This Time For Good

Jane Schulman

“Shoot!” Julie said as she slammed down her pack of cards after losing another game of solitaire.  “I better get out of here.”  

 Today was the day for the monthly meeting of the Fire Rescue Ladies’ Auxiliary. Ten minutes earlier, her mother had yelled upstairs for Julie to get lost.  “The ladies will be here soon and I don’t want you making a fool of yourself again.”  Julie was glad to leave.  She hated when her mother’s friends came over.  They stuffed their mouths with chips and cake, drank too many Tom Collins’ and mimosas, and made fun of everyone in the neighborhood.  

 Julie slipped out the side door and watched from behind the azaleas as ladies walked up the porch steps one by one.  Wearing a wide-brimmed white straw hat, Mrs. Melvin carried her famous blueberry pie.  Mrs. Benton scampered up the steps, almost dropping her platter of chocolate-iced cupcakes.  Julie’s mother wore her new white dress with red polka dots, a thin red belt cinched tight.  Mrs. Corrigan and Reuben were late, as usual.

 Julie pulled her waist-length brown hair into two ponytails and ran over to her best friend Matty’s house.  Quiet and easy-going, Matty always went along with whatever Julie wanted to do. Thank goodness she was home and the two girls skipped down the block to pick up Bonnie.  

The September day was cloudless, warm enough for short sleeves and cut-offs.   The three girls had no special plans for the afternoon and started walking toward sounds of squealing on the next block. Kids were riding wagons down the best sledding hill in the neighborhood.  Bonnie grabbed a wagon from her younger brother and the girls jumped on.  They went screaming down the steep hill but the weight of the three not-so-skinny 10-year-olds was too much for that wagon.  By the time they reached the bottom, the back right wheel was bent and the wagon wouldn’t roll. 

 “What are we gonna do?” asked Matty.  

“We’ve gotta tell my Dad,” said Bonnie.  Julie had a different idea.  

“Let’s run away.”  

The other girls opened their eyes wide, then shrugged and followed Julie into the woods that ringed the neighborhood.  They followed a narrow path, past the tree house they’d built in July, past the blueberry patch they’d picked clean in August, and into a part of the woods they’d never explored.  Nothing looked familiar but Julie wasn’t turning back.  The path narrowed even more –and like no one had walked here all summer.  But they kept walking.

“Look,” said Bonnie, “there’s light up ahead.  Maybe we’ll be out of the woods soon.”  They stepped into a clearing -- what looked to be the backyards of a row of houses.  A tall, bearded man was dragging downed logs to a wheelbarrow.   The girls stepped into his yard and asked if they could cut across to the street.  “Sure,” he answered as he looked them each up and down.  “You’re all looking pretty hot and tired.  Wanna come in for a drink of cold lemonade?”

Julie knew enough not to go into a house or a car of a strange guy.  “We’d love to stop for a drink but we’re in a hurry.  Can you point us to the main road?  We have to meet my parents in town at 2.”  

“Sure, honeys. Turn left at the corner and then right on Ridge Road. Walk down that hill and you’ll be in town.”

“Thanks,” Julie said and the girls stepped quickly down the block.

“I’m glad we’re out of the woods,” Matty said.  “But, you know, the woods felt safer than being around that creepy guy.  I’m glad we were together.”

“Me too,” said Bonnie.  “Where are we going now, Julie?  I’m getting hungry. I never had lunch today.”

Julie wasn’t thinking about food but wondered what their next steps should be. She figured she better act like she knew. Walking down the steep hill, she pointed to a ring of pine trees alongside the road.  

              “Let’s stop and hide out in there a while,” said Julie.

The girls stretched out on piles of leaves and watched sunlight stream and sparkle between the upper limbs of the oaks. They started to doze until Bonnie’s stomach rumbled and she sat up and rifled through her pockets to see if she had anything to eat.  She pulled out a pack of Lifesavers and passed them around.  Matty had a Hershey bar which she split and Julie had a few sticks of gum.  They counted the coins they had and between them, they had $3.75 which wouldn’t get much to eat. Julie shuddered at the thought of skipping lunch and dinner and, even more, sleeping in this ring of trees or maybe even back in the woods.  She knew she better get things going again.

They stepped out of the trees into the bright sun and turned right, heading down the hill. “My feet hurt,” said Matty.  “I need water and I’m starving,” said Bonnie.  As they entered town, they went into a candy store and used the money they had to buy Turkish taffy, potato chips, and another candy bar and sat in the park in the middle of town and ate them.  Too quickly.

“I’ve had enough of this ‘running away’ stuff,” said Bonnie.  “Me too,” said Matty.  This time it was Julie’s turn to shrug. She wasn’t going to run away by herself.  The three girls backtracked up the steep hill, past the ring of pines, into the street with the creepy guy, and cut back into the woods.  By then, red and yellow streaks of light crossed the sky.  The maples cast wide shadows and the crunch of each step on the fallen leaves echoed across their path. Not soon enough they saw houses at the foot of the sledding hill.   The kids were gone and so was the broken wagon.  

They trudged into Bonnie’s garage and looked for the wagon.  It was in the corner, still with the twisted back wheel.  

“I guess we better figure out a way to fix it.” Julie said.  “Where does your Dad keep his tools?”   Bonnie pointed to the workbench in the corner and Julie grabbed a wrench, a hammer and pliers and in no time, they bent the wheel back in place.  

Matty laughed, “Hey, guys, we fixed it.  And what a cool adventure we had today.  Think we can top it next weekend?”  

They walked back to Julie’s, where the Ladies’ Auxiliary meeting was breaking up.  As the girls walked in the gate, Matty’s mother glanced up and quickly went back to her conversation.  Julie’s mother saw the girls and scowled.  No one had noticed they’d been gone. 

Five years later, Julie had grown six inches, her hair was short, and she wore garnet studs in her pierced ears and one nostril.  One warm Wednesday morning, on the last week of 10th grade, Julie pulled on a pair of jeans and slipped on her favorite red flannel shirt. She glanced in the mirror, put on pink lip gloss and a pair of dark sunglasses.  She looked around her room with the posters of Mao Tse Dung and Albert Einstein, her desk piled with novels by Faulkner, Plath, and Baldwin and thought about what to take.  She opened her banjo case, put the banjo on the bed, and stuffed two shirts, another pair of jeans, underwear, The Bell Jar, and a toothbrush inside.  After her mother left for work, she walked down to the main road to wait for the bus to Manhattan.  This time she was going for good.  This time they’d notice she was gone.