My Brother Louis Measures Worms
Page 9
Pauline had taken a wrong turn somwhere north of Parkersburg and was not completely lost but, now, involved in a traffic accident as well—with a car that seemed to her, at first glance, to be driven by a dog.
At this point Lloyd appeared. He had been delivering lawn fertilizer to Aunt Mildred, missed Vergil, and knew immediately what had happened, since it was Vergil’s habit to climb into whatever car was handy and open and go to sleep.
Lloyd set out at once to find and follow Aunt Mildred—never an easy task, but a little easier this time because of all the commotion at the scene of the accident.
He arrived; relieved Vergil; assessed the damage, which was minor; ignored Aunt Mildred (or so she said); and, on the spot, fell in love with Pauline. That Pauline should, at the very same moment, fall in love with Lloyd seemed insane to Aunt Mildred and my mother; unlikely to Louis—“Unless it was a movie,” he said—and gloriously romantic to me.
“But Lloyd,” Mother said when he arrived at our house later that day, arm and arm with Pauline, to tell us the news, “isn’t this awfully sudden?”
“Like a lightning bolt,” Lloyd said.
“And, Pauline,” Mother went on, “of course we think the world and all of Lloyd . . . but you don’t even know him!”
“I feel I do,” Pauline said, “after just these few hours, I’ve never felt so comfortable with a person, nor found anyone so easy to talk to. I figure that whatever I don’t know about Lloyd, or what he doesn’t know about me, will give us conversation for years. Do you believe in fate, Mrs. Lawson?”
“No, I don’t,” Mother said, “not when it’s mixed up with Mildred and a bird dog.”
“Neither do I,” Pauline said, “or never did till now. But just think about it . . . Why did I get lost and end up here? Why did Lloyd’s dog get into someone else’s car? Why did your sister run into me instead of someone else?”
Now, explaining it all to my father, Mother agreed that these were not mysterious events: Vergil was famous for getting into anybody’s car, Aunt Mildred was famous for colliding with anybody’s car and . . . “I know all about getting lost,” Mother said, “but even I know there are only two main roads north from Parkersburg, and if you miss the other one you’ll end up here. But after all, they’re both grown-up people—Lloyd’s thirty-three years old, it’s time he got married—and it wasn’t as if they’re going to get married this very minute. Besides, I thought it would all fizzle out. Of course, it didn’t”—she smiled happily—“and now Lloyd’s gone off to Milwaukee to marry Pauline.”
My father eyed Vergil. “I think if I were Lloyd,” he said, “I’d take that dog along with me for good luck, since he was in on the beginning of this romance.”
“Well, so was Mildred,” Mother said, “but she can’t just go off to Milwaukee either—and you don’t fool me a bit. You just don’t want Vergil underfoot.”
Unfortunately, becase of his large and rangy size, Vergil was automatically underfoot, and he usually chose to sprawl, full-length, in awkward places: at the top of the stairs or at the bottom of the stairs, under the dining room table, under my father’s car and, from time to time, on very warm days, in the bathtub.
The first time this happened Louis tried to make Vergil more comfortable by turning on the water; but Vergil scrambled out of the bathtub (moving faster than we had ever seen him move before) and tore all around the upstairs, barking and howling and shaking himself and spraying water everywhere.
“I think he was asleep,” Louis said, “and is surprised him.”
I thought so too, because Vergil was asleep most of the time . . . but when Louis tried it again, Vergil was awake and the same thing happened.
“He doesn’t like the water,” Mother said. “He just likes to feel the cool porcelain tub.”
“So do I,” my father said, “but I don’t want to take turns with a big hairy dog. Isn’t Lloyd back yet? He must be married by now.”
“Yes,” Mother said, “but they’re on their honeymoon. Surely you don’t begrudge them a honeymoon?”
“That depends on where they went,” my father said. “They could have a very nice honeymoon between Milwaukee and here—two or three days in Chicago, maybe.”
“Yes,” Mother said, “they could. Listen, is that the telephone?”
“Well, hurry up and answer it. May be it’s Lloyd.”
It wasn’t Lloyd. Actually, it wasn’t even the telephone—Mother just made that up because she didn’t want to explain that Lloyd and Pauline had gone in the opposite direction—to San Francisco—and were going to stop along the way wherever Pauline had relatives who wanted to welcome Lloyd into the family. We found out later that all these relatives lived in places like Middle Mine, Wyoming, and Clash, Nebraska, and were probably overjoyed to see anybody at all.
Of course, after two or three weeks, Mother had to admit that they weren’t in Chicago and, as far as she knew, never had been. “They probably aren’t even to San Francisco yet,” she said. “You know how southerners are— sometimes newlywed couples visit around for months.”
“But Pauline isn’t a southerner, she’s from Milwaukee!”
“I was just giving you an example,” Mother said. “It wouldn’t have to be southerners. Amish people do the same thing.”
“Is Pauline Amish?”
“She didn’t say.”
My father thought that over briefly and then shook his head. “You don’t have any idea where they are, do you.”
“No . . . but I do know that Lloyd is lucky, to marry into such a close and loving family.”
“Lloyd is lucky,” my father said, “because he was able to unload this dog on us while he tours the entire western half of the country. Oh, well,” he sighed. “I’m going to take a bath—he isn’t in the bathtub, is he?”
“No,” Mother said, “but be careful when you come downstairs. He’s asleep on the top step.”
Three or four minutes later Louis and I heard the unmistakable thump, thump, bang, thump, bang of something or somebody falling downstairs, and went to see who or what it was.
My father heard the noise too, assumed that Mother had tripped over Vergil and came stumbling out of the bathroom with his pants half off, calling for us to get help. Mother, in the back bedroom, heard both the thumps and the cries for help, came running from that end of house and fell over my father, who was trapped by his pants.
Meanwhile, Vergil lay at the foot of the stairs in his customary position: full-length and flat on his back—and ominously still. We thought he might be dead, and Louis got down on the floor to listen to his heart . . . which led Mother to conclude that it was Louis who had fallen over Vergil and then down the stairs along with Vergil.
“What else would I think?” she said. “Everybody on the floor in a heap.” She felt responsible, though, and made my father pull on his pants and take Vergil to the animal hospital, where, as it turned out, he was well known.
“He isn’t moving,” Mother said. “He fell down the stairs.”
“Does it all the time,” the doctor told us. “This is the laziest dog in the world. He’d rather fall down stairs than stand up. Fell off a shed roof once. Fell out of Lloyd’s truck that was loaded with fertilizer bags.”
“But he isn’t moving,” Mother said.
“That’s because he’s asleep.”
My father said this was the last straw—that he hadn’t wanted a dog at all, and he especially didn’t want a dog who was too lazy to stand up—but Mother was relieved.
“I’d hate to have Lloyd come back,” she said, “and have to tell him that his dog died of injuries.”
“At this rate,” my father said, “his dog will die of old age before he shows up.”
Vergil didn’t die, but Lloyd and Pauline never did show up, either. Their car broke down in a place called Faltrey, Arkansas . . . and we couldn’t find anyone to fix it, Lloyd wrote. They had a garage, had a gas station, had parts and equipment, had no mechanic. The mechanic couldn’t stand Arkansas, th
ey said, and he got on his motorcycle and left. So I fixed our car and two or three other people’s cars . . . and to make a long story short, they just wouldn’t let us leave. And now you couldn’t pay us to leave, because we love it here in Faltrey, especially Pauline. But don’t worry, because we’ll be back to get Vergil, the first chance we get.
“‘Yours truly, Lloyd,’” Mother finished reading. “Well, what do you know about that!”
“I know it’s a long way to Arkansas,” my father said, looking at Vergil.
After that we got a few postcards from Lloyd and a few letters from Pauline, who sent us a picture of the garage and a picture of their house and, eventually, a picture of their baby. All the cards and letters said they would be back for Vergil . . . as soon as Lloyd’s work lets up a little or as soon as we get the tomatoes in the garden or as soon as the baby’s old enough to travel.
My mother believed all these assurances (or said she did), and she would never admit that Vergil was anything but a temporary house guest. If anyone mentioned “your dog,” she would always say, “Oh, this is Lloyd’s dog. We’re just keeping him for Lloyd.”
In a way, my father wouldn’t admit it either, because he never referred to Vergil as “our dog” or “my dog” or anything except “that dog”; but when Lloyd and Pauline finally did come back they had a sizeable family—Lloyd, Jr., was in the second grade, and the twin girls were two and a half years old—and their car was full of infant seats and baby beds and toys. My mother said the last thing they needed was Vergil. “Where would you put him?” she said.
Lloyd agreed. “I guess I just forgot how big he is. We’d better bring the truck next time.”
Mother didn’t mention this to my father, and in fact, Lloyd and Pauline had been gone for three days before he realized that Vergil didn’t go with them, although Vergil was in plain sight, asleep, the whole time.
“You’re just used to him,” Mother said, “and you would miss him a lot.”
“How could I possibly miss him if I haven’t even noticed him for three days?”
“There!” she said. “How could any dog be less trouble!”
She was right, of course. Vergil didn’t bark, or bite people, or dig up gardens, or upset trash cans, and by then we were all used to stepping over him or around him. By then, too, he was too old to climb into the bathtub; but sometimes, on very hot days, my father would lift him in—to get him out of the way, he said—and then get mad because Vergil wouldn’t climb back out.
Despite Vergil’s lack of interest in us, Louis and I were very fond of him. We thought of him as our dog, played with him during those brief and very occasional moments when he was awake, and whenever we had to write a paper for school about My Best Friend, or My Favorite Pet, we wrote about Vergil.
We never got very good grades on these papers because there was so little to tell, but we did share the glory when Vergil won a blue ribbon in the YMCA Pet Show. He won it for “Unusual Obedience to Command”—we commanded him to “play dead,” and no dog did it better or for so long.
Misplaced Persons
Mother was not the only member of her family to be intimidated by automobiles, just as Aunt Mildred was not the only one to have exactly opposite feelings. In fact, they all seemed to be either one way or the other, with the exception of my little brother Louis, who enjoyed driving a car (till he was found out and stopped), but did so without risk to anyone’s life or limbs.
The extreme cases were Aunt Mildred, with whom Louis and I were forbidden to ride—and, at the other end of the scale, Aunt Blanche. My father said that with Aunt Mildred we were apt to be killed outright, but with Aunt Blanche we would probably die of old age while waiting to turn left at an intersection.
When, on one occasion, circumstances required him to be her passenger, he said that he saw parts of town previously unknown to him as she drove blocks and blocks out of her way to avoid crossing traffic.
“I would tell her, ‘You can turn here, Blanche,’” he said, “but she would never do it. We would go on three or four streets, turn right, turn right, turn right again. We were trying to get to the bank, and you could see the bank, but it might as well have been on the other side of a river. . . . Never again!”
Aunt Blanche’s travels were further complicated by her poor sense of direction (a failing she shared with my mother), and by her insistence on beginning any trip, long or short, at the post office. Since she didn’t live very far from the post office, it wasn’t unusual for her to drive past it often, in the natural course of events . . . but even if she was headed for the other end of town in the opposite direction she still drove first to the post office and then took off from there.
This seemed odd but harmless, and no one paid much attention, though there were various opinions about the reason for it. Aunt Rhoda thought Aunt Blanche didn’t want the mailman to know all her business, and to prevent this, just picked up her own mail. This was a sore point with Aunt Rhoda, since her mailman was notorious for reading postcards and return addresses and, on at least one occasion, for observing that Aunt Rhoda certainly did a lot of business with the Spencer Corset Company.
My mother thought Aunt Blanche had a romantic interest in Clifford Sprague, who worked at the post office and, like Blanche, had been widowed young. Uncle Frank thought there was something vaguely crooked about it—not on Aunt Blanche’s part, but on the part of someone else— someone using an anonymous post office box, maybe, and trying to peddle nonexistent real estate or gold mine stock to foolish widows.
Typically, no one ever asked for an explanation—probably because no one would ever allow himself to be driven by Aunt Blanche. My mother was usually willing to ride with her, but since Mother thought she knew the reason behind the post office stop, and wanted to encourage the romance of Aunt Blanche and Clifford Sprague, she said nothing for fear of upsetting the apple cart.
Of course Louis would have asked, and would have accepted any of the above reasons, or any other reason, or, as it finally turned out, the real reason, without batting an eye, since his own reasons for doing things rarely had much to do with the logic of a situation.
But we almost never got inside Aunt Blanche’s car. “We’d never see you again,” my father always told us. “Is that what you want?”
To Louis and me this was both mysterious and intriguing, and we kept hoping for some combination of broken-down cars and urgent errands that would require us to be driven by Aunt Blanche. There wasn’t much chance of this though—the only car which was consistently broken down or smashed or pushed in was Aunt Mildred’s, and the only errands Mother considered urgent were those involving medical emergencies . . . in which case she would obviously not call on Blanche, lest Blanche haul the victim (bleeding or choking or giving birth) first to the post office and then all over town.
“I think I’m the only one who’s really comfortable riding with Blanche,” Mother often said, and this was true. Neither of them was ever in a hurry to get anywhere, or dismayed to end up at an unexpected destination. “We always have a good time,” Mother said . . . and even after the misadventures connected with her Uncle John’s funeral, she insisted that it had been a pretty ride to get there, despite the complications.
This Uncle John was a relative unknown to Louis and me: The first we heard of him was through a telegram, delivered to Mother over the telephone.
“Uncle John Lane has died,” she told us, “in Springfield, and the funeral is the day after tomorrow. He was my father’s brother,” she went on, “and I knew he was at a nursing home in Springfield, but no one’s ever heard from him, or anything about him, so that’s all I know.”
How could this be, I wondered, in so nosy a family? This was my father’s first question too when he heard the news.
“I just don’t know,” Mother said. “Nobody knows. Frank thinks maybe he had a fight with my father years ago. Rhoda said maybe he got wounded in World War I and just never came home. Mildred never heard of him.
Perhaps Mother considered this lofty thought the last word in reasons, but my father did not. “Mildred!” he said. “Mildred just wants to go to Springfield.”
“Well . . . what’s wrong with that? She’s never been there. I’ve never been there. The children have never been there.”
“You’re not going to drag them all that way!”
“Why, of course,” Mother said. “They’re the future.”
Louis said later that this worried him a lot—he was afraid it meant that someone was going to point us out at the funeral, make us stand up, maybe even recite something about life. Still, he wanted to go. We both did—“all that way” sounded to us like foreign travel.
The arrangements turned out to be difficult. Of those who wished to go, only two were willing to drive.
“Let me guess,” my father said. “The tortoise and the hare.”
“I suppose you mean Blanche and Mildred,” Mother said . . . but she did not deny that they were, in fact, the very ones, and my father said he might just as well drive himself, that otherwise he would sit home and worry.
He ended up both driving and worrying, though, because at the last minute an extra cousin appeared, and in the ensuing scramble for seats (especially seats in our car) Mother was seen to climb in with Aunt Blanche, who immediately took off (presumably for the post office), while Mother stuck her head out a window and called, “We’ll see you along the way!”
There had been some talk of forming a caravan, in which the three cars would stay together, but my father said he would have no part of it, and discouraged everyone else from such a plan. “If Mildred is the number-one car,” he said, “you’ll lose Blanche at the first traffic light, and if Blanche is number one, you’ll never get there.”