Hippomobile! (8 page)

 

 

 

 

WE AIN'T SURE HOW
popular checkers is anymore outside of Wymore, but Grandma Henrietta and Grandpa Milton played it nearly every day. As far as we can remember, Grandpa Milton never won a single match. He calls that perseverance. But if you asked us, that ain't the word we would've used.
¹

By the time the three of us got over to their table, Grandma Henrietta was grinning like a shark and rubbing her hands together so you would've thought she was trying to start a campfire. Grandpa Milton had that fiddle-faced look he always got when he was about to lose. “It ain't over till it's over,” he said.

We had a hard time disagreeing with that, but not Grandma Henrietta. “It's over now, Milton,” she said, and she took her newly crowned king and zigzagged it clean across the board so fast, it near made us dizzy. And by the time we could see straight again, every last one of Grandpa Milton's pieces had disappeared.

“Gotcha again, Milt!”

Grandpa Milton sat there a moment staring at all his checkers piled up next to Grandma Henrietta and then called for a rematch.

“Kids,” she said to us, “your Grandpa Milton's a glutton for punishment.”

“Glutton nothin'. I wanna be red this time,” said Grandpa Milton.

Someday you've just gotta hear Grandpa Milton talk. Because his voice is as deep as a well. We think that's because he's gotta be the tallest person you're ever gonna see without the use of binoculars.

“The color ain't got a thing to do with it,” Grandma Henrietta said. “It's all in the fingertips.”

We didn't want them starting another game, at least not until Grandma Henrietta looked at our letter. We asked if we could show her something.

“It's all right by me. I'm gettin' kinda tired of winnin', anyhow,” she said, and let out a fake yawn. “What do you say, Milton? Ain't you gettin' kinda tired of losin'? I know I would be.”

Grandpa Milton flashed us a wink. “Kids, when I was growin' up, I was always learned how you was supposed to give old ladies a break.” His deep voice made the table vibrate and the remaining red checkers dance on top of the board. Then he stood up—and kept right on standing up—and said, “But I'll be back, Henrietta.” And in less than three large steps, he was out the door.

“So what'cha got for me?” Grandma Henrietta asked us.

“It's the kids who came across an interesting item, Henrietta,” said Grandma Ida, and gave us a nod.

So we pulled out the letter and handed it to Grandma Henrietta and watched her squint at it and move it closer up and then farther away and then closer up again. “This here's from Gottfried Schuh,” she said.

“What'd I tell ya?” Grandma Ida said to us, and we told her thanks and gave her a hug that squeezed the air clean out of her.

“Where'd you two find this old document?” Grandma Henrietta asked us.

“In an old book,” we told her.

“What old book would that be?”

We held it up in front of us like at show-and-tell.

Grandma Henrietta leaned forward, squinted, and then took the book right out of our hands. First she said nothing and just ran her hand soft over the cover. “Ah, yes,
The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing
.” Then she leaned back, let out a sigh, and rested her eyes. “If it was going to be in a book, it'd have to be this one.”

“How come is that?” we asked, but didn't get an answer. Grandma Henrietta just went right on resting her eyes. So we finally coughed some and asked again.

Her eyes popped open and she said, “Because the
Handy Cyclopedia
was the very first book the Wymore library ever did own. After the Bible, of course. It was a big sensation back in the day, I do recall, and there probably wasn't nobody in town who didn't come in to consult it at some time or other, whether to find a cure for itchy feet or just to read a poem by Shakespeare. When this letter came back, someone must've decided to use it as a bookmark.”

Grandma Henrietta then dug around in her purse and pulled out her Ping-Pong paddle case. It wasn't really a Ping-Pong paddle case—that's just what we called it because it looked like one. What was in there was her magnifying glass. Grandma Henrietta couldn't read much without it, and she always told us that being a librarian had its own special occupational hazards.
²

“Grandma Ida said you could read it,” we said.

“Is that so?”

“Now, don't play shy, Henrietta,” said Grandma Ida.

“My German's rusty as an old gate, but I sure can try,” she said.

Grandma Henrietta aimed her magnifying glass at the old letter she had flattened out on the table, and we stared over her shoulder. The small letters looked as big as hopper legs
³
now.

 

Meine liebe Schwester Magda!

Von Herzen freue ich mich . . 
.

 

Of course, we couldn't make heads, necks, or tails out of it, but we hoped Grandma Henrietta could. Sometimes she nodded her head and sometimes she bit her lip and sometimes she itched her chin and sometimes she whispered German words to herself that didn't mean beans to us.
⁴
Then for a while she didn't do anything at all, and we were afraid she might be asleep.

“Grandma Henrietta?” we asked.

Then she lowered her magnifying glass and said, “Ach, Gottfried!”

“What's it say?”

“It's a letter from Gottfried to his sister Magda. Seems she was about to marry a fellow named Heinrich Sonnenschein, and Gottfried was writing to say he would be coming to the wedding. And from what I can make out, he drops several hints that he's mighty interested in Heinrich's sister. Says right here how his heart aches every time he thinks of Kunigunde.”

“Cooneygunda?” What kind of a name was that?

“So he asks his sister if Kunigunde's hand was still available. And if she thinks Kunigunde would be interested in coming back to America with him.”

We didn't care much about Kunigunde's hand. “Yeah, but don't it say something in there about the hippomobile?”

“Sure does,” Grandma Henrietta said.

Grandma Ida nodded to us and said, “Go ahead and tell her.”

So we told Grandma Henrietta all about our plan to save Mabel's, and even though she laughed some at our comparison between Paris and Wymore, she thought our scheme wasn't without promise.

“You just might be onto something,” she said. “Because Gottfried writes here how he'd just invented some kinda newfangled dingsbums for his hippomobile and . . .”

“‘Dingsbums'? What's a ‘dingsbums'?” we asked.

“Oh, that ain't nothing but a German word for ‘thingamajig.' And, anyway, he writes how it's this dingsbums of his that now starts the motor.”

“So that means it'll work!” we shouted. And Grandma Ida gave us a smile.

But then Grandma Henrietta said, “Well, he says here how he was gonna remove that dingsbums before he traveled back to his sister's wedding.”

“Remove it?! Why'd he do that for?”

“Says he's worried that when he ain't here, other folks in town might wanna take his vehicle out for a spin. And he didn't want anyone wrecking it.”

“You mean that without that dingsbums thingamabob, the hippomobile ain't gonna work?”

“I ain't sure, kids. I'm no mechanic. But listen to this: he writes here that he was gonna put the dingsbums in his house for safekeeping. So that if anything happened to him on his voyage back home, his sister could send somebody back out here to claim it. Seems he thought he had a gold mine with that hippomobile of his. Maybe he was plannin' on makin' as many of them as he did Gottfrieds. Who knows? It's all pretty amazin', ain't it?”

Amazin'? We didn't think so. Because who knew where in the heck that dingsbums was now? And if we didn't have that piece, how were we gonna get the hippomobile up and running? And if we couldn't get the hippomobile up and running, then what?

“Save your poutin' for a rainy day,” Grandma Henrietta said. Then she turned around in her chair. “Homer, Virgil, get your buns over here! I got some questions for you.”

They got up from their table, and Grandpa Virgil took Grandpa Homer by the elbow and led him across the café and sat him down in a chair and then sat down himself.

Grandma Henrietta said, “Listen, either of you old farts know what ever happened to Gottfried Schuh?”

Grandpa Homer said, “Gottfried Schuh?”

And Grandpa Virgil said the same thing Grandpa Homer said. “Gottfried Schuh?”

And so Grandma Henrietta said, “Is there an echo in here?”

“Well, now, lemme think,” said Grandpa Homer. “He was that odd German fellow, wasn't he, Virgil?”

“Sure is a long time back, Homer,” said Grandpa Virgil.

And they sat there a moment shaking their heads slow and rubbing their jaws hard and squinting like they had grit in their eyes.

Meanwhile Grandma Henrietta rolled hers. “I'm waitin'.”

And so was we.

“Virgil?” said Grandpa Homer.

“Yes, Homer?” said Grandpa Virgil.

“You happen to remember somethin' about a weddin'?”

“A weddin', you say?”

“Yeah, you know. Man and wife. People throw rice at 'em.”

Alls Grandma Henrietta could do was shake her head. “These two boys love nothin' more than to hear theirselves talk.”

“I may be blind, but I heard that,” said Grandpa Homer.

And Grandma Henrietta said, “Good. Think about it sometime. But first answer me my question.”

“That's just what I'm tryin' to do if you'd keep quiet,” Grandpa Homer said. “You're awful loud for a librarian, you know that?”

But then Grandpa Virgil said, “Now that you say weddin', I do think I recall a matter of a weddin', Homer. Didn't Gottfried return to his homeland on account of a relative of his gettin' married?”

Grandma Henrietta gave us a big nod. “A
Schwester
, maybe?”

All of us said, “
‘Schwester'?
”

And Grandma Henrietta said, “Sister.”

“I think you might be right, Henrietta,” said Grandpa Homer. “For a change.”

And Grandpa Virgil said, “Now, Homer, don't start . . .”

“Forget it, Virgil. Ain't no use tryin' to teach an old mutt new tricks,” said Grandma Henrietta. “Just tell me what happened to him.”

“What happened to him?” asked Grandpa Homer.

“That's what I said,” answered Grandma Henrietta. “What happened to him.”

“Well, shoot . . .” Homer shook his head. “Virgil?”

“Far as I can recall being told, he just left one day and ain't never come back. I remember people sayin' how they went in his house months later and found a half-ate piece a sausage lyin' right smack on the middle of his kitchen table.”

“That rings a bell, Virgil. ‘Older than a Gottfried sausage.' Ain't that what people always used to say?”

“My, my,” said Grandpa Virgil. “Older than a Gottfried sausage . . . Them sure was the days, Homer.”

“Boys!” said Grandma Henrietta. “Snap out of it!”

That did the trick. Grandpa Homer said, “Say, Virgil, didn't he send a letter back here from Germany one day?”

“I ain't sure, Homer. Maybe he did. But maybe he didn't. But maybe he did. I guess I ain't sure.”

“Wasn't there some talk in it about him himself getting married?” Grandpa Homer asked.

“Why, Homer, that's startin' to sound familiar, I do think.”

“Now we're gettin' somewheres,” said Grandma Henrietta.

“To some girl with a funny name, if I reckon right,” said Grandpa Homer.

“Why, indeed, Homer! Now that you say a funny name. Because I ain't never forgot a funny name when I hear one,” said Grandpa Virgil. “But I just can't seem to remember what it was . . .”

“Wasn't it somethin' like Esmeralda?”

“Esmeralda? No, that don't sound right. Brunhilde?”

“Kriemhilde, maybe, but not Brunhilde. Was it Kriemhilde, Virgil?”

“Giselinde?”

“Gundelinde? Was it Gundelinde, Virgil?”

“Did you say Gundelinde?”

“That's what I'm saying, Virgil.”

“I think that might've been it, Homer. Gundelinde . . . Yup, I think maybe. No forgettin' a doozy like that, that's for darn sure.”

“How about Kunigunde, boys?” asked Grandma Henrietta. “You think maybe that—”

But she didn't have time to even finish her sentence because Grandpa Homer and Grandpa Virgil both shouted, “Kunigunde! That's her!”

“Never forget a doozy like that, that's for darn sure, Homer,” said Grandpa Virgil.