Willie Bea and the Time the Martians Landed

by Virginia Hamilton

  “Shhhh!” her mother warned. “They hear us and Big might make a mistake.”

  Willie Bea shut up. But she didn’t think Big was bad or mean, the way Little was. Or namby-pamby, the way Hewitt was. Big couldn’t help himself. He was just so awfully big. When he got hold of an idea, it was like he was too big for the idea to get to his head. It would seem to simply sit well with him somewhere below his mind for a month of Sundays. And it would take strong talking by some grown-up, usually, to make him let it go.

  They went silently. It was necessary to leave the path and the dry leaves that crackled as they stepped on them.

  Wood is not like any other place, thought Willie Bea, mindful of tree and trunk, bark and leaf. Somethin’, the way all of it so quiet. Not because you come walk in it, but because it’s wood’s way. All still. All itself of silence.

  Now, as they moved swiftly along, it came to Willie Bea how to go silently, how to keep her feet from making sound. How to feel wood and be a part of it, almost the way the sunlight and shade, the sound of birds, was a part of it.

  Her mama picked their way. Leading, her mama’s small, neat self swayed rhythmically in her Sunday dress. Thoughts, memories popped into Willie Bea’s head.

  Her mama telling, “I went to college. Just one year, though. Hunh! Oh, how I loved it! Wilberforce. I had one dress for Sunday and one dress for the week.”

  “Just one same dress a week!” Willie Bea had said, surprised as she could be.

  “Uh-hunh,” her mama said. “Every night I’d wash and iron that week-dress. Iron it dry. But it was hard way, havin’ but one dress for every day. I sang in the choir. Oh, we had a fine choir there. I took Latin and history. History! I took art and could draw fairly well. Hunh. I quit ’cause of that one week-dress, mostly. It shamed me. I should have been bigger than that, but I was just an ole girl, wanting pretty things.”

  “That don’t seem wrong to me,” Willie Bea had said.

  “Had no money,” her mama explained. “Uncle Jimmy had to go to school, and he worked and helped me and helped himself. He finished. He went to Antioch College. Uncle Jimmy is a college grad-u-ate, like your father.”

  He don’t act like he been to college atall, Willie Bea thought now, about Uncle Jimmy. And then it came to her that maybe you could go to college and it couldn’t touch you. College had touched her papa and her mama. But it had never touched Uncle Jimmy. It didn’t make him different, she thought, watching the smooth sway of her mama’s walk in one of the more than a few dresses she owned now. It didn’t forever change him like it must have her mama and papa. They were so very much different from everyone else in the family.

  How different? Willie Bea wondered. Gentler. Kinder. And smarter, she thought. College did all that!

  Then she and her mama were there. A clearing was suddenly opening, like a pouring, a draining of light and space into a large rectangle in the wood. Like a broad, bright box. It was a weedy place, full of stillness. There were wild flowers sprinkled everywhere. Pretty yellows and blues. A very few white daisies were fading away as the fall inched toward its end. Wild flowers would grow clear on through fall almost to the first snow of November, as long as there was no frost on the pumpkins.

  Big and Hewitt were there, as Marva and Willie Bea had known they would be. And Little was there, as Willie Bea had suspected she would be. Willie Bea and her mama stood among the trunks of close trees. They would not move for fear of scaring Big. He was in the middle of a shot. He stood there, aiming. Hewitt sat on the ground beside Big. Little sat next to him. Her legs were crossed and she chewed on a stalk of weed. She and Hewitt stayed very still, so as not to disturb Big’s aim.

  About thirty-five feet in front of Big and Hewitt, almost in the middle of the clearing, sat Willie Bea’s baby brother; her mama’s youngest son, Kingsley, called Bay Brother.

  Marva gave a tiny gasp. It was so soft, Willie Bea barely heard it. Still and all, it was a sharp, sad cry. Willie Bea’s heart went out to her mama and to her baby brother. If she could have kept her mama from seeing, she would have. It was her job to watch out for Bay Brother. She always did. That is, except for this one time and maybe one or two other times this year since Big had gotten his equipment for Christmas.

  But Bay Brother did look slightly the worse for wear to Willie Bea. His short pants were soaked through with vanilla ice-cream, as was his Sunday shirt. Marva had made it herself, out of fancy shirting, too. Bay Brother held in his tiny hands a carton of homemade ice-cream. You could buy it right downtown at the grocery. Newby Bishop, the grocer, made it himself. Big had stopped long enough at Uncle Jimmy’s house to get a wood spoon for Bay to eat with. And now the baby was eating directly from the carton. Sitting there on the ground. And the ice-cream melted out of the bottom almost as fast as Bay could dip his spoon in to spoon it out. He was having the best time, though, Willie Bea could tell.

  In his seventh heaven, she thought. Look at him. He gettin’ about half of it and losin’ half of it, it’s meltin’ so.

  Surrounding Bay Brother on the ground were broken pumpkins. Small ones. Big must have plucked them right from the vine and kept them in a cool, dark place, like Uncle Jimmy’s cellar, until he had enough for practice. One little pumpkin had been placed on Bay Brother’s head. Then, another, and another.

  Bay was not upset by the pumpkin shoot, or, at least, Big snatching him away and buying him ice-cream. And he could eat out of a pint carton, with an out-sized wooden spoon and not move his head a quarter of an inch from the perfect straight-on position in which Big had posed it. Big had quietly warned Bay not to move. And Bay obeyed. He was too young to be afraid. He probably didn’t feel a thing and never would feel a shot. But then it was happening.

  It happened so fast. Willie Bea was aware of sound, like something gathering air to it and carrying it along at high speed. She had seen Big pull back the string of his great bow. Somehow, she had missed seeing the arrow that he pulled with the string. She saw Big’s fingers move. She had a fleeting thought: Why in the world would Uncle Jimmy buy Big that great bow with some arrows! She thought she heard the bowstring vibrate. She heard that heavy-sounding rush of air.

  The sunlight and space of the clearing seemed to explode. The pumpkin atop Bay’s head burst into pieces, dripping seeds. A few seeds fell on Bay Brother; most exploded behind him. Casually, he let the spoon drop, reached into the carton with his hands and came up with three fingers full of melted ice-cream. Which he managed to slurp into his mouth. Without moving his head a bit.

  Well trained! Willie Bea thought.

  The moment Bay Brother caught sight of his mama was the second Marva Mills made her move. She tore a whip of a tree out of the ground. Grunting, she snatched it from the soft earth. It had a bunch of dead leaves still clinging to the top of it, was young and green. She broke it in half across her knee. And tore the sinewy skin clean away. All this done in a very few motions and in the time it took Bay Brother to shout.

  “Mama! Hey!… Nook-a Big gimme. See?… Ice-keem!”

  Big spun around just as Marva Mills stepped high, as though she meant to climb a hill. She was there, the worst kind of surprise out of nowhere.

  Big’s eyes grew huge and frightened. His dark yellow skin blanched pale as Marva Mills struck his jaw with her open palm. She had to jump to do it. The sound of that smack was like a gunshot in the still clearing.

  Willie Bea witnessed the scene as from a dream. She watched, stunned, as Big dropped to one knee, holding his jaw. He squeezed his eyes shut and bowed his head. She saw Little Wing and Hewitt Wing seem to rise slowly from the ground in one rhythm and slide away, as if pulled by the same invisible string. She saw Big’s face break up in pieces as tears filled his eyes. She knew the smack from her mama could never hurt big old Big. What had broken him down was his pride. His shame at having done something so terribly wrong. He knew it was wrong, but it was like he never thought about that until the very moment he was caught. And then having to be brought up sh
ort by his aunt, whom he loved dearly.

  Like to die, chicken pie! crossed Willie Bea’s mind.

  She was in the clearing beside her mama. And she hadn’t realized she had moved. She saw her mama make a fist, give Big a bop on the very top of his head.

  Willie Bea grabbed her mama’s wrist. It was like she somehow had got hold of it and didn’t know when she had done so.

  “Don’t,” she said to her mama.

  Her mama was panting. “Well, I know I mustn’t,” Marva whispered. “But, Big, you are so … so … wrong! So stupid! How could you? You could miss and shoot him through the eyes! My baby!” She took the switch she was holding and snapped it across Big’s hands. That had to sting. And Big quickly put his hands behind him.

  “Don’t!” Willie Bea told her mama. But Marva Mills simply marched around Big, whipping his hands as he scooted about, trying to get away from her. When Big finally got to his feet, backing away from his aunt, Willie Bea managed to snatch the switch away.

  “Don’t!” she said again. And her mama stood there a moment, exhausted and half ashamed at losing her temper.

  “You deserved it,” she told her nephew. “And I’m going to tell Jimmy, and don’t you dare take Kingsley out of my sight again. You hear me?”

  Big nodded.

  “Say it. Say you won’t,” Marva said.

  Big commenced backing away.

  “Oh. Oh,” Marva said, and tried to take the switch away from Willie Bea. But Willie Bea wouldn’t give it up.

  Big broke and ran. So did Little and Hewitt. They all three ran in three different directions. Marva Mills was left empty-handed. That was when she remembered why she was there in the wood. She went over and grabbed Bay Brother by his arm. She dragged him off behind her.

  “The very idea!” she muttered furiously. Bay’s carton of ice-cream was left in her wake. That caused Bay to wail a long, pitiful cry. But Marva didn’t stop. She hurried from the clearing, talking a mile a minute. “Look at you!” she told her son. “Wait till I get you home. The idea! Jimmy’s goin’ to do somethin’ with that boy—what boy? He’s an overgrown, simple-headed dummy!” Bay Brother’s feet barely touched the ground as she swung him along behind her. He wailed and wailed.

  Willie Bea went over to recover Bay’s ice-cream. She looked in the carton only to find that the ice-cream had melted away on the ground. She took up the carton and flung it into the high weeds and young saplings at the edge of the clearing.

  She looked up to see Little staring at her from behind a tree. Willie Bea was so surprised, for a second she couldn’t move. But she swiftly regained her senses. And carefully raised the switch she still held in her hand. “How ’bout it, Little?” she said. “You always want what someone else has.”

  She closed in on Little. “You’re a one, just ten times worse than Big. I know it’s you who reminds Big to use my brother. I know Big would never think of it if you didn’t worry him. You’re the worse one.”

  “You another one!” Little yelled and ran.

  Willie Bea thought about chasing her cousin.

  Nope, she thought. Don’t want to muss up my pinafore chasing someone as bratty as Little, too. Take more than that child to make me spoil my looks.

  Primly, she stood there in the clearing, cooling her anger. She touched her nicely fixed hair. Best hair-do done by Honey Clay, too. Don’t let my head get sweaty, she thought. Don’t let my curls go back home before I do!

  Then she walked swiftly away. There was a nice coolness in the wood now, and Willie Bea could skip and not get hot. She thought she might be able to catch up with her mama, but she didn’t know for sure. When soon she cleared the wood, she could see her mama almost halfway across Uncle Jimmy’s field. Willie Bea glanced over at Uncle Jimmy’s house. But Big and Little and that half-wit Hewitt were nowhere to be seen.

  She could tell her mama was heading for home to clean up Bay Brother before the Sunday supper. Then, of course, she would have a word with Uncle Jimmy. Willie Bea could see it now. Her mama shaking her finger, and Uncle Jimmy, his head cocked to one side, looking sheepish and not facing her mama straight on. And then Big would get it from his own papa in the woodshed.

  But it was Little that should get the whipping, Willie Bea knew. They always pickin’ on Big ’cause he’s so big, Willie Bea thought. She pushed out of her mind the fact that Big had lured her little brother into the wood to target-shoot. She knew that most of the time, when Big was mean, Little or others were the cause of his seeming to be mean. But she had a soft spot inside for her cousin Big.

  Hope to die, chicken pie! Willie Bea knew what her mama would never understand about Big, even if she were to know. It wasn’t easy for Willie Bea to put into words.

  That Big could not miss with his great bow and arrow. That he would never take a chance with Bay Brother. There were no odds. He never missed. Big just had to shoot. It wasn’t any practice. He knew how to shoot perfectly, just as Willie Bea knew how to walk the high crossbeam up in Uncle Jimmy’s barn.

  She and Little. It was their most favorite, dangerous game. They walked the three-inch-wide cross-beam blind-folded. Up there, she and Little were never at war. High up, where the sharp hay-mound odor stung their nostrils, they were not enemies, not brave, not even cousins. They were highly skilled. They did what they must. They kept the walk secret, knowing that grown-ups would not understand. But they could not stumble and fall. It never entered their minds they might.

  She saw her mama weave around the corn shocks and orange-yellow pumpkins with Bay Brother flying and wailing behind her. Once through the field, her mama paused long enough to retrieve her stockings and high heels. Then she continued on.

  Huh! This turnin’ into some old Halloween, Willie Bea thought.

  Be careful, she warned herself.

  She watched as Marva Mills hurried her youngest son across the Dayton road.

  Or the Gobble-uns might get me.

  Willie Bea trotted over to Grand and Gramp’s good house.

  Gobble-un already got Bay Brother!

  4

  It was some daytime, fall time, Halloween time. Willie Bea was sure she had never known a day quite like it. One minute, she would be hot and sweating; the next, she would be cool all over—her feet, yellowish-cold in the grass; her scalp under her hair-do, almost cold. That was when she knew the daytime had changed. The early Sunday coolish sunshine seemed to have flowed away. What she had now around her in the trees and up from the ground was that fall coolness that she knew would not go away again.

  It’ll stay cool this time, she thought. Indian Summer is all gone for good and true, I bet. Bet tonight’ll be real chilly out. I’ll make Bay and Bay Sister wear some sleeves. Me see—think I’ll make them ghosty in sheets. Powder their faces and they won’t need some masks. Papa can’t buy us masks like that.

  She was resigned to the fact that her papa had said no, he could not buy her and her brother and sister Halloween costumes.

  “No flatter money again this year, Willie Beatrime,” he told her. His eyes were twinkling at her, the way they would when he was sorry he had to hurt her, when he wanted to make light and cause her less pain. She had sure wanted a costume. Little had a costume. Big shunned costumes. But he did wear his rubber hip boots for cleaning outhouses. “I’m the giant Big,” he’d said, the first time he wore the hip boots out of the catalogue, which said they were for fishing. Then he’d said, “I’m the giant Big” a million times, to anyone. It got a laugh the first time. Then it got tiresome.

  They make you buy the whole costume, Willie Bea reminded herself, and a pirate suit may cost eighty-nine cent. And a girl’s four-piece Spanish Costume In Brilliant Colors cost you another fifty cent. That’s a dollar for me and Bay Sis and eighty-nine cent for Bay Brother. Dollar eighty-nine. And all us need new pajamas for the winter, made of flannelette, too. And they are sixty-nine cent a piece, too. Saw it all at the Kresge’s store downtown. Remind Papa about the flannelettes. But he won’t forge
t. Not for us, he won’t, my papa!

  Willie Bea squinted up at the sky. It seemed to have suddenly decided to grow gray clouds over the horizon.

  Can’t believe it’s goin’ to snow-shower this soon. No, don’t let it do that! she thought. I can’t stand that tonight, oooh!

  But even as she watched, the clouds fell apart and formed and reformed. There was no steadiness or certainty about them at all.

  Good, she thought. Maybe the night’ll be clear for begging. I can take Papa’s flashlight, if I have to. Maybe somebody’ll build some bonfires to light the way.

  Occasionally, some farmer would think to make a fire for the kids passing along the roads and fields.

  Willie Bea sat on the lower step of Gramp Wing’s front porch. She was waiting for three o’clock. That was the time when she would see her papa. She had waited as long as she could in Grand’s kitchen. Little, Big and Hewitt were nowhere to be found. And Willie Bea didn’t feel like looking for them.

  Her mama had come back by herself afterwhile. Willie Bea knew then that her little brother must be taking a nap. For there was no one at home to watch him. Her mama never left him alone even for a minute when he was awake. But when he was asleep, he wouldn’t awake again for at least an hour. Chap loved to sleep some sleep, she knew.

  Her mama had come in the front door of Gramp Wing’s house and had not gone to the kitchen. She was in the front room with the men, with Uncle Jimmy. She told Uncle Jimmy good.

  Everyone in the kitchen had stayed quiet. Aunt Lu stretched her neck and stared at the back door, but she was listening, too. Willie Bea had seen Aunt Lu stretch like that countless times. And each time she was sure her aunt looked more and more like a turtle.

  Lost its shell, Willie Bea thought, sitting on the step of Gramp’s porch.

  Aunt Lu wouldn’t interfere with her husband’s sister Marva Mills. Who would? Not even the men would. Least of all, Uncle Jimmy. Only Willie Bea’s papa could get her quiet once she was “on a roll,” as he called her spitfire anger at something.