Otis Spofford (5 page)

Then Otis looked down the street and saw Ellen coming toward him. She had changed to her play clothes and was carrying the chalk box. She looked unhappy.

“Hi,” said Otis, wondering where she was going.

“Hello, Otis.” Ellen stopped in front of the steps. “My mother says she won’t have a rat in the house and I have to get rid of Mutt right away. I thought I’d give him to you, because you fed him and would take good care of him.” She held out the chalk box.

Otis took it and slid back the lid to look at Mutt, who was cowering in a corner. “Gee…” said Otis. “Gee…thanks, Ellen.” Gently he lifted Mutt out and stroked his soft white fur. Mutt snuggled into his hand. His very own Mutt!

“Could I come and see him sometimes?” Ellen asked timidly.

“Sure, any time.” Otis decided Ellen wasn’t so bad after all, even if she was always neat and clean and well behaved.

As Ellen left, Bucky began to chant, “Otis has a girl. Otis has a girl.”

“You keep quiet,” said Otis fiercely, “or I’ll…I’ll…”

“If you do anything to me, I’ll tell the management on you,” said Bucky.

“Well, keep quiet or I won’t let you play with my rat,” said Otis.

Bucky kept quiet.

I
wish I could stir up a little excitement around here, thought Otis, one day after school. His mother was busy at the Spofford School of the Dance, and Mrs. Brewster said she didn’t want him underfoot when she was trying to run the vacuum cleaner in the front hall of the apartment house. Otis didn’t see how she could call sliding down the banisters being underfoot.

Otis wandered over to Stewy’s house to see if Stewy had any ideas. Stewy couldn’t think of anything to do either, so the two boys and Stewy’s dog, Spud, started aimlessly down the street.

This isn’t very exciting, thought Otis, as he watched Spud stop to scratch. The dog stood on three legs while he scratched with his hind foot.

“That dog doesn’t know enough to sit down to scratch,” observed Otis, hoping to get a rise out of Stewy.

“It takes a smart dog to stand up to scratch,” boasted Stewy. “Let’s go over to the high school and watch football practice.”

“Okay,” agreed Otis, leapfrogging over a fire hydrant. “Let’s go.”

Suddenly Stewy pointed. “Hey, look! Isn’t that Hack Battleson over there?”

“It sure is,” agreed Otis in an awed voice, as both boys stopped to admire Hack Battleson. Gee, thought Otis, I wish I had a piece of paper. Maybe he would give me his autograph.

Hack was not only fullback and captain of the Zachary P. Taylor High School football team, he had also been chosen the most promising football player in the whole city by the sports editor of the
Oregonian
. Sometimes he was called Five-yard Battleson, because whenever his team needed to gain one yard, Hack could gain five.

Otis and Stewy often watched Hack at football practice. That was one time when Otis did not want to stir up any excitement. He just wanted to watch Hack kick the football farther than anyone else on the field and tackle the dummies so hard that the dust flew out in clouds. Twice Stewy’s father had taken the boys to see Hack play in a real game in the stadium on the other side of the city.

“I wonder how come he isn’t out at football practice now,” said Otis. Hack, who was standing on his front lawn, held a fruit jar in one hand and appeared to be looking for something.

“Sure is funny,” agreed Stewy. “What’s he doing anyway?”

“Search me,” said Otis. “Gee, look at those muscles. I wish I had muscles like that.” Otis made up his mind to start doing exercises that very night. Otis noticed that Hack stood with one thumb hooked through the belt of his jeans. Otis hooked his thumb through the belt of his jeans too.

Just then the boys saw Hack leap into the air and clap the lid on the jar. He looked into the jar, shook his head, and looked around once more.

The boys sat down on the curb opposite Hack’s house to watch. “I know what,” said Otis. “Let’s give him a yell like we learned at the game.”

The boys began to yell at the top of their voices, “T-T-T-A-Y. L-L-L-O-R. T-A-Y. L-O-R. Ta-a-ay-lor!”

Hack paid no attention. He leaped into the air with his fruit jar again. The boys got up and walked across the street, where they stood in front of Hack’s house.

“Let’s try the Zachary P. Taylor football song,” whispered Otis.

The boys began to sing.

“Z. P. Taylor, school of honored name,

Fight, fight, fight along the road to fame

We’ll win because of might,

We’ll keep your victory bright!

Rah! Rah! Rah!”

This time Hack glanced at the boys and the dog. “Hi, kids,” he said, and went on hunting.

Otis and Stewy looked at each other. Hack Battleson, Five-yard Battleson, fullback and captain of the Zachary P. Taylor football team, actually had spoken to them. Encouraged, the boys moved closer.

Otis was first to get up his courage. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“Trying to catch insects,” answered Hack, in a way that showed he was much too busy to waste time talking to grade-school boys.

“How come you’re catching bugs when there’s football practice going on?” Stewy asked.

“I have to,” said Hack.

“Why?” persisted Otis.

Hack scowled. “For biology class. We were supposed to hand in a collection of thirty insects last week, and I was too busy with football practice to catch them. Now the teacher says if I don’t hand them in by tomorrow, she’ll tell the principal and then I can’t play on the team.”

“Gee, and the big game with Benjamin Harrison High is next week,” said Otis. He and Stewy were shocked. To think that a teacher could not only give orders to Hack Battleson but could make him miss football practice!

Otis recovered first. “I’ll catch them for you, Hack,” he said eagerly. It wasn’t every boy who had the chance to do something for the captain of the team and the best football player in the whole city.

“Would you?” Hack’s manner toward the younger boys suddenly changed. “Say, that would be swell! Then I could go back to football practice.”

“I’ll catch them too,” said Stewy.

“You keep out of this. It was my idea,” said Otis, who did not want any help from Stewy. He wanted to tell people that he alone caught thirty insects for Hack Battleson. Why, it was practically the same thing as saving the big game for the Zachary P. Taylor High School.

“I thought of it at the same time,” objected Stewy. “You just
said
it first.”

“That’s what counts,” said Otis. “Why don’t you go exercise your dog or something?”

“He doesn’t need exercise,” answered Stewy.

“Then is it okay if I catch them for you?” Otis asked Hack. He was anxious to have it clearly understood that he was the one to collect the insects.

“I don’t care who catches them,” answered Hack, who was in a hurry to get to the football field. “Just so somebody has thirty insects here by six-thirty. It can’t be any later, because I’ll probably be up all night trying to identify them, as it is. And they all have to be insects. You can tell an insect because it has six legs. Centipedes and things like that don’t count.”

Otis was disappointed that Stewy was to have an equal chance, but he didn’t feel that he could say anything to Hack about it.

“And they have to be in good condition,” continued Hack, as he held up his fruit jar. “See that piece of cotton in the jar? It’s soaked in cleaning fluid—the kind that takes spots off clothes. When I catch an insect I put it in the jar and put the lid on a minute. The fumes kill the insect without hurting it.”

“Sure. I get it,” said Otis. “How about letting me take your jar?”

“Hey, that’s no fair,” objected Stewy. “That way you’d have a head start.”

“Sure I’d have a head start,” said Otis.

“For Pete’s sake, if you kids are going to stand there fighting all day, I’ll get another jar for you,” said Hack, who was really pleased to have two boys so anxious to work for him.

Otis and Stewy glared at each other until Hack returned with the second jar. “Okay, kids. See you at six-thirty.” Hack waved as he hurried off to the Zachary P. Taylor football field.

“You just wait. I’ll beat you to the thirty bugs,” said Stewy.

Otis did not waste time answering. At least, he had a head start. At home he had two insects: a dead dragonfly he had picked up once because he thought it was pretty, and a yellow butterfly that had died when he tried to keep it in a jar. Now he pawed through some dead leaves under a shrub until he saw an earwig. He scooped it into the jar and screwed on the lid. Stewy watched him and then did the same thing. The boys glowered at each other.

Otis decided he’d better get away from Stewy, or Stewy would copy all his ideas. Otis knew he had to work fast if he was going to catch all those insects by six-thirty. “So long,” he said, and ran down the street.

Otis stopped to hunt among some flowers in a neighbor’s yard. When he found a tiny green aphis clinging to the underside of a rose leaf, he carefully scooped it off and added it to the earwig in his jar. A ladybug flitted past, but before Otis could grab it, it lit on a rosebush growing on a trellis against the house. When Otis tried to catch the ladybug, it flew to a leaf just out of his reach. Otis started to climb the trellis.

The lady who lived in the house burst out onto the front porch. “Otis Spofford! You come down out of my climbing President Hoover this instant!” she ordered.

Otis was so startled that he grabbed at a thorny branch instead of the trellis. “Your what?” he asked, trying to untangle his T-shirt from the thorns.

“My climbing President Hoover. My prize rosebush.” The lady was very cross. “I won’t have it broken. Come down at once.”

The ladybug flitted away, so Otis jumped to the ground. Thorns ripped his T-shirt, but he couldn’t let the ladybug out of sight.

“And don’t you come into my garden again,” said the owner of the rosebush.

“I won’t,” promised Otis, keeping his eye on the ladybug and thinking that if he were a grownup with a prize rosebush, he would want a boy to catch bugs in it. He jumped up and cupped his hands together. There, I got you, he thought. That was one insect closer to winning the game.

In the next yard Otis pried a rock out of a rock garden, but all he found under it was a worm and a crawly thing with too many legs to be an insect. A fly buzzed by and Otis wasted several precious minutes chasing it before it flew out of reach. He saw a bee hovering over a flower. Quickly he clapped it, flower and all, into his jar.

Otis was about to investigate another rock when the owner of the garden appeared. She smiled at Otis. “Hello, boy. Come here and let me show you all my pretty flowers,” she said.

It was perfectly plain to Otis that she didn’t really want him in her garden at all. He didn’t see why grownups had to be so fussy about a few old flowers. “No, thank you,” he said. He didn’t have time to make friends with anyone. Not today, anyway.

The lady started across the yard toward Otis. She looked so determined to be friendly that Otis decided he’d better leave in a hurry, or he would be looking at pretty flowers whether he wanted to or not. “Well…uh…good-bye,” he said, and ran down the street, feeling that he had had a narrow escape.

As Otis was passing Stewy’s house, a tiny moving speck on the sidewalk caught his eye. It was an ant that Otis lost no time in scraping up with a twig and poking into his jar.

“That’s my bug,” yelled Stewy, from half a block away. “You give it back to me.”

“It is not,” Otis yelled back.

“It is, too. I saw you pick it up in front of my house.” Stewy looked hot and cross.

“It was on the sidewalk, and sidewalks don’t belong to you. They belong to the city.” Otis wasn’t going to waste time arguing. When he reached his apartment house, he found Bucky sitting on the front steps waiting for him.

“Say, Otis,” said Bucky, “let’s play like we’re—”

“I know what,” interrupted Otis. “Let’s play like we’re scientists hunting bugs in the jungle. Let’s see how many bugs we can capture.”

Bucky was delighted to receive this much attention from Otis. “Dead or alive?” he asked.

“Alive,” said Otis. “We’ll shut them up in this jar. You go that way and I’ll go this way.” He found a spider in the shrubs and was about to put it into his jar when he remembered. A spider had eight legs. It was not an insect.

“I’ve got one,” shrieked Bucky. “It’s like a ladybug only yellow with black dots.” He held up his two hands cupped together.

“Swell,” said Otis. “Here, put it in the jar.”

“I can’t,” said Bucky. “It’s a fierce jungle bug. It’s putting up a terrible fight. It’s trying to eat me up alive. Help, help!” Bucky fell to the tiny patch of grass in front of the apartment house, where he rolled and kicked.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake.” Otis was disgusted. He might have known this was the way a kindergartner would behave. “I’ll save you,” he called, and fell to the grass beside Bucky to pry open his hands and take out the bug.

“You saved my life,” panted Bucky. “This is a keen game.”

Otis was not so sure, but at least he had another insect for Hack Battleson. Otis then caught a fly, a mosquito, and a white moth. Bucky captured a beetle, a stink bug, and a grasshopper that put up a battle and spit brown juice all over Bucky’s hands.