The Luck of the Buttons

by Anne Ylvisaker

  “Nice, she says!” sniffed Elmira.

  “I think it’s time for my midday repast,” said Elmira.

  “She means it’s time for you to go,” said Eldora to Tugs.

  “I’m sorry if I . . .” Tugs started, but the sisters were already on their way out of the room, pulling Tugs with them.

  They stood awkwardly in the living room. Tugs patted the sleeping Leopold’s head and then boldness overtook her.

  “Would you develop my photographs?” The sisters paused, door open to excuse her. “I took one of the dashing gentleman,” she offered.

  “Well, Sissy. She did rescue our Leopold.”

  “Yes, Sissy. I suppose you’re right. And the gentleman is handsome.”

  “Come back tomorrow,” said Elmira, and shooed Tugs out the door.

  Tugs stood on the porch and remembered about Mary Louise and her plan to become a Mary, which made her remember her hair. She reached up and felt its shortness, already missing the pull of its former weight. She wished she could see the picture she’d taken of herself at the picnic.

  Tugs stopped in at the library. She wanted to ask Miss Lucy for the old newspapers, but Mrs. Goiter, Miss Lucy’s sometime substitute, was at the desk today. She couldn’t possibly ask Mrs. Goiter for help. Mrs. Goiter eyed young hang-abouts with suspicion, shushing their every cough and snicker.

  Tugs had been known to lose a book or two, but they were always — well, usually — found eventually, and while Miss Lucy was discrete about it, Mrs. Goiter had on more than one occasion called out in a loud voice, “Tugs Button! I’m going to confiscate your card!” or, “Tugs Button, you’re on my list!”

  Tugs slipped over to the dictionary to think. Priscilla was not listed. She paged through, reading idly.

  Atoll: a coral island or islands, consisting of a belt of coral reef, partly submerged, surrounding a central lagoon or depression; a lagoon island.

  Lagoon: a shallow sound, channel, pond, or lake, especially one into which the sea flows; as, the lagoons of Venice.

  Reef: a chain or range of rocks, coral, or sand, projecting above the surface at low tide or permanently covered by shallow water.

  Tide: the twice daily rise and fall of the water level in the oceans and seas; to drift with or to be carried by the tides.

  Tugs loved how one word led to another. She’d never seen an ocean, a lagoon, a reef, not even a mass of rock larger than the boulder that prevented Uncle Edgar from plowing the front acre, as he told the story. But one thing could lead to another, after all.

  Then she paged back to button, as she often did.

  Button: a catch, of various forms and materials, used to fasten together the different parts of dress, by being attached to one part and passing through a slit, called a buttonhole, in the other; used also for ornament.

  Then she flipped to tug, for Tugs.

  Tug: to pull or draw with great effort; to draw along with continued exertion; to haul along; to tow; as, to tug a loaded cart; to tug a ship into port.

  “There sweat, there strain, tug the laborious oar.” — Roscommon

  She repeated the small poem to herself. Tugs loved the strong images of her name. She liked to think of herself towing things along. She would walk up to Mrs. Goiter and ask about newspapers.

  Tugs took one more glance at her name in the book, then slipped her hand under the cover and folded it shut with a slap that was louder than she intended.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed to no one in particular. “That was loud!”

  “Tugs Button,” bellowed Mrs. Goiter, stalking heavily through nonfiction and reaching Tugs in fewer than eight strides. She put her hands on her hips. “I’m trying to run a library here. This is a house of quiet and decorum. What are you doing and what do you want?”

  Tugs wavered. She backed up to the pedestal table and rested her hand on the dictionary. “I . . .” she started.

  “Well, out with it!” Mrs. Goiter barked, stepping close enough now that Tugs could smell her stale breath.

  “N-n-newspaper?” Tugs stammered. “Old newspapers? I want to see pictures that the Thompson twins took.”

  “Humph.” Mrs. Goiter shook her head and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Would you look at the dust on those lights? Do I have to do everything myself?” She shook her head again and walked away.

  “Well?” she called in a sharp, very not-library voice, and turned with her hands on her hips. “This way.”

  Tugs hurried after her. They went down the curved stairway to a basement room that Tugs had not been in before. There were shelves and shelves of magazines and newspapers in stacks.

  Mrs. Goiter motioned with a ruler. “Back issues. Locals on the right, more exotic fare to the left.” She handed Tugs the ruler.

  “To mark your place in the stack. Get anything out of order in here and it will be your last visit.”

  Tugs approached the rightmost shelf and ran her hand across a stack of papers. Tentatively, she pulled the top one out partway and stood on her tiptoes to read the date. The Cedar Rapids Tribune, “A Newspaper Without a Muzzle.” Friday, June 28, 1929. She skimmed the headlines. “No Excuse for Mine Disasters Says Uncle Sam,” she read. She pulled the paper off the shelf. Near the bottom was a drawing of children watching fireworks, with the caption “Safe and Sane.” Tugs wanted to explore the rest of the pages, but the Cedar Rapids Tribune wasn’t what she was looking for. She slid it back on the stack and looked on a lower shelf. Tribune, Tribune, Tribune. Tugs moved left to another stack, then another, cautiously lifting papers and squaring them back so Mrs. Goiter wouldn’t notice they’d been disturbed.

  The Gazettes would be older than all of these papers. Or maybe they were counted in Mrs. Goiter’s more exotic fare. She slid a paper off the top shelf. It was a Chicago paper. Nope. Then Tugs pulled it out again. A Chicago paper, right there in the Goodhue library. Now, that was something. Aunt Fiona was the only Button brave enough to have explored a city larger than Cedar Rapids. What went on in Chicago that didn’t go on in Cedar Rapids or Goodhue?

  Tugs took the paper, laying the ruler in its place. She laid it flat on the table, admiring the large, smart type of the headlines.

  “Scouts to Entertain Community” and “Two Escape Death as Train Hits.” There was a cartoon of a man with a suitcase labeled “agriculture” buying a train ticket to Washington, D.C. She opened the newspaper. There were several photographs here. Her eyes skipped from one to another. She was about to turn the page when her eyes went back to a photograph in the corner. There was something familiar about it. The headline above it read “Dapper Jack Disappears with Dough.” It was something about the smile. . . . Tugs read the article below it.

  Tugs looked again at the photograph. Could it be? He wasn’t wearing a hat in the picture, but that too-wide smile was all too familiar. Harvey Drew, Jack Door. Harvey Moore. Tugs looked up from the paper. She was alone in the room. She could hear the heavy clump of Mrs. Goiter’s shoes above her head. Tugs carefully tore the picture and article out of the paper, folded it, and put it in her pocket. Then she closed the paper, checking the edges to make sure it looked as if it hadn’t been disturbed. Her hands shook as she carried it back to the shelf, removed the ruler, and laid the paper carefully on the stack where she’d found it.

  Upstairs, she slid the ruler onto the checkout desk and walked as fast as she could toward the door, then ran three blocks before slowing down.

  The next morning, Tugs wrapped up two pieces of her mother’s crumb cake in a kitchen towel for the Thompson twins. She grabbed her Brownie and slipped past sleeping Granny. How could the Marys think cameras were boring? And who needed to be hemmed in by a dress?

  Tugs stopped at the curb to look back at her house through the lens of her Kodak. The shutters were akimbo. The paint was peeling. She hadn’t noticed before how homely her home was. But as she walked down the block, she saw that theirs wasn’t the only tired-looking house. Theirs wasn’t the only scrubby yard.

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nbsp; “Tugs! Wait up!”

  Tugs turned. Ned was running after her. Ralph Stump was with him.

  “My mom sent me to get you,” said Ned. “Granddaddy’s waiting on you.”

  Granddaddy Ike! It was Wednesday. Checkers day. Tugs hesitated. She really wanted to get her pictures developed. Maybe just this one week. . . .

  “Do you think you could take him, Ned? Maybe he’ll let you sit in on a game.”

  “Really? I always wanted to be the one to take him, but you’ve always been the one and —”

  “It’s a big responsibility,” Tugs said, interrupting him. “You’d have to watch out for him. And make sure he doesn’t put in your mother’s silver or —”

  “I know,” said Ned. “I can do it. Ralph and I can, can’t we, Ralph?”

  “I don’t have a granddaddy as old as yours, so I don’t know,” said Ralph.

  “Well, we can,” said Ned. “Thanks, Tugs. I won’t let you down. Come on, Ralph.”

  Tugs watched them run off. For a moment, she wished Ned was coming with her. But it was good he had Ralph. She had Aggie, after all. At least she hoped she had Aggie. She’d show Aggie her photographs when she got home from camp.

  Eldora and Elmira were sitting on their porch of their smart, well-kept house when Tugs passed the library. Leopold was perched in a potted plant in front of the library, and as she passed, he jumped out and followed her up the walk to the house.

  “Sissy!” exclaimed Elmira. “Looky here, looky here! Our Leopold has been rescued again! Thank you, young man.”

  “Oh, Sissy!” cried Eldora. “Our Leopold!”

  “I didn’t . . .” Tugs started, but the sisters were down the steps and scooping up Leopold between them.

  “He’s been gone since breakfast and we feared the worst, didn’t we, Sissy?”

  “Oh, my, yes, Sissy. Our Leopold never runs off, and when we sat down in our porch chairs like we do every morning after toast and bacon, with our cup of coffee like every morning, our Leopold did not come sit by our feet like he does every morning.” Eldora sighed into Leopold’s shaggy back as he struggled to get free.

  “I said to Sissy, I said, ‘This could be the day we say good-bye to our faithful friend,’” said Elmira. “But you’ve saved him.” She looked more closely at Tugs. “Why, you aren’t a young man at all. You are the girl who got him out of the tree, aren’t you?”

  Eldora pushed her glasses up on her nose and peered closer at Tugs.

  “That’s her, Sissy. The very one. It’s the pants that threw us off.”

  “I brought cake!” Tugs said. “And my camera. Remember you said you’d develop my film?”

  “Cake!” said Elmira.

  “She did bring back Leopold,” said Eldora.

  “True enough,” said Elmira.

  “Give me the Kodak, then,” said Eldora.

  “And the cake,” said Elmira.

  Tugs followed the sisters inside and sat on the sofa. They took the chairs across from her and leaned forward, staring at her like she was a show about to start.

  “Well, I never,” said Elmira, taking the Brownie from Eldora and inspecting it. “She’s got herself a green F model. Old Pepper only had the blue, so he said. But we really wanted the green.”

  “Looks like she’s dropped it,” said one.

  “It’s a little banged up,” agreed the other.

  Elmira held it up to the light and looked through the lens.

  “Should still work, though. These are sturdy little boxes. I bet it’s just a broken mirror. We must have a spare around here we could fix in its place.”

  “Oh, Sissy, won’t this be fun! I wonder what she photographed!”

  “I . . .” Tugs started, but Eldora interrupted.

  “No, don’t tell! It’s more fun to be surprised.”

  “Yes!” agreed Elmira. “I do love a surprise. That is the best part. When we take photographs, we develop each other’s film. Eldora mine and I hers. Then we’re always surprised.”

  “Except that she always tells me when she’s taken a photograph,” said Eldora. “Can’t keep a secret, that one.”

  “Pshaw,” argued Elmira.

  “Can I help?” asked Tugs.

  “No,” said Elmira. “Not enough room. You wait here with Leopold. Come on, now, Sissy, let’s see what she’s got here.”

  Tugs wandered the room. She took down cameras and held them in her hands, looking through their viewfinders, until she heard the creak of the darkroom door. She sat down quickly on the sofa.

  “Here’s your Brownie. We did fix the mirror,” Eldora said. “Good as new. Though that dent is making some trouble for advancing the film. You’ll have to fiddle with it a bit. Here. We have lots of extra film. Take a few rolls, so you can keep snapping.”

  “But the pictures?” insisted Tugs.

  “Ah, yes, the pictures,” said Eldora.

  “Sissy loves the suspense, she does,” said Elmira. “Let’s put the poor child out of her misery. They’re still drying. Come on back.”

  “The first one is really very nice,” Eldora said, chattering on. “So much detail. So close up. Not at all blurry . . .”

  But Tugs did not hear her. She stopped in front of the first photograph and saw her own face staring back. There were her big teeth, protruding, her thin lips barely stretched into a quizzical smile. There was hair popping out in every direction, a fat strand blown across her face. But most of all what Tugs saw were her own eyes staring back at her. Her eyes looked clear and bright. Friendly. They made her face the face of someone she’d want to be friends with.

  “Hi,” she said to the picture, and then they all laughed.

  “She’s kind of cute, that one,” said Eldora, taking the photo from Tugs’s hand.

  But what about Harvey? She was sure her picture could prove he was really Dapper Jack Door.

  She hurried down the line. Aggie was blurred as she spun away. The Rowdies were fuzzy in movement, too.

  “Now, there’s the gent,” said Eldora, squeezing past Tugs to the last photo.

  Tugs studied the photograph. Harvey Moore was holding his hat, and his face was clear for viewing.

  “Let me see that again,” said Elmira. “Isn’t that Mr. Dashing?”

  “Indeed it is. What was his name again?”

  “He says it’s Harvey Moore,” said Tugs. “But I think he’s really a crook. Dapper Jack.”

  “Really?” gasped Eldora.

  “How exciting!” said Elmira.

  “But how do you know?” asked Eldora.

  “I found this article in the newspaper,” said Tugs. She pulled the folded paper out of her pocket.

  “Let’s go back out where it’s bright,” said Eldora.

  They laid the paper on the kitchen table near the window and studied it together.

  “He does resemble our gentleman,” said Elmira.

  “What about Daddy’s money?” said Eldora.

  “I think he is taking people’s money and he’s going to leave town.”

  “What about the Goodhue Progress?”

  “I don’t think there is going to be a newspaper,” said Tugs.

  “If there’s not going to be a newspaper, I don’t want to give him our money!”

  “No. You can’t give him your money,” said Tugs.

  “I’m going to ring the police,” said Eldora.

  “Wait,” said Tugs. “I want to be sure.”

  “What are we going to do when he comes to the house?” said Elmira.

  “What are we going to do?” repeated Eldora.

  “Don’t answer the door for Mr. Moore,” said Tugs. “I’ll figure out something.”

  Mrs. Dostal was arguing with Granny over the fence when Tugs got home. Tugs took advantage of their distraction and knocked at the Dostals’ door. Mr. Dostal answered wearing just his undershirt and pants and looking like he’d just woken up.

  “Yep?” he said.

  “Is Mr. Moore at home?”

>   “Nope,” said Mr. Dostal.

  Tugs sighed.

  “OK,” she said, and Mr. Dostal started to close the door.

  “Do you know when he’s going to be back?” she asked hopefully.

  “Nope.” Mr. Dostal started to close the door once more.

  “Wait!” said Tugs. Mr. Dostal opened the door again and raised his eyebrows.

  “Did he teach you to sail yet? Mrs. Dostal said he was going to teach you to sail.”

  “We don’t have a lake,” said Mr. Dostal. This time he left the door open but started to walk away.

  “Did he fix your Ford?”

  Mr. Dostal stopped, turned around, and came back to the door. He was looking a little more awake.

  “No, he hasn’t, now that you mention it. No, he has not. In fact, he hasn’t fixed the sink, either, like he said, or picked up the tab for groceries, or repaid the small loan I gave him to send back home to his ailing mother. Well, I’ll be jiggered.”

  “I was just wondering,” said Tugs, and she walked down the steps and across the lawn to her own house, waving to Mrs. Dostal and Granny as she went in the door.

  Her mother was waiting for her.

  “Look,” said Mother Button. “You got mail.” She held out a crisp white envelope embossed along the edge with a line drawing of a tree and lake entwined with an address in small type.

  Mail. Tugs had only gotten mail once before in her life when Aunt Fiona had sent her a postcard. Georgia was spelled out in fat letters across the front, and inside each one was a picture featuring some aspect of Georgia life, which, surprisingly, didn’t look so different from life in Iowa. On the back was a note Tugs still knew by heart.

  Dearest Niece,

  Peach pie, pecan pie, cotton plants, ocean. People of every sort. Home soon.

  Love, AF

  But this was an envelope, licked and sealed and stamped.

  Tugs looked it over front and back. There was her own name, hand-printed smartly on the front. She handed it back to her mother, who slid a knife under the flap, making a neat slice at the top.