It was Saturday morning. The public library opened early. It was just about the only thing to do in North Mississippi on the weekend if you couldn’t drive or make out with boys.
Chapter 2
Randall and Marmalade picked me up and we were at the library when it opened. That gave me plenty of time to search the aisles for new books.
It took Marmalade about a million years to get out of the car. I bounced on the curb with ants in my pants. From where I was standing I could see the security guard had unlocked the front door. “Come on,” I moaned, pulling at her furry poncho.
“Alright,” she said to Randall. “We’ll call when we’re ready to leave.”
“Okay,” he said, his sentence cut short by the car door closing.
We waited as Randall jerked the car into drive and pulled away in his old rust covered clunker. After he turned right at the streetlight I ran for the library. At the main door I waited for her to catch up. Together we walked over to the librarian’s desk, where I hovered around Marmalade like a moon caught in the gravitational pull of a planet.
“May I help you?” The librarian stared down over the rims of her glasses.
“My granddaughter would like her own library card.”
The librarian looked over the counter and down the many miles to me. “She’ll need to be able to sign her name. Otherwise she’ll have to use yours.”
“Bring her a card,” Marmalade said. “She’ll sign it.”
The librarian looked doubtful because I was small for my age. She brought a little brown card over and pointed to a line on the back. I climbed up into a plastic chair. I knew how to spell my name, for crissakes. I was in the fifth grade. I wanted my own card. I was tired of having to depend on everyone else. Ignoring the librarian and her wheezy breath, I kept writing. When I was finished, before I had a chance to do anything, Marmalade put her middle finger on my card and slid it across the counter.
I was approved. I finally had my own card. I had worried and needled Marmalade incessantly and it had paid off. Then I ran off to the children’s section. Marmalade followed close behind and took up residence in a little plastic chair at a little plastic table.
Shelves and shelves of worlds waited to be discovered. I glanced around. At this time of the morning there weren’t many people. A quiet, warm light filled the entire place. No one was allowed to scream or yell or make a fool of themselves because a security guard up front would come and escort the loud person to the door. I loved the library. It was my favorite place in all the world.
I filled my arms with Ramona the Brave and A Wrinkle in Time and Recipes for Rainy Days. Brightly colored worlds from the land of imagination opened before me.
When I looked over, Marmalade was perched precariously on the chair, snoring. Golden light flooded her cheeks. She was beautiful even if she did wheeze.
The library was full of magic. Books were proof there were other people in the world. I wanted to be a character in a book. I wanted to be Ramona the Brave, with her freckles and short, messy hair. The shelves in the children’s section were just tall enough for me, but on the other side of the divider, there was the history section, ripe with titles such as The Ming Dynasty or Emperors of the Empire. Just catching sight of the spine of a book made me want to travel the world. I looked over at Marmalade. She was still snoozing.
My eyes scanned the aisles. Moochi was in the B section, wagging his tail.
He loved everything about the library except the sign out front that read No Dogs.
“It’s okay,” I explained. “You’re only half dog.”
I hadn’t seen him all day. He was kinda imaginary except I could see him which made him pretty real if you asked me. He was half person, half dog and walked upright. His right eye was gold and glimmered in the sunlight. And he loved to eat canned peas. He also showed up whenever he wanted.
There were a few things in life that I didn’t like. Standing in direct sunshine, humidity, any temperature over 80 degrees, mosquitoes, gnats, and fleas. The library had none of these things. Praise God.
I snuck a glance at Marmalade. She was all awash in golden light. When I headed down the aisle Moochi was waiting on me.
“She’s sleeping,” I whispered.
He wagged his tail again.
“Hey,” I sidled up closer to him. “You know how people are always disappearing in books, then sometimes they come back in the end?”
He stared at me.
“Like in Nancy Drew?”
Immediate recognition. He nodded, his furry ears flopping.
“Well,” I said, taking his paw, leading him over to the card catalog. “What if we could find a book on how to make people disappear?”
When I was in the first grade my Uncle Thursgood went on an all-inclusive paid vacation to the state mental institution. I guess that he was a lot of trouble because they sent him home after a few months. For as long as I could remember he went to bed when he wanted, ate when he pleased, had no master plan, and never taped up little notes to remind himself of all the important things he had to do today. To top it off, he hated to clean. In fact, I’d never, in all my years of being alive, seen him clean anything.
I loved my weird Uncle Randall, but I wanted to make my mean and crazy Uncle Thursgood go away forever. I needed to find a way to make him disappear.
“Maybe we can find a book that has a formula for some kind of magic water or some powder that we could pour on Thursgood while he was sleeping.” There was tremendous possibility in this idea. Moochi knew. He stroked his whiskers, thinking.
“Okay,” I said, impatient, pulling a drawer out. “Give me a key word.”
There were about a bajillion books with “disappear” in the title but no “how to make someone disappear” books.
“I think we’re going to have to go into the main part of the library.”
Moochi slinked back, tucking his tail.
“Come on.” I grabbed his paw. I pulled him through the arch into the main section. “If she wakes up, we’ll tell her we went to the bathroom.”
The main card catalog was enormous. This was going to take awhile. There were slips of paper and tiny pencils to write with. With Moochi keeping a lookout I wrote down every number I could find. I had ten pieces of paper filled with numbers. The hunt began. Finally I found a book called Mean Co-Workers: How to Make Them Disappear. I pulled it down from the shelf. It was pretty big. I read the first page. It assured me that after thirty days the mean people would go away. I kept reading. The first chapter was about not letting the mean people in your space anymore, not giving in to their demands. I started taking notes. Several pages into Chapter Three Moochi thumped his foot and pointed at the clock.
“Crap.” My eyes went wide. It was twelve o’clock. I broke into a sweat, then into a run.
As I rounded the corner I saw Marmalade talking to the librarian.
Crap.
I ran over.
“Where have you been?” she asked.
“In the bathroom.”
Her brow furrowed with doubt.
“And then . . . I went upstairs to listen to records.”
“You’re supposed to stay with me.” She reached for my hand. “What’s this?” she asked, pointing at the book I’d forgotten was in my hand.
I laid it on the return cart. “Oh, just something I found on the floor.”
“Alright, well, get your books. I’m hungry.”
We checked my big stack of books out with my snazzy new library card. Then we walked to the enclosed area in front where they had a row of pay phones. It was cool and dark with low ceilings.
Marmalade put a dime into the phone, then dialed.
We waited. She shifted from one foot to the other.
“What’s going on?”
She covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “It’s ringing.”
Apparently, it rang and rang. She hung up, concerned. Then, renewed, she pulled the dime from the coin return, put it in agai
n, and said, “Maybe I dialed the wrong number.”
I sat down on the ground and started reading my books.
On the third phone call Randall answered.
“Where have you been?” I heard her ask.
Looking around the edges of her poncho, I saw Moochi peeing on a fire hydrant out front.
“Okay . . . well, then come get us,” she said.
After she hung up, I gathered all of my books so we could walk out front. “What was he doing?” I asked.
“He said he was sleeping.”
The tone of her voice suggested otherwise.
It took Randall twenty minutes to drive six blocks regardless of traffic or weather. I heaved my pile of books into my arms as I saw the old beater pulling to a stop at the curb.
Chapter 3
As soon as we got home, Marmalade went to the kitchen to make sausage and eggs. I wandered into Randall’s room where he was sitting on his bed, staring down at a red high school banner that said Rosell High in big white letters.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to the banner.
“From my school,” he said.
I couldn’t imagine Randall anywhere outside of this house for more than an hour. “Well, what do you do with it?”
“Hang it on the wall,” he said.
The idea of Randall carrying a lunchbox was very curious to me. “Did you like school?”
“I reckon,” he said.
“You reckon?”
“I guess.” He shrugged.
“What did you do?” I asked, sliding closer, nosey.
“Sat at my desk. Answered a lot of questions, mostly.”
“I’ll be in sixth grade in the fall.”
“I know,” he answered. “Mother told me.”
For some reason he asked me to leave him alone. After I’d bothered him about every tiny thing he didn’t remember about school, I shuffled back down the hall. The percolator brought me back to the kitchen. Marmalade poured me fresh coffee in a juice glass with milk and sugar. “Don’t tell your mother I gave you coffee.” She added, “I listen to her complain about everything else. I won’t listen to her complain about coffee.”
After eating lunch and looking through every book in my stack I went up to Grand Daddy’s old room and fell asleep. Locusts hummed their strange song.
Sometime after the streetlights clicked on, I got up and went downstairs to Randall’s room. It was empty, like my stomach. I checked his bathroom, the living room, the front porch, the back yard, looked to see if his old beater was there, and then came back inside.
Marmalade stared at me. “Have you seen your Uncle Randall?”
I shook my head. “No. I was looking out front.”
She walked down to his room. “Did he tell you he was going anywhere?”
“No.”
The phone rang on the gossip bench.
She grabbed the receiver and said, “Hello?” She listened. The color drained out of her face. “Oh, God. I’ll be right there.” She hung up.
Standing in the doorway to Randall’s bedroom, I asked, “Is everything all right?”
My uncle Thursgood started pacing upstairs. Then all of a sudden, his fat butt plopped down on his bed, causing the springs to strain. The metal frame scraped the floor. The Bogeyman was awake.
She pointed to the phone urgently. “Call a taxi.”
We always had to call a taxi if Randall was sleeping or didn’t want to go anywhere, but this was the first time I’d had to call because he wasn’t there. “Where are we going?” I flipped open the phone book looking for the letter T.
Marmalade disappeared into her room, then reemerged a second later, clutching her handbag, “Oh . . . God.” She breathed loudly.
This was shaping up to be quite an evening. I kept my mouth shut and called a taxi. Upstairs, through the ceiling, we heard Thursgood talking to himself. “Yes, I need a taxi at 103 Seabrook Lane.”
As soon as I hung up Marmalade grabbed my hand. Together we walked through the living room, stopping only long enough for me to get my coat and a library book. Thursgood stomped around above our heads. Who knew what he was doing up there.
“Where’s Randall?”
When she didn’t answer, I turned and watched her eyes travel the distance of our street. Finally she said, “Apparently, your uncle took off all of his clothes and ran naked down Hermosa Avenue.”
I felt the palm of my hand against my mouth before I heard the laughter rumbling in my throat.
She cut me short. “It’s not funny.”
True as it might have been, it was not enough to keep me from laughing. The thought of Randall running naked down the street was simultaneously terrifying and hysterical.
Down at the end of the street, headlights cut through the darkness. A bright yellow cab pulled to a stop in front of us. The inside of the taxi smelled like stale cigarette smoke and armpits. Marmalade leaned forward, laying her hand on the back of the seat. “West Precinct, please.”
We listened to an oldies radio station and watched as the taxi driver floored it every time a light turned yellow.
Tall policemen in uniforms were everywhere at the station. It was just like in the movies I saw on tv that I wasn’t supposed to be watching. Marmalade took my hand. An officer led us into a room to wait. The room was really quiet. My stomach growled, and then sort of chortled.
Marmalade looked at me. “When was the last time you ate?”
I had to think about that a minute. “Lunch.”
She sighed, rolling her eyes. After digging around in her pocketbook she pulled out her change purse. “Here. We passed a vending machine on the way in here.”
Yippeee! Junk food.
I liked standing in front of that glass-front machine trying to decide between c12 and a4. It soothed my nerves. I looked around at all of the people passing by. I wondered how many of them knew my uncle had taken off all of his clothes and run down the street naked. Randall was a streaker.
Finally, I chose c12, c10, and a03, and I bought myself a soda with the rest of the change. My eyes drifted to the glass front of the vending machine. An image of Randall materialized wearing two ugly green blankets, knee socks, and dress shoes. His hair was frizzy and poofed out on his head.
The officer said to Marmalade, “Can I talk to you in the other room?”
She pointed a sharp finger at Randall. “Do not move from that chair. Understand?”
Randall nodded, his eyes dropping down into his lap.
As soon as everyone was gone, I ran over and whispered, “What happened?”
He pulled his blankets tighter. “I’ll tell you later.”
The door opened abruptly. Marmalade walked back in. “Alright you two, Officer Jerome has offered to drive us home.”
“No, thanks,” Randall said, looking like he’d had enough of riding in police cars for one night.
Marmalade’s finger pointed in the direction of the front door. “Get your ass in that car.”
Randall gathered his blankets quickly, shuffling toward the door. I followed, listening to his dress shoes clack against the linoleum.
He’d done it this time. That’s for sure. She said “ass.”
Birds were beginning to chirp and the sky was lifting its dark blanket from the east when I climbed out of the patrol car. The clock on the dash read 5:28 am.
We piled inside the house quietly, listening for Thursgood. Satisfied by the silence, Marmalade immediately walked to her room without saying a word. I followed Randall to his bedroom.
After clicking on his bedside lamp, he turned and said, “Go on out in the hall a minute. I gotta put my pants on.”
“You should have thought about putting your pants on earlier. It would have saved us a lot of trouble.” I felt immensely proud of my observation, but when I turned Randall glared at me so I skulked into the hall. Then I found myself lured to the kitchen by the thought of liverwurst and mayonnaise. I made the jailbird a sandwich too.
When I came back with soda and food, he was wearing orange plaid pajamas with holes in the knees and a yellow sweatshirt that had a grouping of stains on the front that looked like the Big Dipper.
“So what in the hell got into you?” I flopped down on the edge of his bed.
He took a bite of his liverwurst sandwich, lifting his eyes high enough to look at me. Mayonnaise clung to the corners of his mouth.
“Well?” I pressed, digging white bread from the roof of my mouth with my tongue.
Smoke drifted down the hall from Marmalade’s room. I pointed a finger at Randall. “Oh, you’re in big trouble. She only smokes when she’s mad.”
He blurted out desperately. “Billy Howard made me do it.”
I shook my head. “That Billy Howard’s some character.”
“It’s true,” he pleaded.
I rolled my eyes. Billy Howard was something else. “Okay,” I sighed. “What exactly did he tell you to do?”
“He said the Voices would go away if I took off my clothes and ran.”
“And did they?”
“Yeah,” he recollected. “Yeah, they did. At least while I was running.”
“Can’t argue that.” I dusted crumbs off my fingers.
That’s the hard part of being a good crazy person. The trust.
Fatigue seized me and I wandered off as the sun slanted through the window. Marmalade was in bed sleeping, smelling like an ashtray. I crawled in beside her and zonked out.
At noon I woke up with Randall standing at the end of the bed pulling on my foot. I cracked an eyelid open. Marmalade snored next to me.
Slithering out of bed, I stepped into the hall. “Yeah?”
He whispered, “You want to go to Taco Bell?”
On this particular day he’d do anything to escape the sharp glare of Marmalade. Now was the time to put in my demand. “The library.”
“They ain’t got no food there.”
“So? It will get you out of here for the rest of the day.”
It only took him a second to realize the genius of my plan. “Get your shoes,” he said. “I’ll meet you in the car.”
Tupelo Honey Page 2
