A Long Line of Cakes

by Deborah Wiles

  More silence. And then finally House spoke up.

  “I can tell you a story while we wait.”

  The rain would come down for as long as it took, and the story would spin out for as long as House had breath; indeed he would tell it for as long as he lived.

  And so he tugged at the brim of his baseball cap and began. He had been hired to read to the old man as he lay dying—Norwood’s bedroom was across the wide hallway near the front door. Ruby shivered. House’s elbow had been healing from its first injury—another story for another time—so he had read to Mr. Norwood instead of playing ball most of last year.

  It took a lot longer for Mr. Norwood to die than House imagined it would, and he’d had to fight his own impulses to flee when he first started the job, because he, too, had heard the stories about how the house was haunted and held treasure, and how Mr. Norwood, who had closed himself up in this house years ago, was a monster, a baby-eater, and worse. But none of those stories was true.

  Mr. Norwood had been a merchant marine for many years and had traveled the world collecting interesting memories and mementos. House gestured with his good hand around the room as if to say, You can see, all these things from faraway places.

  “But then something happened to him,” said House, “and I don’t know what. He came home and closed himself up here and lived the rest of his life as a solitary. He had friends all over the world. They wrote to him and he wrote to them. He listened to music and tended a garden and took care of Eudora Welty—who was my mother’s dog originally, though I don’t remember any of that, because my mom died when I was six and Eudora already lived here then.”

  Emma blinked. Ben scratched at his ear. Ruby kept quiet. She knew about House’s mother, and about Eudora Welty, and about Norwood Boyd, but being in his house, and listening to House tell the story, was another thing altogether.

  House took a breath—it was a lot to tell anybody in one gulp, especially this special story. But he felt he was giving it into good hands, so he continued. “He read all the books on these shelves, and when he couldn’t read to himself anymore, I started reading to him. We were reading Treasure Island when he died.”

  “The moment he died?” asked Ruby. She’d always wanted to know. House nodded. Ruby held her arms across her chest for safety. Ben and House exchanged a look. Ben’s admiration for his friend grew as he listened.

  Emma concentrated on the high ceilings and the sturdy walls and the solid wooden floors beneath her feet. She imagined four or five bedrooms upstairs. Hers would be in the turret.

  I’m here, she told the old abandoned house. And she sent those words to Norwood Boyd as well. Here I am. Do you want a girl to love your house? I do.

  “Who took care of Norwood?” asked Ruby. “If he couldn’t even hold a book to read, how did he eat? Or do anything else?”

  “Mr. Pip came by every day,” said House. “Or Miss Mattie. And probably others. My dad, for one. He had friends, even if he didn’t venture out in the world.”

  “What about the house?” asked Emma.

  “Norwood built the house himself,” said House. “A long time ago.”

  “It’s a big house for one person,” said Ruby, “and it doesn’t look anything like all the other houses around here. Why did he need such a big house?”

  “Maybe he didn’t think he would end up alone,” whispered Emma. “Maybe he filled it with treasures for the family he never had.”

  “That’s too sad to even think about,” said Ruby. “And creepy.”

  “It’s not creepy at all,” said Emma.

  “How do you know?” asked Ruby. “You didn’t even know him.”

  “Neither did you!” said Emma.

  Ben changed the subject. “It’s a great house!”

  House smiled. None of the All-Stars had thought it was a great house. Of course. But Ben wasn’t burdened by the rumors, the myths, the prejudices, the fears. It was a great house.

  Emma tried not to speak of her excitement, not to show it, but when Ben declared this a great house, she couldn’t contain herself and burst out with, “It’s mine!”

  Emma clapped her hand over her mouth and looked at Ben, wide-eyed. In an instant, she could tell he had been thinking the very same thing.

  Ruby pursed her lips and said nothing. They were birdbrains, these two. Who would want a once-haunted, dilapidated house?

  “I don’t know who it belongs to now,” said House. “Or what’s going to happen to it.” He said it as smoothly as if it had been no big deal for Emma to burst out with her ownership of it.

  “Who hired you to read to Mr. Norwood?” asked Ruby, bringing the story back to the center of the conversation.

  “It was Mr. Pip.”

  “Pip!” Ruby sat up straight and pushed her hair out of her face. “Mr. Pip?”

  “He and Norwood were best friends,” said House. “They were best friends when they were kids, and kept on being best friends until the end.”

  Would he tell them the rest? He would. “There’s a picture out there in the hallway of Pip wearing Mr. Norwood’s baseball uniform, when they were both twelve years old—a long time ago.”

  Ruby slid off the couch. “Let me see it.”

  House got a flashlight from the table next to the ­hallway and said, “Come on.” Honey and Gordon had ­succumbed to the sound of the rain and were both sleeping on the rug next to the snoring Eudora Welty. They had had quite the fright, and it was perfect napping weather.

  Emma, Ben, House, and Ruby trooped out to the hallway. The walls were packed with framed photos of all sizes, the story of a life.

  The rain slowed to a drizzle and the sun began to glide through the front window. A shaft of light shone on the hallway, just where Parting Schotz stood, frozen in time in his picture frame, smiling all over his twelve-year-old face, wearing a uniform that said AURORA ANGELS on it.

  “Why is he wearing Norwood’s uniform instead of his own?” asked Ruby.

  “It’s a long story,” said House. “Pip told it to me after Norwood died.”

  “What’s the short version?”

  House shoved the brim of his baseball cap right, left, then back to center. “Pip couldn’t play with the white boys, on their team, when they were kids, and Mr. Norwood quit the team when he found out. Then neither one of them played ball. And they were both real good ballplayers.”

  “Good garden of peas,” said Ruby. “I never knew this story.”

  “Neither did I,” said House. “Pip told me that Norwood was a catcher, and could throw a ball clean from home to second base to get a batter out.”

  “I’m a catcher!” said Ruby.

  “What about Mr. Pip?” asked Ben.

  “Pip was the best hitter Norwood had ever seen. And you should have seen him at our All-Stars game! He knocked one out of the park and he’s eighty-eight years old! He saved the game!”

  “He did,” confirmed Ruby.

  Ben softly whistled his admiration. “Wish I’d seen that.”

  There was silence then—a contemplation of those two twelve-year-old boys and their friendship. Ruby began to reevaluate her opinion of House Jackson. Actually, she’d never thought much about House at all. Maybe she had dismissed him because he was—until today—so quiet, or because he was such good friends with that Cleebo Wilson who drove her nuts with his bravado and bragging.

  Ruby watched House lift his baseball cap and resettle it on his forehead. His face was red, the way people’s faces color up when they’ve said things that are important to them to say. He was cute.

  She shook her head. She course-corrected. “We should go. The storm’s over.” She looked up and down the hallway. “Where’s Emma?”

  * * *

  They found her outside at the garden fence, her practical side already hard at work, moving forward. It was one thing to decide a house belonged to you. It was quite another to make it a reality. First things first. Her father had to decide to stay.

  “Can we
really make a garden out of this mess?” she asked.

  “We can if we chop the weeds and bring in my chickens,” said Ruby.

  “How will you get them all the way over here?” asked Ben.

  Ruby sniffed at Mr. Nitpick and said, “Mr. Butterfield has a chicken tractor. It’s really an old school bus he turned into a portable chicken coop. You use ’em for moving your chickens from place to place, so they can have new grass all the time. He’ll haul ’em over for us, I bet. And they can stay until they’ve finished the job. We’ll look after them every day.”

  “Everybody will know we’re here if we tell somebody else!” said Emma. “My dad can say no before we even get started!”

  Ruby thought about it. “Miss Eula can do it for us. We’ll have to tell her our plan. And she’ll have to tell Mr. Butterfield, but he won’t tell anybody else. He’s a lawyer, and he can’t talk about other people’s business. So nobody else will know the plan.”

  Honey, Gordon, and Eudora Welty appeared on the back porch, half-awake. “Where did everybody go?”

  Emma agreed about Miss Eula. “Can we start tomorrow?” she asked.

  And so it was decided.

  Back at the Cake Café, Leo and Arlouin had baked a batch of Comfort Cookies. They were still wearing their aprons and their somber moods. The radio played softly in the kitchen. “Who’s Sorry Now” wafted into the front room. The CLOSED sign was on the door, as it was every afternoon, and the two Cakes sat at their favorite wooden table near the glass bakery case, where they liked to admire their work. But they weren’t in an admiring mood this late afternoon after the soiree.

  Leo was shaken that Parting Schotz would know his father’s name, but his nerves settled as he told himself that anyone could find out about Archibald Cake just by asking about the Cakes themselves. Leo had told the story of Archie to five or six—or was it fifteen or twenty?—customers who asked where the Cakes were from, and any of them—all of them—would surely have mentioned the story to Pip. One thing a body could be sure of in this town was gossip.

  And beyond that, Pip was an old man; old people mixed things up. Especially if they’d been knocked in the head like that.

  So Leo soothed himself and didn’t mention his under-the-table conversation with Pip to Arlouin. He was sure he’d never been to Halleluia, Mississippi, even though the place felt familiar in a way he couldn’t articulate.

  “Cakes never go anywhere twice!” Archie had told his young son, his only child, Leo. “We do our best and we move on. There is so much need in the world, after all, and cake is one simple way to soothe it.”

  The dogs had heaped themselves at Leo’s and Arlouin’s feet. “They need comfort, too,” said Leo. He fed them a cookie apiece.

  “Bad dogs,” said Arlouin, but she said it with great affection. The song on the radio changed and “I Fall to Pieces” drifted to them as they sat and sighed and munched.

  Dot Land, Halleluia’s postmistress, opened the café door and called “Yoo-hoo!” and waltzed in with a bushel basket of mail. “I’ve been looking for you!” she said. “When your boys came in yesterday to check, we didn’t have your forwarded mail yet, but”—she raised the basket high over her head—“here it is!”

  “Come in, Dot,” said a weary Arlouin. “Have a Comfort Cookie.”

  “Oh, no, thank you,” said Dot in a warm but firm voice. She had a pearl-handled comb peacocked in her short natural hair. “I am watching my waistline.”

  “Do you expect it to run off?” asked Leo in his own weary voice, making a bad joke and laughing at it ruefully in spite of himself.

  Bo-Bo gave Dot a kiss as Dot helped herself to a seat at the wooden table with the plate of cookies.

  “Look, you two.” Dot put the mail basket in her lap. “It’s okay. Nobody blames you or your dogs for crashing the party. It could have happened to anyone.”

  “It was pandemonium,” said Leo. “A pandemonium bonanza. How do you know about it?”

  “You think I don’t know everything that goes on in this town?” said Dot. “I’m postmistress!”

  “Well, you didn’t see it,” said Leo. He took a bite of cookie.

  “I couldn’t leave work!” said Dot.

  “Finesse screamed at my children,” said Arlouin. “She scared them away! And she said that our family ruined everything.” Arlouin ate another Comfort Cookie.

  “Well, that’s the pot calling the kettle black,” declared Dot. “I remember when Finesse—Frances—broke House’s arm in that same barbershop a year ago, and ruined his baseball summer, and almost lost them the All-Stars game this year, to boot! She’ll come around; don’t worry about her. And your kids will come home, too. They can’t have gone far.”

  “Gordon went to Honey’s with House,” said Arlouin.

  “See, there you go.”

  “I’m sure Ben will be there, too,” Arlouin continued. “And that means Emma is with Ruby.”

  “Have a cookie, Dot,” said Leo. “Please.”

  Dot helped herself to a cookie, took a bite, closed her eyes, and sighed with pleasure. It was a good cookie. The rain had slowed to pitter-patters on the tin roof above them. The boys were upstairs playing something that involved lots of rolling around and laughing and bumping into things, with occasional shouting and ­catapulting off the top bunk beds. A normal rainy afternoon’s fun.

  “Maybe it will be all right,” Arlouin hoped.

  “Of course it will be all right,” said Dot. “And look at all this mail I’ve brought you! I’ll bet there’s something in here to lift your spirits.”

  “Thank you, Dot,” said Leo with feeling. “You lift our spirits, too.”

  Dot took another bite of cookie. “I’m telling you, I’ve never seen a body in this town get so much mail from such far-flung places!”

  “We do get mail from all over,” agreed Arlouin.

  “Well,” continued Dot, “except for Norwood Boyd, who could have been a stamp collector with all the exotic stamps that came affixed to his letters! Postmarks from the Philippines, Madagascar, Australia, Guam, India—and that’s just for starters! He traveled so much as a young man and he had so many friends, wrote so many letters, got so much mail …”

  “Who?” asked Leo.

  “Norwood Boyd,” said Dot, blushing a little at her crowing. She loved to talk about the mail. “Nobody has mail home delivery here, as you know, but Norwood was different, and Carl Fontana—you know him, our deputy postmaster—he delivered Norwood’s mail once a week and picked up and mailed his replies as well.”

  “Have I met him?” asked Leo.

  “Carl Fontana?” Dot adjusted the comb in her hair.

  “No,” said Leo. “Norwood Boyd. I know that name. I think I’ve met him!”

  “I should say not,” said Dot. She eyed the cookie plate. “Norwood died, poor soul, before you arrived in Halleluia.”

  “Oh,” said Leo. “I misunderstood.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear it,” added Arlouin. She held up the cookie plate for Dot.

  “Well, he lived a long life,” said Dot, taking another cookie. “And he was a friend to all who knew him.” She rose and put the mail basket on her chair. “I’ve got to go,” she said. “Enjoy your mail call!” She smiled and left the café holding another cookie, or maybe it was two cookies, or maybe it was a napkin full of cookies. Dot departed with cookies.

  Leo pushed up the nose of his glasses and looked at Arlouin. “That name is so familiar.”

  “Norwood Boyd?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t remember.”

  “Rain’s stopped!” yelled the Cake boys as they tumbled over one another down the stairs and out the back door. The rain had scoured the sandy lane to a shine. Pumpkin-colored pebbles gleamed in the sunlight, warm and wet and washed. The boys left the back door open and the dogs followed them outside.

  “Norwood Boyd?” Arlouin repeated, as she got up to shut the door and turn on the overhead fan.

  But Leo had pushed the
thought aside, like he pushed all reflection aside. He was not a ruminating man. He lived in the moment with one eye to the future, where nothing was spoiled and everything was possible and there lived an eternal beginning.

  “Let’s see what the mail brought,” he said.

  Even though they had moved many times in the past twelve years, the Cakes had had only one address, a central mailbox where all their correspondence was sent. It had been the same address all during Leo Cake’s childhood as well—the only address he’d ever known.

  Anyone who wanted to send mail to the Cakes had been sending it there for ages. Every so often, when he remembered, Leo directed the mail place to send the accumulated mail and it was forwarded. Then Leo sifted through the thank-you letters and the bills and the requests for help.

  What would we have done without you? Your William Tell’s Never-Miss Apple Cake saved the day! Love, Vinnie and Vaughn and the boys.

  “Was that in Amarillo or Plano?” asked Leo.

  “Austin,” said Arlouin. She folded each letter and put it back in its envelope as Leo opened the next.

  You changed our lives for the better with your Grilled Tortilla and Onion Cakes with Nuts and Caramel Frosting! Muchas Gracias! Love, Jorge and Louisa and everyone at the Hatch Chile Farm.

  “Was that New Haven or New York?”

  “Neither,” said Arlouin.

  We’ll never forget you! Hungarian Plum Cakes forever! Love, George and Louisa at Evergreen Farms.

  “Was that North Dakota or South Dakota?

  “Honestly, Leo.”

  Word of mouth brought the requests.

  “This one looks promising,” said Leo. “An old family bakery burned down in Sesquidilla, California, and nobody bakes there.”

  “Nobody?”

  “They don’t even cook! They need us right away!”

  “Was anyone hurt?”

  “Just the buns!” Leo laughed too hard at his own joke. Arlouin smacked him on the shoulder with an empty envelope. “Stop that! This is a tragedy!”

  “Which is why we should go help them,” said Leo, suddenly somber. “Everything up in smoke.” He rubbed his chin with the backs of his fingers. “Disaster is what happens when you stay somewhere too long. You accumulate too many things. And then, when something bad happens, you lose everything. Or everything is a mess. Ugly. Imperfect. Old. Broken.”