by Lorraine Ray
Grandpa Drummond lumbered down the hall of his home. His long white beard and shoulder length white hair was authentic for his mountain man parade the next day, and his gray eyebrows twisted in contortions as difficult to follow as a child’s first attempt at cursive writing. Drummond stood erect, but big bellied, had shiny pink cheeks, and a large red nose. He had been heading for the kitchen, but he came into his library after hearing a bee buzzing in the bay window. He’d heard them trapped there before; he was sensitive about trapped bees, but on his way to the window he switched on a small table lamp and was very surprised to see some of his books tilting out of the bookshelves or, even worse, lying on the floor with their backs cruelly strained. As surprised as he was by the books, he gasped to see the stuffed elk head on the floor, a rip in the wallpaper, and a giant hole in his adobe wall where the head had been. Drummond went to inspect the hole and the rip, when a strange hairy form in a shadowy corner seemed to leap up from behind the big basket, and when he spun around to see what it was, and cried “Who’s there!”, one foot stomped the carpet, or what he supposed was going to be the carpet. Instead, his foot met something else. This something else provided about as much traction as you would imagine a round glass orb would.
Grandpa Drummond’s foot slipped, he floundered, and his left leg shot forward. His hip collapsed downward and he fell with a tremendous crashing boom. For a moment, he lay there in shock and confusion and then a small wail of misery arose.
“Hilda!” he shouted after the wail.
From behind the basket, Stephanie gasped and covered her mouth.
Grandpa Drummond waited.
“Hilda!”
His gaze traveled around the room and he stared down at the fallen elk head, and up at the battered javelina and the mountain lion, which seemed to be winking at him. No doubt he was hallucinating from the fall, hitting the ground so hard. But he could swear that lion had something wrong with its expression, something different…
He pulled himself across the library carpet toward the couch. When he reached the couch, his hand ran forward under the sofa pillow, but shot back right away. “Glass?” He threw the pillow back. “Hilda!”
“What? What have you done?” Hilda’s voice could be heard coming down the hall. Upon entering the library and finding her husband sprawled on the carpet, she exclaimed: “Oh, Drummond!”
“I slipped on something and fell.” Grandpa Drummond said this in a distracted voice as he made sure that his hand hadn’t been cut by the broken glass. “Do we have a new maid service?”
“Yes, yes, we do. But oh, my goodness. What have you done? Oh, dear.” She crossed the room and dropped to the side of her injured husband. Before she got to him she wiped her hands on a tea towel and tossed it on the couch. “What have you hurt?”
“Oh, nothing really. Only my pride. I need help getting upstairs. I...think...I’ll be okay if I can rest my hip for an hour in bed.”
“Well, that’s what we’ll do then. Do you think you can get to our room?”
“Yes,” he said, his gaze traveled to the wall behind her and the assortment of heads. “Oh, and I almost forgot, the elk head, Hilda. It’s come down. Look at the size of that hole!”
Hilda swung around. “My goodness. What’s happened? We’ll have to get Dr. Adobe in here again.”
And when his wife turned toward him he bobbed his head around hers to keep his gaze focused on the stuffed lion head. “I found the elk head down and these pieces of broken glass hidden under this pillow. Wasn’t that the Swedish vase, the Gertrick Von Frick, which you got from your sister?”
“Yes, I’ll buy another.”
“She died! All her work is very valuable. She isn’t blowing anymore glass for anyone. And so many books on the floor. What could have happened?”
“I don't know. It’s terrible. But whatever made you fall? Are you faint at all? Maybe too much sun out in the yard? Perhaps we should call your heart specialist?”
“No, nothing like that,” said Drummond. “I thought something jumped up, but there was nothing and then I could have sworn I felt something...something underfoot. I...I think it was a small glass ball. I must have dropped a marble in here the last time I played Chinese checkers with Will. Be careful, there might be others.”
Hilda helped Drummond to his feet and they slowly made their way across the room. “I don’t think so, dear,” she said, “The maids have vacuumed thoroughly since you last played Chinese checkers.”
“And doesn’t the mountain lion look funny? It seems to be winking? What’s his eye doing?” Drummond thought his own eyes were playing tricks; he squinted and turned his head back toward the lion when they stood in the threshold ready to leave.
“The lion?” asked Hilda.
“Does the mountain lion...does it seem to be winking?” He stared at the stuffed head on the wall as though he had never properly seen it before. He frowned and concentrated.
“Why, no dear. It’s dark in here. It doesn’t,” said Hilda giving it a cursory glance.
“Does that lion’s eye seem to be winking? I think there’s something funny about...something...it didn’t look like that yesterday.”
“Well dear. If you’re going to let it upset you, I’ll take a look at it.” Hilda left Drummond hanging onto the threshold as she approached the lion head and squinted at it as it squinted back at her. “Now that you mention it, I think, one of its eyes...why, yes, it’s gone! One of its eyes is missing. I don’t wonder. The old thing. They’re all just falling to pieces. Rotten old moldy things. They’re attracting bugs into the house and they’re dropping apart. All their hair is shedding. I suppose the crash of elk head falling loosened the lion’s eye. It must have happened that way. Then you stepped on it.”
“I suppose. That makes sense,” said Drummond. “The eye wasn’t missing yesterday.”
“Oh, and Drummond! You’re going to be so happy!” Hilda came back to him and supported her husband as he limped toward the stairs. “While you were gone the most wonderful thing happened. Stephanie showed an interest in your special Native American things. She was studying and studying those old pots of yours like nothing you’ve ever seen. She was standing in front of them and just staring at them so patiently. My goodness, it was awfully cute, but, you know, it impressed me,” said Hilda with a thrilled expression on her face. The fact that Stephanie picked up two of those valuable pots and took them outside to play camp with after Hilda left and the fact that they were sitting precariously on a pile of sticks on the lawn and were full of dirty water and mesquite beans was unknown to Granny Hilda. “Maybe she’ll grow up to be an archeologist or an anthropologist someday,” said Granny Hilda.
“An archeologist or an anthropologist?” Drummond said. “Wouldn’t that be something? Do you really think she might be that interested in my collection?”
“Interested? I’m telling you, fascinated might be more like it. Yes, yes, she was just studying and studying those pots. She showed so much interest in them. Just intense. And several other things on the walls and the shelves, too.”
“Well, well. This surprises me. So you actually think you have seen her studying some of my pots...and it makes you think—this is so wonderful—that she will someday want to be working as an archeologist or, or in a museum?” Drummond hobbled beside his wife up the stairs and through the hall, past cabinets and curio-jammed shelves, toward their large bedroom that occupied a corner of the second story of their home. He began to spread his happiness thickly: “By golly! I knew she would. This is really something. A child prodigy.” Reaching the threshold of their bedroom, he began to speculate along those lines. “That a child would see the beauty in a Native American pot—I won’t be surprised at all if Stephanie...where is that little Stephanie of mine?” asked Drummond, pulling himself upright. “I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Stephanie grows up to be a museum curator.”
“Oh dear, I certainly hope so. None of my people were anything special.”
Drummond let ou
t a large groan when he eased himself onto the bed.
Chapter Eight
