The Ghost Belonged to Me (6 page)

When I called out from the pavilion top, Bub walked right up to us and spoke without preamble, as the saying goes.

“My pa is took especially bad,” he said to me. “And Ma told me to skin over here and get word to your pa that he'll be off work for several days.”

“Is he barkin' in his bed again?” Uncle Miles wanted to know.

Bub shook his head and fidgeted. “Worse,” he said. “He's out in the creek bottoms crashin' through the underbrush and actin' wild.”

“Had we ought to send out a party and bring him in?” Uncle Miles asked.

“No, nothin' comes of tryin' to deal with him when he goes off wavin' his stump and cussin' the streetcar company. Better to let him run loose till he comes to himself.”

Uncle Miles nodded. And I told Bub I'd get word to Dad. Then Bub went on his way, heavy-laden with troubles. “A pitiful situation,” Uncle Miles said, “and no two ways about it.”

Then we turned back to our handiwork, the pavilion, which was up and looking very stylish but bare.

“The wonder is,” said Uncle Miles, “that Luella—your maw—don't command a stand of rose bushes to grow up around that thing in time for the party.” Then he marched off and untied Nelly Melba from the hitching post, climbed in his buggy, and was gone.

When Gladys called me in to noon dinner, I found Mother and Lucille making a whole batch of paper roses. They were at the dining-room table rolling up pink and green crepe paper and were in a fine old sweat. “These are to be stuck in the sides of the trelliswork on the pavilion, Alexander,” Mother said, waving a rose at me but never looking up.

They were cutting it pretty fine with those paper flowers, since the company for the party was due in three hours. But I guess with all the things they had to do, they'd naturally be working at something right down to the wire.

“As quick as you've had something to eat,” Mother said, “I want you to arrange these roses on the pavilion and not just any old way. Put them in nice and don't bother about the back wall which won't show. It doesn't look like rain, does it?”

Lucille moaned. She was sitting there rolling up roses that looked like a lot of wadded paper to me. Her hair was done special, high on her head, and she was wearing her old wrapper. The ribbons on her corsets were poking out from her busts. I knew she hadn't eaten anything since Friday noon in order to get into her coming-out dress.

I had my dinner off the sideboard. And before I finished it, Mrs. Wysock came in the room, holding up Lucille's dress which was a mass of roses and ribbons. Mrs. Wysock is the dressmaker and usually pretty quick with her mouth. But she was keeping silent that day because she knew any little thing could set Lucille off into hysterics. She was right there on the edge.

Mrs. Wysock wanted to know where she could put the dress so it would hold its shape till time to put Lucille in it. Mother studied a while and then remembered her old dress form. And so she sent me to the barnloft to fetch it, though she had to tell me twice.

Venturing up the barnloft at high noon should not have been any big event for me. Still, I had to reason with myself somewhat. And just as I got to the barn doors, a cloud came across the sun that worried me worse than it would Lucille. It was like evening on the steps. I pushed the loft door open and made a quick grab at the dress form without looking around any.

But out of the corner of my eye I saw a girl's green skirt-tails brush across the floor and whisk into a corner behind a pile of boxes. I knocked the dress form down instead of getting a grip on it. When I reached down to pick it up, I figured Blossom was hiding up there and had nipped out of sight.

I'd wanted to think right along that Blossom passed her time up there. But I didn't stay to flush her out. If I'd caught a glimpse of her face, it might have been different. But as it was, I decided to leave and think about it.

So I hightailed it back to the house with the dress form, which was bigger than I was and shapelier.

I knew this party meant I'd have to take a bath and put on a high-collared shirt. So I took my time poking the roses into the pavilion and setting up a plank table in there for the punch bowl. Every once in a while, I'd glance up to the barn window, but it seemed to be blank. I was trying to think of something smart I could do to let Blossom know I was on to her. When I was down to my last paper rose, the idea came tome.

I went up to the house for a pencil and a piece of paper from Gladys's grocery pad. The kitchen was full of big trays of small iced cakes with sugar roses on them. There was a dusky-looking woman with gold crosses hanging down from her ears. She was arranging the cakes on platters. She shot me a narrow look from her black eyes but never said anything.

I printed a note very careful on the top sheet of the pad. Then I ripped it off and ran down to the barn with it and the rose. This time I pounded up the stairs, making extra noise. Right in the middle of the floor up there where it couldn't be missed, I laid the rose down and the note with it. This is what it said:

I was pretty sure Blossom would rise to that. And if she had any good sportsmanship about her, she'd wear the rose tucked in her shirtwaist Monday at school. I was well pleased with myself for this cleverness.

 

 

 

 

N
obody had told me I was to pass the refreshments at this event. Mother saved that news till the last minute. Then she poured salt into the wound by hauling out a Buster Brown collar and told me I was to put on my Sunday knicker suit including the coat. Which is wool.

Mother's idea was for us all to receive the guests on the porch and then invite them to wander down to the pavilion where they'd refresh themselves with fruit punch and cakes.

Down there Cousin Elvera Schumate was to ladle the punch into little cups. And I was to circulate, offering seconds on the cakes. The reason I had to do this, said Mother, was that neither Gladys nor the extra help were presentable enough to be seen. She must have made this known in the kitchen, too, because Gladys was out there pining away with her feelings seriously hurt.

We began to assemble on the front porch before three o'clock because company in Bluff City are always right there on the dot if they're coming at all.

Dad said he was going to have one of his Antonio y Cleopatra cigars as we were on the porch, not in the house. Mother said he wasn't. She asked him how he thought she looked, and he stepped back to get a good view of her. She was uninterrupted ruffles with up at her throat a cameo as big as a saucer. Dad told her she looked just like the girl he'd married in 1892. So then she let him smoke his cigar but told him to flip his ash over the porch balustrade.

Lucille banged through the screen door, all in pale pink, carrying a bouquet of rosebuds with streamers. She was very low-necked and the top part of her outfit moved up and down with her breathing.

Mother told her she looked just like the duchess of York, but younger. Lucille returned the compliment by remarking that Mother looked just like Queen Alexandra, but younger. And Dad wondered aloud what was wrong with good American people.

“You look right miserable, Dad,” I told him.

“So do you, Alexander, but younger,” he replied.

The first person up the lane was Cousin Elvera Schumate. You could see her at quite a distance. There was a glass-eyed bird on her hat ready to take flight. She carried a walking stick with a tassle, though she is in no way lame.

When she drew nigh the porch, she looked up and said, “Well, if you four aren't a fine-looking group of people suitable to receive anybody!”

Mother told her to join us on the porch before she had to ladle punch because she was family too.

At the stroke of three an automobile turned out of Pine Street and came up the lane at a stately pace.

“Dear Lord,” said Mother, “That is the Van Deeters' limousine. Lucille, you have arrived.”

Lucille was interested, but her mind was more on the Hacketts, on account of Tom. But getting the Van Deeters was icing on the cake.

So it was a bad moment when the limousine drew up to the porch steps with no Van Deeters in the back seat. The chauffeur, who wore gaiters, hopped out and darted up the steps to Mother, tipped his cap, and said, “Mrs. Van Deeter sends her compliments and a note.” He was back in the driver's seat before Mother could get her fingers to work open the envelope:

Inside was a letter from Mrs. Van Deeter regretting that she had a previous engagement and wishing Lucille well. That was the only time I ever heard my Mother blaspheme, though it was only a small oath at that. And it was directed against Uncle Miles, not any of the Van Deeters.

By then, though, people were beginning to straggle up the lane, some horsedrawn and some by automobile. The younger ones of Lucille's crowd came on foot. Lucille waved her bouquet at them until Mother told her not to.

It seemed like the lawn just filled up with people all of a sudden. As they mounted the porch steps and passed along us, Mother would say, “You know our daughter, Lucille, of course.” And everybody agreed.

Mother had to look at Lucille severely pretty often because she kept craning her neck trying to catch sight of the Hacketts. Lucille even took to whispering to me, though she is not in the habit of confiding in my direction.

“I know Tom's coming,” she muttered, “because he gave me his word on it. But if his folks come too, then that's a sign they know he and I are—serious and they put their stamp of approval on it.”

I was not sure I followed Lucille's reasoning, since people have been known to attend a party out of nothing but curiosity. But I supposed she had it all worked out in her own mind.

Mother was surveying the crowd pretty sharp too and would occasionally poke Dad and say things like, “Here come the Breckenridges and there are the Hochhuths behind them, so be on your best behavior.” But Dad is pretty much on the same kind of behavior regardless of the company he's in.

Mother gave me the nod to start around the crowd with the iced cakes. I was just heading down off the porch when a big white and gold automobile turned into the lane. When it got closer, Dad said, “Why that's a new six-cylinder Coey Flyer touring barouche.” When it got closer still Mother said, “Dear Lord, it's the Hacketts.” When it rolled to a stop, Lucille sagged. In it was Mr. and Mrs. Hackett, but not Tom.

“Hey there, Joe!” Mr. Hackett called out to Dad from the lane.

And Dad said, “Hey there, Walter,” back to him. But when Mrs. Hackett climbed down out of the Coey Flyer, she kept her head over on one side and seemed not to take too much notice of anything. She wasn't dressed quite like the other women. She had on a big hat, though it was plain, and she carried a little tiny pocketbook on a chain.

“Oh, I guess that dress came from Chicago. It's very smart,” Mother whispered sadly. And she made a gesture like she was trying to flatten out some of her ruffles.

Dad and Mr. Hackett go back a long way together as they pointed out to each other. But Mrs. Hackett was quite cool and passed off the porch with record speed, just glancing into Lucille's bouquet and smiling a small amount. Mother told me to conduct her personally down to the pavilion and Cousin Elvera. Mrs. Hackett took my arm and nodded a bit to people we passed. She asked me if I thought this was an amusing party, to which I didn't know how to reply. It was about to get amusing, but I did not foresee that.

Dad and Mr. Hackett were old friends together. It wasn't long before they had their coats off and their cuffs turned back to poke around under the hood of the Hacketts' new Coey Flyer.

I was in front of the snowball bushes by the porch trying hard to rid myself of the rest of the cakes. I heard a rustling down near the ground. The thought of Trixie came to me, so I set the cake platter on the grass and parted the branches.

There was a quaint face looking out at me from under the porch, but it wasn't Trixie's. It was Blossom's. She was hunkered down out of sight, having a view of people's feet.

“You are everywhere at once, aren't you, Blossom?” I said to her. We were both down on our knees and nose to nose.

“I just wanted to have a look at what was going on,” said Blossom, “and kindly don't tell my mama.” Then she darted a look past me at the platter of cakes.

“How would I have the chance to do that?”

“Well,” she said, “she's working out in your kitchen this afternoon, piling the cakes on the trays.” So then I knew who the woman was with the gold crosses in her ears who looked at me with the same black eyes as Blossom's. And that was the same woman who said I was receptive to the Spirit World. It worried me somewhat. I offered Blossom the tray and she helped herself to three cakes, which cleaned me out.

She commenced to nibble around one of the sugar roses and before I could back out of the bushes darted her face forward and gave me a thank-you kiss on the mouth. It took me by surprise and had a strawberry flavor.

My luck being what it is, Lucille was mounting the porch steps just then and had a clear view of this business behind the bushes. Looking down, she said very haughty, “Alexander! How disgusting and at my party too!”

So I told her that what I was doing under the porch was not a patch on what she did
on
the porch with Tom Hackett. Which set her face to crumpling, since Tom had not yet shown up.

As I was exiting from the snowball bushes, I saw a young fellow approaching the house on foot, but it wasn't Tom. This fellow was dressed like the rest in a stiff straw hat and a whip-cord suit. But he was tending to drag his feet along the lane, and I could not place him.