The Children's Crusade Read Online Free Page A

that once again he was acting as if Mr. Gleason were still his teacher. He was not and never would be again. He was by far the best teacher Robert had ever had, and when Robert thought about a new set of kids sitting at the desks in Room 9 come September, his stomach began to hurt. His stomach hadn’t hurt in a few weeks, not since the Fourth of July, when his father had brought him home from the club while everyone else ate hot dogs and played capture the flag.
    He left the piano and lay on the couch. His stomach really hurt, and his father wouldn’t be home for hours. There was a chance the milk had turned, though if that were the case then the other children would start feeling sick soon, too. He reached over to the coffee table and picked up his mother’s abalone shell from the beach at Sea Ranch. People used it as an ashtray, and it smelled like cigarettes, or actually more like after-cigarettes, which was a dirtier, nastier smell. At the party there would be a little smoking and a lot of drinking. He enjoyed watching adults, and never more than when they were tipsy. He thought they were very, very funny, with their loud voices and sudden, jerky movements. At last year’s party, his father’s friend Marvin Miller had gotten so loud that his father had left the party to take him home, and the next day he’d told Robert that for some adults, alcohol could be like candy in that it tasted really good but you could go overboard and then not feel well.
    Robert returned the shell to the table and concentrated on his stomach. His father said not to think about whatever hurt, but Robert couldn’t help it. On the Fourth of July, lying on the couch while his father sat beside him and stroked his head, Robert noticed that the pain in his stomach had gone away, and he told his father it wasgood he’d been concentrating on it because otherwise he might not have realized he was feeling better.
    He sat up slowly. In the bedroom hallway his brothers were being rather loud, and he went to investigate. When he was Ryan’s age, he’d read chapter books and ridden a two-wheeler, but Ryan could do neither. Maybe worse, Ryan cried whenever he was taken to the barber, so his hair was almost as long as a girl’s.
    “You guys are being really loud,” Robert said.
    “We’re playing track meet,” Ryan said. “Want to play with us?”
    Track meet was a game they’d invented early in the summer, following a trip to an actual track meet at Stanford. Robert said he was busy and disappeared into his room, and Ryan shrugged at James and returned his attention to his next event, which was long jump. He took a run and a leap and then at the last minute tucked into a somersault that delivered him to the floor right in front of his mother’s closed door. This hurt his shoulder and his ear, and he made his badger give them both a nuzzle. Badger had been a present to Ryan from James, on the day James was born; James had given Robert a play bow-and-arrow set and Rebecca a book of paper dolls. Ryan wasn’t sure why James hadn’t given their parents anything. Their mother would have wanted a present, he felt sure.
    He half pushed and half slid closer to her room. His feet needed somewhere to go, and they landed against the door. From there, it was possible to tap his toes without making any noise. He tapped out “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” using the big toe of his left foot for a few words, and then the big toe of his right foot, and back and forth. “Have you any wool,” he sang softly, and for the rest of the song he patted his badger once for every toe tap.
    He heard his mother on the other side of the door, saying, “Oh, how can it be so late?”
    She didn’t sound upset, so he got to his knees and turned theknob slowly.
    “Who is it?”
    He pushed the door open just a little and hoped she would somehow know it was him.
    But the next thing he heard was the sound of the bathroom door closing, and he realized she wasn’t coming to see