The Well-Wishers (8 page)

I knew him pretty well in those days, because we were in the same room in school for ages, and both had to stay after a lot, but not for the same reasons. / got into trouble by stupid showing off, but Dicky LeBaron was the kind whose idea of fun is breaking things.

The year we were in the fifth grade he and his awful older-boy friends went around all winter knocking people's mailboxes down. They seemed to do it to
our
box oftener than to anybody else's, maybe because Dicky didn't like me any better than I liked him.

One cold night I lay in wait for him behind a tree, and when he and his friends came up to the mailbox, I threw a pail of water over them and escaped on a horse I used to have. After that it was war.

But the next summer Laura and James moved to town and I began to know them and Kip and Gordy, and everything changed. And that fall Dicky got put in six-one-B and I mostly forgot him.

Not that Dicky is dumb. He comes from a poor background, but he is smart. But I guess Mr. Colfax, the principal, thought Miss Wilson could handle him better. Mrs. Van Nest is a wonderful teacher, but soft. She believes in letting the young idea shoot.

But if Dicky LeBaron heard a teacher say a thing like that, he would probably show up in class next day with a BB gun.

The talk around school was that Dicky picked on Gordy a lot, in six-one-B. Sometimes James got wind of things that had happened, and wanted to give Dicky a dose of his own medicine, but Gordy would never let him. I could understand why. A boy has to stand on his own two feet. Even if they are both left feet, the way Gordy's sometimes seem to be.

But aside from that, up to the day of the apples I had begun to think of Dicky LeBaron as a thing of the past.

And even afterwards I might have listened to Laura's advice and not tried to get even, if Dicky had let us alone. But he didn't, from that day on.

The very next afternoon we were haying a meeting in the secret house when I heard a scrabbling noise outside. I went out on the stoop to investigate, and there was Dicky, climbing up and trying to peek in one of the windows. When he saw me, he ran off down the hill and then shied a stone at me. He is the kind who would always have stones in his pocket, ready for throwing. The stone didn't hit me, but it might have.

And all that week, every time I was alone, before school or after or at recess, he kept coming up and pestering me, wanting to know what we
did
at our secret meetings. And Gordy confided in me that Dicky had spread the rumor all through six-one-B that what we did in the secret house was play paper dolls.

It was that that decided me.

Because people can think what they like about me, and even about my paintings, but to say that I play paper dolls is a vile slander.

The next day I lay in wait for Dicky. The thing to do, I decided, was to act perfectly nice and let his own base instincts lure him to his destruction.

So I was lurking on the schoolhouse corner that morning when his horrible high school friends let him out of their jalopy. And the minute I saw him I sang out,

"Dicky LeBaron, Dicky LeBaron,
Put his mother's old false hair on!"

Because the only way to start a conversation with Dicky is to descend to his level. With anyone else you would make friends by being friendly, but with Dicky LeBaron's kind you have to speak their language.

Sure enough, he came swaggering right over to me in his hateful motorcycle jacket and said,

"Lydia Green, Lydia Green,
Bopped her Grammaw on the bean!"

And we were off to a good start.

"I hear," I said, "that you claim I play paper dolls."

"Well?" he sneered. "Don't you? What
do
you play, then, in that old hut? I know. Post office, I bet. 'Oh Gordy, Gordy, kiss my left eyebrow!'" And he fell back against a bush in a mock faint.

"I wouldn't stoop to it," I told him. "Post office is for snerds."

"All right, what
do
you do, then?" he said.
"Prob'ly nothing at all, if you ask me. You just pretend it's secret so people'll think you're important!"

"A lot you know!" I said, acting indignant. "If I were to tell you what we do, you'd wither away on the spot. But no, I don't dare. Your feeble brain couldn't stand it."

"Aw, come on. Tell!" He forgot to sound tough and bullying and just sounded curious. "I'll let you wish on my rabbit's foot if you do." Honestly, you'd think he thought he was Huckleberry Finn or something.

Goodness knows, I didn't want to touch his old rabbit's foot, but I did. It felt awful. I didn't wish on it, though. I was afraid it would disagree with the real magic. Any magic of Dicky LeBaron's would probably be black as the ace of spades. I pretended to wish, and then I handed the rabbit's foot back and lowered my voice and looked around as if I were afraid somebody might overhear.

"If you want to know," I said, "we raise ghosts. That's what we do. That house is haunted."

"Yah! As if I'd believe that."

"I don't care whether you believe it or not. It's true," I said. "I'll swear on a stack of Bibles!"

I was not telling a lie, really, because we
did
have a conversation with a ghost in the secret house one day. Or at least we think we did. And besides, my fingers were crossed.

Dicky was looking at me now as if he'd like to believe me but couldn't, quite.

"All right, come and see for yourself," I said. "Come today at four o'clock." That would give us an hour to get ready for him.

He hesitated. Then he grinned, not his usual sneer but a real grin. "All right, maybe I will," he said. Suddenly he slapped me on the back. "You know, you're not so bad after all." And he went swaggering into the school.

I felt guilty after that. But I concentrated on how awful Dicky was usually, and made my plans. I decided not to tell the others just yet, though. Laura would be sure to begin preaching if she knew. And James's and Kip's idea of dealing with Dicky would be to use their fists. And I aimed to strike deeper, to his very core.

I decided the best thing to do was call a secret meeting, but not say why till the last minute. So in class that afternoon I held up one finger in the secret sign. But when we all met in the school yard, it turned out there were complications. James and Kip had football and Gordy and Deborah had promised to call on Sylvia. And Laura was due at a meeting of the Girls' Sewing Club, which she belongs to for some reason. I would sooner die.

They all promised to come to the secret house, though, as soon as their social obligations would permit. I didn't tell them who else was coming. If the magic wanted me to handle it alone, so be it. But Laura suspected.

"You've got a look in your eye," she said. "You're planning something. Remember what I warned you."

"It's my turn for the magic, isn't it?" I said. "Go to your old sewing club. But you'd better sew quick unless you want to miss everything." And I boarded the school bus. From the look on Laura's face I think she almost jumped on after me. But it was too late.

I rode to the red house and made my wish on the well and then I started for the house in the woods. But I didn't feel quite so sure of things as I climbed the last lap of the way. The sun was behind the trees already and the woods felt gloomy and cold. And I suddenly thought, what if Dicky weren't so taken in as he seemed? What if he had come early and brought cohorts, to ambush me on the way? Enemies might be hiding behind each tree right now. But when I turned to look, none jumped out.

And when I finally opened the front door of the secret house, no one was lurking there, either. So I began arranging my welcome for Dicky. By the time I'd finished, I felt pleased with myself again. I was only sorry the others weren't there to congratulate me.

My arrangement was very simple. That was its classic beauty.

In the front hall floor of the secret house there is a square hole that was once the shaft of a furnace that isn't there anymore. It is quite a big hole and dangerous; so we keep a big chest pushed over it, just in case.

It was the work of a moment to shove the chest away and turn it at right angles, to block the rest of the hall. And then I put a little rug over the hole.

So that when you-know-who opened the door in the murky misty twilight, he would naturally step right on you-know-what and fall straight down you-know-where.

But first I dropped a lot of old sofa pillows down the shaft, beause I didn't want anybody, even you-know-who, to break an actual bone.

My plan was that I would hold Dicky prisoner in the cellar at the bottom of the shaft and haunt him and make ghost noises till he was scared and undermined, and then when the others came, we would tell him all about himself and how awful he was, and not let him out till he begged and confessed and promised to reform. It would do him a lot more good than fists, and be more lasting, too, I thought.

That was my plan.

But do you remember when you were little and you made a booby trap for someone and then went away and left it, how often as not it was you yourself who forgot and came through that door later and brought the water down on your own head and the pail, too, half the time?

You would not think a thing like that could happen to a person old enough to be in six-one-A, would you? Well, it can.

Because first I thought I would watch for Dicky from the upstairs front windows, where there's a better view. And then I got interested in the shapes of the pine trees in front of the house and thought I'd make a drawing of them. And then I was so busy drawing that I didn't hear Dicky come through the woods till he was almost at the front door. And
then
I went running downstairs in the almost darkness, and dodged round the chest in my headlong haste, and stepped right in the middle of the little rug.

And you know what happened.

The pillows at the bottom of the shaft did their duty and I found myself unkilled. But I had fallen with my leg under me, and when I tried to straighten it, my ankle felt like a thousand knives stabbing, and I could still wiggle my toes, so I thought it probably wasn't broken, but I was sure it was strained or sprained or both.

I remembered Laura's warning, and I knew the magic was up to its old tricks, teaching moral lessons again. And it was then that I heard Dicky LeBaron come up on the front stoop.

He hesitated. Of course I couldn't see him hesitating, but I could feel it. Then I heard him cautiously, creepily, creakingly open the front door.

Now was my chance, moral lessons or not. "Beware," I said, making my voice deep and ghostly. "Dicky LeBaron, your time has come."

I heard Dicky gasp. Then he must have summoned up superhuman courage. Because I heard his footsteps come closer to where the yawning hole gaped.

I waited till his head showed, and then I made the worst face I could and uttered a low moan. The way my ankle felt made that part easy. But I didn't find out till later that what with the shaft's having once led to a coal cellar, my face and hands were covered with coal dust and black as a hobgoblin's. And that helped.

Dicky took one look and let out a yell. I heard him scramble to his feet and run out of the house and jump from the stoop. And then I heard voices outside.

"What you doing round here, Dicky boy?" said the first voice. "Playing with the goody-goodies?"

"What'd you run away from us for, Dicky boy?" said the second voice. "Didn't you know we'd follow you?"

I knew those voices. It was Dicky's horrible high school friends. But they didn't sound as friendly with him as I'd have expected them to. I began to wonder if maybe when they were alone with him and didn't have anybody else to bully, they bullied
Dicky.

"It's haunted. There's a ghost in the cellar," I heard Dicky gasp out.

"What d'you take us for, Dicky boy?" said the first high-schooler. "You think we'd believe a thing like that?"

"You trying to get rid of us, Dicky boy?" said the other. "Don't you want us to meet your high-toned friends?"

"All right, see for yourselves," Dicky said.

There were heavy footsteps now, and a second later three faces looked down the hole. "Beware," I started to say again. But my ankle was really throbbing now, and maybe that's why my voice cracked and went up high.

"That's not a ghost," said the first high school boy.

"That's a girl," said the second one.

"It's that crazy Lydia Green," said the first one.

"Gee. It
is
Lydia Green," said Dicky.

"Poor Dicky boy. Scared by a girl," said the second high school boy tauntingly.

"Aw, I was not. I knew it all along," was the vain boast of Dicky.

But the first (and worst) high school boy was smiling a mean smile. He is called Stinker, by the way, which shows what even his friends must think of him. "Well," he said, "I guess we've just about got her where we want her, haven't we?"

"I guess we have," said the second one. He is known as Smoko. Cigarettes are his life's blood. "Now we've got her what'll we do with her?"

"Let's see," said the one called Stinker. "She's the one hit me with that apple, too. Nobody does that to me and gets away with it."

"We could drop red-hot pennies down," suggested Smoko.

"Or burn up the place with her in it," said Stinker.

"You wouldn't do that, would you?" said Dicky LeBaron, sounding scared that they might.

Of course I knew they wouldn't. But even if they could talk about it, it showed what kind they were. And in my craven cowardice I said the wrong thing.

"You'd better leave me alone," I said. "I've got friends, and they're on their way here right now."

"They are?" said the one called Stinker. "That's dandy. We can wait for them and mom them when they come in the door."

I was sorry I'd spoken. Because if James and Kip got there first, they could take care of themselves, and even Laura and Gordy are spunky. But what about Deborah?

"Listen," I said. "You don't want to do that. One of them's just a little girl."

"You don't say?" said Stinker. "A little girl, huh?"