Runaway Ralph - Beverly Cleary [5]
Suddenly Ralph was angry. He was furious at the way his old friend had treated him. He would show Matt that he could manage without help. Matt would come out in the morning expecting to find Ralph waiting to be let in, but Ralph would fool him. He wouldn’t be waiting, and there wouldn’t be any broken motorcycle at the foot of the steps either.
Ralph set about finding a solution to his problem. He looked at the ghostly rocking chairs, the cracked concrete porch, the steps, and the asphalt driveway below. Once Ralph had taken the trouble to look, the solution to getting his motorcycle down the steps seemed surprisingly easy. About three inches below the porch on either side of the steps was a sloping section of concrete, a sort of ramp intended as an edge to the steps. The two ramps were about ten inches wide and each sloped down to a flat section. Below each flat section was a shrub that had been pruned into a somewhat lopsided ball of leaves.
All Ralph had to do was ride his motorcycle over the edge, down the slope, and into the shrub, which would break his fall and let him slide gently through the leaves to the ground. The only problem was that terrifying three-inch drop from the porch to the slanting concrete, but Ralph was sure that with a cool head and steady paws he could manage. He would show old Matt a thing or two!
Ralph wheeled his motorcycle back from the edge of the porch but in line with one of the concrete ramps. High speed would be best, he decided, speed fast enough to carry him over the edge without wobbling so that he would land on the ramp on both wheels. Ralph’s heart was pounding as he mounted his motorcycle, but his head was cool and his paws steady on the handle grips.
Ralph drew a deep breath. Pb-pb-b-b-b. His paws tightened on the handle grips. He rode smoothly toward the edge of the porch. He held his breath as he shot out into space as he had planned. There was a sudden heart-shaking drop before the tires hit the ramp.
At this point everything went wrong. Before Ralph realized what was happening, the motorcycle shot down the ramp, which was worn smooth by the many children who had slid down it. Ralph flew into the air and fell upside down into the shrub. He lost his grip on the motorcycle and felt himself brushed by leaves and scratched by twigs until he came to rest wedged into the crotch of a small branch. His helmet had fallen off, one ear was scratched, and he was badly frightened, but he was not injured.
When Ralph had caught his breath and his heart no longer pounded against his ribs, he boosted himself up so that he was sitting in the crotch of the twig. The shrub was not the leafy cushion he had expected. From his perch in the center he could see that the leaves grew only at the tips of the twigs and that the bush, which had looked soft and springy from the outside, was on the inside leafless and spiky with dead twigs.
My motorcycle, thought Ralph frantically. Where is it? Then he saw it, far above his head hanging on a twig by its back wheel. His helmet, however, had bounced to the ground.
Ralph did the only thing he could do and that was climb up to his motorcycle and start chewing. The twig that held the motorcycle had a dry and dusty taste, but Ralph chewed until it snapped and the motorcycle slid down to the crotch of the twig below. Ralph climbed down, and when he could not free the motorcycle with his paws, he started chewing once more. No little cousin was ever going to say to him, What happened to your motorcycle, Ralph? Huh? What happened to your motorcycle?
Ralph chewed his motorcycle from one twig to the next, and the lower he went, the thicker the twigs became. By the time the motorcycle finally dropped to the ground beside the helmet, Ralph’s jaws ached. He dragged the motorcycle across the weedy patch of lawn to