I loved my grandmother, and when she died from a stroke I was beyond consoling. I had gone to visit her one morning and had let myself in. She never locked her doors. I once asked her why and she told me someone might need to get in, which they wouldn’t be able to do if the door was locked. Because she felt no malice toward anyone, she never suspected it from others. It’s the suspicious people who get preyed upon the most.
I remember one morning pushing open her door and calling her name. There was no reply, no slight laugh, no “Come in, Sam.” Just silence. I found her in bed, cold to the touch. I called my parents and Mackey’s Funeral Home, then sat beside her and smoothed her hair. I wanted her to look her best. Pretty soon my mother and father came, then Johnny Mackey with his hearse.
That was eight years ago, but when anything happens to me I think, I ought to call Grandma and tell her. Then I remember and grieve all over again.
Pastor Taylor presided at her funeral. I can’t recall a thing he said. What I do recollect is my brother Roger and me walking through Grandma’s house, room by room, dividing her earthly goods. The stool my grandfather made so Grandma could reach the punch bowl in the top cabinet. The cast-iron doorstop that propped open the front door. The cookie jar with the rooster on it that I remember reaching into as a child. It was high up on the counter; I had to stand on the stool my grandfather made.
I wanted it all, as if by surrounding myself with her things I could keep her alive. I wanted to touch the things she had touched. I went to turn off the kitchen light and stood there wondering how many times Grandma had touched that very switch. My finger lingered there, a flickering connection to that saintly woman.
I thought of this as I shoveled the church walk, thought of how uncertain life was and how having Grandma around had seemed to calm the whirlwind. Grandma sitting in that same old pew in the same old meetinghouse in the same old town. Then walking home down the same old sidewalk, careful not to stumble where the maple tree had heaved up the concrete. Cooked Sunday dinner at the same old stove and fed us on the same old Sunday china.
Then I thought of Dale Hinshaw and my anger fell away. We’re more alike than we are different. We’re both holding on to that which is no more, both wanting what used to be. So when he opened the Herald and there was Pastor Taylor from 1973, it took him back and brought him peace. And he thought if it brought him peace, it would do the same for others. So he clipped it out and thumbtacked it to the church bulletin board.
It’s still there. The Friendly Women’s Circle wanted to take it down and put up a Christmas bulletin board, but I asked them to leave it up a while longer. I told them that sometimes all we have is memory, that sometimes it’s all that gets us through, and we ought be really careful before letting it go.
Twenty-one
The Spelling Bee
For the past thirty years, the Harmony Herald has sponsored the local spelling bee for the kids in the sixth grade. I was in Miss Fishbeck’s class in the sixth grade. She would divide the class in half, the boys against the girls. The girls would line up in front of the chalkboard, underneath the picture of George Washington. The boys would stand against the back wall between the globe and the fish tank. There was a sea of shiny, wood floor between us, which Mr. Griswold, the janitor, polished the week before school and the week after Christmas.
Miss Fishbeck would stand in the center of the room calling out words like epistle and cameo and demeanor. Words we boys never used. The words we did use, being sixth-grade boys, were never called in a spelling bee, so we were always at a disadvantage and the girls would invariably win. If Miss Fishbeck had called out words like booger and poop the boys could have won; but she never did, so we were doomed from the start.
The winner of our class would then take on the winners from the other sixth-grade classes. The school champion would proceed to the County Spelling Bee, then that winner would go to the state championship, whose winner would move on to the national competition in Washington, D.C. If you won the National Spelling Bee, you got to visit the White House and have your picture taken with the president of the United States of America.
I dreamed about that. I dreamed of outspelling Muriel Burgdorf and getting my picture in the Herald. Then winning the County Spelling Bee. Then going to the state capital and staying the night in a hotel and spelling the word lipopolysaccharide and traveling to Washington, D.C., and winning the National Spelling Bee and shaking hands with Richard Nixon, who would spend an entire day with me, showing me the secret tunnels under the White House and shooting baskets with me in the White House gym.
But it was not to be. Miss Fishbeck called out the word receive and I forgot the cardinal rule of spelling bees: i before e except after c, or when sounded as a long a as in neighbor or weigh. But Muriel Burgdorf didn’t forget, so she won and had her picture put in the Herald. She went on to the county fair, where she blew it. She spelled the word miscellaneous, a hard word, then stumbled on the word Mississippi, which, despite its length, was an easy word to spell. It was the word you prayed would be called when it was your turn to spell.
I remembered how to spell Mississippi by imagining Miss Fishbeck sipping a drink. Miss is sipping. You just had to remember to stop at the n, which Muriel forgot to do. She burst into tears. We looked away, embarrassed, as Miss Fishbeck led her from the stage, both of them weeping.
That was the best our school had ever done until Amanda Hodge moved here this last summer.
Amanda is the niece of Miriam and Ellis Hodge. She is the daughter of Ellis’s youngest brother, Ralph, who is a waste of flesh according to Ellis, who seldom has a bad word to say about anyone. So when Ellis does get around to saying something bad about someone, you are inclined to believe him.
It was a cruel joke—how Ralph and his wife, drunkards both, could conceive and bear such a beautiful child, while Ellis and Miriam Hodge, who worked hard and went to church every Sunday, remained barren. Ellis had brought up the matter several times with God, but had not yet received a satisfactory explanation.
Ralph and his wife had lived away from Harmony most of their married life. Then Ralph was fired from his job, and he and his wife came back to Harmony to work on the family farm. The only reason Ellis let him was because of Amanda. They showed up one night, reeking of whiskey. Ellis wanted to turn them away, and would have except for the little girl standing between them. Instead, he bought a doublewide trailer, set it in the field, furnished it, then told his brother, “This is it, Ralph. This is your last chance. If you don’t knock off the booze, you’ll have to leave.”
But it was an empty threat and Ralph knew it. He knew Ellis and Miriam couldn’t bear the thought of him and his wife moving away and taking Amanda with them. So Ellis fumed and threatened, but in the end, did nothing. Except every Saturday morning, Ellis and Miriam would bring Amanda to their house for the weekend. They would take her fishing at the pond, or to the Dog ’n’ Suds in the next town over for a root beer, then would have her spend the night. They ordered pink sheets from the Sears catalog. Amanda picked them out herself. They bought her a white bed with a canopy and set it up in their guest room and told her it would be her room as long as she wanted it.
On Sunday mornings, Miriam would make Amanda’s favorite breakfast, blueberry pancakes, and they would go to meeting. They would sit in the fourth row. Ellis and Amanda sitting like bookends around Miriam, leaning into her.
After church, they would go home and eat Sunday dinner and then snap beans on the porch or play pitch and catch. They’d play word games. Miriam would thumb through the dictionary, calling out words for Amanda to spell. Then Miriam would braid Amanda’s hair. They’d sit on the porch steps—Amanda on the bottom step with Miriam on the step above her, dividing her hair into two strands of threes and braiding them. They’d put off taking Amanda home as long as they could. Then, after dinner, Ellis and Miriam would walk her home. They’d walk slowly, prolonging their bliss.
They lived for Saturday mornings, when E
llis would hike across the field to the trailer and tap on the door and ask, “Can we borrow your little sweetie for the weekend?” Twice, Ralph and his wife said no because they liked watching Ellis sag when he heard that word. They liked the power of it. They were that kind of people.
Then Ellis got Ralph alone in the barn and told him, “If you ever keep us from Amanda again, we’ll call the police and report you for neglect and you’ll go to jail.” He felt terrible saying that. He felt like a bully. But he and Miriam loved that girl so much. They even talked with Ralph and his wife about adopting her.
Ralph said, “It’ll cost you fifty thousand dollars. Not a dime less.” They were that kind of people.
When fall came, Amanda entered the sixth grade and was assigned to Miss Fishbeck’s class. It was Miss Fishbeck’s last year to teach. She was retiring. Her only regret was that in all her years of teaching, she’d never had a County Spelling Bee champion. It nagged at her. Every year she divided the classroom in half—girls up front underneath George Washington, boys in back by the fish tank—and would drill them. It was a discouragement. The boys would put the e before the i. The girls would collapse under the least pressure.
After all these years, Miss Fishbeck had learned not to expect much. She had gotten her hopes up with Muriel Burgdorf, only to have them crushed. She’d learned her lesson: Expect nothing. Then here came Amanda Hodge, standing at the chalkboard, spelling every word Miss Fishbeck threw her way. She started out easy—ankle and adverb and confuse. Amanda spelled them without blinking, clearly, and with confidence.
Miss Fishbeck grew mildly excited. She called out iniquity. Amanda spelled it.
Miss Fishbeck began breathing faster. “Lacerate,” she said. “Can you spell lacerate?”
“Lacerate,” repeated Amanda. “L-a-c-e-r-a-t-e. Lacerate.”
Miss Fishbeck trembled. Who was this child? Where had she come from? She went for broke. “Labyrinthian,” she said.
Amanda smiled and said, “I know that one. Labyrinthian. L-a-b-y-r-i-n-t-h-i-a-n. Labyrinthian. That’s easy.”
Miss Fishbeck began to weep.
They had spelling bees every day for a week. Amanda never missed a word—lactiferous, conductance, and polyribonucleotide.
A month later it was time for the sixth-grade spell-off, which Amanda won. Bob Miles Jr. took her picture for the Herald. Ellis and Miriam took her to the Dog ’n’ Suds for a root beer. The next month was the County Spelling Bee. Miss Fishbeck sat in the front row, her Bible clutched in her hands, praying the Lord’s Prayer, lingering on “Thy will be done.”
It came down to Amanda and a boy from Cartersburg.
The caller looked at the boy and said, “Colloquialism.” The boy hesitated at the second l, screwed his eyes in thought, and left it out.
The caller turned to Amanda. “Colloquialism,” she said.
“Colloquialism,” Amanda repeated. C-o-l-l-o-q-u-i-a-l-i-s-m. Colloquialism.” Miss Fishbeck let out a gasp and clutched her Bible to her chest.
Then Amanda spelled the word lackadaisical and it was over. Pandemonium. Miss Fishbeck ran up the steps, no small feat, and hugged Amanda to her and that was the picture Bob Miles snapped for the Herald. Ellis and Miriam stood beaming in the first row. Ralph and his wife weren’t there.
Amanda went on to the State Spelling Bee. Miss Fishbeck took the entire sixth grade on a school bus all the way to the state capitol building. Ellis and Miriam followed in their truck, with Bob Miles Jr. sandwiched between them. They parked in front of a fire hydrant and Bob put a big card on the windshield that read PRESS. Bob had always wanted to do that.
The governor himself called out the words for the spelling bee. It went on for three hours, kids dropping like flies, all the way down to Amanda and two other girls. It was painful to watch—a spelling-bee holocaust. The two girls were trembling with fear. Too much pressure. They went down.
The governor turned to Amanda.
“Quintuplicate,” he declared.
“Quintuplicate,” repeated Amanda. “Q-u-i-n-t-u-pl-i-c-a-t-e. Quintuplicate.”
And that was it.
This was in October. The National Spelling Bee wasn’t until January. Every Saturday, Amanda came to Ellis and Miriam’s house. Miriam would read words from the dictionary and Amanda would spell them. They’d go for drives through the country. Ellis would point out trees, then pull the truck over and look them up in the tree book he carried in his glovebox.
“There’s an oak tree,” he’d say. “Its scientific name is Lithocarpus.”
“Lithocarpus,” Amanda would repeat. “L-i-t-h-o-ca-r-p-u-s. Lithocarpus.”
“Atta girl,” he’d say.
On the Friday after Christmas, they drove up to the city to see the Christmas lights, and spent the night in a hotel. That Sunday they returned to Harmony and went to meeting. I was on vacation and had invited a professor from my old seminary to bring a message. It was entitled “The Hermeneutics of Suspicion.” He talked about how it is we know what we know and whether we can be sure we really know it. People smiled as he spoke, not understanding a word he was saying. Not even Amanda understood, though she was enthralled with the word hermeneutics. What a fascinating word! She wondered what it meant and how to spell it.
Dale Hinshaw thought it was a man’s name. “Herman Uticks. He must be one of them German fellas,” he speculated the next day at the Coffee Cup.
After Sunday dinner, Amanda looked it up in Miriam’s dictionary. Hermeneutics: the study of the methodological principles of interpretation. She still wasn’t sure what it meant. She’d have to ask Miss Fishbeck. Miss Fishbeck would know. Miss Fishbeck knew everything.
The National Spelling Bee was held in the middle of January in Washington, D.C. Harvey Muldock loaned Miriam and Ellis a brand-new car for the trip. Bob Miles Jr. from the Herald was Amanda’s press entourage, plus when Ellis got tired, he drove. Miss Fishbeck and Miriam and Amanda sat in the backseat, spelling words. It was the farthest any of them had ever traveled. They left on a Sunday, early. By ten that morning they’d crossed the Ohio River, then drove over the Appalachians and into the Shenandoah Valley. They drove twelve hours, then pulled into the parking lot of the Grand Hyatt on H Street, where the spelling bee contestants were staying.
They all shared a room. Ellis and Bob Jr. in one bed, Miss Fishbeck and Miriam in the other, and Amanda on a roll-out cot by the window. When they first arrived, Ellis had stood at the door memorizing the fire escape instructions and reading the sign on the door that told how much the room cost. They hadn’t told him at the front desk and he hadn’t asked for fear of appearing cheap.
Two hundred and twelve dollars! He was about to complain, about ready to check out and go somewhere else, but he didn’t want to make Amanda feel bad so he kept quiet. This was her day. To heck with the money.
When they had checked in downstairs, a man had offered to carry their suitcases upstairs, but Ellis didn’t want to pay the man fifty cents, so he carried them himself. Miriam had brought along bread and bologna. They ate in the room, sitting on the beds, watching television. Sixty-seven channels. They watched Lawrence Welk.
The next morning they woke up, ate breakfast, climbed in the car and drove down H Street to Ninth Street, turned left, and pulled up to the Washington Convention Center. They made their way inside. Miss Fishbeck held her Bible to her chest, repeating the Lord’s Prayer. Bob Miles carried his camera. Ellis and Miriam were sick with worry. They tried not to show it, but it couldn’t be helped. The National Spelling Bee!
Amanda was the picture of calm.
It lasted five hours. By then, Ellis had sweated through his shirt onto his suit jacket. Miss Fishbeck had moved on to the Twenty-third Psalm: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for thou art with me…” Each time Amanda spelled a word, Bob Jr. snapped her picture.
It came down to Amanda and a boy from Hawaii.
It was the boy’s turn.
“Hendecasyllab
ic,” the caller called. The boy studied the ceiling, then the floor, then began to spell. He forgot the second l.
But Amanda didn’t. She was one word from victory.
Ellis and Miriam didn’t breathe. This was it. By now, Miss Fishbeck was praying aloud.
“Hermeneutics,” the caller declared.
Miss Fishbeck groaned. Miriam brightened. Bob Jr. whispered to Ellis, “Who’s that?”
“Hermeneutics,” Amanda said. “H-e-r-m-e-n-e-u-t-i-c-s. Hermeneutics.”
Then the caller smiled and Ellis and Miriam breathed and Miss Fishbeck began to weep and Bob Jr. snapped a picture of Amanda receiving her trophy. Then everyone stood and clapped, even the boy from Hawaii.
The next day they went to the White House, to the Oval Office, to shake hands with the president of the United States of America.
They were all there—Amanda and Miriam and Ellis, plus Miss Fishbeck and Bob Jr. The president stood with his arm around Amanda while Bob took their picture for the Herald.
Then the president turned to Miriam and Ellis and said, “These must be your parents. I bet you’re proud of your daughter.”
Ellis has never told a lie. But in that split second, it occurred to him that biology didn’t make you a parent, love did. So Ellis stepped forward and shook the president’s hand and said, “We couldn’t be more proud.”
“What was the winning word?” the President asked.
“Hermeneutics,” said Amanda.
“Ah, yes, the study of the methodological principles of interpretation,” he said.
“That’s right,” Amanda said. “I learned about it at church.”
“That must be some church,” the president said.
They drove back to Harmony the next day. Bob Miles Jr. dropped Miriam and Ellis and Amanda off at the farmhouse, where Amanda spent the night. They had blueberry pancakes for breakfast, then Ellis walked her home across the field.
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