Me and Rupert Goody by Barbara O'Connor

put.”
    All this agreeing was making me madder. “You should’ve seen him, Uncle Beau. Hiding in the bushes, spying on me!”
    Uncle Beau shook his head. “I don’t know what got into him.”
    â€œI told you he was crazy!” I stamped my foot, then dropped onto the couch. I looked at my knuckles all red and scraped up. What had got into Rupert? What had got into me, was more like it. Why on this earth had I done what I done? Hauled off and hit Kevin Rochester right in the stomach in front of God and everybody What did I care if he called Rupert a retard? Wasn’t no business of mine. Maybe I was the one who was crazy.
    That night we played Parcheesi in silence. I could feel Rupert’s eyes on me, but every time I looked up, he looked away. Jake was having a doggy dream and whined and jerked in his sleep. Every now and then, somebody smacked a mosquito. When Uncle Beau said, “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream,” nobody said nothing.
    I turned the sign and buttoned the door and we walked in single file down the side of the road. Jake, me, Uncle Beau, and Rupert. At Arrowhead Road, we stopped. I waited. Nothing. Uncle Beau pretended he was busy looking for ticks on Jake. Rupert shuffled a rock around with his toe. He looked at the rhododendron fan in his hand, then dropped it, watching the leathery leaves land on his shoe.
    I thrust my bear-and-Indian-chief wallet at Rupert.
“Here,” I said. He looked at it, not moving. Uncle Beau nudged him with his elbow and Rupert took the wallet.
    â€œAdios, Rupert,” I said, turning and heading toward home. I was almost to my mailbox when I heard Rupert holler, “Adios, Jennalee.”

Fourteen
    And so the summer went. Me trying to keep things predictable and Rupert trying to mess things up. Leastways, that’s the way I saw it.
    Like the time he come home with a cat. Mangiest looking alley cat I ever seen. Rupert claimed Hal Roper give it to him for digging fence holes. Well, first off, if that was true, then he got taken for a fool. And second off, we didn’t want no cats around the store. Uncle Beau is allergic to the dern things, and Jake, well, you can imagine how Jake reacted to the situation. First thing he did was chase that cat around the store, knocking over stuff and sending that thing clawing its way up the curtain in Uncle Beau’s room.
    I figured Uncle Beau would make Rupert take that cat back where it come from. I couldn’t believe my ears when
Uncle Beau said, “You keep that thing outside, Rupert, you hear me?”
    It wasn’t two days before that cat was spending its days on Rupert’s lap. Then, when it started catching mice and moles and stuff, Uncle Beau was just tickled pink. Me and Jake, though, we never did take a shine to that cat.
    Then there was the time the dairy truck showed up at the store with a new driver. Never been to Uncle Beau’s before. Me and Uncle Beau was busy inside, so Rupert, he decided to play Mr. Important and signed for the delivery. Even helped unload it. About fifty cases of yogurt and not one drop of milk. Well, trust me when I say there ain’t too many yogurt eaters in Claytonville, North Carolina.
    Me and Uncle Beau walked outside just as the dairy truck was disappearing down the road and there stood Rupert, grinning like he just saved the world.
    â€œWhat in tarnation is this?” Uncle Beau said when he saw the yogurt.
    Rupert looked at the cases stacked up there on the porch and scratched his head like it never occurred to him to wonder what was in them.
    â€œThey from the dairy man,” he said.
    So there we were with a mountain of yogurt in August (which, in case you didn’t know it, is hot as blazes down here in the South) and nowhere to put it and nobody to buy it.
    Now, if it was me, I’d’ve made Rupert pay dearly for that
act of sheer stupidity But Uncle Beau, he just sit Rupert down and give him