“About a month.”
“That long?”
“Time will go by fast. Remember, the Knights of Columbus picnic is coming. If it’s hot, you can go swimming.”
“My old bathing suit is too small.”
“Then we’ll get a new one.”
I hugged her so hard, she said I was squeezing the pudding out of her.
“Will you read a story?”
“What do you want to hear?” she asked.
“The Man of the House.” That was the story about Phillip, who wore brown corduroy knickers and a brown Eton jacket, and sat on the window seat waiting for his father, who was fighting the Hun.
“That one again? Wouldn’t you like a new one?”
“No.” I closed my eyes and saw Phillip’s house by the sea, a stone bench in the garden. And there was Phillip in the nursery, sitting in the window seat. “Doesn’t that sound like our house, Mama?” I asked, but fell asleep before she could answer.
In the deepest part of the night, Papa shook my shoulder and said, “You’re still biting your fingernails. We’re going to the cemetery.” I had on a new bathing suit, and I shivered as we stepped out into the night. No one was stirring in Harvester except me and Papa, bouncing along in the pickup.
Papa turned off the main road and drove up to the gate of the cemetery as he had done before. But this time when he dragged me out, he hauled me up to the gate, lifted the latch, and marched me in.
Straight through the cemetery we hiked, between tall headstones and pious trees, grown sinister in the dark. I howled like a banshee and tugged to free myself, but Papa stepped along without hesitation, paying no attention. At the far end of the cemetery, where a fence separated the graves from cornfields, he let go of my hand.
“Stay here till your nails are long,” he said, and turned away.
I screamed and ran after him, but he was gone. In a minute, I heard the pickup’s engine.
I tried to find the gate, but among hundreds of headstones and monuments, trees and peony bushes, I lost my way, finally sinking down on a cold bench and burying my face in my hands. In the inky shadows around me, animals glided through the grass, soundless but for the whisper of their feet. Something cool and smooth slid across my instep.
As I bolted, the earth fell away, and I tumbled down and down, into an open grave with water standing in the bottom. Bathed in slime, I heard from above a laugh much like Papa’s, but when I turned to look, a leering face hovered at the rim of the grave, shrieking, “Everyone knows!”
After a long time, I peered between my fingers. The face had disappeared. Scrabbling up the side of the grave, I pulled myself out onto the grass.
A dawn breeze from the west churned the trees and coaxed the lilac bushes to dance. A great whispering passed among the willows and even the stone angels took it up: “Everyone knows.”
Less than fifty yards distant was the gate, and beyond, the outline of Harvester beckoned. In the east, flames were creeping over the horizon. Above, the sky was clear and a most remarkable cornflower blue.
In the distant sky to the southeast, a lone bird appeared, enormous, bigger than a swan or goose. The corners of a sheet or blanket were gathered into its beak!
Hadn’t Mama said that the stork carried babies that way? I was seeing a baby delivered to someone. Probably to Aunt Betty. She was the only person I knew who was expecting one.
I stopped in the road to watch it pass. But something was wrong. One corner of the blanket had slipped from the bird’s beak. A second appeared to be giving way. If I ran hard, out into the field alongside the road, I could be there to catch Aunt Betty’s baby.
Scaling a rickety wooden fence, I started across the unplowed field. Then something happened to my feet. They grew to the size of watermelons.
The bird was close. I could hear the baby cry. The fabric was slipping. A small hand waved, appealing to me. But my feet would not budge. Stretching out my hands helplessly, I watched in horror as the baby fell through the cornflower sky.
I didn’t tell Mama about the dream. All day I was heavy with it. At recess I couldn’t pump up properly on the swing. Jumping rope, I tripped time and again.
After school I went out selling tickets to the Knights of Columbus picnic. Plodding from house to house, knocking on doors, reciting the same old tale of games and prizes, I found it hard to smile and show the enthusiasm Mama expected. The baby, its little hand waving to me, filled all the space behind my eyes and in my heart. It was fortunate that the customers were more enthusiastic about buying than I was about selling. Returning home, I had only three tickets remaining in the envelope, and Mama was pleased.
“Didn’t I say you’d be a wonderful salesman?” Mama asked, putting the envelope in the cupboard for tomorrow. “Set the table. It’s almost supper time.” Mama was in a happy mood, humming in her random, no-tune way as she checked the baked potatoes.
“What’s that?” I asked, laying out the silverware beside the plates, fork on the left, spoon and knife on the right. Tacked to the wall above the kitchen table was a chart with the alphabet set out in rows. But the letters were all mixed up.
“That’s a typing chart. I sent away for it. There’s a book that goes with it. I’m going to learn to type.”
“You’re going to teach yourself?”
“The book says it’s easy.”
I folded paper napkins and put them under the forks. “Why do you need a chart? The letters are on the typewriter keys.”
“Because you’re supposed to learn to type without looking at the keys, the way Papa does. Haven’t you noticed how he never looks at the keys?”
“How long will it take?”
“That depends on how much I practice.”
“What’re you going to type on?”
“Art Bigelow gave me that old typewriter that was in the office. He said they were going to get rid of it anyway.”
“Why do you need to know how to type?”
“You never know when it might come in handy.”
Secretaries knew how to type. Knowing how to type was a glamorous and exclusive thing, like owning a set of encyclopedias or suitcases that matched. The image of Mama typing, knowing where the keys were without looking, sent a thrill through me. This was a person I didn’t thoroughly know, a person who had ideas I would never have guessed at. It was a little frightening.
Handing me a bowl of carrots, Mama gave me a sort of sideways glance and smiled, all the while humming something which only accidentally sounded like “Jeepers Creepers.”
10
LATE THURSDAY AFTERNOON, AS I was selling the last of my tickets to Dr. White and his nurse, the sky began to lower and by the time I reached home, the first drops of rain were wetting the brick platform in front of our door.
When Papa came home to supper, he announced, “I called Joe Navarin and he said I can come over and hunt night crawlers.”
“Can I come?” I asked quickly.
Papa looked at me speculatively. “Do you promise not to start whining to come home the minute we get there?”
“I promise.”
“If you start whining, I won’t take you again.”
Joe Navarin, who owned the Sinclair gas station and bought four tickets for the Memorial Day picnic, lived at the edge of town in a house that sat on a half-acre lot. When it rained Papa sometimes went to gather night crawlers from Mr. Navarin’s yard, which teemed with them during a good downpour. Papa had never taken me. He was afraid I’d get cold or start to fuss before he had enough worms.
I didn’t have a real raincoat, but Mama had a jacket that kept off the rain. After dinner she got it out, buttoned it on me, and rolled up the sleeves until my hands stuck out. From a box under her bed, she retrieved my buckle-up galoshes and put those on me.
As she did, she inquired, “What happened to your shoes? They’re torn here on top.”
“Mrs. Grubb’s dog.”
“That yappy little devil?” She fastened the bu
ckles. “What about an umbrella, Willie?”
“No umbrellas. You can’t hunt night crawlers with a flashlight in one hand and an umbrella in the other, for God’s sake.”
From the freight room at the other end of the depot, Papa fetched a couple of minnow pails and a shovel. His fishing and hunting gear were kept stored in the freight room. “We’ll drive out Cemetery Road and dig up dirt for these,” he said, handing me the pails.
Cemetery Road. I looked at Mama. Her face did not reveal any awful knowledge. She was calm and smiling. But Cemetery Road? Why there? Why not Red Berry Road or Sioux Woman Lake Road?
I was silent climbing into the pickup. Of course Papa wasn’t going to leave me in the cemetery, especially not in the rain. The darkness and confusion, the listening, waiting animals gathered silently around, all the dream images fluttered in my brain like frantic moth wings. I huddled deeper inside Mama’s jacket.
On the left was the unplowed field where I had tried to catch Aunt Betty’s baby. I looked quickly, then turned away. It was wrong to tempt whatever dark forces created bad dreams. What if I were to look up now and see a baby falling through the sky? I closed my eyes tight. Could a person try to run and find that their legs wouldn’t move, that their feet were nailed to the ground? What if the stork dropped the baby in the field behind Aunt Betty’s house? It was an unplowed field much like this one. What if I were there, and I couldn’t run?
Papa pulled the truck over onto the shoulder and killed the engine. “We can get our dirt here,” he said, jumping down from the cab and removing the shovel and pails from the back. We were a good hundred yards from the cemetery drive. Thank God for that. Papa helped me down and handed me the flashlight. “Hold this where I dig,” he told me.
There were worms here, too, in the grass and crawling across the road. “Should I get those worms for us, Papa?”
“No. Leave them be. We’ll get bigger ones at Joe’s.”
I stood with my back to the plowed field, holding the light, the rain falling, steady and gentle, on my shoulders and on the old fishing cap of Papa’s, which Mama had clapped on my head as I was going out the door. When the pails were half-full, Papa lifted them into the back of the truck and we headed for town, the windshield wipers slap-slapping the rain from our view.
Papa pulled into Mr. Navarin’s long driveway. We didn’t stop at the house. We’d come for the worms, and we set to work hunting them. Papa walked, carrying his pail. He was right about the worms. They were everywhere and they were huge, a foot or so long many of them, and as big around as my fingers. I held the flashlight in my left hand and snatched up the struggling worms with my right, tossing them into the pail.
I was reminded of dreams in which, gazing casually at the ground, I’d spy money in the grass. Falling to my hands and knees with great excitement, I’d gather up the coins and stuff them into my pocket. The more I found, the more appeared. I began to plan all the things I would buy: a big, red tricycle for me, a fur coat for Mama, and a fishing boat for Papa. I put the money in the cut-glass vase from Aunt Essie on top of the sideboard in the living room and told myself that when I woke in the morning, I’d get it and show Mama. How thrilled she would be. Several times it had happened that the dream was so real that when I woke, I ran to the vase and couldn’t believe there was no money in it. But this was no dream, I was pretty sure.
I picked up my pail and moved along. The wealth of worms was beyond anything I could have imagined. I tried not to step on them with my galoshes, but it wasn’t easy. The worms felt different than they looked. They looked smooth and slimy, but they were rough to the touch and not at all disgusting. I had handled worms before when we went fishing, handing them to Papa to put on my hook. This year I was going to learn to bait my own hook.
“Papa, when we go fishing this weekend, will you teach me to put the worm on my hook?”
Papa was all the way across the yard and didn’t hear me. I don’t know how long we gathered worms. The time flew. Very soon Papa said, “My pail’s full. What about you?”
“Mine, too.”
He slapped the lid down on his pail. The lid resembled a colander, full of holes so that the minnows or worms wouldn’t die. Night crawlers were too fat to slip through the holes. I slapped the lid on mine and followed him to the truck. When he lifted my pail to the back of the pickup, he opened the lid and looked inside. “Pretty good,” he said.
I savored the “pretty good,” sucking out every bit of flavor as if it were Christmas candy. I was turning it over pleasantly in my mind the next afternoon, which was Friday, as Sally Wheeler and I walked to her house from school.
“Papa and I went hunting for night crawlers last night.”
Sally made a face. “You picked them up?”
“It’s easy. They can’t bite.”
“They’re so icky.”
“No, they’re not. They’re nice. I got a whole pail of them. There must have been a million at Mr. Navarin’s. We had a real good time, Papa and me, and he said I was a very good night crawler catcher.”
Sally shuddered and made an awful face. “Don’t tell Mama.”
“Why not?”
“She doesn’t like to hear about killing things.”
“I didn’t kill them.”
“You will when you go fishing.”
That was true. It was something to think about.
“Did you ever see the Rabels’ dog?” Sally asked.
“A black one?”
She nodded. “Mama hit it with the car. She didn’t mean to, but it chased cars all the time, and it ran right out in front of her.”
“Did she kill it?”
“Sure.” Sally shifted her reader, her speller, and her lunch pail. “I was with her. We had to walk home. Mama couldn’t drive. She left the car in front of the Rabels’ after she told them about the dog. She never went back for the car. When Daddy came home on Friday, he went and got it. I had to hold Mama’s hand walking home. She kept telling me she wouldn’t ever drive the car again.”
“When did it happen?”
“Before Easter.”
“Does she drive the car now?”
“Once in a while, but I don’t like to ride with her because she slams on the brakes all the time. It’s scary.” As we crossed the Wheelers’ backyard, Sally said, “She still cries about the dog sometimes. I wish she wouldn’t do that. What if she cried in Truska’s store? People would think she was crazy.” Sally lowered her voice and added, “Sometimes she cries and there’s not even a reason. She says, ‘I’m sorry I’m crying. I can’t stop.’ I don’t see why she can’t stop. She’s a grown-up.”
“Lark, it’s so nice that you could come study with Sally,” Mrs. Wheeler told me, as if this were the first instead of the eighth or tenth time Sally and I had studied catechism together on a Friday afternoon. Mrs. Wheeler’s eyelids were puffy and red along the edge.
“Sit down at the table now,” she insisted, “and have some cookies and milk.” She brought two plates and two glasses, and set them before us. From a big jar she removed handfuls of Fig New-tons and stacked them on our plates, six or eight on each plate. “Do you like Fig Newtons, Lark?”
“Oh, yes. Thank you.” I didn’t like Fig Newtons. They tasted like dried prunes. Also, the seeds made it seem like I was eating sand. But I didn’t want to make Mrs. Wheeler sad so I ate them and smiled.
Mrs. Wheeler poured herself a cup of tea. I wished she’d put some in my milk. I wasn’t fond of milk without something to kill the taste. Mama usually put in a little tea or coffee. Mrs. Wheeler’s back was to us, but I saw that her shoulders were shaking. Not another dog, I hoped.
Without turning around, she said, “I’m sorry to be upset, but a terrible thing happened today.”
Oh, dear, had she killed something?
“It was Hilly Stillman,” she began, her voice wavering but not breaking. “I drove out to the Catholic cemetery to set out plants on Wheeler graves. I wanted them to look nice for Memor
ial Day. I don’t drive much, but sometimes you have to—to do things.
“I was leaving the cemetery. I’d gotten out of the car to close the gate when I saw another car, coming down the main road, heading into the country. There were three young men in the car—no, two young men in the front seat and an older man in the back. It looked like … I’m not sure who it was. I’d never seen the young men before. They must be from St. Bridget or Red Berry, or maybe they’re staying at the hotel.
“I closed the gate. There was someone running ahead of the car. I thought maybe it was a high school boy training for a race, but he was wearing a regular shirt and … they didn’t see me right away because of those big spirea bushes on either side of the drive.” She paused. She was trembling, and I wondered if we should go to her. I thought maybe Sally would, but Sally didn’t move. I could feel her discomfort across the table. I wished that I could tell her not to be embarrassed, most people were strange when you got to know them. Anyway, I didn’t think it was strange to cry about a dead dog. And the story Mrs. Wheeler was telling sounded exciting and mysterious. I was anxious to hear the rest.
“The car got closer,” Mrs. Wheeler resumed. “It was going slow, and the two young men in the front seat were honking the horn and yelling at the one who was running. They were saying … awful things to him. They were chasing him with the car, chasing him like he was an animal, honking and yelling. They were telling him what… what they would do to him when they caught him.” Mrs. Wheeler spoke haltingly, like someone editing as they go. What had those men said, and why were they chasing someone?
“Then I saw it was Hilly Stillman they were tormenting. He was frightened half to death. He can’t run very well because of his game foot, but he was going as fast as he could. He was about to drop.” She was sobbing. “I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was like a nightmare. I ran to the end of the cemetery drive and screamed at them. I waved my arms and screamed. They pulled out and drove around Hilly. Then they took off. Hilly fell down in the grass and curled up and cried like a little child. It was a terrible thing.” She grabbed a towel and covered her face.
The Cape Ann Page 9
