All the King's Horses (10 page)

‘Hey!’ said Joe, grinning. ‘Colin’s old man talks baby talk! Let’s find him a bottle!’

‘Just leave him alone, will you?’ said Colin, between his teeth. He turned to Grandpa. ‘C’mon, Grandpa – don’t pay any attention to him. Let’s go inside the school, and I’ll call Mom.’

He reached out to take Grandpa’s hand, but Grandpa gave him a push that sent him spinning into the circle. ‘Bad boy! Bad, bad, bad!’

Everyone stared, first at Grandpa, then at
Colin,
who was trying not to cry. Finally, Joe laughed. ‘Sure he’s who you think he is, Tink? Take a good look, now. Old nuts all look the—’

‘Stop it!’ I shouted. ‘Stop it, stop it, stop it!’

Joe whirled around, but when he saw it was me, he grinned. ‘Looky here!’ he said. ‘It’s big sister to the rescue! You’re in luck, Tink.’

‘Nobody’s in luck when you’re around!’ I said. ‘Any of you! Grandpa’s sick, and it’s really mean to tease him, because he can’t fight back. Only jerks pick on somebody like that, and that’s what you are – jerks, jerks, jerks!’

The boys around Joe just laughed, but a lot of the others looked ashamed of themselves, and the girls who had clustered around the outside of the circle started to go back to whatever they’d been doing. That was a good sign, so I held out a hand to Grandpa. ‘Come on – let’s go into the school. Wouldn’t you like to see where Colin and I spend the day?’

‘School,’ he said, frowning. ‘This school?’

‘Sure,’ said Joe, digging his elbow into the guy next to him. ‘They teach kids to talk here – maybe you should come.’

‘Bad kids,’ said Grandpa. ‘I teach you!’ Raising his hand and hook, he took a couple of steps towards Joe. I grabbed his arm, but I knew I couldn’t hold him long.

‘Beat it!’ I said to Joe. ‘I mean it – get out of the way!’

‘Oh no!’ said Joe, rolling his eyes. ‘The old crazy’s mad at me. What’ll I do?’

‘Listen,’ said Colin, ‘you better stop clowning, or he’ll—’

‘Waste me?’ said Joe, still pretending to look scared. ‘Well, at least I got you to protect me, Tink.’ And grabbing Colin by the shoulders, he shoved him between himself and Grandpa. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Now, if he kills anybody, it’ll be you.’ He was laughing, but suddenly he stopped, because Grandpa jerked his arm out of my hand and started forward. And his face …

It wasn’t just that he looked mad; it was that he changed completely. He was always a big man, but it almost seemed as if he was growing. As he grew, he got a lot younger, until finally he looked like the Grandpa we’d seen in the Seer’s dream – except really, really dangerous. His eyes went deep black, and a weird kind of light started to glow all around him, making the rest of the playground seem dark. Suddenly, he raised both his arms and yelled. It was like nothing I’d ever heard before; there were no words, only a long howl that made me shake all over. Some of the kids began to run, but Joe and Colin just stood there, staring.

‘Get out of the way!’ I screamed – then something soft and black brushed by me, and the air filled with the most beautiful music I had ever heard. Everything stopped: the kids, Grandpa – even the wind. I turned my head very slowly, the way you do in dreams, and I saw someone in a black hooded cloak, holding a silver branch with golden apples hanging from it. I blinked and looked again, but all I saw was Mr Stegeth and Mr Crewes running across the playground.

Before I had time to decide if I was crazy or not, the two teachers were in the middle of the circle, and the kids were melting away. Mr Crewes looked at Mr Stegeth. ‘Why don’t you get some kickball going, while I see what I can do for Mr Madison.’

‘It’s not Mr Madison,’ said Colin. ‘It’s Mr O’Brien.’

‘Irish, huh?’ said Mr Stegeth, smiling at Colin the way people do when they’re ashamed of themselves but they don’t want to admit it. ‘So that’s where you get your big mouth … Come on, you guys. Let’s play ball.’ He walked away, laughing with Joe and the others.

Colin doubled up his fists as he watched them go. ‘Boy,’ he said, ‘if Grandpa hadn’t been sick, he would have knocked his block off for saying that.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Mr Crewes, though he looked angry, too. ‘He would have known Mr Stegeth was just trying to be funny.’

That showed how little he knew Grandpa; but of course we were too polite to say so.

‘Grandpa,’ I said, putting an arm around him, ‘this is Mr Crewes. He’s a teacher.’

Mr Crewes looked quick and held out his left hand to Grandpa. ‘Hello, Mr O’Brien,’ he said. ‘I’m really pleased to meet you. One of my students has told me all about the horses you’ve trained, and I feel I know you.’

It was as if he had said something magic: Grandpa smiled. ‘Horses,’ he said, nodding.

A siren wailed on the street, and I was afraid it would distract Grandpa, but Mr Crewes just raised his voice. ‘Why don’t you come into the school? I could get you a cup of coffee, and you could tell me about your horses.’

The siren got closer; then a police car with all its lights going pulled into the school parking lot and Mom and two cops jumped out of it. Colin and I looked at each other and sighed: all we were going to hear for the next month was that our grandfather had been arrested.

Mom got to us a little before the cops did. ‘Oh Dad!’ she said, taking his hand. ‘I’ve been so worried! How did you get all the way over here?’

Grandpa smiled at her. ‘Home, OK? Tired.’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘In a police car – won’t that be fun?’ Then she turned to Colin and me. ‘The police said you two saw Grandpa out here and told a teacher to look for me while you stayed with him. That was absolutely the right thing to do. I’m very proud of you.’

‘You should be,’ said Mr Crewes, and the way he looked at us let us know he’d never tell her there’d been trouble. ‘They handled the situation beautifully.’

‘Oh, are you the teacher who called?’ said Mom, smiling.

He nodded and put out his hand. ‘Jim Crewes,’ he said; then he looked over his shoulder at the kids, who were beginning to hover around again. ‘Let’s get your father to the car.’

Mom nodded, and we started across the playground, with Colin, Grandpa and me in the lead, and Mr Crewes and Mom next, and the cops last, keeping everybody else from following. After we had taken a few steps, I saw I should have tried to get us into a different order, because Mom asked Mr Crewes if he knew how Colin was doing, and Mr Crewes told her the school had been trying to get in touch with her about him. There was nothing Colin or I could do,
either,
because Grandpa seemed to have understood he was going to ride in the police car, and he walked towards it so fast that we got there way ahead of them. When they caught up, I could see from Mom’s face that Mr Crewes had told her a lot.

‘So if it’s OK with you and Colin,’ he was saying, ‘he and I will talk to Mr Beeker and Mr Stegeth today after school, and I think they’ll let Colin work with me, on condition that there be no more … er, disruptions in the future.’

‘Wow!’ exploded Colin. ‘You mean, I could be in your class instead of in that old—’

‘– We’ll have to see, Colin,’ cut in Mr Crewes. ‘And we’ll have to have a chat about the conditions.’ He turned to Mom again. ‘He’ll miss the bus, but don’t worry. I’ll drive him home.’

‘Thank you,’ said Mom. Then she turned to us. ‘Why didn’t you two tell me what was wrong? We could have had all this resolved two weeks ago.’

Colin nudged me, which wasn’t fair, because it was his problem. ‘Well,’ I said, looking down, ‘we thought you had enough to cope with at home.’

‘Home?’ said Grandpa, tapping Mom’s arm. ‘Now?’

‘Take him home,’ said Mr Crewes. ‘He’s had
a
long morning, and it will take me a couple of days to work things out. Could I stop by Friday and tell you what we’ve arranged?’

‘That would be wonderful,’ said Mom. ‘Come by around eight.’

‘I’ll look forward to it,’ he said. Then he turned to Colin and me. ‘We’d better get back inside, you guys, or somebody will give us a detention.’

Mom gave us both a big hug, so I knew everything was OK; then we hurried back across the empty playground with Mr Crewes. Inside, he gave us passes and hurried off to his class.

‘Boy oh boy,’ said Colin as we started up the steps together. ‘Is he ever a prince!’

‘I’ll say,’ I said. ‘Colin, when Joe was clowning … did you, um, see anything funny?’

‘Funny is the last word I’d use for a creep like Joe,’ he said.

‘No, I mean funny peculiar. Like fae—’

‘Shhh!’ he hissed. ‘Not here. They might not like it.’

‘It’s not against the rules to talk in the halls…’ I began, but then I realized what ‘They’ he meant. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Later.’

He nodded. ‘Right after dinner. I was going to show you something connected with Them, anyway. Just you wait – you’ll drop your teeth.’

I SPENT THE
rest of the school day wondering what Colin had to show me, but when he got home, which he didn’t until the 5:15 was long gone, he obviously had other things on his mind. Good things: he was so bouncy that he almost dropped the plates when he helped me set the table. After supper was finally all served and we’d said grace, Mom smiled.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘aren’t you going to tell us what happened?’

‘Sure am!’ said Colin enthusiastically. ‘We went to see Mr Beeker and Mr Stegeth, and … well, see, ever since I got to Wheelock, Mr Stegeth’s been giving me easy math problems. I
told
and
told
him he was wasting my time, but he never listened, so I quit doing them. Just a sec – I’m starved.’ He cut his potato in half and
stuffed
one of the pieces into his mouth.

‘I see,’ said Mom dryly. ‘And I don’t suppose it occurred to you, Mr Einstein, that your intellectual objection to the easy problems made Mr Stegeth think you couldn’t do them?’

‘That’s what Mr Crewes said,’ mumbled Colin through the potato. ‘Only nicely. Then he told Mr Stegeth and Mr Beeker he could “demonstrate my competence” – and he started giving me mental arithmetic problems. First they were pretty easy, but they got tougher, like counting backwards from a hundred by sevens, or multiplying four-digit numbers by twelve.’

‘And they were wowed, right?’ I said, trying not to sound jealous. Having a math whiz for a brother is a pain.

‘You should have seen them!’ he said, gulping down the second half of his potato and starting in on his sausage. ‘Their eyes looked like saucers! Finally, Mr Beeker said he’d talk to Mr Crewes tomorrow. So I think I’ll be able to switch, and that’s
neat
, because Mr Crewes went to
MIT
, like Dad. I know, because he told me when I asked. That means he’s a
real
scientist, not just a teacher—’

‘Bad boy!’ said Grandpa suddenly, thumping his hand on the table.

‘Now, Dad,’ said Mom soothingly, ‘I know
Colin
isn’t minding his manners, but he’s excited, and I think just this once—’

‘Bad boy,’ insisted Grandpa. ‘I teach him!’

We all stared at each other; then something clicked in my mind. ‘Oh!’ I said. ‘This morning, when Grandpa visited the school, some of the boys were teasing him, and when Colin tried to stop them, he got Colin mixed up with them, or something, and he—’

‘– Right!’ said Grandpa, glaring at Colin. ‘Horsewhip.’

Mom put her hand on Grandpa’s. ‘Dad, Sarah’s saying you got mixed up. Colin didn’t
like
what the bad boys were saying, and he was telling them to stop. That’s good, not bad.’

‘But you’re dead right about those boys, Grandpa,’ said Colin. ‘They’re jerks, and—’

‘Quiet!’ shouted Grandpa.

Mom threw Colin a look that meant he had better do what Grandpa said, so he shut up and we finished dinner without talking at all. Mom tried to get Colin to talk about Mr Crewes while we did the dishes, but he wouldn’t, and when we were done, he went up to his room and closed the door. So much for whatever he’d been going to tell me about Them.

‘Oh, dear,’ sighed Mom. ‘And he was so happy.’

I nodded. ‘I sure hope Grandpa doesn’t keep
on
mixing him up with Joe and those guys.’

‘Oh, no! He won’t do that!’ said Mom in the voice she used to make it seem as if everything were all right. Colin and I hated that voice, because of course we knew everything
wasn’t
all right, but all of a sudden, I realized why she used it. She was scared.

After I went to bed, I lay in the dark a long time, wondering if that could possibly be true, because Mom just wasn’t the sort of person who
got
scared. After Dad died, she’d run the family all by herself, including working; all our Maple Street friends’ moms had thought that was very brave. Personally, I thought it was braver of her to give up her job when Grandpa couldn’t be left alone any more; that scared Colin and me, because we knew her not being able to work made us poor, and we were afraid she’d run out of money altogether, like the warehouse people, before we got old enough to get jobs. But Mom was just as brave about not working as she’d been about working.

We also knew Mom was unscarable because of a trunk we’d found in Grandpa’s attic when we were moving him out of his cottage. When we’d opened it to see if the stuff inside it was worth keeping, we’d practically fallen over,
because
it was filled with big-time trophies and ribbons Mom had won, and pictures of her taking mammoth jumps at Madison Square Garden. We didn’t dare mention it, though of course we were dying to know more, because there was this … space, I guess you could call it … between Mom and Grandpa, and we’d figured out long ago that it had something to do with the fact that Mom didn’t ride any more – at all, ever – though you couldn’t talk to either her or Grandpa long without realizing she’d been really good once. But that trunk just shouted how tough Mom was, because she couldn’t possibly have been
that
good and then
quit
without running into Grandpa’s Irish, and we’d never met anybody brave enough to stand up to that.