by Jane Langton
Dolores Leech, RN
Lincoln Town Nurse
Beulah Terrace
Lincoln, Mass.
Dear Dolores,
The other day after Mr. Heron’s funeral, I visited Mrs. Alice Bewley in her home on Route 126. I was really shocked to see the way she lives. It was really unsanitary in there. I think you would be doing the old lady a kindness if you would pay her a visit. I have a strong suspicion her living conditions are way below acceptable health standards. I wonder if she wouldn’t be better off in a good nursing home? I understand the poor old girl doesn’t have any living relatives to take responsibility for her, so it’s up to friends and neighbors like you and me. And the sooner the better.
So much for business matters. It was good to see you. Not tearing out any bathrooms yet, I hope? Not going after the garage with a sledgehammer?
Yours,
Buddy Whipple
Buddy read his letter over and smiled to himself. The final paragraph pleased him. In a jocular way it would remind Dolores of his personal loan. Just a little reminder, that was all it was. Just the lightest of light touches. Now it was her turn to do him a favor.
Of course getting old lady Bewley off the property and into a nursing home was only the first step. The place would still belong to her. Idly Buddy wondered whether or not Mrs. Bewley had been keeping up with her taxes. Did she have a pension? She had been a domestic servant all her life. Shrewdly Buddy suspected that no arrangements had been made for social security payments. It was an interesting line of thought. Well, he would look into it. But right now — Buddy looked at his watch and jumped up from his chair. There was just time to take a shower and get dressed for that big luncheon with ex-Governor Croney at the Ramada Inn. There would be a lot of people, there, all kinds of potential backers and supporters, but maybe he’d get a chance to put a word or two in Croney’s ear. Just a bee in his bonnet. No harm in grinding his own axe before everybody else came along with their own demands and expectations.
As it turned out, the place was packed. Buddy was disappointed to find himself in a crowded corner of the big function room, far from the head table, with harassed waiters squeezing around his chair, slapping down plates of cold tunafish salad. But after the Neapolitan ice cream and the tepid coffee, after Croney’s hearty little speech and his campaign manager’s pep talk, Buddy distinguished himself by getting to his feet and making several superb suggestions for the handling of conservative voters in the western suburbs of Boston.
After lunch, as everybody began crowding toward the door, the campaign manager plucked Buddy’s sleeve and invited him to stay for a private drink in the cocktail lounge.
And there in the dim light of the bar, Buddy really enjoyed himself. He had eaten very little of the colorless lunch, so the drinks went down smoothly, and soon he was light-headed, confidential, and palsy-walsy. After his third Scotch he made the campaign manager an impulsive, magnificent offer.
“My house,” he said. “I’ve got this big old house out there in Lincoln. Oh, I don’t live in it myself. Can’t afford to. I rent it out for a king’s ransom. But those people don’t have any lease. I can get them out of there any time I want. And the place would be just great for a suburban campaign headquarters. Naturally I’d lower the rent for a good cause like this. We could put in a switchboard. Keep our fingers on the pulse of the whole state. Great place to have parties, fund raisers.”
“Well, that’s very kind of you,” breathed the campaign manager.
Fourteen
WHEN BARBARA HERON KNOCKED ON THE DOOR OF THE HOUSE on Barretts Mill Road, she found Homer Kelly at home alone.
“Where’s John’s little brother?” said Barbara.
Homer waved her into the living room. “Be grateful that I have a heroic wife. She’s taken the little weirdo to the zoo. I don’t know what all those nice sensible four-legged animals will think of our little two-legged monster. But who cares? We are alone. We can breathe free. We can hear ourselves think. Sit down. I’ll just move Benny’s reading matter out of the way, these little books about kitties and bunnies.” Homer picked up the World Almanac and dropped the one-volume Columbia Encyclopedia on the floor, breaking the spine.
Barbara sat down. “It’s just this thing I wanted to ask you, that’s all. And see what you thought. It’s my father’s medicine. It’s missing — the little kit he carried around with him all the time in case of an asthma attack. There was a syringe of epinephrin and a bottle of antihistamine tablets. They were in a little red box about so big —,” Barbara held up her fingers. “He always had it with him. I saw to that. And I can swear I saw it in the pocket of his jacket that morning.”
“But he could have dropped it anywhere in that wilderness down there, couldn’t he?” said Homer. “Maybe he was in such a panic he couldn’t handle the needle, and he dropped it. And then he tried to run to the house for help, only he couldn’t get that far.”
“But John crawled all over that orchard,” said Barbara. “He looked really carefully. You know, he went over it with a fine-tooth —”
“A fine-tooth comb,” said Homer, with a trace of bitterness in his voice — Homer had been mixed up with fine-tooth combs before. “Pretty hard to find a little thing like that. Needle in a haystack, right?”
“But the box was red. You couldn’t miss it,” insisted Barbara. “It has to be somewhere. I looked through his stuff in the house, and under the seat of his car. I tell you it isn’t anywhere. How could it be missing? Tell me! Under what circumstances could my father’s asthma medicine be absolutely gone?”
She was staring at him accusingly. Homer blinked uncomfortably and looked down at the chess game on the coffee table, where Benny’s pawn had Homer’s king in check. Groaning under his breath, he dropped his gaze to the Scrabble board on the floor, where Benny, with an impossible collection of letters — two Ls, two Es, two Us and a K — had come up with the word ukulele. “Well, I don’t know,” grumbled Homer. “Maybe those yellow jackets stole it. Now, come on, Barbara, don’t torture yourself with afterthoughts.”
Barbara picked up Homer’s fallen queen and turned it over and over in her hand. “Well, never mind, Homer. I just wanted to get it off my chest. I think somebody had it in for my father. And then —,” Barbara dropped the queen on the floor and reached down to pick it up — “then I went and made it worse.” Hastily she dropped the queen back on the table and put into words at last what she had really come to say. “Listen, Homer, it’s Buddy. I’m worried about Buddy Whipple. He’s moved right in. He won’t leave.”
“Buddy Whipple?” Homer was surprised. “Well, tell him to get out.”
“I have. I tell him all the time. But he just grins and shrugs his shoulders, and says, ‘Virginia, what do you think?’ And then Virginia —” Barbara paused, biting her lip.
“Virginia what?”
“She lets him stay.”
“Why?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. She won’t talk about it.”
“Well, I don’t see what I can do. I should think it was up to you girls. I suppose he’s paying rent?”
“Oh, yes, and of course he says he’s going to do a lot of work. He wants to turn both our places into farms in order to reduce our property taxes. You know, he’s going to raise hay on most of it, and lease some of it for horse pasturage, so he says he’ll put up fences, and then he’s going to rent out some more of it to that dairy that grows cattle corn. At least he claims that’s what he’s going to do. And he’s promised to do something about Route 126. They’re threatening to change the route and take it up our driveway. Buddy thinks he can throw his weight around and get them to change their minds.” Barbara made a wry face. “That’s our Buddy. And he’s promised to take on the Save Our Sites Committee, who want to — oh, I know he thinks he’s going to be a big help. But I just don’t like it. He’s just so damned —” Barbara slapped the coffee table with the flat of her hand. The chessmen jumped. “I want him out!”
>
Homer stroked his chin. “You didn’t happen to — ah — look in his room for the medicine?”
“As a matter of fact, I did. It wasn’t there.”
“Well, I’ll admit it’s peculiar that the stuff has turned up missing. But it’s not what you’d call evidence, for or against anybody.”
“It’s Virginia, you see,” said Barbara, sounding desperate. “Somehow he’s got her on his side. I tell you, Homer, he’s a monster.”
There was a bright chatter at the door.
“Oh, no,” said Homer, “talk about monsters, here comes Benny. They’re back.” Homer’s voice turned sepulchral. “Well, hello there, Benny, old boy. Welcome home.”
“Oh, Barbara, hello,” said Mary. “I’m glad you’re still here. Did Homer tell you it’s his birthday? Well, it is. Look, Homer, I bought you a present. I decided we should send Gwen and Tom a complete record of Benny’s whole life while they’re away. You know, lots of really cute snapshots. So here it is, your new camera for taking pictures of Benny.”
Homer was aghast. “Listen, woman, you know I can’t handle one of those damn things. I’m too dumb. Focal length, aperture, all that stuff, I can’t get it through my head. I appreciate the thought, and all, but you wasted your money.”
“No, no, I’ll teach you how. It’s perfectly simple. Oh, Barbara, you’ve got to hear what Benny’s been learning in the car. I’ve been teaching him nursery rhymes. That’s right, Homer, nursery rhymes. I mean, if he’s going to go around memorizing things, he might as well be learning five-year-old things instead of the contents of the Columbia Encyclopedia, right? Now, come on, Benny, say a nursery rhyme for Barbara.”
Benny struck a pose in his small red overalls and recited at the top of his lungs:
LITTLE MISS MUFFET!
SAT ON A TUFFET!
EATING HER CURDS AND WHEY!
ALONG CAME A SPIDER!
AND SAT DOWN BESIDE HER!
AND FRIGHTENED MISS MUFFET AWAY!
Then Benny made a sudden lunge, and sank his teeth in Barbara’s knee.
“Oh, no, Benny! No, no! Not like that!” Mary snatched him up and gave him a good whack. Homer shouted with rage. Benny bawled loudly.
Barbara, laughing like the good sport she was, rubbed her knee hard and went home.
Fifteen
“TONIGHT LOOK FOR STRONG BREEZES,” SAID THE CHANNEL 4 meteorologist, pointing to the streak of cloud running from Maine to the Gulf of Mexico on his satellite picture. “Nothing like the freak tornados of last month, of course. Just a weather front moving rapidly out to sea.”
In Lincoln the wind began to rise about midnight. It whipped the forgotten laundry on the line with sharp reports and tumbled the trees in the front yard with soft rushing sounds and made the old floorboards creak. It blew the barn spider right out of her silken nest at the top of the shed door. Away she went, blowing on a threadline, landing unhurt on a tossing sheet. From that uneasy resting place she mounted to the laundry rope, and from there to the porch column. There, as the wind died down, she built a new web, suspending it from the pillar and the porch ceiling, with stabilizing lines running to the floor and to the handlebars of John’s bicycle. Next morning a mosquito blundered into the spiral thread and sent a wild message quivering up the woven strands to the spider poised on the ceiling. Swiftly she rushed at the mosquito, wrapped it, paralyzed it, then cut the carcass out of the web. Moving heavily with a full belly, she was unprepared for disaster. When the shadow of the blue jay fell across the wooden pillar, the spider had time only to hook the claws of her forelegs into her silken shroud-lines and hang on.
Away flew the jay. It landed in the hemlock tree, hopped deeper into the interior and poised itself above the five small birds in its nest. Stuffing the contents of its beak into one of the yawning mouths, the jay was disappointed to discover only a single jointed leg. Squawking angrily, she rushed up into the sunlight again and swooped once more around the porch at the east end of the house.
But now the angle of pillar and porch roof was empty. Only the shell of a swaddled mosquito swayed in the vacant threads of the spiderweb. The spider itself had fled, scuttling away to a crack in the ceiling, moving rapidly on only seven legs.
John spent the day hard at work in the yard. He began with the sunken garden. It had once been Edward Heron’s pride. But Mr. Heron must have been neglecting it lately. His green roses were a jungle of thorns and mildew and black spot. Witchgrass and thistle choked his evil-looking canna lilies, the color of dried blood. John spent the morning on his hands and knees, his back bare to the sun, digging up dandelions and purslane from between the paving stones. After lunch he went down on his knees again in the vegetable garden, pulling up lamb’s quarters and quack grass. The vegetable garden was forty feet square. John’s back and shoulders turned an angry red.
After supper he was back out-of-doors. This time he was avoiding Buddy, who was lording it over the kitchen, talking loudly about his new political connections, about all the VIPs he would be running around with now, and all the big important stuff they were planning to do. John filled the lawnmower with gasoline, set the blade high, jerked on the starter rope, and guided the lumbering machine down the hill to the tall grass around the vegetable garden.
The grass was too high for the mower. The engine kept balking, buzzing at too high-pitched a whine, and then John would have to pull it back and push it in again, careful to cut only a narrow swath at a time.
He was pleased with the result. The small field was covered with soft heaps of long grass. In the twilight he raked them up, carried them in armfuls to the garden, and spread them around the freshly weeded tomatoes and cucumbers, the zucchini, the summer squash, the green peppers, the eggplant, the pole beans. Sooner or later the weeds would come right back up again, but the heaped grass would dampen their enthusiasm for a while. And the fresh grassy carpet looked really nice along the rows.
Then in the grey gloom John stretched a length of string along the four sides of the bed. Its white line stood out sharply in the gathering darkness, and he had no trouble using the edging tool to make a clean border all the way around, defining which part of the world was orderly garden, which the chaos of the field. Mosquitoes moved around him in a feathery cloud, brushing vaguely against his face and arms. But mosquitoes never bit him much — he tasted bad or something — and John didn’t even bother to wave them away.
He was just finishing when Barbara looked out the door, silhouetted against the light of the lamp in the hall, and called to him, “Hey, you crazy kid, come on inside.”
John hadn’t been feeling tired at all, but as he put away his tools in the shed, his bones ached. His shoulders were sore with sunburn. Feeling a little feverish, he groped his way up the narrow stairs to his room and put on his pajama pants. Then he remembered his barn spider. He picked up his flashlight and went back downstairs.
Opening the laundry door to the porch, John gazed two hundred million miles westward straight into the glossy eye of the planet Venus, sinking toward the horizon in the neighborhood of the crescent moon. For a second John remembered a sentence of Fabre’s about the great geometrician whose divine compass measures all things, but then he set the ringing words aside. It sounded nice, but you couldn’t talk like that any more — unless you were like Mrs. Farhang. John snickered softly to himself, “What does the planet Venus actually say?” Then he moved across the grass in his bare feet and aimed his flashlight at the top of the shed door.
That was funny. Only the tattered remains of a web were left in the corner of the door frame. There was no spider poised in a nest of threads at the top of the door. Had she been gobbled up by something? Maybe she had simply moved someplace else. John poked his flashlight around the window of the laundry, the corners of the porch. Soon he was relieved to see a new web in the angle between the ceiling and one of the porch pillars. Brushing past the clean laundry, smelling the sunshine trapped in the hanging shirts, John put a spotlight on the sp
ider as she moved slowly across the top of the web.
“Good old girl,” he said. “There you are again. Hey, oh, wow, what happened to you?”
Something was missing. John counted the legs twice. There were only seven. The third leg on the right side of the cephalothorax was gone. “Autotomy,” whispered John to himself. “Something tried to grab you and you saved yourself by losing a leg. Good for you, old girl. Now, the question is, will the leg grow back? I’ll keep an eye on you. Take care.”
Sixteen
NEXT DAY JOHN SHOWED THE WEB TO VIRGINIA. THE MORNING was cool and cloudy. Beads of mist clung to the silken strands.
“Oh, isn’t that pretty,” said Virginia. “Where’s the spider?”
“She’s hiding up there at the top. In the daytime she only comes out if something lands on the web.”
“What if you poked it with a little stick?”
“No, it wouldn’t have the right frequency of vibration. You have to use a tuning fork. Have you got a tuning fork?”
“No.”
“Well, then, you have to put in a fly or something.” John made a sudden motion, snatching something out of the air. Lifting his fist he held it under the web, then opened his hand. A speck blundered upward.
“Oh, look at that,” said Virginia. “It’s stuck. It can’t get away.”
“Here she comes,” whispered John. “See? She’s really fast. Now she’s paying out line and throwing it over. She’s wrapping up her breakfast.”
“Horrible,” said Virginia, shuddering. “Horrible, horrible. What’s she doing now? She’s just sitting there.”
“She’s poisoning it. Then she’ll suck it dry.”
Virginia moaned and turned away. “Why couldn’t everything in the world have been vegetarian? I mean, since the beginning of time?”
“Wasps are worse than that,” said John. “Some of them catch spiders and paralyze them and lay their eggs on them, and then when the wasp grubs hatch out, they eat the parts of the spiders in just the right order, so the guts get saved till last, so the spiders won’t die too soon. They’ll still be fresh and delicious.”
