She looked bleak and dropped her eyes. “You’re going away?”
“Yes. I’ll explain, Ricky, but it’s rather long. Let’s sit down and I’ll tell you about it.” So we sat on opposite sides of the picnic table under the ponderosas and I talked. Pete lay on the table between us, making a library lion of himself with his forepaws on the creased letter, and sang a low song like bees buzzing in deep clover, while he narrowed his eyes in contentment.
I was much relieved to find that she already knew that Miles had married Belle-I hadn’t relished having to break that to her. She glanced up, dropped her eyes at once, and said with no expression at all, “Yes, I know. Daddy wrote me about it.”
“Oh. I see.”
She suddenly looked grim and not at all a child. “I’m not going back there, Danny. I won’t go back there.”
“But-Look here, Rikki-tikki-tavi, I know how you feel. I certainly don’t want you to go back there-I’d take you away myself if I could. But how can you help going back? He’s your daddy and you are only eleven.”
“I don’t have to go back. He’s not my real daddy. My grandmother is coming to get me.”
“What? When’s she coming?”
“Tomorrow. She has to drive up from Brawley. I wrote her about it and asked her if I could come live with her because I wouldn’t live with Daddy any more with her there.” She managed to put more contempt into one pronoun than an adult could have squeezed out of profanity. “Grandma wrote back and said that I didn’t have to live there if I didn’t want to because he had never adopted me and she was my ‘guardian of record.’” She looked up anxiously. “That’s right, isn’t it? They can’t make me?”
I felt an overpowering flood of relief. The one thing I had not been able to figure out, a problem that had worried me for months, was how to keep Ricky from being subjected to the poisonous influence of Belle for-well, two years; it had seemed certain that it would be about two years. “If he never adopted you, Ricky, I’m certain that your grandmother can make it stick if you are both firm about it.” Then I frowned and chewed my lip. “But you may have some trouble tomorrow. They may object to letting you go with her.”
“How can they stop me? I’ll just get in the car and go.”
“It’s not that simple, Ricky. These people who run the camp, they have to follow rules. Your daddy-Miles, I mean-Miles turned you over to them; they won’t be willing to turn you back over to anyone but him.”
She stuck out her lower lip. “I won’t go. I’m going with Grandma.”
“Yes. But maybe I can tell you how to make it easy. If I were you, I wouldn’t tell them that I’m leaving camp; I’d just tell them that your grandmother wants to take you for a ride-then don’t come back.”
Some of her tension relaxed. “All right.”
“Uh. . . don’t pack a bag or anything or they may guess what you’re doing. Don’t try to take any clothes but those you are wearing at the time. Put any money or anything you really want to save into your pockets. You don’t have much here that you would really mind losing, I suppose?”
“I guess not.” But she looked wistful. “rye got a brand-new swim suit.”
How do you explain to a child that there are times when you just must abandon your baggage? You can’t-they’ll go back into a burning building to save a doll or a toy elephant. “Mmm…Ricky, have your grandmother tell them that she is taking you over to Arrowhead to have a swim with her. . . and that she may take you to dinner at the hotel there, but that she will have you back before taps. Then you can carry your swimming suit and a towel. But nothing else. Er, will your grandmother tell that fib for you?”
“I guess so. Yes, I’m sure she will. She says people have to tell little white fibs or else people couldn’t stand each other. But she says fibs were meant to be used, not abused.”