by Green, Jeri
“Confound it, this clown makes a clatterment. I never heared sucha ruckus and commotion.”
“Heck fire,” Cleve said, “I’m a-fixin’ to tek both fistes and cram ’em in yer mouth. Shet yer yappin’ ’n’ have fun.”
The trio took the path to the adult rides. Virgie would have been perfectly fine with going to the petting zoo, but she knew better than to even bring up that suggestion.
“Baby girl,” Cleve said, “what do you want to ride first? It’s your day. You choose.”
“I don’t know, Daddy. How ’bout the big wheel?”
“Alrighty. We’ll be sure to ride the Ferris wheel.”
Cleve was like a young boy on his first date.
“But, how ’bout let’s ride ’at rollercoaster first?” Cleve whispered into Claire’s ear.
“I dunno, Daddy,” Claire said. “’At’s a teeth-rattlin’ ride.”
“Come on. Don’t be a feardy cat,” Cleve said.
Reluctantly, Claire followed her father and they took their places at the back of the line.
“Line ain’t so long fer the swangs,” Claire said, hoping her father would take the hint.
“Ain’t gonna ride no sissy swangs. We gonna tackle dis monster. Furst thang ’em boys gonna askt me when I tells ’em we went here wuz did you ride that Blue Cyclone? I ain’t gonna lie to ’em when I says ‘yup.’”
Claire obediently followed her father. Only the rear car on the ride was available.
“Look at yer maw, baby girl, standing down’air lookin’ at us. She is fit to be tied,” Cleve said. “Wave to her ’fore she has a heart attack.”
Claire waved weakly at Virgie whose pale face stared up at her daughter. Something in Virgie’s face really did look like she was about to have a heart attack.
Virgie was at her wit’s end. A cow had mooed last night after dark, and the dog had howled before the moon had risen. She’d seen a black snake along the side of the road as she’d driven here. She’d watched Cleve the night before talking to his buddies. The fool had lit three cigarettes off his one match. Claire was doomed to die. Virgie knew it in her bones.
Yet, if she’d tried to stop Cleve from coming today, no telling what he would have done to her and to Claire. Virgie did the only thing she could do as she watched her beloved daughter follow her father up the wooden walkway to the roller coaster car. Virgie prayed.
The car that the ride man had placed her beloved child in was at the end. Land a Goshen. Virgie stood horrified. The man was putting Cleve and Claire in the 13th car on that line. The giant wooden structure swayed before Virgie’s eyes. She took two steps to the side and sank on a bench before her knees gave way.
She would have screamed to the top of her lungs for Claire to get off the car, but the ride was already rolling down the tracks. Virgie watched. The small cars traced up the track, rising to the first steep hill, topping it, they flew down with lightning speed. Sharp turn left, then right, then slowing down for the long climb up the second hill, around they came. She caught a glimpse of her daughter’s pale face just as the car disappeared into the fake coal mine’s black entry. There was a crashing sound. Screams.
Several riders were hurt from a malfunction on the roller coaster. A mechanical failure had caused some of the cars to leave the track and careen into the ground. The coaster cars were a mass of twisted metal, soaked in blood. Cleve and Claire were among the lucky ones. They survived, but Claire was badly hurt.
“If only we’d stayed home and baked that cake,” Virgie kept mumbling. That same thought would haunt her for years, running circles in her head like a merry-go-round that never stopped.
Chapter Ten
Hadley was making a pot of fresh-brewed, delicious Brazilian coffee when she heard the familiar “thunk” of Randy the Rocket’s morning paper delivery. As she went to the front porch to retrieve the paper, she peered down the street just in time to see the tail end of a bicycle disappearing around the corner of the cul-de-sac. How anyone could throw papers onto porches and pedal away so quickly was one of life’s unsolved mysteries. Maybe the Rocket would grow up to be a major league pitcher or a professional cyclist.
She had been waiting for the paper all morning. She bypassed the headlines and went straight to the obituaries. If Beanie was off gravedigging duty, she thought maybe they could begin cleaning out Eustian Singlepenny’s house.
Bill had given her the okay to start cleaning out Eustian’s house now that the legal wrangling over his murder had been cleared up. Since all the obituary notices involved people on the other side of the county, she thought, it doesn’t look like Beanie will be busy today.
“Go for it,” she muttered to Onus, who ignored her, preferring to poke his head inside a tiny, empty box he’d found.
She went to the refrigerator and retrieved the baloney. Removing the bread from the breadbox, she pulled eight slices from the bag. If they were going to be working as hard as she suspected today, she reasoned they would need extra sustenance. Putting the sandwiches together, she sliced them into halves. She wrapped the sandwiches in wax paper and put them into a plastic bag. Rummaging around in the pantry, she found some chips and a bag of cookies that did not have chocolate covering them. There was nothing more frustrating than trying to separate cookies that had melted together to form a giant chocolate mess. She sliced off several thick slices of chocolate pound cake and threw in a couple of apples into the bag for good measure.
Hadley had bought Harry a small cooler to take fishing years ago. Remembering where she stored it, she retrieved it from the garage, washed it out, dug some ice cubes out of the icemaker and filled it full. Throwing in some sodas and bottled water and the bag, Hadley was pleased with the menu.
Onus was still obsessing about how to cram his fat head into the tiny space inside the box.
“Hey Onus, mind your manners. Don’t tear up the house today.”
She went to the cabinet and got a can of cat food out. She opened it and placed it in his dish. “Guess you could use a snack, too,” she said. “Give it up, old bird. Your round head just ain’t gonna fit into that square hole.”
Onus ignored her advice. Why should he care what she thought. Ignorant human.
“Guess it’s time to round up Beanie,” Hadley said, gathering her supplies and packing the car.
Hadley was wearing her oldest jeans. A ratty old tee and a faded long-sleeve shirt completed the ensemble. She had donned Harry’s old baseball hat and her old hiking boots. Sticking out of her rear pocket was an old pair of leather gardening gloves. The only thing left to do was make sure Eustian Singlepenny’s house key was in her purse. It was.
Time to go. As she backed out into the street, she waved at her neighbor, Ivy Benedict. Ivy was harvesting huckleberries for her homemade wine. What Ivy could do in her kitchen with some cheesecloth, an empty gallon jug, some sugar, yeast, huckleberries, and a balloon to go atop the jug was amazing. Hadley had tasted some of Ivy’s products from her little in-home winery.
Hadley wondered if Beanie was still at home or if he was making his usual rounds around town.
Hadley knew Beanie from grade school. They’d grown up together. An injury in a pulp mill as a younger man had disfigured one of his hands and part of his forearm, but Beanie, whose real name was Vesper Wendell Fugate, had moved back home to the mountains and got a job at one of the local cemeteries. The accident at the pulp mill had turned Beanie into a simple soul. Reflections for Beanie were seen through a prism as opposed to a looking glass. Many folks laughed at him. He was the butt of jokes.
When Hadley looked at Beanie, she saw a kind heart and a good man. Beanie was her friend. Slightly damaged, but who didn’t get a few dings and dents on his chassis if he lived long enough? The accident had left Beanie with periods of foggy thought, which a lot of people made fun of, but not Hadley Pell.
She tried to help Beanie out whenever she could. Her brother-in-law, Bill Whittaker, the local sheriff, had gotten Hadley the job of cleaning
out Eustian Singlepenny’s house. Eustian was a world-class hoarder, but Beanie was one of the hardest workers Hadley knew.
She drove down Main Street, hoping to catch a glimpse of her friend. Beanie liked to mingle among the town’s people and keep abreast the local happenings in his own simple way. He didn’t give a dried apple about local politics, ignoring the latest gossip about what the mayor was up to or who was going to run for the school board. The countless court battles down at the courthouse did not interest him.
Beanie focused on more important issues – like what the Blue Plate Special was at the Greasy Spoon. He rarely ate at the Spoon, preferring to feast on a cold can of chili or a peanut butter sandwich for supper. But as he ate the chili or sandwich, he liked to imagine he was eating from the handwritten menu on the chalkboard outside the diner: meatloaf and mashed potatoes, chicken fried steak and gravy, or turkey casserole with cornbread topping. It passed the time.
Today, the talk was about Pearl Andrew’s 97 birthday party and a hundred other things.
“Don’t you know them grandkids from Ohio turned up for the weekend?” somebody said.
“Cecil Phillips got home from squirrel huntin’ Sad-day. Cleanin’ his shotgun like always. Dern thang went off. Sent a spray a buckshot through his livin’ room ceiling. Leola was settin’ on the throne in the upstairs john. Heard she got a mess a pellets in her bottom.”
“Heh. Heh,” someone said. “Bet it’s a three-dawg night at Cecil’s.”
“You said it. Leola’s backside was burnt, but I heared the toilet took most of the shot.”
“Do say?”
“Guess Leola’s fin’ly got that new bathroom she’s been pining for.”
“Yep. And Cecil’s got the outhouse! Heh. Heh. It goes with the dawg house, ya know. Kinda like a set!”
From their conversations, Beanie learned that Reece Melborn’s beagle pups would soon be ready for adoption, three girls and four boys. Lucky seven, and more beautiful beagles had never been born on the mountain according to Reece.
Beanie gleaned information like a magnetic field. The reason was simple. In Hope Rock County, Beanie was invisible. Not in the real physical sense of the word but in the practical sense.
It was the same whether he was positioned at the edge of the woods waiting for a funeral to be over so he could finish covering the grave or if he was sitting on a bench outside of Brinkley’s Garage, most people just did not see him. He was as much a part of the scenery in Hope Rock County as the big, brick courthouse. People would talk and reveal secrets, never realizing Beanie was right there listening in and keeping current with the town’s news.
Hadley drove down Main Street looking right and left in search of her friend. Beanie was leaning against a column at the courthouse. His eyes were closed, his face turned up to the sun. She angled her car into one of the parking spaces in front of the building and rolled down her window.
He opened his eyes when he heard the approaching car.
“What are you smiling for?” Hadley asked.
“I see all that cooler in the back seat,” Beanie said. “Bet it’s plum full of goodies.”
“Yes, it is. I cooked a truckload of dishes for us. Just like I promised. Where’s your shovel?” Hadley asked,
“We ain’t gonna dig graves, today, are we?” asked Beanie. “Harvey said we had no business, today.”
“You’re right, Bean. No grave digging today. I don’t know what I was thinking. It sure is a glorious morning, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Hadley, what you been doin’?”
“Well, I thought if you were free today, we could start cleaning out Eustian’s house. What do you think? If we get an early start, maybe we can make some good progress before it gets really warm. We could get ahead of the game. Figure we need to get crawlin’ before the snakes.”
“Snakes!” Beanie said.
“Figure of speech, Bean,” Hadley said. “Figure of speech.”
“Oh. You got a lotta them speechin’ figures, Hadley. You’re stuffed to the gills with ’em, ain’t ya. One ‘a these days, them speechin’ figures ‘er gonna spill out all over the street. I’ll be sweepin’ ’em up for a month of Sundays. You think they’ll fit in a regular garbage can? Harvey’s got some extra big bins down at the cemetery. He won’t mind if I need to stuff them figures in a few of them.”
“Don’t worry about it, Bean,” Hadley said. “You ready to get to work?”
“You bet,” Beanie said. “I got nuthin’ to do, today. Got the weeds ’n’ grass mowed just like Harvey wanted. Nobody to plant. I’m with you, Hadley,” Beanie said.
“Have you got any leather gloves?” Hadley asked.
“I got some at the tool shack at the cemetery.” Beanie replied.
“Why don’t we just pick up a pair while we are in town instead of going all the way out to the shack?”
“I don’t have but two one-dollar bills and a dime and a nickel in my pocket, Hadley”
“Don’t worry about that, Beanie, I’ll take care of it. We will just take it off our taxes as a business expense”
“Hadley is cleaning out a dead man’s house a business?”
“Of course, Bean,” Hadley said.
“Really?” Beanie asked. “I don’t know. But I guess it is if you say so, Hadley.”
“I say so.”
After a quick stop at the hardware store for gloves, Hadley and Beanie drove out to the Singlepenny house. Hadley was pleased to see that two industrial dumpsters had been delivered.
“What you want to bet we can fill up both of these before we are finished with this job, Bean?” Hadley asked.
“I don’t wanna take that bet.” Beanie said, as he got out of the car. “But like I said, Harvey’s got them extra bins, he’d be glad to let us use.”
“We’ll leave Harvey’s bins where they are, Bean. These two dumpsters are huge. They’ll be big enough for what we need. If we don’t fill them up, we’ll take and use one of them for a swimming pool.”
“A swimmin’ pool?” Beanie asked.
“Sure,” said Hadley. “We’ll fill her up with water and practice our belly flops.”
“Oh, Hadley. My belly floppin’ ain’t the best,” Beanie said.
“Don’t worry, Bean. We ain’t trying out for the Olympics. Just you and me and a big old dumpster swimming pool. You belly floppin’ and me in a bikini. Won’t that be a purty sight?”
“It makes me wanna puke just thinkin’ about it, Hadley.”
“Don’t lose your lunch,” Hadley said. “My old bikini is up in the attic dry rotting as we speak.”
“You gonna go swimmin’ with me in a rotten swimmin’ suit?” Beanie asked.
His face suddenly paled.
“Oh, Bean,” Hadley said. “Take your finger and rub your forehead. Erase that thought of me swimming naked in that dumpster swimmin’ pool with those two little strings that were once my bathing suit floating on top of that rusty water like two tadpoles right out of your brain.”
Beanie did as Hadley instructed. After scrubbing his forehead with his finger, he was all smiles.
“Boy,” Hadley said, “Eustian had some view.”
From their vantage point, Beanie and Hadley looked across Eustian’s meadow. The rusting remnants of MEGA Mountain Funland Park looked eerily haunting in the distance. The skeletal remnants of the old Ferris wheel, the ragged remains of the roller coaster, the ghostly relic of the gigantic menacing clown head were all visible from Eustian’s porch, along with the rotting stalls and ticket shacks.
Beanie stood quietly gazing at the metal and wooden ruins that peeked over the treetops through the encroaching weeds. He sighed.
“Looks spooky and lonesome, don’t it, Hadley? Think it’s haunted?”
The wind whipped through the pine trees causing the branches to knock and moan. The breeze that blew through the Ferris wheel whined, carrying strange, high-pitched sounds to waft across the meadow.
“Oh, Hadley! Listen! The h
aints are tuning up to sing!”
“They are not, Beanie. It’s just the wind trying to get that old wheel to spin again.”
“Well, I don’t want to see that. My knees are jelly, Hadley,” Beanie said. “I don’t need no skids in my underwear, too.”
“Calm down. There is nothing to be afraid of, Beanie.”
“If you say so, Hadley.”
“I say so.”
“Hadley?”
“Yeah, Bean.”
“Are you positive there ain’t no ghosts floatin’ around in that place. Look! The chairs on the big wheel are rockin’ back and forth. There’s someone in them!”
Hadley stood behind Beanie and looked at the rusting skeletons of the old thrill rides.
“It’s only the wind. I promise. Nobody’s on the Ferris wheel. Besides,” Hadley said, “we’ve got nothing to worry about. What ghost in his right mind would leave sucha lovely amusement park to come look at two old goats cleaning out a house full of old junk?”
“Well,” Beanie said, “I guess you got a good point.”
Hadley’s argument had struck home. Beanie was all smiles.
“You’re so smart, Hadley. If I was a ghost riding rides, I’d never leave them in a million years. Especially to come watch us clean out trash.”
“You’re especially right, Bean,” Hadley said. “Like always.”
Chapter Eleven
After gloving up, Hadley had a thought.
“Let’s start in the old tool shed, Beanie,” she said.
They walked over to a tilting structure that looked like it had never seen a paintbrush in its life. Hadley grabbed the crooked door’s handle and pulled. The door protested, squealing open on corroded hinges.
“Bingo, Beanie! Just what I hoped we would find. We will grab that old garden wheelbarrow and use it to carry stuff to the dumpster. And luck’s on our side! The wheel’s not flat!”
