Martha Calhoun

by Richard Babcock

  Elro lifted his arm hopelessly, as if discovering that the fingers twisting through his were an iron chain. Then we shuffled the few feet over to the cop’s table.

  “There somethin’ wrong, buster?” the cop demanded. He talked by jiggling his cheeks. His lips hardly moved.

  “No.”

  “ ‘Cause if there’s somethin’ wrong, we want to know about it.”

  “No, sir, nothin’ wrong.”

  “Well, you come here then.” The cop crooked his finger to draw Elro closer. “That’s right, let go your girlfriend there for a second.”

  Elro looked at me and dropped my hand, then took a halting step toward the table. The cop hoisted himself up a few inches. He spoke under his voice. “You tell your girlfriend that we’ve got an ord-nance in this town that says people gotta wear shoes in public extablishments. Tell her that if she comes in here again, she better cover up her pretty toes.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Elro.

  “Got that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The waitress came up again with a fresh pot of coffee. “Are you botherin’ these nice kids, Stan?” she asked. “Now, you just let them be.”

  “I was just tellin’ the girl here that she better learn to wear shoes in a extablishment like this.”

  The waitress stared at my feet. They looked huge and shamefully pink against the scuffed wood of the restaurant’s floor. I felt as if I were in one of those dreams where you suddenly realize you’ve arrived at school wearing your pajamas. “Why, you’re a regular poet,” the waitress said.

  “Whaddaya mean?” demanded the cop.

  “See?” she said to me. “I told you this town don’t know nothin’.” She shooed us away. “You kids run along. Leave us old folks to argue.”

  “Why a poet?” huffed the cop, his cheeks jiggling.

  Outside, Elro grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me toward the truck.

  “Wait,” I said. “I’ve got to get shoes.” My embarrassment in the restaurant had punctured my confidence. I could have cut off my feet at the ankles.

  “Not now, we gotta get out of here.” He continued to pull me along the sidewalk.

  I shook my arm free. “I’m not leaving without shoes. It’s your fault I lost my others, and I’m not going barefoot anymore.”

  “Jesus!” Elro stomped over to the truck and jumped into the cab, slamming his palm down on the steering wheel. Behind me, the waitress rapped on the restaurant window. She’d apparently witnessed our scene, and now she shook her head knowingly. The knob of hair flopped back and forth above her.

  I turned and scurried down the sidewalk in search of a place to buy shoes. In a two-minute walk, I passed a grocery, a tavern, a hardware store, another tavern, and a tiny post office whose front was almost covered by two gigantic white columns. Beyond the post office came several boarded-up buildings, a vacant lot, and, at the end of town, a wood building whose whitewashed walls had weathered into the dirty, smudged color of old snow. Stenciling on the window said DEMARZO’S DEPARTMENT STORE. Kitty-corner across the street, a sign on a brighter, newer building said FINNEGAN’S FIVE AND DIME. But the children I’d noticed before were playing in front, and I didn’t want to walk past them in my humiliating bare feet. So DeMarzo’s was it.

  Inside, the lighting was dim. I didn’t see anyone around and wandered down one aisle. Away from the front, the air was stale. Dry goods were stacked on the shelves in neat piles that looked as if they hadn’t been disturbed in years. I picked up a man’s white dress shirt packed in a clear plastic envelope. The envelope had gathered a coating of dust, and the shirt inside was turning faintly yellow, like an old photograph.

  At the far end of the aisle, a door opened into a small room with a rumpled sofa pushed against the wall. “Anybody here?” I called out, and to my left a voice suddenly crackled. Tucked in a corner of the store, an old woman was sitting in a ladder-back chair. Her dress was a shapeless mass of black, and she was sitting with her thighs apart, resting one hand on a cane.

  “Hello,” I said. “I’m looking for shoes.”

  “Got shoes,” she said, speaking with a strong accent. “Lotta shoes.” She pointed with her cane to the wall nearby, where one whole section was taken up with shoeboxes. I went over to have a look. The boxes, too, had yellowed with age. I started flipping through them, looking for shoes that might fit, but all I could find were men’s shoes, black and brown and all very plain.

  “No, no,” said the woman. Pushing herself up with her cane, she rose to her feet. I saw that she was extraordinarily short, the top of her head barely came to my chest. She shambled over and again using her cane, she poked at my feet, taking the measure of them. Then she bent slowly at the waist and pulled a box from the bottom shelf. “Here,” she said. Cradling the box on her hip, she took off the top. Inside, unprotected by any tissue paper, two ankle-high black shoes nestled against each other like napping puppies. The shoes appeared to be made of some thin, shiny material, and black, wiry laces ran up and down the fronts.

  “Try, try,” she said.

  I lifted one out. Though it must have been sitting there for decades, the shoe was in perfect shape. The leather sole was stiff, but flexible. There was a short, thick heel. The woman didn’t seem concerned that I was barefoot, so I sat in a nearby chair and slipped the shoe on. It was narrow, but the right length. I laced it up over my ankle.

  “Fit good,” the woman said.

  “Yes.”

  “Very fine shoes, very beautiful. The beautiful women, they wear this shoe.”

  “I can imagine.” I turned my ankle round and back, studying the effect. In fact, the shoe was ugly, I thought. It was grim and indelicate, and it looked preposterous on me. The high, blunt top came to the cuffs of my jeans. Still I liked having the shoe on. I felt sort of honored, as if I’d been entrusted with something treasured and pure.

  “It’s ancient!” I said.

  “Made good,” said the woman. “These new, they break.” She swung her cane to indicate the rest of the contents of the store.

  I ran my fingers up and down the shoe’s silky sides. “How much.”

  She considered for a moment. “Five dollar.”

  Five dollars. I only had fifteen. This was ridiculous. I couldn’t walk around the Dells in a pair of shoes like that. I couldn’t walk anywhere without everyone noticing.

  “Made good,” she said again.

  “I’m sorry, I need something newer. And cheaper.” I quickly took off the shoe and handed it back.

  “Okay.” She stared at the wall of boxes and reached up with her cane to tap one above her head. “You get,” she said.

  The box contained a pair of orange canvas espadrilles with rubber bottoms. The shoes looked a little unstylish, but they weren’t antiques. I put on one, then the other, and took a few steps. They fit fine.

  “How much?”

  “Three dollar.”

  “Okay.”

  Wearing my purchase, I followed her to a counter along the wall and took three dollar bills out of my pocket. She rang them up in a mountainous cash register.

  “Summer shoes,” she said, smiling and indicating the espadrilles. “Summer and fun.”

  “I know,” I said. I thanked her and walked outside. The new rubber soles squeaked with every step. Part way down the sidewalk, I stopped. I could see Elro up ahead, sitting in the cab of the truck, staring blankly down the street. I watched him for a moment, then I went back into DeMarzo’s Department Store and bought the old shoes, too, carrying them away in their box, under my arm.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Outside of Minniefield, Elro took the first main road that headed north, and we drove for several hours. The sun pounded down on the pickup, and the inside of the cab grew hot. I started getting drowsy. I lay my head back on the seat, but I was caught in that never-never land, just short of dozing off, where real thoughts and dreams fade in and out of each other. I was thinking about Bunny: She’d be up by now, probably a
t the kitchen table drinking coffee, having gone around the house first thing, checking all the doors and windows. Her “tour of the property,” she used to say—who knows what she expected to find. Nothing, I suppose. She just needed to make sure that everything was exactly as she’d left it the night before. Anyway, there she’d be, sipping coffee at the kitchen table, maybe reading my note—she’d find it on the tour—but probably just sitting and staring into space, wrapped in her green terrycloth bathrobe. No, she hasn’t had that in years. The robe she wears now is beige. How could I forget? She’d be in her beige robe, and someone would call. Mrs. Vernon? No, Mrs. O’Brien. Mrs. O’Brien on the phone. Mrs. Calhoun, your daughter has run away. With a boy! A dumb, dangerous boy. We told you she was bad. You didn’t believe us, but we told you. Now, you’ve raised two bad ones, a son and a daughter. What do you say to that, Mrs. Calhoun? Where’s your talk about a child being a gift now? And you said this one was special. Specially bad, maybe. Specially like her brother. You can’t keep the badness out, can you, Mrs. Calhoun? You try to hide it, you try to dress it up, you try to talk around it, but, in the end, the badness comes through, doesn’t it, Mrs. Calhoun? Mrs. Calhoun? Mrs. Calhoun?

  “Ride the ducks!”

  “Huh?” I blinked my eyes open. The sun through the windshield weighed a ton on my chest.

  Elro pointed to a billboard that showed what looked like a barge with wheels crawling into the water, carrying a load of joyous passengers. The passengers were waving ecstatically, with their hands above their heads, as if they were doing some kind of African dance. The sign said we were twenty miles from the Dells, “nature’s wonderland.” “Ride the ducks!” the sign commanded.

  “The only thing they can’t do is fly,” said Elro.

  Soon the roadside was littered with billboards—signs advertising a water show, a frontier village, motels, miniature golf, restaurants, a river tour. But nothing was advertised as much as the ducks. Duck billboards were everywhere, and soon I started seeing bumper stickers on cars. The message was always the same. “Ride the ducks!”

  “Those words,” I said. “Maybe I’m just getting giddy, but they’re starting to sound really crazy.”

  “Yeah?” said Elro.

  “Yeah. It’s like they’re telling us to do something wild and amazing. They make my heart speed up.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Like a war whoop, except not for war.”

  “A nut whoop,” said Elro.

  “What?”

  “A nut whoop. You know, you yell it before going nuts.” He paused. “Ride the ducks!” he yelled suddenly, and he bugged his eyes and started shaking like an idiot.

  “Don’t.” I grabbed his arm. “We’ll crash.” He settled down, and I let go. “Where’d you hear that?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “Nut whoop.”

  “I made it up. Just now.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really. Why not?”

  I turned to stare out the window, smiling to myself. I must be getting giddy, I thought.

  From the outskirts, the town of Wisconsin Dells doesn’t look much like nature’s wonderland. The road we were on was banked by restaurants, stores, gas stations, and motels. Cars were backed up at the first big intersection, and we had to snake in a long line past a traffic cop who kept blowing his whistle, as if someone could do something about the whole mess. It was probably one of the busiest weekends of the year. “They’ll never find us here with all these people,” said Elro.

  “I don’t know. We look like the only ones without kids.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  Elro followed the signs for the ducks, and eventually we came to a parking lot filled with cars. A man in a brown uniform told us a duck had just left—the next one would go in half an hour. Elro bought two tickets, at two dollars apiece, and parked the truck. With time to kill, we wandered over to a hot dog stand and sat at a table outside under a parasol. Elro bought two hot dogs, some fries, and a Coke for himself, and fries and a Coke for me. Before starting to eat, he tucked a paper napkin in the neck of his shirt to catch any drops of mustard. Again, I smiled to myself and turned away, sipping my Coke through a straw and looking out over the parking lot.

  The sun burning down on the roofs of the cars created a shimmery glare, a glittery silver lake. Here and there, a human boat cut through the dancing water. A man wearing a baseball cap and trailing a wife and three kids tacked back and forth, apparently in search of the family car. I couldn’t hear what was being said, but I could see. The father was getting frustrated and blaming the mother, whose job it probably was to mark down the location whenever the car was left in a lot. The mother was squawking at the kids, who risked getting lost as the father hurried in his search. The smallest child, a girl, was crying. At one point, she stopped in a clear area, put her hands together, threw her head back, and let out what must have been a frightening wail. By the time it rolled over the cars and wound through the shimmering, rising heat, however, it came to me as a sweet, short gust of soprano. It could have been a glorious snatch of opera, heard from afar. While she was still crying, they found the car. The mother fanned the doors to cool the inside, and the father came back for the little girl. He lifted her high off the ground, and she put her arms around his neck, holding her little head close to his. Watching them, I remembered a moment from when I was very young. I was in a huge, noisy building, perhaps a bus station, and like the little girl, I was crying uncontrollably. Suddenly, a strange man, a friend of Bunny’s, lifted me above his head and put me on his shoulders. In the terror and the strangeness of it, I stopped crying. I gripped the man’s head, my nose in his rough hair. There was a musty, leathery smell to his hair, so strong that I thought it must be a bad smell, though I rather liked it. Bunny smiled up at me. “See? That’s better,” she said. “Now you’re happy.” It occurred to me there at the hot dog stand that all I ever knew was Bunny, then and now.

  Beside me, Elro had dozed off. His legs were stretched out in front, and his chin had dropped to his chest. After a while, the duck drove up, moving clumsily along on black tires that poked out of the hull. A bright garden of tourists sprouted from under a canopy on top. After parking, the duck unloaded several dozen passengers, who fanned out slowly through the cars in the lot. To the side, a line of riders for our trip was forming.

  I shook Elro’s shoulder. He dragged his eyes open painfully.

  “The duck,” I said.

  He sat up abruptly and fumbled in his shirt pocket for the tickets. “Let’s go,” he said.

  We filed past the ticket-taker, walked up a ramp and took two seats on the side. Families milled around, scrambling to find places together. A young man and woman fussed over various seats, testing the views, before sitting down in front of us. Finally, we were ready to go. The driver, a broad-backed man in a red shirt, spoke to us through a microphone. “Welcome to the Wisconsin Dells and to a ride on a duck—an original Wisconsin duck.” The motor started up, and the vehicle rumbled forward. “The Dells is a scenic treasure created by Mother Nature, the greatest architect of them all,” the driver went on. “It’s a wonderland of cliffs and caves and sculpted rocks, carved over centuries by glacial waters eating through the area’s soft sandstone. Using these unique Wisconsin ducks, we’re able to show you the most magnificent sights on both land and water.”

  We turned past a sign marked “Duck Trail” and headed off through a pine woods. The driver put down the microphone and stepped on the gas. The duck bolted forward, and everyone gasped. Our seats were only ten feet or so off the ground, but speeding along in the open made them seem much higher.

  “This thing really moves,” said Elro.

  The young man sitting in front of us suddenly turned. “Some ride, huh?” he said.

  “Yeah,” said Elro.

  We drove on through the woods. The pine trees were tall and full and densely packed, and they streaked by in a long, even curtain of green. The trail was bumpy
, but the duck was heavy and moved in looping bounces that sometimes left your stomach up around your chest. I held my head out to the side, letting the wind with its clean pine fragrance billow through my hair. There was something wild and amazing about the ride after all, and I was glad we’d come on it.

  After a few minutes, the man in front again turned to Elro. “You ever do this before?” he asked.

  “No, first time.”

  “Some fun, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  The man was perhaps in his early twenties, with frizzy brown hair and beaverish teeth. He shifted in his seat to get a better look at Elro, virtually turning his back on the woods. “You two just up for the day?” he asked.

  Elro wiped his palms on his jeans and stared into the pines.

  I nodded.

  The man persisted. “Where ya from?”

  I thought for a moment. “Illinois.”

  “Hey! Me, too. Where in Illinois?”

  I glanced at Elro, but he was off in the trees, his face twisted as far away from me and the man as it could get. “Emerson,” I said. It’s a town not far from Katydid.

  “Oh, I know Emerson. A pretty town. We ate at a restaurant there once. What was the name of that place, honey?” He tapped the shoulder of the woman with him. She gave him a bored smile that told him to go away. “Oh, you know,” he said to me. “The famous place. Everybody knows it.”

  I hadn’t been in Emerson in three years, and I’d never eaten there.

  “You know, the big one, with the porch. It’s got a little statue of a nigger jockey out front.” He was getting excited. “You know.”

  “Ahhh.” Nothing came. I was too tired to lie. I glanced again at Elro, looking for help, and the man saw something in my face. His eyes tightened with suspicion.

  “The Rose Bush,” said the woman. She had delicate, pointy features.

  “Yeah, the Rose Bush,” he said, relaxing again.

  “Oh, of course, the Rose Bush,” I said.

  The driver flicked on his microphone. “Hold onto your hats,” he announced. “Here’s Suicide Hill.” At the top of a small bluff, the duck wavered for a second, and then dipped and streaked downhill. Children screamed. The duck plunged jarringly along the steep trail. We were all pushed against the backs of our seats.