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“You’re always busy.” He was uncomfortably aware of how much he sounded like Brenda when he said this.
“Well, for spaghetti sauce! You could offer to help, you know.”
It was like all the lights coming back on after an electrical storm. Lord, who was the stupid one?
Still, it took him a few days to feel comfortable around Leslie’s father. Part of the problem was he didn’t know what to call him. “Hey,” he’d say, and both Leslie and her father would turn around. “Uh, Mr. Burke?”
“I wish you’d call me Bill, Jess.”
“Yeah.” He fumbled around with the name for a couple more days, but it came more easily with practice. It also helped to know some things that Bill for all his brains and books didn’t know. Jess found he was really useful to him, not a nuisance to be tolerated or set out on the porch like P.T.
“You’re amazing,” Bill would say. “Where did you learn that, Jess?” Jess never quite knew how he knew things, so he’d shrug and let Bill and Leslie praise him to each other—though the work itself was praise enough.
First they ripped out the boards that covered the ancient fireplace, coming upon the rusty bricks like prospectors upon the mother lode. Next they got the old wallpaper off the living-room wall—all five garish layers of it. Sometimes as they lovingly patched
and painted, they listened to Bill’s records or sang, Leslie and Jess teaching Bill some of Miss Edmunds’ songs and Bill teaching them some he knew. At other times they would talk. Jess listened wonderingly as Bill explained things that were going on in the world. If Momma could hear him, she’d swear he was another Walter Cronkite instead of “some hippie.” All the Burkes were smart. Not smart, maybe, about fixing things or growing things, but smart in a way Jess had never known real live people to be. Like one day while they were working, Judy came down and read out loud to them, mostly poetry and some of it in Italian which, of course, Jess couldn’t understand, but he buried his head in the rich sound of the words and let himself be wrapped warmly around in the feel of the Burkes’ brilliance.
They painted the living room gold. Leslie and Jess had wanted blue, but Bill held out for gold, which turned out to be so beautiful that they were glad they had given in. The sun would slant in from the west in the late afternoon until the room was brimful of light.
Finally Bill rented a sander from Millsburg Plaza, and they took off the black floor paint down to the wide oak boards and refinished them.
“No rugs,” Bill said.
“No,” agreed Judy. “It would be like putting a veil on the Mona Lisa.”
When Bill and the children had finished razor-blading the last bits of paint off the windows and washed the panes, they called Judy down from her upstairs study to come and see. The four of them sat down on the floor and gazed around. It was gorgeous.
Leslie gave a deep satisfied sigh. “I love this room,” she said. “Don’t you feel the golden enchantment of it? It is worthy to be”—Jess looked up in sudden alarm—“in a palace.” Relief. In such a mood, a person might even let a sworn secret slip. But she hadn’t, not even to Bill and Judy, and he knew how she felt about her parents. She must have seen his anxiety because she winked at him across Bill and Judy just as he sometimes winked at May Belle over Joyce Ann’s head. Terabithia was still just for the two of them.
The next afternoon they called P.T. and headed for Terabithia. It had been more than a month since they had been there together, and as they neared the creek bed, they slowed down. Jess wasn’t sure he still remembered how to be a king.
“We’ve been away for many years,” Leslie was whispering. “How do you suppose the kingdom has fared in our absence?”
“Where’ve we been?”
“Conquering the hostile savages on our northern borders,” she answered. “But the lines of communication have been broken, and thus we do not have tidings of our beloved homeland for many a full moon.” How was that for regular queen talk? Jess wished he could match it. “You think anything bad has happened?”
“We must have courage, my king. It may indeed be so.”
They swung silently across the creek bed. On the farther bank, Leslie picked up two sticks. “Thy sword, sire,” she whispered.
Jess nodded. They hunched down and crept toward the stronghold like police detectives on TV.
“Hey, queen! Watch out! Behind you!”
Leslie whirled and began to duel the imaginary foe. Then more came rushing upon them and the shouts of the battle rang through Terabithia. The guardian of the realm raced about in happy puppy circles, too young as yet to comprehend the danger that surrounded them all.
“They have sounded the retreat!” the brave queen cried.
“Yey!”
“Drive them out utterly, so they may never return and prey upon our people.”
“Out you go! Out! Out!” All the way to the creek bed, they forced the enemy back, sweating under their winter jackets.
“At last. Terabithia is free once more.”
The king sat down on a log and wiped his face, but the queen did not let him rest long. “Sire, we must go at once to the grove of the pines and give thanks for our victory.”
