Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man: A Novel (27 page)

Pickle signed us up to raise money to buy sewing machines to send to Korea. Whoever raises the most money gets a brand-new Eureka Supermatic vacuum cleaner with a new double-sized throwaway dust bag. It has cyclone air action and seven attachments and is worth $69.95. I don’t know why she wants a vacuum cleaner, but she is determined to win a prize.

I came up with a way for us to make a fortune. It came to me the other day while I was up in the plane crop-dusting with Jimmy Snow. Why not take a picture of a farm from the air and put the picture in the paper under the heading
MYSTERY FARM?
When the people who own it recognize the picture and call in, we can sell them the picture of their farm for $10 to use on Christmas cards. People will eat that up. Pickle is going to get the school camera and Jimmy is going to take her in the plane tomorrow. After we win the vacuum cleaner, we might be able to make enough money so we could buy a car and get our own apartment. I would feel better if Pickle was out of that house. She won’t tell me, but her daddy is still beating the daylights out of her. I can see the marks. Lemuel says she sasses him and
it makes matters worse. She is very brave. I think if anybody ever beat me with a strap, I’d get them when they were asleep.

Yesterday afternoon Jimmy and Pickle went up in his plane and flew all over Magnolia Springs taking pictures. We have fifteen
MYSTERY FARMS
and one mystery filling station. We stayed up all night developing those pictures in her darkroom. They turned out great except for one thing. Dumb Pickle didn’t find out whose farms she took pictures of. They are a
MYSTERY
to us, too! Can you believe someone would be that dumb? Sometimes I wonder about her. Now we don’t have any more money for film. I can see when Pickle and I go into business, I will have to be the brains. Since she is on the honor roll, it makes you wonder about the Mississippi school system.

Today Pickle decided that because we only have five more days left to make money, we will rent ourselves out as slaves after school and all day on Saturday. They are going to announce it on the radio show—two slaves are available but only as a pair. We don’t want to be a slave by ourselves. Some man might try and hire us. Pickle says we can charge $2 an hour. If we work hard, she’s sure we can win the vacuum cleaner.

A woman named Mrs. Clayborn hired us as slaves to change all the drapes in her house. Mr. and Mrs. Clayborn are about the richest people in Magnolia Springs and have the biggest house in town. Mr. Clayborn owns the tractor dealership and a lot of farmland. I didn’t want to hang curtains, but Pickle was thrilled to death because she always wanted to get into that house and try to see Virginia Clayborn, who they keep locked up. Virginia is the little girl the Clayborns adopted a long time ago and she never grew up right, so they don’t let her out at all. She is twenty-two years old and four feet two inches tall, but she isn’t a midget or a dwarf. She just has fits and foams at the mouth. That’s why they live so far from town. Pickle told me all this, but I don’t believe a word of it. She’s just trying to get me to feel good about being a slave. She’ll do anything to win a prize.

The Clayborn house is a huge, dark, red-brick thing that looks like nobody lives there. But when we knocked on the door, some woman answered.

Pickle said, “We are the two slaves you ordered.”

Mrs. Clayborn invited us in and took us to the living room. On a table sat a real stuffed turtle with red lights in its eyes. Weird. She had on some opera music and she had been sitting there reading poetry books to herself. She called her colored maid and told her to help us get started with the drapes and then she went back to reading her poetry. The whole house was funny. I never saw such old furniture. There wasn’t one new thing. I prefer Danish modern.

While we were taking down the drapes, Pickle asked the maid, “How is sweet little Virginia getting along these days?” The maid just looked at her like she was crazy. I knew Pickle had made up that story about Virginia and I told her so after we left.

The next day, when we went back, Pickle was determined to prove to me that girl lived there. Every time the maid would leave for a minute, Pickle would run around as fast as she could
opening all the doors, looking for Virginia. I told her to stop it, she was going to get us in a lot of trouble. Pickle thought the crazy girl was either in the basement or up on the third floor. One time Pickle pretended she had to go to the bathroom and went down to the basement looking for her, but she said there wasn’t anything there but more old furniture. Through it all, Mrs. Clayborn sat in the living room and listened to her music and read her poems.

Saturday was our last day, and all I wanted was to finish hanging the drapes and get out. We were on the second floor in one of the bedrooms when Mrs. Clayborn called the maid downstairs. Before I knew it, Pickle ran to the third floor looking for Virginia and started jerking all the doors open, leaving me standing there holding about fifty pounds of red velvet drapes. All of a sudden I heard Pickle scream bloody murder and she came flying past the bedroom and kept going out the front door. I didn’t know what happened, but I figured I’d better get out of there, too. So I dropped the drapes and started to run down the stairs. Just then Mrs. Clayborn was running up them, screaming, “Virginia, get back in your room.” I looked around me and this girl with fuzzy hair and pop eyes was coming down behind me. I was right in the middle between her and Mrs. Clayborn, and Mrs. Clayborn was yelling at me, “Stop her, stop her!” I didn’t have much choice because that girl ran straight into me, and when Mrs. Clayborn grabbed both me and the girl, I was stuck between them and couldn’t get loose.

The girl was screaming, “I hate you!” and was trying to hit Mrs. Clayborn, but she was missing her and beating hell out of me.

When we got her back to her room, Mrs. Clayborn said to me, “See that she doesn’t hurt herself. I’m going to get the doctor,” and locked me in there with her! I tried, but I couldn’t get out for love or money.

I looked around, and there wasn’t anything in the room she could hurt herself with. There wasn’t anything in the room at all as a matter of fact. But she sure could have hurt me if she had a mind to. I was about to be killed by a crazy person just because Pickle Watkins wanted to win a stupid vacuum cleaner.

When Virginia sat down on the floor and started to holler and beat her fists on her head, I said, “Hey, you better stop that.”

She looked at me and said, “Who are you?”

I said, “I’m Daisy Fay Harper, and I’m hanging drapes downstairs. You must be Virginia. How do you do?”

She looked at me and said, “I want hillbilly music.”

I said, “What?”

She said, “I want to hear some hillbilly music,” and began to hit herself in the head again.

I was hoping she wouldn’t start to foam at the mouth. I didn’t know what else to do, so I sat down and sang her a little bit of “It Wasn’t God That Made Honky Tonk Angels” and then a little bit of “Kaw-liga” and “Your Cheatin’ Heart.” I was just starting in on “Happy Trails to You” when she got mad and said that was a western song. She may have been crazy, but she wasn’t stupid. I sang her bits and pieces of every hillbilly song I could remember from my daddy’s jukebox. I was singing “I Fall to Pieces,” a Patsy Kline hit, for the second time when the door opened and this doctor with a black bag came in and said, “Well, how’s little Virginia today? Your mother tells me you’re not feeling well.”

Can you believe that? She almost kills me and the doctor thinks she’s not feeling well. I’d hate to see her when she’s really sick.

When I got downstairs, Mrs. Clayborn was standing there wringing her hands and saying over and over, “I’m sorry about what happened. I don’t know how she could have gotten out.” I knew how she got out, but I wasn’t saying anything because I wanted to get paid. She asked me to forgive Virginia because she was not well.

When I said I didn’t think Virginia would be so mad if she could just listen to some hillbilly music, Mrs. Clayborn told me they’d tried that but she breaks any radio or record player they get her and hurts herself with it. Just then I remembered the outhouse joke that my daddy played on Momma, so I suggested Daddy could go in Virginia’s room and put a drive-in speaker on the ceiling where she couldn’t get at it. He could hook it up to a radio or something.

When the doctor came downstairs and heard my idea, he
thought it was a good one and said for Daddy to call Mr. Clayborn and make arrangements to do it as soon as possible.

Mrs. Clayborn went to her purse and gave me a $20 bill. I told her that she only owed us $12, but she said for me to keep the change and hugged me good-bye. When I got outside, my dear best friend, Pickle Watkins, who had been hiding in a four-o’clock bush, ran up. “What happened to you?” she asked.

I looked at her. I said, “What happened to you?” and kept walking. I’m never speaking to her again. I would never leave her like that no matter what. I gave her the $20 and told her to shove that stupid vacuum cleaner up her stupid nose. She cried and carried on, but I will never forgive her as long as we both shall live and that’s that.

Daddy will probably make a lot of money installing those speakers, and the Koreans aren’t going to get one red cent of it.

When I got home, I told Daddy and Jimmy Snow that if Pickle calls me, I’m not in.

Now that I think about it, Virginia is not four feet two inches tall. She is the same height I am. I knew Pickle didn’t know what she was talking about.

Sunday, Pickle came down to the motel and knocked on my door. I was sitting on the roof, and she didn’t see me. I sit on the roof a lot. People never think to look up. Anyway, she knocked and then she slipped a letter under my door and left.

I went down after she had gone and read the letter. It said how sorry she was for leaving me, but that girl had scared her so bad she just ran and thought I was right behind her. A likely
story! I got all the things she’s ever given me, including some clothes she had loaned me, and put them in a box.

Monday morning, at school, Lemuel met me when I got off the school bus, and I gave him the box. He said Pickle was heartbroken and couldn’t eat all day Sunday and wouldn’t I please make up with her. I told him Pickle had cut me to the quick, hurt me too bad to ever make up, but I was not mad at him or Baby Sister and would continue to remain their friends if they wished.

When I got to class, I never looked at Pickle once. By lunch it was all over school that we had broken up. Everybody fluttered around her like she was the injured party. I wondered if she told them about leaving me to be killed. Patsy Ruth Coggins gave me a long, tearful talk on how best friends should never fight and wouldn’t I send Pickle a message of some kind she could deliver. I told Patsy Ruth Coggins to tell Pickle that we were definitely not a current walk-to-class couple.

Amy Jo Snipes drove me crazy all through lunch, running on about how it would absolutely ruin her wedding if two of her bridesmaids were not speaking to each other, and wouldn’t I make up just for the wedding. Afterwards I could go back to not speaking if I wanted to.

Vernon Mooseburger wanted to have a debate on the pros and cons of making up with Pickle, but I told him to mind his own business. Then he wanted to debate the pros and cons of minding his own business. That debate team has got him crazy!

I held out all day until sixth period, Future Homemakers of America, and then I looked at Pickle by mistake. She was looking right at me. I started to laugh and so did she. We ran up to the ladies’ room and cried and hugged and kissed and made up. We said we loved each other and Pickle promised never to leave me again. How can you stay mad at Pickle?

Daddy put those speakers up for the Clayborn girl. He came home and told me he thought Virginia was crazy as a loon. I could have told him that.

This Saturday we went to Amy Jo Snipes’s shower. She got all kinds of kitchen things. I never could find a colander. I don’t know what it is. I just gave her some money so she can buy it herself.

Kay Bob Benson and Patsy Ruth Coggins won the vacuum cleaner for raising the most money for the Koreans. That’s the second prize Kay Bob Benson has won this year.

Pickle found out the Magnolia Springs paper is going to give away an Esterbrook fountain pen for the best human-interest photograph. She dragged me out to the old folks’ home to get a picture of this man who was having his hundredth birthday party. When we got there, his family had come from all over the country. It was awful. He just sat in a wheelchair all slumped down and every once in a while one of them would go over and try to sit him up and say, “Look, Big Poppa, here’s little Larry, or Aunt Somebody or other.” He couldn’t hear or see, much less recognize people. They had him in a suit that was four times too big. Pickle said he had a diaper on underneath. They thought Pickle and I were part of the family and talked to us about how Big Poppa used to hide under a pile of leaves whenever any of them would visit. After meeting the relatives, I don’t blame Big Poppa.

They put a cake in front of him, lit the candles and sang “Happy Birthday, Big Poppa.” He almost fell over right in the cake, but a nurse caught him in time. Pickle got a picture, so she is happy. After a while they just wheeled him in a corner and visited with each other. It was terrible. That old man didn’t get one present, but Pickle said what would you give a hundred-year-old man? I guess she’s right.

Well, Miss Amy Jo Snipes is now officially Mrs. Nathan Willy. I hope she’ll live. That was the first wedding I have ever been to and I don’t care if I never go to another one. I couldn’t believe Pickle. She kept snapping pictures all through the ceremony, and she was a bridesmaid. She shouldn’t have gotten in the bride and groom’s face like that, but she is desperate. Her picture of the old man didn’t turn out, it was all blurred. I told her, “What do you expect, trying to take a picture of one hundred lit candles with a flashbulb?” Even I know better than that, and I’m not a photographer.