Rosetown

by Cynthia Rylant

  1

  Wings and a Chair Used Books was where Flora Smallwood’s mother worked three afternoons a week. Inside, it had a purple velveteen chair by the window for anyone who wanted to stay awhile, and Flora, who sometimes felt quite acutely the stress of being nine years old, and sensitive, loved this chair. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays were her favorite days because of it.

  The owner of the shop was Miss Meriwether, a tall woman with deep black hair pulled tightly into a ponytail. Miss Meriwether told Flora that in her younger days she had been a free spirit but that one day she’d decided to grow up and open a shop.

  Flora tried to imagine Miss Meriwether as a free spirit, but it wasn’t easy, as the words “inventory” and “bottom line” sometimes floated through the bookshop air as Flora sat reading. But Miss Meriwether did like long flowery skirts, so maybe she was still free in her heart.

  Flora’s family had been through a time of sadness, for their old, loving dog, Laurence, had passed away one spring night while everyone was sleeping. They all knew Laurence was fading. But no one believed, really, that he would ever not be with them anymore. Especially Flora, who had held on to his collar ever since she took her first steps.

  But he did: he left them. And since then the idea of a new family pet sometimes had been mentioned. Yet never followed through on. Everyone was, in some way, still holding on to Laurence’s collar.

  Flora was an only child, and her parents were, for now, living in separate homes. The challenges of this, of course, were many. And there was the practical challenge for Flora of having two homes, with her own bedroom in each, for since most things do not come in duplicate, often the one thing she needed right that minute was not in this home, it was in the other. Sometimes the thing was not that important, as in the case of her green scarf or striped coat. But sometimes even something small like that—a scarf or a coat—suddenly felt so vital to her, and she felt a great sad longing because it was not in this home but the other one.

  Flora’s father, Forster Smallwood, worked for the Rosetown newspaper, The Rosetown Chronicle, and he was, Flora thought, a nice man, a good father, and a lost soul. She was not sure why she thought he was lost. Maybe it was the look she often saw on his face, that look that detached him from wherever he was and whatever he was doing and put him somewhere else. Maybe Neptune.

  But he was a good father and a good photographer, too. He often allowed Flora to stand with him in his darkroom to watch a photograph slowly come into being. Standing under the red glow of the darkroom light, Flora watched the blank photographic paper bathe in the pan of chemicals. And then the formerly invisible face of a person would begin to materialize on the wet paper, his features becoming clear and strong, like a ghost who has suddenly found teeth and eyes and ears and put them on.

  Both Flora’s father and mother had been very troubled by the war in Vietnam, and now American soldiers were being withdrawn from the fighting. Rosetown, Indiana, in 1972 was like any other small American town, its citizens sharply divided over the war and what it all had been about. Flora’s father once told her, when he was in a dark mood after the evening television news, “You were born into an angry world.”

  But then he had smiled, as if he realized how harsh this might have sounded, and he added, “Thank goodness you showed up just when we needed you.”

  It seemed to Flora that the purple velveteen chair by the window in Wings and a Chair Used Books was more important than ever these days. Laurence had passed on. Her scarves and coats were confused.

  And fourth grade at Rosetown Primary School was so very different from third.

  2

  What Flora noticed at once on the first day of fourth grade had been the sudden confidence all of the former third graders seemed to have found, and she wondered where they had found it. Nearly all of her classmates appeared to be taller, louder, stronger, and possessed of a sureness of opinion that had been entirely absent the year before. The stumblers, the wanderers, and the floaters of third grade had suddenly, mysteriously, found their feet. They weren’t afraid of school anymore. Or maybe of anything.

  All of this made Flora a little shy. She missed the uncertainty.

  Fortunately, a new and uncertain person had arrived in room 22, and with him Flora was beginning to build that precious thing called friendship.

  His name was Yury, which set him apart right away. His Eastern European name, combined with the burden of being the new boy, made Yury a very uncertain fourth-grade person indeed.

  He wore large round glasses, which made him look rather owl-like.

  And he was very smart, like an owl, beneath all of the new-boy uncertainty. Flora knew this right away because he was clever. Clever the way her father was clever. Yury could look at a situation and in one or two sentences say all that needed saying about it. But he shared his cleverness with only one person in fourth grade: Flora. He sat behind her in class, so it was easy for him to whisper to the back of her head. Yury whispered, Flora smiled, and the seeds of friendship were planted.

  They walked the same route after school three afternoons a week. Yury walked to his father’s office on State Street, and Flora walked to the bookshop on Main.

  Yury’s father was a doctor.

  “Do you help in the office?” Flora asked one day as they walked their route together.

  “My father has given me the job of making tea for everyone,” Yury answered.

  “Even for the patients?” asked Flora.

  “Yes,” said Yury. “It is healthy tea which is called Mo’s 24.”

  “That doesn’t sound very healthy,” said Flora. “It should be called Tea for Long Life.”

  “The 24 are twenty-four herbs,” explained Yury.

  “Well, then, who is Mo?” asked Flora.

  “Oh, he’s Curly’s brother,” said Yury, grinning.

  “He is not.” Flora laughed. “I didn’t know that the Three Stooges were popular in the Ukraine,” she said.

  “Even Ukrainians need their yuks,” said Yury.

  How strange, thought Flora, to be walking in Rosetown with a Ukrainian boy who served tea in a doctor’s office every afternoon, the doctor being his father.

  She had told Yury about Laurence’s passing. Yury had also said good-bye to an old pet, a cat whose name was Juliette, so he understood. Flora enjoyed Yury’s company, but she especially appreciated his compassion.

  When they reached the bookshop, Flora and Yury stood together in front of the window and inspected the week’s display.

  “I would like to go there,” Yury said, pointing to a book about Key West. “I would sail a sailboat.”

  “And follow an octopus,” said Flora.

  “To South America,” said Yury.

  “To find a town filled with . . . ,” Flora said, then waited for his answer.

  “Elephants,” finished Yury.

  “You could write a book about them, and Miss Meriwether could put it in this window,” said Flora.

  “And we could stand here on the sidewalk together and look at it,” Yury said.

  Flora smiled.

  She was starting to feel more certain, knowing Yury.

  3

  The days of a newspaper photographer in a small Indiana town were not often very exciting ones. But Flora’s father once told her that every now and then there was “something of the cosmic experience.” And on those occasions he liked to bring her along.

  But it also had to be a Saturday.

  Life did not often combine cosmic experiences with Saturdays in Rosetown, but on this particular Saturday it did. It was Flora’s weekend at the yellow house, so Flora’s father had to drive by and collect her.

  After he called, she waited by the mailbox for him. When he pulled up, Flora got into the front seat a
nd said, “What’s up, bud?”

  This was what she always said when her father invited her to come along on a job. It was a line from an old black-and-white movie they had once watched on television, about a newspaperman.

  “Wait and see,” her father said, which was what he always said.

  They drove past the city limits, across the wide flat landscape of tall grasses shimmering yellow under the September sun, until, in the distance, Flora could see flashing red lights.

  “It isn’t scary, is it?” she asked softly. The red lights could mean something hard and awful.

  “Oh no, dear,” said her father. “I would never take you to scary.”

  Flora let go a deep breath. Good.

  They pulled up behind a row of vehicles that included a police car, a TV news van, and a farmer on a tractor.

  Flora’s father smiled when he saw the tractor.

  “Of course there would be a farmer,” he said. “I love Indiana.”

  They parked and left their car, and soon the cosmic experience was right there in front of them.

  Sitting on the ground was a parachutist who had experienced a hard landing, injuring a foot. But he was not the cosmic experience.

  The cosmic experience was his parachuting companion, a little brown terrier wearing a red flight suit that was embroidered with one word: Zowie.

  “That’s Zowie,” said Flora’s father.

  Flora was thrilled. She had not expected to meet a little dog who jumped out of airplanes, attached to his owner.

  Zowie was sitting beside his adventurous owner as the policeman checked the condition of the young man’s foot.

  Zowie licked the policeman’s hand.

  “Zowie knows that’s a good guy,” said Flora.

  Her father nodded.

  “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll take some photos, and then I’ll ask if you can meet them.”

  Flora’s father did his work while she waited quietly, apart from the action. Then he leaned over and said something to the parachutist. The young man nodded, grinned, and then waved Flora over to where he and Zowie sat.

  Flora shyly went up to them. She said hello and asked if she could pet Zowie. The little dog danced around her feet.

  “Brave dog,” Flora said, smiling and petting his head.

  “The best friend I’ve ever had,” said the parachutist.

  Oh yes, thought Flora. Yes. She understood.

  On the drive back to Rosetown, Flora watched the dove-gray clouds move over the fields and farms. She looked toward the horizon dividing the brown soil from the blue sky. And deep inside she suddenly became aware of a feeling: expectation.

  Something new was coming. Or maybe someone new.

  She looked over at her father. Did he feel it too? But his eyes, she could tell, were work eyes. Already he was developing the photographs in his mind.

  The feeling was Flora’s alone. She wondered about it all the way home.

  4

  Indiana was a beautiful place for a girl to grow. Flora always knew this. Her mother called it “balance.”

  “There is balance here in Indiana,” Emma Jean Smallwood once said as they walked to the Windy Day Diner.

  Naturally, this was a very vague statement, but Flora thought she understood its meaning. It had something to do with the harmony between earth and sky, with the way four country roads would converge at a crossroads, with the symmetry of a white church in the center of town and the town streets making perfect right angles to it.

  Balance.

  Flora’s parents’ separating had put her decidedly off balance, yet the simple harmonies in the world around her helped keep her feeling safe.

  And she knew that her parents both loved her. And that each of them loved the other. Flora had never heard them fight. The feeling between them was not one of war. It was instead as if they had skipped the war completely and gone straight to defeat, raising mutual flags of surrender. Then came the dividing up of dishes, silverware, linens, and lamps so that one of them could live five streets over.

  Flora’s father had brought old things for himself, but he had bought new things for her room in the white house. He said he wanted them to be “as good as old,” hoping she would feel as comfortable there as in the yellow house.

  She never quite was. But they had their old movies on television to watch. And their popcorn popper.

  Her parents had not told her how long this separation might last.

  “We find we are a bit of a mess,” her mother said. “And that we need to take some air.”

  Splitting one family into two was “taking air.”

  This had happened three months after Laurence passed, and Flora couldn’t help wondering, if he had lived, would her parents not have needed air.

  But she didn’t want to hold Laurence responsible. He was seventeen when he decided not to wake up, which in dog years is ancient. He’d given them everything he had.

  And Flora was still in the same town and in the same school, and she still had the same friends.

  Like her friend Nessy.

  Nessy and Flora had known each other for years. And though their families were very different, the two girls were very much alike.

  They’d met in a summer reading club for children, ages four and five, at the Rosetown Free Library. Flora was five and Nessy was four, and each was a little worried about all of it, this reading club. On the day of the club’s first meeting in the Children’s Room, Nessy would not let go of her mother’s hand when her mother wanted to go on some errands while the club had its meeting.

  “It will be all right, Vanessa,” said her mother, smiling while she tried to pry herself loose.

  Another mother (who happened to be Emma Jean Smallwood) was standing nearby with her daughter, Flora. And Emma Jean said to Nessy, “ ‘Vanessa’ is the most beautiful name. I believe it means ‘butterfly.’ My daughter’s name is Flora. It means ‘flower.’ ”

  Nessy looked at Flora.

  And Nessy let go of her mother’s hand and took Flora’s hand instead.

  Flora was the person who first called Vanessa “Nessy.” And by the time summer reading club was over and kindergarten in her immediate future, Nessy was Nessy to everyone.

  Because the girls were in different grades, as they grew, they did not see each other in school very much. But as often as they could, they played together on weekends.

  So when Flora spent her first night in the rented white house with the “as good as old” things her father had bought for her, Nessy was there with her.

  They read Nancy Drew books, and they painted stars on their toes, and they made pizza from a box with Forster Smallwood’s help. Then everyone watched a Laurel and Hardy show and ate popcorn.

  Nessy slept next to Flora that night in the new little bed in the new room. And she gave Flora, that night, balance.

  5

  Yury often accompanied Flora into Wings and a Chair Used Books to see what was new in the Young People’s Nook. Miss Meriwether was very proud of her selection of used books for young readers, especially those books she called “extra vintage.” Flora had read several extra-vintage books about a child named Honey Bunch, and many about a girl named Meg, and she was planning soon to dive into The Boy Allies.

  When Yury stopped into the store with her this Monday afternoon, they decided to read a book out loud to each other, taking turns with the chapters.

  It wasn’t easy to settle upon a title. Flora was sure that Yury would enjoy Meg and the Disappearing Diamonds, but he wasn’t that sure. Yury was positive they both would love a book about tigers called Man-Eaters of Kumaon, but Flora was positive they both would not.

  Finally they settled on a very worn book that had on its cover a drawing of a boy and a girl who appeared to be spying on an oil well. It was called Nora Force at Raven Rock.

  Flora and Yury were curious about a mystery that involved oil. And when they saw the title of the first chapter—“An Arrival and a Robbery”—the
y were hooked.

  They took turns reading the book aloud, Yury sitting cross-legged on the floor beside the velveteen chair. They kept their voices low in case a customer came in, but on this day the store was empty, and Flora’s mother was in the back wrapping some books to mail.

  The two of them shared Nora’s adventures to the middle of chapter 3—“Happy Landings!”—when Nora’s airplane ride created something of a diversion.

  “Right into the vortex of the storm headed the airplane,” Yury read aloud.

  “Does ‘vortex’ mean a tornado?” Flora interrupted.

  Yury thumbed ahead.

  “I don’t think it’s a tornado here,” he answered. “This part has a girl leaving the plane, safe and sound.”

  “Good,” said Flora.

  “Yes,” said Yury. “Surely an airplane would be the worst place to be in a tornado.”

  “Definitely,” agreed Flora.

  Both Flora and Yury worried quite a lot about tornados, although a tornado had never come to Rosetown. Still, there was always a possibility, and the two of them had made a joint disaster plan. It involved meeting up at the bookshop exactly three hours after the tornado landed. They had decided against meeting at the doctor’s office, since Yury’s father might be very busy helping people. And they had decided against meeting at either of their homes, because Flora could not predict whether she would be at the yellow house or the white house when disaster struck. And besides, neither wanted to be the one sitting and waiting for the other to show up. Action was everything.

  They read on. And when someone in the story said to Nora, “Buck up, Nora Force,” they both laughed.

  “I’m going to say that to myself every time I worry about a test,” said Flora. “Buck up, Nora Force!”

  She was about to say more, when suddenly she saw, just out of the corner of her eye, a white fluffy tail, with a tip of yellow on the end, slide under the steps of Southwell’s Barbershop across the street.

  “What was that?” she said.

  “What?” asked Yury.

  “Something went under Mr. Southwell’s front steps,” Flora said. “I think it was a cat.”