Free Blossoms and the Green Phantom by Betsy Byars Page B

ghost.
    Pap realized then how unkempt he must appear. He attempted to smooth his hair. Then he extended both his arms. “Please, lady, oh, please. Do the Christian thing.” He smoothed his hair again. “Help an old man. I’m dying, lady. I tell you I’m dying!”
    The woman started the car.
    Tears rolled down Pap’s cheeks. “Please, lady, please! I meant it when I said I’m dying. I can’t stand to be in this Dumpster no more. Help me, lady, help me.”
    He had one last glimpse of the woman’s horrified expression as she turned the steering wheel. She drove out of the parking lot so fast that the tires spun in the loose sand.
    “I can’t hurt nobody,” Pap called after her. He stretched out one hand. “I’m helpless.”
    Pap watched until the taillights were specks in the distance. He kept standing there. He was so tired and worn down that he suspected he had told the truth when he had said he was dying.
    “Well, there went another one,” Pap told Mud. He made an effort not to let his despair show in his voice. Mud was sensitive to sounds.
    Then he sat down and told Dump the same thing in a lower, sadder voice. “There went another one.” Dump pawed Pap’s leg, asking to get back in Pap’s lap.
    Pap picked him up without even knowing he did so. In his mind was the thought that had begun when the woman drove away. It would be a terrible, terrible thing for a man to die in a Dumpster.

CHAPTER 19
Junior’s Move
    Junior had decided to make his move. The chickens had not clucked loudly in at least five minutes, and Junior knew it was time. He had to do something, because it seemed to him the sky was beginning to get light in the east. The last thing in the world Junior wanted to hear was the crow of a rooster. Then it would all be over but the words “Climb down with your hands over your head.”
    At last Junior had a plan. The plan came about because Junior remembered a wonderful thing. There had been a window on the side of the chicken house. He had seen it briefly on that incredibly fast boost up, but it was a window and Junior thought there was a little window ledge.
    Junior’s plan was to swing down, feel for the ledge with his feet, put his feet firmly on the window ledge, and step down to the ground. The plan was foolproof if, he added, the ledge was there.
    Junior knew there was a possibility it was not. Sometimes his eyes saw things that Junior wanted them to see. Like last Christmas, Junior had tiptoed down the steps in the middle of the night and his eyes had seen a red bicycle under the tree with his name on it. When he came down the next morning, the bicycle was not there.
    Junior began moving snakelike toward the side of the chicken house. He began to breathe easier. He was going to make it. He knew he was. He would be home in his bed before morning.
    In that moment of relief Junior realized that the lights had gone on once again in the Bensons’ bedroom. He glanced up, horrified. He had been so intent on his own silent, stealthy movements that he had forgotten about the house. He had been worrying about THEM, the chickens, when what he should have been worrying about was HIM. Was he coming back out? Had he seen Junior? Would he have his shotgun?
    The porch lights went on. Old man Benson was coming back out. He would spot Junior for sure this time. He might even shoot before—
    At that moment he heard something he had never expected to hear again in this world. He heard his mother’s voice. Then he realized that his mother was knocking at the door. “Open this door, Mr. Benson,” she was saying. “I mean to talk to you.”
    Junior heard the door open.
    His head was raised high now because he did not want to miss one single word of his mother’s wonderful voice. She had the most wonderful voice of anyone in the world, and her words were always perfect. These were more than perfect.
    “Mr. Benson, I believe my son is on the roof of your chicken house, and I have come to take him