Rufus M. (22 page)

Now take a Vox Pop. Rufus would ventriloquize with this disk in his mouth for a while. Then he'd get rid of the thing and he'd be able to go right on ventriloquizing without it. It was not cheating. Like water wings, a Vox Pop was a way of learning. He went in and bought one.

He waited until he got home in his backyard to try the Vox Pop. He climbed onto the chicken coop and carefully placed the disk on his tongue. "Peep! Peep!" he tried first. He made his voice high and low, loud and soft, attempting to throw his voice all over the yard and under the house. But all the voices came from right there on the chicken coop and nowhere else.

Rufus was not discouraged. It is true that with water wings one can learn to swim almost immediately. At least float. But with these disks one could not ventriloquize right away. However, the art of ventriloquizing is much more difficult to learn and consequently much less common than the art of swimming. Otherwise the world would be full of ventriloquists. Rufus reasoned this way as he made his voice sound like a bullfrog and tried to place it in the puddle by the rainspout.

He laughed out loud, his spirits soaring as he thought that when he got really good he could say
ba-room, ba-room!
like a frog. Then he'd put the
ba-room
in Harold Callahan's inkwell or the teacher's.

Rufus climbed down and went over to the doorway of the barn. The Moffat Museum was what the family called the barn now because it had so many of their old possessions in it. Sylvie's old brown bike they'd all learned to ride on was in one corner. It didn't have any tires anymore and the wheels and spokes were bent. The seat had fallen off and the bell didn't ring. Mama was going to sell it to the junk man.

"Oh, no," cried Jane. "We'll put it in the barn and call the barn a museum. We'll have the Moffats' first bike on view, the way they have the first fire engine in the Cranbury Historical Society."

So that's the way the museum started and the Moffats kept their mounted bugs there and Rufus kept his cardboard boy at the doorway. He was the guard. He was supposed to keep you from touching things.

"Have a biscuit," said Rufus now, wishing he could throw his voice into the biscuit boy's smiling face and surprise everybody. "What!" everybody would say. "A cardboard boy can talk!"

Rufus was bound to admit, as the afternoon wore on and twilight came, that he had not improved one iota in ventriloquism even with a Vox Pop in his mouth.

But he wasn't giving up being a real ventriloquist.

Not yet.

He clicked his ventriloquist's disk around in his mouth, trying it in this position and that. It had taken some time for him to learn to ride Sylvie's old bike, and then all of a sudden he had just ridden off. Vox Pop would be like that. Probably all of a sudden he'd hit it right. Goodness, no; he had not given up being a ventriloquist yet.

That very evening, in fact, something happened to encourage Rufus. He had gone into the little green-and-white parlor to practice his ventriloquism all by himself. The rest of the family were tired of hearing him. He sat in the big armchair with his legs over the arm and he said, "Get out of there, you!"

He no longer aimed his voice at any special spot. He would be content for his voice to land anywhere now just so long as it didn't seem to come right from him.

He practiced and practiced and all the while he was practicing, Jane and Nancy Stokes were sitting on the little square front porch, talking. They were talking in such low voices that Rufus did not even know they were out there.

"Rufus is so funny," laughed Jane. "He spends all his time talking to himself. He wants to be a ventriloquist."

"What does he say?" Nancy laughed, too.

"Oh," said Jane, "he usually says the same thing, 'Let me out' or 'Get out of there, you!'"

Now when Jane said "Let me out" and "Get out of there, you!" she unconsciously raised her voice to sound like Rufus.

And it did sound like Rufus. In fact, it sounded so much like Rufus that it roused him from his armchair like a bolt of thunder. "Criminenty!" he exclaimed. "That's it!"

His voice! Way out on the porch. "Let me out!" as plain as day. He was getting so he could make it work! This Vox Pop wasn't so bad after all. The funny part was he hadn't even known he'd said it that time. He hadn't even opened his mouth. He'd been thinking it plenty, of course. Maybe he had said it. He must have said it! He could ventriloquize now! He took the little disk out of his mouth, wiped it off fondly, and stuck it in his pocket. Tired and happy and almost ecstatic, he climbed the stairs to bed.

In school the next day the whole class was having a silent reading period. When the children finished reading to the bottom of the page, they would have oral reading. The teacher hoped that then, out loud, they would whiz along fast. Rufus finished his silent reading. In fact he finished the whole story because it was a good one about the Minotaur. Then he sat there with his hands folded, the way he should. And then he remembered about last night. He smiled to himself. He was getting good now. Not perfect yet, because in some ways his voice had sounded like an echo. Still, it was a good beginning.

Of course, Rufus was not going to try ventriloquism in the schoolroom again; not after that unfortunate experience the other day when he had to stand in the cloakroom. But he could not resist putting his Vox Pop in his mouth and trying it in this position and that and remembering where it was on his tongue last night when his voice jumped out on the porch. He had to be careful, naturally, for the teacher might think he was putting some candy in his mouth. As a matter of fact, Hughie Pudge did think Rufus was eating a Boston wafer and held out his hand under the desk, wanting a piece.

Rufus pressed his lips together, shook his head, frowned, and held out his hands with a gesture that was meant to say, "I haven't any," and then he slipped back into his dreams of ventriloquism, while Hughie continued to eye him with suspicion and reproach.

Rufus turned the disk over in his mouth. This was the way he had had it arranged last night, he thought. Gosh! He wished it would work that way all the time. Maybe it would. How did he know? He should have kept on doing it last night once he had the hang of the thing. He wished he could try it now. Why shouldn't he try it? What was he, scared? Scared of standing in the cloakroom? But he wouldn't have to stand in the cloakroom again. He was a real bona fide ventriloquist now.

"Let me out!" he said boldly, in a high squeaky voice. He tried to sound like some funny little thing that got caught in the inkwell on the teacher's desk.

While the storm was gathering on Miss Lumkin's face and Rufus was scrunching himself into a small ball, feeling more than uncomfortable, in walked Mr. Pennypepper, the Superintendent of Schools; not just of this school, of all the schools in the town of Cranbury.

"What do you think," said Miss Lumkin to the Superintendent, "of a boy who says 'Let me out' all the time when it is good and quiet in the classroom?"

Apparently Mr. Pennypepper didn't know what to think! He just stood there, rocking back and forth on his toes, clinking the coins in his pocket and looking at the ceiling. Then he shook his head and said, "Will that boy rise, please?"

Rufus arose.

"Explain yourself," said Mr. Pennypepper.

Rufus could not talk because he had his Vox Pop in his mouth. He did not think to take it out. To all questions he was silent, and finally Miss Lumkin suggested there was a possibility that Rufus not only had been talking out loud, saying "Let me out!" whenever he saw fit, but also that he had his mouth full of candy.

"Put it in the wastebasket," the teacher said.

Rufus walked to the front of the room, the whole class holding its breath and everybody glad he was not in Rufus's shoes.

Mr. Pennypepper stood by with folded arms and watched Rufus open his mouth and drop what he had in it into the basket.

"I would suggest," said Mr. Pennypepper, looking back at the ceiling, "that this young man he sent to my office."

The entire class sucked in its breath, like one person. Standing very straight Rufus went out of the room and down the hall to the little round office where Mr. Pennypepper did his work and interviewed the bad. This office was in the rounded corner of the building, the part that was built like a castle. Rufus had been here only once before in his whole life when he brought a certificate from the Board of Health saying he was all over scarlet fever and could go back to school. Rufus looked around and he wondered where Mr. Pennypepper hung his strap. He was glad he didn't see it anywhere. All the same, to keep his courage up he clutched his ragged old postcard from the soldier named Al.

Mr. Pennypepper soon came in. He did not sit down. He rocked from heel to toe and he looked at the ceiling. Finally he took something out of his pocket.

"What is this thing called Vox Pop?" he asked.

"It's a thing you put in your mouth," murmured Rufus.

"What is it for?" he asked.

"For ventriloquisms," said Rufus.

"I see," said Mr. Pennypepper.

Now it's coming,
thought Rufus. In the cases of very bad children Mr. Pennypepper did sometimes have to strap them.

Mr. Pennypepper studied Rufus and he studied Vox Pop, which he held in his hand on a piece of paper. Finally he said, "There is a time and a place for everything, young man. Put this in your pocket and leave it there. Understand?"

"Yes, sir," said Rufus.

"Now," said Mr. Pennypepper, rubbing his hands and looking stern, "go back to your room!" He said all this as though he had just been through a terrific ordeal.

Rufus went back to his room and the class could not take their eyes off him for the rest of the day. Had he been strapped or hadn't he been strapped? That's what they all wondered.

Rufus felt chastened. He had a good mind to throw Vox Pop into the wastebasket once and for all and never use it again. No matter how you looked at the thing, it was a fake. Still, he didn't like to throw it away, and he could keep it in The Moffat Museum next to the mounted bugs. So he put it back into his pocket.

But he never did try to make voices come out of inkwells again; not in school at any rate. In fact, he gave up trying to be a ventriloquist—at least for a day or two. Then he took it up again and he continued with the study of magic.

"Watch me!" he'd say to anyone who would look, and he'd plunge the rubber knife into the palm of his hand.

"Yes," said Mama to the children, "better times are coming now for all people."

Why? Because the war was over. Peace had come. This was the way it happened. A few days ago, in the middle of Rufus's reading lesson, all of a sudden the whistles blew! Whistles and sirens and fire alarms! Church bells of all the four churches rang, peal after peal! All the children looked at the teacher. What was the matter?

The teacher's face broke into a half-believing look of joy. "The war is over," she exclaimed. And her eyes filled up with tears as she looked at the flag behind her over the blackboard, a flag with four blue stars in it, one for each of her four soldier brothers.