by Anne Nesbet
“You like it?” said George Thibodeau. “Springdale Dairy, the one and only! Best milk in town.”
“You forgetting Sharp’s Ridge?” said Gusta.
George snorted. “Ha, ha!” he said. “So. Guess you could let the pigeon go from here, couldn’t you? Unless you think it’d be too far.”
“Nelly’s a very good flier,” said Gusta. “I guess she’ll be fine, even with the harness.”
She showed him how it strapped like a funny backward backpack onto Nelly’s chest. Nelly didn’t fuss about it at all. She seemed proud to be one of the pioneering pigeon photographers of Springdale.
“That’s so great!” said George. “All she needs now is a little tiny aviator’s cap! She’s like the Amelia Earhart of pigeons! You know who Amelia Earhart is, right?”
“Sure,” said Gusta. “She got lost in a plane.”
“In a Lockheed Model Ten Electra,” said George. “She was flying around the world and just disappeared. Over the Pacific Ocean somewhere.”
“Okay,” said Gusta. “But Nelly isn’t going to get lost. Are you, Nelly? You fly home safe, now, before the clouds get here!”
And she tossed Nelly gently into the air.
Gusta and George tipped their heads back, watching the pigeon fly away over the tops of the trees. It felt like a dozen tiny little muscles in Gusta’s eyes were being asked to do things they’d never done before. And maybe that was just plain fact, because she had never been able to see birds flying through the air before, and if you think about it, it takes a lot of focusing and refocusing to track something as small as a bird moving through something as vast as the air.
She had to take her glasses off again for a moment and rub her eyes after all that hard work.
“I’ll tell you the truth — I’d like to fly,” said George. “I hope I will someday. You know they’ve been building an airport on the other side of town.”
“Of course I know that,” said Gusta. “We’re all writing those essays about it.”
“Oh, right,” said George. “So are you walking back over the hill now, Augusta?”
“Why won’t you call me Gusta?” said Gusta. “Only teachers and my grandmother and Mr. Bertmann call me AU-gusta.”
“Only person I know named after a state capital,” said George. “Funny sort of name, Augusta.”
“Thanks a lot for your opinion,” said Gusta. “I didn’t give it to myself.”
“My name’s funny, too. Bet you can’t spell it.”
“Thibodeau? Maybe I can’t.”
“Not even Thibodeau. George.”
“G-E-O-R-G-E,” said Gusta right away. “I’m really not sure about Thibodeau, though.”
“You messed up even on George,” said George. “It’s really G-E-O-R-G-E-S, with a silent S. That’s the French way. But nobody at school knows about the S. I bet maybe it’s not even on the folder they keep all my teachers’ complaints in.”
“Oh,” said Gusta. “Well, does the silent S matter to you?”
He thought it over a while.
“I guess it does a little bit. Is that foolish?”
“So what if it’s foolish? If it matters to you, I’ll be careful to think it every time I say your name,” said Gusta. Seemed like a matter-of-fact sort of thing to her.
That was about the first time Gusta had ever seen Georges Thibodeau run out of words. He stared over at her and said nothing for several seconds, until he gave a little twitch as his inner motor started running again. “You have to get home now, didn’t you say?”
“Right. Guess I’d better,” said Gusta. “Gramma Hoopes is going to worry if I’m out here too long. Oh, but here’s a question: Why is there all this gold in the road here? Or is it diamonds?”
They had reached that part of the road where the rocks sparkled.
“Ha!” said Georges, being very good-natured about the interruption. “Don’t you have fool’s gold where you come from? You know, mica? When I was little, I thought it really was gold. I brought a whole pail of it home once, proud as could be. Did they ever laugh!”
“So it’s not actually treasure,” said Gusta. “Too bad.”
“It’s just pretty. If it had been worth anything, people would have dug it out of the road fifty years ago, I bet. Anyway, it’s downhill for you from this point. Guess I’ll see you Monday. Let me know if you need some more pigeons carried anywhere.”
“Sure will,” said Gusta. “Thanks.”
“And if they really get little CAMERAS, you really HAVE to show me!”
“All right,” said Gusta.
And Georges (now forever accompanied by that silent S) waved good-bye and started back the other direction, down toward the pastures and barns of the Springdale Dairy.
It is never too early,” said Miss Hatch, “to begin our preparations for the end of the year.”
She had a stack of just-collected papers in her hands, which were the class’s inky-fresh, hopeful compositions on the theme of “A Vision of America from On High.” Miss Hatch squared the corners of the papers and set the pile gently down on her desk.
“Of course, we all hope that the winner of the honor certificate and the cash prize will come from our classroom,” she said. “But I want you to know that the writers of the best essays in this room will have a reward of their own: they will recite their compositions for an audience as part of our all-school celebration in June.”
Polite murmur from the class. All-school glory, though lovely, had a hard time competing with twenty dollars, the prize for the best essay in town.
“I am still working out our classroom’s contribution to the school performance, which this year is to be a Patriotic Pageant, but I can assure you there will be tableaux celebrating our flag, and several of our greatest heroes portrayed in their moments of glory — we practiced some of these in the fall; do you remember “Washington Crossing the Delaware”? And all the while on a pedestal in the back of the stage, our own Statue of Liberty will stand, holding her torch high, sending her light blazing forth to all the world.”
While Miss Hatch assigned historical roles to various members of the class and reminded others of the parts they had played in the fall, Gusta amused herself by reading all the notices and posters on the walls of the room. The classroom seemed a much smaller space, now that she had her glasses. All of those words and pictures and Scottie dogs right there at her figurative fingertips!
“. . . And I can think of nothing more suitable than having our new school friend, Augusta Neubronner, playing the important role of Liberty.”
There was a sudden silence in the room. Gusta tore her eyes away from the walls, and looked right up at Miss Hatch with what must have seemed like alarm, because Miss Hatch said soothingly, “It won’t be a hard role, Augusta, and I think you’ll do beautifully. It will mean standing up high and holding the torch with pride. What, Molly?”
Molly Gowen must have been waving her hand. But now, when Gusta turned around to look, she could see even the littlest of the angry lines at the corners of Molly’s mouth. It was overwhelming sometimes, how much a face wanted to tell you.
“Miss Hatch,” said Molly. “I think there may be a small problem here. She can’t be our Statue of Liberty. The Statue of Liberty doesn’t wear eyeglasses. The Statue of Liberty’s supposed to be a symbol of perfection, and perfection doesn’t mean eyeglasses. Or bad teeth. And anyway, Augusta’s probably not even all American, that’s what my father says. My father says Neubronner is probably a German name. The Statue of Liberty should be a pure American, isn’t that so?”
Now, by turning her head Gusta could see both Molly’s face and Miss Hatch’s face at almost the same time, and both of them contained much more information than she really wanted to have. Molly had those angry, self-righteous edges everywhere, and Miss Hatch — Miss Hatch was also angry or upset or something, but trying in vain not to let any of it spill into view.
“Molly Gowen,” she started. “We have to think —”
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br /> That’s when Georges Thibodeau not only interrupted, he stood right up from his seat in order to interrupt with fullest effect: “WE ARE GETTING A NEW ELECTRO-PURE PASTEURIZING MACHINE AT THE SPRINGDALE DAIRY!” he said, with his half bellow of a voice.
“Georges!” said Miss Hatch. (Gusta, listening, loyally added the silent S.) “You really must not —”
“WHAT I MEAN IS,” said Georges, as stubbornly as a calf making its way up a muddy, muddy field. “I guess being PURE is a fine thing for MILK. But that has nothing to do with PEOPLE.”
And then he blinked, almost as if he was surprised to find himself standing up in class and bellowing like that.
“Sorry, Miss Hatch!” he said, and he plopped right down.
So!” said Josie, whipping another shirt onto her board. “About Miss Kendall!”
She was calling them to order. Bess and Gusta grinned at each other. This was why Bess had come home with them, despite it being wash day: to hear the latest high-school news from Josie.
They had the three old ironing boards set up, like a factory line almost, and Gusta soldiered away at her sheets and pillowcases and handkerchiefs — all the simplest things — while Bess and Josie turned the shirts this way and that with their clever, super-competent hands.
They, unlike hapless Gusta, could iron anything, even shirts, without scorching the sleeves or sizzling their own fingers or causing any other sort of damage.
Aunt Marion seemed perplexed, sometimes, by all the things Gusta didn’t know.
“I know your Mama can iron a shirt!” she said. “I can’t imagine why she hasn’t trained you up a little better. Never mind; Josie and Bess will teach you, and there’s always the sheets.”
Even sheets can be scorched if you forget to clip on the iron’s jacket, though. Fortunately, Josie’s eyes were not only naturally sharp, but seemed to be able to look in about fifteen directions at once. And she could talk a mile a minute at the very same time.
“She told me that thing I found up in the attic isn’t a guitar at all. It’s called a u-ku-le-le, and it comes from Hawaii,” she announced, all grandly. “And Miss Kendall’s going to find it some strings.”
“So how’d it end up all the way here?” said Bess.
“The old captain, I figure,” said Josie. “Well, look. You know how ships are. Ships go absolutely anywheres. And now we’re going to get ourselves ready for the fair! It’s perfect — I’ll sing and strum the ukulele thing, and you’ll play your horn, and Bess will play the — well, Bess, I guess you’ll whistle and maybe shake a jar of dried beans around, and we’ll have our At-Least-Red-Ribbon Band all ready to go!”
“Oh!” said Bess. “Do you really think we could?”
“Why not?” said Josie. “Ever heard of a band like this? Forest horn, ukulele, and dried beans? No, you have not! So that gives us an edge right there. In big-time show business in New York City, it’s always the strange acts that bring in the audience.”
Gusta wasn’t sure about that, but Josie’s confidence was a powerful force. You could probably build actual bridges out of that confidence and walk on them over deadly fire pits and deep ravines.
“I guess we’ll have to be actually able to play something, if we want to win ribbons,” Gusta said.
“Oh, now, of course!” said Josie. “I won’t hear any of your worrywart nonsense. Here, fold up these shirts for me, now your sheets are done. We have ages to learn how to play. I figure that’s the easiest part of the whole thing.”
And Gusta couldn’t help herself — she put a foot out onto that bridge made of pure confidence, and then she put another foot out, and when she stole a glance over at Bess’s face (which also turned out to make all sorts of expressions Gusta hadn’t been used to seeing so clearly, before her eyeglasses), she saw that Bess was clambering out onto that bridge, too.
“We’ll need a name,” said Bess, who seemed ready to leap right the way over to wholehearted adoption of Josie’s crazy schemes. “Don’t all the good bands have names? There’s the Kendall Mills Band here, you know. The ones who always win. And the Glenn Miller Orchestra — I’ve heard that on the radio.”
(At Bess’s house they had a radio, but maybe not for much longer, said Mama-Liz, because it had been bought on what they called installment, and who had money for any payments, with Bess’s papa so unfairly out of work?)
“We need something catchier,” said Josie. “So they aren’t expecting the usual whatever, clarinets and stuff.”
“The Horn and Ukulele and Bean Jar Orchestra?” suggested Bess.
“Naw,” said Josie. “That’s too specific. That’ll ruin the surprise.”
Gusta folded up her pile of shirts and bit her tongue. It seemed to her to be a backward sort of thinking, to worry about a band’s name first and only then consider learning to play some actual songs.
“Three Girls Band,” said Bess.
Josie groaned.
“Elm Street Band,” said Bess.
Josie groaned again.
“Well, that’s what we have in common,” said Bess practically. “We all live on Elm Street, and we’re all girls. Two of us are cousins. One of us wears eyeglasses. Some of us are more or less orphans.”
“Orphans!” said Josie. “That’s catchy!”
“Hey,” said Bess, pointing with her head over at Gusta. “Not Gusta. Gusta’s not an orphan at all, and I’m only half.”
Josie raised her eyebrows at Bess — a question mark of an expression. Then she turned to Gusta.
“Now you know I don’t mean this in a bad way,” said Josie. “But I haven’t so much as seen your mama in years and years, and I sure have never seen your papa, and he’s gone from the country anyway, and here you are without either one of them. I vote we make you an honorary orphan. Then we’re one of us all orphan — that’s me; one of us half honorary — that’s Bess; and you all honorary. It’s perfect! We’ll be the Springdale Honorary Orphan Band.”
She looked sideways at Gusta and grinned until Gusta had to smile back.
“And I know where we can practice our songs in peace and freedom, too. A nice, quiet place. We’ll go out there soon as Miss Kendall fixes up those strings. . . .”
So that was how the three girls found themselves walking up the Holly Hill road a few days later, Delphine perched on Josie’s shoulders and the bruise-making horn case banging out its usual comments on Gusta’s poor legs. Miss Kendall’s promise of strings for the ukulele had come true, so Josie said they’d better up and rehearse.
Bess and Josie led the way up another track that angled off from the Holly Hill road.
Another path that probably never gets as far as Canada, thought Gusta, with the secret, sad part of her brain that was always wondering how her papa was doing, and wishing so much that he could find his way home.
Gusta’s secret sadness was interrupted by the sounds of a three-year-old whining: Josie had put Delphine down on the ground, but Delphine generally preferred being carried.
“No need to fuss, Delphine. Here we are,” said Bess.
Gusta was trying to follow Bess, which meant she almost walked right into the rusted iron fence. It was only knee-high anyway, not the sort of fence you build to keep people out. Just a way of marking out some part of the woods as special. And then she realized that the stones here were not the same wild rocks they saw everywhere in the woods. These had been tamed and shaped by human beings.
In fact, they were gravestones.
Gusta’s heart galloped for a second. She hadn’t ever been in a cemetery before. She’d just heard about them. But she certainly hadn’t expected to find herself tripping over gravestones out in the Maine woods.
“Should we be in here?” she asked. Her knees were feeling rather uncertain about everything, while the horn case weighed down her arm and hand.
“Why not?” said Josie, but from the other side of the fence.
“Of course we should,” said Bess. “This is ours.”
“What
do you mean, ours?”
“Look there,” she said. “That stone lamb there? That’s for our Uncle Hammett, who died when he was little. Of course I didn’t know him when he was alive, but I like his lamb. I’m glad the pretty lamb is right next to Mama. We didn’t have the money for another lamb for the baby. Her name was going to be Harriet, but of course she didn’t get to use her name very long at all.”
“Oh, Bess!” said Gusta. A mama and sister in a cemetery in the woods were farther away even than a papa in the Canadian air army, when you thought of it properly.
Gusta had never noticed this graveyard was even there, walking by on the main dirt road.
“Your mama brought you up to visit then,” said Josie. “When Bess’s mother passed away. It’s coming back to me now. You were very little, and Bess, you were an outright baby. They argued about something, all of them, your mother and Miss Marion and even Mrs. Hoopes. Ha! Hadn’t remembered any of that until right just now!”
“Arguing?” said Gusta. “Why would they be arguing?”
Josie shrugged.
“How would I know? I was pretty little myself. Maybe your grandmother didn’t so much approve of your father or something — that’s usually what makes for arguments. Anyway, I was so young and stupid I got the feeling somehow I had done something to make them all mad, and I went and hid in the attic most of an afternoon, and that’s all I recall, which is a lot more than I would have said I remembered about any of it.”
There were stumps for sitting on, right out there among the graves. Josie and Bess took two stumps for themselves and pointed to another for Gusta while Delphine floated around them all like a noisy butterfly. Josie and Bess were cool as cucumbers about being out here among all the dead people, but Gusta wasn’t quite so sure.
“You think it’s all right?” she said. “Playing music in a graveyard?”
“They’re our people!” said Bess. “They’d be glad about the visit!”
So Gusta shrugged and got her French horn out.
They played the songs they all knew, and Bess sometimes whistled and sometimes rattled those dried beans in their jar, and it was quite the joyful racket indeed.
