“Just one game,” said John. “Then I got to go home. The train leaves at nine. Who’s going to be ‘it’?”
“Me,” said Douglas.
“That the first time I ever heard of anybody volunteering to be ‘it,’ “said Tom.
Douglas looked at John for a long moment. “Start running,” he cried.
The boys scattered, yelling. John backed away, then turned and began to lope. Douglas counted slowly. He let them run far, spread out, separate each to his own small world. When they had got their momentum up and were almost out of sight he took a deep breath.
“Statues!”
Everyone froze.
Very quietly Douglas moved across the lawn to where John Huff stood like an iron deer in the twilight.
Far away, the other boys stood hands up, faces grimaced, eyes bright as stuffed squirrels.
But here was John, alone and motionless and no one rushing or making a great outcry to spoil this moment.
Douglas walked around the statue one way, walked around the statue the other way. The statue did not move.
It did not speak. It looked at the horizon, its mouth half smiling.
It was like that time years ago in Chicago when they had visited a big place where the carved marble figures were, and his walking around them in the silence. So here was John Huff with grass stains on his knees and the seat of his. pants, and cuts on his fingers and scabs on his elbows. Here was John Huff with the quiet tennis shoes, his feet sheathed in silence. There was the mouth that had chewed many an: apricot pie come summer, and said many a quiet thing or: two about life and the lay of the land. And there were the eyes, not blind like statues’ eyes, but filled with molten green- · gold. And there the dark hair blowing now north now south or any direction in the little breeze there was. And there the % hands with all the town on them, dirt from roads and bark-slivers from trees, the fingers that smelled of hemp and vine and green apple, old coins or pickle-green frogs. There were the ears with the sunlight shining through them like bright warm peach wax and here, invisible, his spearmint-breath upon the air.
“John, now,” said Douglas, “don’t you move so much as an eyelash. I absolutely command you to stay here and not move at all for the next three hours!”
“Doug . . .”
John’s lips moved.
“Freeze!” said Douglas.
John went back to looking at the sky, but he was not smiling now.
“I got to go,” he whispered.
“Not a muscle, it’s the game!”
“I just got to get home now,” said John.
Now the statue moved, took its hands down out of the air and turned its head to look at Douglas. They stood looking at each other. The other kids were putting their arms down, too.
“We’ll play one more round,” said John, “except this time, I’m ‘it. ’ Run!”
The boys ran.
“Freeze!”
The boys froze, Douglas with them.
“Not a muscle!” shouted John. “Not a hair!”
He came and stood by Douglas.
“Boy, this is the only way to do it,” he said.
Douglas looked off at the twilight sky.
“Frozen statues, every single one of you, the next three minutes!” said John.
Douglas felt John walking around him even as he had walked around John a moment ago. He felt John sock him on the arm once, not too hard. “So long,” he said.
Then there was a rushing sound and he knew without looking that there was nobody behind him now.
Far away, a train whistle sounded.
Douglas stood that way for a full minute, waiting for the sound of the running to fade, but it did not stop. He’s still running away, but he doesn’t sound any further off, thought Douglas. Why doesn’t he stop running?
And then he realized it was only the sound of his heart in his body.
Stop! He jerked his hand to his chest. Stop running! I don’t like that sound!
And then he felt himself walking across the lawns among all the other statues now, and whether they, too, were coming to life he did not know. They did not seem to be moving at all. For that matter he himself was only moving from the knees down. The rest of him was cold stone, and very heavy.
Going up the front porch of his house, he turned suddenly to look at the lawns behind him. The lawns were empty.
A series of rifle shots. Screen doors banged one after the . other, a sunset volley, along the street.
Statues are best, he thought. They’re the only things you can keep on your lawn. Don’t ever let them move. Once you do, you can’t do a thing with them.
Suddenly his fist shot out like a piston from his side and it shook itself hard at the lawns and the street and the gathering dusk. His face was choked with blood, his eyes were blazing.
“John!” he cried. “You, John! John, you’re my enemy, you hear? You’re no friend of mine! Don’t come back now, ever! Get away, you! Enemy, you hear? That’s what you are! It’s all off between us, you’re dirt, that’s all, dirt! John, you hear me, John!”
As if a wick had been turned a little lower in a great clear lamp beyond the town, the sky darkened still more. He stood on the porch, his mouth gasping and working. His fist still thrust straight out at that house across the street and down the way. He looked at the fist and it dissolved, the world dissolved beyond it.
Going upstairs, in the dark, where he could only feel his face but see nothing of himself, not even his fists, he told himself over and over, I’m mad, I’m angry, I hate him, I’m mad, I’m angry, I hate him!
Ten minutes later, slowly he reached the top of the stairs, in the dark . . .
“Tom,” said Douglas, “just promise me one thing, okay?”
“It’s a promise. What?”
“You may be my brother and maybe I hate you sometimes, but stick around, all right?”
“You mean you’ll let me follow you and the older guys when you go on hikes?”
“Well . . .sure . . .even that. What I mean is, don’t go away, huh? Don’t let any cars run over you or fall off a cliff.” “I should say not! Whatta you think I am, anyway?”
“Cause if worst comes to worst, and both of us are real old—say forty or forty-five some day—we can own a gold mine out West and sit there smoking corn silk and growing beards.”
“Growing beards! Boy!”
“Like I say, you stick around and don’t let nothing happen.”
“You can depend on me,” said Tom.
“It’s not you I worry about,” said Douglas. “It’s the way God runs the world.”
Tom thought about this for a moment.
“He’s all right, Doug,” said Tom. “He tries.”
She came out of the the bathroom putting iodine on her finger where she had almost lopped it off cutting herself a chunk of cocoanut cake. Just then the mailman came up the porch steps, opened the door, and walked in. The door slammed. Elmira Brown jumped a foot.
“Sam!” she cried. She waved her iodined finger on the air to cool it. “I’m still not used to my husband being a postman. Every time you just walk in, it scares the life out of me!”
Sam Brown stood there with the mail pouch half empty, scratching his head. He looked back out the door as if a fog had suddenly rolled in on a calm sweet summer morn.
“Sam, you’re home early,” she said.
“Can’t stay,” he said in a puzzled voice.
“Spit it out, what’s wrong?” She came over and looked into his face.
“Maybe nothing, maybe lots. I just delivered some mail to Clara Goodwater up the street . . .”
“Clara Goodwater!”
“Now don’t get your dander up. Books it was, from the Johnson-Smith Company, Racine, Wisconsin. Title of one book . . .let’s see now.” He screwed up his face, then unscrewed it. “Albertus Magnus-that’s it. Being the approved, verified, sympathetic and natural EGYPTIAN SECRETS or . . .” He peered at the ceiling to summon the lettering. �
��White and Black Art for Man and Beast, Revealing the Forbidden Knowledge and Mysteries of Ancient Philosophers!”
“Clara Goodwater’s you say?”
“Walking along, I had a good chance to peek at the front pages, no harm in that. ‘Hidden Secrets of Life Unveiled by that celebrated Student, Philosopher, Chemist, Naturalist, Psychomist, Astrologer, Alchemist, Metallurgist, Sorcerer, Explanator of the Mysteries of Wizards and Witchcraft, together with recondite views of numerous Arts and Sciences—Obscure, Plain, Practical, etc. ’ There! By God, I got a head like a box Brownie. Got the words, even if I haven’t got the sense.”
Elmira stood looking at her iodined finger as if it were pointed at her by a stranger.
“Clara Goodwater,” she murmured.
“Looked me right in the eye as I handed it over, said, ‘Going to be a witch, first-class no doubt. Get my diploma in no time. Set up business. Hex crowds and individuals, old and young, big and small. ’ Then she kinda laughed, put her nose in that book, and went in.”
Elmira stared at a bruise on her arm, carefully tongued a loose tooth in her jaw.
A door slammed. Tom Spaulding, kneeling on Elmira Brown’s front lawn, looked up. He had been wandering about the neighborhood, seeing how the ants were doing here or there, and had found a particularly good hill with a big hole in which all kinds of fiery bright pismires were tumbling about scissoring the air and wildly carrying little packets of dead grasshopper and infinitesimal bird down into the earth. Now here was something else: Mrs. Brown, swaying on the edge of her porch as if she’d just found out the world was falling through space at sixty trillion miles a second. Behind her was Mr. Brown, who didn’t know the miles per second and probably wouldn’t care if he did know.
“You, Tom!” said Mrs. Brown. “I need moral support and the equivalent of the blood of the Lamb with me. Come along!”
And off she rushed, squashing ants and kicking tops off dandelions and trotting big spiky holes in flower beds as she cut across yards.
Tom knelt a moment longer studying Mrs. Brown’s shoulder blades and spine as she toppled down the street. He read the bones and they were eloquent of melodrama and adventure, a thing he did not ordinarily connect with ladies, even though Mrs. Brown had the remnants of a pirate’s mustache. A moment later he was in tandem with her.
“Mrs. Brown, you sure look mad!”
“You don’t know what mad is, boy!”
“Watch out!” cried Tom.
Mrs. Elmira Brown fell right over an iron dog lying asleep there on the green grass.
“Mrs. Brown!”
“You see?” Mrs. Brown sat there. “Clara Goodwater did this to me! Magic!”
“Magic?”
“Never mind, boy. Here’s the steps. You go first and kick any invisible strings out of the way. Ring that doorbell, but pull your finger off quick, the juice’ll burn you to a cinder!”
Tom did not touch the bell.
“Clara Goodwater!” Mrs. Brown flicked the bell button with her iodined finger.
Far away in the cool dim empty rooms of the big old house, a silver bell tinkled and faded.
Tom listened. Still farther away there was a stir of mouselike running. A shadow, perhaps a blowing curtain, moved in a distant parlor.
“Hello,” said a quiet voice.
And quite suddenly Mrs. Goodwater was there, fresh as a stick of peppermint, behind the screen.
“Why, hello there, Tom, Elmira. What—”
“Don’t rush me! We came over about your practicing to be a full-fledged witch!”
Mrs. Goodwater smiled. “Your husband’s not only a mailman, but a guardian of the law. Got a nose out to here!”
“He didn’t look at no mail.”
“He’s ten minutes between houses laughing at post cards. and tryin’ on mail-order shoes.”
“It ain’t what he seen; it’s what you yourself told him about the books you got.”
“Just a joke. Goin’ to be a witch! I said, and bang! Off gallops Sam, like I’d flung Lightning at him. I declare there can’t be one wrinkle in that man’s brain.”
“You talked about your magic other places yesterday—”
“You must mean the Sandwich Club . . .”
“To which I pointedly was not invited.”
“Why, lady, we thought that was your regular day with your grandma.”
“I can always have another Grandma day, if people’d only ask me places.”
“All there was to it at the Sandwich Club was me sitting there with a ham and pickle sandwich, and I said right out loud, “At last I’m going to get my witch’s diploma. Been studying for years!”
“That’s what come back to me over the phone!”
“Ain’t modern inventions wonderful!” said Mrs. Goodwater.
“Considering you been president of the Honeysuckle Ladies Lodge since the Civil War, it seems, I’ll put it to you bang on the nose, have you used witchcraft all these years to spell the ladies and win the ayes-have-it?”
“Do you doubt it for a moment, lady?” said Mrs. Goodwater.
“Election’s tomorrow again, and all I want to know is, you runnin’ for another term—and ain’t you ashamed?”
“Yes to the first question and no to the second. Lady, look here, I bought those books for my boy cousin, Raoul. He’s just ten and goes around looking in hats for rabbits. I told him there’s about as much chance finding rabbits in hats as brains in heads of certain people I could name, but look he does and so I got these gifts for him.
“Wouldn’t believe you on a stack of Bibles.”
“God’s truth, anyway. I love to fun about the witch thing. The ladies all yodeled when I explained about my dark powers. Wish you’d been there.”
“I’ll be there tomorrow to fight you with a cross of gold and all the powers of good I can organize behind me,” said Elmira. “Right now, tell me how much other magic junk you got in your house.”
Mrs. Goodwater pointed to a side table inside the door.
“I been buyin’ all kinds of magic herbs. Smell funny and make Raoul happy. That little sack of stuff, that’s called This is rue, and this is Sabisse root and that there’s Ebon herbs; here’s black sulphur, and this they claim is bone dust.”
“Bone dust” Elmira skipped back and kicked Tom’s ankle. Tom yelped.
“And here’s wormwood and fern leaves so you can freeze shotguns and fly like a bat in your dreams, it says in Chapter X of the little book here. I think it’s fine for growing boys’ heads to think about things like this. Now, from the look on your face you don’t believe Raoul exists. Well, I’ll give you his Springfield address.”
“Yes,” said Elmira, “and the day I write him you’ll take the Springfield bus and go to General Delivery and get my letter and write back to me in a boy’s hand. I know you!”
“Mrs. Brown, speak up—you want to be president of the Honeysuckle Ladies Lodge, right? You run every year now for ten years. You nominate yourself. And always wind up gettin’ one vote. Yours. Elmira, if the ladies wanted you they’d landslide you in. But from where I stand looking up the mountain, ain’t so much as one pebble come rattlin’ down save yours. Tell you what, I’ll nominate and vote for you myself come noon tomorrow, how’s that?”
“Damned for sure, then,” said Elmira. “Last year I got a deathly cold right at election time; couldn’t get out and campaign back-fence-to-back-fence. Year before that, broke my leg. Mighty strange.” She squinted darkly at the lady behind the screen. “That’s not all. Last month I cut my finger six times, bruised my knee ten times, fell off my back porch twice, you hear-twice! I broke a window, dropped four dishes, one vase worth a dollar forty-nine at Bixby’s, and I’m billin’ you for every dropped dish from now on in my house and environs!”
“I’ll be poor by Christmas,” said Mrs. Goodwater. She opened the screen door and came out suddenly and let the door slam. “Elmira Brown, how old are you?”
“You probably got it written in one of
your black books. Thirty-five!”
“Well, when I think of thirty-five years of your life . . .” Mrs. Goodwater pursed her lips and blinked her eyes, counting. “That’s about twelve thousand seven hundred and seventy-five days, or counting three of them per day, twelve thousand-odd commotions, twelve thousand much-ados and twelve thousand calamaties. It’s a full rich life you lead, Elmira Brown. Shake hands!”
“Get away!” Elmira fended her off.
“Why, lady, you’re only the second most clumsy woman in Green Town, Illinois. You can’t sit down without playing the chair like an accordion. You can’t stand up but what you kick the cat. You can’t trot across an open meadow without falling into a well. Your life has been one long decline, Elmira Alice Brown, so why not admit it?”
“It wasn’t clumsiness that caused my calamities, but you being within a mile of me at those times when I dropped a pot of beans or juiced my finger in the electric socket at home.”
“Lady, in a town this size, everybody’s within a mile of someone at one time or other in the day.”
“You admit being around then?”
“I admit being born here, yes, but I’d give anything right now to have been born in Kenosha or Zion. Elmira, go to your dentist and see what he can do about that serpent’s tongue in there.”
“Oh!” said Elmira. “Oh, oh, oh!”
“You’ve pushed me too far. I wasn’t interested in witchcraft, but I think I’ll just look into this business. Listen here! You’re invisible right now. While you stood there I put a spell on you. You’re clean out of sight.”
“You didn’t!”
“Course,” admitted the witch, “I never could see you, lady.” Elmira pulled out her pocket mirror. “There I am!” She peered closer and gasped. She reached up like someone tuning a harp and plucked a single thread. She held it up, Exhibit A. “I never had a gray hair in my life till this second!”
The witch smiled charmingly. “Put it in a jar of still water, be an angleworm come morning. Oh, Elmira, look at yourself at last, won’t you? All these years, blaming others for your own mallet feet and floaty ways! You ever read Shakespeare? There’s little stage directions in there: ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS. That’s you, Elmira. Alarums and Excursions! Now get home before I feel the bumps on your head and predict gas at night for you! Shoo!
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