when he didn't have anything to add to his Getaway Fund. Just to stack up his nickels and dimes and count them, like a miser counting his gold. It was an embarrassing thought.
“Yeah, you're right,” he told Jancy. “We'll go by taxicab.”

But then, back at the Greyhound ticket office, he found out that his generous offer wasn't going to get them anywhere. There wasn't a single taxi in the whole town of Reedly.

“Not anymore,” the clerk told them. “Used to be Tony Martinez had a license, but then his old cab broke down and he quit. Where is it you kids want to go?”

It was Jancy who answered. “To Gold Beach,” she said. “We're going to our aunt's house in Gold Beach.”

The ticket clerk, a tall man with a kind of
Shakespearean
-type beard, almost like Prospero's in the Rockwell Kent illustration, rubbed his fuzzy chin while he peered over the counter at the four of them. At Buddy, who was leaning against William's leg and staring up at him wide-eyed, and Trixie, who was giving him her cutest Shirley Temple smile. “You know what?” he said. “I live in Gold Beach, and if you kids can wait a couple of hours till I get off, I can take you there. If you don't mind riding in a beat-up old Model A.”

Of course they didn't mind, and for a while it looked like their troubles, as far as getting to Aunt Fiona's house anyway, were pretty much over. Of course, there was still the chance that they wouldn't be welcome when they got there, but that possibility was one that William had been trying hard not to worry about. They'd cross that bridge, he kept telling himself, when they came to it.

So that was the way things were, and for the moment the only problem seemed to be keeping Trixie and Buddy from punching each other while they waited for almost two hours on the hard wooden bench in the ticket office.

But it was then, right there in the bus station, that another serious problem started to develop. It began, for William at least, when he noticed that Jancy was pawing around in the little crocheted bag she used as a purse. Pawing around, taking things out and putting them back, and finally dumping everything onto the bench. As far as William could see, there wasn't much—only a broken comb, a stubby pencil, a handkerchief, a quarter, two dimes, and a penny—and what looked like a badly wrinkled envelope. And when William asked what she was looking for, she only gasped and said, “I know I put it in here. I know it. But now it's gone.”

Holding up the wrinkled envelope, she said, “See. Here's the other one. But the one that had her address on it just isn't here.” She paused long enough to shake her head slowly from side to side, before she wailed, “And I can't remember what her address was.”

“I don't believe it,” William whispered, trying not to sound too frantic. “You wrote Aunt Fiona all those letters and you don't remember what the address was?”

“I wrote her
three
letters,” Jancy said coldly. “A long time ago. And she only answered the first two. And only
the first one had her address on it. After that she gave me this post office box number.” Jancy held up the one wrinkled envelope. “See there. Just a post office box number. I know I still had both letters. But the other one's just disappeared. I've looked and looked.”

“The street name,” William urged. “Can't you even remember the name of the street?” He was thinking that if they knew the street, they could make up a house number to tell the ticket clerk and have him drop them there. And then, after he drove off, they could walk up and down the street until … Well, until something happened. Maybe Trixie would recognize the house, or Aunt Fiona would just happen to come out and find them.

Jancy closed her eyes tightly and rocked her head from side to side. Trixie and Buddy stopped poking each other and watched her. “Why is Jancy doing this?” Buddy said, rocking his head back and forth.

“She's thinking,” William said. “She's trying to remember the name of the street where Aunt Fiona lives.” Another possibility occurred to him, not a very likely one, perhaps. After all, she'd only been four years old when she left. But worth a try.

Grabbing Trixie's shoulder, he gave it a shake to be sure he had her full attention. “Listen, Trixie,” he said. “I don't suppose you can remember the name of the street. The street where you lived with Aunt Fiona.”

“Oh,” Trixie said. “I think I can. I'll think about it.”
She rocked her head back and forth the way Jancy had been doing, before she said triumphantly, “I do remember. Sort of. I remember it was a name.”

“Not funny,” William said sarcastically, and turned back to Jancy. But she only shook her head sadly. Right at that moment the ticket clerk came out from behind the counter and said, “Okay, kids, follow me. We're off to Gold Beach.”

J
ust as he'd said, the ticket agent's Model A was pretty beat up, with rusty running boards and lots of dents, but, as it turned out, it did have one redeeming feature: a rumble seat. A leather-covered backseat that opened up behind the cab, so it would be almost like riding in a convertible. William had never ridden in a rumble seat and neither, of course, had the other kids, but they all, including William himself, immediately wanted to. This was a development that, along with finding room for their luggage, made things a little complicated.

It took several minutes of discussion and a little whimpering and whining before it was decided that the two little kids and Jancy would ride in the rumble seat. Which meant that only William, along with the suitcase and knapsack, would be in the cab with the driver. Which also meant that it was going to be up to him, all by himself, to decide what to tell the ticket clerk about where he should let them out.

Fortunately, the Model A turned out to be in such bad condition, with lots of jerky starts and stops and sudden motor deaths, that the helpful ticket clerk was too busy keeping it going to think about asking exactly where they were headed until they were almost there.

They stopped and started, died and revived, and finally coasted in neutral down a steep, curvy road with a nice view of the ocean. Or at least the clerk said there was a nice view. Because of being buried under all the luggage, William wasn't able to see much. It wasn't until they were well within the outskirts of Gold Beach that the Model A's owner got around to asking William just where he should let them off.

In desperation, William had decided that he would say they wanted to be dropped off at the post office. And when the owner of the Model A wanted to know why, he would just say … what?

He'd almost composed a halfway sensible answer to that question when Jancy began to knock violently on the back window and yell something unintelligible, but that clearly included the word “STOP!” The driver slammed on the brakes, and the Ford came to such a quick stop that William might have gone right through the windshield if he hadn't been pinned down by so much luggage. Struggling to see around his knapsack, he tried to stay calm, even though his first guess was that someone, probably Buddy, had fallen onto the road.

He had to wait several more frantic moments while Jancy climbed out of the rumble seat and up onto the running board, stuck her head in the window, and said, “We're here. This is the street.” She pointed triumphantly. “Right back there. Eleanor Street.”

And when the ticket clerk asked if he should back up and drive down Eleanor, she said quickly, “No. You don't need to do that. The house is real close. We can walk the rest of the way.”

They had all thanked the friendly owner of the rumble seat over and over again and waved good-bye until he had chugged and jolted out of sight, before William turned to Jancy and opened his mouth to say, “What in the world … ?” Jancy and Trixie, both at once, began to explain.

Jancy was saying, “I started reading the street names out loud as soon as we got to Gold Beach, and as soon as I said Eleanor, Trixie screamed, ‘That's it!' And then I remembered too. That was the street name on the envelope that got lost.”

And at the same time Trixie was saying, “See, William, I did remember. Just like I told you. As soon as Jancy read that sign”—she stopped long enough to point—“that sign right over there that says ‘Eleanor,' I remembered that was it. And it
was so
a name, just like I told you. I just didn't remember whose name it was.”

Another big problem more or less solved. But still …
William sighed. That still left the biggest one—the one problem that he'd been trying to push out of his mind ever since they'd decided to run away. And that was what their aunt was going to do when they appeared on her doorstep. An imagined scene that he'd been trying to pull the curtain on every time it shoved its way into his consciousness. A scene in which Aunt Fiona took one look at four hungry, bedraggled runaway Baggetts and slammed the door in their faces.

After all, you could hardly blame her. How many people would be willing to take in four kids—two little ones she hadn't seen for two years, plus an eleven-year-old and an almost teenager whom she'd barely met—to feed and clothe, and probably have to hide from an angry Ed Baggett? Who would be willing to do such a thing? William's best guess was that the answer to that question had to be,
nobody in their right mind
.

But whatever the answer was going to be, it was beginning to look like they were going to get it very soon. Sure enough, as soon as they started down Eleanor Street, Trixie began to remember some other things. “Look,” she was saying. “Hey, Buddy. Look at that house with the big fence around it. Remember the great big police dog who used to bark at us? Remember?” And then, while Buddy was still shaking his head, “Look! Look! There he is.”

And he certainly was. A big, mean-looking German shepherd was running across the lawn, barking fiercely.
William and Jancy and Buddy, too, were backing away, but Trixie was saying, in a soothing, grownup-sounding voice, “It's all right, kiddos. He's a bad dog all right, but it's a good, strong fence. Just don't ever put your fingers through the wire.”

“Is that what Aunt Fiona said?” Jancy asked, and Trixie nodded, looking very pleased with herself. But when William once again asked her which was Aunt Fiona's house, she still didn't seem sure. She looked back and forth down the street several times and then pointed. “This way, I think. Maybe it's down this way.”

And so William and Jancy changed hands on the heavy suitcase and knapsack and struggled on down Eleanor Street. They had passed several more houses, including one with a fancy fountain that Trixie thought she remembered, when they came to an old-fashioned wooden house with a wide front porch, and Trixie once again came to a stop. “I think that's our house. Remember, Buddy? Isn't that where we lived? Yes, yes. That's it.”

Then, before anyone could even try to stop her, she was running up the walk, climbing the steps, and ringing the doorbell, while Buddy was still shaking his head and saying, “I don't think I live there.”

What with carrying all the luggage and waiting while Buddy put one foot and then the other on every one of the steep stairs, William and Jancy had barely arrived on the porch when the door opened, and there she was.

There was a slender woman with lots of brown hair who, right at first, didn't look especially familiar to William. Except there was something about her that brought back a tumbled rush of mixed-up memories— good ones and bad ones. Memories of the way he'd felt about his quiet, gentle mother, and how it had become mixed with resentment when she didn't stand up for him the way he felt she should have. The same kind of resentment he knew he was going to feel when this halfway familiar person did what she was surely going to do—point her finger, stamp her foot, and tell them to go away and stop messing up her nice, quiet life.

But then, after staring and gasping for a long second, Aunt Fiona dropped to her knees and reached out and grabbed Trixie, who still had her finger on the doorbell, and Buddy, too. “Oh, thank God,” she almost sobbed. “You're all right? You are all right.” And then, looking up at William and Jancy, she demanded, “But where were you? Where on earth have you been?”

A
t first William didn't understand what Aunt Fiona was raving about, but by the time she led the way down the hall and into a big, good-smelling kitchen, she'd pretty much explained. It seemed that just two days before, on Thursday, Big Ed and two of his full-grown sons had shown up at her front door. Three big, angry, threatening men, who pushed their way right past her into her house, demanding that she give back their kids.