A Long Way From Chicago (10 page)

WHEN YOU COME TO THE END,
YOU’LL FIND A FRIEND

Mrs. Weidenbach averted her eyes as we passed Pickled Products. I took charge of unpacking the pie and getting it registered at Fruit Pies and Cobblers. Grandma started at the other end of the table, casting an eye over the competition. Everything looked good to me, and I was wishing I was a judge so I could have a taste. A little card with a number and a name stood beside each entry.

When she got to her own pie, Grandma froze. Next to it was another lattice-topped gooseberry pie. There was no doubt about it. Only gooseberries are that shade of gray-green. And it was a very nice-looking pie. The edges of its pastry were as neatly crimped as Grandma’s. Maybe better. She bent to read the card, and whipped around.

I followed her look as it fell on one of the smallest people in the tent. It was a man, one of the few there. A little tiny man. He wore small bib overalls, a dress shirt, and a bow tie. Four or five strands of hair were arranged across his little bald head.

“Rupert Pennypacker,” Grandma breathed. You seldom
saw her caught off guard. Was he responsible for the other gooseberry pie?

“Who?” I said.

“The best home-baker in the state of Illinois,” Grandma said. “Him and me come up together out in the country, so I know.”

Mrs. Weidenbach quaked. Even Mary Alice looked concerned.

“I’m a goner,” said Grandma.

A puttering sound deafened us. It was Barnie Buchanan, the air ace, right over our heads. He was doing his aerial stunts: barrel rolls and vertical figure eights, or whatever he did. Everybody looked up, though we could only see tent.

It was just a moment, but somehow I was sure. In that split second when we’d all looked up, I thought Grandma had switched her pie’s card with Rupert Pennypacker’s. It was a desperate act, but as Mrs. Weidenbach had said, these were desperate times. It was the wrong thing for Grandma to do, but I might get a plane ride out of it. My head swam.

Grandma nudged me away from the table and elbowed through a parting crowd. She was making for Mr. Pennypacker. I wondered if she’d reach down, grab him by his bib, and fling him out of the tent. With Grandma, you never knew. “Rupert,” she said.

Standing beside him was the scariest-looking old lady I’d ever seen, weirder than Aunt Puss Chapman. She was only a little taller than Mr. Pennypacker and dressed all in black, including the veil on her hat. She had warts, and
her chin met her hat brim. There was a lump in her cheek that looked like it might be a bunch of chaw.

“You remember Mama,” Mr. Pennypacker said to Grandma.

His voice was high, like it had never changed. My voice hadn’t changed either, but I was twelve, so I still had hope.

His old mama hissed something in his ear and tried to pull him away with a claw on his arm.

“Well, may the best man win,” Grandma said, turning on her heel. By now the judges were at work. They carried little silver knives and miniature trowels for sampling the cobblers and pies. Tension mounted.

Nervously, Mrs. Weidenbach said to Grandma, “What a nice, moist consistency your pie filling has, Mrs. Dowdel. I’m sure it will be noted. How much water did you add to the mixture?”

“About a mouthful,” Grandma replied.

The judging went on forever, but nobody left the sweltering tent. We all watched the judges chewing. Finally, Mary Alice said she thought she might faint, so I took her outside.

Up among the clouds Barnie Buchanan was still putting his old biplane through its paces. He dived to earth, then pulled up in time. He gave us three loops and a snap roll. And my heart was up there with him, scouting for Germans.

A voice rose from inside the tent, followed by gusts of applause. They were announcing the winners: honorable mention, third prize, second—first. I didn’t want to go
back in there. I hoped we’d win, but I wasn’t sure we should. Not if Grandma had switched—

The tent quivered with one final burst of applause. People began streaming out, flowing around us. Then out strolled Mr. Pennypacker and his mama, clutching him. You couldn’t read anything in that face of hers, but Mr. Pennypacker was beaming. From the clasp on his overall bib hung a blue ribbon.

“Shoot,” Mary Alice said. “After all that pie crust I rolled out.” In a way I was relieved. But then I saw my one and only chance for a plane ride crash and burn. Mr. Pennypacker was already heading for the field where the biplane was coming in for a landing.

At last Mrs. Weidenbach and Grandma came out. A nod from Grandma sent me back to the Hupmobile for our hamper of lunch. We ate it at a table in the Temperance tent, sliced chicken washed down with ice water. Grandma had her great stone face on, but Mrs. Weidenbach tried to make the best of things.

“Never mind, Mrs. Dowdel. As I have said, a red ribbon for second place is not to be sneezed at or scorned. You did right well.”

But Grandma hadn’t come to the fair for second prize. She didn’t wear it, if she’d bothered to collect it at all. “And you were up against stiff competition,” Mrs. Weidenbach said. “I daresay Rupert Pennypacker has had nothing to do all his life but wait on his dreadful mother and bake.”

Consoling Grandma was a thankless task. She ate her chicken sandwich with her usual appetite, observing the
crowds. If I could read her mind at all, she was thinking she could do with a cold beer.

The day seemed to have peaked and was going downhill now. As we left the Temperance tent, the quartet was singing, in close harmony:

We were ready to head for the parking pasture, but Grandma turned us the other way, toward the midway and the biplane.

“Wha—” said Mrs. Weidenbach, but fell silent.

We were walking through the fair, and something inside my rib cage began to stir. There ahead, the biplane was on the ground. Afternoon sun played off the dull mahogany of its propeller. Something within me dared to dream. I wasn’t swooping. I didn’t even taxi, but I was walking lighter.

Giving blue ribbon winners free rides hadn’t stimulated much business. Barnie Buchanan was lounging beside his plane. He was smoking another cigarette in a cupped hand, pilot-style.

Grandma strode past the ticket table, out onto the field. She paused to look the plane over from prop to tail. Then she glanced briefly down at me. I didn’t dare look up at her. But my hopes were rising. Then she marched forward. When Barnie Buchanan saw Grandma bearing down on him, he tossed away his cigarette.

“I’m a blue ribbon winner,” Grandma announced, “here for my ride.”

“Wha—” Mrs. Weidenbach said.

My brain went dead.

“Well, ma’am,” Barnie Buchanan said uncertainly, noticing her size. “And what class did you compete in?”

“Fruit Pies and Cobblers.” She held up a crumpled blue ribbon clutched in her fist. She gave him a glimpse of it, then dropped the ribbon into her pocketbook.

“Well, ma’am, it seems to me I’ve already given a ride to a man who won first in pies,” he said. “A little fellow.”

“Oh that’s Rupert Pennypacker,” Grandma said. “You got that turned around in your mind. He won in Sausage and Headcheese. Don’t I look more like a pie baker than him?”

Grandma reached up to pull the pin out of her hat. She handed the hat to Mary Alice. “Here, hold this. It might blow off.” I saw the hatband was missing from her hat, the blue ribbon.

It took three big members of the American Legion and Barnie Buchanan to get Grandma into the front cockpit of the plane. Eventually, the sight drew a crowd. The Legionnaires would invite Grandma to step into their clasped hands, then boost her up. That didn’t work.

Then they’d hoist her up some other way, but she’d get halfway there, and her hindquarters would be higher than her head. They had an awful job getting her into the plane, and they were wringing wet. But at last she slid into the seat, to a round of applause from the crowd. Grandma was a tight fit, and the plane seemed to bend beneath her. Barnie Buchanan stroked his chin. But then he pulled his goggles over his eyes and sprang up to the rear seat. He could pilot the plane from there, if he could
see around Grandma. A Legionnaire jerked the propeller and the motor coughed twice, then roared.

Mrs. Weidenbach was between Mary Alice and me now, clutching our hands.

A lot of Grandma stuck up above the plane. The breeze stirred her white hair, loosening the bun on the back. Her spectacle lenses flashed like goggles. She raised one hand in farewell, and the plane began to bump down the field.

Now my heart was in my mouth. Everyone’s was. The biplane, heavy-burdened, lumbered over uneven ground, trying to gather speed. It drew nearer and nearer the hedgerow at the far end of the field.

“Lift!” the crowd cried. “Lift!” Mary Alice’s hands were over her eyes.

But then distant dust spurted from the plane’s front wheels. The tail rose, but dropped down again. It had stopped just short of the hedgerow, and now it was turning back. We watched the bright disc of the whirling propeller as the biplane returned to us.

Barnie Buchanan dropped down from the cockpit. He looked pale, shaken. Boy, did he need a cigarette. But they had to get Grandma down from the plane, and getting her out was twice the job of getting her in. She’d plant one big shoe on a shoulder and the other on another. They had her by the ankles, then by the hips. She tipped forward and back, and the pocketbook swinging from her arm pummeled their heads. She brought two big men to their knees.

At last she was on solid ground, scanning the crowd for me. She crooked a finger, and I went forth. As always, I couldn’t see a moment ahead.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry,” Barnie Buchanan was saying to Grandma. “But I was just carrying a little more . . . freight than this old crate could handle.”

Grandma waved that away. “Don’t give it a thought. You can take my grandson instead,” she said. “If he wants to go.”

The heavens opened. I thought I heard celestial music. Somehow I was up in the front seat of the plane, buckling myself in with trembling hands. And Barnie Buchanan was handing me up a pair of goggles. Goggles from the Great War.

Now we were taxiing, Barnie and me, bumping over the ground, gathering speed behind the yearning motor. And I felt that moment when we left the ground, and the fair fell away below us, and ahead of us was nothing but the towering white clouds. And beyond them sky, endless sky. I didn’t know there was that much sky, as we flew, Barnie and me, in stuttering circles higher than birds, over the patchwork fields.

That night Mary Alice went up to bed early, tuckered out. Still in her fair finery, Grandma sat in the platform rocker, working out of her shoes. They’d been a torment to her all day. Now she kicked them aside. “If I could pop all the corns on my toes,” she said, “I could feed a famine.”

I’d settled on the settee, watching her in the circle of light, after the big doings of the day.

“Grandma,” I said at last. “I’ve got a couple of things on my mind.”

“Well, spit ’em out,” she said, “if you must.”

“About your plane ride. You never did expect it to get off the ground, did you?”

“Lands no.” She turned down a hand. “When I was dainty enough for a plane to lift, they didn’t have them. We couldn’t have dusted the crops with me on board. I just wanted to see what it felt like sitting up there in that hen roost.”

“Cockpit, Grandma,” I said. “Then you meant for me to have the ride all along?”

Grandma didn’t reply.

“And another thing. I’ve got a confession to make,” I said. “I know you wanted first prize on the pie. You wanted it bad. And I thought you’d switched the card on Mr. Pennypacker’s pie with yours so you could win with his pie.”

She shot me her sternest look. But then easing back in the platform rocker, she said, “I did.”

1933

D
own at Grandma’s the only thing that reminded us of home and Chicago was Nehi. This was orange pop at a nickel a bottle. With the twenty-five cents apiece that Dad gave Mary Alice and me, we could each buy five Nehis during our week, if we could slip off from Grandma long enough to get our allowances spent.