Joshua and His Gang ; Chapter Six

THE DREAMERS

It was weeks since school had gotten out. It was weeks until school would go back in.

Summer doldrums hit the gang.

"There's nothing to do," said Ellen.

Ingrid had been thinking the exact same thing at the exact same time and she wanted to sit up and tell Ellen this astonishing fact. She knew that Ellen did it often with Lucy but they were twins. Maybe friends could do it too. In spite of her discovery Ingrid was just too lazy to move.

Some of the gang were lying in the long grass where the lawn mower could not easily go beside the garage at Joshua's house.

Piya yawned and Sam sighed. John was seeing if he could breathe grass up his nose by burying his head in the long stalks and inhaling. Joshua was helping Bill deliver Bill's brother's newspapers - his brother was away at camp for two weeks.

  Lucy was checking to see if the guppies in Kresge's fish department had had their babies. Any day they'd have new guppies the lady who worked there had told her. "Then we have to hope the babies don't get eaten by the other fish."

Lucy had been horrified to hear this. She was determined to help, somehow, even if she had to stand by the tank and scare the big fish away. She hoped that at nighttime the babies would be safe because she knew no one would listen if she asked to stick around the store then too.

Ingrid yawned. Piya yawned. John sneezed as he finally managed to sniff a whole bunch of grass up his nose. Sam shouted, "Idiot numbskull" because John had startled him with the sneeze but it was a lazy shout.

"There's nothing to do," said Ingrid and Ellen said, "I was just thinking that."

Lucy suddenly appeared up the driveway and squeezed between the garage and the house. "Hey!" she yelled. "Let's have a carnival!"

"What?" said the gang in a yawny, communal voice.

"Idiot numbskull," yawned Sam.

"Come on - sit up - listen," said Lucy and the gang did so because they could not help but respond to her bossy enthusiasm.

"Mrs. Mabel told me all about it - she used to be part of one when she was a girl. It sounds like fun and we make money and I get to wear my ballet costume."

She stopped for breath.

"Money?" asked Piya and John.

"Ballet?" questioned Ellen.

"Did the fish have babies?" Ingrid wanted to know. Mrs. Mabel was the fish lady at the cent store.

"Zillions of babies," Lucy told them and I helped Mrs. Mabel scoop them out into another tank so they wouldn't get eaten and while we were doing this she told me all about the carnival."

"I can do acrobats," yelled Sam and this time it came out a yell and then he threw himself into a somersault."

"I can do card tricks," said John as he moved out of Sam's way.

"I can do magic," said Ellen.

"You can?" asked Lucy in disbelief.

"Yes." She did not explain. Lucy looked at her with a new thought that maybe she didn't know everything about her twin and hadn't she just mentioned ballet which Ellen did not know she had been secretly practicing from a book in the empty room that used to be her grandma's.

Then the gang all started talking at once and before they knew it they were planning a carnival.

Bill and Joshua were certainly surprised when they came back from delivering the papers and found the gang had moved from lazing in the meadow to busily working on the verandeh with paper and coloured pencils.

Ingrid was figuring out the acts and making a list. John was drawing up posters with Sam and Pia and Ellen. Lucy was doing ballet steps in a corner of the verandeh and calling out suggestions to Ingrid.

Bill and Joshua collapsed onto the porch swing. "Wow," said Joshua. "What a beehive of activity."

"Yeah," said Bill, "I just want to rest after all that work we did."

"Aw come on," said Ellen, "we need a strong man to lift weights and also a lion tamer - you could do that, Bill, your cat looks like a tiger. And Joshua, we need someone to take tickets and organize the whole thing."

"I can juggle," Joshua said quietly, "And I can charm snakes."

He took off his glasses and stared at them. "I'm not only good at booky things."

After a pause in which the gang considered this Ellen said, "I didn't know you minded."

"Well, I don't really, I just wanted to let you know."

Piya looked worried and Ingrid looked at Ellen and shrugged.

"We need a lot of stuff done so everybody can help," Ingrid said.

"I wanna see you charm snakes," Sam shouted at Joshua.

"Okay," he said. He trotted off but was soon back. He had a rumpled paper sack and a flute and his school book bag. He put the sack and flute down and took a wooden snake out of the school bag. The snake was made of many wooden pieces cleverly joined together. It was painted red and black.

Sam was about to protest that it wasn't a real snake but when he saw how it shivered he yelled, "Neato."

The rest of the gang just watched but they moved down off the verandeh to where Joshua was on the front grass which was a lawn.

Joshua draped the snake around his neck and let

the tail and head rest over his shoulders. He reached over to pick up the flute and the snake fell off so he had to adjust it back on his neck. Lucy handed him the flute.

He put the flute to his lips and closed his eyes and began to play notes. As he did so he moved his shoulders slightly so that the snake shivered a bit. It started to fall off and he stopped playing and adjusted it and went back to making one note after the other drop out of the flute, his eyes still closed.

The gang watched but didn't say anything. There didn't seem to be anything to say.

After awhile he opened his eyes, stopped playing and looked at the gang. The gang looked back. Suddenly Ingrid started to clap and everyone else followed but John and Sam both made a bit of a face.

"Now I'll juggle," Joshua said.  He took three balls out of the paper sack. Two were red, white and blue and the same size and sponge rubber. One was smaller and white and made of hard India rubber.

Joshua stood back from the gang and started to throw the balls one by one up in the air and try to catch them. He wasn't very good. He kept dropping them and he juggled so slowly. Again the gang did not say anything. Sam yawned.

"You need the balls to be all the same size," Bill said to him.

"Well, I don't have three the same size," Joshua said and kept on juggling.

Sam got even more bored, gave a loud sigh, and tried to leap to his feet from a lying position. One of his brothers could do this. Then Joshua stopped juggling. "I'll have to practice a bit," he said.

"That's a good idea," said Piya, "I mean, it isn't easy to juggle."

"Especially when the balls don't match," Lucy said but not out loud.

Ellen and Ingrid looked at each other but didn't say anything.

The gang went back to making posters.

The next day Joshua was sick. Piya came running to tell the gang.

"He's sunstruck," she said. "His mother said he got too much sun delivering those papers and he should have been wearing a hat."

"No wonder he was so bad at juggling," Lucy said and Piya yelled, "Don't say that," and she jumped on Lucy and started to hit her. Ellen and Sam pulled Piya away from Lucy while the rest of the gang looked on in shock. Piya never hit anyone. She started to cry and ran home. Lucy started to cry and ran home. Ellen rolled her eyes and went after her sister.

Joshua had to spend the day in bed in a darkened room. The gang didn't work on the carnival. They somehow didn't feel like it.

The next day Joshua was better but his mother said he still had to take it easy. She let him sit out on the verandeh and the gang could visit if they were quiet.

Joshua's mom gave the gang a big bowl of raisins and peanuts to keep them settled.

"I had a terrible dream last night," Ellen told them when they were all sitting around Joshua who was lying on the porch swing. They munched on the treat. John was trying to line up a peanut on one side of his mouth and a raisin on the other and crunch down and feel the difference in texture.

"Your dreams are always terrible," Lucy began, but Bill shushed her.

"I could tell you about it but that isn't nearly good enough. I wish I could show you."

"Take a picture," said John.

"Of my dream?" Ellen was incredulous and she scrunched up her face.

"Yeah - wow!" shouted Sam. "Let's do it. Ellen you go to sleep and I'll get my brother's camera and when you're dreaming I'll snap the pitcher."

"Pic-ture," breathed Lucy, wondering if he would ever get it right.

"How will you know she's dreaming?" Piya wanted to know while Bill and Ingrid and Joshua were all saying, "You can't photograph dreams" and John was just shaking his head and Lucy said to Sam, "Idiot numbskull."

"Has anyone ever tried," demanded Sam and startled the gang to silence.

"I can tell my cat is dreaming because she twitches," said Ellen thoughtfully.

"Maybe you could stick the camera in her ear," Piya giggled and everyone laughed and Lucy gave her a quick hug. They were friends again.

"But I dream in colour," said Ellen.

"You do?" Lucy was astounded. She dreamed in regular black and white. It didn't seem fair that her twin could dream better than she could.

"We could colour the photograph," Ingrid said, "My Mom did this somehow with a picture of her Dad for a gift. Except she made his hair look funny."

"We could try it, I guess," said Lucy.

Joshua grabbed his head as if it were aching. "What are you going to photograph?" he asked. He sounded tired.

"Why, the dream," Ellen said.

"But it's in your head."

"It seems it should be possible," Ingrid said, almost apologetically.

"Mass hysteria," murmured Bill. He'd heard his mother say this. 

"Oh be quiet," Piya told him. "What do you know. You're just a boy." And once again the gang looked at Piya with raised eyebrows. For a timid little girl she was developing some pretty assertive characteristics. "We just don't know how to take pictures of dreams yet," she explained. "But if we can think about doing something then eventually we will be able to do it. My aunt told me this."

"Your aunt the scientist?" asked Bill.

"No - the one who's a mystic."

"A lipstick?" hooted Sam.

"No, silly. A mystic."

"What's that?"

"Oh, she sort of knows things by feeling rather than thinking. It's hard to explain."

The gang was silent, thinking.

"Actually," said John, "I meant you could take a picture of your dream by drawing it."

"Idiot numbskull," shouted Sam, who felt he had been tricked.

"I can't draw," said Ellen.

"You draw very nicely," said Lucy who drew even better than her sister so she could allow herself to be generous with praise.

"Just do it a bit at a time and let it sort of develop like a photograph would," John suggested. He had once been allowed in the darkroom of a newspaper by a friend of his father's and had seen how photographs were developed.

"Okay," said Ellen. "I'll have to go and get some crayons."

"Mom!" Joshua shouted suddenly, scaring everyone.

"What?" she called from somewhere inside the house.

"I need pencil crayons and paper."

In a few minutes his mother brought them out to him. She smiled at everyone and then went back inside.

"You should have said thank you," Lucy said. She also thought he should have said please. At times she thought he was spoiled.

"Oh, yeah, I forgot," he said. He spread the paper out on the floor and gave Ellen the pencils.

"I don't know where to start."

"Well, what was the dream about?"

"Oh - a little bird was outside the window sort of squeaking the whole time - "

"Birds don't squeak," Sam interrupted.

"In dreams they do," Ingrid shushed him.

Ellen drew a tiny bird in one corner.

"Nice bird," commented Bill.

"Then my aunt and uncle showed up from Tillsonburg. They have a blue car but in the dream it was a red fire truck and they drove it right into my bedroom and their son Mark was with them but he had a mustache even though he's only four years old. And instead of my bedroom door there was a tunnel and instead of a road there was a river of strawberry jam and then my Dad came in and I jumped up on my bed to yell at him not to get his feet all sticky in the jam and he started to laugh and say okay, okay, I'll walk on my hands - "

Ellen was not drawing the dream but everyone was listening so hard that no one noticed.