Timing is everything. That’s what they say, although who the “they” is that says it is anyone’s guess. Regardless, the phrase certainly applies to the morning events on Camelot Court. Here’s why: About the time that Bumpers was racing into the Wiley front yard, the robin chicks’ mother was flying into the screen window of Rachel’s screened-in porch (unlike Mrs. Benny Benini, the Wileys used screens). It is impossible to know why the chicks’ mother did this, except to say, as some astute biologists from the local university later observed, that bird mothers, like any mothers of offspring about to take flight, can get distracted, and, when they do, their actions get misunderstood. Mrs. James got distracted; now her family was engaged in midair calesthenics on Camelot Court and she was driving the family Chevrolet in hot pursuit. The chicks’ mother, perhaps excited about the morning launch of her babies, got distracted by the sight of Bumpers. The robin had been seen, on more than one occasion, hopping around the grass in the exact location that Bumpers had dashed. She had also been observed to leave said location, in the past, with worms in her beak. Rachel and Thinky have theorized that, on the morning in question, the robin flew towards the corner of the yard, thinking not about the worms but instead about her chicks’ upcoming flight. This was the day. All signs were a go. The chicks would need a good breakfast before things got underway. Musing on such considerations, Mrs. Robin, according to Rachel and Thinky, didn’t see Bumpers and his boomerang bounty until the last second, and so she had to veer, erratically, off her flight path, causing her to fhplump into the screen of the screened-in porch before she could come to a post-veer stop. Rachel and Thinky’s explanation is as good as any. It also explains why they woke up when they did.
“What was that?” Thinky said.
“Whtwaswhat?” Rachel mumbled.
Technically, Thinky had been asleep before the flphump. Her eyes were closed. But she wasn’t full asleep, as she liked to call it. She was only some asleep, the kind of asleep a thirteen year-old girl is when she is sleeping over in the screen-in porch at her best friend’s house and she has already heard the thump (not fphlump) sound of the screen door closing behind the escaping posterior of a beagle named Bumpers.
Rachel was asleep. She was much less than full asleep when Thinky started listing the possibilities for why she had heard the flump. She was full awake when Thinky decided that the fphlump must have been caused by the robin staring at them from the Wiley front yard. She was on her feet and running when Thinky screamed that the fphlump was connected to the flump and that Bumpers had just taken off after the robin.
It was very lucky that the girls stayed up late the night before, stargazing from the steps of the screened-in porch. Otherwise, they might not have been so tired and they might have changed into their pajamas before they went to bed. But sleepover luck was in their favor: they had fallen asleep in not just their clothes but their sneakers as well. “Too much teenager talk,” Mrs. Wiley would later say. “Made us ready for teenager walk,” Thinky would reply.
They were ready for more than walking. Which was fortunate because Rachel, expecting, when she heard Thinky scream “taking off”, to see Bumpers bumbling around the yard in pursuit of a bird, instead saw her beagle friend bumping up the side of the trees, knocking leaves and who knows what else (Mrs. Benny Benini did) off their treetop perch. Rachel bolted out the door, jumped the family fence, and started down the street after the family dog. Thinky, however, hesitated. She saw what was above Bumpers. She saw what looked like Jeremy James suspended from the arms of a man who himself was suspended from the basket of a hot air balloon. She would not have believed it was Jeremy James except that Jeremy’s sister, Jocelyn, was looking over the edge of the balloon basket, waving.
Jocelyn was friends with Thinky’s younger sister. Jocelyn was too nice to steal Rachel’s dog. But Jeremy….
What a brazen boy!Thinky thought. First, he hadn’t had the nerve to say hello yesterday and instead had looked like a thief when he’d passed in front of Rachel’s house. Now he had gone and hired a hot air balloon, and an acrobat, to help him steal Rachel’s beagle. Such behavior, Thinky decided, was inexcusable.That boy needed to be stopped.
Thinky was not the only one to watch Jeremy James soar above the trees on Camelot Court and decide that his behavior needed stopping. Mrs. James, driving the Chevrolet faster than her normally civic-minded intentions allowed, had managed to turn onto Camelot Court not long after Bonnie did. Having seen her family drift toward the east, she had gone out after them, perplexed by what she would describe as Mr. James’s sudden cleverness. Look who wanted to be pilot after all! She had suspected that Mr. James was somehow responsible for Jeremy’s obsession with flight. Jeremy had to inherit his flying-crazed gene from someone. Now, at the first opportunity, Mr. James had climbed into the cockpit of a balloon with Jeremy. Worse than that, he had brought along little Jocelyn.
Once she’d recovered from the shock of seeing the balloon drifting off with her family, Mrs. James had focused on the chase. It had been easy keeping up. Because there was only a single road leading from the McGillivibe’s field back toward Bobbing Apple, and because the balloon was going more up than it was away, Mrs. James had actually gotten ahead of it. She then tried to figure out which direction they would head. When she saw that direction was east, that made her wonder. Was this some kind of escape? Were her husband and children trying to move back east, to Mr. James’s family, and his prospects for a better job? If they did, she would be alone in Bobbing Apple. What would she do? Should she go back to school, maybe on the internet, and finish her degree? Only when she saw Jocelyn wave at her from Bonnie’s basket did Mrs. James sufficiently settle herself to realize what was really going on. This wasn’t an escape. This was a demonstration. This was part of Mr. James’s plan to show the people who were closing the factory that he was a man who could soar.
Mrs. James couldn’t really blame Mr. James for that. The factory boss was a sorry excuse for a boss. He was petty and he was unkind. He was not very forthcoming about what would happen to people like Mr. James when the factory closed later that summer. He also did not wear starched shirts and at least Mr. James always showed up for work in a clean and starched shirt. A supervisor, not matter what the level, needed to look respectable. He needed to show that he took his job seriously, even if the factory bosses and its owner did not listen to good ideas and were going to lay that supervisor and all his workers off.
Mrs. James scanned the sky, trying to spot Mr. James in the basket. When she saw him, facing the south, she knew that she was right. He was facing the factory, looking toward his future. He had put aside his fears and was standing up to his obstacles. A wave of pride helped Mrs. James’s foot find enough pressure to keep pace with the balloon. A series of turns helped the James’s Chevrolet hone its way back home. Mrs. James grinned. Mr. James was piloting the balloon over their house. This was his sign to Mrs. James that he knew where his home was, where his roots were, where his heart lay. She pictured Mr. James, one hand at his side, another extended in front, a figure of action and determination, a father and factory supervisor guiding the balloonist down Lancelot Lane and toward the factory. They would land on the lawn of the factory. The factory bosses and owner would have to take notice of a man who could land a hot air balloon on the lawn of a failing factory. They would have to listen to the ideas of a man who could help the factory and town become part of the future instead of a relic from the past.
Misplaced pride can get the better of the best of us. It can muddle our thinking and mess our plans. In Mrs. James’s case, it made her turn on Camelot Court, instead of Lancelot Lane. It caused her to look up rather than in front. It temporarily made her think that Jeremy and Mr. McGillivibe were rescuing a dog that had fallen out of the hot air balloon rather than one that had been removed from its yard by it. Most importantly, it blinded Mrs. James to the fact that Camelot Court was a cul-de-sac and hence resulted in a collision between the James Chevrolet Caprice and Mrs. Benny Benini’s brand new trashcans.