William S. and the Great Escape Read online

  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.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Just 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 remembe
red, 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?”

  CHAPTER 22

  At 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.

  “They told me all four of you had disappeared several days before and nobody had seen you since, and they were sure that you must have come here. But of course you weren’t here, and I hadn’t heard a word from you. But when I tried to tell them so, they wouldn’t believe me. They insisted on going through the whole house, looking in all the closets and under beds and even in cupboards, before they finally gave up and went away.” She sighed again, grabbed Buddy, and picked him up—a stiff, startled-looking Buddy—and hugged him hard as she asked William, “Where have you been all this time?”

  “We were on our way here,” William started to explain, “but we kind of stopped off for a few days at a … well, at a friend’s house, and …”

  “But couldn’t you have phoned?” Aunt Fiona frowned at William and then at Jancy. Buddy was pushing her arms away, struggling to get down. “I’ve been so worried since I heard you were missing. I’ve been imagining all sorts of terrible things that might have happened to you.”

  “I guess we could have phoned,” William said. “We should have, but we didn’t know your phone number. And besides …” He paused, wondering if it would be all right to say what he was thinking, but then Jancy interrupted and said it for him.

  Jancy flat-out told Aunt Fiona, “We were afraid that if we did, you’d tell us not to come.” Tears were flooding Jancy’s big eyes, and her chin was beginning to quiver as she went on, “And we didn’t have anywhere else in the whole world to go.”

  For a moment Aunt Fiona stared from Jancy to William and back again, before she put Buddy down and grabbed them both at once and hugged them. And it was right then, with Aunt Fiona’s arms around him and Jancy, that William began to let himself start to believe, just a little bit, that maybe this running-away thing might turn out all right after all. Still a pretty big maybe, because of the Baggett problem—the possibility a bunch of Baggetts might show up again at any moment to take them back. But there would be time to worry about that later.

  Right at the moment all he could think was how completely different everything seemed now that he’d met Aunt Fiona and was beginning to understand what she was really like. And to see how her old house with its shiny wood floors and good-smelling kitchen looked, smelled, and just plain felt so different from any of the places he’d ever lived as a Baggett.

  “O brave new world,/that has such people in’t,” William found himself thinking, one of his favorite lines from The Tempest, but one that, up until that moment, he’d never found much use for.

  But now Aunt Fiona was saying to them, “Well, and so here you are, and I’m so glad to really meet both of you, at last.” She took a deep breath and shook her head slowly from side to side before she went on. “There’s so much to talk about and make plans for, but I guess what we should do first and foremost is decide what we can do about dinner, and where you all are going to sleep tonight, and—”

  “We won’t take up a lot of room,” Jancy said quickly.

  “No, we won’t at all.” Trixie was bouncing up and down again and doing her dimpled smile. “At Clarice’s house, Buddy and me slept in just one little old cot, and we didn’t even kick each other. Not very much, anyway.”

  And then Buddy got into the act by announcing proudly, “And I didn’t wet the bed, either. Not even once.” Which for some reason made Aunt Fiona pick him up and hug him again.

  “I just can’t believe you,” she told him. “You’ve gotten to be so big, and you’re talking like a grownup. You’re not my little baby anymore, are you?” She kind of nuzzled her face against Buddy’s neck. “Don’t you remember when you were my baby, Buddy?”

  “No.” Buddy shook his head solemnly. “I don’t remember.” But he had stopped pushing her away and trying to get down. Instead he put one arm around Aunt Fiona’s neck and said, “I don’t remember, but maybe I’m going to.”

  So then Aunt Fiona got out some pasta and sausages and added them to the good-smelling stuff that she was already cooking. And all the time she was cooking and setting the table for four more people, and later, when they were eating, she was talking and asking questions.

  While they were still at the table, they told her about how they’d hidden in the basement at the Ogdens’ house, and how Clarice had scared them into staying longer when they wanted to leave, by saying the police were looking for them, when they really weren’t.

  And when Aunt Fiona wondered why Clarice had done that, William quickly said, “I think it was just because she’s a lonely person and she liked having some people around to talk to for a change.” Then he frowned at Jancy and said firmly, “That’s what I think, anyway.” Jancy got the message. She grinned slightly and ducked her head, but she kept her mouth shut.

  It wasn’t until later that evening, after the little kids had been put to bed, that Auntie—she’d said they could call her Auntie when they felt like it—began to tell William and Jancy about the day Ed Baggett came and took Buddy and Trixie away.

  “It was the worst day of my life,” she told them. Her lips were quivering as she went on, “I’d had those two beautiful babies since right after Laura, your mother, died. Ever since Buddy was just a week old, and Trixie was only a toddler. I’d really come to think of them as my own. I never imagined for a minute that Ed would ever want them back, and then …” She stopped, shaking her head and biting her lip for a long moment, before she went on. “I never liked Ed Baggett. I had always been so terribly sorry Laura married him. But on that day I hated that man so much….”

  She sighed and stopped again, and then Jancy brought up something that William had wondered about for a long time. Like always, Jancy was good at saying straight out what she was thinking about. “I wonder why our mama married Big Ed. I was only six when she died, but I remember her pretty well. She was always good to us, or at least she tried to be, except sometimes when Big Ed was around, and she could only do just what he told her to.” Jancy shook her head and sighed. “I guess she was afraid of him, like everybody else.”

 
“I know. I’ve always wondered too,” Auntie said. “It’s a complicated story. After Laura graduated from high school, she went to live with some cousins of ours in Crownfield, because the junior college there had such a good drama department. Laura was such a pretty girl, and she’d always wanted to be an actress.”

  Jancy looked at William with raised eyebrows, and guessing what the eyebrows were suggesting, he grinned back at her and nodded—a nod that meant something about acting talent and where it might have come from.

  But Aunt Fiona went right on. “I guess you know that the Crownfield schools have always had exceptional drama departments. Anyway, Laura was going to the college, but she was also doing some community service helping out families who were having difficulties, and somehow she got acquainted with Mabel Baggett. You know, Ed Baggett’s first wife—the mother of the first six kids. The oldest one was—”

  “Little Ed,” Jancy offered.

  Auntie nodded. “Yes. Ed Junior was only about six years old, and there were three others before the twins, who were still infants when Mabel Baggett started having some kind of a nervous breakdown. She’d gotten to the point where she couldn’t begin to take care of all those children, and Laura started helping her out. Laura always loved babies.”

  It was William’s turn to raise an eyebrow and nod at Jancy. A nod that this time meant that being crazy about all sorts of little things might have come from the same place.

  “And then Mabel Baggett disappeared. Left all her children, as well as Big Ed, and ran away back to wherever it was she came from.”