Standing in the Rainbow - Fannie Flagg [8]
Sometime later Bobby hit the front door of his house running and didn’t stop until he got to his room and onto his own bed. When Anna Lee, who was out on the porch, saw the look on his face as he went by, she figured someone was chasing him. She got up to look and see if it was Luther Griggs, the big bully who was always beating Bobby up any chance he got, but Luther was nowhere in sight.
Poor Monroe had stayed up on the tower for at least another forty-five minutes, trying as hard as he could to attach one of those red balloons to the side of the railing, but they all flew off.
But for Bobby the day had been far more than just the failure of the balloon caper. It was the first time he had seen his life from a distance or from anywhere, for that matter, except from the center of his own giant universe. Could it really be possible that he was nothing but just another small dot among a bunch of other small dots? He had always thought he was something different, something special. Now he was thrown for a complete loop.
Raggedy Ann
THAT NIGHT Bobby was especially sweet and after dinner, when they were all out on the porch, he went over to his mother in the swing, lay down with his head in his mother’s lap, and went to sleep, something he had not done since he was six. It was an extraordinarily warm evening and the entire family, including Jimmy, and Dorothy’s red-and-white cocker spaniel, Princess Mary Margaret, all sat out trying to catch a little night breeze. It was a quiet night and they were enjoying the sound of the crickets and the soft squeak of the swing. Dorothy looked down at Bobby. He was now in such a deep sleep that when she crossed her legs with his head in her lap he did not awaken. She smoothed his hair back off his forehead. “He must have been up to something today because he’s dead to the world tonight.”
Anna Lee said, “I thought Luther Griggs was after him again. He ran in the door this afternoon going about a hundred miles an hour.”
His mother sighed. “I’m worried that the Griggs boy is really going to hurt him one of these days. He’s already a head taller than Bobby.”
Doc knocked the ashes out of his pipe against the side of the porch. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry too much. He’ll have to catch him first. Bobby may be little but he’s fast.”
Dorothy thought about it and was somewhat reassured. “Well, that’s true. The other day, by the time I got my switch he was out the door and so far out in the field all I could see was the top of his head.”
Anna Lee, who, now a teenager, had recently started referring to her brother as “that child,” made an observation. “That child is certainly a lot of trouble, isn’t he, Mother?”
“Yes, but he can be sweet when he wants to. He’s just at that age, I suppose.”
“Was I ever like that?” asked Anna Lee.
“No. You were just a little angel—wasn’t she, Mother?”
Mother Smith agreed. “Absolutely. You were the best-behaved little girl. I used to take you everywhere with me and all I had to do was to put you down with one of your little dolls and you’d sit there and play and I never heard a peep out of you.”
“You loved your dolls,” Dorothy said. “That big Raggedy Ann was your favorite; you used to take it everywhere.”
They sat there in the quiet listening to the crickets for a few more minutes. Then Dorothy turned to Anna Lee. “What ever happened to your Raggedy Ann doll?”
“Bobby knocked its head off.”
“Oh.”
Just then Tot Whooten, a frazzled-looking woman, walked by on the sidewalk headed somewhere in a hurry. She did not stop but waved her hand in the air and called out over her shoulder, “Momma’s left her purse at the picture show again and I’ve got to get there before they close.”
Mother Smith shook her head. “Poor Tot, that’s the second time this week.”
Dorothy agreed. “Poor Tot.”
A few minutes later, Tot came walking by again, this time with her mother’s huge black purse on her arm.