A Long Way From Chicago (12 page)

I had some trouble settling down that night. It was the first night of the visit, so that was normal. But every time my eyes closed, I saw the phantom brakeman with hamburger meat for a face, swinging a ghostly lantern through tree branches like skeletons.

So I was up and down. As bad luck would have it, my bedroom window looked west to the haunted woods. I’d keep getting up to look in case a lantern was swinging in the trees. But I didn’t see anything.

Then I was no sooner asleep than I was awake again. Some sound woke me. I didn’t move in the bed, hoping not to hear any more. But I heard some snuffling, like crying. It seemed to come from Mary Alice’s room. I thought I heard her voice too, just a few words, though she never talked in her sleep.

Now I was bolt awake, and the goose bumps were back. Wearing only my BVDs, I got up and looked out in the hall. Mary Alice’s door was shut tight, though we never closed our bedroom doors, hoping for a breeze. I crept over, but didn’t try the knob, which was bound to be locked. I rapped lightly. This brought forth a little startled yipping sound from inside.

Quicker than if I’d awakened her, little feet padded across her creaking floor. Her keyhole spoke. “What?”

“Mary Alice, are you alone in there?”

“Who wants to know?”

“Who do you think? Are you?”

“. . . No,” she said. “And don’t whisper so loud.”

“Who’s in there with you?”

“A puppy.”

“A puppy?”
I said. “Where’d you get a puppy?”

“The cobhouse.”

“You don’t go in the cobhouse,” I said.

“He came out. He followed me home. I’m calling him Skipper. That’s what you’re hearing, Joey. Don’t tell Grandma. She doesn’t believe in indoor pets.”

I gave up, though I didn’t quite believe in the pet either, Skipper or whoever. But I was too tired to argue. I went back to bed and slept like a log.

Grandma had already eaten her breakfast. She was at the stove, fixing ours. Sausage patties, which reminded me of the brakeman. And buttermilk biscuits and fried eggs over easy. Mary Alice turned up promptly, looking perky and innocent. I remembered Skipper.

When Grandma’s back was turned, Mary Alice broke open a biscuit and stuck a sausage patty inside it. Then she pushed it down her shirt. She knew I was watching, but she didn’t meet my eye. The eggs were runny, so that was a problem for her. She thought about making an egg sandwich to go with the other biscuit, but gave it up. When Grandma turned back to the table, Mary Alice had licked her platter clean. She skidded out of her chair and was gone, back upstairs. Grandma gave her departing figure a long look.

She’d mentioned that the night air would cool her brew to soap, so we went outside to see. The embers were white, and sure enough, the pot was solid with soap. Something like soap.

It reminded me of the cheese she fed the catfish, and it didn’t smell much better. My job was to pry it out of the pot. Grandma hunkered in the grass with a butcher knife to carve it into cakes.

“This here’s good soap,” she remarked as she went at it with the knife. “It lathers good, and it’ll take the top layer of skin right off you.”

The sun hadn’t been up long, and the morning glories
were just beginning to unfurl. Then far down the road a cloud of dust appeared, heading for town. Nearer, it was Miz Eubanks, the strings on her sunbonnet flying. She was standing up in her buckboard with a whip in her hand. Her old straw-hatted mule was galloping. I’d never seen a mule break into a trot, let alone a full gallop.

The buckboard sped past the house, never slowing for town. Grandma stood up to watch it pass, fingering her chins thoughtfully.

She gave me the chore of scraping out the soap pot, which looked like a long day’s work. I had to roll the pot in the grass and climb halfway in with a wire brush to loosen the clinging soap. It was a mean job, and some very strange-smelling stuff had gone into that soap. Grandma’d said that the full recipe for it would die with her.

In an hour’s time I hadn’t made a dent in it. By then Mary Alice had come out on the back porch, wearing her tap shoes. She began to run through one of her routines, calling out the steps:

I was scraping away on the pot, and she was tapping away on the porch, and if you asked me, she was acting entirely too innocent.

We heard a clopping of hooves and a jangle of harness, and here came Miz Eubanks in her buckboard, back from uptown. She swerved into Grandma’s side yard and drew up. The old mule was foaming at the mouth and looked near death. Its straw hat was hanging from an ear.

Miz Eubanks dropped down and lit running. She pounded up on the back porch, shoving Mary Alice aside. But even Miz Eubanks didn’t quite dare to storm into Grandma’s house. She gave the screen door a savage rattle though.

Grandma appeared, big behind screen wire. “Well, Idella,” she said, “what have you got a burr under your tail about now?”

Miz Eubanks was wheezing. She turned up the sleeves on her feedsack dress. “I need my girl back. You’ve got her in there.”

“What have I got that’s yours?” Grandma queried.

“Vandalia. You’ve got her. She didn’t come home last night, and she ain’t at work today. She was seen comin’ in this house. That girl done brought her.” Miz Eubanks poked a finger in Mary Alice’s face, which was frozen with fear.

I was observing the scene over the rim of the soap pot, and I was all eyes.

“Who seen her come in here?” Grandma said. “I didn’t.”

“Everybody in town,” Miz Eubanks barked.

Grandma nodded. She knew everybody knew everything, often before it happened.

“Well, let me tell you how it’ll be, Idella,” Grandma said in a reasonable voice. “If you want to search my house, you’ll have to get past me. And I’ll tell you something else for free. If you set a foot over that doorsill, I’ll wring your red neck.”

Miz Eubanks made one of her fists and seemed about to put it through the screen door. She was dancing with
rage. With a strangled cry, she dashed off the porch, heading for the buckboard. Her old mule saw her coming and shied.

She rattled off the property, and Mary Alice stood there on the porch, wilting.

Things quieted down after that. Grandma disappeared from the screen door. I went back to scraping the pot, and pretty soon Mary Alice went back to practicing her tap. But real slow. Her timing was all off.

By noon I knocked off work for a stop at the privy before dinner. I was almost in it with only one thing on my mind when something moved in the cobhouse door. Somebody was there, and he stepped out into my path. I nearly jumped over the privy.

It was a guy in a tight suit, a high collar, and a silk necktie. I’d seen him uptown, but couldn’t put a name to him. He looked me over and decided I was old enough that he’d have to deal with me.

“Junior Stubbs,” he said, putting out a hand to shake.

“Ah,” I said. “Could you wait a minute?”

When I came out of the privy, he gave me a business card that read:

S
TUBBS
& A
SKEW

General Insurance Agents

Wind and Fire Coverage Our Specialty

“I’m in business with my daddy,” he explained. “Merle Stubbs.”

I fingered the card. “I doubt if my grandma is in the market for any insurance.”

“Mrs. Dowdel?” he said. “Oh no. You can’t sell her anything.”

He had a jiggly Adam’s apple, I noticed. “I happened to be passing,” he said.

“Between the cobhouse and the privy?”

“Well, no.” He looked down at his shoes. “I was holed up here, to tell you the truth. I’m on my lunch hour. You got Vandalia Eubanks in your house, am I right?”

“Everybody says so,” I said. “Why? Do you want to sell Vandalia some insurance?”

“No,” he said. “I want
her.
”

I blinked in the midday sun while he waited for me to work this out. “Could you get a message to Vandalia?” he asked, pulling out another of his cards. “You can read what’s on the back of it, just to show you I mean business.”

I turned the card over and read,

My ears burned like fire. Now that I was thirteen, it took less than this to embarrass me.

“Do your best,” he said. “It’s now or never for me. If her old ma gets her home again, I’m a dead duck. Tell Vandalia I’ll be back in the cobhouse tonight by dark, with hope in my heart.”

Then Junior cut out. I watched him scale Grandma’s back fence in his suit.

By midafternoon I’d done all I could do on the soap pot, and a nickel was burning a hole in my pocket. I was thinking hard about a Nehi. But before I could make my escape, a car pulled up in front of Grandma’s house, a 1930 Ford Model A sedan. A lady and a man got out and started up the front walk. I went in the kitchen door, not wanting to miss anything.

Grandma was already at the front door, and Mary Alice was hanging around the foot of the stairs that led up to the bedrooms. I palmed Junior’s poem to her, and she stuck it down the front of her shirt where the sausage sandwich had earlier gone.

“Junior’ll be in the cobhouse by nightfall,” I murmured.

And Mary Alice nodded.

“Whatever you’re selling, Merle,” Grandma was saying at the front door, “I don’t want any.”

Mr. Merle Stubbs and his wife overflowed the front door. “Now, Mrs. Dowdel, I’m not here in my professional capacity. I have took time off work and brought Mrs. Stubbs with me to have a friendly word with you.”

They got their feet in the door, and Grandma let them take chairs in the front room. “What do you want?” she said, not sitting.

“Nothing in the world but to chat with you on a private matter.” Mr. Stubbs shifted one leg over the other.

“There’s no private matters in this town, Merle,” Grandma said. “Everybody’s private business is public property.”

“Yes, and you’ve stuck your nose in ours!” Mrs. Stubbs said, speaking up sharp. “You got that Eubanks gal upstairs this minute.” Mrs. Stubbs glared at the ceiling. “She’s trying to steal my son, and you’re helping her out. She’s gotten away from her maw, so she’s halfway there!”

Grandma’s spectacles flashed her a warning. But Mr. Stubbs said, “Now, now, Mrs. Stubbs is upset and off her feed about our boy, Junior. He’s lost all his judgment and wants to marry a Eubanks.”

“Do tell.” Grandma’s big arms were folded in front of her. “So what?”

“We’ve got a position in the community,” Mr. Stubbs said. “We don’t need a connection with such as the Eubankses. I’m as democratic as the next guy, but there’s limits. Besides, Idella Eubanks is half-cracked, and it could run in the family. Think of the children.”

“Have you talked it over with Junior?” Grandma asked.

“You can’t talk sense to him,” Mrs. Stubbs replied. “He’s bewitched.”

Mary Alice and I lurked near, taking in every word. About the only thing Vandalia and Junior had going for them as a couple was that they weren’t cousins.

A thud occurred then. Mary Alice and I both heard it. Something hit the outside of the house, nothing loud. Just a thud. Grandma heard. She began to drift toward the front door, but she went on talking to the Stubbses. “Well, it’s no skin off my nose,” she said calmly, “but seems like your boy’s old enough to make up his own mind. How old is he?”

“Thirty,” Mrs. Stubbs said, “but he’s a young thirty.”

Grandma was at the front door now. She pulled it open and stalked outside. We all followed, naturally, to find her in the middle of the yard with her hands on her hips, staring back at the house.

A ladder had appeared, propped against the sill of an upstairs bedroom window. On the top of the ladder was Miz Idella Eubanks in her sunbonnet. She was working away, trying to jimmy loose the catch on a window screen.