When the Crickets Stopped Singing

by Marilyn Cram-Donahue

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  We were coming home from Sunday school the next morning when Reba Lu suddenly said, “Who’s next on our list?” She was really into loving sinners. I could see we had a busy summer ahead of us.

  “How about Miss Emma?” I suggested. “Every time I walk past Dr. Thomas’s house, I see her sitting by that upstairs window peeking out. I bet she’d like company. We could go and get acquainted first and teach her to crochet later.”

  I didn’t really want to go, but I was dying to see Reba Lu’s face when she saw what Miss Emma kept for pets.

  “Not me,” Geraldine protested. “I hate snakes.”

  Reba Lu gave her a stern look. “We all agreed to work together on our list of sinners,” she reminded her. “We can take Dodie with us. We’ll call first and ask Mrs. Dawson to make sure the snake is in its cage.”

  “Ugh!” Geraldine said, but Reba Lu had already lifted the receiver down from the wall and was waiting for the operator.

  When we started up the street, the front door of the Clements’ house banged open. Mr. Jefferson Clement came out on the porch, saw us watching, and waved a greeting from across the street like we were all old friends.

  “Ho, there, ladies,” he called. “Out for a little Sunday walk?”

  It was the first time I’d come face to face with Mr. Clement since he arrived back in town. I wondered if he remembered that I had stood there watching and listening while Mama talked to him. I didn’t know what to say to him, but, as usual, Reba Lu did.

  “Good morning, Mr. Clement, sir. It’s a fine day, isn’t it?” Then she gave Geraldine and me a push to hurry us up.

  Mr. Clement glanced back at his house, then crossed over and followed us up the street. “Oh, ick!” I whispered. “Having him back there where I can’t see him makes me feel like a spider is crawling in my hair.”

  “Ignore him.” Reba Lu made a quick turn up the front walk to Dodie’s door. She turned to look at me. “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. That’s what my daddy would say.” Then, before we could stop her, she gave the bell key a twist. “Dodie?” she called. “Come on out here.”

  “Can’t,” came from inside. “I’m scrubbing clothes.”

  The three of us looked at each other. I remembered what Geraldine had told me, and I figured this must be one of the days when Mrs. Crumper was on the bottle. I wondered which neighbor’s clothes Dodie was scrubbing. I was considering what to do next when Geraldine opened the patched screen door and walked right in.

  I never would have done that. It was the worst kind of manners. Apparently, neither would Reba Lu because she stood firmly beside me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mr. Clement passing us on the sidewalk in front of Dodie’s house. He slowed down a little, seemed to hesitate, then went on. Reba Lu and I stood there and listened, and pretty soon we heard Geraldine say, “You’re washing whose dirty drawers?”

  We couldn’t hear Dodie’s answer, even with our ears against the screen. Reba Lu shifted from one foot to the other. “I’m thinking Geraldine might need our help,” I said.

  “I was thinking the same thing.” Reba Lu reached for the door handle.

  Neither one of us was prepared to see Mrs. Crumper asleep on the couch with her mouth hanging open and an empty glass in her hand. The cotton stuffing that was coming out of the holes in the cushions was about the same color as her dyed yellow hair. We tiptoed on through the kitchen and found Dodie and Geraldine out on the back screened porch.

  The Crumpers didn’t have a washing machine, just two big standing tubs. One was for washing. The other, with a wooden wringer clamped on its side, was for rinsing. The washtub held a big scrub board, and Dodie leaned over it with soap up to her elbows. Up and down went her skinny arms, rubbing somebody’s old union suit against the bumpy tin panel.

  “I wonder who in Messina still wears old-fashioned underwear like that,” I said.

  Geraldine stared at me. “What do you know about men’s underwear?” She sounded surprised and a little angry. She never could stand it if I got a step ahead of her.

  “I hang my father’s and Eddie’s on the line, don’t I?” I almost told her that Eddie wore modern boxer shorts with stripes, but thought better of it.

  Geraldine didn’t have a father or any brothers, so I knew a lot more than she did about some things. It felt real good to get the advantage now and then.

  Dodie pulled the cloth out of the water and twisted it so that most of the soap oozed out, then dropped it into the rinse tub. She dunked it up and down a bit, then stuck the end of the dripping cloth in between the rollers, tightened the lever, and started turning the handle with both hands. I could see it was hard work.

  “How long is this going to take?” Geraldine asked.

  “Until I get done.” Dodie jerked her head at a dirty pile on the floor. “Then I have to hang them on the line. What do you want?”

  “We’re on our way to visit Miss Emma,” Reba Lu said. “We thought you might like to come, too.”

  Dodie shook her head. “I won’t go in any house that has a snake in it. No way!”

  “We took care of that,” Reba Lu told her. “It’s caged up.”

  “Miss Emma’s crazy,” Dodie protested. “Mr. Jefferson Clement told me she hasn’t got the sense to tie her own shoelaces.” She gave the handle another couple of turns. “He’s a nice man, Mr. Clement is. He helped me hang out the wash the other day. He says he likes to be friendly to people. He says …”

  “Are you coming or not?” Geraldine interrupted. I wished she had held her tongue. I was dying to find out what else Mr. Clement had said. After all, he was on our list of people to love, and we needed to find out as much about him as we could.

  Dodie pulled a man’s shirt out of the soapy water and began to rub it up and down against the scrub board. Finally, she dropped it in the rinse water and turned to look at us.

  “Why are you all of a sudden asking me to do things with you?” she demanded. She was using her testy voice. The one that said don’t fool with me.

  Geraldine shuffled, and Reba Lu cleared her throat.

  “Why not?” I said. Just those two words. But I was amazed that they had come out of my mouth.

  Reba Lu started to say something else, but Dodie held up one hand and cut her off just like she was slicing bread with a sharp knife. She looked at me with a kind of half smile.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Why not?” Geraldine and Reba Lu could have been in China for all the notice she gave them.

  Dodie wiped her hands on her shorts and went to peek at her mother. When she came back, she said, “She’ll be out a while longer. I can’t be gone too long, though.”

  We walked up the street in twos. Geraldine and Reba Lu first, then Dodie and me coming along behind.

  We were about to ring Dr. Thomas’s doorbell when Geraldine said, “Wait a minute. Who’s going in first?”

  We hadn’t thought of that.

  “If we all push in together, we could get caught in the doorway and never get out,” Geraldine said. She was trying to act like she was in charge, but she was scared. We all were, a little, but Geraldine was the only one who would never admit it. That’s why she was stalling by asking questions like that.

  Geraldine picked a few long blades of grass, broke them into different lengths, and held them up so we could see only the tips. “We’ll draw straws,” she said. She gave Dodie first choice. Poor Reba Lu got the short piece. She would have gone home right then, except we pushed her up next to the front door and made her ring the bell. Mrs. Dawson must have been waiting on the other side because the door flew open like a gust of wind had hit it. She ushered us upstairs before we could change our minds.

  “This is a real occasion,” she said. “Miss Emma doesn’t get many callers. Now, you just settle in and make yourselves at home. Stay as long as you like.”

  Reba Lu went up the stairs so slow we had to give her a couple of shoves to get her to the top.
Miss Emma’s door was closed, probably to keep the animals from running loose. We stood in front of it and looked at each other. “Do you smell something funny?” Reba Lu asked.

  We did. It was a warm, musty smell, kind of sweet in a sickening sort of way. Dodie tapped at the door. When it opened, the smell came out to meet us.

  “Welcome,” Miss Emma said. “How thoughtful of you to call.” She motioned to two chairs and a love seat. “Do sit down.”

  I didn’t see how we could. Two cats sat in one chair and hissed. That ugly little dog, Lily-Poo, was on the love seat, licking herself. Miss Emma sat in the remaining chair and stroked the brown monkey that sat on her shoulder and wrapped his tail around her neck. White mice skittered from under the dresser and across the carpet. I spotted the snake in a tall cage in the corner. It was looping itself in and out of shapes that never stopped moving.

  “That’s Cleopatra,” Miss Emma said. “Isn’t she lovely?”

  Geraldine gave me a shaky look and sat on the edge of the bed as far from Miss Emma’s green parrot as she could. The rest of us perched beside her. I noticed that the pink satin coverlet was spotted with white splotches of parrot poop. I tried not to sit in any.

  The parrot began to squawk, “Help! Help! Somebody save me!”

  “Henry is afraid of strangers,” Miss Emma said. She smiled at him fondly. “Wise old bird, aren’t you, Henry?”

  Reba Lu and Geraldine looked at me. Dodie opened her mouth, but no words came out. I cleared my throat, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. I gave Reba Lu a nudge.

  “Well,” she said, “how are you today, Miss Emma?”

  Without blinking, Miss Emma said, “I’m not quite right. Didn’t they tell you?”

  I wanted to ask who “they” was, but I didn’t dare.

  “They’ve been saying that since I was only as big as Joseph here.” She lifted the little monkey off her shoulder and bounced him on her knee like a baby. To my amazement he put his thumb in his mouth, just like he was human.

  “Miss Emma’s not right,” she told Joseph, patting his furry little head. “That’s what they said about me. I heard them through a crack in the door.”

  Joseph chittered back at her. Chika-chiky-chika.

  I glanced at Reba Lu. Her eyes were open wide, and she looked like she would never shut them again. She edged a little closer to me to get away from the fresh parrot poop that Henry was depositing on the coverlet.

  I stared at Miss Emma with her face like a plump apple and her frizzled brown hair. She looked anything but lovable to me. We really had our job cut out for us if we wanted to keep her on our list. I could just imagine trying to teach her to crochet while Joseph chattered and tangled the thread and mice ran across the floor.

  “Want to see my new teeth?” she asked suddenly. Before we could decide, she opened her mouth into a big doughnut shape and leaned toward us. Her false teeth were large and wet and shiny.

  I said a prayer for God to keep them in her mouth.

  When the door creaked open, I half hoped it would be Him, coming to take charge. But it wasn’t God. It was Dr. Thomas, which seemed to me almost as good. His eyes were on Miss Emma while he talked, but I had a feeling he was speaking to us girls.

  “Nice for you to have company,” he said. “The girls can catch you up on what’s going on in our town.”

  I didn’t think we could tell Miss Emma anything she didn’t already know. From that upstairs window, she could see everything that happened on Palm Avenue. I bet at night she could even look in a lot of lighted windows.

  As if she were going to demonstrate how much she could see, Miss Emma went over and peered out the window. She stiffened and held her breath. Then she began to rock back and forth, hugging herself with both arms. She turned and took a step toward Dr. Thomas. “Papa,” she whimpered. “He’s back.” Her eyes had grown big, and her lips trembled. Her voice rose higher until she sounded like a little girl.

  The little monkey squealed excitedly, and the parrot began to squawk. “Help! Help!” it screeched.

  “Help! Help!” mimicked Miss Emma. Over and over.

  Before we could see what Miss Emma would do next, Dr. Thomas took me firmly by the shoulders and pointed me toward the door. “You all better run along now,” he said. “It’s time for Miss Emma to have her rest.”

  We ran, and I led the way. I wanted to get outside to see what had scared her so. I could still hear her whimpering. And the sound of Henry squawking “Help! Help!”

  As soon as I opened the front door, I saw who she was carrying on about. Jefferson Clement was leaning against the wall of the bank building on the corner, right where Willie Jack Kelly usually stood. He wasn’t doing anything wrong, as far as I could tell.

  But he sure seemed to have gotten Miss Emma riled up.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Crack! Sizzle! Boom!

  The Fourth of July announced itself early in Messina and kept right on sparkling and banging until the moon was high.

  Eddie and my father had bought Roman candles, whirligigs, and firecrackers over a week ago. They were saving the showiest ones for later, to set off at the town picnic. But I could hear the firecrackers early that morning while I helped Mama make the potato salad.

  Everything sizzled and popped on the Fourth of July. The chicken crackled in the frying pan. Onions crunched as Mama chopped them into tiny, shiny pieces. Even the Rice Krispies I had for breakfast seemed to get into the spirit as they snapped and crackled.

  American flags waved in front yards, and downtown Messina had a huge red, white, and blue banner that stretched all the way across Main Street from Flannery’s Grocery Store to Verna’s Beauty Parlor.

  By eight o’clock in the morning, it was eighty-nine degrees outside, and inside it wasn’t much cooler. The radio said it would be a scorching Fourth of July, and the announcer wasn’t talking about fireworks.

  Across the street, the Adams twins, Violet and Rose, were busy tying strings of firecrackers together. When they had a good collection, they eyed my dog, Buster. He eyed them right back and crawled under the house.

  I saw Violet grin and point a finger in Buster’s direction. She said something to Rose, who started hugging herself with excitement. That was when I remembered how Violet was the one who had held the cat’s head while Rose tried to feed it a mud pie. I got the picture! Violet was the one who got the ideas, and Rose carried them out.

  As soon as I had that figured out, I marched right over and told the twins I knew what they were planning. I made them look at me, one at a time. Then I had my say. “I skinned the hide off the last mean kids who tried such a trick.” It was a fib, but I figured it was for a good cause. They looked disappointed, but scared, too, and that suited me.

  Then I went back home and tried to lure Buster out from under the house with a lamb shank bone from last night’s supper. But he knew all about firecrackers tied to his tail, and he wasn’t taking a chance.

  The next thing I knew, the twins were digging up a patch of dirt at the side of the driveway. Charles was helping, so I went over to watch. He showed Violet how to drag the hoe in a straight line to make a furrow. Then he pulled a long string of firecrackers out of his pocket and showed Rose how to plant it.

  She began jumping up and down. “I get to plant the firecrackers!” she yelled. She looked at her sister and stuck out her tongue. “You have to dig the hole.”

  “Lay the line down real careful,” Charles said, “and cover the crackers with that nice loose dirt. If you water them good and keep the weeds pulled, they’ll sprout next spring and be ready to pick by summer. You can sell the ones you don’t want and make some money to buy Abba-Zabas.”

  Reba Lu had come out to watch with me. “The twins are crazy about Abba-Zabas,” she explained. “They chew at the taffy until they make a hole, then suck the peanut butter out.”

  “I’m surprised your father let Charles get away with that,” I told her. “What are they going to do when the
firecrackers don’t sprout?”

  Reba Lu shrugged. “They’ll be into some other mischief by then.” She grinned. “My dad was the one who put him up to it. He said there won’t be any Sunday sermon if those two don’t give him some peace.”

  Geraldine came by, and we three stood around looking at each other until I said, “I can’t stop thinking about Miss Emma. While I was slicing the salad potatoes this morning, I kept remembering how she sounded when she saw Mr. Clement outside her window.”

  “You don’t know for sure if Mr. Clement is the reason she was scared. Anyway, everyone knows Miss Emma is tetched.” Geraldine held one hand up to her head, made a circling motion with her index finger, and laughed. But it wasn’t a ha-ha laugh. I could tell by the tone of her voice that she was in one of her arguing moods.

  “Nobody else was out there!” Reba Lu said.

  “That’s right.” I stared at Geraldine until she lowered her eyes. “We all heard her,” I went on. “She said, ‘He’s back!’ and she sounded like a little girl having a bad dream. I can’t get it out of my mind.”

  I didn’t think they could, either. We stood there looking at each other a few minutes more. Finally, we meandered up the street to say hello to Willie Jack and take him a shiny apple that had been picked fresh last fall from one of the mountain orchards and stored in our cellar where it kept nice and cool.

  Willie Jack was the town handyman when he actually worked, and folks said he was a real craftsman. He painted, repaired, and could build things from scratch. I remember when Daddy hired him to make my dollhouse when I was little. He even carved some furniture for me—a tiny bed and a kitchen table with four chairs. Then he made a sofa and an easy chair for the front room. He put tiny soft pads on those because he said my doll people would be more comfortable with cushions to sit on.

  Willie Jack didn’t have any family of his own, which my dad said was a pity because he would have been a good father. He dressed himself in overalls, a plaid shirt with long sleeves, and heavy boots all year round. When Mama took me up to Artie Longmire’s barbershop to have my hair cut real short back when we had that head lice scare, I heard Artie say that all those clothes helped cover Willie Jack’s battle scars.