The Secret of the Indian (The Indian in the Cupboard)

  Omri was speechless. He’d forgotten about winning the prize.

  “I wish I’d heard it,” he said at last.

  “Too bad, it’s over now,” said Gillon, thumping down the stairs again in his pajamas.

  After that there just wasn’t a minute’s peace. His parents had both heard the announcement and were clamoring for Omri to come down for a special bacon-and-eggs breakfast to celebrate. By the time that was done with, it was too late to go back upstairs because his train wouldn’t wait for him. Luckily he’d given the food to Matron to distribute, reserving a special, large (so to speak) portion for Boone in his little house.

  Omri just had to go off and leave Patrick where (ever) he was.

  There were no skinheads to make trouble in Hovel Road, and Omri got to school in good order, though feeling highly uneasy. He was dead worried about Patrick. What would Patrick’s mother say when he didn’t show up? And what if he was in some appalling danger, as Omri himself had been in the Indian village, and was waiting on tenterhooks to be brought back?

  Omri put his books and stuff in his locker and then went in to assembly. Mr. Johnson, the headmaster, was already on the stage, clearing his throat for silence. More than the usual number of teachers were there too. Several hundred children were seated on the floor.

  Omri crept in and sat down near the main doors. He craned his neck, looking for Emma, but he couldn’t see her. Hadn’t she come to school? He was still looking for her anxiously when Mr. Johnson began to talk; Omri didn’t take in what he said, until suddenly, with a shock, he heard his own name.

  Everywhere in the auditorium people turned their heads to look at him. Omri sat up straight, alarmed.

  “… very proud indeed,” Mr. Johnson concluded. “Omri, stand up and come forward.”

  Utterly bewildered, Omri rose to his feet.

  “Me?”

  “Yes, yes!” beamed Mr. Johnson. All the teachers on the stage were smiling, and as Omri moved forward, everyone started to applaud.

  Omri found himself being helped onto the stage, and, turning, saw he was the focus of hundreds of pairs of eyes. What was all this? If only he’d been listening!

  “Now, it just so happens,” said Mr. Johnson, in unfamiliarly genial tones, “that I have here a copy of Omri’s story, which had to be kept by the school when Omri entered it for the competition. And what I thought would be really nice is if Omri would agree to read us his winning story as this morning’s assembly feature.” Omri’s mouth fell open.

  Mr. Johnson was handing him a typed manuscript which he well recognized—he’d typed it himself, hunt-and-peck system, in three copies. One he’d sent in to Telecom for the writing competition, one he’d kept, and this one he’d had to hand in to the school office. Across the top was typed the title: “The Plastic Indian.”

  He clutched it till it creased, swallowed hard, and looked up at Mr. Johnson imploringly.

  “Now, now, Omri, no false modesty! Telecom has notified the school that you have won first prize in the intermediate age group—three hundred pounds! What about that, you people?” There was an impressed and envious gasp from the assembled crowd below, and Omri heard murmurs of “Three hundred quid! Wow! Get old Omri, then—millionaire time! Blimey!” And they burst into applause all over again.

  “Stand here in the middle of the stage,” Mr. Johnson said, maneuvering Omri by the shoulders. “Now then! I haven’t had a chance to read this myself yet, so I’m just going to sit here and enjoy it. Well done, Omri! Off you go!”

  Omri dithered for a moment or two and then thought, Hey, this isn’t half bad. I’ve dreamed of this happening! So he began to read.

  The story was based on his first meeting with the Indian, a year ago when he’d first discovered the cupboard and the key’s magic. It was a great story, and he’d done his best to write it well. At first when he began to read it, he was nervous and stumbled over the words, but after a paragraph or two he hit his stride and began to read with feeling and expression. He did Little Bear’s gruff voice and had a stab at Boone’s Texas accent; when he said something funny, the whole auditorium erupted with laughter. During the exciting bits everyone sat poised to catch what came next. It was very satisfying, and when he finished the story and the applause broke out again, with some cheering, Omri felt this was a great moment in his life, one that he’d always remember.

  In fact he was feeling extremely pleased with himself—not at all a sensation he was accustomed to at school—when he suddenly became aware that Mr. Johnson had stood up behind him and was looming over him in a distinctly sinister manner.

  Before the applause had died away, Mr. Johnson bent down and whispered something in Omri’s ear that made his blood chill in his veins.

  “I want to see you in my office immediately.”

  Omri turned to look at him. He was appalled to see that all geniality had been wiped from the headmaster’s face, which had gone the color of a wet sheet.

  “That story,” pursued the grim voice in a hissing undertone meant for Omri’s ears alone, “was supposed to be an invention. I have reason to believe that most of it, incredible as it seems, may be true.”

  14

  A Strange Yellow Sky

  DOC BRANT PUT HIS old-fashioned stethoscope back in his bag in silence. Patrick, peeping through the frill of cotton lace around the top of Ruby Lou’s dress, saw Boone lying on her bed on a bright-colored patchwork quilt.

  At least he wasn’t lying out on the hot desert sand anymore, though it had not been so hot by the time they had finally found him—it had been getting dark, and Patrick had been scared they’d never find him at all.

  The horse had been pretty useless—it became clear quite early on that it hadn’t a clue where it had left Boone. But Ruby Lou had been absolutely determined to find him. Luckily Tickle’s many and varied talents included amateur tracking. With his help, they had finally found the place where the horse’s tracks had rejoined the main trail into town. This had been made possible by the fact that the horse was wearing some very unusual horseshoes.

  “Like some’n from a bygone age,” Tick had remarked.

  After that it had just been a matter of following them, and when they lost them on some hard ground, Patrick had noticed—silhouetted against a magnificent desert sunset—a tall cactus sticking up on the horizon that he recognized. Soon after that Ruby Lou and Tickle were heaving Boone’s unconscious body onto the back of Tick’s wagon.

  “Sure must have had a crack on the head or some’n,” squeaked Tick. “He’s out colder ‘n last week’s beans.”

  Doc Brant said nothing about last week’s beans. He was a man of few words. He just packed his stethoscope away and prepared to leave.

  “Well, Doc?” cried Ruby Lou anxiously.

  The old man shook his head. “Cain’t find nothin’ wrong with him. Head’s okay. Ain’t got fever. Ain’t bin shot. Nothin’ but a bit o’ bruisin’ on the ribs, mebbe from when he fell off the horse. Seems like he plumb don’t favor wakin’ up.”

  “God pardon sin, Doc—mebbe he’s drunk?” asked Tickle piously.

  “Look who’s talkin’,” muttered Ruby.

  The doctor shook his head. “No liquor on his breath. Cain’t explain it. Just better leave him lay.”

  When he’d gone, Tickle said he’d mosey over to the saloon to tickle the ivories for a while to soothe his nerves.

  “You be okay here alone, Ruby?”

  “I ain’t alone,” she replied promptly, and patted her bosom. “Pat and me’ll keep each other company and decide what t’ do about Billy, here.”

  Tickle suddenly drew himself up to his full height of five feet and intoned in an unexpectedly deep, commanding voice, “Don’t you go believin’ everythin’ you see. There’s a lot of devil’s work in this world! I know it, account of I ain’t free of sin myself!” And he cast his eyes to heaven before closing the door.

  “D’ you hear that? There’s a bit of the preacher left in him, even thoug
h he ain’t held a service since the Dead-Eye Gang went through and burned the church down in ’81. That’s how he learnt trackin’—trying to chase ’em.”

  As she spoke, Ruby lifted Patrick out between finger and thumb and set him on a table.

  It was covered with a rich—and, from Patrick’s point of view, colossal—assortment of feminine fancies: a tortoise-shell-backed hairbrush, elaborate bottles of perfume, a number of sepia-tinted photos in heavily worked silver frames, an ivory comb…. Patrick could easily have sunk and suffocated in the scented powder in a cut-glass bowl, and the mirror in its bright enamel frame, above which he could just see his head, was the size of a reflecting skyscraper. The copper hairpins scattered about were as tall as himself.

  “Okay, Pat, let’s hear from you,” said Ruby Lou.

  “Who, me?” said Patrick, startled.

  “Don’t string me no line now. You know what’s up with my pal Billy Boone, don’t ya.” It was not a question. Her blue eyes were narrowed as she looked at him, though her wide red mouth was smiling knowingly.

  Patrick sat down cross-legged on a white swansdown powder puff. “Yes, I do, as a matter of fact. But you won’t believe me if I tell you.”

  “Try me.”

  Patrick told her, “Boone’s left his body behind and gone into the future.”

  There was a pause while she took this in.

  “Supposin’ I say I believe ya. An’ I jest might, ’cause he told me some such tale himself once. Will he come back?”

  “Yes. But only if my friend Omri turns the key at—at the other end.”

  “Into the future, huh? Is that where you come from?”

  “Yes.”

  “What year?” she asked, as if that would catch him out. Patrick told her.

  She straightened up. “Holy snakes! That’s almost exactly a hundred years from now!”

  She walked about the room for a bit. Patrick watched her. Of course she was rather gaudily dressed, and he supposed she was a lady in name only, so to speak, but when she was at the far side of the room, so he could see all of her, it was obvious that she was very pretty. She was clever, too, cleverer than all those crazy men in the bar who had started shooting and fighting at the sight of him.

  And she was brave, and tough. The way she’d ridden that horse, the way she’d stuck to the search, the way she’d lifted Boone’s big body onto the tail of the wagon … Patrick admired her. And she liked Boone, she liked him a lot. Patrick wondered if he liked her.

  She stopped pacing. “What’s it like—in the future?”

  “It’s okay. We’ve got a lot of gadgets and stuff, for making life easier. You get about in cars—that’s like horseless carriages, very fast—and we’ve got flying machines. We’ve got moving photographs that you can have in your home to entertain you. And doctors have found out how to cure lots of diseases, so people live longer.”

  “Gee. Sounds great! Any drawbacks?”

  She was clever.

  “Well, yes. There are too many people really. They make a lot of mess, and plenty of them are still poor and starving. There’s still crime. And there are lots of wars. Not just with guns, and bows and arrows and stuff. There are weapons now—I mean—then, I mean—well, anyway, they’re much scarier, they could blow up the whole world.”

  Ruby Lou strolled back to him and sat down. She put her elbow on the table near him (her arm was like a great white marble pillar) and rested her chin on her hand. She fixed her blue eyes on him.

  “That’s quite a drawback all right. I guess I’ll stick around here till my time’s up…. It gets rough at times, but at least we’re too civilized to kill more ’n one or two at once. Say, they ain’t gonna shoot any of them big ones off while Billy’s there, are they?”

  “I don’t suppose so.”

  “They better not blow up my Billy,” she said. And the way she said it showed Patrick that she didn’t just like Boone.

  Patrick spent the night cozily in the pocket of a raccoon-skin jacket of Ruby Lou’s, which she laid out on a chair for him. She spent the night sitting by the bed watching Boone.

  “Won’t you be tired?” asked Patrick as she bedded him down after giving him a supper of a few fibers of underdone steak and a crumb of potato washed down with milk from her sewing thimble.

  “Don’t you fret about me, pal. I’m used to goin’ without sleep.”

  She turned the oil lamp low so as not to disturb him, and he saw her move to the window. She drew back the frilly curtains.

  “Sky’s a funny color,” she said, peering out into the night. “Don’t like the feel of the air, neither. Kinda tight-feeling. Hope we ain’t in for a big blow.”

  Patrick slept peacefully. In the morning he woke, with the fur tickling his nose, to all the noises of the town: horses neighing, wheels rattling, dogs barking, cocks crowing, people’s voices—but behind and around all this was something odd and eerie. A sort of whining, gusting sound.

  Ruby was standing where he had last seen her, at the window. Patrick sat up in the fur and sneezed.

  “Ruby!” he called as loudly as he could.

  She turned from the window, stooped, and lifted him. Her hand was soft, except for some callouses as big as watermelons, which must have come from riding. It smelled sweetly of soap—and was trembling.

  “How’s Boone?”

  “Jest the same. Come here and look at the sky.”

  She carried him to the window. He rested his arms along the top of her curled finger and looked up. The sky, and indeed the air, was a strange yellowish color. Below the window he could see giant people hurrying about. The gusting sound was wind, coming in irregular bursts. It caught at the women’s dresses and pushed them along. It blew smoke from chimneys away in sudden puffs, like warning smoke signals. It was disturbing the horses, tearing at their manes, flattening their tails to their haunches, making them shake their heads uneasily.

  As Patrick watched, a man’s big hat was blown off his head and trundled up the dirt street along with several balls of thistles. The man ran after it. Somewhere a door banged and banged, rhythmically, as the wind began to blow more steadily.

  “What is it, Ruby?” asked Patrick in a worried voice.

  “I’m not sure, pardner. I just hope it ain’t what it might be.”

  “What?”

  “Blowin’ up for a twister.”

  Patrick turned to look at her, but all he could see was the underside of her chin. His mouth had gone suddenly dry.

  “You—don’t mean a cyclone? One of those black funnel things that—”

  Ruby Lou looked at Boone, lying on the bed. She’d covered him with a rug the night before. He looked peaceful and had a good color. His hat, which Ruby had picked up on Patrick’s advice, lay beside him.

  “Say, that’d be one for the books!” she said with a sudden strained laugh.

  “What would?”

  “We was worryin’ about what might happen to him there. What if your friend turned his magic key and sent Boone back t’ here—and the bit of him he left behind ’d been just—blowed clean away?”

  15

  Interrogation

  MR. JOHNSON KEPT HIS hand on Omri’s shoulder all the way to his office, as if he thought Omri would twist free and run for it if he didn’t hold on to him.

  And he might have done it, too, if he hadn’t been half-paralyzed—at least mentally—from apprehension.

  He knows! Those were the only words in Omri’s head. What was he to do when the interrogation began, as it would in a matter of moments? Lie, deny everything—okay, but what if—

  Mr. Johnson thrust him through the door of his office, followed him in, and closed and locked it behind him.

  Then he walked behind his desk. But he didn’t sit down. He leaned forward and rested his knuckles on the desk and glared hypnotically into Omri’s eyes.

  “Now, Omri,” he said in a clear, deep voice which he used on only the most solemn occasions when someone had done something expu
lsion-worthy, “you know what I have to say.”

  Omri swallowed and stared at him the way a rabbit stares into a car’s headlights as they bear down on him.

  “You haven’t forgotten that day last year,” he said, “any more than I have. The day you and Patrick were sent to my office for talking in class. The day I went home early because I supposed I was ill, having seen something I believed I couldn’t possibly have seen. You remember all that, Omri, don’t you?”

  Omri felt his head nod.

  “What I thought I saw,” the headmaster continued slowly, “was two tiny, living people in the palm of a boy’s hand. They moved. One of them was dressed as a Red Indian.”

  “It’s not right to say ‘Red Indian,’” Omri heard himself say in a strangled voice.

  Mr. Johnson jerked his head back. “I beg your pardon?”

  “They don’t like it,” Omri pursued helplessly, hardly knowing what he was saying. “You should say ‘American Indian’ or ‘Native American.’”

  “I have always said Red Indian and I shall continue to say Red Indian!” Mr. Johnson was suddenly shouting. “I say I saw a Red Indian, a tiny little one, and another figure as well, and they were alive, and I spent weeks trying to convince myself that I hadn’t seen them, that I’d been overworking, and in the end I did convince myself. Almost. Until this morning. When I heard you read your story,” he went on, leaning even closer so that Omri backed a step, “it all came back to me in a flash, and I knew—I knew that I was not imagining things after all! I ought to have had more faith in my strength of mind, I ought to have known I am not a man to imagine things!” His voice dropped and his shoulders slumped. “I must confess it’s a relief in a way. That’s what it is. It’s a relief.” He took a deep breath and allowed himself to sit down.

  Omri was left standing in front of the desk. His knees had gone woolly, and his face felt cold.

  “Now then, my boy,” said Mr. Johnson more calmly, “let us take a new starting point. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio …’”