The Well-Wishers (17 page)

"Oh, Papa," said Muriel. "It was all a joke. These little kids would believe anything!"

"
Well!"was
all Laura and Lydia and Gordy and Kip could say. I think they might have said more and told Muriel what they thought of her, but at that moment there was an interruption.

Because at that moment the whole theaterful of people came tearing out of the front doors and the emergency exits, too, babbling with alarm and excitement and swirling about on the sidewalk. And the police emergency squad arrived, and the Volunteer Fire Brigade.

"What's happened?" everyone was asking.

"It's a tornado," said somebody.

"It's the dam burst," said somebody else.

"It's a bomb," said a third voice. "It's international spies. I heard somebody say so!"

I saw Harold Tillinghast skulking among the perturbed movie fans. When his eye fell on me and Mr. Breitenwisher, he turned tail and disappeared like the craven coward I have always known him to be. I could have pointed an accusing finger and explained everything, but I did not say a word.

And I couldn't have moved to point a finger, anyway. We stood hemmed in by the crowd, jammed uncomfortably close together and jostled by the people who milled around us, those who were trying to get out and those who were trying to get in.

Mr. Breitenwisher plucked at the sleeve of a policeman who was squeezing past. "Officer," he said, "I wish to report a kidnapping."

"Step to one side, please," said the policeman. "You'll have to wait your turn. We've got escaping gas here." And he pushed through and into the theater.

"What?" said Mr. Breitenwisher. "You mean my Muriel's life was in danger?"

"Yes, and this boy here saved her," said a voice.

And the ticket-taking man suddenly wormed through the crowd and clapped me on the back.

"That was some job you did, sonny," he said. He turned and addressed those who were standing near. "This boy here gave the alarm and saved everybody in the nick of time. But he saved this gentleman's little girl first. I guess he'll be the town hero from today on!"

"What?" said Mr. Breitenwisher again. "Do you mean to stand there and tell me Harold Tillinghast did a thing like that?"

I had had about enough. "My name," I said, as loud as I could, "is James Alexander Martin."

"Address?" said a little man with a notebook, bobbing up at that moment by my other elbow. I found out afterwards he was a reporter from the town newspaper.

"Silvermine Road," chorused Laura and Lydia and Kip and Gordy proudly. And the little man wrote it down.

"Some mistake here," muttered Mr. Breitenwisher. He turned to Muriel. "Thought it was Harold Tillinghast you wanted to go out with. Boy with a bad reputation. So they tell me. Not like this boy here. James Alexander Martin. Fine upstanding boy. Good-looking specimen. Go out with him any time you like."

He turned back to me and held out his hand. "Glad to know you, boy," he said. "Saved my Muriel's life. Eternally grateful. Feel free to take her to the movies any day in the week."

"Thanks," I said, vowing privately that I would not take Muriel Breitenwisher to a cat's funeral if she were the last woman on earth.

After that more things happened.

First of all the police and the fire brigade found and tamed the gas leak, which turned out to be in the kitchen of the restaurant next door.

And then the reporter interviewed me, and lots of my friends, turned up in the crowd, plus about fifty strangers who wanted to shake my hand. And the photographer from the paper took my picture in three different poses.

"Get in the picture, Muriel," I heard Mr. Breitenwisher say. And the beauteous Muriel tripped willingly forward.

But I rolled my eyes at the others, and Laura and Kip and Lydia and Gordy understandingly crowded around and between us. When the picture came out in the
Advertiser
the next Friday, it said,
"James Martin and Friends." And only a part of Muriel's face and some of her long golden hair showed.

All the chatter and interviewing and congratulations took ages, and it was nearly suppertime before we finally got away. And when we reached the red house, the news had already preceded us, via sundry telephoning friends, and I found my mother and father and Deborah and Dickey LeBaron (who had been pressed to stay) waiting in congratulatory mood. And we all had supper together.

All this was gratifying, in a way. You can't help but feel good when your father shakes your hand and says he's proud of you, and your mother looks at you and smiles and suddenly has tears in her eyes.

But I knew the credit really belonged to the well, and I said so.

The party broke up early, out of regard for the weary legs of the travelers. And I went to my room a mass of mixed emotions, as the books say.

It seemed to me my adventure proved the magic was real all right. All those things couldn't have just happened.

And the well had heard my wish, too. Because the magic could easily have arranged for me to find the gas leak without that long deiour to the Breitenwishers' house first. But I had asked for magic-seeming magic; so I got a castle and a captive princess and a spy story thrown in.

Of course they weren't
really
magic, like ghosts and witches, but that was logical, too.

We were older now, and the time had come to put away childish things.

It was when I remembered that, and thought of Muriel Breitenwisher, that my spirits sank, and people's congratulations were as the taste of ashes.

What did it matter if I was everybody else's hero, when love was an idle dream and women were fickle deceivers, and Muriel Breitenwisher had pulled the wool over my eyes and called me a little boy?

I lay awake and brooded about this for a long time.

Yet every cloud has a lining, be it ever so silver.

In school that next Monday morning Mrs. Van Nest made me stand up in front of the class while she told everybody all about the adventure at the movie theater. And when recess came, a lot of the kids wanted to hear about it all over again.

It was then that I noticed Florence Squibb on the edge of the crowd, hanging back sort of shyly. And when the others had turned from me to a game of run-sheep-run, she came closer.

"I think it was just wonderful, what you did," she said.

"Oh, it was nothing," I said.

"No it wasn't. It was just wonderful," she said.

"Do you really think so?" I said.

"Yes, I do," she said.

I had known Florence Squibb ever since we first moved to the country, and never thought twice about her before. But now suddenly I saw that her eyes were as big and blue as Muriel Breitenwisher's, and her hair, while not golden, was a pleasing shade of brown.

A week ago I wouldn't have noticed a thing like that, but I was a man now. And the magic had done that for me, too.

"Ahem," I said. "Would you like to go to the movies with me sometime?"

"Yes," she said, "I would."

And we went that very next Saturday afternoon. We are going this coming Saturday, too.

So now I guess you might say I have a girl, in a way. And I don't have as much time as I used to for the well, or magic, or secret meetings with Kip and Laura and Lydia and Gordy and Dicky LeBaron.

After school when I don't have football practice, I generally walk home with Florence Squibb and carry her books.

Sometimes I look back regretfully on the old happy carefree days of wishes, and magic planning, and Saturday walks in search of mysterious adventure.

But having a girl is a kind of magic, too.

And if you don't think this is true, all I can say is, wait till you have one yourself.

And you'll see.

This is Laura writing now. James got to begin this book; so it is only right that I should end it. But there will be a little bit from everybody else in this chapter, too.

After James's adventure we could just about tell that the magic was over, at least for a while. After all, everyone had had a wish. And Thanksgiving was coming, which seemed to put a logical end to it, somehow.

I had an idea about that. And I told my mother and she agreed that it was a good one. So we had a big Thanksgiving dinner at our house and invited Kip and Lydia and Gordy and Dicky LeBaron. I made the turkey stuffing and James mashed the potatoes.

Before dinner, while we were enjoying our cranberry juice cocktails and while our minds were still sharpened with hunger and before the glut set in, I
passed this book around for each one to write down truly what he was most thankful for. I thought it would make just about the best ending the book could have.

I took people in the order in which their wishes had happened; so Gordy got the book first.

And from here on you can read what each one had to say.

This is Gordy, and I am thankful to have had a wish on the well all to myself. Last summer when the magic happened before, I didn't get one.

Not that last summer wasn't wonderful. And not that the well didn't do me a good turn in letting me meet James and Laura and the others, and get to know them and start doing things with them.

I guess it is no secret how I feel about them; so
I needn't be ashamed of putting it down here that the well gave me a chance of my own, and brought Doctor Emma Lovely across my path, and led me to Sylvia.

I am glad to have helped Sylvia, partly for her own sake, but even more for mine.

Because good as it is to know people you think are wonderful, it is good to have somebody think
you
are wonderful, too, once in a while.

And Sylvia seems to think I am as wonderful as I think James and Laura and Lydia and Kip are. And yes, Dicky LeBaron, too.

I know I am not wonderful, of course, but it is good to have somebody think I am.

And that is what I am thankful for.

And I guess that's all.

This is Laura again now, just to say that Madame Salvini and Mr. Adam Appledore were married in Mr. Chenoweth's church this last Saturday morning.

It was a simple but picturesque ceremony. Madame Salvini wore her wedding costume from the second act of
Lucia.
She wanted to sing, "Oh Promise Me," but we explained to her that brides just don't sing at their own weddings.

Lots of the Well-Wishers were there, and Deborah was flower girl, and the only attendant. The flowers were late chrysanthemums from Madame Salvini's own garden, and Deborah says there wasn't a bug or a beetle on them.

And Mr. Appledore tells me their orchard is coming along fine.

This isn't what I'm most thankful for, and I'll be back once more to tell you what
is.
But I thought you'd like to know how that wish ended.

And now it's Lydia's turn.

This is Lydia.

I suppose I ought to point out all kinds of morals, and say that the lesson I learned that day I tried to get even with Dicky LeBaron struck deep into my very vitals, and made me a better girl.

And in a way that is true.

What I learned was not only that Dicky LeBaron can be a good friend in a crisis, but that when you get to know him, he is a lot of fun, too.

And I think it's a good thing we did get to know him, because what with the way James has faded out of the picture lately and spends all his time with Florence Squibb of all people, we need
somebody
with a little gumption around here.

Dicky doesn't come around all the time, but when he does, he and I are the leaders now. At least we are the venturesome ones. But we have Laura and Kip to be sensible, and Gordy and Deborah to be cautious and keep us from going too far.

The thing is, though, that when you like somebody as much as I like Dicky LeBaron now, you realize how much time you wasted in not getting to know the person sooner.

And that's what the magic taught me, and I'm glad.

But I won't say I'm not thankful the hornets stung Stinker and Smoko, too.

Because I am.

This is Kip writing now.

I really have the most to be thankful for, because the magic sent the biggest wish to me. To me and Deborah, that is. And Dicky LeBaron, too, I guess.