“Don’t tell your mama,” he whispered in my ear. “She’d be mad at me for spending the money.”
I promised I wouldn’t tell.
It felt good having a secret just between the two of us for a change.
Daddy wanted to go out to a farm clear to the other side of town. I asked if I could go with him, but he thought I’d better get back home.
“See if your mama’s doing all right,” he said. “She might just need your help.”
I headed on home, but halfway there remembered I’d left Daddy’s lunch plate at the station. Mama would sigh for the rest of the afternoon if I didn’t bring it back the way she’d told me to. She might even holler and I didn’t want more of that if I could avoid it. I turned back and took my own sweet time getting there.
The way the sun blazed its dragon-hot breath on me I didn’t think it was a good idea to rush. As it was, the water-heavy air filled my lungs and made me cough every dozen steps or so. I thought maybe once I got to Daddy’s desk I’d sit in front of that fan of his for a couple minutes to cool off before turning around and going back home.
I found Mama’s plate right where Daddy’d left it and stood with my face inches from the fan. The air hit my face, but it wasn’t near as cool as I’d hoped it would be, so I switched it off.
That was when I heard talking coming from down the hall where Mayor Winston’s office was.
“People are talking, Abe.” I knew that voice to belong to Mayor Winston. It was deep and full of gravel just then, not smooth like normal.
“Who is?” Mr. Campbell asked. “Wheeler? You know he’s a bigger gossip than any woman in this town.”
“So you’re telling me it isn’t true?” Mayor Winston paused before going on. “You didn’t walk Mary Spence home last night and stand outside her front door for an hour chatting it up with her?”
Silence. Abe Campbell didn’t answer. I got out from behind Daddy’s desk and walked quiet as I could toward the hallway.
“You can’t do that,” Winston said. “It doesn’t look good.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“It looks bad, Abe.” The mayor’s voice was firm. “She’s married. They’ve got kids.”
“What do you want me to do?” Campbell asked.
“Stay away from her.”
Neither of them said anything else for more than a couple minutes and I expected they were staring each other down like I’d seen men do in the movies. They had their eyes locked, not blinking, to prove who was stronger.
I wanted so bad to believe that Mayor Winston was the mightier man. “Are you done?” Mr. Campbell asked.
“I guess I am.”
“Good. I have work to do.”
“Do the right thing, Abe,” Mayor Winston said. “I hope you still know what that would be.”
I rushed out the station door and to the street, walking fast as I could down the pavement in the direction of home.
When I passed the Wheelers’ house I saw Hazel at their front gate, talking over the fence to one of the girls that followed her around. They stopped and watched me walk by. I stuck my tongue out at her before running fast as I could all the way back home.
I got to the front door of our house before I realized I’d forgotten the plate.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Gossip about Mama and Abe Campbell’s walk only lasted a week and a half. But for those handful of days I thought I’d have liked to run off and never come back. At the store, the ladies would murmur to each other, thinking they weren’t loud enough for me to hear. At church, we’d get stares. Worst of all was Hazel Wheeler and her side-eyed glances and stink-faced smirks.
I swore if she said one word—just one word—I’d knock the haughty look right off her face.
Daddy was the one to set folks right. He told them he asked Abe to walk Mama home that night to be sure she got there safe.
“Jake Winston and I had important town business to talk over,” he’d told people more than once. “Fellas such as us can’t make decisions lightly. Especially when it comes down to what kind of ice cream to have at the social next week.”
The idea Daddy put into the minds of the people was that no harm was done.
At home, though, he couldn’t hardly get Mama to sit down in a room with him. She’d get up and go or pretend she didn’t hear him when he said something to her.
“An hour, Mary?” he’d asked when he thought Ray and I couldn’t hear. “What could you have thought of to say to Abe for a full hour? I can’t even get you to say hello to me anymore.”
She never did give him an answer.
But after that week and a half passed, the folks in Bliss found something else to gossip about. News spread fast, sending all the ladies in town twittering and all the kids whispering from one to another.
The new schoolteacher had arrived in town all the way from the other side of the state. Word was she was getting paid by the government to come to town and teach. Some weren’t too happy about that and I figured Abe Campbell was one of them. As for me, I was glad we’d have school to go to. I just hoped she’d be nice.
“Bert said she’s pretty,” Ray told me one day when we were walking out to the creek. He had his fishing pole leaned against his shoulder and an old coffee can full of worms.
I told him I’d go watch him fish, but I wasn’t about to touch one of those worms. The way they wriggled and jiggled away from the end of the hook made me feel bad. Even when Ray hooked one, I made sure to shut my eyes real tight or look away altogether.
He thought it was babyish of me to shy away at that. I just did not care what he thought, though. He could think whatever he liked about me. I still wasn’t going to murder one of those worms.
“When’d he see her?” I asked, meaning the schoolteacher.
Ray shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“Well, I don’t care if she’s pretty so long as she’s nice,” I said. “Teachers should be nice, not pretty.”
“What’s wrong with them bein’ pretty?”
I didn’t know how to answer that, so I took to running toward the creek. He chased after me, not liking to lose.
If ever I wanted to get Ray off one subject or another, I just had to challenge him to a race. That always got his mind off things.
It worked every time.
We got our first look at the new teacher at church the following Sunday. She sat in the very first pew with the preacher’s wife.
All through the service the only part of her I could see was her long brown hair that she kept pulled back in a pretty ribbon that matched her dress. I wondered if she had a kind face and if she was quick to smile. I did hope so. And I hoped she had a pleasant voice, one that didn’t give me the willies.
All during the sermon I kept my eyes on the preacher as if I was hanging onto every word out of his mouth. I nodded when I saw folks ahead of me nodding and I folded my hands and closed my eyes when it seemed like the rest of the church was praying.
But all I could think about was school starting in a little less than a month. It made me feel antsy and sick to my stomach. Still, I couldn’t hardly wait for the first day.
Sitting there in the pew between Aunt Carrie and Daddy, I tried to imagine what our first day of school might be like.
Mama would make sure Ray and I had ourselves a good breakfast, one that would stick by us until lunchtime. She wouldn’t pack us food to take since we’d come home for the noon meal because we lived so close.
She’d remind us to listen to the teacher and not to get in any sort of trouble. And she’d especially make sure I knew I wasn’t to fight or cuss or daydream or spit even. If nothing else, she did know my weaknesses.
I would promise to try and that would seem good enough for her. And I would, try that was. I’d try hard as I could. As to if I’d succeed at any of it, I couldn’t have promised that. But I would do my best just so long as nobody said anything to get me riled.
Ray and I would walk together, Ray even mo
re nervous than me. He hadn’t been to more than a day of school in a real long time. Much as he’d learned from Mama’s lessons he still would have a hard time of it as far as reading went. He’d worry about how the letters leapfrogged each other all over the page.
He hadn’t given up and wasn’t like to. That Ray Jones could be stubborn when he needed to be.
Once we’d gotten to the school, I imagined us finding seats right beside each other. It would give him courage, knowing I was right there. He did have his friends, the ones he’d talk with after church or go off to play a game of catch with, still there was comfort for him in being by me. At least that was what I imagined.
In my daydream Hazel Wheeler wasn’t even in the classroom. She’d gotten herself shipped off to a boarding school for mean and nasty girls with sour faces. All the friends she’d left behind would turn to me, asking if I’d like to be one of them. I wouldn’t be so sure, but they’d ask so nice I couldn’t say no.
The new schoolteacher would welcome us all to class and she’d call the roll. It’d take her a long time to get to my name seeing that Spence was near the end of the alphabet. But when she did get to me, she’d smile.
I just knew she’d be my friend even if she was my teacher.
When I imagined her voice she had an Oklahoma drawl even if she was from Michigan.
She wouldn’t be the kind to slap palms with her yardstick or to put noses in a corner. She’d be one to throw the dunce cap in the trash and to laugh at jokes that were funny even if they were told at the wrong time.
The way I imagined it, she’d be the best kind of teacher there was.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
On the morning I turned eleven I woke up feeling older. I got out of bed and stretched, sure I was taller than I’d been the day before. I wiggled my toes against the little rug by my bed, wondering if my feet had gotten longer. My best green dress even felt a little snugger. At least it seemed to fit tighter around my hips and shoulders. Not my chest, though, and that was all right by me. The last thing in the world I wanted was to grow in that way, not yet at least. I just thought I’d be embarrassed to have those things bumping out under the fabric of my dress.
I studied myself in the wood-framed mirror Daddy’d hung on my wall. Turning my head one direction and then the other, I studied my face, holding poses like the ones I’d seen women do in Mama’s magazines. Pinching at my cheeks brought up the color just like biting did to my lips.
I wondered if now that I was eleven years old I’d be expected to look more grown, more dainty and refined. If I was, Mama would be sure to tell me.
If there was anything in the whole world Mama wished for me it was that I’d be polite and genteel.
I watched my reflection sigh and stoop her shoulders. What Mama wanted would surely take all the fun out of my days. Being a lady was a whole lot like work.
Stepping away from the mirror, I opened my door. Right away I smelled the baking cake and my heart fluttered with excitement.
“You’ll have to figure out what you’re going to wish for,” Daddy had said the day before.
I didn’t have to figure anything out at all. I knew what I was going to wish for already. I’d known for a good month.
As far as I knew, Millard had been to every one of my birthday dinners. He was every bit as much a part of our family as I was. He wasn’t one to bring presents or to give a card, but that never mattered to me. It was enough for me to know that he’d be at my house, lending his scratchy singing voice to the happy birthday song, and that he’d want me to think long and hard about the wish I’d make when I blew out the candles.
“You don’t wanna wish for somethin’ piddly,” he’d say. “Always try for the biggest wish you can think up. You never know what might happen.”
I decided that my eleventh birthday wish would be for him. I’d wish that somehow he’d fold on his stubborn resolution to stay in Red River and pack his stuff, hopping on a train for Bliss that very day. It was the biggest and best wish I could think up.
He’d written us a letter just a couple days before, telling us the news from home, and I thought he was busier than ever with all the folks in and out of the Hooverville. He told of how they had better buildings for the people come to stay and how sometimes they’d have dances on a Friday night.
I bet Pastor didn’t like that one bit.
“They even got a couple flush toilets down there now,” he’d written. “Clean water out of the tap, too. Government’s got some of their folks there to be sure it’s all fine and good for the families. Real safe. Sometimes I wonder if that old Hooverville is the best place most of them ever lived in.”
In that letter he didn’t say so much as one word about leaving Red River.
I knew my wish would have to be mighty strong to pull him up out of the Oklahoma soil where he’d been rooted near all his life and bring him to us. I wasn’t even sure it’d be right, having him leave.
But he’d always been the one to tell me to wish big, and I intended to do just that.
Mama shooed me out of the house. She said she had to get my cake frosted and chicken fried and that she and Opal had a lot of work ahead of them to get the house ready. We were to have company for supper.
That and Mama had a couple surprises to put together for me.
“And I don’t need you sneaking peeks at me,” she said. “I’ve worked too hard for you to spoil it.”
I did as Mama said, not giving her one argument. I knew she’d scrimped and saved to have a good meal for my birthday. And she’d gone without sugar in her coffee for weeks so she had enough to bake a cake. It would have been the act of an ungrateful child to sass at Mama just then.
Besides, I liked surprises more than anything else, so I did as she said. I went out back to see if Ray wanted to go into the woods with me. He sat out behind the shed on an overturned bucket. When he saw me, he turned quick, hiding something under his shirt.
“Don’t look,” he hollered.
“What are you hiding?” I asked, stepping closer.
“Don’t ask questions on your birthday, Pearl.”
“Is it a present for me?”
“I ain’t sayin’. Don’t ask me no more questions,” he said. “Now shoo.” On any other day, his hollering at me like that would’ve hurt my feelings. Not on that day, though. I was happy to let him keep on carving on the piece of wood I saw peeking out from under the cotton of his white shirt. I turned right around and left him to it.
“Happy birthday, by the way,” he yelled at me as I went.
“Thanks,” I answered, not even looking over my shoulder at him.
I made my way to the library. It was a bright and sunny day and I was hoping to find another book to read. I’d read through the Oz book so many times I nearly had it committed to memory. I thought it might be good to find a different story for a change. Something from the shelf Aunt Carrie’d shown me.
As I went, a couple folks here and there called after me, wishing me a happy birthday. I wondered if Daddy’d told them to say that if they saw me. I didn’t mind so much. It sure felt good to have that kind of attention.
Seemed every day Bliss got to feeling more and more like home.
Still, something nagged at me whenever I got to thinking I was somewhere near happy. It made me think of a half-broken tooth Daddy had once. He’d forget it was sore until he chomped on something hard. Then it hurt him something awful.
After a week or two he had to get that tooth pulled so it’d stop paining him.
Making my way down the street to the library, I felt some kind of aching worry throbbing in the middle of my chest. It caught my breath and I gasped once, twice, and felt a flutter in my heart.
I put one foot in front of the other and kept moving forward. Bliss was home and I’d be happy there no matter how hard I had to try.
Mrs. Trask brightened up as soon as she saw me coming through the door. She eased herself up from her desk, moving slower than usual and
wincing a little before she got straight as she was able.
“I have found just the book for you, Miss Spence,” she told me. She pointed off to a row of shelves. “It’s just over that way. Come along. We shall retrieve it together.”
Following behind her I worried about what kind of book she’d picked for me. All I’d been reading for months was the Oz book and I had hoped to find a story just as good as that one. Sighing, I tried to have faith she’d chosen a book I would like.
When I saw the one she pulled off the shelf for me I couldn’t help but smile. On the cover was an Indian man with a tomahawk in hand, his face stretched into a fierce battle cry.
Mrs. Trask winked at me and wished me a happy birthday.
I would have hugged her if I didn’t worry I’d break her in two.
Sitting in the window seat, the light warming me, I read that book, my eyes not leaving the page except when I needed to blink. There weren’t any battles, not in the first few chapters at least. But the words were such that I could about smell the Indian’s deer-skin vest and hear his horse neighing.
Wanting to save some of that story for later, I closed it, putting it under my arm before checking it out and heading home.
“How do you like it so far?” Mrs. Trask asked as she stamped the inside of the book. “Are you enjoying it?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am,” I answered. “I surely am.”
“I am delighted to hear that, my dear.”
I did believe she was.
If I could have been an Indian I would’ve wanted to be the kind that traveled all over. I’d be in the sort of tribe that planned according to the seasons and where the good hunting grounds were. A nomad, that’s what I’d be. North in the summer and south in the winter. West when the buffalo were good and stout. East for fishing. I supposed I’d have followed the chief, trusting him to know the best way to go.
But if I couldn’t have been born an Indian I might have been brought into the tribe somehow or another. With my light hair and eyes I wouldn’t look like them. That could be all right, though, I reckoned. Somebody had to be able to go into town to deal with the white man. I’d be sure they got a fair shake for the animal skins they wanted to trade and I’d never allow them to get into the fire water.
A Trail of Crumbs Page 21
