And suddenly the kid bent over double, laughing.
After a long while he straightened up and tried to wipe the grin from his face.
"Well? What's so flappin1 funny!"
"I just don't believe this. I just never saw a talking mouse before. Not one wearing a pack, and with such an angry expression!"
"I ain't no mouse, sonny! I ain't no kind of mouse!" Rory spat angrily over his left shoulder. "You have a smart lip for a boy your age! You'd do well to keep it buttoned."
"If you're not a mouse, what are you?"
"I'm a kangaroo rat! You show your ignorance by not recognizing the fact."
"How should I know what you are! I've never seen a kangaroo rat in my life! I've never even heard of a kangaroo rat."
Rory stared at the kid. "You're as ignorant as old Mrs. Critch, ain't you! She never heard of lemmings!"
"You're not only funny-looking, you're an eavesdropper!" the boy said, scowling.
"Eavesdropper! You were telling the whole world out there! And I told you this is my plane, so go on about your business. Get lost!"
"I've got as much right in this dump as you have! Besides, did you say you have salvage rights? Salvage rights on a model plane?"
"Can you give me any reason why not?"
"Well I . . . well I guess I can't," the boy said uncertainly. "But what are you going to do with her?"
"Do with her? I'm going to clean her up, that's what I'm going to do with her! Fix that wing, see. And the hole in her side. Build a new cowling." Rory twisted a whisker with his forepaw. "I'm going to fix her up like new, sonny. Better than new. And then I'm going to fly her."
"Do what?"
"Fly her, sonny! Fly her! That's what a plane's for, ain't it? Climb up in that front cockpit and fly her! Up there, sonny," Rory said, pointing at the sky. "Up there, away from the world—and from dumb kids!"
CHAPTER 5
"you're going to fly her?" The boy stared at Rory. "But it's a model, it doesn't have any controls! It was built to go around in a circle at the end of those two wires. You can't work the ailerons—it doesn't even have real ailerons. You can't work the rudder or anything!" Then, almost apologetically, as if he felt the kangaroo rat might not understand, "Listen, my dad's an airplane mechanic—over there," he said, pointing toward the airfield. "I really do know what I'm talking about. And even if it had controls, you can't just get in a plane and take off, you have to know about rate of climb and stall speed, about pitch and roll and—well, a lot more than that. Do you know anything about flying?"
This sure was a talkative kid. Rory tried to hold his temper. "I can rig controls, sonny! I can build ailerons and hinge the rudder. I can rig levers for the spark and the fuel and choke. And as for the flying, I can learn, can't I! What do you think flight manuals are for! Weather manuals! Them first pilots didn't have any lessons, there weren't any flight instructors for the first pilots. They didn't have the manuals, they wrote the flappin' manuals!"
"You mean like Orville and Wilbur Wright?"
"Oh them, sure. But lots of others, too. Those first pilots in World War One, they had to teach themselves to fly." Rory leaned back against the Buick and crossed his big feet. "I heard a fellow tell all about it. I spent last winter in the hangar down at Turbine Field. I made myself a bed behind the woodstove where I could read flying magazines and listen to the pilots shoot the bull."
The way the kid grinned, he must have spent some time in the hangar himself, listening to flying talk. This wasn't a bad kid, Rory decided. "What's your name, sonny?"
"Charlie. Charlie Gribble."
"Well, Charlie, there was this old duffer used to come into the hangar a lot. He was too old to fly any more, but he'd flown a Martinsyde Elephant back in World War One. He talked funny, British. What they used to do was, they'd weight the plane with rocks for the beginners so they couldn't take off. That way, they could get used to running the plane down the runway and working the controls. They didn't have simulated flight trainers and all that fancy stuff back then, sonny—Charlie. Well, when they got used to working the controls with a plane that couldn't take off, then they'd take out some of the weight so they could go up a few feet and land again. And when a pilot could do that okay, then they took out the rest of the rocks and you were on your own.
Those were the days, sonny. And if those fellows could do it, so can I." Rory walked around to the front of the plane. "I can if this here engine's in running order, or if I can fix it up. I don't see no major damage. The coil seems all right. The points are pitted, though; I'll need a new set to make her run smooth. Have to have a bigger gas tank, too, I guess. Wouldn't get far with that little thing. I figure she ought to carry maybe a half-gallon and ..."
The kid was frowning at Rory.
"What's the trouble sonny? You think there's something bad wrong with this engine?"
"No, the engine's probably okay, it's not that, it's just—well," Charlie blurted suddenly as if the question embarrassed him, "well, if you can talk, then how come other—how come mice can't talk too?"
"Mice can talk, sonny. They just haven't much worth saying."
"Well if a mouse can talk, and if you can talk— couldn't a lemming?"
"I don't know, sonny. The lemming in the cage, you mean? I suppose he can if he ain't just plain stupid."
"My lemming's not stupid. But if my lemming can talk, how come he never talked to me?"
"Maybe he doesn't trust you. Maybe he thinks you'd tell everybody. No one wants to be made into a sideshow."
"But I've been good to that lemming! I wouldn't have told!"
"And what makes you think he's your lemming?
I'd say he's his own lemming, sonny."
"Well I—well I . . ." Charlie didn't seem to know how to answer.
"Would you want to belong to someone, sonny? Be someone's pet boy?"
Charlie stared at the kangaroo rat. "Well . . . well I guess I wouldn't. Listen, if I brought him over here, would you talk to him? I'm really worried about him. I don't know if he can make it on his own."
"What's this all about, sonny? What're you doing out here in the dump with that youngster in a cage anyway?"
"It's the housekeeper. She made me bring him. I mean, she made me get him out of the house. She threw him out of the house! See, I had him hidden and . . ."
Rory settled back against the plane's tail assembly and smoothed his whiskers. "See here, sonny, maybe you'd better start at the beginning."
Charlie thought for a minute. "I'm not sure where the beginning is. It's all pretty complicated when you think about it."
"Well start with the housekeeper, then."
"Okay. Old Critch—Mrs. Critch. See, my dad hired her to keep house when he had to leave to go to work up at Snodley Field. Dad owns that mechanic's hangar over at the airfield, but it's all closed down, the whole field is closed. There isn't any business. So he had to go up to Snodley Field to work, and my mother is dead, so he hired Mrs. Critch to keep house. To look after me," Charlie said crossly. "She's really an old grump, but it was either her or Mrs. Larken and she wheezes. Well, so there we are, Mrs. Critch and me, and her grungy nephew visiting her sometimes, and it's really a lousy summer. Dad's away, the airfield's closed, and the dump—well, you saw those birds, I guess. Even the dump isn't like it used to be."
"Okay. So go on."
"Well, so last month my Uncle Joe came through Skrimville on his way home from fishing in Canada, and he brought me the lemming. He found him in his tent, hundreds of miles below where this kind of lemming lives, and he didn't want to turn him out all alone so he brought him to me. I kept him hidden under my bed until this morning. And this morning old Critch barged in and saw him and began shouting, 'It's a rat! It's a rat! All this greasy junk in your room and now you've got a rat in here! Get it out of here or I'll kill it!' Then she grabbed up the cage and ran down the hall with it and threw it right out the front door and I thought she'd already killed him."