Spiderweb for Two - A Melendy Maze (10 page)

“‘Up the wooded hillside, over its crest,'” Oliver sang aloud. He started up the slope to the left of the house, shuffling noisily among the million leaves; Isaac snuffed and scuffed close at hand. Jays called. Oliver's progress seemed nearly as aimless as Isaac's. He found a few leftover wild grapes, ate a handful and spat them out; they were fermented. He paused to pull apart a rotten stump, waking up a beetle and watching with absorption the frantic scurrying of an ant colony. He wrote his name with a twig on the creamy underside of a tree fungus, talked back to a squirrel on a branch, talked back to a crow in the sky; found a hickory tree and gathered a pocketful of nuts, searched for a stone to break them with and, when he had found it, squatted on his haunches in the sun for half an hour, cracking the nuts and picking out the kernels with a pin. (He always carried a pin this time of year, for just this purpose.)

By the time he started to descend the other side of the hill, it was nearly noon. He whistled to the dog, but Isaac had deserted, bored, no doubt, by the lengthy hickory-nut process. Oliver descended slowly. He had not been in this particular region for some time—not since May—and when he emerged from the woodland at the base of the hill, he saw the “giant stems” to which the clue referred. What had been small upstart weeds in May had, during the summer, attained a mighty growth, and were now decaying. Oliver found himself in a wilderness of pokeweed plants. The great hollow stems were far taller than he, eight or ten feet tall and still hung with tattered leaves and broken berries full of ink. He had no idea how large an area they covered, all he knew was that there were hundreds of the enormous plants; and this dead, fragile forest seemed a little scary, somehow. He whistled for Isaac again and called him, but there was no sound except for the crickets and the methodical easy breaking of hollow brittle stalks as he pushed his way forward. Far away a phoebe called sadly, and a noisy company of chickadees flew away in fright as he disturbed them. The crickets were everywhere, shiny and nimble, and so were the spiders; autumn seemed to be the rush season for them: Oliver kept getting cobwebs in his mouth.

“How much of this is there, anyway?” he began to wonder after a while. He was growing tired of fighting his way through the papery jungle and eating cobwebs, and he was tired of being spattered with purple juice from the great wilting berry clusters. Pokeweed was poisonous he had always heard, and now with the stillness and the inability to see more than two feet ahead in any direction, the seemingly endless grove appeared rather sinister: a poison forest in some terrifying tale. Oliver was not often a prey to such fancies and, on the whole, was not easily alarmed.

“It's just that I'm hungry,” he said aloud, addressing himself in a sturdy, sensible voice which made him feel a little better. “I'll eat my lunch in the next clearing.”

He walked on, or rather, tore his way on, until he came to a small open space where he sat down. Food always had the power to cheer Oliver, and he was delighted to see that Cuffy, besides tomato sandwiches, had given him two liverwurst ones (a food she disapproved of usually). She had also supplied a chocolate cupcake, and an orange to slake his thirst. Oliver sat quiet as a mouse among the stalks, eating and enjoying. The sunlight rested on his head benevolently; the dry leaves rustled now and then against the stems. Here in this little wilderness he was as hidden and remote as if he'd found a pocket in the Andes; no one knew where he was, no one would ever have guessed, and sometimes, for a little while, that is a pleasant feeling.

When he had finished his picnic, he felt lazy and lay down on his stomach for a while, watching the tiny earnest activities of ant and spider and scarlet cochineal bug. Among these the jerking crickets looked as big as cows.

An airplane humming across the sky—“A Douglas DC-6,” said Oliver—brought him back to his own world, and he got up to continue his journey. The twisting, crackling progress began again, and the bursting berries splashed him juicily.

Still, he seemed to be getting nowhere and when, after an hour, he came upon many trampled stalks, he was certain that they were stalks that he himself had broken, and that he had succeeded, like the lost people he'd read about, in making a complete circle. He did not care for this at all.

“Dumb jerk, you should have brought a compass,” he scolded himself. “If there was a brook to follow, even, or a tree to climb and get my bearings—”

He was beginning to be quite frightened, though he knew this was silly. He seemed to have been breaking his way through these hollow pipes for many hours. He remembered all sorts of stories about lost children; children who had been found only after several days with nothing to eat but berries. “But you can't eat pokeweed berries,” said Oliver. “Even if they weren't poisonous, by this time of year they're
stale.
” Supposing he had to spend the night here, trying to sleep, with all those dry leaves whispering in the dark, sounding like people, ghosts,
things,
creeping toward him? Oh, no, he would have to find his way out before then! He glanced up at the sun, wondering how much more time he had before the dusk began, and found that the sun was nearly out of sight behind the weedtops, sinking, naturally, downward toward the west. The west!

“Dumb jerk,” said Oliver again, sincerely. He had had to turn his head and look over his shoulder to see the sun. He had been walking south, paying no attention to the fiery signal in the sky. “‘Face turned west,' dumb jerk,” he said and felt a little better, knowing at least that he now was headed in the right direction.

The crickets were all at work, singing—Oliver knew that they didn't sing, they rubbed their hind legs together—but still it sounded like a long, spun-out wavering song that had no ending. He heard nothing else when he stopped to listen: no cows, no crows, no sound of airplane or of engine. It was better not to stop at all; better to crash and plunge and make the noise himself.

Finally, though, he had to stop, to get a gnat out of his eye. Standing there scared and tired and berry-stained, he wondered why in the world he and Randy had thought of this search as fun.

“Good afternoon, child,” said a pleasant voice.

Oliver's heart bucked in his chest. His scalp tingled; he could feel his hair rising. The whole afternoon—the spooky paper forest, the being lost, the hours of solitude, and the clue itself, with its talk of pockets full of gold and crowns on trees—had all had an unreal fairytale feeling; and the little elderly woman he now stared at seemed part of the story. She was small and thin with big gentle eyes. She wore a broad-brimmed hat, a red sweater with heavily sagging pockets, and a flowered dress. In her arms was a stout bundle of branches studded with red berries.

“G-good afternoon,” said Oliver.

“Well, I heard this trampling and crashing in the weeds, and I thought maybe one of Addison's cows was lost again. Came in myself to see.”

Oliver was deeply relieved to find that this was not a witch or fairy—of course he had not really thought it was—but just a person, like himself, and he began to feel as free as he usually did.

“Even if I'm not a cow, I'm just as lost,” said Oliver. “I'm loster. Can you tell me where I am?”

“You're in Corn Hollow,” said the little lady. “Over that way's Carthage and over
that
way's Eldred. Which one did you want?”

“Well, I live in a house called the Four-Story Mistake, maybe you know it? It's nearer to Carthage than it is to Eldred.”

“Why, yes, of course, I know it well. You come along with me,” she said. “My house is on a road that joins up with one that goes right past yours.”

“Oh, thanks a lot,” said Oliver, with a sigh of relief. “What kind of berries are those you have? They're very pretty.”

“Black alder,” said the lady. “Every fall I gather them to sell to the Christmas-wreath makers. They use them in place of holly berries. I find them over there, in the swamp.”

“May I carry them for you?” asked Oliver, wishing that Cuffy could hear this courtly offer. His companion seemed pleased, too. She gave him the bundle, thanking him, and they walked on in silence for a moment or two. Oliver thought of Willy Sloper's definition of good manners: “Just like the grease on a creaky wheel, or liniment on a sore joint. Eases the rub, that's all; reduces the wear and tear.”

By now they were clear of the pokeweed wilderness and walking across a stretch of swampy pastureland. Oliver looked back at the weeds.

“Must be about a million of those plants back there. I thought I was lost for keeps,” he said.

“Yes, the rains this summer,” said the lady. “I never saw them quite so tall and thick before. In the spring when they're tiny little shoots I come and cut them and boil them for my supper; they're like asparagus then—”

“But poisonous,” cried Oliver.

“The root, only, and later on the berries. A lot of weeds are good to eat. Purslane's delicious in a salad.”

“
That
stuff?” said Oliver in disbelief. Purslane persistently invaded every garden he had ever had: a mean weed, he thought, with many little fat stems that broke off in your hand when you started to pull, leaving the root intact beneath the earth. “I didn't think that stuff was good for anything but discouragement.”

“Nearly every weed is good for something. Some for medicine and some for dye and some for food. Nettles are very nice to eat, cooked, of course, and sorrel makes the best soup in the world. A man doesn't really need to make a garden, at all, for the garden is already here.”

“Well,” said Oliver. He could not imagine eating nettles. Or purslane, either. Still, he was interested, and he liked his new companion. “My name is Oliver Melendy,” he told her, as though making her a present of his name.

“And mine is Bishop,” said the lady. “Louisianna Bishop.”

They were ascending another wooded slope, and soon they came to a cleared space, a woodpile, and a sleeping garden, and in the middle stood Miss Bishop's house. It was little; just the right size for her, Oliver thought. It had a roof as steep as a clown's hat, and smoke was coming out of the chimney like a tall feather. In every window plants were blossoming and growing, and he knew that in the summer the garden must be a fine one.

“Come in, Oliver, and have a cup of tea,” she invited. “And I've got a fruitcake here.”

Much as he wished to stop, Oliver felt he had no time to waste.

“I'm on an errand for my sister,” he said. “Kind of.”

“Oh, in that case—” Miss Bishop opened the back door, took the branches from him and put them in a pail. Many cats rose up to meet her.

“These are Pawpaw and Trundle and Sammy and Aunt Belle,” said Miss Bishop formally. “Tell me, Oliver, where are you going, on this errand?”

“Well, gee, I don't know myself exactly,” Oliver admitted unhappily. “All I know is it's someplace to the west, and I've just got to get it done now, today, because I don't ever, ever want to go through that mess of pokeweed again.”

Miss Bishop was nice. She did not question or exclaim at this peculiar information. “Come with me,” she said. “I'll let you out the front door and you'll be on the road; it goes west. When you start back, you can just come back along it, past my house and down to the next road. Then turn right, and you'll be home in no time.”

Her little parlor was cozy. The pictures on the walls were thick as barnacles, and everything had a cover on it: the upright piano, the round tables, the backs and arms of chairs. The windows were covered, too, with many plants that had fancy blossoms shaped like pocketbooks and earrings.

“Can I come back again?” said Oliver. “I want to look around,” he added candidly.

“Please promise to,” Miss Bishop said cordially. “I'll show you the collection of pressed flowers that my grandma made, and the moss-gardens I keep all winter. I'll make Sammy do his tricks for you.”

They went out the front door and along the path to the front gate. Beyond it Oliver noticed that the mailbox, like several others in the region, was planted in a milkpail full of earth. The name Bishop was stenciled on its side.…

Oliver turned suddenly. “Miss Bishop!” he cried. “Is a bishop what you'd call a prelate?”

“Is a—why, yes, Oliver, I think so. Why?”

“Part of this errand for my sister—gee, thanks a million!” said Oliver, rushing through the gate. Then he returned. “Someday I'll tell you all about it. Okay?”

“Okay,” said little Miss Bishop, smiling at him.

He was hot on the scent, all right. Thirty yards farther on he was not at all surprised to find a tin sign nailed to the trunk of a large oak:

    
Drink Crown

    
The beer without a peer.

Yes, he was hot on the scent; but it was starting to get dark, now, and where was the nymph? Where was the garden with the purse of gold? When he came to the Addisons' mailbox he was surprised. They never entered that farm by the front entrance, always approaching it by a shorter way: the back road that brought them up by the barn and outbuildings where business was always going on between men, horses, cows, pigs, machinery, and chickens. Oliver loved that farm and its activities. He was not used to the front entrance with its wire gate, neat white-legged mailbox, and two huge soft maples. Already, in the house, the lights were on. Someone was moving to and fro in the kitchen. Oliver felt lonesome all at once and a little discouraged; it was too late to go on searching. He had failed. Sighing, he walked up the path to the farmhouse door and knocked; he might as well stop and say hello, anyway.

Daphne Addison opened the door, releasing a smell of cooking and a lot of noise.

“Why, Oliver! Hello. Come on in.”

She was a nice girl, Daphne; calm and rosy-cheeked and pleasant.