What Came From the Stars (11 page)

Mrs. Lumpkin drove away very quickly.

The Peppers went back to cleaning their house.

By the end of the week, the Peppers had replaced the smashed windows—no need to fit the new screens until next summer—and cleared out the broken furniture and brought in new beds and dressers for Tommy and Patty and repaired the kitchen table and three of the chairs, and they were only a little tippy. They’d hung a new front door and the wall in the hall had new sheetrock and was spackled and primed and ready for painting. Tommy asked for pale yellow—his mother’s favorite color. And there was a new chair in the empty living room and their father had guessed they needed some paintings for the walls since they looked pretty bare and Patty had nodded and smiled and he had set up his easel. He had gotten one or two ideas after he saw Tommy’s chain, he said, but in three days he finished seven seascapes—with lots of green and lots of silver—four for their walls, three for the Plymouth Fall Festival. One of them had two suns. “Just a crazy idea,” said Tommy’s father.

Tommy smiled. They weren’t thrimble, he thought—but pretty close.

They
were
illil.

On Saturday, Tommy’s father bought the pale yellow paint. He did the close brushwork around all the edges in the hall while Tommy watched, fingering the warm chain. Walls are supposed to be flat, but this was an old house and Tommy could see this wall wasn’t even close to flat. It leaned in a little bit at the top and leaned out a little bit at the bottom. And there were ten, twenty, a hundred places where the wall bumped up, a thousand places where it nicked in. And Tommy had never noticed before, but there was a curve to it. If he looked with his head cocked to one side, the wall had a horizon.

His father poured the pale yellow paint into a pan and gave Tommy a roller to finish the hall while he went into the kitchen to see what could be done about the ruined cabinets. Tommy stepped back and looked at the bumps and nicks arranging themselves together across the horizon. He thought he might ... Well, he wasn’t sure what he might do.

But the chain was very warm.

He ran the roller into the pan with the pale yellow paint.

He looked at the wall again.

Then he began to roll the paint across the hallway wall. He finished quickly so that the whole hall was a pale yellow.

Then he began again—his chain was almost hot. He felt the way the wall curved, its bumps, its nicks. He pushed harder on the roller, lighter, then along the roller’s edges, quickly, slowly, and then barely touching at all—the lightest whisper of pale yellow paint.

When Patty came out into the hall—she’d been sorting all the books that hadn’t been stained green back onto the shelves their father had put up again—she looked at the pale yellow walls. She squinted a little, then tilted her head, then leaned back. Then she smiled, smiled, smiled.

“Do you like it?”

Patty put her arms around Tommy’s waist.

Their father glanced into the hall as he was carrying out the last box of shattered dishware.

It was a good thing that it was only shattered dishware in the box.

“Tommy,” he said. He squinted a little, then tilted his head. “Tommy, how did you do this?”

“I remembered,” said Tommy.

His father put his hand to his face. He reached up and almost touched the wall. Then he stood back. “You remembered,” he whispered.

He went outside. Tommy and Patty followed him.

They sat on the dune, a surprisingly warm breeze coming up from the sea. The long grasses were bobbing back and forth to each other, carrying the day’s news as they do. Quiet seagulls hove to, their faces in the breeze, their eyes half closed, dropping down suddenly onto the planet when it suited them. Some jellyfish washed up and shimmering eerily beyond the sea reach. The salty wind. The cool, clean damp everywhere.

And on the sandy dune, the three Peppers sitting close, crying a little—a good crying. Remembering the way she held her head, the way she moved her hands, how easily she cried, how easily she laughed.

And inside, in the hall, pictures of Tommy Pepper’s mother in pale yellow hints on pale yellow walls.

Thrimble and illil.

It hardly seemed that anyone in Plymouth should have been in the mood for the Plymouth Fall Festival. But as the farmers’ market brought in yellow gourds and gallons of apple cider, and as the winds turned and the first frosts of the season laced the windowpanes, Plymouth felt that autumn would be lost if folks never had a chance to walk the 4-H stalls and smear cotton candy over their faces and cheer the tractor pulls and ride the Tilt-a-Whirl and eat footlong boiled hot dogs and elephant ears.

So on the last Saturday of October, Tommy and Patty and their father—who was carrying three of the seascapes—weren’t the only ones who got to the fairgrounds early to watch the sows get their pre-judging milk baths, to see the great horses have their manes braided before the parades, to whistle as the giant pumpkins got weighed, to walk between the cages of the quick-eyed rabbits and the scatterbrained chickens and the white ducks with their startling orange bills. Everywhere there was the smell of sawdust and frying oil and good clean manure—except in the Big Tent, where the pies and jams scented the closed air with nutmeg and cinnamon—and everywhere the barkers were calling out, inviting them to try their luck on the Wheel of Chance, to have their fortunes read, to choose from among the Oriental glass beads brought back from deepest Asia, to win a giant panda by making three only three that’s right just three baskets in a row, to see the one the only the original Cardiff Giant, the greatest hoax of all time!

They met Alice Winslow around ten o’clock and she hugged Patty and told her that she would braid her hair if she wanted and Patty nodded and they found a bench near to the Musical Stage and close enough to the food booths that they could get a hot elephant ear and watch the acts while Mr. Pepper went to the seascape painting exhibit. Mr. Pepper gave them a bunch of tokens and said they’d meet again right at noon, okay? By the apple pie booth? Patty would stay close to her brother? Promise? Good.

Alice Winslow and Tommy and Patty had eaten five elephant ears between them—which they figured was probably more than they should have—and heard the Foxboro Fiddlers perform with their star fiddler fiddling behind his back, and the Andrews Sisters Redux sing a medley of World War II top hits, before James Sullivan found them.

“Am I too late?” he said.

“For what?” said Tommy.

“Belknap.”

They looked at him.

“Belknap is playing today.”

“Playing what?” said Tommy.

“His accordion.”

“In front of everyone?” said Alice Winslow.

“No, he’s going to wait until everyone leaves,” said James Sullivan.

“That might not be a bad idea,” said Tommy.

Patty hit him on the shoulder.

“That’s right,” said James Sullivan. “Hit him again.”

Patty might have hit him again if a guy wearing a gold-sequined coat hadn’t come on stage and announced Pat Bellnip and His Sweet-Singing Toe-Stomping Dance-Making Accordion playing a Medley of American Folk Songs, and Patrick Belknap, wearing a black cowboy hat, stepped out onto the stage.

Alice Winslow said, “Oh my goodness.”

They could tell he was nervous, slinging his accordion around. His eyes were blinking—a lot. And his cheeks were bright red. His mouth was open as if he was sucking air.

But then he started in on the Medley of American Folk Songs.

Tommy had to admit, he wasn’t half bad. But the people around the stage thought Pat Bellnip and His Sweet-Singing Toe-Stomping Dance-Making Accordion were great. Some started stomping their toes, all right, and two couples got up close to the stage and began to dance, and then three couples, and then a whole lot more, and James Sullivan took Patty’s two hands and started to dance with her, and then what could Tommy do when Alice Winslow pulled him up and said she didn’t care if his hands were covered with cinnamon?

Tommy figured he’d have to punch Pat Bellnip in the face when this was all over.

Afterward, the Swampscott Barbershop Quartet took the stage, and Patrick Belknap climbed down and everyone clapped as he walked by—you could tell he liked that. He came over, and Alice Winslow told him he was great and James Sullivan and Tommy said he looked dumb in a cowboy hat. Patrick Belknap said he saw Pepper dancing with Alice Winslow and Tommy told him shut up and Alice Winslow asked why he hadn’t told them he would be playing and he said would
they
say anything if
they
were going to get on stage at the Plymouth Fall Festival? James Sullivan and Tommy both said not in a million years, and then they all decided to get elephant ears—even Tommy and Patty and Alice Winslow again—and Tommy said at least the hat was great and Patrick Belknap lifted it off his head and put it on Tommy. “Yours for the morning,” he said, and Tommy adjusted it so that it fit low over his eyes.

They bought the elephant ears and listened to the Swampscott Barbershop Quartet until they couldn’t take it anymore and then they walked out to the Midway and they each placed a quarter on a spin and Alice Winslow won a fuzzy white koala bear and gave it to Patty, who held it close. Then they all stood at a bar and fired water pistols into a clown’s mouth while the little ball rose on top of the clown’s head and Tommy won—because of his cowboy hat, said James Sullivan. So they used five tokens to play again and James Sullivan wore the cowboy hat this time and he won and said “I told you so” and so Tommy fired his water pistol at James Sullivan and James Sullivan fired his at Tommy and the guy behind the bar hollered at them and Tommy took the cowboy hat back.

But Tommy was pretty wet, and maybe that was why, when a barker hollered that they only had to pay three tokens to see the Cardiff Giant the Greatest Hoax of All Time, Tommy suddenly felt very, very cold.

Even though his chain had suddenly warmed.

“Come in, come in,” the barker called. He was a tall man, with shadows across his face. He wore a dark suit, and a dark shirt, and dark gloves. “Come in.” He looked at them. “Come in.”

They paid their tokens. They went into the tent.

Inside, the sawdust underfoot was worn down to furrows, and the sawdust in the air sifted through the shafts of sunlight the plastic tent windows let in. James Sullivan and Patrick Belknap and Alice Winslow and Tommy and Patty passed the poster displays—
THE CARDIFF GIANT!!! THE PETRIFIED MAN!!! A GIANT OF EARLIER TIMES
!!!—and then James Sullivan lifted the sheet that divided the outer tent from the inner tent.

The chain was hot.

“We shouldn’t be here,” said Tommy.

James Sullivan looked at him. “You scared, Pepper?”

Tommy was scared.

“No,” he said.

James Sullivan ducked through. Then Patrick Belknap. Then Alice Winslow.

Patty took Tommy’s hand, and they ducked in too. Tommy felt the dark close around them.

They were alone in the tent.

Tommy held Patty’s hand tightly.

Another thick layer of sawdust on this side of the tent, also furrowed, and a long trestle table with a rope strung around it to keep people back. And lying on the table, what looked like a stone man, long arms tight at its sides, face eroded away so that it was blank except for a mouth, long legs slightly apart, and looking like it weighed more than any of the giant pumpkins Tommy had seen being weighed.

Maybe it was the thick sawdust, or being inside the tent, or the dark, but everything was very quiet.

“Look how tall it is,” said James Sullivan. He was whispering.

Tommy felt the chain almost burn him.

Patrick Belknap leaned across the rope.

“Don’t touch it,” said Tommy.

Patrick Belknap looked at him. “It’s made out of stone,” he said slowly.

“Just don’t touch it.”

Patty tightened her hand in Tommy’s.

“It’s okay,” said Patrick Belknap, and he reached over and grabbed the giant’s foot. “It’s not alive, Pepper. It’s not going to move or anything.”

Of course it wasn’t going to move, thought Tommy. It was made of stone. It wasn’t alive.

“People once thought it was real,” said Alice Winslow.

“That’s why it’s called a hoax,” said James Sullivan.

But it did look real, thought Tommy. Very real.

The feet were too large. They could almost have been webbed. The legs had knees that came too low. The torso and chest were too thin, too long. The left hand hung down almost to its low knees. And its head was too large, and—

“Wouldn’t this look great in Mr. Burroughs’s room?” said James Sullivan.

Quickly, Tommy dropped Patty’s hand and went around to the other side of the stone man.

“The William Bradford Elementary School Giant,” said Patrick Belknap.

Tommy looked closely in the dark.

The right hand was missing.

“Hey, Tommy...” said Alice Winslow.

“Quiet.”

They all looked at Tommy.

“Don’t say anything else.”

James Sullivan started to laugh. “Pepper, are you spooked?”

“We have to go meet our father,” said Tommy. He came back around and took Patty’s hand again.

“Pepper, what are you doing?”

Tommy took Patty out of the dark.

“Hey, Tommy. Hey, wait.”

But they didn’t wait.

They left the tent, and the shadowed barker—who was no longer hollering—watched them pass.

They met their father at the apple pie booth, but Tommy didn’t want any of the apple pie he’d bought. His father said maybe he’d eaten too many elephant ears?

Tommy said this was important and he should come with them to the Cardiff Giant tent and his father said he’d sold all three seascapes and Tommy said this was really, really important so could he come with them?

And his father looked at him and he dropped the apple pie on a bench and he took Patty’s hand. “Lead the way.”

So Tommy did, and when they got to the Cardiff Giant tent, the barker was gone.

“The tent’s closed,” said their father.

Tommy went in anyway.

His father and Patty came in behind him.