A Perfect Friend Read online

  Robin thought he said “Don’t you think I know that?” but she couldn’t be sure. Till now she’d thought she understood Ben’s sadness, but he’d just shown her that he hurt a lot worse than she’d realized, and she never again tried to change his feelings.

  From then on what kept Ben hoping to grow out of his sorrow and run his own life was not games or dreams but more and more books about elephants with more accurate pictures. He also had his father, who was kind and tired but who seemed to need Ben’s company and help—even when they seldom spoke to each other. Even after Ben and Robin had given up wandering through the woods, he enjoyed her company at the movies or playing occasional indoor games. He never had to ask her again to let him keep his sadness private.

  Ben also had a few good teachers who tried to help him onward, and most of the other children in school seemed to show they liked him. So he had other reasons to live on through his days and nights, neither too sad nor happy but without much hope that he’d have a life which felt rewarding. Sometimes he felt like a single young hawk, abandoned by its parents but learning to fly and hunt on its own. Most days, though, he felt like a boy who would never be stronger or have his own safe family and a job that he liked better than school.

  It was two months after his eleventh birthday that the next wide door in Ben’s life began to swing open, slowly at first. It started in school one day when Duncan Owens said to Ben “Remember that my dad knows the man that brings traveling shows to town—mostly bands and dances? Sometime this spring he’s bringing a family circus with one ring. Let’s us two go.” Everybody, including Ben, called Duncan “Dunk.” It was maybe because his red hair always looked as if he’d been dunked by his heels in water and stood up to dry with his hair in peaks.

  Ben had gone to movies with Dunk a few times but had to quit. Dunk talked too much all through the story. Up on the screen a good cowboy would aim his pistol at a furious rattlesnake, and Dunk would say “Why is he doing that?”

  Ben would say “Because the snake might kill him. Use your brain, Dunk.”

  Dunk would give a bow in Ben’s direction and say “Oh thanks, Great Wazuma.” Both Dunk and Robin called Ben silly stuck-up names when he acted smarter than he was.

  But in two more minutes, when the movie cowboy stopped to let his horse drink from a beautiful river, Dunk might say “Ben, you think that horse is really thirsty?”

  Ben liked Dunk because he was funny and loyal a lot of the time. When Ben had gone every afternoon to see his mother the whole last month she was in the hospital, Dunk would wait in the hall to ride home with him. And the night she died, Dunk biked out to Ben’s and stayed all night on the extra bed across from Ben’s in case Ben needed to wake up and talk or go outdoors in the January frost and sit in one of their usual places to stare at the moon and tell long stories about brave boys.

  So Ben was glad he knew Dunk Owens, but he mostly went to the movies alone or with Robin Drake. They would ride their bikes straight to the theater from school, then ride on home in the early evening. Ben didn’t mention the possible news of a circus to Robin or even to his father. But after a week of keeping the secret, he managed to leave school alone one afternoon. He biked to the office of the local newspaper, asked to speak to the advertising manager, and then asked the man if the circus news was true.

  The man said “Son, I can’t tell you that. If it’s really just a one-ring circus like you say, I doubt it could even afford to buy ads. If they don’t buy ads, then we won’t know if they’re living or dead.”

  Ben thanked him and turned to get back on his bike; but then he said to the man “You think they’ll have any elephants with them—actual elephants, really alive?”

  The man shook his head and gave a dry laugh. “If these circus people are half as poor as you say they are, they’ll be lucky to have one moldy bear. Of course, way back when I was a boy, a man came to town with a trained black bear. You could pay him a nickle, and the bear would dance with you and hug you when he finished—or anytime he wanted to! I didn’t believe it but I paid my nickle, and—bless my soul—the old bear stood up and hugged me tight and then danced me around in circles till I was dizzy as any old drunk.”

  Dunk had said that the circus would come in the spring. Spring was still a slow three weeks away. So Ben decided just to wait through the final days of cold rain and see what late March or April might bring. For Ben, ever since his mother died, it was natural to keep his thoughts and dreams a secret from everyone but himself. That way he never had to look disappointed if his hopes failed to happen. But he had a calendar in his room at home; and before he lay down to sleep each night, he would cross off one more day of time. He could almost feel the warm breeze of spring moving toward him through the gray end of winter.

  Toward the middle of March on a bright warm day, Ben and Dunk rode their bikes back from school. Ben stopped with Dunk at the long driveway downhill to Dunk’s house. Dunk wanted to keep riding around together, just laughing and talking and throwing rocks maybe. But Ben’s father had told him to come home as soon as he could to mow the yard—or so Ben claimed.

  Dunk said “Mow the yard? Our grass hasn’t grown an inch all winter.”

  Ben said “Ours has. See you soon.” Of course the grass didn’t need to be mowed. Ben planned to be alone for a while and check on something he still didn’t want to share with Dunk or anybody else.

  One good thing about having Dunk as a friend was that you couldn’t hurt Dunk’s feelings easily. Not that you wanted to harm him on purpose; but in case you were careless or too sarcastic, Dunk mostly let it pass. Eventually you could rile him, but you had to scratch deeply. Dunk had a hard time at home with his father; so when he got out in public, he took most things that happened very calmly and waited for better luck the next time he saw his few friends at school. It was one of the main things Ben liked about him. This time Dunk just waved goodbye to Ben and sped down his driveway.

  Then instead of heading home, Ben rode on to the far side of town, to the empty field where they had the county fair in the fall. If a circus was coming, it would have to come here. There was no other piece of vacant land that was wide enough to hold even something as small as a circus with only one ring and a moldy old bear.

  When Ben got to the field, the sun was setting; and fog was creeping out from the line of distant trees. The only man-made things he could see were a few light poles and some rusty garbage cans left over from the end of the fair. That was last October. Ben always liked to look around garbage cans. Sometimes he found scraps of old letters or postcards. Finding somebody else’s words would often make Ben feel less lonely. He had a small collection of postcards he’d found, thrown away. They were mostly from other people’s vacations, and they had bright pictures of strange wild animals and said dumb things like “How do you like my alligator suit?” when the picture showed a wild alligator with its mouth open wide and about two thousand teeth on display.

  So even though it was close to dark, Ben biked over toward the beat-up cans. They were empty of all but bubble gum wrappers and some burst balloons. Still, he noticed some kind of small sign on the nearest light post. He rode straight to it and was truly thrilled to read what it said—

  THE DREAM OF A LIFETIME!

  ONE AND ALL! FAMILY CIRCUS TO CHILL AND THRILL YOU!

  COMING FOR FIVE NIGHTS ON ITS WAY BACK NORTH FROM WINTER IN FLORIDA!

  CARNIVOROUS CATS AND PONDEROUS PACHYDERMS!

  CHUCKLESOME CLOWNS AND HIGH-WIRE HEROINES!

  FAMILY PRICES—COME MORE THAN ONCE! MARCH 21-24TH

  Until that moment as the sun set deeper and the dark of the woods moved closer toward him, Benjamin Barks had been a fearless boy in most parts of his life. But now he felt as if long fingers in an iron glove were raking a deep cut up his spine. His whole body shook hard once and then again. In another few seconds he was almost scared, and he turned his bike to escape. But then he calmed a little and stayed in place beside the light pole and asked himself
what was frightening here? Soon he understood there was nothing wrong with the place. There were no seen or unseen enemies lurking—just the same old empty field that, once every fall, gave room to a Ferris wheel and rides and the noise of a rinky-dink fair.

  What Ben had thought was almost scary was the news that Dunk was right when he’d said a circus was coming. Dunk seldom lied but sometimes he got his news reports twisted. And for Ben, so soon after his mother’s death, circus news might be too good to handle. But what this sign announced was no county fair with prize pigs, cows, and giant apple pies. It was promising a circus, in this small town, and very soon. The most exciting thing of all, of course, was the place on the sign where it bragged about pachyderms.

  While there was still enough light to see it, Ben reached out and touched the actual word in bright red ink. He knew that a pachyderm was normally an elephant, and the sign promised more than one—big weighty creatures. The thought of those wondrous animals coming to this tame field was still too good to risk talking about with anybody, however kind or friendly. Just thinking about it too much in his own mind could make it go away. So Ben decided, more than before, to keep on waiting and watching in silence.

  That much happened on a Friday afternoon—no school the next day. When Ben got home safe from the fairgrounds, it was already dark. But his father was still not back from work, and the only light in the house was the one Ben always left on for times like this. Coming into the empty house alone was hard enough, but coming in the dark was almost too hard. As he unlocked the kitchen door, the telephone rang. He sprinted to answer it.

  It was Robin. “You OK?”

  “Sure” Ben said, though he breathed too fast.

  “You sound like you’re scared. Where have you been, Mr. Laughinghouse Barks?”

  Ben didn’t like telling anybody his plans, but somehow he’d never stopped Robin from asking for detailed reports on what he did or was planning to do. Now he laughed and told her “Maybe you’ll know in a hundred years or so.” When he realized that his answer rhymed, he sang it to Robin a second time like a teasing song.

  Robin loved country music so she sang right back. “Then I’ll keep livin’, long as you keep givin’.”

  Ben said “What have I given you, since Christmas anyhow?” Last Christmas he’d given her a good harmonica, and she’d learned to play it—any song you could mention and some she’d made up.

  She kept on singing in her fake country voice. “You ain’t give me not a penny—”

  Ben finally had to laugh. He knew that Robin was a genuine friend, and her voice could cheer him when most others couldn’t, but now he had to start cooking supper, so he kept quiet.

  Robin waited as long as she could. Then she said “All right, Chef Barks, go do your magic with steak and potatoes.”

  That was what Ben’s father ate three nights a week, Ben said “For your information, General Drake, we’re having macaroni and cheese.”

  “And something green please—a salad or spinach. You’ve got to eat green stuff more than you do, or you’ll never get grown.”

  Ben said “Then I’ll run out and mow the yard right now with just my teeth.” Ben had almost hung up before he remembered to ask Robin if she was doing OK—he hadn’t seen her at school that day.

  Robin moaned and groaned. “I’ve got a strep throat, but I’m so tired of bed.”

  “Want me to drop by tomorrow and see you?”

  “Yes” she said. But then “No, I’m dangerous—you know, contagious. I’ve still got a fever.”

  Ben said “Call me when you know you’re safe, and I’ll bring some ice cream.” Robin would have walked on her hands through flames to get her favorite ice cream, which was peppermint, though she liked all flavors.

  She groaned again but ended with a smiling sound. “Good. I’ll hurry.” As usual she hung up with no word of goodbye.

  After Ben had put his jacket in his room and checked upstairs for any burglars that might be hiding, he came back down and set the kitchen table for supper. He turned on the oven to thaw the frozen macaroni and cheese, and then he went to the dining room to do his homework while he waited for his father.

  An hour later Ben’s father still hadn’t come home. That wasn’t strange; he was often as late as nine o’clock. So Ben turned the oven off, went back to his homework, but then leaned down on the table and fell entirely asleep. Soon he was dreaming that he sat in a chair in a field very much like the field out back. His head was turning in all directions like radar scanning for planes or storms till an elephant came to the edge of the woods and stood there, shy, looking out toward him and curling her trunk to show she might be friendly if he was gentle enough. She was a middle-sized Indian elephant with a deep notch in her broad right ear and a bracelet of small bells around one foot.

  The sight of her there was so good and strong that—still asleep and lost in his dream—Ben stood up from the table and started walking toward the kitchen door to go out and meet her and tell her his name at least and ask for hers. But before he put his hand on the knob, a sudden owl’s cry ended the dream. Ben was standing in the kitchen with nothing but the smell of macaroni and cheese to keep him company.

  So now while the memory was fresh in his mind, he took a clean sheet of paper and drew—for the first time in all his tries—the picture of an elephant so much like real life that he almost thought she would speak his name and tell him secrets the two of them could share in the long time they might spend together. Ben knew it was the truest picture of an elephant anyone had ever made, and it pleased him more than anything he’d done with his hands in all his life.

  He held the drawing out in front of him and spoke to it as he might have spoken to a friend if he’d had any friends but Robin and Dunk. “You know what it feels like inside my head, and you’re the only living thing that does.” He didn’t know exactly what he meant by that, but the words themselves made his pleasure turn into actual happiness that lasted through his father’s return and a driedout supper past bedtime.

  Those last days of winter crept by, dim and rainy. On school days when the sky was still dark, Ben would wake before his alarm clock rang. His father liked to sleep as long as possible, so Ben would dress and go down quietly to start the coffee in a chilly kitchen. Then he’d trot outside, as the sun made its first streaks on the sky, to feed old Hilda. She was Ben’s mother’s dog and was fifteen years old, deaf, and mostly blind.

  Ben and his father were always trying to persuade Hilda to sleep in the main house but she always refused. She’d sit by the kitchen door and wait there, upright all night long, until they let her go back to her cot in the shed by the garage. There she slept on a pile of worn blankets in the one low room. Old as the shed was, it was warmed at nights by its own oil stove and covered with a bright tin roof. Hilda’s corner was also lit by a dim bulb, night and day, to let her know—in case her blind eyes could see the faintest shine—that members of her family still lived in the main house and remembered her needs.

  So as always the first thing Ben saw when he entered was his own reflection on the opposite wall from where Hilda lay. Years ago his mother had fixed this space for Hilda, and then she’d propped an old cracked mirror low down on the wall and kept it polished. When Ben got old enough to notice, he asked his mother what the mirror was for in a place where so few people ever came.

  “It’s company for Hilda, son. It lets her feel she’s not so alone.”

  Ben had said “We could get another dog. Then she’d have real company.”

  But his mother had just said “No, son, this is what Hilda wants.”

  It hadn’t occurred to Ben, so long ago, that Hilda might have also spoken to his mother.

  But now he stood in the freezing morning air and took a slow look at his own face and body. That was something he very seldom did, and at first the sight of himself was shocking. He was thin and a whole inch taller than he remembered. His hair was longer than his mother would have liked, and his wrists w
ere showing at the ends of his sleeves—all his clothes were too small now. There was one change that Ben liked, however. His face was plainly more nearly grown, more like a boy maybe fourteen years old and not just eleven. Ben put out a hand and covered the mirror’s image of his eyes. They looked as though they were seeing too much. Then he turned back to Hilda.

  Old and deaf as Hilda was, she’d generally still be asleep when Ben walked in. But once she heard him, her tail would start a quick thumping on the floor. Then very slowly she’d manage to stand and turn her head up to trace Ben’s moves as he opened the can and made her breakfast by stirring in the water he’d brought from the house. When Ben’s mother had found Hilda so long ago—a lost puppy by the road—Ben wasn’t even born. So she was the only dog he’d ever had; and because of that maybe, they had a deep calm friendship.

  In their early days together, Hilda was still young and strong. She loved to hunt frogs and little fish in a stream near the house. But long before dark every afternoon, she’d come to where Ben was—building houses with his blocks on the floor or drawing pictures at the kitchen table. Then she’d lie beside him as close as she could get. It was back in those early days that Ben sometimes thought the dog was speaking to him. She didn’t speak the way dogs speak in movies by moving her lips and using plain words. She’d turn her wide eyes to meet Ben’s directly. And then when they’d each looked deep into one another, Hilda might put words into Ben’s head in a voice that was strange but clear. They’d be silent words but he’d hear them all the same.

  He knew he wasn’t imagining her voice. As time passed they talked more often, yet there were times when Ben tried to ask for help and Hilda couldn’t reply. Still, when she did her help was trustworthy; and her voice was always soothing to hear. It was as real as his own voice in school, solving problems at the blackboard. So he had no trouble in believing that the bond between Hilda and him was real. He’d had something like it before with a deer he saw more than once in the woods. So he went on listening whenever Hilda spoke, though he told nobody else, not even his mother.