A Long Way From Chicago (17 page)

We three were at the breakfast table the next morning, in our regular clothes, when a sharp footstep sounded on the back porch.

A rounded figure with a head cocked like a bird filled the screen door. It was Mrs. L. J. Weidenbach, the banker’s wife.

Grandma looked up from her breakfast, scrapple and corn syrup with sides of bacon. “Only ten after six,” Grandma muttered, “and she’s already girdled and gallivantin’.”

Mrs. Weidenbach must have been desperate, because she’d lowered herself to come to Grandma’s back door. “Oh, Mrs. Dowdel,” she said through screen wire, “you see before you a woman at the end of her rope.”

“I wish,” Grandma mumbled.

Mrs. Weidenbach dared to open the screen door and slip inside on her teetery high-heeled shoes. Dad had taught me to stand up when a lady enters the room, but a look from Grandma kept me in my place.

“Mrs. Dowdel, as head of the Ladies’ Hospitality Committee for the Centennial Celebration, I have come to fling myself at your feet. We of the committee have worked our fingers to the bone to make the celebration worthy of the town’s traditions. Now on the eve of the event, my committee members are dropping like flies. You will have heard how Mrs. Askew has been brought
low.” Mrs. Weidenbach’s voice fell. “Female troubles.”

Grandma’s specs were riding down her nose. She looked up over them. “Oh yes. Cora Askew’s insides has been given a public airing.”

“And then there is Mrs. Forrest Pugh’s nervous condition,” Mrs. Weidenbach sighed. “Mrs. Dowdel, I’ll put it to you straight. Our committee has more than it can manage—handing out programs, setting up chairs, arranging for prizes, keeping the ladies’ public rest room tidy. It is not glorious work, Mrs. Dowdel, but it is meaningful. I thought you might step in and lend us a hand. We understand that at your time of life, you are not as active as you once were. But we are in great hopes you will rise to the occasion.”

I thought Grandma might rise to the occasion and throw the kitchen table at Mrs. Weidenbach. Mary Alice and I got ready to run.

Mrs. Weidenbach’s hand plunged into her bosom and drew up a lacy hanky. “I can do no more,” she said, dabbing at her mouth. “I will have my hands full with Daddy during the celebration itself. As a ninety-year-old veteran of the Civil War, Daddy is bound to carry off the honor of being Oldest Settler, and he will need all my support. But he’s bound to win.” Mrs. Weidenbach looked suddenly uncertain. “Unless Aunt Puss Chapman—”

“Naw.” Grandma waved a strip of bacon. “You couldn’t blast Aunt Puss off her place with a charge of dynamite.”

“Well, then,” Mrs. Weidenbach said, reassured. “And I will have to be on hand for the talent show,” she continued. “My nephew is entering it with a dramatic reading, and I must be there for the boy.”

“Ah,” Grandma said. “Let me see if I heard right. At my time of life, my hearing isn’t what it was.”

Mary Alice and I stared at each other. Of all her whoppers, this was Grandma’s crowning achievement. She had ears on her like an Indian scout.

“You want me to swab out toilets while you run your old daddy for Oldest Settler and your nephew for public speaker. Or did my ears deceive me?”

“Well, I wouldn’t have put it quite like that.” Mrs. Weidenbach dabbed all around her neck.

“I’m busy as a bird dog myself these days,” Grandma said. “I’ve got my grandkids visiting, as you may have noticed. And my tomatoes are coming on. I’m rushed off my feet.” Grandma sprawled in her chair, the picture of ease.

“You don’t mean you’re canning tomatoes on Centennial week!” Mrs. Weidenbach goggled.

“Tomatoes wait for no man,” Grandma said, gazing at the door.

Defeated, Mrs. Weidenbach took the hint and retreated. We listened to her heels pecking off the porch. I wiped the last scrap of scrapple around my plate in the corn syrup. Mary Alice examined her fingernails, waiting. Grandma was deep in thought, and we were passing the time until she came to a conclusion.

She slapped the oilcloth at last. “No rest for the weary,” she said, climbing to her feet. She ran a hand down the small of her back, though it was none too small. “Not enough hours in the day.”

“We picking tomatoes, Grandma?” I asked, testing her.

“What?” she said.

She glanced down at Mary Alice. “Bring your tap shoes?”

“My
tap
shoes!” Mary Alice clutched her head, which she often did these days. “Grandma, I haven’t taken tap since I was a
kid.
”

“Give it up, did you?” Grandma said.

“
Ages
ago.” Mary Alice sniffed. “I’m taking ballroom dancing now, to get ready for high-school mixers and formal and semiformal evenings.”

Grandma pondered, fingering her chins.

Then she said to me, “Find my gum boots. We’re goin’ to high grass and tall timber. Take us the better part of the day to get there and back on shank’s ponies.” Which meant we’d be walking.

When I didn’t find her gum boots in the cellar, she sent me to the cobhouse. As I passed through the kitchen, I noticed Grandma and Mary Alice had their heads together, conspiring.

The only light in the cobhouse came from the open door. But I could see the Phantom Brakeman’s old overcoat hanging on a peg. Under it stood Grandma’s gum boots. When I reached down for them, a boot moved.

Remembering cottonmouths, I recoiled. My hands were in my armpits when I heard a sound. One of the boots mewed. I’d forgotten about the old tomcat. But then he’d have jumped at me by now, if he’d been around. A kitten’s face appeared out of the top of the boot. Pointy ears, whiskers, big green eyes. She mewed at me again and tried to get a paw up. I reached down for her. She was gray with a white bib and boots. She only weighed
ounces, and she kept her claws in when I tucked her in my arm and carried her back to the house with the gum boots.

In the kitchen Grandma had her gardening hat on, with the chigger veil. She was packing our lunch, with a couple of early tomatoes and some salt for them in a twist of paper. I drew nigh and planted the kitten on the table beside her.

“Get that thing out of the house!” she barked. But neither the kitten nor I was fooled. The kitten butted Grandma’s hand. Then she rubbed herself along Grandma’s arm, and Grandma let her.

“Got a new pet?” I inquired.

“Chicago people have pets,” she said. “But there’s a new litter living down in the cobhouse now, and I let ’em. They keep down the vermin. Don’t need all of them though.” Gently, she lifted the kitten and put her in the hamper with our lunch. “We’ll drown this one in the crick on our way,” she said. But I wasn’t worried.

“What happened to the old cat?” I asked, meaning the jumping tom.

“Got in front of the Cannonball,” Grandma said briefly.

She was sitting to tug her gum boots on now, and she was already wearing men’s pants under apron and dress.

“Grandma, are we going out to see Aunt Puss Chapman?” I said, trying to see a little bit ahead.

“We’re going farther out in the sticks than that,” she said, grunting.

“What for?”

“To see if an old feller name of Uncle Grady Griswold’s
still living. And his wife, Aunt Mae.”

By now I knew that not everybody around here called “Uncle” or “Aunt” was necessarily
your
uncle or aunt. “Why do we want to know?”

“Because if he’s alive, Uncle Grady’d be a hundred and three years old.”

The sun had already begun to punish us by the time we’d crossed the bridge over Salt Creek. I was carrying the hamper, and mews came from within. Grandma had forgotten to drown the kitten. We walked a long way over roads we’d skimmed in the Terraplane 8. Mary Alice wasn’t with us. She was elsewhere. Mary Alice was up to something.

By noon we were nearly out of the county. We’d crossed Route 36. But Grandma trudged on. We ate our lunch in a pasture. The kitten climbed out and fed from our hands. Then she stalked around in the weeds, teaching herself to jump at butterflies. When it was time to go, she climbed back into the hamper. We cut across the fields from there, to a little house at the end of a faint lane.

Somebody still lived there. Chickens were in the brooder house, and the garden was in and weeded. Hollyhocks stood guard along the fence. Grandma pushed open the front door.

It was a parlor from some other time, with faded love knots in the wallpaper. Beside a cold stove sat an old lady. On the other side in a rocker sat the oldest man on earth, in a stocking cap.

Grandma sighed with satisfaction to see them both breathing. Aunt Mae Griswold grinned at Grandma. Both her teeth gleamed in the gloom of the room.

“How you been, Aunt Mae?”

“Oh yes,” Aunt Mae agreed. “Very warm for the time of year.” She wore gardening gloves and a variety of shawls.

“How are your feet?” Grandma thundered at her. “Are they still swelling on you?”

“Not bad,” Aunt Mae said. “They’re still pretty good layers. We get eight or ten dozen eggs off them every day and sell what we don’t eat to the Cowgills.”

Grandma turned to Uncle Grady.

“Speak right up to him,” Aunt Mae called out. “He’s a little hard of hearing.”

Uncle Grady Griswold was almost as small as he was old. The pom-pom on his stocking cap hung far down his humped shoulder. He was so old he’d have made Aunt Puss Chapman look like a young girl at her first party. He gazed uninterested up at Grandma.

“How you been, Uncle Grady?” she said, speaking up.

“Fair to piddling,” he said weakly.

Grandma lifted the kitten out of the hamper by the scruff of its neck. “I brought you a mouser.”

Uncle Grady blinked at the hanging kitten and seemed to rally. “Put her right here,” he said, and Grandma lowered the kitten into his bony lap, where she offered her head for petting.

“Do you get up and around, Uncle Grady?”

“Oh yes,” he said in a stronger voice. “I wrung the neck
off a chicken this morning before daylight.”

“Did you have chicken for your dinner?”

“No.” He shook his head. “She got away.”

“Ah,” Grandma said. “Listen, Uncle Grady. Do you still have your old army uniform?”

He started, and the kitten looked up in alarm. He waved two small, shriveled fists. “Has war been declared?” He’d have jumped out of his chair, ready to enlist, but Grandma put a hand on him.

“Nothin’ like that,” she said.

“Well, I’m ready,” he piped up. “I’m cocked and primed. My full kit’s in the bedroom there.” He pointed a crooked finger. “We sleep downstairs now because Mae can’t climb steps. She’s getting on in years.”

Grandma nodded me toward the bedroom. “Don’t forget my sword!” Uncle Grady called after me, seeming not to wonder who I was. Aunt Mae looked on, interested.

I found his full kit: uniform, sword, boots and spurs, and a cap. They didn’t smell very good, and they didn’t look right to me.

“Grandma,” I muttered, holding up the small coat. “There’s something funny about this uniform.” The only Civil War uniform I’d ever seen up close was on Mrs. L. J. Weidenbach’s daddy. “Was Uncle Grady on our side?”

“Of course he was on our side,” she said. “But he goes back before the Civil War. He was in the Mexican War.”

“They winged me at the battle of Cerro Gordo,” Uncle Grady offered.

I stared. We’d covered the Mexican War in school that year. “Grandma, the Mexican War started almost ninety years ago. Even if Uncle Grady is a hundred and three,
he’d only have been about my age during that war.”

“Well, maybe he was a little drummer boy,” Grandma suggested.

“Rum-tum-tum,” Uncle Grady said, playing an imaginary drum with invisible drumsticks.

Grandma turned to the other rocker. “Can I borrow Uncle Grady for the day on Saturday, Aunt Mae?” she howled.

“You sure can, honey,” Aunt Mae said. “In fact, you can keep him!” She’d heard every word and grinned broadly.

On the first day of the Centennial Celebration the town began to fill up with merrymakers and the curious. People came in farm wagons and Fords from as far away as Bement and Tuscola. Grandma closed all her windows because the dust from the road never settled.

People came for the events, the tree-topping and chicken-plucking competitions, and the chili cook-off. They marveled at the flower show put on by the ladies of the United Brethren Church and the mother-daughter look-alike contest, the spelling bee, the Illinois Power and Light Company’s display on rural electrification, and the three-legged race.