“Well, Miss Willie,” he said gruffly, “let’s see if there’s fever. The way you are shivering …” He took out his thermometer and put it in her mouth. While he took her temperature, he felt her pulse, listened to her heart and examined the bump on her head.
He grunted. “What you want to hit yourself in the head for?” he said, frowning. She knew he didn’t expect her to answer with a thermometer in her mouth. Dr. Taylor was joking with her, Willie Bea knew. He always joked with his patients.
“It was the stilt that hit her, Doc,” said her father on the piano bench.
Dr. Taylor grinned, winking at Willie Bea. “He don’t think I know that!” he whispered loudly. Her papa had to hear. “He thinks I’m too old to find out things for myself!”
Willie Bea remembered all this now through the pain of her forehead. That stinging, cold pain made everything come clear.
Her father had looked sheepish. “Now, Doc …,” he said. But Dr. Taylor waved him quiet with one hand, never taking his eyes off of Willie Bea.
He placed his hand on what felt to Willie Bea like a bump the size of an orange on her forehead. And getting bigger. “Does that hurt?” he asked her.
His hand was as light as a feather, even when his gentle fingers probed.
She shook her head. But it did hurt her, oh, it did!
“Cat got your tongue?” he asked her.
And again she shook her head.
“Well. Don’t feel like talkin’, do you?” he said in sympathy. “Don’t blame you at all! No, sir. Do you know what kind of Willie it is can walk on stilts over a mile in the dead of night?” he asked her.
Had it been that far? Then Willie Bea listened as closely as she could, what with her head aching and her back hurting so. She felt that any minute Dr. Taylor would prove that she was someone special.
“It has to be a pretty brave Willie to do all that!” he said, still in a loud whisper for her mama and papa to overhear. “Wonder why Willie had to do all that!” he said. “’Cause of them monsters over at the Kelly farm?”
Willie Bea nodded. And then her mama and papa and Dr. Taylor and Vermilla Taylor had a brief discussion about how the monsters had only been on the radio and that the invasion was some actors. Willie Bea hadn’t caught much of the discussion, she was so tired. She’d understood even less of it.
Then Dr. Taylor had taken the thermometer out of her mouth.
“Well, I’ll be!” he said. He looked hard at Willie Bea until his eyes swam with amusement. “Not a bit of fever! Sakes, this child ain’t sick with a grippe. But that bump is nasty and I don’t see why she’s shiverin’ so. Maybe some exposure. It was cold last night! Now, Willie, I want you to tell me. How many fingers do you see? Four?” Dr. Taylor held up three fingers.
Willie Bea shook her head. She held up three of her own fingers to show she knew the right number.
“Anything else hurting you?” he asked. “Talk, child!” he commanded, and Willie Bea talked right away.
Her voice had come, soft and as weary as she had felt. “My back hurts so. It hurts just awful.”
Dr. Taylor looked hard at Willie Bea’s mama, standing, clutching her hands.
“I never thought,” Marva said nervously. “I saw that bump …”
“That’s why you’re the mama and I’m the doctor!” he said triumphantly, his eyes twinkling away.
“Now, Father,” scolded Vermilla Taylor, hovering. She lived in fear that folks would take her father’s bluntness the wrong way.
The doc hurumphed at Vermilla and turned back to Willie Bea.
“Let’s see that back,” he said. Willie Bea had to turn over and loosen her pajama bottoms. Somebody had already removed the sheet she had worn like a cape. She looked around for it, but she didn’t see it.
She unbuttoned her shirt, then lay quietly on her stomach. Dr. Taylor lifted the shirt away from her back. She heard her mama draw in her breath quickly. Willie Bea began to cry, fearing she had a broken spine.
“Now see what you done?” Dr. Taylor said to her mama. Marva quieted at once. “Child will mess up her hobo face, too!”
“Just some bruises,” Dr. Taylor said soothingly to Willie Bea. “A few scratches that we’ll put a salve on.” With some cotton he put something that stung a little on Willie Bea’s back. Then his blue-veined hands moved expertly over the scrapes, working a salve in. His hands were not quite warm on her back.
“That hurt?” he asked. “You tell me if it hurts.
“And probably the strain on the muscles of all that stilting and falling on your cousin,” Dr. Taylor added. “Big Wing! Now, he’s something! What a monster he turned out to be!” He had laughed his head off at his own joking.
They say laughing makes you live longer, Willie Bea had thought, and thought again now, as she woke up for the tenth or eleventh time this day.
Dr. Taylor knew all the Wing families, as he knew all the large families in the town. He had delivered all of the Wing children, he had lived that long, Willie Bea knew. It didn’t matter how rich or poor folks were, how black or white they were, she realized, he served them all. He was the only doctor any of them would have. He knew it. He was proud of it. And he did his best, which was good enough. Quite fine, really, Willie Bea’s papa would say.
Wonder if Dr. Taylor serves that Kelly farm, Willie Bea thought. They are a large family, so I hear.
Now she was awake again. She knew what day it was. Monday. End of October. She was upstairs in her room, although she didn’t remember how she’d got there.
Must’ve been sometime after Dr. Taylor and his daughter left, she thought. What time was that? I remember he kept me talking and talking a long time. He played a game with me. He had Mama sing me some songs. He said after a long while that I was all right, not much of a concussion that being a child wouldn’t cure, and he gave me something, to soothe my throat, he said. But I didn’t have a sore throat. So why did I take it—and swallow it?
After that, it was morning; it was light out, anyway. The house, the street outside, so quiet. Mama came with a tray. But I didn’t want anything but toast and my camomile tea. Mama calls it cambric tea. But it hurt me all over just to reach for that toast and tea. Ate the toast, but I left the tea after a sip or two. So hot and good! Mama took away the tray. Left the plate and cup.
Bet my papa carried me up here, thought Willie Bea. Her papa would often carry her up, or Bay or Bay Sister, when one of them fell asleep in the chair. Her long legs dangling as he carried her. Sometimes she awakened, was comforted that it was her papa holding her, and went right back to sleep on the stairs, her head on her papa’s shoulder.
Willie Bea was in her bedroom now, in the big bed, in the middle of it. Bay Sis probably had gone to school, Willie Bea guessed. And Bay Brother would be downstairs, underfoot of mama. Willie Bea recalled vaguely hearing him come upstairs to see her, making it almost to the door before her mama caught him and shushed him. She had taken him by the hand back downstairs.
Carefully, Willie Bea stood the hurting long enough to turn on her side. So now there would be no one to annoy her in her illness for the whole day.
She had to smile at the thought of her illness. I have a bad bump, feels as big as a … as a … hedge ball of a osage tree! she would say to Little when she saw her.
Little!
Willie Bea rubbed her forehead, avoiding the bump. She squeezed her eyes tight closed. She hadn’t allowed herself to think about the night before because she was sort of upset about it, afraid to go over it in her mind.
Oh, that darkness night of monsters! Had it all happened? Had she and Toughy Clay really seen that bonfire and the farmer who told them to git? Did they go on to the Kelly farm?
’Course we did, she thought, scrunching in a ball under the covers. And you know what happened then!
She had been keeping herself from thinking about it.
Afraid I won’t see it the way it was. Afraid those men from Venus never happened, the way Mama says. W
hen did her mama say that?
Her mama and papa telling her things last night sometime. She remembered now, she had the feeling then that they all, even Dr. Taylor and Vermilla, thought she might feel ashamed of herself. Feel foolish, like her mama and papa did. But she didn’t. And they were telling her it was all right, she needn’t feel bad about feeling ridiculous or ashamed.
But she never did feel that way. Why should she?
All of them having another discussion, telling her:
That what she called the Venus men, and what they called men from Mars, and what Toughy Clay had called an invasion, hadn’t happened. That the whole thing, the panic and all, had been nothing more than a radio play!
On a radio show.
Aunt Leah fainting, and Mr. Hollis (that was who, on the piano bench) lifting her in his arms. Gorgeous Aunt Leah of fortune and wealth! And Aunt Lu Wing ready to jump down the well.
How could that be nothing more than a radio play? she thought, pulling the covers up over her face.
She made night come under the covers with her, where the air was warm and space was endless in the darkness. Finally, she had the proof of the Kelly farm. What kind of radio play would have the Kelly farm on it!
What I saw wasn’t a play or a show, Willie Bea thought, shivering under the covers. The noise I heard. The great white eyes I saw. And them, talking to me! Toughy was there, he said it was an invasion. He saw it all. Talked to me right in my ear!
Willie Bea closed her eyes again. A scene flooded the dark redness behind her eyes. She couldn’t seem to dam it up and hold it back. There was the white eye of the monster. There was somebody standing over her. There was this man saying …
“No!” whispered Willie Bea. “I don’t want to hear him. He was just trying to fool with me.”
But the man’s voice wouldn’t go away. “What happened? What are you kids doing where we are harvesting? Did we hit someone? … Oh, little child!”
No! “Dum-de-dum-de-dum!” Willie Bea hummed, so the voice would go away. She sat up in bed. “Ouch! Oooh! Ahhhh!” She sucked in her breath from the pain in her back and legs, even in her arms. It was an aching hurt all over. A tired soreness of muscles and bruising scrapes. “Oh, man!” she said as the aching rid her of the voice.
The bump on her head was an impossible soreness, with shaking aches on either side of it. Oooh! Am I gonna die? No. Dr. Taylor said I’d be all right. And that old doctor never lied.
Willie Bea knew a story that proved Dr. Taylor never lied. Say he once told a daughter that her olden mama hadn’t “kicked off” until the daughter had helped the dying mama lie down.
Can you imagine saying something like that to some weeping woman who has lost her only mama? Willie Bea thought. Better not say anything like that to my mama! But Grand Wing will never ever die.
Willie Bea was sure of that. Looking around her room, it was so nice to be safe at home. Warm and safe! With covers and a mama to bring you buttered toast.
What time is it? she wondered. She saw that the cup of tea and the empty plate for toast were still there on the chair. But the house was a long-past-breakfast house. She could hear the radio on downstairs and distant music as the shows changed. It had to be late in the morning or even noontime. Had the twelve o’clock whistle blown? She listened hard.
And heard it blowing! Just as she thought about it, it went off.
Well, I am special, aren’t I? I can tell when a whistle will blow!
She found herself reaching for the cup of cold cambric tea before she had even thought about it.
I want it, she thought, cold or not. But when she had it—she found that when she moved slowly, it didn’t hurt her so much—and tasted it, she didn’t want it at all.
What do I want, then? she wondered. I’m not even hungry. Am I? I am so tired!
She was tired. Exhausted, and all she had been doing was sleeping.
She was about to burst into tears out of temper and hurting all over, when someone knocked softly. Willie Bea froze, watching the door. Her mind slowed to a ghost walk. And all she could think of was monsters with one eye. Was it possible for some monster to slip in your house and up the stairs?
Oh, me, no, don’t let …
But it was no monster. What was left of the fears from the night before dissolved for Willie Bea at the sight of Bay Sister, home from school for lunch. Bay Sister had on her red jumper and one of Willie Bea’s hand-me-down blouses underneath. She looked nice. All at once Willie Bea felt sad, strange inside, having stayed in.
Out in front of her, Bay Sister held a blue dinner plate with a sandwich on it. Willie Bea knew the sandwich was for her. And knew what kind of sandwich it was at the moment she spied Big, behind Bay Sister, carrying the tray. The tray had a steaming bowl of soup on it and a cup of something else hot. Big came in like he was walking on eggs.
“Move that stuff! Hurry!” he told Bay Sister, his eyes cutting to the chair next to Willie Bea’s bed.
Quickly and with one hand, Bay Sister put the teacup and saucer and the bread plate on the floor. Gingerly, Big set down the tray. “Whew! I did it!” he said, straightening up again. He seemed to tower in the bedroom, he was so big and the ceiling was that low.
“Hey, Willie Bea,” he said. He looked kindly at his cousin, and his best friend, his look seemed to say. “Oooh, man! That some knot you got on you head.”
“It hurts like the dickens, too,” Willie Bea said. “Hey back. Hey, Bay Sister.”
“Hi you?” asked Bay Sister.
“I’m feelin’ better, some,” Willie Bea said. “I been sleepin’ a lot. Dr. Taylor gave me somethin’.”
“Yeah?” said Big. “They say you can’t remember, and not to make you think about the scary stuff last night.” Immediately, he put his hand over his mouth. Bay Sister kicked his ankle, Willie Bea saw her.
“We brought you some food,” Bay Sister said. “See?”
“I see,” Willie Bea said.
“A egg-salad sandwich. You love egg salad,” said Bay Sister. “And some veg’ble soup and some chocolate Mama made. Bay is havin’ some chocolate downstairs. Only he have some on his shirt and on the tablecloth more than in his mouth. What in the world all happened last night, Willie Bea?”
Before Willie Bea could answer her, Big said, “I carried that tray up them stairs and didn’t spill nothin’.” He looked pleasantly surprised.
“I see you did,” Willie Bea told him. “And thank you very much, Big.”
She sat up straight. Big had to lift the tray again. Very carefully, he placed it on Willie Bea’s lap. Bay Sister took the egg-salad sandwich off the plate and put it on the tray. “There,” she said.
“Have you all had some lunch?” Willie Bea asked.
“I’m not hongry,” said Big. Willie Bea eyed him. Then she handed him half the sandwich.
“Take it. I can’t eat so much. I already had toast,” she said.
Reluctantly, Big took the sandwich and tried not to eat it in one gulp. Willie Bea gave the other half to Bay Sister. She gave them each a sip of her chocolate. So much passing back and forth nearly exhausted her. She sighed heavily. “Don’t know what’s a wrong with me today.”
“But what happen last night?” Bay Sister asked. “Papa ran in, say all you kids was gone to the Kelly farm. And then we have to go home from Grand’s, no trick or treat or nothing. Papa unlock this house for us. And then him and Uncle Jimmy …” But at a slight signal from Big, Bay Sister shut up.
“I’ll go down in a minute,” Bay Sister said quickly, “eat and get back to school. Willie Bea, we made Halloween masks today. I have to color mine, yet. I’ll bring you another sandwich before I leave.”
Willie Bea looked at Big as she sipped the soup.
“I ain’t gone back this afternoon,” he said. “I don’t feel like gone to school any more today.”
“Uncle Jimmy better not find out,” Bay Sister said.
“I ain’t worried,” Big said.
Little m
arched in just as Big spoke. “Ain’t worried ’bout what?” she said. She had half a smoked-ham-and-mayonaise sandwich in one hand and an apple in the other. She was looking at Willie Bea. She was panting as though she’d been running, and she had. All the way from Uncle Jimmy’s house, where she’d grabbed some lunch, and then eating it on the way to Willie Bea’s house. She saw the knot on Willie Bea’s forehead. She looked away and pretended she had not seen it.
She’s even jealous of my bump! Willie Bea thought.
“That Kelly foreman bring you home,” Little said.
Willie Bea stared at Little in a calm way, although she didn’t know what Little was talking about. What was a for-man?
“Yeah, and we in the car with him, and we spy your papa on his way to Kellys’,” Big said, helping out Willie Bea, “’cause Toughy already run all the way to get some help. What he think somebody gone do against some monsters? He come upon my daddy and Uncle Jason in the car. They see him and they stop the car. They on the way to Kellys’, too. Daddy has his shotgun and Uncle Jason has his pickaxe.”
Willie Bea stared at Big. She was still confused.
“And I see my daddy’s auto when we in the foreman’s sedan,” Big continued. “The Kelly foreman take care of that big ole farm for Mr. Kelly. He run the place himself, boss of the other mens.”
“Yeah, huh!” Little said. “That foreman ridin’ this gret big machine. And two other men ridin’ each a gret giant machine. Call it a one-man, all-machine combine! It cut the corn up by automatic, it just new to buy it right now.” She eyed Willie Bea. “And you think them real giant machines some monsters—hee!”
“Shut up, Little!” Big said.
“Well, she did!” Little said.
Bay Sister stared from Big to Little and back, but she was afraid to look at Willie Bea.
Willie Bea gazed around the room. Right away, she took up the soup bowl and commenced sipping soup from the rim. All of her attention seemed focused on eating the soup, which gave her time to think.
Willie Bea and the Time the Martians Landed Page 14