Terrible, Horrible Edie

by E. C. Spykman

Anyway they couldn’t be found. Hubert found one of somebody else’s—a high brown color—wedged between two rocks under the bluff, and Theodore thought he could scull across with that. What he really wanted to do was rescue the Q, but for that he would have to wait for the harbor-master, Captain Harbuck, and he would be too busy now to help with small boats.

  “We can’t all go, that’s a cert,” said Hubert after they had all helped to get the skiff back into the water. He himself stepped in and sat down on the middle plank. “I strongly advise you girls to amuse yourselves in some other manner,” he said. Ted shoved off, as if he were the other brain with but a single thought, and Jane and Edie were left noisily but helplessly behind. When they saw that their case was hopeless, they started down the sand. There was no end to the wonders. The Barrons’ launch was on the Lampsons’ piazza, the Lampsons’ own boat was missing, and their float was tangled up in a tree. Some parts of the shore looked like jackstraws—big wood, little wood, new, old, sticks, logs. There were smashed boats on some of the boulders and smashed windows and roofs on the summer cottages behind them. The ocean had cleaned out all the back yards and pitched up what it got just where it liked. Jane and Edie found one of the skiff oars and Jane put it over her shoulder.

  “Suppose it isn’t?” said Edie.

  “See that peck on the leather,” said Jane. “Lou bit it out because I wouldn’t let her row. I saw her do it.”

  Every kind of work had stopped in Mount Harbor, they could see when they got to the village. The people were all on the street looking and talking. To Jane and Edie they said “Quite a blow!” They answered, “You bet!” Olsen’s boathouse was right where it ought to have been, but when they looked through the door, there was nothing in it, not even a can of paint. “Lost it all,” said Mr. Olsen who was standing nearby. “Quite a blow!” Opposite the station the electric light poles had lain down in a tangled, crazy row. Jane and Edie stood on the station platform and stared.

  “You keep away from them wires,” said Mr. Olsen, coming up beside them. “I’ve seen people scorched up horrid because they was ignorant.”

  “We know,” said Jane.

  It was terribly lucky, they both thought, that Mount Harbor had no trees or they would have all gone down like the poles. “Perhaps,” Jane said, “they all went in another storm.” And they had never been able to see them. She didn’t know how Edie felt but she was proud of the small gray houses in the village that had sat steadfast against the storm. Their owners were airing them out now and probably trying to get the floors dry. Not one house in the village of Mount Harbor had moved an inch, nor their roofs either, nor their garden fences—or only just one at the end of the street—that was Mr. Lumsden’s new ice-cream parlor. It was standing on its head.

  “Oh my!” said Edie.

  They were not the first ones to get there by any means; a large party of village children were taking turns looking in the window, which, miraculously, had not been broken. Jane and Edie elbowed themselves in when they thought it was their turn, and the rapturous sight that met their eyes was one they could hardly tear themselves away from. The entire contents of Mr. Lumsden’s ice-cream parlor had been upset with the house and lay mixed in “more than oriental splendor” on the ceiling.

  “No, it’s the floor now,” said Edie, leaving the sight slowly and reluctantly. “Did you see the chocolate creams?”

  “I looked at the gum drops,” said Jane. “They look like the hard kind that last for hours.”

  It was like Aladdin’s cave. They had not had anything to eat since eight o’clock, and all Mr. Lumsden’s great glass jars had lost their stoppers and poured out bull’s-eyes, rock candy, peppermint sticks, licorice drops, peach blossoms, Necco wafers, molasses kisses, besides chocolate creams and gumdrops. His ice-cream tins had been dumped out of their ice chest and had lost their covers. They had seen whole gallons of strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate beginning to melt around the edges and run into each other. It was a sight so impressive that no one had a word to say until one of the older boys tried the door handle and then there was a breathless waiting. But it would not give. It was either locked or jammed hard.

  “Suppose I heave a rock?” said Jim Gunley, looking sideways at the girls to see how they would take it.

  “A lot of good that would do,” said the older boy, whom they did not know, “getting the eats full of glass.”

  Perhaps they had had good dinners somehow, in the middle of the storm. Anyway the villagers began to leave except some quite small ones who could not take their noses off the glass. Jim Gunley went when someone came up with a story that a dead man had been washed up below Olsen’s boathouse.

  “Do you want to see him?” asked Jane.

  “Not much,” said Edie. “I’d rather have some ice cream, wouldn’t you?”

  “Well,” said Jane, “there doesn’t look like much hope of that either.” She wondered what Edie expected. Even if all Mr. Lumsden’s doors burst open, they couldn’t just take his things. They couldn’t even take them if they fell out on the dirt.

  “I’m going home,” she said.

  “Wait just precisely three and a half minutes more,” said Edie. “Mr. Lumsden might come himself.”

  “He won’t. He’s gone to Far’s Landing. I heard Mr. Olsen saying so.”

  But Edie had to circle the parlor as if she were a beagle, and Jane had to follow at her heels to be sure she did not do anything to get put in jail. And she had to listen to her arguments too. Edie thought Mr. Lumsden might have been drowned in the storm or hit by a tree in Far’s Landing. Then the ice-cream parlor wouldn’t belong to anybody.

  “Yes, it would,” said Jane. “He’d have left it to a relation in his will. Edie, you can’t do anything. I won’t let you. It would be stealing.”

  “I just want to see,” said Edie.

  She fiddled with the upside-down latch of the back door.

  “The boys have tried that already,” said Jane. “I saw them.” This, she made up. But it was better to tell a few lies at the moment, she thought.

  Edie put her eye to the keyhole. “I bet it isn’t locked,” she said. “Come on, scare cat, let’s give it one little tug.”

  Jane would have nothing to do with it. The small children had come round from the front and were standing behind them in a row, looking with all their might. She knew very well that if anything startling happened, some one of them would go off to get his mother and she and Edie would be caught for burglars. She put out her hand to catch Edie’s hard brown wrist that was going toward the latch when there was a tug at her skirt. It was Jim Gunley’s younger brother who had taken his thumb out of his mouth and was trying to say something. “What?” said Jane, leaning over to try to hear the whisper. “Wait, Edie, wait,” she said, holding her. “I think he’s saying he heard a noise. Where?” said Jane to Harold Gunley. Harold pointed at Mr. Lumsden’s back door.

  “What did I tell you!” said Edie.

  Jane reluctantly put her finger on the foolish, weak-looking latch, and Edie grasped above it with her whole tough brown hand. “Pull!” she said. The door gave a rasping scratch and opened a few inches. “See!”

  She tried to peek through the crack, but it was too dark to see anything, or else there was something in the way. They both took hold of the edge and jerked, and the door gave onto the tiny passage where Mr. Lumsden kept boxes, papers, a garbage pail, and his broom. They were all there in a heap upside down with boards, sticks, and dirt on top, and on top of them were a pair of men’s boots, which must have been on the floor and got flung up there when the house went over.

  When the door was opened, the pile of rubbish began to fall out and Jane did not like it. “Now you’ve done it,” she said. But Edie was staring at the boots, and she stared too when she saw what was happening. The boxes fell at their feet, but the boots stayed up in the air. They had legs attached to them! These kept stiff for a minute and then, as more stuff loosened and fell, they began to waver and fall to
o.

  “It’s a live man,” said Edie, scrabbling at the boxes.

  “It’s a dead man,” said Jane. “I wish you’d mind your own business once in a while.” But she helped with hauling things away from the legs, and except for a wooden crate that they had a hard time getting away from where it was wedged against the doorjamb, they were very quick about it, and very careful to keep out of the way of the legs, which now stretched out beside them. Edie finally got a stone out of the back lot to break up the crate, and at a last mighty tug it came away and they sat down on the step outside the sill and also on their audience, which had moved up as close as possible to get the best view. Two of them ran off screaming, just as Jane had been sure they would.

  “It’s their own fault,” said Edie. “Come on. Let’s see what’s happened.”

  They crawled back on their hands and knees in order not to run into the legs, but they were gone, and there at the end of the dark passage sat Mr. Lumsden in a white apron, blinking at them. Jane and Edie sank back on their heels and they all looked at each other quite a while.

  “Quite a blow,” said Mr. Lumsden. “It tipped me over.”

  “I hope you’re still alive,” said Jane politely.

  “Gut rush uv blood to the head,” said Mr. Lumsden. “Bin on it an hour or more.” He shook his head violently as if trying to clear it. “Shouldn’t wonder you saved me.”

  “Oh no!” said Jane modestly, thinking of what they had thought about the candy and ice cream.

  “We did, more or less,” said Edie. Jane gave her a look. “We were trying to save your store and we found you.”

  “I’m lucky,” said Mr. Lumsden.

  He got up and stood swaying from side to side and trying to clear his vision by waving cobwebs away from before his face. Presently he stepped out on the grass. “Upside down,” he said, considering the ice-cream parlor, “plum upside down.”

  “Almost everything has spilled,” said Edie. “Would you like to see it?”

  They guided him, still weaving, to the plate-glass window.

  “Them boxes,” he said, feeling himself and flexing his legs, “plum jammed me in.”

  His look in his big window did not seem to inspire him with thoughts of any kind at all; it just made him continue to shake his head. Edie, and even Jane, was more than surprised; they were both disappointed and impatient that Mr. Lumsden, whom they had saved, with that ocean of candy and ice cream in front of him, useless as far as selling was concerned, beginning to melt already, with syrups creeping nearer and nearer to bars of Peter’s chocolate, and dirt and dust dropping all over it from what used to be the floor— Mr. Lumsden did not have an inkling of the right thing to do.

  “Goodness,” he said. “Goodness.”

  “It’ll be badness pretty soon,” said Edie. With Jane listening she did not dare be any fresher than that.

  But he did not catch on, and they finally had to leave him walking unsteadily round and round the ice-cream parlor followed by that part of the audience that had dared to remain, wondering how he could get it right side up again.

  “Wouldn’t you have thought,” said Edie, stepping over a crevasse that the water had made in the road back to Aunt Louise’s, “that he could just have offered us a package of Neccos for saving his life!”

  “It was just an accident,” said Jane.

  “For you, but not for me,” said Edie, wagging her head. “You know that.”

  They got back to Aunt Louise’s just in time to see Hubert and Ted sculling across the harbor with some of the furniture tied behind the skiff like dead whales; and just in time for an enormous supper that Cook had somehow invented from what had been on the top kitchen shelves. Gander served it in her rubbers. And just in time to see that the boat that was still looking in their front door was still unoccupied by Shaw Wells; and just in time to be able to get to bed before they fell down. Edie sat for two minutes with her arms to hold her up, her short yellow hair dripping backwards.

  “Gee, Jane,” she said, while Widgy who was curled up at the foot of the bed looked at her with one eye, “I wish every day could be like this one, don’t you?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Enemy

  Waking up at Aunt Louise’s was almost always a good sensation, no matter what kind of day it might be, because of the sounds that the wind, light or strong, brought in before your eyes were even open. There was particularly the clock chunk of boats and the chuck, chuck, chuck of Captain Grannet’s lobster launch setting out steadily and firmly to visit the pots. These made you part of everything to do with salt water, so that you saw the wet piles of the wharfs at low tide, barnacles, mud flats or the brimming harbor, quahogs under boulders, scurrying fiddler crabs, and screaming gulls. In between these noises the pine trees soughed and breathed through the window until you were ready to get up and see what kind of a day it was—the kind when you went swimming on the outer beach and ducked through the surf, or the kind when you dived for clam shells from the float, or the kind that you spent entirely on getting ready to race and fixing things up after you had.

  The morning after the “big blow” there was not a sound. The sun was streaming in and the air was stirring as usual, but the wind seemed to have blown away even the wonderful beach smells. Edie woke up knowing that it was going to be an exciting day—everything would have to be cleaned up as if it were the beginning of the world—even in her sleep she had been looking forward to it. She, personally, meant to rescue the player piano, investigate Shaw Wells’s sloop, help bail the Q, and see if any of those mice had come to life—there would be a thousand things she liked, and therefore when she lay in bed listening and heard none of them beginning, she sat up startled with surprise. The only sound was the ticking of the window shade cord. Except for that there were no inside noises either. Usually there was Lou who came in to say: “Mith-thes, are you awake?” and poked her finger in your eye to see if you were, and Theodore tramping and Hubert blowing his nose and Gander sounding as if an elephant had got hold of a dustpan. She remembered that Lou and Chris and Mr. Parker were still away, but what about the others? And the smell of breakfast? The blow should not have done anything to that. Aunt Louise’s great iron stove was on a brick platform, and the water had only licked its feet; also the part-time man had been glad to spite the electricity so that he could set up the old gasoline pump in the cellar last night. She had seen it working herself. It was not strong enough to get a bath from its workings, but it could have sent coffee water into the kitchen, she was sure, and with just a little wood from the wood pile, which had a small roof of its own, there should have been bacon. Somewhere, somehow, she began to realize, life must be going on without her and she had better get up and see. As she stepped to the floor, no little dog jumped down beside her.

  “Why, Widgy, bad dog, where are you?” she said. How could he have gone off without her?

  One of the best things about summer was how easy it was to get dressed; stretch your legs twice for pants, throw a dress over your head, pull on some socks, put your feet into sneakers, and that was it until Mr. Parker or Theodore saw you. Then maybe you had to wash your face if they thought of it, which honestly did seem rather foolish when you were in water most of the time. This morning especially she felt that she had had enough of it yesterday and took no pains to be any cleaner than when she went to bed. Now that her hair was short, a comb did whatever was necessary in “a brace of lightning shakes” exactly as the part-time man said he would do things. She was downstairs in three and a half minutes, and it took her much less to discover why Aunt Louise’s was so quiet. There was no one in the house but herself, not even in the kitchen, not a sight or a sound of a soul. She had overslept, she saw by the kitchen clock, and she bet as she came back to the hall that they had all gone off to see some marvelous sight without her. It must have promised to be extra marvelous because they had left breakfast scattered all over the table without clearing off a thing. It was probably that dead man that she
and Jane had heard about in the village, or the white yacht that the boys had reported last night had gone on the rocks in the narrows. What a party of skunks to leave her out of it when they knew perfectly well that she was the one person in the family who didn’t mind getting up early! And where was Widgy? She really did not see how Widgy could have deserted her. He had never been mean in the whole of his life. That riddle, however, was soon solved. They had shut him in the downstairs toilet room—to be out of their way, she supposed. Now he welcomed her as if she had saved his life, going crazy and running in circles and making noises in his throat.

  “Where are they, Widge? Show me where they are,” said Edie, but he only talked louder and said nothing. Anyway he was only interested in her. That was some consolation.

  Edie went into the dining room and ate some pieces of bacon that had gotten soft and cold. Couldn’t even Cook have stayed at home—the fat old thing. How could she go anywhere with her kind of feet? She spread butter and jam on soft cold toast, drank a glass of milk down in one long series of swallowings, and went out through the side veranda door. She was glad to see the sloop was still there. Someone had moved the top of the pine tree that had settled beyond it, but luckily you could not move sloops across dry land as quickly as that. And there was still no one in it as she found out by hallooing to see who would come up from the cabin. As soon as she had seen about the mice and fed Jocko and Laza who were living in the barn, she would come back and get aboard herself. She had always been dying to see Shaw Wells’s sloop.

  At the boathouse she felt too sad to stay. The mice were certainly dead and looked terrible. She dropped them into the bushes as Hubert had suggested. The player piano was still full of water and it was too heavy for her to tip over; every single roll was drenched through, and the top of the boathouse was still standing on end against the trees behind it. Wouldn’t you think they’d be doing something about something, she said to herself, as she decided to take a look out the balcony window, hoping there might be somebody in sight on the beach. There wasn’t, not even somebody towing a rescued boat out or bailing a sunk skiff. In the stable the animals were all right and very hungry, so she gave them what she had brought and listened dejectedly as they scolded her. The Ford was all right too, but she was rather disgusted with it and gave it a kick for being so undisturbed. She wandered up the shell road to see if she could see somebody or something from the bridge that went over the railroad tracks. Hooray! There was a man there. It was awfully funny, because the part-time man didn’t come till the afternoon, but probably it was somebody from the railroad.