“Now, we’re
getting
somewhere,” I tell my brother, punching his shoulder in celebration. I feel light-headed with tonight’s progress.
But Ren is less confident, his face pinched in disappointment. “Not exactly Dick Tracy and Sam Catchem, are they?” he pouts, wanting more from Mr. Marshall than “We’ll see what we can do.”
“No, they’re
not
,” I tell him, “but since nobody else seems to give a good damn ’bout Marvin, they’re all we’ve got!”
Chapter 12
At quarter ’til one on the steamy hot Saturday before Mother’s Day, I amble over to Miss May-belle’s to meet her grandniece Maryvale. Miss Maybelle’s on her lunch hour from the post office and I’ve been told to be prompt. Expecting the worst, I’m relieved to see that the girl swinging her bare legs on Miss Maybelle’s front porch is dressed like me in shorts, T-shirt and sandals. And there’s not a doll in sight.
“Hey, there,” I call as I open the wood-and-wire front gate.
“Hay’s for horses; try grass, it’s cheaper!” the girl calls back. Her face is full of freckles and her brown eyes crinkle beneath red-brown bangs when she grins. “You Reesa?” she asks.
“That’s me. You Maryvale?”
“Puh-lease call me Vaylie. I’ve been Maryvaled to death this week!”
I figure the pretty woman opening the screen door is Vaylie’s mother. Miss Maybelle’s in full steam behind her, jangling keys to the post office in hand.
“You two met already? Good.” Miss Maybelle takes charge as usual, brisk in her postmistress’ uniform. “Marie Louise, this is Maryvale’s mother, Miz Laverne Carrollton.”
Miss Maybelle acts surprised that I know enough to step forward, shake hands, and say “Pleased to meet you, having a nice trip?”
Miz Laverne’s more redheaded than her daughter and her teeth are bright white against the reddest red lipstick I’ve ever seen. Her skin is pearl-colored with tiny lavender veins showing through. Although she wears makeup like a movie star, I see dark purple circles under her eyes. There’s a small bruise like a violet-colored butterfly on the ivory inside her wrist.
Miss Maybelle checks her watch and spouts orders. “Laverne’s keeping me company at the post office while I sort the afternoon mail. Marie Louise, you must return Maryvale at precisely five o’clock. I went over this with your mother in case you forget.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say nicely, hating her.
As we trail them down the walk, I marvel at Miz Laverne’s ability to walk so smoothly in spiky heels next to Miss Maybelle’s MacArthur-like march. At the street, they turn right toward the post office and Vaylie and I peel left, toward home.
“That woman’s a witch,” Vaylie says. “She always like that?”
“Pretty much.” I grin. “Our school bus picks us up every day in front of the post office. No matter what the weather, boiling hot, freezing cold or pouring rain, she never lets us wait inside. ‘I’m runnin’ a branch of the United States Post Office,
not
a nursery school! This building is for official
business
only. You hooligans stay off those benches, too. They’re official government property!’ You’d think the fate of the entire nation rests on those benches staying empty.”
Vaylie’s laughing at my version of Miss Maybelle’s ornery old attitude. “She wanted us to stay over a few days, but our Atlanta cousins warned us that an afternoon was ’bout all we could stand.”
“Where you headed next?”
“Over to Winter Park to stay with a school friend of Mamma’s. We’re
on tour
, Mamma says, but mostly we’re takin’ a break from Daddy.”
“Is your father sick?” I ask.
“Sort of. I mean, he’s all right most of the time. But sometimes he gets to feelin’ melancholy and then he drinks and turns mean as a snake. Usually only lasts a couple weeks, but when Mamma sees his melancholy comin’, she tells Whit and Claudette to take over and we go on tour.”
“Who are they?”
“Whit and Claudette? They’re our colored maid and butler, been takin’ care of Daddy since he was a boy. Claudette says melancholy runs in Daddy’s family, but Whit says it was
The War
that did him in. Whatever the reason, Mamma and I leave town ’til they get Daddy back on track. Where you takin’ me?” Vaylie asks as I turn down the grove road.
“Dry Sink. It’s this old, dry sinkhole where my brother Ren and the Samson boys are waiting to have a rattler race.”
“What’s that?” Vaylie asks, breaking into a run beside me.
“Ren and Roy and Dwayne have been out in the palmetto scrub all week with their fork sticks looking for rattlesnakes. Caught some and trapped ’em in burlap bags. First, we all climb up the tree, then we lower the bags and let ’em free. The rattlers race for cover into the brush outside the sinkhole. You won’t believe how fast they go!”
In the clearing, where, on one side of the hole, our grove stops and, on the other side, the Samson palmetto scrub begins, Vaylie declares she’s never seen a sinkhole before. “Where’d it come from?” she pants.
We wave to the boys, who are already up in the giant oak, and run around Dry Sink to join them.
“Daddy says this whole state’s just a thin layer of limestone floating on a million underground rivers. Every once in a while, either a river rises or the ground sinks, then you wind up with a big hole like this one,” I explain.
“Swell!” Vaylie hoists herself easily onto the lower branches of the tree, yelling “Hey” to the boys above us.
“This is Vaylie,” I tell them. “Don’t drop those snakes ’til we get up there!”
Ren, Roy and Dwayne are champing at the bit to get started. “What took you so long?” Ren grumps.
“Got here as soon as we could!” I blaze back at him. “Get this show on the road!”
Vaylie and I scramble above them, cushioning our seats with the Spanish moss that hangs like lace around us. Vaylie wrinkles her nose. “This stuff stinks.”
“That’s not the moss; it’s
rattler
taint!” I say, watching her eyes balloon open.
Each of the boys holds a squirming burlap bag with two ropes attached. Side by side, the three of them lock their legs on the tree limb and “skin the cat.” Now upside down, like a trio of acrobatic puppeteers, they use the ropes to lower the bags into position, behind the starting line drawn in the dirt.
“Now, Roo,
now
!” Ren hollers.
“On your mark,” I yell. “Get set!
Go!
” The boys yank on one of their ropes to release the slip knot on the other. Instantly the snakes are free, their terrible beauty churning the pale gray dust. From our tree, we watch and hoot and yell as the fat brown diamondbacks coil and uncurl, tail bells rattling, split tongues flicking, angry, hooded eyes surveying each other and the barren sinkhole for cover.
“Won’t they kill each other first?” Vaylie gasps, mesmerized by the drama below.
“No, watch! They want to run for cover, but the big one—see him?—the race won’t start ’til
he
says so.”
The biggest one, diamond head high above the others, twirls himself into position, twisting a giant coil across the necks of the other two, then, darting and dancing, presses their heads down into the dirt.
Dominance established, Ren’s snake, the smallest, is first to quit the dance. It stretches out flat—at least four feet— and wriggles its way toward Dry Sink’s side and the stand of palmetto. The other two join him and the race begins. Screaming, we cheer them and howl as Roy’s snake, the big one, pulls ahead and vanishes into the scrub, with Ren’s and Dwayne’s just behind.
All of a sudden, the boys punch each other in victory and defeat, a big clap of thunder yanks our attention to the sky. While we were looking elsewhere, a dark mound of clouds has boiled itself into a surly black storm bank. Out of nowhere, lightning flashes on top of us, sparking a mad scramble out of the tree. A high branch in a giant live oak is no place to be in a Florida thunderstorm. Gasping at the splat of raindrops the size of soup spoons, flinching at the roar of the thunder, the boys veer left through the scrub toward Samsons’. Vaylie and I run right, through the grove toward home.
In the kitchen, Doto looks up from her letter-writing. “When I heard the thunder, I knew you’d be home soon. You must be Maryvale,” she says, regally extending her hand.
“
Vaylie
, please, ma’am. Vaylie Carrollton.”
“I’ve driven through the town of Carrollton in Virginia. Any relation?”
“Yes, ma’am, my daddy’s family’s lived there forever, raisin’ horses and growin’ tobacco.”
“You may call me Doto.”
“Dodo? Like the Dodo bird?” Vaylie is puzzled but polite.
I laugh. “No, Doto, like DeSoto, the kind of car she drives.”
“Pleased to meet ya,” Vaylie says, stretching her freckles in a smile.
“Likewise, I’m sure,” Doto nods. “If you girls want a snack, there are Oreos in the jar and milk in the Frigidaire,” she says, turning her attention back to her letter.
“Mind if we sit out the storm in the attic?” I ask.
“Be my guest,” Doto waves.
The roof of our house is heavy-gauge tin, and the thirdfloor attic, accessible only through Doto’s room, is the best possible place to enjoy a good storm. The slant of the rain, the wind, the thunder and lightning create what I call the tin-tin symphony. Vaylie and I spread out a quilt on the wood plank floor and, like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice in
Fantasia
, conduct the elements with our cookies dipped in milk. After a while, when the storm dies down to a slow drone, Vaylie’s attention turns to the attic.
“This all y’all’s stuff?” she asks, picking her way around an old trunk.
“Nope, most of it was Mr. Swann’s. He used to own this house. Mother keeps threatening she’s going to throw it all out.”
“Who’s this?” Vaylie’s holding up a picture of a serious-looking lady in a big black hat.
“No idea.”
“Kinda ugly, isn’t she?” she says, setting down the dusty gold frame.
“Sort of, but like Mother says, ‘pretty’s only skin-deep.’ ”
“Yeh, and my mamma says, ‘Sometimes pretty’s all you got.’ ” Vaylie says, smearing her hands on her shorts.
“I think your mother’s
very
pretty,” I say.
“Well,
of course
she is. She was Miss Richmond at age eighteen, went on to become Miss Virginia, 1937. She was the prettiest girl in our state, that’s why Daddy married her.” Vaylie’s picking through an old button box.
“My father married Mother because she was a Bridge Champion,” I tell her proudly.
“What’s that?” Vaylie frowns, holding a pair of silver buttons up to her ears.
“Well, it’s someone who’s really good at the card game called Bridge. He met her at a country club tournament. It was a member-guest event, and she was the guest of another member. Daddy says Mother beat the socks off everybody there, in spite of the fact that her partner was a dummy. He says that after she demolished his hand, he had to ask for hers.”
“Your daddy proposed to your mother because she
beat
him at cards?” Vaylie asks, not believing me.
“That’s what he says, and because right before she wins, she flashes him her Judy Garland grin.”
“Your mother looks like Judy Garland?” Vaylie’s impressed.
“Well, yes,
we
think so.”
“Whoa, what’s this?” Vaylie asks, standing tiptoe to pull a fat hatbox off the top of an old armoire.
“Hat, maybe?” I wonder, moving closer to see.
The box top’s pattern is barely visible under its thick coat of dust. Vaylie lifts it and the eyes of a handsome young man in military uniform smile back at us. “Neat,” Vaylie says, lifting the photo to reveal a flag folded in a triangle, and a stack of yellow papers.
“Let’s turn on the light,” I say, stepping around an abandoned rocker to reach the switch.
The top newspaper clipping is somebody’s death announcement.
Lieutenant Richard Randall Swann, U.S. Army, Slain in Sec
ond Battle at River Marne
, the black headline reads. We check the date. September 28, 1918.
“This stuff’s ancient,” Vaylie says, sorting quickly through the rest of the stack.
“He must have been old Mr. Swann’s son. Looks a lot like Tyrone Power, don’t you think?”
Vaylie doesn’t answer. Instead, she gasps. “My Gawd, Reesa, look here!”
The party scene cut from the yellowed newspaper is of a cluster of ladies behind a lace-draped table topped with a big silver punch bowl, a party cake and a tall vase of flowers. Below it, the line of print says
Miss Maybelle Mason to Wed Local Hero.
Dead center, a pretty young woman smiles broadly for the camera. The date is September 15, 1918. Vaylie reads me the story:
Mrs. Blanche Ogden Swann entertained at her home on Old Dixie Highway Saturday night in honor of Miss Maybelle Mason, who will wed the highly decorated Lieutenant Richard Randall Swann on Sunday, October 15th. The affair was a variety shower and the bride received many beautiful and useful gifts. After a delicious supper was served, the ladies entertained themselves with games. A mock wedding was the source of much merriment. Guests included: Mrs. Caroline Mason, Misses Bertine Turner . . .
“...and a whole bunch of other names.” Vaylie hands me the article.
“Oh, Vaylie,” I say, comparing dates, “he died ten days after the party, two weeks before the wedding!”
“How
aw
ful for Great-Aunt Maybelle!” Vaylie exclaims, looking back at the smiling bride-to-be. “Poor thing, how’d she ever get over it?”
“Maybe she didn’t, Vaylie. Some things, well,
some
things you never get over.”
“I know,” she says darkly. “Like people being mean to each other who ought not to.”
“And getting killed,” I add, “for no reason at all.”
“Girls!” Doto calls from the bottom of the stairs. “It’s four forty-five. Doesn’t Vaylie have to be at Maybelle’s by five o’clock?”
“Oh, Lord,” Vaylie says, holding up the hatbox, “think we should take this stuff to her?”
“I don’t know. It might . . . well . . . mightn’t it bring up a batch of memories best left alone?”
“You’re probably right.” Vaylie sighs, replacing the lid very carefully, returning the box to the top of the armoire. “It explains a lot, though, don’t it?”
Outside, the road has switched from the dry, baked asphalt of a few hours ago to a shiny wet ribbon reflecting us. Rain-washed leaves glitter in the sun. Walking back, we talk quietly about our secret discovery under the dust in the attic. Vaylie promises to quiz her grandfather, Miss Maybelle’s brother, for more information; both of us swear to be pen pals for
life
.