The Book of Bright Ideas (27 page)

I didn't know where I'd be the scaredest—pressed up against that old house where Fossard had shot his dog and his wife, or standing in the open, where his ghost roamed at night, walking straight toward me, scraping that shovel against the ground even if I couldn't hear it with the storm so noisy.

And then I remembered what Tommy said. He said that after Fossard built the shelter, the fear of being stuck in it if a bomb came down was so bad that he shot his dog and his wife and hanged himself. I didn't know if Tommy was telling the truth about why Fossard built the shelter, or why he killed them all, but when I started to hear scraping noises that could have come from a shovel, I decided real fast that I was gonna believe what he said about Hiram walking like a ghost because he was too afraid to go under the ground.

I turned to get out of the clearing and scooted down the hill, my shoes slippery on the wet grass, determined to find the shelter and hide in it till morning. The air was pitch-dark in the woods, even with the sky flashing, especially in the dippy part, so that my hands and my feet had to be my eyes again.

I cried out when my hands bumped into wood too flat to be a tree. My fingers fumbled to see what I was touching. I felt the wood strips on each side of the flat wood and a sliver that jabbed into my hand when I rubbed it. I pushed on the flat part, and the wood gave way, creaking as it opened. Tommy had said Fossard's shelter was cut into the side of a hill, underneath a thick patch of red pine. I looked up and saw the dark ridge of a hill above the door, and thick streaks that had to be trees, just like Tommy had said, and I knew that I'd just found Hiram Fossard's bomb shelter.

25

I lurched forward and shoved the door open. I stepped inside. The bomb shelter smelled like dirt and mold. I stood just inside the door. I was afraid of what was in front of me, and I was afraid of what was to the sides of me, but I was even more afraid of what was behind me. I moved deeper inside, spreading my arms wide as I felt for something, anything, but all I could feel was air.

I took a couple of steps to my right, my hand reaching till it bumped up against something and stopped. I'd learned to spell the word
mason
by running my fingers over the letters on the jars Aunt Verdella had out while she was canning green beans, so when my hand felt dusty, rounded glass with snaky lumps swirling in the same pattern, I knew I was touching jars of canned goods. I felt the whole row of mason jars, and the wooden shelf they were sitting on. I fumbled beneath the shelf and let my fingers trace the wooden rim of what I decided was a rain barrel.

I turned and took a couple more steps and figured I was in the middle of the room, because my toes or hands weren't bumping up against anything. I didn't like that feeling. I walked crooked, not on purpose but because it's hard to walk straight when you can't see, and I whacked my leg on something that was real hard. I reached out but felt nothing, so I bent over. It was a damp, thin mattress sitting on a low, metal frame that I'd bumped up against. And that's when I heard something I
knew
was Fossard's ghost!

I didn't think. I just moved. I slammed down on the floor and scooted myself under the cot. A spring grabbed at my hair and cobwebs clung to my wet face. The door started to creak and I slid myself over until I bumped against a wall. Every bit of me, from my feet up to the top of my ouching head, was shaking.

It's funny—but not in a funny sort of way—how lots of times when you get in a bad fix, you don't do what you thought you'd do at all. When Winnalee and me talked about going to see the fairies, sometimes I'd picture us lost in the woods or trapped in Fossard's bomb shelter. And every time I thought of this happening, I saw us both so terrified that all we could do was scream like Fay Wray in that King Kong movie Aunt Verdella once let me stay up late to watch, even though she was afraid it would give me nightmares. But when it happened for real, and I found myself huddled under a stinky bed in Fossard's shelter, ghosty voices coming from outside the doorway, I didn't scream at all. I just laid there all tucked up small, my hands clamped over my mouth, and I shook, and I stared hard into the darkness, and nothing came out of my mouth at all. Not even a breath. Not even when the door opened with a squeak and a clunk, and a stream of light jabbed inside.

I clamped my eyes shut, but I could still see some light flashing through my lids. “Shit, they're not in here.” It was Freeda's voice! I pressed my toes against the floor to scoot myself out, then stopped when I heard my ma's voice. “I'm gonna give her the spanking of her life when I find her! I can't believe she'd run off like this! She knows better!” I'd never heard my ma so mad in her whole life.

“Shit, I'm wet!” Freeda said, as the murky beam from the flashlight zigzagged across the walls. “How far did we walk in that goddamn rain, anyway? Had to have been at least a good mile or more. Dammit.”

“We should have taken my car, not Verdella's,” Ma said. “Verdella said yesterday that it was making strange noises, and she hoped she could remember to have Rudy look at it.”

Freeda cussed a few more times, then she said, “There's a candle. Look for matches, will you, Jewel? This flashlight's starting to fade.”

There was a quiet sizzle noise, then the tiny room lit with soft flickering light. “Damn,” Freeda said. “I don't know where else to look. The goddamn house is boarded shut…unless they found a way inside.”

I could see the legs of a chair, now that the room had some light in it, and I could see Ma and Freeda's legs and their shoes and hear the squishy sounds their footsteps made. Ma's legs backed up to the chair and she sat down with a sigh. “I can't believe this,” she said. “Evelyn's never done something like this before. I'm so worried about those kids, Freeda.”

Freeda's legs scissored across the floor as she paced. “Do you suppose Button told Winnalee about Ma showing up? God, do you suppose? What if Winnalee talked Button into running away? They could be anywhere!”

“I don't think so,” Ma said. “You heard Tommy. He said they'd been planning all summer to come here and look for fairies. No doubt they left after Button went to sit with Winnalee.”

“But Button heard, Jewel. She was there when Ma showed up, and Verdella told her to go over to my place.” Freeda's hands came down hard to her sides, and the slap her hands made against her wet clothes sounded sharp. “I can't believe Winnalee would run off, though, with her foot hurting. I had to carry her into the bathroom to pee before I left, for crissakes.”

Freeda paced back and forth a few more times, her wet shoes leaving dark smudges on the floorboards. “I wish to hell we knew what was going on. Tommy's sure they headed here, but I just don't know.”

“If they came here, they headed through the woods, like Tommy said. Let's just hope they got scared when the storm started and headed back to Verdella's, or that the men have found them by now and they're safe and sound. I guess we'll know as soon as they figure out that we should have been back by now and come looking for us. They know we headed here.”

“Shit!” Freeda said again. “What a day this has been. Rushing Winnalee to the doctor; my ma showing up here; the girls running off and getting lost. Jesus H. Christ! And if Button told her about Ma…” The springs above me squealed as Freeda sat down, her butt sinking the cot so low that the springs touched my back. I laid as flat as I could so I wouldn't get squished.

“I shouldn't have lied to her. Ma might have been a bitch to me, but she was good to Winnalee. It was like she'd used up every bit of madness she had in her on me and so Winnalee was spared. That kid didn't know me, except for what Ma told her, and none of that was good, I'm sure, so I knew she wouldn't go with me unless she thought she had no choice.”

They stopped talking for a bit, and all I heard was the sound of my own breathing. Quiet, short puffs that landed on the wood plank just an inch from my mouth and stirred dust that floated up my nose. Afraid I'd sneeze, I turned my head sideways and pressed my cheek to the floor.

There was nothing I wanted more in the world than to crawl out from under that cobwebby, smelly hiding place and have Ma wrap her arms around me. But I couldn't make myself do it. Not when there was still mad in her voice, and not after I'd waited so long that she'd be madder still to know that I stayed hidden, being all ears. I didn't know what to do, so I decided to stay tucked underneath the cot until I figured that out.

“She's not going to understand why I lied, Jewel. When I told Ma that I wanted my daughter back, and she told me that I didn't deserve her because of the kind of mother I'd be, I just lost it. I suppose I conjured up that lie because at that time I was wishing she
was
dead. I didn't mean to hurt Winnalee though. I just wanted to get her out of there quick.”

“Oh, Freeda,” Ma said.

“I was barely sixteen when I had Winnalee. Just a kid. A scared, screwed-up kid. When I was in labor with her, they had to give me ether to knock me out because I wouldn't stop screaming. And I wasn't screaming just because of the pain either. I was screaming because I was scared shitless. They held her up to show her to me, and I started puking as much from fear as from the ether. There she was, her scalp still chalky, blood on her, looking so small and helpless, and all I could think was, ‘What in the hell am I supposed to do with her?' I lost it, Jewel. I did! I didn't hardly know how to take care of myself, for crissakes! What in the hell was I gonna do with a little baby?”

“Wouldn't your ma have given you a hand, Freeda?” Ma asked.

Freeda grunted that kind of grunt that means, “What? Are you crazy?” Then she said, “I'd dropped out of school when I started showing and sat home for a good four months. I thought I'd lose my mind, sitting in that house with that woman preaching at me. The thought of spending the rest of my life sitting stuck out on that farm, taking care of a kid with that fat ass harping at me, about sent me up the wall.

“Course, when I left, I didn't plan to be gone for so long. I was just gonna catch a ride with this young guy who was making a run to Chicago. He said he'd be swinging back through Hopested in a few days, and I'd planned to come back with him. My last hurrah, you know? But, shit, before he could even turn his car around and point it north, I was gone.”

“You were just a kid, Freeda. A scared kid.”

“Ah, shit, that's no excuse, and you know it as well as I do.” Freeda got up and started shuffling across the small floor again. “One week dragged into another. Then a whole year had passed. I told myself I'd go get her when I turned eighteen, but by then I was waitressing, living in some dump with a couple of losers, and barely making ends meet. I couldn't support a baby. Then one year turned into two, then three, then four. I felt guilty, of course, but at the same time, I felt some comfort in knowing that the kid was at least being fed and clothed.

“I was twenty-one when I learned that my uncle Dewey had moved back in with Ma. I didn't think about the money, the dump I was living in, or anything but getting my kid out of that house and away from him. I jumped into my old clunker, and I drove back to Hopested, hoping to God that I wasn't too late and that that worthless, sick son of a bitch hadn't touched her yet. If he had, I swear to God, I would have taken a gun and killed him.”

“Oh, Freeda. I didn't know about your uncle,” Ma said. She sounded teary.

“Yeah, well, water under the bridge at this point, I guess. The important part is that I got there before that bastard could do to her what he'd done to me.”

Freeda was crying, softly, and maybe Ma too. “You know what's the goddamn truth, Jewel? That if it hadn't been for hearing that Dewey was back, I probably wouldn't have gone for her.”

“Of course you would have,” Ma said. “As soon as you grew up a bit more.”

“No,” Freeda said. “I wouldn't have. As much as I loved her and thought about her, I wouldn't have gone back, because I knew I was no good for her.”

“Oh, Freeda, don't say that!” Ma sat down on the mattress next to Freeda, and I did my best to make myself bunny-pancake flat.

“It's true. I'm all fucked up, Jewel. You know it's true. I spread my legs for anyone who wants me to spread them, and I don't even know why. What I do know, though, is that it ain't good for Winnalee. Neither is all the moving around I've put her through, trying to stay ahead of Ma, or Dewey, or maybe the lie I told her itself. I don't know, but I just can't put down roots. I feel safer this way, somehow. Like a moving target, I guess.”

“You want to hear something that might make you feel a little better, Freeda? When I first met Winnalee, I told myself that I didn't like her because she was so undisciplined. But you know what the truth was? I didn't like her because looking at her made me feel sorry for Evelyn.”

My insides stiffened when Ma said this, sure that what she was gonna say next was that looking at Winnalee made her feel sorry for me because I was ugly.

“You shittin' me? Why?”

“Because I could tell that no matter how unstable—tragic even—her life had been, she still felt secure because she felt loved and accepted. And I knew Evelyn didn't feel the same. I guess in a way that's why you bothered me too. Because even though it was obvious to me that you had your demons, at least you didn't feel like you had to apologize or hide who you were and how you felt.”

“Hell, you probably rubbed me the wrong way for the same reasons,” Freeda said. “You had a grip on all the things I didn't. Like I needed more reminders of how many things I was failing at! Shit, though, at least your kid knows where home is.”

Freeda got up. She sighed. “Crissakes, our kids are only nine years old, and already we've got regrets. How damn bad is it gonna be by the time they're grown?”

Ma and Freeda laughed together then, though their laughter had a lot of sad in it.

“It's all guesswork, isn't it, when you don't have a decent blueprint to follow?” Freeda said.

“Tell me about it,” my ma said.

Freeda went to the door and peered out. “It seems to be letting up some now. Christ, where are they?” I didn't know if she meant me and Winnalee, or Daddy and Uncle Rudy.

For a minute I couldn't hear nothing but the patter of rain outside the shelter door, then Freeda spoke. “Having someone mess with you when you're little, it screws a person up, Jewel. Bad. It took me a long time to get past that. Hell, I suppose in reality, I ain't over it yet, because I still do things that I don't understand, but at least I can stomach looking at myself now. And at least I'm trying my damnedest with Winnalee now.”