by Ruth White
Porter was so startled he couldn’t move. It was Woodrow who put his hand on my arm and discovered I was burning up with fever.
“She’s dying,” Woodrow said to Porter, because as he told me later, he didn’t see how anybody could get so hot and not die.
I went on screaming at Grace Kelly, “Don’t look in there!”
But she didn’t hear me. The people trying to watch the show, however, heard me loud and clear. And they hollered for me to put a cork in it.
Porter came to his senses, grabbed me up in his arms, and carried me out, with Woodrow trotting along behind.
“Call Doc Dot!” Porter yelled at Pearl as we passed the ticket booth. “Tell him to meet me at my house straightaway.”
I remember sinking … sinking … I was hot, and so sad. Don’t look in the window. Something ugly is inside.
It was dark when I opened my eyes to the real world again. I was in my own bed, and Mama was there beside me, mopping my face with a cool, wet cloth. My lamp was on, but a scarf was thrown over the shade to dim the light.
I didn’t remember much of the day.
“Hey,” I mumbled, “whatsa matter?”
“Measles,” Mama said. “A very bad case.”
Was that all? Every pore of my body ached right down to my hair follicles. Even my eyelids were sore. And she called it the measles.
“Where’s Woodrow?” I said.
“Grandpa took him back to the 7:30 show.”
“Why? Did we miss something?”
Mama smiled. “You could say that. Woodrow can tell you how it ended.”
Right then I didn’t really care. I had never felt so bad.
“Porter is in bed, too,” Mama said. “Doc had to give him a sedative.”
“How come?”
“You scared him nearly to death. You were delirious, you know, and he thought you were having some kind of fit.”
“Do I have to go to school tomorrow?”
“Oh no, you won’t be going back until September. When this term is over next week, you will have to stay in bed, and in the dark, for at least ten more days.”
“In the dark?”
“Well, only dim light. No reading. Measles has been known to settle in the eyes.”
All that night I had strange dreams and hallucinations. One time I thought I had these little-bitty green slits for eyes like a lizard’s. And then I dreamed of Blind Benny wandering around town singing.
“It’s not so bad being blind,” he told me. “I don’t have to look at ugly things.”
And the old nightmare came and went like a bat swooping down on me, then retreating into the dark musty caves of my memory. Each time I woke up in a frenzy, my mama was there, calm and cool and beautiful. She sat by me all night long, and the next day she stayed home with me. She made arrangements to take off that whole week from her teaching job to take care of me. Porter, Granny, and Grandpa came in one at a time, but I didn’t feel like visiting with them. Doc Dot came around 10:00 and took my temperature. He and Mama went out into the hallway and talked about me.
“ … nightmares.” I heard part of what Mama said. “Don’t look in the window.”
“ … her father” was part of Doc’s response.
I put my pillow over my head.
Mama brought my meals and put azaleas and honeysuckle sprigs on my tray. I thought that was real sweet of her, and I was sad that I didn’t feel like eating or talking to her.
Late that evening I opened my eyes and there was Woodrow just about a foot above me, his crossed eyes looking into my face.
“When you said Porter makes you sick, you weren’t foolin’, were you?” he said.
I tried to smile.
“How you feel?” came the inevitable question.
“Well, one minute I’m afraid I’m going to die, and the next minute I’m afraid I’m not.”
He grinned. We had heard that line from Minnie Pearl on The Grand Ole Opry last Saturday night.
Woodrow sat down in a chair beside my bed.
“You’ve heard the expression ‘cute as a speckled pup’?” he said.
“Sure.”
“Well, that’s what comes to mind when I look at you, Gypsy.”
He was trying to be nice.
“Am I speckled?” I said.
“You’re one big speckle, nearabout,” he said. “Wanna mirror?”
“No.”
“Wanna know how the show ended?”
“To tell you the truth, Woodrow, I don’t remember how it started.”
“Oh.”
“Okay, time for medicine,” Mama said as she came in with a small glass of something liquid.
“What’s that?” Woodrow said.
“Just a little hot rum to help Gypsy sleep. Doc Dot ordered it.”
“Wow! Rum!” Woodrow said. “Wonder why Daddy didn’t give me some of his rum when I had the measles.”
He watched, fascinated, as Mama helped me sit up and drink the rum.
“How is it?” he said to me.
“Awful!” I said, because it was.
“Daddy always mixed it with apple cider or pop. He said that made it taste better.”
Mama gave me a quick drink of water.
“We’ll remember that next time,” she said to Woodrow. “There now. Time for rest. Visiting hours are over.”
“Oh sure,” Woodrow said, and stood up. “‘Nite, Gypsy.”
“’Nite, Woodrow.”
And that was the end of the worst part of having the measles.
Eleven
It was the next evening just after it got dark that Woodrow came to my window and called softly, “Gypsy, you awake?”
The window was right beside the bed and the curtains were pushed back to let in the night breeze.
“Yeah, I’m awake,” I said, rising up on my knees.
Together Woodrow and I removed the screen and eased it down to the floor.
“Are you better?” he said.
“Some,” I said. “Doc says my fever’s down.”
“Had your rum tonight?” he said, grinning.
“Not yet. Mama’ll bring it in a while.”
“Well, I got somebody here wants to visit you.”
“Oh? Who?”
I leaned toward the window and detected a figure about a head taller than Woodrow standing in the shadows.
“I hope he’s had the measles,” I said.
“Oh yeah. He’s had everything,” Woodrow said as he pushed the person forward. “Say hello to Blind Benny.”
I was flabbergasted.
For years I had heard him singing, but I had seen him only in the dark from afar while he rummaged through people’s leftovers and the dogs sniffed around him. Now here he was. Leave it to Woodrow to bring him right up to my window and introduce him like he was somebody’s cousin from Grassy Lick maybe.
Blind Benny moved halfway into the dim light coming from the lamp. I could see his face and the legendary sightless eyes that were almost not there. They were like two little holes in his face, about the size of dimes, and not eyes at all. It was an automatic reflex for me to shrink from anything so hideous. I almost gasped, but I clapped a hand over my mouth before the hateful sound could escape.
As usual nothing got past Woodrow. He saw my reaction and smiled.
“Evenin’, Miss Beauty,” Blind Benny said shyly. “Hope you’re a-feelin’ fitter than you wuz.”
Beauty? Why did he call me that? A feeling akin to pain came with that name.
“I reckon so,” I said, trying to find some words.
“I wuz sorry when your cousin here told me you wuz ailin’. But he said you’d not be skeerd of me like most girls is.”
Woodrow and I exchanged a glance.
Suddenly Benny started scratching his thighs and behind.
“Chiggers is awful this year,” he said. “I might near wore my fangers down to a nub, jist a-scratchin’ myself. Woodrow tells me he knows ‘bout chiggers. Knows their ways and their secret places,
he sez. He’s gonna show me how to keep away from ’em. Do the chiggers git on you much, Miss Beauty?”
“Sometimes,” I mumbled.
It was true that there was a bumper crop of chiggers that year. They were tiny, almost microscopic bugs that liked to crawl up under your clothes and burrow into the white, fleshy places where the sun never touches. Big ugly red bumps would pop up where they dug in. And Woodrow did have a peculiar knack for sniffing them out.
Lots of times he’d say to me, “Don’t sit there. Chigger convention.”
Or, “Don’t lean on that tree. Chigger city.”
“Yeah, Woodrow’s right handy to have around sometimes,” I said to Blind Benny.
Woodrow looked at me sideways, like he was wondering if I meant something by that.
“When Woodrow ast me to come over here to your winder,” Blind Benny said, “it brung to my mind a mem’ry of your pappy in this very room sanging to you when you’s jist a little thang.”
“You mean … my daddy?” I said.
“Oh yeah,” Blind Benny said, moving closer and clutching the window ledge.
I felt a tremor go through me as I shrank away from him.
“Amos Leemaster and me wuz boys together back there in Cold Valley, Kentucky, Miss Beauty.”
“Why do you call me that?” I said.
“Beauty? Don’t you ’member? It wuz his name for you! He always called you Beauty—short for Arbutus. He named you hissef—Gypsy Arbutus Leemaster. He sed he couldn’t thank of ary other name to beat it, and he were right!”
I felt sick and I wanted him to go away then, but I didn’t know how to say it.
“Benny’s going to sing to you, Gypsy,” Woodrow said.
I lay back on my pillow and closed my eyes. I knew what the song was going to be before he began.
When the moon comes over the mountain
Every beam brings a dream, dear, of you.
Blind Benny’s voice was even more wonderful—haunting, it was—up close. And I could almost hear my daddy echoing each line.
Once again we stroll ’neath that mountain
Through the rose-covered valley we knew.
Each day is gray and dreary,
But the night is bright and cheery.
When the moon comes over the mountain,
I’m alone with my memories of you.
“It was Amos’s fav’rit song,” Benny said softly when he was finished. “He was a good sanger. Too bad what happened to him!”
“I’m feeling sick,” I interrupted, not quite trusting my voice. “I want to rest now.”
“Why, shore. You sleep, Miss Beauty. And I hope you’ll be well agin soon.”
I didn’t answer.
I heard Woodrow fumbling around with the screen; then there was silence.
The next day it turned real hot. Porter came into my room, ran an extension cord in from the hallway, and placed an electric fan on my dresser. It was one of those small wire ones that swivel back and forth. It felt good. Then he brought in a radio.
“Something to keep you cool and something to occupy your mind,” he said.
Mama had cleaned out my stash of books.
“How do you feel?” he went on.
“Like a mushroom,” I said irritably. “In a cool, dark place.”
Porter tuned the radio to Coal Station.
“Can I get anything else for you?” he said.
I shook my head. Didn’t he know that if I wanted anything I wouldn’t ask him? He hung around for another minute, then left me alone.
The radio was playing “Hernando’s Hideaway.” It reminded me of my tree house. I thought I would feel better if I could go there and sit on the tree-house porch and hang my feet above the water and listen to the creek rippling over the rocks.
I remembered the day Daddy built the tree house for me. I was barely big enough to get up the steps, and Mama fussed at Daddy because she said I was too small to climb up there and play. So he promised he would always go with me until I was old enough to go by myself. And he did.
Until he died.
I didn’t go back to the tree house until I was ten years old—the day Mama and Porter got married and drove away to Myrtle Beach for their honeymoon. Then I climbed up there and went into the room. It was damp and still smelled like raw lumber. There was a button on the floor, and I picked it up and looked at it for a long time. It was green with little swirls of white running through it like marble. I knew it came off Daddy’s green shirt—the one he wore to the volunteer firemen’s meetings every Tuesday night.
But I didn’t want to think about that anymore.
“Mama!” I yelled, feeling clammy and all out of sorts. “I wanna get up!”
She popped in the door just like she had been standing right out there in the hall. She was wearing a blue sundress with daisies all over it, and her hair was brushed back in its everyday style, with a blue ribbon in it, which made her look like a young girl.
“Don’t be silly,” she said.
“I wanna go to the tree house.”
“You’ll do no such thing!”
“Why did you marry Porter?”
It was a nasty thing to say, and popped out of nowhere.
“He’s not my daddy!” I said in a low, evil voice. “And he never will be! I hate him!”
I saw a slow flush go over her face, and her lip began to tremble.
“You don’t give him a chance,” she said in a whisper.
I turned my back to her and covered my head with the sheet.
Mama left the room.
By Saturday I felt lots better, and Woodrow spent most of the day with me. We played checkers, and he read to me from a book called Lorna Doone. It was real good. Then he showed me how you could talk into the fan; it was queer the way the rotating blades chopped up the sound waves and made your voice quiver.
“That’s how it is when Mama calls my name in my dreams,” he said sadly.
“Why do you reckon it sounds like that?” I said.
“It’s being filtered through two worlds. Some kind of real strong force field separating the two dimensions.”
“Oh, I see,” I said, but I didn’t see at all, and what’s more, I didn’t think he did either.
“I think maybe she’ll try to contact me another way,” Woodrow said.
“Like on the telephone?” I said.
“You’re making fun of me!” Woodrow said. “I never thought you’d do that, Gypsy.”
“Honest, I didn’t mean to,” I said, because I didn’t, but even so, I was still ashamed of myself.
We didn’t have anything to say to each other for a long time, and Woodrow looked so pitiful I couldn’t stand it. I thought and thought about what I could say to him to make him feel better. Finally I had it.
“Tell you what, Woodrow, when Mama lets me go outside again, we’ll have a wienie roast, okay?”
It worked.
“Oh yeah?” he said, brightening.
“Down by the creek,” I went on. “There’s a place where Grandpa lets me build a fire sometimes. We’ll have it there, and we’ll invite Mary Lee and Rita and Buzz, Garnet, Franklin Delano, John Ed, and …”
“And Peggy Sue and Willy!” he said excitedly.
After that I got better every day.
Twelve
“I want to sit on the stump!” Buzz insisted when we were all gathered around the fire that Saturday night about the end of June.
It was a perfect evening. Except for a wasper, which Buzz killed, and a few gnats, the insects didn’t get on us much. There was only one stump, and for that reason I had suggested we all sit on the ground Indian-fashion. But Buzz could be hardheaded as they come, and he was bound and determined to get his own way. I guess we were all a little chickenhearted when it came to Buzz, because he had a reputation for beating people up.
“Why, certainly!” Woodrow said, as agreeable as all get-out. “If Buzz wants to sit on the stump, let him!”
So whet
her I liked it or not, Buzz climbed up on the stump. I was disgruntled because it put him way yonder higher than the rest of us and we had to look up to see him. On top of that, he decided he wanted to tell a story. Seemed like everybody had a story these days.
We listened politely as he told us this tale we had all heard before, only he said it happened to his aunt and we knew dern good and well that was a lie. He said one day she went to eat from a can of storebought tomatoes, and there amongst the tomatoes was a human finger. She got so sick she puked all night long. Then she wrote to the factory where they canned those tomatoes, and sure enough, they said yes, one of their workers there lost a finger when he was on the job, and nobody ever found that finger, but thanks to Buzz’s aunt, now they knew what had happened to it, and they sent her a whole case of canned tomatoes—which she didn’t want—as a reward.
We told Buzz that was a real good story.
Dawg wiggled in between me and John Ed and gobbled up a wienie somebody had dropped on the ground. Then she sighed and lay down beside me and put her head in my lap.
“Now you tell us a story, Woodrow,” Rita said.
“Whatsa matter, Fatty?” Buzz said irritably. “You didn’t like my story?”
Rita didn’t say anything. She just dropped her head.
“Speaking of fingers being chopped off,” Woodrow said quickly, and I noticed he laid a hand gently on Rita’s plump, tanned arm, “it reminds me of a good one. It was wintertime two years ago, and cold enough to freeze the Abdominal Snowman …”
“It ain’t abdominal, it’s abominable!” Buzz chided.
“Right,” Woodrow went on. “It was a joke, Buzz. Anyway, my Aunt Millie was awful sick. In fact, she was on her deathbed. Me and Daddy and Mama were over there trying to do what we could to help Uncle Russell out, but it happened I was the only one in the room with Aunt Millie at one particular moment when she turned her face to me and said, ‘Woody, my boy, dying ain’t nothin’ but changing your form, like water turns to steam, you know?’
“Then she closed her eyes and died right in front of me. I like to cried my eyes out ’cause I loved her.”
Willy Stacy belched real big. He had put away four hot dogs. We were all working on a sucker, which had caused Woodrow to pause and get in a couple of licks.