CHAPTER TWO

 

 

It was a few weeks later, a chilly night in late September. Johnny was walking home from a Monday night Boy Scout meeting at the Methodist church, wearing his new Boy Scout uniform with the red neckerchief and the bright red-and-white numerals 112 sewed on the right shoulder. For months the professor and Johnny's gramma and grandpa had been trying to persuade him to join. They were worried that Johnny was too much of a loner, and they wanted him to break out of his shell and make some friends. And so he had finally signed up with Troop 112. The first meeting had not been much. Before the scoutmaster showed up, the boys spent their time horsing around, playing games of Steal the Bacon (using a knotted towel for the bacon) and throwing the cakes of Ivory soap at each other that they were supposed to be carving into little animals and things like that. But when the meeting started and things quieted down a bit, Johnny decided he liked the scoutmaster and most of the other boys too. He was stubborn about changing his mind, but he was beginning to think that maybe—just maybe—this Boy Scout business was a good idea.

As Johnny walked on, all sorts of thoughts came crowding into his mind. He thought about his mother, who had been in her grave for over a year now. He thought about his dad, who was flying a jet for the Air Force, over in Korea. The year was 1951, and the Korean War was raging. Mr. Dixon didn't have to be over there, because he had already served in the Air Force in World War Two. Besides, he was the only surviving parent of a dependent child. But he had volunteered anyway, because he liked flying. Johnny did not understand why his dad wanted to do such a dangerous thing. He didn't understand why the Americans had to go help the South Koreans fight the North Koreans and the Chinese Communists. But he did know one thing—he knew that he was scared. Sometimes before he went to bed at night Johnny would imagine seeing his dad's jet plane hurtling through the sky. Suddenly it would burst, exploding in flame and smoke, with pieces flying everywhere. Johnny would close his eyes and shudder. He worried about his dad a lot. Sometimes when the mail arrived on Saturday afternoons, Johnny wondered if there was an official U.S. government telegram in the pile, a telegram that began We regret to inform you. . . .

Johnny wished that he could stop worrying about his dad and just go along with what the professor had told him: There was one big rule in life—the things you worried about never happened, and the things that happened were never the ones you expected. Not that this bit of advice helped Johnny much. It simply meant that he spent more time guessing at what the unexpected disasters in his life would be.

When Johnny started up the walk toward his front door, he was suddenly hit with the chilling feeling that something was wrong. Quickly he glanced toward the big bay window. The window was dark. This was odd, because usually at this time of night Gramma would be in the living room watching TV. The Dixons were poor, and they hadn't had a television set until recently, when Professor Childermass had bought them one as a present. At first Gramma had been suspicious of this newfangled invention, convinced that the rays it emitted were harmful. But before long she was a regular TV addict, watching the Kate Smith Hour, Milton Berle, and soap operas like Search for Tomorrow. But no gray aquarium glow hovered about the walls tonight. Johnny wondered what Gramma was doing.

Oh, well. She might be up to any number of things. She might be lying down upstairs with a headache—she had had a lot of headaches lately, for some reason. She might be making fudge or a lemon meringue pie in the kitchen. She might be in the bathroom. So Johnny shrugged and started up the steps. Slam went the screen door. He walked across the porch and opened the front door. Now he was in the long, musty-smelling hall that ran from the front to the back of the house. With a strong sense of foreboding, Johnny opened the door to the living room and peered in. It was dark. Johnny could see various shapes: the rounded bulk of the brown armchair, the boxy shape of the television set. And as his eyes got used to the dark, he saw his grandmother sitting, rigid and still, on the couch. Her glasses glimmered faintly, but she was not moving a muscle. Terror clutched at Johnny's heart. What was the matter with her?

Johnny swallowed several times. When he finally spoke, his voice was weak. "Gramma?"

"Hullo, John. How're you?" Gramma sounded dull and lifeless, like a recording.

Not knowing what to say, Johnny hovered in the doorway. Then Gramma spoke again, unexpectedly, in the same flat voice.

"You're home from school early, arncha? They letcha out early, did they?"

Early. It was nine o'clock at night. Gramma had gone crazy. Or else she was drunk. But, no, she was death on liquor, wouldn't even stay in the same room with people who were drinking. Johnny felt sick. How had this happened? What could he do? He wanted to run out the door yelling and screaming. But instead he stood rooted to the spot. Suddenly he heard footsteps behind him. Somebody was coming up the walk. The sound broke Johnny's trance, and he dashed down the hall to flip the switch that turned on the porch light. When he stepped out onto the porch, he saw his grampa and Professor Childermass. Even in the pale light he could see that their faces were grim and haggard. And Johnny knew in a flash that they too knew something was wrong with Gramma.

The screen door opened, and the two old men entered. Grampa walked slowly forward and put his hand gently on Johnny's shoulder.

"Johnny, we hafta talk to you," he said quietly.

Johnny followed the professor and Grampa through the house to the kitchen. Grampa switched on the kitchen light, closed the door, and went to the stove to turn on the gas under the teakettle. Johnny could see now that Grampa's eyes were red-rimmed, and there were wet streaks on his loose, leathery cheeks. He had been crying.

The professor stood in the middle of the room with his arms folded. He stared hard at the floor. "John," he said, "there is something the matter with your grandmother. I'm sorry you had to come upon her alone like that, but I was across the street with your grampa. He was . . . well, he was terribly upset, as you might imagine."

Johnny's eyes were wide with fear. And now his voice trembled as he spoke. "Professor, what is it? Why . . . why's she actin' that way?"

The professor looked forlornly at Johnny. He opened his mouth to speak, but all he said was "My cousin . . ." Then he snapped his mouth shut suddenly and turned to stare at the wallpaper. His face became a frozen, secretive mask.

Johnny wondered for a second, but then it hit him. He knew what the professor had been about to say: My cousin Bea died of a brain tumor. Many times Johnny had heard the professor talking to Grampa about how Cousin Bea had had a brain tumor, only Doc Schermerhorn diagnosed it as bad teeth, so she died. A brain tumor. It sounded so horrible, so hopeless. Johnny hoped that the professor was wrong.

Grampa gently put his hand on Johnny's shoulder. "We called the . . . the hospital," he said in a broken, tearful voice. "The ambulance is comin' to get her."

Johnny looked dully at Grampa. He waited for Grampa to take his hand away, and then he walked over to a kitchen chair and slumped into it. He felt stunned, as if he had been hit on the head with a baseball bat. He couldn't cry. He couldn't feel anything or think anything except This isn't really happening. It's not real. In spite of what the professor had said, the things you are afraid of sometimes really do happen. And when they do, it feels worse than any nightmare.

The red electric clock over the stove buzzed, but there was no other sound in the room. Finally the professor coughed. He turned and took Grampa firmly by the arm.

"Come on, Henry," he said in a low voice. "I know it's not going to be any fun, but we have to get Kate ready to go. The ambulance'll be here any minute. The sooner the doctors examine your wife, the sooner they can start fixing her up. She may not know why we want her to go, but. . . well, I don't expect she'll give us a whole lot of trouble. Are you with me?"

Grampa nodded. Then he opened the kitchen door, and he and the professor went out. Johnny followed them timidly through the dining room and the front room to the parlor. The professor went into the darkness, and a few minutes later he came out with Gramma holding on to his arm. She shuffled along uncertainly, and Johnny noticed that she was wearing her blue cloth slippers, the ones with the little blue felt rosettes. Her stockings were wrinkly and saggy, and her face was blank. She looked as if she did not have the slightest idea of what was happening.

The ambulance arrived. It stood in front of the house with its red light flashing. Two attendants got out and took a wheeled cot out of the back of the vehicle. They helped Gramma down the front steps, gently eased her onto the cot, and wheeled the cot out to the ambulance. Gramma was lifted inside, and the rear doors were closed. The big white vehicle roared away, its siren screaming. The professor watched it go for a second, and then he went across the street to get his car—he was going to drive Grampa to the hospital. As he was about to leave the house, Grampa turned to Johnny and asked him if he wanted to go with them. But Johnny said no, he would stay home. He stood in the doorway watching as the car backed out of the driveway and rolled away down the street.

 

While Gramma was in the hospital the days passed in a blur for Johnny. During school he had a hard time keeping his mind on his work because he was thinking about her so much. He told Sister Mary Anthony, his eighth grade teacher, about what had happened, and she asked the whole class to pray for Johnny's grandmother. And each day, after school had let out, Johnny went into the gloomy, echoing church next door and lit a candle in front of the Blessed Virgin's altar. Kneeling at the altar rail, he prayed that nothing bad would happen to his gramma.

Finally the news came. Yes, Gramma had a brain tumor. The doctor at the hospital explained to Johnny and Grampa that there were two kinds of tumors, benign and malignant. A benign tumor was just a little lump in the brain. It might grow, but it usually wouldn't do any harm. A malignant tumor would grow and eventually kill the patient. Unfortunately you couldn't tell if a tumor was benign or malignant until you actually operated and took it out. The doctor was an honest sort of person, and he laid it on the line: It was going to be a dangerous operation, especially for someone as old as Gramma was. Something might go wrong, or they might not get all of the tumor out. Everybody would just have to sit tight.

Grampa drove Johnny home after the session with the doctor. Neither of them said a word until the car had stopped in the driveway and Grampa muttered, "Gotta go fix supper." Then he got out of the car, closed the door, and loped off toward the house. Johnny watched him go. Grampa looked utterly defeated. His shoulders sagged, and his head hung. Tears came to Johnny's eyes, but with a snorting sound and a shudder he forced the sobs down. He got out of the car and was starting to walk down the driveway to the garage when he heard someone call.

"John! Over here!"

Johnny turned. It was the professor. He was standing in his front yard with a golf club in his hand. The professor played a perfectly terrible game of golf, but he kept at it anyway. Sometimes he practiced his swing in his backyard with a little plastic practice ball. The practice swings didn't help his game any, but—as he often said, sourly—he had chopped some lovely big holes in his back lawn.

"Johnny! Come here a minute. Can I talk to you?"

Johnny walked back up the driveway and across the street.

"Yeah, Professor? Whaddaya want?" The tone of his voice showed how rotten he felt.

The professor smiled sadly. "Is it as bad as all that?" he asked.

Johnny nodded gloomily. "It sure is. We talked to the doctor and he said—"

"Yes. I know. I called up the doctor earlier and got a full report. It's awful, I know, but . . . well, let's hope everything will turn out okay."

"Fat chance," said Johnny bitterly. He was in such a black mood that he did not want to be cheered up, and he did not want the professor to be painting fake rosy pictures for him.

"John," said the professor gravely, and he walked closer to the boy. He put his arm around him and smiled in a pained way. "I think you need to get away from here. I think you need to go on a vacation."