“I’ve never told anybody, Angie. That Geraldine would probably laugh her head off at the idea of someone my age being afraid of the dark. Remember you promised not to tell.”
“So did you,” I reminded her. We both stood there with the cold spring water up to our ankles and stuck out our little fingers. I hooked mine around hers, and we pulled hard to make our promises stick. Then we got busy picking those mulberries that Mama wanted. When we’d finished, we began to walk down the street together.
“I’ll save you a mulberry muffin,” I told her.
At Dodie’s house, she turned and looked at me just before she opened the door. “Save me two?” she asked. Then she grinned.
I grinned back. When I’d gone to collect mulberries that morning, I’d never expected to get to be sort of a friend with Dodie Crumper. But that’s what had happened. Now she knew something about me that nobody else knew. And I knew something about her. Somehow I was sure Dodie would never tell my secret. And that was more than I could say for Geraldine.
CHAPTER TEN
A couple of weeks later, Reba Lu and Geraldine and I were looking for something to do and decided we wanted to camp out. We wanted it even more after our mothers said no. We sat on my porch swing and tried to figure out what to do.
“Mama wouldn’t even let me explain,” I complained. “She just shook her head before I had even finished asking.”
“Same here,” Geraldine said. “Only mine said, ‘Of course not!’”
Reba Lu gave the swing a big push with both feet, and we all put our legs straight out and coasted. “Want to hear what mine said?”
Geraldine and I didn’t bother to answer. We knew Reba Lu well enough by now to know she would tell us, no matter what.
Reba Lu jumped out of the swing. “Mama looked at me like this …” She put one hand on each hip and gave us the kind of look Mrs. Adams usually reserved for Charles. “And then she said, ‘Really, Reba Lu!’”
We burst out laughing. We had all heard Mrs. Adams sound exactly like that. Suddenly Reba Lu started doing a little dance, putting her arms in the air and turning around in circles. “I’ve got it!” she shouted. “They said no separately. That’s our answer.”
Reba Lu might have got it, but I didn’t. And from the look on Geraldine’s face, she didn’t, either.
“Don’t you see?” Reba Lu demanded. “We have to get all three of our mamas together. That way, we’ll have a better chance to find a chink in their armor.”
“What chink? What armor?” I glanced at Geraldine. She raised both eyebrows and shrugged her shoulders.
“It’s an expression. If a knight’s armor has a chink—a little piece broken out of it—he’s more vulnerable.”
I knew that word! Miss Hallie Harper said small nations by the sea could be vulnerable to attack by ships. That meant they would probably lose the battle. So maybe we could win the battle if we made our mothers more vulnerable by getting them together while we joined forces. I never thought I would thank Miss Harper for anything. But this might make it easier for me to love her.
“OK,” Reba Lu said. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll bake oatmeal cookies and make sweet iced tea. Then we’ll get our mothers to come sit on Angie’s front porch. It’ll be easy to convince them to let us camp out when they see how capable we are.”
She did her little dance again. “What are we waiting for?” she asked.
So we baked the cookies that afternoon at the preacher’s house because he was out making visits to the sick, and Mrs. Adams was teaching a Bible study class up at the church.
Reba Lu found her mother’s recipe, and we worked on the cookies all afternoon, sifting and mixing and blending. But when Reba Lu pulled the first cookie sheet out of the oven, we just stared at them. Not one of us even wanted to taste one. “We followed my mama’s recipe,” she said, “but her cookies never looked like this.”
Geraldine reached out and poked one with her finger. It was mushy in the middle and singed at the edges. The raisins looked like black flies. “Your oven must be broken,” she said.
Just then the twins came in the kitchen, all sweaty and dirty from digging up some of their firecrackers to see if they had sprouted yet. They took two cookies apiece, one for each hand, and ate them right down, burnt edges and all.
We cut away the rest of the black edges, but it didn’t help much. We would have made another batch, except we had already used up all Mrs. Adams’s oatmeal.
“Mama is always telling me not to eat cookies fresh from the oven because they need to rest a while for the flavor to develop,” I said.
Privately, I thought these would take a considerable amount of resting to improve. But we hoped for the best and put them in a shoebox lined with waxed paper and hid them in Reba Lu’s closet so Charles and the twins couldn’t find them.
The next day, Geraldine told her mother, “Mrs. Wallace has invited you to her house this afternoon.” Reba Lu did the same. I just waited until Mrs. Murlock and Mrs. Adams were coming up the front walk, then told Mama we had unexpected company.
After they had nibbled some on the cookies (which tasted like they needed a lot more resting), and washed down the crumbs with iced tea, we brought up the campout. It went like this:
Mama: “You’ll catch your death of cold.” We reminded her it was the middle of July.
Mrs. Murlock: “You don’t have a tent, and I’m not buying one.” We explained how we could hang long sheets from the low limbs of a tree.
Mrs. Murlock: “Not one of my sheets, you won’t.”
Mrs. Adams: “The coyotes will get you.” That was something we hadn’t considered, but we assured them we could throw rocks and make enough noise to scare them off.
Then they all started asking questions.
Mama: “Whose backyard did you plan to camp in?” Reba Lu’s. She had some trees with low branches that would be perfect to hang sheets from.
Mrs. Adams: “What are you going to eat?” Peanut butter sandwiches and grape Kool-Aid, donated by Mrs. Adams, though Reba Lu was just getting around to telling her that.
Mrs. Murlock: “Where will you go to the bathroom?”
“Wherever.”
That was from Geraldine, and our mothers had a fit until Mrs. Adams said she could leave the back porch door unlatched.
Mama and Mrs. Murlock held their ground. They were still shaking their heads when Daddy came home.
“Camping?” he exclaimed. “I did that when I was a boy. Fine idea. Good, healthy fun.”
There wasn’t much our mothers could do then except load us down with instructions.
“Lights out at nine.” What lights?
“Take plenty of blankets.” It was still July.
“If you see a coyote, don’t run. Yell for help as loud as you can.” I intended to climb the nearest tree as high as I could.
This was on a Thursday. We figured we could make our plans, get our equipment together, build our tent, and be ready to camp out on Friday night. We sat on the scrubby grass that grew under the big elm trees in the preacher’s backyard while Reba Lu made a list and Geraldine stuck her two cents in and was bossy, as usual. I had always been the list maker when it was just Geraldine and me, but Reba Lu had taken that over because of her nice handwriting.
After a bit, Reba Lu began to read out loud. “Chewing gum, Nancy Drew books, flashlights, snacks.” She chewed on her pencil a bit, then added pencils and paper.
“What for?” Geraldine and I said it together.
“You want to keep a diary, don’t you?” Reba Lu sounded surprised that the two of us hadn’t thought of that. “It’s the most important part of having an adventure. Writing about it, so we won’t forget all the things that happened.”
I glanced at Geraldine. She was getting that narrow look about her eyes that meant somebody was starting to push her too far.
“In a diary,” I told her, “you can write down anything you want. You can even write things about other peo
ple.” I shifted my eyes toward Reba Lu. Geraldine brightened up considerably and gave me a thumbs up. I could have hugged myself. This was the Geraldine I knew.
“What about the campfire?” Geraldine asked.
We stared at each other. “We could roast marshmallows,” Reba Lu said.
“And cook weenies on a stick,” I added. “That’s better than peanut butter sandwiches for camping out.”
“Do you think our folks will let us light a fire?” Geraldine asked.
“They will if Eddie builds it and makes sure we don’t burn up,” I said. “The trouble is, he’ll probably want to hang around and eat roasted weenies and marshmallows.”
“That’s OK with me,” Reba Lu said. “I think Eddie’s nice.” I tried not to grin when I saw how red her face was getting.
Geraldine started walking around the backyard. “You don’t have much kindling wood here,” she said. “I’ve got a big pile at my house. It’s what’s left over from the old outhouse that fell down. My mama will be glad to have it hauled away.”
Reba Lu gave her a pinched-mouth look that said as plain as day what she thought of cooking weenies over wood that had been used for such private purposes. But she gave in when Geraldine said it had been sitting in the sun for over a year and had all the germs baked out of it.
“Did we forget anything?” Reba Lu wanted to know.
It came to me with a jolt. It reminded me of the way I had felt the time I used a knife to pry burnt toast out of the toaster while it was still plugged in. We had forgotten something. I thought of our list of sinners. “Dodie,” I said. Just that one word. The two of them looked at me like I needed to wash my mouth out with soap.
“Maybe her mother won’t let her come,” I said. I was starting to get a bad feeling of what it would be like with Dodie in the same tent with Geraldine and Reba Lu.
Geraldine let out a snorting sound. “Her mother wouldn’t even know she was gone.”
Once again, we trudged up the street to Dodie’s house and rang the bell. When the door opened, we expected to see Dodie, but Mr. Jefferson Clement came out instead. Bits of what looked like straw stuck out of his hair. As he limped past me, I caught a whiff of something spicy—like the aftershave lotion I had smelled up at the barbershop.
He looked startled to see us and never said a word. Just kept going down the sidewalk, and across the street toward his own house.
He didn’t move too fast, though, and he had his left hand on his right shoulder, rubbing it like it was hurting him. Before we could blink twice, Dodie came stomping out of her house. Her face was red, and her fists were clenched. She started up Palm Avenue, moving fast, as if someone was shoving her from behind. She never even glanced at us.
“You come back here!” we heard Mrs. Crumper yell.
“Hey, Dodie!” Geraldine called.
Dodie never slowed down. Her shoulders were hunched, and her bony elbows jabbed the air.
“I wonder what happened?” Reba Lu said, eyeing the front screen door. “Do you suppose we ought to see if Mrs. Crumper is all right?”
Geraldine and I looked at each other. Neither one of us cared a hoot about Mrs. Crumper.
“It’s our Christian duty,” Reba Lu insisted, and marched up the front steps.
Geraldine sighed. “Next thing we know, she’ll be telling us to love the whole sinning Crumper family.”
I uh-huhed in agreement, but we went ahead and followed her into the house.
Mrs. Crumper wasn’t in her usual place on the couch. She was sitting on a hardback chair, holding the sweeping half of a broken broom in one hand. The other half was standing broken-side-up in a fishbowl filled with dirty water. The water moved, so I figured it must have a live fish in it. Poor, trapped thing.
Mrs. Crumper’s face was a sight, all red and puffy, and she was taking great gulping breaths that made her chest rise and fall. Her pink chenille robe fell apart in front, and we got a good look at what she wasn’t wearing. Geraldine and I stared, but Reba Lu went over and pulled the robe back together.
Mrs. Crumper ignored her. “Dodie’s real mad at me,” she told us. “She says I’ve ruined everything because I told Mr. Clement not to bring any more dirty clothes over here. Now she won’t be getting any more of their money. Well, she’ll just have to do without. I don’t want that man coming around.”
That was the longest speech I ever heard Mrs. Crumper make. Her mouth twisted, and I thought she was going to start crying, but then I saw she was trying to smile. She stared at the broken broom she was holding and put it on the floor next to her chair.
“How about you girls sit yourselves down a while. Dodie will be back. She always comes back.” She tried to get up and fell back into the chair. “I could make some lemonade,” she said. Then she gave a loud hiccup.
I wanted to get out of there fast, but my feet seemed glued to the dirty Crumper floor. Geraldine took hold of my arm and gave it a pull. We had taken a few steps toward the door when Mrs. Crumper clutched at her hands, twisting and rubbing them like she was washing a dirty shirt she couldn’t get clean.
“I take care of my Dodie. She’s a good girl, a hard worker. She’s going to make something of herself.”
Reba Lu opened her mouth, but even she couldn’t think of a single thing to say to that.
Mrs. Crumper picked up the piece of broken broom and started waving it in the air. Then she narrowed her eyes at me like she was trying to figure out who I was. When she tried to get up off the chair again, I started backing toward the door. Geraldine got there before me, and Reba Lu was right behind us.
We stumbled down the front steps, getting our arms tangled around each other. I was wondering how that broom got broken. But before I could say anything about it, Reba Lu found her voice. “Maybe we should add Mrs. Crumper to our list of people to love.” She sounded doubtful, which was unusual for her. She started to say something else, but Geraldine had had enough.
“You can forget it, Reba Lu,” she said. “Dodie is all the Crumper I can stomach, and I’m having trouble with that one.”
I thought that was a little unfair, but I nodded and said, “I don’t ever want to go back in that smelly house again. I think Dodie’s mother might be a little tetched in the head.”
Reba Lu put her hands on her hips and jutted her chin out at us. “You’re both thinking about yourselves,” she accused us. “Is that any way to get on God’s good side?”
We stood there on the Crumpers’ front walk glaring at each other and scuffling our feet on the sidewalk. Then something came out of my mouth that surprised me.
“We came here to ask Dodie about camping out, and that’s what we’re going to do.” I started up Palm Avenue. I looked back once and saw that they were trailing along behind me.
“We don’t even know where Dodie went!” Geraldine yelled.
“I do!” I yelled back. I hoped I was right.
By the time we reached the American Legion Park, Geraldine and Reba Lu had caught up with me, and the three of us were walking together again. It was the first time in our friendship that I was in charge. I was beginning to like the feeling.
I led the way past the picnic benches, then stopped and pointed toward the eucalyptus forest on the north side. Dodie sat on one of the giant roots that had grown almost flat on top like a long bench. I saw that she had stuck some eucalyptus leaves in her hair the same way she had at the Fourth of July picnic. She faced away from us, her back hunched over like she was hunting for something in the dirt.
“How’d you know she’d be here?” whispered Geraldine.
“I just knew.” I didn’t feel like explaining.
We walked over to Dodie and stood around, waiting for her to look up. She didn’t. She was scratching up piles of dirt, moistened with water from the creek, and mixing in small rocks and broken-off bits of eucalyptus bark. As we watched, she scooped up handfuls and pressed the dirt mixture into the shape of four walls around an empty space in the middle. The whole thi
ng was about as big as a shoebox.
“Are you OK?” I asked.
“What do you care?”
“I just wondered. Mr. Clement came tearing out of your house and your mother is really mad.”
“Not your business.”
“What are you making?” Geraldine asked her.
“Fort.”
“Why are you putting rocks and leaves in the wall?” I asked.
“Makes it stronger.”
Then she took a single eucalyptus pod with the hat attached and put it in the center of the square. It looked lonely, I thought, sitting there all by itself. We watched as she began laying sticks in a crisscross pattern across the top.
“I guess that’s the roof,” Reba Lu said. Dodie glanced sideways at her, but kept on working.
I cleared my throat. “We came to find you because we want to ask you something.”
“Ask me what?”
I raised my eyebrows at Geraldine. She gritted her teeth. “We’re camping out in Reba Lu’s backyard Friday night. We came to invite you.”
Dodie steadied the roof of her fort, then covered it with rows of long eucalyptus leaves.
“What for?” she finally asked.
Reba Lu took over. “Because it will be fun. Don’t you want to have fun?” I remembered that Reba Lu had said almost the exact same thing when we asked Dodie to go to the matinee. Dodie might not be very likeable, but she wasn’t stupid.
She narrowed her eyes at Reba Lu, then stared at Geraldine. I might as well have been on the moon for all the notice she took of me. Then she said, “You two don’t like me, do you?”
Reba Lu was struck dumb. So was Geraldine. Even though she put both hands on her hips and got that look on her face that meant business, she didn’t seem able to say anything. Reba Lu got her voice back and plunged right in with her best missionary voice. “We’re trying to like you,” she said. “We want to like you, Dodie, but you always … you make it hard to be nice!”
Dodie’s eyes seemed as pale as rain. You could almost see right through them. It made me feel sad to look at her eyes. But it was hard to feel sorry for Dodie Crumper for very long.
When the Crickets Stopped Singing Page 7
