Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man: A Novel (17 page)

“Where is he?” I asked.

Mr. Kilgore answered, “I’m not at liberty to say, but don’t worry. I’ll be back tomorrow with legal papers for you to sign. Meanwhile, don’t discuss the case with anyone, not even Mrs. Romeo.”

Opal said she could never thank me enough for what I was doing, I had made her the happiest woman alive. Sure, I thought, she wasn’t the one that Claude Pistal was going to kill.

Daddy and Jimmy Snow sat up all night and didn’t sleep a wink and didn’t have one drink.

This morning before I went to school, Mr. Kilgore came back with that paper to sign. Before he left, he said, “Miss Harper, I just want you to know, I have cross-examined a lot of pretty tough customers, and you are the hardest nut I have ever had to crack. My hat’s off to you.”

I felt great until I started thinking on the bus that he said that just to make me feel good because it had only taken him one afternoon to make me spill my guts. I had sold out for a banana split and a hot fudge sundae and, on top of that, I hadn’t done page 57 on my arithmetic book.

It’s not that I don’t trust the FBI, but in case there is a slipup, I have written down the combination to my lock that goes to the box where I keep my private papers and put it in
a Luden’s cough drop box and put it in a sock, and put that in a cigar box. I glued that shut with airplane glue and put it in a sack and buried it on the beach. I have given Michael the map of where I buried it. He is to go dig it up only if I am killed. There are two parts to the map. I made Daddy take me up to the colored quarters and I gave Peachy Wigham the other half. I told her under no circumstances is she to give it to Michael if I am living, and she said she wouldn’t. She asked no questions. That’s why she’s so popular.

This is my farewell note just in case.

Daddy, Jimmy Snow and Billy Bundy went up to the Blue Gardenia Lounge today to tell Harold Pistal to get a message to his brother, Claude, that if he dares come within 100 miles of me, Daddy will kill him. And if Claude kills him, Jimmy Snow will kill Claude and if he kills both of them and Billy Bundy, there is a whole group of other people that will kill him. I don’t think Daddy has another group of people, but it made a good threat!

Harold said for Daddy to calm down. Nothing was going to happen to anybody. Claude is in South America for good and is never returning because some men in Detroit are mad at him. When Daddy got home, he called up Mr. Kilgore, and Mr.
Kilgore said yes, Claude was in South America, and if he ever tried to come back, the FBI would pick him up so fast it would make his head swim. Daddy was happy as a clam over this news and so was I. I am too young to die.

I better write that little girl we adopted in Jr. Debutantes who lives in South America and tell her if she ever runs across a man named Claude Pistal not to talk to him because he is bad business.

When I got to school this morning, there was a substitute teacher. Mrs. Underwood was in the Magnolia Springs Clinic and had her appendix out Saturday morning. She would be back in two weeks. Here I had been so worried about myself while poor Mrs. Underwood was sick. We wrote her a get-well note. Mine was six pages long and I put a joke in it. When I was over at the Pig and Whistle Barbecue at lunch, I decided I had better go see her in person and make sure she was doing all right. I don’t trust that other teacher. She might be trying to take Mrs. Underwood’s job.

When I arrived at the clinic, the nurse said they didn’t allow any children visitors unless they had an adult with them. It took me forever to find an adult to take me in. Finally, this retarded man named Leroy that always hangs around the Big B Drugstore went with me, but I had to buy him an ice cream sandwich before he would do it.

I said to the nurse, “Here is my adult,” but the nurse looked up and said, “Leroy, you get out of here now and go on home.”
I don’t know what was the matter with her. He was an adult, wasn’t he?

I finally went around the back and found another way in. I looked in all the rooms, and most of the people were old and asleep. I went by one room and there were four people standing outside the door. One was a preacher reading from the Bible. Whoever was in that room was dying. What if it was Mrs. Underwood? I ran up and down the halls, but I couldn’t find her. I was yelling, “Mrs. Underwood, Mrs. Underwood,” when that nurse caught hold of me, but as she was dragging me to the front door, I heard Mrs. Underwood’s voice coming out of a room way down at the other end of the hall.

She said, “Is that Daisy?” I got away from that nurse and ran to the room and there was Mrs. Underwood, sitting up in her bed with a beautiful blue lace bed jacket on. She wasn’t dying at all. Then, all of a sudden, that nurse was right on top of me and she was mad. I had woke up all her patients making such a racket.

Mrs. Underwood asked if I could please stay. That nurse wasn’t going to let me, but the other patients were all ringing their bells, so she said, “Oh, all right, but just five minutes.”

Mrs. Underwood looked surprised to see me. She said, “Daisy, what in the world are you doing out of school?” and I said I thought I’d better come up and see if she was really OK because I had a terrible time in the hospital once when they took my tonsils out. She said she was fine and for me not to worry about her. I told her we had all written her a get-well note and then, like a dummy, told her everything I had written in my note, including the joke. Now it won’t be a surprise when she gets it.

After I left, I realized that was the first time I’d seen Mrs. Underwood without her makeup on. She is a natural beauty, just like Doris Day.

Mrs. Dot took us to the Harwin County Fair. I had $15 and I knew I was going to win a terrific prize for Mrs. Underwood. We were all packed in that car like sardines. Angel Pistal had to sit on my lap. She is the boniest little girl I have ever met.

Amy Jo Snipes and her sisters were yacking away about what rides they were going on. Even Kay Bob Benson was excited because she forgot herself and asked me a question. She broke her silence from Halloween, but when I answered her and she realized what she had done, she looked at me and said, “Who are you?” and stuck her nose in the air.

When we got to the fairgrounds, the sky was all lit up, and Mrs. Dot had to park a mile away. It was freezing cold outside with a big brown ring around the moon. We went up to this huge archway that said “Welcome to the Harwin County Fair and Agriculture Show.” We had to wait forever for Mrs. Dot to buy our tickets and Michael was so excited that he bought a Kewpie doll on a stick from some man who was selling funny buttons and all kinds of stuff before he even got into the fair. They had the biggest Ferris wheel I have ever seen. Kay Bob Benson bought herself a white wooden baton with glitter pasted all over it. There was a caterpillar ride with a green and white canvas top on it that closed up when you rode it, and a loop-the-loop, and bumper cars that Michael couldn’t wait to ride on, and a huge merry-go-round, and every ride had a different tune playing on it.

Mrs. Dot made us all stay together and we had to visit the exhibition halls before we could go on any of the rides. I got me a corn dog and we went into this big barn, full of livestock stalls, with cows, and sheep and pigs, and some of them had ribbons on them, where they had won a prize. After them came a display of John Deere tractors and farm equipment that I didn’t care a thing in the world about. I never saw so many Future Farmers of America in my life. That place stunk to high heaven.

Then we went into this big building that had squash that
weighed twelve pounds and some real big ears of corn. They were selling fruit jars full of jams and jellies and pickles and little tiny corn, and a bunch of homemade clothes that came from the home economics departments all over the county. I wouldn’t be caught dead in those clothes. I buy all my things at Elwood’s Variety Store. A lot of churches had made quilts, but I prefer an electric blanket myself. We saw an art show by some school kids with some of the ugliest pictures you ever laid eyes on, and then we came to the essays. I looked for mine, but it wasn’t there. The winning essay was from somebody from Loxley and was entitled “When I Grow Up, I Want to Be a Good American.” Who doesn’t?

I was having a fit to get out of there and go ride the rides and play the games and win some prizes and so was Michael. Finally, when Mrs. Dot got to the garden club section, we had our chance. Her entry, “Marshland Magic,” had won a ribbon, but all it looked like to me was a stuffed duck sitting in some weeds. She was so busy carrying on and telling everyone that went by about her arrangement that Michael and I snuck away and ran back out to the midway. The first thing we did was to buy ourselves a hat that a woman sewed your name on right there, any color that you wanted. I got a black one with “Daisy Fay” written on it in pink thread. Michael got a red one, with purple thread. He has no taste at all.

We rode the bumper cars. Crazy Michael crashed into everyone. Some boys got so mad that when they bumped us back I hit my tooth on my candied apple and nearly knocked it out. One’s already chipped; I don’t need to lose another. We spun around about six times and I had to get out before I was sick. Michael wouldn’t leave. He said he was going to wait for a better car. I told him I would meet him at the Ferris wheel in thirty minutes, and went over to the booth where they have stuffed black and white cats you knock over with a baseball, three tries for a quarter. The prizes were watches and radios and a lamp with a hula girl. When you turned it on, the skirt moved up and down. I spent five dollars trying to win that lamp for Mrs. Underwood, but I never could knock more than two of those cats
down at a time. Those balls were not heavy enough if you ask me because I am a real good aimer.

I finally gave up and went over to the next booth where water was running in a little stream with little yellow plastic ducks floating down it. You could pick a duck out of the water for a quarter and the man would look at the number on the bottom of the duck and tell you what prize you had won. I stood there and watched for a long time and nobody ever won a big prize. He always reached under the counter and gave them some dinky prize, like a tin horn or a rubber spider, so I decided to skip that one. By then it was time to meet Michael at the Ferris wheel, but he didn’t show up until twenty minutes later.

When he did show up, he had Vernon Mooseburger with him. The three of us rode the Ferris wheel and got off just in time, because some little girl waited until she was on the very top and threw up all over everybody. We also rode the caterpillar and the crazy mouse. Michael kept grabbing handfuls of cotton candy off of the small children’s paper cones when their parents weren’t looking. You should have heard them scream, but by that time Michael would be long gone. In one sideshow they had a two-headed sheep in a bottle, but I think it was rubber, a real gyp! We saw the fat man and we wasted our money on that because Michael and I both agreed Jessie LeGore had been fatter, but Vernon thought it was great and wonderful.

My favorite was the half man, half woman. One side of him was dressed in a black suit with a sock and shoes on one foot, and the other side of him had on makeup and a high heel with one leg in some red pedal pushers. He had a half of a mustache. I tried to talk to him so I could see if he had a man’s or a woman’s voice, but the man inside told me I wasn’t supposed to talk to the act. I think for fifty cents I should have gotten at least a sentence.

We walked around looking for a game I could win at when I saw just the thing I wanted to get Mrs. Underwood. A black and white plaster cocker spaniel with sparkle on it. It was on the shelf of the man who guesses your weight. He claimed he could guess your weight within three pounds. I went up there and gave
him my quarter. He looked at me and said, “Little girl, I think you weigh ninety-two pounds.” I was hoping and praying he would be wrong, but I got on the scale and weighed ninety-three pounds. I made Michael and Vernon do it too, but he guessed right both times. He must have been an expert. I was disappointed because Mrs. Underwood sure would have loved that black and white cocker spaniel.