by Richard Peck
“What happened to the old cat?” I asked, meaning the jumping tom.
“Got in front of the Cannonball,” Grandma said briefly.
She was sitting to tug her gum boots on now, and she was already wearing men’s pants under apron and dress.
“Grandma, are we going out to see Aunt Puss Chapman?” I said, trying to see a little bit ahead.
“We’re going farther out in the sticks than that,” she said, grunting.
“What for?”
“To see if an old feller name of Uncle Grady Griswold’s still living. And his wife, Aunt Mae.”
By now I knew that not everybody around here called “Uncle” or “Aunt” was necessarily your uncle or aunt. “Why do we want to know?”
“Because if he’s alive, Uncle Grady’d be a hundred and three years old.”
The sun had already begun to punish us by the time we’d crossed the bridge over Salt Creek. I was carrying the hamper, and mews came from within. Grandma had forgotten to drown the kitten. We walked a long way over roads we’d skimmed in the Terraplane 8. Mary Alice wasn’t with us. She was elsewhere. Mary Alice was up to something.
By noon we were nearly out of the county. We’d crossed Route 36. But Grandma trudged on. We ate our lunch in a pasture. The kitten climbed out and fed from our hands. Then she stalked around in the weeds, teaching herself to jump at butterflies. When it was time to go, she climbed back into the hamper. We cut across the fields from there, to a little house at the end of a faint lane.
Somebody still lived there. Chickens were in the brooder house, and the garden was in and weeded. Hollyhocks stood guard along the fence. Grandma pushed open the front door.
It was a parlor from some other time, with faded love knots in the wallpaper. Beside a cold stove sat an old lady. On the other side in a rocker sat the oldest man on earth, in a stocking cap.
Grandma sighed with satisfaction to see them both breathing. Aunt Mae Griswold grinned at Grandma. Both her teeth gleamed in the gloom of the room.
“How you been, Aunt Mae?”
“Oh yes,” Aunt Mae agreed. “Very warm for the time of year.” She wore gardening gloves and a variety of shawls.
“How are your feet?” Grandma thundered at her. “Are they still swelling on you?”
“Not bad,” Aunt Mae said. “They’re still pretty good layers. We get eight or ten dozen eggs off them every day and sell what we don’t eat to the Cowgills.”
Grandma turned to Uncle Grady.
“Speak right up to him,” Aunt Mae called out. “He’s a little hard of hearing.”
Uncle Grady Griswold was almost as small as he was old. The pom-pom on his stocking cap hung far down his humped shoulder. He was so old he’d have made Aunt Puss Chapman look like a young girl at her first party. He gazed uninterested up at Grandma.
“How you been, Uncle Grady?” she said, speaking up.
“Fair to piddling,” he said weakly.
Grandma lifted the kitten out of the hamper by the scruff of its neck. “I brought you a mouser.”
Uncle Grady blinked at the hanging kitten and seemed to rally. “Put her right here,” he said, and Grandma lowered the kitten into his bony lap, where she offered her head for petting.
“Do you get up and around, Uncle Grady?”
“Oh yes,” he said in a stronger voice. “I wrung the neck off a chicken this morning before daylight.”
“Did you have chicken for your dinner?”
“No.” He shook his head. “She got away.”
“Ah,” Grandma said. “Listen, Uncle Grady. Do you still have your old army uniform?”
He started, and the kitten looked up in alarm. He waved two small, shriveled fists. “Has war been declared?” He’d have jumped out of his chair, ready to enlist, but Grandma put a hand on him.
“Nothin’ like that,” she said.
“Well, I’m ready,” he piped up. “I’m cocked and primed. My full kit’s in the bedroom there.” He pointed a crooked finger. “We sleep downstairs now because Mae can’t climb steps. She’s getting on in years.”
Grandma nodded me toward the bedroom. “Don’t forget my sword!” Uncle Grady called after me, seeming not to wonder who I was. Aunt Mae looked on, interested.
I found his full kit: uniform, sword, boots and spurs, and a cap. They didn’t smell very good, and they didn’t look right to me.
“Grandma,” I muttered, holding up the small coat. “There’s something funny about this uniform.” The only Civil War uniform I’d ever seen up close was on Mrs. L. J. Weidenbach’s daddy. “Was Uncle Grady on our side?”
“Of course he was on our side,” she said. “But he goes back before the Civil War. He was in the Mexican War.”
“They winged me at the battle of Cerro Gordo,” Uncle Grady offered.
I stared. We’d covered the Mexican War in school that year. “Grandma, the Mexican War started almost ninety years ago. Even if Uncle Grady is a hundred and three, he’d only have been about my age during that war.”
“Well, maybe he was a little drummer boy,” Grandma suggested.
“Rum-tum-tum,” Uncle Grady said, playing an imaginary drum with invisible drumsticks.
Grandma turned to the other rocker. “Can I borrow Uncle Grady for the day on Saturday, Aunt Mae?” she howled.
“You sure can, honey,” Aunt Mae said. “In fact, you can keep him!” She’d heard every word and grinned broadly.
On the first day of the Centennial Celebration the town began to fill up with merrymakers and the curious. People came in farm wagons and Fords from as far away as Bement and Tuscola. Grandma closed all her windows because the dust from the road never settled.
People came for the events, the tree-topping and chicken-plucking competitions, and the chili cook-off. They marveled at the flower show put on by the ladies of the United Brethren Church and the mother-daughter look-alike contest, the spelling bee, the Illinois Power and Light Company’s display on rural electrification, and the three-legged race.
I hadn’t seen hide nor hoof mark of Mary Alice all day. That evening Grandma and I had a quiet supper at the kitchen table, under the ceiling light and the flypaper strips. This was the night of the talent show. I knew we were going, even after she poured a second cup of coffee and stifled a yawn like she was thinking of bed.
“Well, I guess you’ll want to look in on the show,” she remarked.
But I was fifteen now, and wise to her. I stifled a yawn. “Doesn’t matter to me.”
“We don’t have to stay to the end.” She was on her feet now, making short work of the dishes.
The stage was the bandstand in the park, lit with headlights running off car batteries. We chose a back bench because nobody wanted to sit behind Grandma. And we could see everybody from here. The audience was mostly town people because the farmers had all gone home to do their chores. But there was a good turnout. Mr. and Mrs. L. J. Weidenbach were up in the front row.
On a table by the bandstand waited the loving cup for first prize and the scrolls for second, third, and honorable mention. Just as the crowd was getting restless, the first act began, a man playing a musical saw. Grandma sat through that with both hands clamped on her knees. Afterward she remarked that it had been “more saw than music.”
Then we had a barbershop quartet. Though they called themselves “The Sons of the Prairie Pioneers” and all wore beards, they were Mr. Earl T. Askew and three more of the sheriff’s deputies. Practice had improved them some, and they didn’t sing “The Night That Paddy Murphy Died” in mixed company. They did a medley that included “Just a Song at Twilight” and after a round of applause, came back for “Sweet Adeline.”
Grandma wasn’t about to clap for deputies. She began to fidget.
The vocal part of the program continued with the choir from Mrs. Effie Wilcox’s church. They did “Sweet Hour of Prayer,” “The Old Rugged Cross,” and “I Come to the Garden Alone While the Dew Is Still on the Roses.” These got no respons
e from United Brethren members. But the choir returned for an encore anyway, with tambourines, to sing:
Swing low, sweet Chariot,
And scoop me from the mire;
Take me up to Glory,
Snatched from Eternal Fire.
If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought Grandma was ready to leave. She was fidgeting all over the bench. Then a boy clumped on the stage. He was about fifth grade or an overgrown fourth. His hair was parted in the middle, and he’d painted artificial freckles all over his moon face. His costume was high-topped shoes and old-time britches held up by one suspender. “That’s my nephew, everybody!” Mrs. L. J. Weidenbach called out from the front row.
He cleared his throat and began to recite:
Ain’t I glad I ain’t a girl,
Hands to wash and hair to curl,
Skirts a-flappin’ round my knees,
Ain’t I glad that that ain’t me?
The boy planted his fists on his pudgy hips and looked out over the audience.
Grandpa says it’s just a chance
that I got to wearin’ pants,
Says that when a kid is small,
They puts dresses on ’em all.
They that kicks and makes a noise
Gets promoted into boys.
Them that sits and twists their curls,
They just leaves them, calls them “girls.”
He took his bow to a spatter of applause that grew. All of Mrs. Weidenbach’s friends stood to clap, and they were joined by everybody who owed the bank money. The boy kept bowing.
“That made me about half-sick,” Grandma remarked.
At this point we could have used an intermission. But Mrs. Merle Stubbs of the Ladies’ Committee mounted the stage, carrying a portable Victrola. She threw wide its doors and wound it.
“Crank it up, Lula,” somebody called out, and the crowd tittered. Mrs. Stubbs dropped a record on the turntable and withdrew. They’d have dimmed the lights now, but the car batteries were weakening anyway. Music from a full orchestra welled out of the Victrola. It was a waltz, “When I Grow Too Old to Dream, I’ll Have You to Remember.”
From nowhere a couple glided onto the bandstand stage. He was tall, dark, and handsome, and seemed to be wearing a tuxedo. In his big hands he held a girl. The vision of a girl. Headlights caught the glimmer of her white gown as he twirled her in easy circles. Her graceful hand held up her flowing skirts.
The crowd caught its breath. It was like a movie coming to life. The seed pearls on the girl’s dress flashed pale fire. I looked again, and behind the careful makeup, below the swooped-up hair—it was Mary Alice. As she turned in the waltz, a bustle came into view.
I nudged Grandma hard. But she was completely caught up in the sight of Mary Alice sweeping around the stage in Grandma’s own wedding gown.
But who was her partner? He was dipping her almost to the floor now, though you couldn’t tell who was leading who. I squinted and saw it was Ray Veech.
Ray Veech, of Veech’s Gas and Oil, and wearing Grandpa Dowdel’s wedding suit with the cuffs let all the way down. Ray Veech, a man’s man, who spent his life under cars with grease up to his elbows. Ray Veech and Mary Alice. My world tilted.
Now the waltz was winding down. Ray and Mary Alice came out even with it. Still clinging to one of his big hands, she collapsed to the floor in an elegant curtsey. Her skirts fanned out in every direction.
After a moment of stunned silence the crowd was on its feet. They were getting up on their benches and clapping over their heads in applause like summer thunder.
Grandma stood. Patting her back hair in a satisfied way, she said, “We don’t need to stay to the end.”
We were up way before daybreak on Saturday. While the dew was still on the roses, the road outside Grandma’s house was thronged with people coming in from as far away now as Argenta and Farmer City for the parade. But we were working right up to the last minute on our float.
At the stroke of eleven the parade stepped off with the high-school bands of the three nearest towns with high schools. Next in the order of procession were five tractor-drawn hayframes jammed with members of the Piatt County Democratic Party. They were followed by Mr. L. J. Weidenbach in a decorated Hupmobile carrying all four Republicans.
The Odd Fellows’ drum and bugle corps followed. On their heels, mounted, trotted the Anti-Horse-Thief Society members done up as old-time bounty hunters in big hats and drooping mustaches.
Then came the first float. Mrs. L. J. Weidenbach had outdone herself, aided by a club she belonged to, the Order of the Eastern Star. Their float was a flatbed International Harvester truck banked in flowers. In a kitchen chair sat Mrs. Weidenbach’s old daddy in full Civil War blue and his decoration from the Grand Army of the Republic. He seemed to have no idea where he was. Surrounding him on the flatbed were Eastern Star ladies garbed in Grecian drapings. Mrs. L. J. Weidenbach was there too, in a vast hoopskirt, holding her daddy upright.
Above him a sign, roped in rambler roses, read:
OLDEST SETTLER IN THE COMMUNITY
BORN 1845
DECORATED VETERAN OF THE CIVIL WAR
By rights, this float should have been followed by a marching platoon from the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union carrying their sign:
STRONG DRINK IS A MOCKER
But somehow, our float cut in. It was another hayframe, this one from Cowgills’ Dairy Farm. Flanking it on foot were the Cowgill brothers, who had all grown up to be good Christian men, except for Ernie, who was in jail. The horse that pulled our hayframe was the one that usually pulled the Cowgills’ milk wagon. It had its work cut out for it because there was a lot happening on our float.
At the front was a sweating yellow mound that had been a cow carved out of butter before the sun got to it. Nearby stood Mary Alice in her ball gown, bowing to the crowd and holding up the loving cup for first prize in the talent show. I rode up there with her, wearing Grandpa Dowdel’s wedding suit because Ray wouldn’t ride on a float. Behind us sat Mrs. Effie Wilcox on a three-legged stool. She was demonstrating the use of a pioneer butter churn, and her eyes roamed all over the crowds beside the street.
At the back of the float was a throne, though it was only the platform rocker from Grandma’s front room. On a pile of pillows to give him stature sat Uncle Grady Griswold in full uniform. The sun sparkled off the tip of the sword he held aloft. He could no more raise a beard than I could, so he looked like a beaming boy.
To lend him support, Grandma stood beside him, her feet planted wide. She was another Grandma, one we’d never seen before. Her costume was an enormous and complicated old-fashioned gown made out of cut-velvet and fringe. Its bustle overhung the rear of the hayframe, and the front of it scooped breathtakingly low on her bosom. She’d topped herself with Idella Eubanks’s sunbonnet. Loose in her hand hung Grandpa Dowdel’s twelve-gauge Winchester. After all, it was an antique.
Above them hung a sign, a sheet stretched between clothesline poles. It had taken me half the night to letter it:
UNCLE GRADY GRISWOLD
BORN 1832
AND WINGED IN THE MEXICAN WAR
BY FAR THE OLDEST SETTLER IN THE COMMUNITY
Just the sight of Grandma herself silenced the crowds. But by the time we were trundling past The Coffee Pot Cafe and Uncle Grady was brandishing his sword, the applause began.
Into Mary Alice’s ear I muttered, “But why Ray Veech?”
“I saw possibilities in him,” she said coolly, showing off her loving cup to the crowds.
“I didn’t know he could dance.”
“Dance?” Mary Alice sniffed. “He can barely walk. What do you think I’ve been doing all week? I’ve been giving him ballroom dancing lessons. And the big clodhopper tramped all over my feet. I’m crippled for life.”
The route of the parade crossed the Wabash tracks at the depot, to give the other side of town a look. But the Blue Bird train pulled in from Chicago, right on schedule. It block
ed the way and separated the parade just ahead of the Weidenbach float, which drew up short.
The Cowgills’ overworked old horse dragging our hayframe didn’t notice. It clopped on and ran into Mrs. Weidenbach’s float. We bumped. I reached for Mary Alice to keep her from tangling in her skirts and pitching off the float. Mrs. Wilcox teetered on her stool.
Of course Mrs. Weidenbach knew we were right behind her, crabbing her act with an older settler than her daddy. And her reciting nephew had finished out of the money at the talent show, so she was already upset and off her feed with us.
But now her old daddy turned around and looked back. He may not have known where he was, but there was nothing wrong with his eyesight. He read our sign over Uncle Grady, and his old pink eyes narrowed. He spoke sharply to his daughter, who laid a restraining hand on him.
Then it all happened quick. Mrs. Weidenbach’s daddy slipped free of her, leaped out of his kitchen chair, and jumped off their float. He cocked his forage cap at a dangerous angle and stalked back to our hayframe.
Glaring up at Uncle Grady, he howled, “You yellow-bellied old buzzard, if you’d fought in the Mexican War, we’d have lost!”
Seeming to consider this, Uncle Grady gazed down. Then he hollered, “Them’s fighting words, and I declare war!” Before Grandma could stop him, he charged off his throne, balanced a moment on the edge of our float, and threw himself into space. He lit on Mrs. Weidenbach’s daddy, and they both rolled in the street, locked in combat. Their medals and weaponry clanged like wild bells ringing out.
“Don’t use the sword, Uncle Grady!” Grandma cried.
By now the Wabash Blue Bird should have pulled out. But all the passengers were at the windows, staring at this spectacle. Two of the oldest men alive were brawling in the street, tangled up in each other and Uncle Grady’s sword, their small fists throwing punches. Now they were so covered in dust and droppings, you couldn’t tell one uniform from the other. In the distance from the other side of town the last of the high-school bands blared “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”
