The Great Unexpected

by Sharon Creech

  That was a dangerous question. I wanted her to fall down dead of a heart attack. I wanted the chickens to peck a hole in her head. I wanted her to zing off to her precious moon and stay there.

  “Lizzie, I’m awful tired. I’ve been at this all morning, and all I want to do is take a shower and a long nap.”

  “Naomi, you poor thing. I understand completely. You stop working right this minute. Don’t worry about me.”

  “I won’t, Lizzie. I won’t worry about you.”

  “Good!” As she started across the yard, chickens swarmed around her. “Shoo, shoo, go on now, you silly chickens. Shoo, shoo.” She turned to wave at me. “Maybe I’ll try to catch up with Finn boy! Bye, Naomi, bye-bye!”

  Oh. Yes, I would worry about Lizzie.

  CHAPTER 28

  DON’T GET TOO FRIENDLY

  Once when I was little, Joe found me cradling a chicken in my beloved, tattered blankie.

  “Naomi, don’t you get too friendly with that chicken.”

  “Why not?”

  “Not too friendly, not with chickens.”

  “Why?”

  “Because.”

  A couple months later, I was on the back screened porch one drizzly morning, trying to see over the windowsill into the yard. Joe came out of the barn, snatched up a chicken—Miss Buddy—by the neck, slammed her on the old tree trunk, lifted his hatchet, and chopped off her head. The headless Miss Buddy rolled off the stump and ran around the yard for several minutes before falling over.

  “Dinner!” he called out to Nula at the kitchen window.

  I guess you could say that left an impression on me.

  Somehow in my mind that scene got mixed up with the dog attack and blood and my arm and my father’s arm. One night I dreamed that the sheriff came to our house to arrest me and my father, and he took us over to the stump and told us to put our arms on it, and he chopped them off. Whack.

  I didn’t trust people or animals very easily. Except for Finn. I hadn’t known that boy one day before I had willingly given him a chunk of my young heart.

  As for Lizzie, I hadn’t trusted her when we first met, but she sort of wore me down. “Naomi, please will you sit with me? You’re the most clever girl I ever met. I wish I were half as clever as you” and “Naomi, I wish I could sit as still as you. You look as if you are watching a movie in your head. Are you? Tell me about it! Will you?” and “Naomi, how do you remember everyone’s name? How do you do that? Names jump in and out of my head like grasshoppers.”

  But after that morning in the barn with Finn, I started to wonder if maybe I shouldn’t be so friendly with Lizzie. What if she really wasn’t my friend?

  I took a shower and lay down on my bed and closed my eyes. My body felt heavy, as if it might sink into the mattress and into a deep, deep sleep. I could see Finn’s face coming closer and closer to mine.

  “Naomi?”

  “What? What?”

  “Easy, lass, it’s only me.” Nula stood at the foot of my bed.

  An enormous sigh escaped out into the air. I couldn’t help it.

  “What is it, Naomi?”

  “It’s that Finn boy.” Another sigh of great depth. “I feel as if I’m either going to die or sprout wings and flap around the yard.”

  Nula placed her fingertips against my forehead. “Why, lass, you’re heartsick, that’s what. You drink some hot tea with a dollop of honey in it, and then go out and run fast and hard.”

  “Sounds like the cure for an ailing donkey.”

  “Sometimes there’s not much difference between a heartsick soul and a sick ole donkey.” She tapped my foot. “Have you seen that Finn boy again?”

  “He was here this morning. In the barn.”

  “Was he? I heard Lizzie crashing through the yard, but I missed dreamy Finn boy. Shoot. I was hoping to get a look at him.”

  I ran across the meadow and down the hill. I ran alongside the creek, and with every step, I was thinking, Finn, Finn, Finn, Finn. Where the creek turned, I stopped. There he was: Finn. Maybe I could summon him just by thinking about him.

  “You looking for me?” he asked.

  I was panting like an old dog. I couldn’t speak.

  Finn walked toward me. He glided toward me. He floated toward me. I felt I would faint. I was hallucinating.

  “Naomi?”

  I collapsed in a heap on the bank. “Whoa. A little dizzy, that’s all.”

  Finn knelt beside me. His hand touched my cheek. It felt like silky air whispering across my face. “Naomi?”

  “Mm?”

  His lips touched my cheek, lightly, like the swish of a butterfly’s wing, and because I felt awkward and did not know how to respond, I lifted his hand and softly kissed his palm.

  The next morning, as I was on my way to meet Lizzie and Mrs. Mudkin to save some more unfortunate souls, I replayed my encounter with Finn. I wanted to remember everything so that I would be able to see it in my mind so perfectly, so accurately that it would be as if it were happening again.

  I had asked Finn to tell me where he was from and why he was here, but he said, “I’d rather hear about you. Tell me where you’re from and why you’re here and what you like and what you don’t, and—”

  “That’s not interesting to me.”

  “But it’s interesting to me.” He wasn’t shy about saying it. He said it casually, sincere but not mushy.

  We had moved up the bank and were sitting with our backs against a boulder. The creek was shiny with the afternoon sun overhead, shooting speckled arrows at us. Flickers of light and shadow played across Finn’s face.

  I truly did not want to talk about myself. Mine is not a story that can be repeated too often. Not only did it seem too heavy to drag out, but I felt as if I did not have all the pieces of it, that I would not be able to tell my story until I was an old lady.

  Finn asked about my parents. I told him—in the briefest and simplest way—about my mother dying when I was a baby, and about my father and the dog and all that.

  “That’s tragic,” he said. “Is that why your arm is like that?”

  I stiffened. “Like what?”

  “Like it got hurt real bad.”

  I never talked about my arm, unless I had to defend it against the likes of Bo Dimmens and his idiot insults. Most other people around here knew what happened to me and they knew my right arm got torn up pretty bad, but they didn’t point it out to me. Maybe that arm would never be strong and would never grow straight like the other one, but that didn’t seem too bad in the scheme of things.

  CHAPTER 29

  RELUCTANT SOULS

  I was dreading the encounter with the next two unfortunate souls because they were Witch Wiggins and Crazy Cora, but I was also curious about them. How scary could they really be? What would their houses look like? Did Witch Wiggins truly have coffins and a thousand birds? Finn had been there. Maybe Witch Wiggins would tell me something about Finn.

  I had similar mixed feelings about seeing Lizzie again. I was annoyed with her, mad at her, but I also wanted to know if she had seen Finn. I wanted to tell her about my encounter with him so that she would understand that he was my Finn, mine. It sounds silly now to say that, but that’s the way it was.

  An orange scarf was wrapped around Lizzie’s neck. “Naomi,” she rasped, “I have the worst sore throat. I almost have laryngitis.”

  Shoot. She wouldn’t be able to yammer at me all day long.

  Mrs. Mudkin insisted that Lizzie go home. “You mustn’t be exposing these elderly unfortunate souls to your germs. Off with you now. Go, go—”

  I tried to protest. Worse than Lizzie yammering at me all day long would be me on my own with Mrs. Mudkin and the unfortunate souls.

  Lizzie waved a weak good-bye, her other hand clutching her throat in a gesture of dire agony.

  “Come along,” Mrs. Mudkin urged, tugging at my wrist. “Unfortunate souls awaiting.”

  We stood a long time on Witch Wiggins’s porch, alterna
tely knocking and calling out her name, not Witch Wiggins, of course, but Mrs. Wiggins. From within came a low, whirring sound as of a thousand, thousand birds flapping their wings. Finally, a loud click and a thud and the door inched open and one eyeball appeared above the chain which still held the door fastened.

  When Mrs. Mudkin explained our mission, Witch Wiggins replied with one word. “No.”

  “‘No’?” Mrs. Mudkin said. “‘No’ what?”

  “No, I’m not here and I don’t want any and I don’t need any.”

  Mrs. Mudkin smiled. “Now, now, surely the company of this—this—young lady will be a welcome pleasure in your day.” Mrs. Mudkin beamed at me and then turned again to the eye at the door frame.

  “I’m in the middle of something,” Witch Wiggins said, closing the door and relatching three locks from the inside.

  “Well!” Mrs. Mudkin said. “The manners of some people! Even if one is unfortunate and elderly it does not excuse one from common courtesy.” Abruptly, she turned and again yanked me by the wrist. “We will try her next week. We will not be daunted. This way, Raynee—”

  “Naomi. Nay-OH-me.”

  “Raomi.”

  “NAY. NAY. Like a horse: neigh, neigh, neigh.”

  “Shh, child, don’t be so silly.”

  When we reached Crazy Cora’s house, we encountered an unshaven man in overalls sitting on the porch steps. Across his knees lay a rifle.

  “Don’t think you should come up no closer,” he said.

  We stopped in our tracks.

  “I beg your pardon?” Mrs. Mudkin said in her sweetest voice.

  “Maw don’t want no trespassers.”

  “Is Cora your maw—your mother—young man?”

  He wasn’t a young man by any means, but he was younger than Mrs. Mudkin. “What’s it to you?”

  “Young man, I am Mrs. Mudkin from the Ladies Society at the church, and I am here with this young lady, Raomi, to assist your mother.”

  “She knows you were coming and she said to tell you she don’t need no assistance.”

  Mrs. Mudkin rearranged her hat so that two feathers stuck out straight from the right side of her head. “Young man, I think I would prefer to hear that directly from Cora.”

  The man turned his head toward the house and bellowed, “MAW! THIS HERE LADY WANTS TO HEAR IT FROM YOU DIRE-ECK-LY.”

  A face appeared at an upstairs window: a white face surrounded by a tangle of white hair. The voice of Crazy Cora drifted down.

  “I don’t need no assistance. I am taking a nap.”

  The face withdrew from the window. The man smiled at us.

  “See?” he said. “I told ya.”

  I hate to admit it, but I was happy that Crazy Cora and Witch Wiggins did not require my help that day. I raced home feeling as if I’d been given a gift: a free day. A free day always felt better when you hadn’t expected it to be free. Free!

  I planned to let Nula know I’d been set free and then I’d roam. I’d wander here and there, free of Lizzie, and hoping to bump into Finn, my Finn.

  As I rounded the final curve leading to our house, I saw a lump up ahead at the side of the road. At first it looked like a sack of garbage, but the closer I got, the less it looked like garbage and the more it looked like a person. Every now and then, but not too often, you might run into a drunk lying alongside the road. Normally, you steered clear of them, but this one was lying between me and our gate.

  And then I saw that it was not a drunk. It was Joe. I lurched toward him and then stopped. There was blood near his head and his right arm. I started screaming like a crazy person, screaming a sound I had never heard come out of my mouth before, wailing and yelping and calling for help. I found out later that I was also screaming, “Dog, dog! A dog has gotten Joe! Help! A dog!”

  Nula came rushing from the house carrying a broom, looking wildly around for this dog. Then she saw Joe. She was at his side, her face down low next to his.

  “Naomi, stop screaming. There’s no dog. Run get help. Run like you’ve never run before.”

  I did. I ran like I’d never run before, and that was the first time since I’d met Finn that I did not think of him, not once.

  CHAPTER 30

  ACROSS THE OCEAN: ANOTHER CALL

  MRS. KAVANAGH

  Across the ocean, it was a chilly July afternoon, but all the windows were open, at the request of Mrs. Kavanagh.

  “Fresh air, clean air, new air!” she commanded. “Let’s pull down those heavy curtains, Pilpenny. Full of dust, don’t you think?” From her wheelchair, Mrs Kavanagh tugged at a thick, brocaded curtain.

  Pilpenny said, “It’s easy enough for you to say ‘Let’s’ as if you mean ‘Let us’—the two of us—do the work, but you really mean me, don’t you, Sybil, mm? Let ole Pilpenny do all the work. Pilpenny the slave!”

  “Now, Pilpenny, tuh! You silly hen. Don’t throw a wobbly. Listen—there’s the phone. See who’s ringing us up, won’t you, Pilpenny, sweet?”

  “Sweet slave. Sometimes I’m sorry Mr. Dingle introduced us.” Pilpenny tapped the top of Mrs. Kavanagh’s head and scuttled off to the hall. When she returned, she said, “Sybil, it’s the Dingle man.”

  “What does he want?”

  “You’d best come to the phone.” Pilpenny wheeled Mrs. Kavanagh into the hall and stood discreetly to one side as Mrs. Kavanagh took the phone.

  “Dingle?” she said. “Again so soon? What is it? Eh? Say again? My, my, my. Yes, I see. Yes, please do. My, my.”

  After ending her call, Mrs. Kavanagh turned to Pilpenny. “This does put a wrinkle in things, doesn’t it?”

  CHAPTER 31

  WRINKLES

  The next week was a fog of days and nights, dripping with muffled weeping and visitors coming and going, and the same questions asked and answered:

  “A heart attack, was it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Yes.”

  “No warning?”

  “No.”

  The first time Nula was asked whether Joe had had any warning, she hesitated. The only thing out of the ordinary that morning had been his saying his hand itched. He’d held out his hand, palm up, and said, “Itches like crazy. What’s that mean?”

  Nula said, “It means company’s coming.”

  “Shoot,” Joe said. “Don’t want no company!”

  All week long, similar phrases salted the air:

  “At least he went quickly.”

  “He was a good man.”

  “He’ll be in heaven now.”

  “He was a nice man.”

  “He was an honest fellow.”

  And there were the odd recollections, offered in earnest:

  “Once’t he saved my donkey, didja know that?”

  “We caught frogs together when we was kids.”

  “Once’t he was sweet on my cousin Irene.”

  “Once’t he stole a watermelon. His daddy whupped him for it.”

  When people asked Nula, “What will you do now?” she looked back at them blankly, as if they had said, “Are you a rhinoceros?”

  On the day of the funeral, I found her standing in the dining room, tugging at the tablecloth. She was more agitated than I’d ever seen her. She pounded on the table, tugged at the cloth.

  “This … this … tablecloth! Look at it—full of … of … wrinkles!” She slumped into a nearby chair and sobbed as if her heart were splattering into a zillion pieces.

  I leaned my head against her back and spoke into that splattered heart. “It’s okay, Nula. I’ll iron it. I’ll get rid of the wrinkles.”

  Outside, a man stood near the front gate, turning his hat in his hand, as if debating whether or not to approach our door. It was that Dingle Dangle man. He was gone by the time we left for the church.

  I think Nula was surprised that I made it through the funeral, given that I’d spent the first twenty-four hours after Joe died in a stupor: unable to eat or sleep or move. The
doctor later said my mind must have connected seeing Joe lying there—bleeding from cuts to his head and arm from when he fell—with the old memories of the dog attack and seeing my father lying on the grass, bloodied.

  During those hours, I felt as if I’d twice lost a father—one young and one old. Something had shifted profoundly, as if a mountain had risen where flat earth had been, as if the blue sky had fallen away like a curtain, revealing a somber, gray, domed lid.

  But within a few days, there was another shift. I could hear Joe’s voice; I could see him in my mind’s eye—in the barn, in the fields, in the kitchen; I could sense him nearby. Not only could I hear him, see him, and sense him, but it seemed perfectly natural that this was so. I soon learned, though, that not everyone shared this vision.

  After the funeral service, the parlor and the dining room were crowded with townspeople and with food brought by the church ladies. I thought I would scream from hearing the same things over and over, about how sorry everyone was and yet what a “blessing” it was that Joe had gone quickly. I knew they meant well, but I wanted to stand on the table and shout, “Shut UP. Stop it! He’s not gone. Go home.”

  And then there was Lizzie. She had come to the house several times in the days before the funeral, but each time I’d been in bed and didn’t want to see her. But now I was trapped in a chair in the corner.

  Her face crumpled when she spotted me and tears dribbled down her cheeks.

  “Naomi, Naomi, baby, you poor thing, you poor little thing.”

  I do not know what came over me. I pushed at her and said, “I’m not a baby. I’m not a poor little thing, Lizzie.” I couldn’t bear that she was going to start saying Joe was gone.

  She sniffled, taken aback. “Naomi?”

  I glanced around the room. “Where’s Finn? I thought surely you and he would be hanging out together by now.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I don’t know how the funeral and jealousy were related, but that day the two were joined at the hip. “You know what I’m talking about, Lizzie. Don’t act so innocent. You’ve been after Finn since the first day you met him.”