The Middle Moffat (17 page)

Miss Chichester turned Jane's head around for this bow and at last Jane really did look like a perfect middle bear. Furthermore, she could see out. There was Mama, laughing so hard the tears were rolling down her cheeks. And there was Nancy Stokes with all the Stokeses, and Olga was there. And there was Mr. Buckle beaming up at the stage. Jane bowed and lumbered off the stage. She felt good now. Acting was fun, she thought, especially if you could be disguised in a bear uniform. And this time she had not turned a somersault across the stage as she had the time she was a butterfly. True, she had lost her head. But she had found it. And the show had gone on, the way people say shows always do.

Moreover, the Moffats had nice warm bear pajamas to sleep in for the rest of the winter. Of course they didn't go to bed with the bear heads on. But the rest of the costumes were nice and warm.

Jane stood on the porch anxiously scanning the sky. There was going to be an eclipse of the sun and she certainly hoped she was not going to miss it.

It seemed to Jane that in the past she had missed a great many important things. For instance, one day there had been a slight earthquake. Oh, it was very slight, just a tremor in fact, but still it was an earthquake and Jane would have liked to have felt it. However, when the earth quaked she was at the moving pictures with Nancy Stokes. No one in the moving picture house had felt the earthquake, but when Janey got home everybody was talking about it.

Of course, a lot of people didn't know it was an earthquake until they read about it in the evening
Register.
Many people thought it was just men blasting on the head of the Sleeping Giant or an explosion somewhere. Mama said the dishes had rattled on the sideboard and Madame-the-bust had swayed on her pedestal.

Jane was sorry she had missed it, and for many days afterward she had gone around with her eyes glued to the ground, looking vainly for cracks in the earth. Or she would fasten her ear to the ground, Indian fashion, hoping to hear a rumble.

But this eclipse now, how could she miss it? Somehow or another, everybody knew about it in advance. For weeks the teacher had talked of little else in school. Everybody knew exactly when to expect it. Nobody knew about the earthquake in advance. Natural to miss it. Just like shooting stars. Of course, Jane saw plenty of good shooting stars, but she had an idea she missed the best ones. She'd be reading a book on a warm summer's evening, and in would rush Rufus or Joey.

"Boy, oh, boy, you should see the shooting star I just saw!"

The way they told it made Jane envision a star that shot across the sky from horizon to horizon. Her shooting stars were wonderful, but she really never saw anything like the ones they described.

Another important thing which Jane had missed was the geyser on the corner of Pleasant Street. A water main burst in front of the oldest inhabitant's house and water shot up in the air forty feet! Just like Yellowstone Park, Joey said. Jane wished she'd seen that, but she and Nancy were bathing a stray dog and didn't know about the geyser until there was nothing left but a trickle of water in the gutter.

But the worst thing that might happen was that she might not even know the eclipse
was
the eclipse right while it was going on. It might be like the man in the moon. All of her life she had heard of this man in the moon. But for years she had not been able to find him. She knew the lady in the moon very well. However, the man in the moon was much more famous. Jane always looked for him, expecting a man, well-dressed, with perhaps a tall hat and a cane.

Of course she did see a jolly pie-face. But surely that could not possibly be
the man
the whole world talked about. That's what she had thought, anyway, until last night, when she was walking home from the play in the Town Hall with Mama.

It was nice to be walking home with Mama. They looked at the stars and the moon together. Jane resolved to find out about this man in the moon once and for all.

"I'll give myself until we get to Ashbellows Place," she decided. "If I don't find him by then, I'll ask Mama."

She scrunched along in the snow, happily, with Mama. Mama was telling her about things when she was little in New York.

"...that year we were living in a house that looked out over the East River," Mama was saying. But Janey only half listened while she studied the moon hard. There was the lovely lady in the moon, the same as always. Then, if she blinked her eyes and looked again, there was the jolly pie-face. But the man! Where was he? The man with the top hat and cane?

They reached the corner of Ashbellows Place and still Jane did not see the man in the moon, although her eyes were strained from the effort. She listened politely until Mama finished her story. Then she said:

"Mama."

"Yes, Janey?"

"You see the moon?"

"Yes, Janey."

"You see the man in the moon?"

"Yes, of course I do, Jane. He's right there for the whole world to see."

"Oh..."

Jane fell silent for a moment. For the whole world to see. Why didn't she see him then? If she told Mama she didn't see him, would Mama think she was an ignoramus? Well, ignoramus or not, tonight she was going to find out. She tucked her hand tightly in Mama's, took a deep breath, and then said as though it were a huge joke:

"Well, I don't see him, Mama."

Mama was lost in her own thoughts and did not answer. She thinks I am an ignoramus, Jane decided.

"Not tonight anyway," she added to ease the blow. "Of course, I see the lady in the moon," she went on hastily. "But the man in the moon?...No!"

She said this "no" defiantly. All right. She was an ignoramus.

"The man in the moon? No?" Mama repeated absent-mindedly. Then, thinking this was a game Jane was playing, she said, "Well, you may not see him. But I see him. The same jolly old fellow I've known all my life."

These words "jolly old fellow" sounded so endearing, Jane did wish she knew him, too.

"What does he look like?" she asked.

They stopped under the lamplight. On the snow Mama drew a moon with a face in it. It was a jolly pie-face, the same as Jane saw.

"There," said Mama. "The man in the moon!"

"Oh," gasped Jane. "Is
that
the man in the moon?"

"Of course that's the man in the moon."

"Is that the man in the moon the whole world sees?"

"Yes, Janey."

"Why, I know him," Jane said scornfully, as though the man in the moon had been putting something over on her.

"Of course you know him," said Mama.

"'Course I know him," laughed Jane. What a relief! She wasn't an ignoramus. There wasn't any man in the moon with a top hat and cane. Just this jolly pie-face. He was
the man
in the moon.

Now Jane hoped she would not have the same trouble recognizing the eclipse as she had the man in the moon. She looked at the sun, squinting her eyes. Maybe the eclipse was beginning. It wasn't supposed to begin for a couple of hours. Still, she wanted to make sure she wasn't going to miss it.

But then, how could she miss it? Jane broke off an icicle from the hop vine and sucked it. Pooh! She couldn't miss it. Not after all those pictures the teacher had drawn on the blackboard. Jane jumped off the porch and began drawing pictures of the eclipse in the snow. The teacher had said, "When the eclipse is total, then you will see the corona. Look for it. A crown of fire." Apparently, from the way the teacher spoke, this was going to be one of the biggest eclipses ever. Scientists and astronomers were coming from all the world to watch this one right in New Haven. Because of all the places in the world, New Haven was the best place to watch it. And Cranbury, being so near, was just as good.

Since people were coming from Honolulu and the other side of the earth to see this eclipse, Jane was beginning to think perhaps she should go somewhere special to see the eclipse, too. Not just watch it from her own front yard.

"Take a piece of smoked glass and look!" the teacher had said.

She had not said
go
anywhere and look. Just look. All the same it began to seem to Jane that it might be a very good idea to go to some important spot in Cranbury and look. Like the top of Shingle Hill. But there was so much snow on the ground it would be hard to get up there. What about the tip end of Cranbury, Gooseneck Point, that jutted out into the harbor? A long flat sandbar, covered now with snow and ice. There, Jane thought, she would really feel she was seeing something important.