The Truth According to Us

by Annie Barrows

  Jottie was poking at her hat in the hall mirror. “Into the car with you,” she said.

  Bird and I bounced out to Jottie’s car. We settled ourselves in the backseat and rolled the windows all the way down, even though it wasn’t real hot yet. Jottie glanced back at us over her shoulder. “Just roll them up when we get to Sam’s.”

  “Oh Lord,” groaned Mae. “Can’t you drop me off first?”

  “No, ma’am, I cannot,” said Jottie firmly. “It’ll only take a minute.”

  Mae moaned again. Sam Spurling lived on our north farm. His brother Wren ran north farm and big farm, too. There were hundreds of Spurlings around Macedonia, so you always had to make clear which one you were talking about by saying the Up-the-River Spurlings or the Sideling-Hill Spurlings or the Winchester-Avenue Spurlings (those were the fancy ones). There were a whole set of them called the B&O Spurlings (we tormented the life out of those children). But everyone knew Sam Spurling without any other words attached. He lived in a little falling-down house—more like a shack—with a million cats. Jottie said they were all descended from two cats he got to clear rats out of my grandfather’s barn in 1918.

  The cats had been multiplying ever since. Once, when she was in a snit about my education, Jottie set me the problem of figuring out how many cats Sam had. Four kittens to each cat, with each cat having one set a year. I got up to 1923 and a thousand and something, and then I went and hid under the house. Later on, while I sat on the sofa not having cake in punishment, Bird said, “Oh, that’s easy. Let me just think for a minute…” She rolled her eyes up in her head and twirled her spoon and said, “…carry the two makes seven, he’s got seven thousand six hundred and forty-eight cats.” All the grown-ups gave puffs of admiration. It was years before Bird admitted she made that number up.

  We rolled the windows up as soon as we turned off the main road, but it didn’t do any good. The smell came through the bottom of the car. Jottie set the brake, took a deep breath, and climbed out with a box in her hand. Bird scooped up the bag Jottie’d given us, and then we filled our cheeks with air and ran to the apple tree that crouched over on one side of the yard. A flood of cats came yowling and creeping and scraping after us. They were almost all of them scrawny and mangy and mean from hunger, but they pretended they liked us, until we set down their scraps. Then they stopped winding between our ankles and lunged for it. I always tried to hold some aside for the littlest, weakest ones, the kittens just tottering along.

  The cats turned Jottie’s stomach. She said they smelled. But what really smelled was Sam’s house. I don’t know how Jottie managed to stand on the front porch and knock on the door. You can plug your nose from the inside, but not while you’re talking.

  “Sam! It’s Jottie. I got some applesauce and some meat loaf out here for you, but you got to come out and get it or the cats’ll be in it.”

  I couldn’t hear what he said.

  “Sure you can, Sam. Come on. I don’t care. I won’t even look. I just don’t want the cats eating my good meat loaf.”

  He said something else.

  “I’m not even looking. I’m standing here with my eyes closed. Come on, now, Sam.”

  The door opened a crack, but it was dark in there. He wasn’t on the electricity.

  “There you go, now,” said Jottie, handing him a bundle. “Anything else you need? Want me to bring some milk down from the big farm? Or eggs?”

  Mumble.

  “You sure?”

  Mumble.

  “You’re welcome.”

  Jottie picked her way through cats and muck back to the car, where Mae was scrunched down with a handkerchief over her nose. Jottie looked at us, thronged with cats, and shuddered. “Come on back, girls, before the fleas eat you alive.”

  We piled into the car. I turned to look at Sam’s falling-down house as we drove away. There was a cat walking along the swayed back of the roof. I leaned over the front seat. “Why does he live like that?”

  “Sam?” Mae removed the handkerchief from her nose. “I guess he likes it that way.”

  It was a silly answer, the kind you’d give a child, and I was beyond it. “Why?” I asked. “Why would he like all those cats around?” I turned to Jottie. She could be relied upon.

  She smiled at me, quick and understanding. “He never cared much for people,” she explained. “He couldn’t talk—remember, Mae, how he stuttered so bad it sounded like he was choking?”

  “I guess that’s right,” Mae said.

  “He could talk fine if there was no one around,” Jottie added.

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “I heard him once,” she said. “When he didn’t know I was there.”

  “What does he look like?” I’d never seen all of him, only his hands and his leg once, when he’d stuck it out the door so Jottie could pour some peroxide on it.

  “He looks like a cat,” Mae said, giggling.

  Jottie laughed. “You know, he does! He doesn’t shave, so his hair’s grown over most of his face. Might have a tail, for all I know.”

  “That’s a sight I can live without, Sam Spurling’s tail,” Mae mumbled.

  Bird meowed, and we all laughed, but I wondered. I wondered if something had happened to Sam to make him the way he was or if he had grown that way without noticing. If a person could grow to be like Sam without noticing, there was a chance that I was just as strange and hadn’t noticed it. What was I like? I wondered. Did most girls my age feel the way I did, as if the people I thought I knew had turned out to have a thousand little tunnels leading away from the face they showed the world? Was this something everyone else had already grasped? The buried parts, now, they were fascinating but ominous, too. And I thought, Maybe that’s why Sam Spurling decided to live with a million cats. Maybe a million cats were easier to understand than one or two people.

  —

  The next stop was Waldon’s farm. It was a nice place, his farm, but Mae didn’t reckon herself for a farmer’s wife, and after she married Waldon, she kept trying to name it something pretty, something that didn’t sound like a farm. She called it Liondel for a while, and then she changed it to Willowdeen Hall. She put that one on a sign, but Waldon took it down. The summer of Layla Beck, she was calling it Hampshire Downs, but no one else called it that.

  My uncle Waldon was on the porch when we came up the drive. Bird and I loved Waldon. He was the kindest man who ever drew breath, the only grown-up who never, even under the most dire provocation, lost his temper with me and Bird. He was long and narrow, and his face was long and narrow, with a white band at the top where his hat kept the sun out. When he wasn’t smiling, he looked real serious, but just let him catch one glimpse of Mae and he’d start smiling.

  “I have to make myself comfortable,” I yelled over the seat. That’s what Jottie liked us to say when we had to go to the bathroom.

  “Me too; I’m about to burst,” Bird said at once.

  We saw Jottie’s eyes narrow in the mirror.

  “I do,” Bird said. We all knew she was lying. She just wanted to talk to Waldon. She talked his ear off every chance she got. When she was a little girl, she’d stowed away in his laundry hamper because she loved him so much, but then she’d wrecked it by calling his name. She’d wanted him to find her.

  “You can just wait until big farm, missy,” Mae said to her.

  “I’m going to wet my pants,” Bird said.

  “Not if you know what’s good for you, you’re not,” Jottie warned. She pulled up in front of Waldon’s steps, and Mae and I hopped out.

  “How-you, Waldon?” Jottie called from the front seat.

  “Just fine, Jottie,” said Waldon. “Right as rain. How-you?” He caught hold of Mae’s arm and held it tight.

  “Oh, fine. Did you go up to Martinsburg this week?”

  “A-yup, on Wednesday. Saw Wren.”

  “Willa’s got to go inside for a second,” Mae broke in. “I’ll just go with her.”

  She pic
ked up her little suitcase and we went inside Waldon’s house. It was cool in there, and Mae had put a dish of tiny soaps in the bathroom to make it smell nice. After I did my business, I picked up each soap and gave it a sniff. There was a rose one and a violet one and one that smelled like grapes. I used regular soap to wash my hands.

  When I came out, the house was quiet. “Well, bye,” I called, but no one answered. I walked down the hall to the kitchen. “Bye.”

  There they were, Waldon and Mae, and I saw why they hadn’t answered me. They were busy kissing, hard. They didn’t even know I was there. Waldon picked up Mae and set her on the counter, and she wrapped her legs tight around him, all while they were still kissing. I had never seen anything like it before. I watched and then I couldn’t stop watching, even though I wanted to run away, too. Then Waldon made a sound, and I got scared they’d notice me and I tiptoed backward into the hall and went around through the parlor.

  I flopped into the backseat of the car, and Bird said, “What happened to you?”

  “Nothing,” I mumbled.

  “Why’re you all red?”

  I looked up and saw Jottie’s eyes in the mirror again, looking at me kind of curious. I wondered if she knew what was going on in the kitchen. Before, when I’d heard about the things that grown-ups did, I’d thought it sounded terrible and embarrassing. But Mae hadn’t minded. She’d been part of it. She’d wanted to. Maybe it wasn’t like what I thought. Still, I felt funny. I turned to Bird. “I’m hot,” I said. “Ain’t you ever been hot?”

  —

  Up at the big farm, Jottie shooed us away. “I got to talk business with Wren,” she said. “Don’t chase the chickens.” Bird and I rolled our eyes at each other. We didn’t chase chickens anymore, ever since we found out that it killed them.

  “Let’s go jump in some hay,” Bird said.

  I thought about hay and sweat stuck together. “No,” I said.

  “You want to scratch the pigs?”

  “No. They smell,” I said.

  “Well, ain’t you just a lady,” said Bird. “You smell, too, you know. Probably to a pig, you smell like you-know-what.”

  I stuck my tongue out at her and then, to show that I was above it all, I went to sit on the fence. I thought about Mae and Waldon kissing until I was so nervous I almost fell off the fence, and then I watched Jottie talking to Wren. Her hands were cutting the air, one, two, three. Had Jottie ever kissed anyone? Had she kissed Vause Hamilton, so long ago? She must have kissed somebody, sometime. Or maybe not. How common was it? Wren listened to Jottie and nodded and turned his hat in his hands. After a while, Bird forgave me and climbed up beside me. We called the cows, and they galumphed over, drooling, and stared at us.

  “That was boring,” said Bird, when we were back in the car. “This whole morning has been boring.”

  Jottie laughed and jiggled the steering wheel, and the car careened to the other side of the highway while Bird and I screamed.

  15

  Emmett was sitting on the front porch when we opened the screen door. “Why, Emmett! Honey!” Jottie cried. “You never said you were coming!”

  He smiled at her. “I didn’t know I was until about an hour ago.”

  “Stand up and let me look at you.”

  Emmett stood. He was so tall that Jottie had to reach up to pat his shirt. It was a funny thing Jottie did when she saw him, patting his shirt. I think she wanted to hug him, but she was afraid he wouldn’t like it. Now she frowned at him. “You’re looking mighty thin, honey.”

  “So’re you.”

  “Puh. You eating enough?”

  “I eat plenty.” He winked at me over Jottie’s shoulder, and I relaxed all over. I’d been pretty sure Emmett wouldn’t squeal about my father’s car or Cooey’s Red Apple, but now I knew it. “I’m fine, Jottie,” he said.

  “Did you see Felix?”

  His eyebrow shot up. “Felix is here?” He looked at the front door. “No. I went inside and didn’t see a soul, so I came out here. Thought I’d wait for you to turn up.”

  “I was up at big farm,” Jottie said.

  “And we took Mae to Hampshire Downs,” I said.

  He laughed. I always liked to make Emmett laugh. When he laughed, his whole face lit up, and you could see that he was younger than the others. A lot of the time, you couldn’t tell. “Hampshire Downs?” he said. “And let me guess: Mae is the Duchess of Bedford County.”

  “Waldon doesn’t mind,” said Jottie.

  Emmett laughed again. “I know he doesn’t.”

  Suddenly I understood what they meant. As long as Waldon got Mae, he didn’t care what she called his farm. “Oh!” I cried out. The two of them turned to look at me, kind of questioning. “Nothing,” I muttered, but inside I felt proud. I knew more than they thought.

  “How’s big farm?” asked Emmett.

  “Same as always,” Jottie said. “Butter’s up a little, Wren said.”

  “Good thing. Might as well feed it to the pigs at ten cents a pound.”

  Jottie plunked herself down in her chair. “So. Why’d you come to town?”

  Emmett sat down, too. “I got to talk to Sol.”

  Jottie’s eyes slid to the front door, and she almost whispered when she said, “Sol? Why?”

  She looked worried, and I remembered the parade, how she’d turned pink when she’d waved to Mr. McKubin by mistake. And then Richie, too, getting kicked by Harriet when he talked about Sol. There was something the matter with Mr. McKubin, but whatever it was, Emmett wasn’t fussed about it.

  “I heard a couple of things about American Everlasting, and I—”

  Father’s voice came floating out of the front hall. “Gloves? Well, that’s real nice. All those fishes up at Dolly’s Ford are sure going to appreciate that.”

  Miss Beck’s voice laughed back. “The WPA strives to maintain the highest standards of gentility.”

  “I can see that.” Father held open the screen door and they came out together, Miss Beck glossy and happy and beautiful as the day. Emmett stood up, and Father broke into a smile. “Well, what do you know? This is my brother, Emmett Romeyn,” he said. “Emmett, this is Miss Beck.”

  Emmett’s mouth opened, but Miss Beck spoke before he did. “Ohh,” she said. “I understand now.” She smiled up at Emmett like she’d known him for years and held out her hand. They shook hands, and she said to Father, “I thought he was you. The other day, I was walking down Prince Street and I waved to”—she gestured at Emmett—“Mr. Romeyn through a shop window. Did you think I was a lunatic?” she asked, turning to Emmett.

  “No,” he said quietly. “No, I didn’t.”

  “I don’t see how you could mistake us,” Father said, grinning. “I’m the handsome one.”

  Emmett spoke like he hadn’t heard. “You’re writing the history of Macedonia?”

  “That’s right,” she said.

  “I’ll be real interested to read it when you’re done.”

  “So will I,” Miss Beck said, kind of rueful.

  Father put his hand on her arm. “We’d better go get us some sites of historical moment, then, hadn’t we?”

  She laughed. “I’m still reeling from Flick Park.”

  “I know it,” he said. “It’s like London and Paris put together, isn’t it? Come on.”

  Together, they stepped across the front porch and out into the sunshine. “Bye, honey,” he called over his shoulder. I guess he was talking to me.

  I watched them drive away, down Academy Street. They didn’t wave.

  Emmett sat down hard.

  Jottie looked at me. “Go get some lunch, Willa. Make a sandwich for Bird, too, while you’re at it.”

  I gave her the fish-eye. I knew when I was being got rid of.

  “Go on. Don’t cut your fingers off.”

  I went in the door and slid myself between the coatrack and the wall next to the front door, where I could hear everything. I was a natural.

  For a stretch of time
, they didn’t say anything. Then Emmett said, “That is a real pretty girl.”

  “I guess,” Jottie replied.

  Then he asked, low, “Do I look so much like him?”

  “Only to someone who doesn’t know you,” Jottie answered. It was true, too. They were both thin and dark, and they had those eyebrows, same as Jottie, but I’d never before thought that they looked alike. If I were blindfolded and I heard one of them walk in the front door, I’d know which one it was, just by the sound of his shoe against the floor.

  “Mm.”

  “And you’re taller.”

  He laughed a little. “Are you trying to comfort me?”

  “Well, you are. You’re real good-looking.”

  He groaned. “Stop that. Honest to God, Jottie, you sound so sorry for me.”

  I pondered that. She did sound sorry for him, and I couldn’t figure out why. I didn’t understand what Emmett said next, either. “How is it that Felix gets everything he wants?” he muttered. “How is it that he never pays for a damn thing?”

  “Oh, honey, don’t be like that. She’s not worth all this fuss.”

  “I wasn’t talking about anyone in particular,” Emmett said.

  “Good. Girls like her are a dime a dozen.”

  “Oh, yeah? Where?”

  Jottie cleared her throat. “What’s all this about Sol?”

  “So you can say his name out loud now?” Emmett said, kind of snide.

  “That’s enough of your lip, there, mister. I’m your older sister, remember?”

  Emmett made a sound that Jottie would have killed me if I’d made. When he did it, she laughed.

  “I heard that Shank fired some fellows, that’s all,” Emmett said. “Charlie Timbrook and George were telling me about it the other day, and it sure as hell sounds like a rotten business, because afterward Shank gave them the big old talk about how they have to pull together like a family, meaning that the rest of them have to make their orders just the same and he’s not paying any extra.”