Tugs smoothed out her bedspread and laid her Brownie on it. She got a butter knife from the kitchen drawer and pried the exposure lever back to its correct position. She tried turning the winding key, but the dented side was stopping things up. It wasn’t split open, though. So it wasn’t technically broken, and that was lucky. Her fingers itched to open the back and see what was inside, but she remembered Mr. Pepper’s words and resisted.
How did the picture making happen? The viewing window was a problem. Would the cracks show up in photos? Could the Brownie still take photos? Tugs studied the camera’s face, running her finger over the ridged eye of the lens opening. Even the lens cover was green, a detail that delighted her. There were two tiny glass windows down in the corner, with a tiny silver nail between them. What were they for?
The front cover must come off. Mr. Pepper hadn’t said it wouldn’t. She pulled on it cautiously but didn’t dare pry too hard. She held the cube of it between her two palms. It was cool to the touch and nearly smooth, the pine green of the surface mottled by thin lighter green lines running in random paths.
Oh, the beauty of it. This little box could capture the world. How had she not known that she needed just this very thing in her life? Just the owning of it made her forget her ornery relatives, her jaggedy grin, the way Bess had turned away from her at the park. She felt important.
Tugs was not generally one to take good care of things. Her clothes lay in a heap on the floor. The doll she’d had since she was six was missing an arm, and its tiny checked dress was torn. When she’d gotten Swisher cousin Nora’s hand-me-down bicycle last year, she’d left it on the front porch and it had been stolen in the night.
But the camera would be different, she vowed to herself. Her name had been drawn in that raffle, as if the hand of Luck herself had chosen her — Tugs Esther Button. Tugs imagined Luck as a kindly ancient grandmother, a sweeter version of her own tart wrinkly Granny, but just as feisty in her ability to turn events to her whim. And if Luck wanted her to have a green Kodak No. 2 Brownie F model, Tugs would stand up to the task.
Too bad she’d already mismanaged the box and instruction manual. There was no chance it would still be at the park two days later, what with G.O.’s family and their scavenging obsession. Couldn’t drop a Hershey’s wrapper without some Lindholm sweeping in to claim it for a wrapper sculpture or some such. They would have been over and through that park quick as a wink, picking up trash and claiming anything left behind. No such thing as a lost and found department in a town inhabited by a clan of finders keepers. And even if they did find the manual, G.O. certainly wouldn’t give it to her.
Tugs had yet to need information that couldn’t be found at the library. She could find a camera instruction book there, sure. First thing Monday morning, Tugs scoured the house for Rootabaga Stories. She wore her blue ribbons pinned to the front of her overalls and carried her Kodak by its little leather strap.
Miss Lucy was busy with the Thompson twins, sisters who lived together in the little house next to the library and still dressed identically, though they were old ladies. Tugs put her book on the returns shelf and went to the dictionary while she waited.
Lucky, said the dictionary, meant favored by luck; fortunate; meeting with good success or good fortune.
Tugs flipped to fortune.
Fortune: the arrival of something in a sudden or unexpected manner; chance; accident; luck; destiny.
Destiny: the fixed order of things; invincible necessity; fate.
Fate: predetermined event; destiny; especially, the final lot; doom.
Luck, fortune, destiny, fate, doom. It was a perplexing circle.
“What’s the word of the day?” asked Miss Lucy.
“Oh!” said Tugs a little too loudly. “Nothing!” She knocked her camera off the table, scooted off the stool to pick it up, and stood, blushing.
“Well, Tugs Button, would you look at those ribbons. Aren’t you the cat’s meow?” said Miss Lucy. Tugs turned redder yet. She tried to think of something clever to say, but could only come up with, “You got a coffee spot on your blouse, Miss Lucy.”
“Why, so I do. I must have been in a hurry this morning. Now, tell me about those ribbons.”
“Three-legged race. Aggie Millhouse,” Tugs said, pointing to the first ribbon. Then she unpinned the second ribbon and handed it to Miss Lucy. “Essay,” she said, and her chest filled so fast she was sure the whole of Goodhue could hear the air rush in. She was getting not only the swell head her father warned against, but a swell chest as well. It was impulse, but she wanted Miss Lucy to have that essay ribbon. “Keep it.”
Miss Lucy opened her mouth to protest, but then shut it again and held the ribbon aloft, as if inspecting a sweet summer tomato. “I know just what let’s do. Come on.”
Tugs followed her to the office, where Miss Lucy rummaged for the key to the display case and stuck a pin between her teeth. Just inside the foyer, she unlocked the case and pinned Tugs’s ribbon next to a small American flag and a feature on Betsy Ross. Then she plucked a pencil from behind her ear and printed neatly below it, TUGS BUTTON: PATRIOTIC ESSAY WINNER 1929.
“There,” said Miss Lucy. “Now, bring that essay next time you come in and we’ll hang it with the ribbon.”
Tugs nodded, but she knew she wouldn’t. The ribbon was enough. Probably too much, even. Displaying the essay would certainly be putting on airs.
The door swung open and Burton Ward came in, dragging Winslow by the hand. “Button,” he scoffed under his breath as he passed Tugs. Tugs’s stomach dropped. She hoped Miss Lucy didn’t know about the Ben Franklin incident.
“Button!” mimicked Winslow, not so quietly.
Miss Lucy turned and said loud enough for the whole library to hear, “Sorry we don’t have room to put all of your blue ribbons in the case, Tugs.” Then she scurried after Winslow, who was randomly pulling books off shelves as he passed, and Tugs slipped out the front door, forgetting entirely about the camera instruction manual.
Tugs was studying the sidewalk so hard as she walked home from the library, trying to avoid stepping on the cracks between the squares, that she nearly walked smack into Ned, who came charging around the corner full speed ahead.
“Ned!” she said.
“Tugs!” he said.
“Huh,” said Tugs.
“Yep,” said Ned.
“I was at the library,” said Tugs.
“I know.”
“You do?”
“Granny said.”
“Well.”
“Why aren’t you with Aggie?”
“She’s at camp.”
They watched Mrs. Perkins chase the Wards’ cat out of her petunias.
“I’m on my way home,” said Tugs.
“I’ll walk with you,” said Ned.
“But where were you going?” asked Tugs.
“The library,” said Ned.
“Well, I guess I could walk with you, then,” said Tugs.
“OK,” said Ned, scratching a patch of mosquito bites. “I saw Mr. Moore.”
“Oh.”
“He was in the phone booth outside the Ben Franklin.”
“Hmmm.”
“The door was open and I sort of overheard him say something strange.”
Tugs glanced over at Ned.
“Well?”
“He said Goodhue was ripe, or maybe it was, ‘Time is right for picking.’ What did he mean?”
“Don’t know,” said Tugs.
“I thought you were interested in what he is up to.”
Tugs shrugged. Her mind was muddled over what had happened at the library. She had a ribbon hanging in the display case, with her name printed right there for everyone who walked into the library to see. It had been exciting in the moment, but now she had doubts.
What if people thought she was showing off? What if she was showing off? Would they know Miss Lucy had been the one to put the ribbon in the case, or would they think that a Button such as he
rself would have picked the lock and stuck the ribbon in there uninvited? Yet if there was one thing Buttons were not, it was criminals. She would never pick a lock.
Her heart beat faster with the indignity of it all, and she brooded as they climbed the library steps.
Tugs followed Ned through the door and stopped in front of the case. Her stomach clenched. How had she not seen how dirty and wrinkled her ribbon was? It looked like a used ribbon, not the ribbon of a real winner. Aggie Millhouse would never display a dirty ribbon.
“Ned!” she whispered as Ned stepped into the library. “What do you need at the library?”
It took Ned a moment to remember.
“You!” he said.
“But I’m right here.” Tugs glanced around the library, but no one had noticed them yet, not even Miss Lucy, whose concentration was still completely taken with the Ward boys. “Come on, let’s go.”
Miss Lucy, in her haste to chase Winslow, had left the display case open. Tugs tucked her camera under one arm, reached into the case, grabbed her ribbon, and ducked out the door, a puzzled Ned trailing behind her.
Back outside, Tugs was suddenly tired. “Let’s watch cars,” she said, and flopped down on the bench that sat at the edge of the library yard, facing Main Street.
“Model T,” said Ned.
“Olds,” said Tugs.
“Whippet!” they said together. There wasn’t much traffic, but then there never was in Goodhue.
“That was lucky, anyhow,” said Tugs.
“What?” said Ned hopefully.
“The case was still open.”
“Oh,” said Ned, nodding as if he understood. “Yep, that was lucky.”
“I guess I should get home,” Tugs said.
“Me too,” said Ned.
They were almost to the Perkinses’ house when they saw the three Marys roller-skating toward them. Mary Alice, Mary Helen, and Mary Louise were not only best friends; they were also beautiful, with straight hair, straight teeth, and small, plump limbs. Seeing them for the first time since Aggie’s party, sailing down the sidewalk, their matching skirts billowing, their laughing faces glowing, it was as if the pages she’d just read in the dictionary, luck, fortune, were skimming toward her. Tugs found herself wishing to be a Mary, too.
Tugs waved.
“Hiya, Mary Alice, Mary Helen, Mary Louise!” she hollered.
“Well, if it isn’t Tugs Button and her little sidekick,” said Mary Alice as the three skated to a neat stop. “Where are you off to, nursery school?”
“My house,” said Tugs. She smiled in what she hoped was a carefree summer-afternoon sort of way, then remembered her buckteeth and her cousin next to her. She pulled her top lip down and chewed on her lower lip. The Marys started to go around her.
“Want to come with?” she said. “To my house?” She stepped in front of Ned. “He’s not coming.” She held up her camera. “I’ve got my Kodak. I won it at the Fourth of July. I didn’t see you there. Where were you? I could take your photograph.” Never mind that it couldn’t really take pictures.
“We were over at the auto races in Cedar Rapids with our families,” said Mary Louise.
“Eight thrilling events,” said Mary Alice. “Much more fun than that silly picnic.”
“We’ve all got Kodaks,” said Mary Helen. “Boring.”
“And,” added Mary Alice, “Mr. Moore says he’s going to put our photograph in the first edition of the Goodhue Progress, due to the generous contributions our fathers made.”
“We can’t come anyhow,” said Mary Louise. “My mother is going to give us bobs.”
“Oh!” said Tugs. “But your hair is so beautiful already.”
The Marys giggled at that and tromped on the grass to get around Tugs and Ned. Then they glided away. Tugs looked after them, holding her camera in front of her.
“Click,” she said.
Back at home, Tugs left Ned in the living room with Granny and her mother and went to her room with the excuse that she had to change clothes. How could she be like the Marys with Ned hovering around?
She sat on her bed with her camera and scanned her room through the viewfinder, inspecting everything through the lens.
Click: a spider resting in her web in the sloped corner of the ceiling.
Click: tiny faded flowers on the curtain, rustling slightly in the barest midday breeze. The curtains were frayed at the bottom, and dirty.
There were several yellowed newspaper pictures cut from the Cedar Rapids Tribune.
She scanned the whole room but could not find one beautiful thing.
Until the Fourth of July, Tugs hadn’t known she wanted a ribbon or a Kodak. She hadn’t thought about possibility. Tugs had never aspired. Burton’s accusation rang again in her head. Tugs was a Button, and all at once she understood what that meant. Who else but a Button would wear dirty ribbons pinned to their dirty overalls? Her face burned with belated embarrassment.
“What on earth are you still doing in here?” said her mother, peering around the door. “Ned wants to entice Granny into a game of marbles, but she’s retreated out to the weed patch.”
“Tell him I don’t have time for him,” said Tugs. “I’m busy.”
Mother Button stepped all the way into Tugs’s room and shut the door behind her.
“Busy is doing something useful. Now, your cousin is here. I suggest you get out there and do something with him. You’ve got one foot in the doghouse already, leaving him with Ralph Stump for the three-legged race.”
“I can’t,” said Tugs.
“What do you mean, can’t?”
“I don’t have anything to wear.”
“Wear? Since when did you worry about what you are going to wear?”
“Girls wear dresses and skirts, Mother. I can’t go around wearing those dirty overalls anymore.”
Mother Button studied Tugs, then pulled open the middle dresser drawer and pulled out a dress.
“Here. You can press this. It probably still fits.”
“Oh!” said Tugs. “I forgot about that dress. Thanks.”
Tugs bounded out of bed and pulled on the dress in its wrinkled state and smoothed it with her hands. It was an old dress of her mother’s that had been made over for Tugs for last year’s school program. She’d stuffed it in the drawer afterward, never intending to wear something so uncomfortable again. It was a little small but she could still button it, and if she scrubbed the dirt off her knees, maybe no one would notice that it was a little too short. Why did she have to keep growing, for Pete’s sake?
“There,” she said, presenting herself to Mother Button and Ned in the living room. “All I need now is a bob. Can you cut my hair, Mama?”
Mother Button looked at Ned, who shrugged.
“It’s the Marys,” he said. “She wants to look like the Marys.”
“Hmmm,” mused Mother Button, running her fingers through Tugs’s mass of curly hair. “Is that how the girls are wearing it now? I guess we could see what we could do.” She rummaged through the junk drawer for a scissors and went to the linen closet for a sheet to put under the stool. “Just straight across all the way around, right?” she asked.
“Here,” said Ned, holding up Mother Button’s Good Housekeeping magazine. “Look at the pictures of the ladies in here.”
Tugs thanked Ned grudgingly. She was grateful for the haircut help but annoyed that Ned was hanging around in the first place. Didn’t he have friends his own age to bother? She paged quickly through the magazine.
“There,” she said, pointing to a woman in an ad. “Like that. To the bottom edge of my face.”
“Looks easy enough,” said Mother Button. “Go wet your hair in the sink and we’ll give it a try.”
Tugs stuck her head under the kitchen sink and got it soaking wet. Then she wrapped a towel around her head and hopped up on the stool. Mother Button worked a comb through the snarls as Tugs winced. Then she pulled a lock of hair down with the comb, stopping the comb
at chin length, then snipping along the teeth of the comb. She grabbed the next lock and repeated the process. Trouble was, when she let go of the wet hair, the spring in the curls wound right back up, leaving Tugs’s new cut considerably shorter than anticipated. It was more of an ear-length bob than a chin-length bob. Ned’s eyes grew wide.
“Well?” said Tugs, anxious to see.
“It’s bobbed all right,” said Ned.
“Oh, dear,” said Mother Button. “I’m afraid this might not be exactly what you had in mind. But Ned is right. It is bobbed.” She went to her room and brought back her hand mirror and held it up for Tugs to see.
“Perfect!” said Tugs. “I’ll bet the Marys got theirs short, too. Wait until Aggie sees!” She shook her head back and forth. “I feel so light. Oh, my neck is all cool. You should try it, too, Mama. It’s fashionable and comfortable.”
“Well, one bob in the family might be enough for starters,” said Mother Button. “Get the broom, now, and sweep up all that hair.”
“But I need to go to Mary Louise’s.”
“Tomorrow,” said Mother Button firmly. “Your hair won’t grow overnight, and if you change out of your dress for the rest of today, it will still be clean tomorrow.”
Tugs thought about what she would say when she got to Mary Louise’s. She didn’t have any real excuse for arriving uninvited, except to show off her new hair. She imagined them giggling over their matching haircuts. She could take a picture of all of them. Except that she left her Brownie at home. Maybe the Marys would let Tugs be an honorary Mary. And Aggie, too. The Five Marys. She would suggest it. Mary Louise, Mary Helen, Mary Alice, and . . . Tugs. Mary Tugs?
And with that thought, her avalanche of dissatisfaction welled. Mary Tugs sounded terrible. She said it out loud. Mary Tugs. Ridiculous. Aggie, Louise, Helen, and Alice, now, those were girl names.
If she could change her name it would be . . . it would be . . . well, something lovely. Penelope? No. Catherine? No. Priscilla. Mary Priscilla. Perfect.
The Luck of the Buttons Page 6
