by Thomas Tryon
Niles, Niles, that’s enough, child. No more. Just then Winnie had hollered from the window for Ada to bring the beans; Niles, following the rooster, disappeared behind the barn.
She was at the sink, rinsing off the limas, when she heard the cry: she and Winnie ran out the door to find Holland pointing up at the carriage-house roof, where, on the peak, Chanticleer perched, wings flapping, crowing lustily. Behind him, incredibly, was Niles, precariously balanced, arms flapping, shrill crowing noises issuing from his throat. Terrified, motioning for the others to be silent, Ada approached.
Niles—enough now, Niles. It is not important now—
Er-rrr-a-rrr-aroo-ooo!
He took no notice; his eyes remained battened on the bird; his head turned jerkily; he pecked, he flapped, he strutted, he crowed, would not, could not cease.
Niles, she said in relief, after Mr. Angelini had brought his ladder and led him down from the roof. What on earth were you doing?
I wasn’t on earth, he told her excitedly.
But what possessed you?
Breathless, bewildered, eyes luminous with unaccustomed brightness, he tried to explain. Chanticleer—I was doing the game on Chanticleer. A fine dew of sweat still lay across his forehead. Just—you know—to see what it was like to be a rooster. But then, I couldn’t stop. I really was Chanticleer. I couldn’t help it!
Couldn’t? The word baffled her. Could you not stop?
Yes. I think so, if I stopped thinking about Chanticleer. But I didn’t—he trailed off, pondering the mystery of it.
What, child?
I didn’t want to.
So it had been with the rooster. And still it wasn’t over . . .
With a shiver, Ada rinsed out her camel hair brush in a jelly glass and quietly rose. Leaving the arbor, she approached Niles across the lawn. “Child,” she said softly, motioning her hands at the rooster, who shook his wattles and pranced away. “Niles?”
“Yes.”
“Come along.” She took his hand and he went with her toward the arbor.
“Oh Niles is doing ever so much better with his arithmetic problems,” exclaimed Mrs. Jewett elaborately so as to be overheard by the boy, and Aunt Josie called, “Niles, sweetheart, are we going to have a show this year?”
“Yes,” he said as Ada reseated herself at the easel. He came and parked his rear on the arm of Aunt Josie’s chair and she squeezed him tight. “Yes, we are,” he said, peering out to the street, hoping for sight of Holland. “With a special trick.”
“Oh? Then I must have a new specialty act,” she said, nodding so her curls bobbed. Fat and stiff and of an unlikely mixture of reds, these were bent each night into coils; released in the morning, they snapped to life like bedsprings all over her head. “Now, what?” she wondered, “Camille?” She put on a tragic face and coughed loudly. Aunt Fan cackled, but Niles, after consideration, vetoed it. “Something with music and dancing,” he said.
Josie racked her brains, then snapped her fingers. “I know! I’ll do a Spanish number! With a shawl and a big comb and castanets—Yes?” Brows arched, her mouth a perfect O, she awaited Niles’s verdict.
“Yes!” he decreed.
“Sí sí señor!” She began snapping fingers at the side of her head, then, irresistibly, got up and, flinging her chintz skirt about, clacking her Enna Jettick shoes on the brick, fandangoed up the walk singing in her whisky tenor:
“Lay-dee of Spain, I adore yooooo,
Lay-dee of Spain, I live for yoooo—”
She leaned to a flower bed and, turning again, a blossom appeared clenched in her teeth. Faster and faster she went, her abandon exposing her rolled stockings till, too dizzy to continue, she reeled out onto the lawn. “Olé,” she cried, finishing with a breathless flourish, then called “Buenos días, Mr. Angelini,” to the handyman, who, coming from the direction of the cider press, lugged in one hand an empty gasoline can, bound for the dump heap in the granary yard.
Ada waved. “Mr. Angelini, when you have time, shall you please bring your ladder and poke down that wasp nest?”
The old Italian stopped in his tracks and, though he stared at the arbor group with a long look, gave no sign of having heard the request. Then he disappeared behind the barn carrying his can.
Aunt Josie knocked a weathered croquet ball aside with her foot and, returning to the arbor, dropped into her chair. “I don’t think we’ll have a Spanish number after all.” She kicked off her shoes and sprawled, testing a curl for spring. “Maybe we’ll just do a tableau. I can be Whistler’s Mother and sit in a chair. That’d be a sketch. Ooh-a, that’s a pun, dears.”
While Ada became engrossed again in her work, the other ladies put their heads together and arranged themselves into a tight little symposium for purposes of gossip.
Niles listened to Mrs. Jewett’s indignation over the morning headlines. Bruno Hauptmann, she was talking about. Bruno—it sounded like a name for a dog. Well, Bruno Hauptmann was a dog all right. Stole the Lindbergh baby, he had. Put a ladder up against the house and took the baby out the window. Lots of money had been paid by Lucky Lindy to get the baby back, but when he did the baby was no longer alive. Bruno Hauptmann was going to get the Chair.
“And his lawyers are appealing again—think of the poor taxpayers’ money going down the drain!” Mrs. Jewett’s red mouth was going a mile a minute.
Ding-ding-ding.
The Talcotts Ferry trolley stopped at Church Street, then rolled past the house, wheels clanking, bell ringing. Niles checked his time and made a minor adjustment on his Ingersoll watch. Far off in the distance could be heard the drone of an airplane, banking away from the airfield on its way to New York.
Niles put his watch back on and buckled the strap. Lifting his head, he looked up to the street. Holland was walking along the car tracks. So he’d been off on the trolleys again. He came casually sauntering down the lawn, kicking at the dandelions, squinting at the airplane, which was flying low and casting a giant shadow across Pequot Landing. Soon the roar of the propellers increased in such volume as to drown out entirely the piano music from the Rowe house next door.
In another moment a tiny figure had tripped through the doorway and down the back-porch steps, a little white-haired lady who came out flourishing a red coach blanket around her head. There followed a most entertaining, if singular, performance, attentively witnessed by all eyes in the arbor, and a pair, Niles was quick to notice, outside, where Holland stood hidden by the grape leaves, the Asiatic look on his face.
“Hoo-oo,” the lady called, blinking and peering up at the sky as she darted across the yard. “Hoo-oo.” With her audience half out of their chairs and watching through the grapevines, she continued prancing back and forth in a comical effort to make herself seen by the plane. Trying not to trample the begonias bordering the grass, she scurried in circles around a sundial, clockwise, counter-clockwise, the blanket flapping like the cape of some demented matador.
When the plane had passed directly overhead and disappeared beyond the trees, she stood bewildered for a moment, blanket limp at her side while she caught her breath, then, with a shrug, smoothed back a stray wisp of hair and, the blanket dragging behind, picked her way past her flower beds toward the house, pausing as she went to inspect a planting of portulaca.
“Well, imagine that!” Mrs. Jewett shook her head in wonder and watched the sprightly old lady fold the blanket, tuck it under her arm, and go inside. Presently the piano music resumed.
“It ain’t Paderewski, but then I’ll bet Paderewski couldn’t run the 2:20 the way she does,” Aunt Josie boomed.
Mrs. Jewett made certain arrangements to ease her bosom. “Such an exhibition—really! A woman her age. I thought she had a serious heart condition.”
“An amazing woman,” replied Aunt Josie.
Which was one word for it. Mrs. Rowe, considered by most people to be rather eccentric, had come to Valley Hill Road as a bride back before the turn of the century. Mr. Rowe had flown wit
h Rickenbacker and, after the armistice, was one of the pioneers of commercial aviation. Thirteen years ago he had been sent by President Harding to South America to investigate the possibilities of continental flying routes. His plane crashed in the jungle and he was never seen again. The news of his death had left his widow in shock, and for several years she had seldom appeared, but after the airfield was constructed south of the city and the planes flew directly over Pequot Landing, coaxed out by the sound of their motors, Alice Rowe had suddenly emerged, waving her blanket as though trying to communicate with her dead husband.
“Does that Mrs. Whoosis still look after her?” Mrs. Jewett said, settled again in her chair finally.
Mrs. Cooney, that would be; Torrie said she had seen her down at the Center a few weeks ago and there had been a little—well, not really an argument, but it seemed that rats had been appearing from Mrs. Rowe’s cellar and Mrs. Cooney insisted they came from the Perry barn. “But I told her we haven’t had rats over here for years. Not since Ada got her cat and—” She broke off, embarrassed, and while Ada looked down at her painting Aunt Josie began talking rapidly.
“I don’t think I’ve even had a glimpse of old Mrs. Rowe in—years,” she said. “Look out there, Fan.” The wasp had returned and Fanny quickly lowered her veil, jumping from her chair and retreating again to the corner of the arbor. Niles laughed at the sight: Aunt Fania looked like a camp bed, all netted up against mosquitoes.
“Why, will you just look at that,” said Mrs. Jewett, pointing to the table where the wasp was hovering over the pitcher. In a moment it had settled on the lip, then crawled inside where it dropped into the wine, shortly to be imprisoned by its wet wings on the darkly shining surface.
“He’ll get drunk,” Aunt Josie said as it pushed frantically between pieces of orange and lemon, trying to free itself. Soon it gave up and floated exhausted amidst the fruit.
“Thank goodness.” Fanny breathed a sigh of relief. She undid her netting, still damp from her earlier accident, draped it over some grape leaves to dry, and went to stand behind the others, clustered at Ada’s back and chattering blithely as they enviously watched her add a deeper wash to her roses.
“Oh, Sister,” Fan exclaimed, “marvelous depth you’ve gotten in your petals. I don’t know how you ever got the hang of flower painting, anyway. Art certainly don’t run in our family. Never had a lesson in her life,” she boasted to Mrs. Jewett.
“Well, I think it’s just wonderful. She’s an absolute La Vinci,” said Mrs. Jewett, who knew a little about art. “I can’t draw a straight line myself.” Off to one side Niles had taken a long spoon and was fishing the unfortunate wasp from the pitcher. He poured off the excess liquid and held the insect cradled in the spoon out into the sunshine while its wings dried. “There’s no such thing in the world as a purely straight line,” Josie said. “Then perhaps there’s hope for me after all,” Mrs. Jewett said, carefully following the tip of Ada’s moistened brush with her eye. “What red d’ye call that, I wonder?”
Ada explained that it was the Crimson Lake Niles had brought from the store and Mrs. Jewett said, “I think a red like that shade would suit my coloring,” and went on to explain about a crêpe de chine dress she wanted dyed for the country club dance. “Oh, and did I tell you? When Joe goes away on his next trip”—Mr. Jewett was a drummer for Sherwin-Williams paints; he often traveled to Providence, to Fall River, to Bangor—“I’m going to have the sunporch redone.” Is that so? asked someone, what color? Mrs. Jewett thought parrot green above with a darker color for the dado. There was silence for a spell, then Mrs. Jewett spoke again. “Imagine that poor Alice Rowe being so scared of rats.” Honestly, she went on, such a tempest in a teapot, and why didn’t she set traps? Torrie replied that Mrs. Cooney had said she was going to buy some pellets to put around for the rats to eat, hoping to get rid of them in that way. By this time the wasp’s wings had begun to flutter, and presently it heaved itself up and crawled to the lip of the iced tea spoon.
“Fly away, your house is on fire, your children will burn,” Niles heard Holland whisper gleefully as his hand shot out from the sheltering grape leaves.
“Damn you!” Niles said, turning in the direction of Aunt Fan’s frightened cry. Her maline net hung drying on the grapevine and, almost as if to confirm her in her theory, the wasp drove straight at her neck.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” she cried, a volley of sharp, staccato shrieks, while one person screamed and another slapped the wasp from her flesh, and Niles quickly ran to crush it underfoot. Mrs. Jewett had backed against the table, knocking the pitcher to the flagging, where it broke, the fruit lying amidst the turf and glass, the wine leaving a darkening stain on the stonework. Aunt Fan was in an agony of cries and moans and while Mrs. Jewett vainly tried to help her sit down and Aunt Josie tried to draw her up the walk to the house, Ada rushed ahead to get something for the swelling and to tell Winnie to phone for the doctor; Torrie, having gathered up Ada’s paraphernalia, quickly followed. Niles during the meantime had been trying helpfully to pick up the pieces of broken glass. Reaching for the last fragments, he found himself staring at a pair of feet; he looked up at Holland’s face.
“You bastard,” he said, “you dirty rotten bastard.” Which was all he could think of to call him; only he wasn’t really saying it, only thinking it, seeing the gable-shaped brows lifted slightly as the face peered back at him through the grape leaves, eyebrows lifted in mock innocence (Who? Me?), thinking, Oh Holland when are you going to stop, when are you going to make it stop!
What was that he was saying?
“—and I want you to take it off,” he ordered.
Niles rose with a blank look. “What?”
The costume, he was demanding. Niles must take it off. He wasn’t Professor Rabbitwaters—Holland was. It was his invention. The One and Only Original Professor Rabbitwaters!
“But—why?”
“Because I said to.” Easily; not threatening or anything, just a simple statement. Then, with the old winning smile: “Because Professor Rabbitwaters, bless him, is going to do a trick.”
A trick? What sort of trick was that?
“A gr-r-eat trick! Professor Rabbitwaters is going to do the old Hat Trick. But first I need a hat”—relieving him of Granddaddy Perry’s silk topper—“and then I’m going to do a command performance!”
“Who for?”
“Who for?” The smile was oh so wide and oh so charming. “Why, for a sweet little old lady, that’s who. But second, I need something to pull out of the hat!” And away he went, Holland, out from the arbor and over the lawn, cape flapping, hat on the back of his head, his laughter bright and merry as he skimmed away in the direction of the barn.
4
The young fry of Pequot Landing often occupied themselves with a pastime, an amusing charade in which Old Lady Rowe played a central role, one which some might think churlish, but one that not only piqued their imaginations but intrigued Old Lady Rowe as well. While it was generally known that her mind was sometimes cloudy, she was in no way stupid, and when the more enterprising children would telephone her in an assortment of cleverly disguised (they thought) voices, she would listen patiently while the little mischiefs tried to pull the wool over her eyes.
“Is this Mrs. Rowe?” (Telephone operator’s pinched voice, half-stifled giggles in the background.)
“Yes? Who is this, please?”
“This is the White House calling. One moment, pul-eeze.”
“Harum.” (Deep, presidential-sounding tone; more giggles.) “Ah—Mrs. Rowe?”
“Yes? Yes, this is Mrs. Rowe speaking.” A twinkle in the voice.
“This is—harum—the President.” The mouthpiece quickly covered; impossible to stop the laughter.
Or, another variation: the operator informs Mrs. Rowe that Hollywood is on the line.
“Hollywood? California? Goodness!” With feigned surprise.
In a low voice, heavily accented: “Meeses Rowe? Thees ees Gar
rbo.”
“Greta Garbo?”
“Yas. Dat’s right. Grreta Garr-bo.”
Thus would begin a lengthy conversation, mirthful on one end, eager, if confused, on the other, with either the President or Miss Garbo, sometimes both, invited to tea. And the parade would arrive, often all the way up Church Street from the Center, for instead of tea Mrs. Rowe always served hot dogs and never seemed to mind the fact that, at the last moment, the President’s schedule had been changed or Garbo was delayed filming.
She was a gracious hostess, kind and thoughtful and remarkable in her tolerance of her guests. Nor were the hot dogs the only attraction: a wastebasket made from a hollowed-out elephant’s foot, a Grecian wine jug, a Siamese temple dancer’s headdress, the horn of a narwhal, wild animal skins, combs of mother-of-pearl, jade figures, even a real shrunken head which her small visitors might handle carefully.
Later that same afternoon, when the doctor had come to see Aunt Fania and left again, Mrs. Rowe had gone out to her garage for a bottle of rooting compound to start a stalk of begonia, shattered in her dash about the yard. Yes, there was the bottle, right where she remembered it—her memory wasn’t so bad after all—on the shelf next to the bag of rat pellets; and over there the broken begonia plant. She picked up the injured stem and was returning to the house, passing the hen-and-chickens in the rock garden encircling the sundial, when something caught her eye, a figure just there behind the clump of rhododendrons at the foot of the lawn. Shading her eyes with her hand, she peered uncertainly at the shrubbery, wondering who it might be. The figure moved slightly and now she could make out a bizarre face staring back at her from under an old top hat.
