The Book of Bright Ideas

by Sandra Kring

  “Harley Hoffesteader was going to blow our heads off. That’s what brought us here,” Winnalee said. Fanny Tilman’s eyes stretched behind her glasses, and she clutched her purse to her middle all the harder.

  “Where’s your—?” Aunt Verdella stopped talking when everybody suddenly looked past her and Winnalee and out toward Grandma Mae’s yard. “Oh, here she comes now!” Aunt Verdella said.

  I looked up to see Freeda coming across their lawn. She was dressed in a pretty pink sundress, her coppery hair stuck on top of her head in a stack of curls the size of juice cans. It looked like her feet were naked. “What’s she got?” Aunt Verdella said.

  “A cake,” Winnalee said.

  A cake wasn’t all Freeda was carrying though. She had a guitar too. Not the one from the attic, but a new one. A yellowwood one.

  “Where’d you get that thing?” Aunt Verdella asked, nodding toward the guitar as she took the cake from Freeda and waited for Ma to clear a spot on the table so she could set the cake plate down.

  “Oh, some loser left it at my place last night. I guess he thought he was gonna serenade me.” June Thompson giggled behind her hand as she glanced quickly at Mrs. Tilman. “Anyway, I thought Reece could play us a song.” Ma held a clump of her oatmeal hair flat against her head, so the wind wouldn’t pick it up again. Her eyes were squinched into little lines as she looked at the guitar, or maybe the sun behind it.

  “My, what a beautiful cake! Jewel, look how she swirled the frosting. Isn’t that pretty? I didn’t know you baked, Freeda,” Aunt Verdella said.

  Winnalee stuck her finger into the chocolate swirls and Freeda swatted at her hand. “I don’t do it often, trust me, so don’t get used to it.”

  Aunt Verdella got busy introducing Freeda to everyone, and as soon as the “nice to meet you”s were said, Freeda went to Daddy. “Here,” she said. She handed the guitar to him.

  “What the hell you want me to do with this?” Daddy asked. Freeda grinned and shrugged, then, with her eyes still on Daddy, she backed up till she reached the picnic table and sat down, crossing her bare legs. Stupid Tommy rushed to sit next to her.

  “I haven’t played one of these in years,” Daddy said. He had his hand wrapped around the neck part of the guitar and was staring at it, while everyone else stared at Freeda. One of the Thompson twins slapped Daddy on the back and said, “You son of a bitch, if I could play a guitar like you, I’d never set it down.” Everyone nodded and added their two cents.

  “Let’s eat, shall we?” Ma said, standing up quickly and reaching for the stack of paper plates still in their plastic wrapper.

  “Sit by me, Uncle Reece,” Winnalee said, her name for Daddy making Ma’s eyebrows leap halfway up her forehead. Winnalee plunked down on the bench beside me and set her plate down before her. “Scoot over, Button!”

  I slid over to the very edge of the bench, slipped my hands up over my ears, and Winnalee scooted against me to make room for Daddy. Well, until Ma told me and Winnalee we had to sit on the grass, so there would be enough room at the table and on the lawn chairs for the grown-ups. She picked up a big spoon and jabbed it into the potato salad.

  There was lots of food. Some that went together, and some that didn’t. Just like the crowd filling their plates.

  While we ate, Aunt Verdella kept coaxing Freeda to tell everybody about herself. “You know, so they can all get to know you better, dear.”

  “What do you want to know?” Freeda asked.

  “Well, I don’t know. Where you’re from. Where you’ve been. Anything.”

  “Well, let’s see.” Freeda bit the tip off of a pickle and chewed it. “I went down to Chicago after I left home. Lived there awhile, then to Cleveland, then down to Orlando. I lived in the Dakotas for a time too. Hell.” Freeda laughed. “Where haven’t I lived?”

  “Detroit!” Winnalee said, from the grass near the picnic table, where we sat cross-legged. “That’s where we were gonna go.” She leaned over then and wrapped her arm around my neck. “But I’m glad we ended up here instead, because Button lives here.” She gave me a squeeze. Aunt Verdella and Ada and June’s “aw”s sounded like a church choir.

  “I’ve never been out to the East Coast, but one day I’ll get there too,” Freeda said.

  “Seems to me, a child needs some roots,” Fanny Tilman said, as she scooped some sauerkraut stuff that she’d brought onto her plate. Even when filling her plate, she didn’t set her purse down but had it slung over her arm.

  Aunt Verdella leaned forward. “Where’d you start from, honey? Where’d you grow up?”

  Freeda sat up straight and tried peering over the top of the metal tub that was parked under a shade tree. “That beer over there?” she asked.

  “Sure is. You want one?” Uncle Rudy asked.

  “I sure do,” she answered. Uncle Rudy was gonna get up to grab her a beer, but one of the Thompson twins hurried to grab her one instead, smiling at her with teeth white as the sagging plate he held.

  “Where’d you say you were born and raised?” Aunt Verdella asked again. Her eyebrows were stitched together, like she’d crocheted them that way.

  “Hopested, Minnesota,” Winnalee said, while she crunched a potato chip. “It was a hole. That’s what Freeda said.” Fanny turned around and glared at Winnalee. I think because Winnalee didn’t know (or didn’t care) that children should be seen and not heard.

  “Where’s that, exactly?” Aunt Verdella asked.

  Freeda didn’t look like she wanted to talk any more about where she used to live. It looked to me like she just wanted to drink her beer.

  “It’s in the east central part of the state,” Uncle Rudy said. “Over by St. Cloud.” Then all the guys tried figuring out how many miles St. Cloud and Hopested were from Dauber. Not because they wanted to go there, I don’t suppose, but just because men always seemed to have to know how far away other places were.

  I stopped listening to their boring talk and looked over at Winnalee’s ma, sitting a ways over from the picnic table, and I worried that the Thompson baby, who was crawling in the grass, would knock it over. I felt Tommy staring at me. When he saw me looking at him, he showed me his vampire teeth and slipped his pointy fingers behind his ears till they were sticking out sideways. I turned my head away, slipping my hands up over my ears.

  After we ate, Uncle Rudy got up to go get the ice cream, but Aunt Verdella told him she thought everybody was full, so maybe we’d better wait for dessert. All the men—and Freeda too—were talking as loud as Aunt Verdella, probably because they were drinking beers. “How about some music, Reece?” Freeda said. Daddy glanced over at the guitar a few times before he grabbed it. There was a pick weaved in the strings at the top, and he plucked it loose and gave the guitar a strum. It sounded bad, so he twisted the little knobs at the top while he plucked at the strings, one string after another, until it sounded just right. Then he started strumming. “Play something, Uncle Reece!” Winnalee said. “I wanna dance!” Aunt Verdella grinned, and I knew why. She loved it that Winnalee was calling them all “aunt” and “uncle” now.

  Daddy stood up then and propped one leg on the corner of the picnic-table bench. He hooked the curved part of the guitar on his leg and started to play.

  “Oh goodie! ‘The Twist’!” Winnalee shouted.

  Aunt Verdella let out a whoop and jumped up fast. She grabbed Freeda’s hand and led her to the grass. The two of them sang along, loud, as they danced that funny dance where you move your top part one way and your bottom part the other way. They looked silly with their butts poked out, the heels of their feet swishing from side to side as they twisted their middles side to side. June, who didn’t seem to do much more than laugh, got up then too, dancing with her baby, whose head was bobbling all over the place. Her little boy, whose striped shirt was wet with spilled lemonade and watermelon juice, ran in circles around the dancers.

  “Come on, Button! Twist!” Winnalee shouted, as she headed to join the ladies. I looked ov
er at Ma, wondering if she’d dance, but one look at her face told me that the only thing Ma was going to twist was the wire tie around the hamburger-bun bag.

  “Look at Freeda!” Winnalee yelled. I glanced up and saw everybody watching Freeda, who was twisting herself down so low that her butt was swishing across her heels. Mike Thompson joined her then, twisting just like her, while everyone laughed and clapped.

  I never heard Daddy play guitar before, though I’d heard him sing along with the radio in the garage a few times. As his pick banged against the strings, the muscles in his arm rose and fell, making that tattooed red heart look like it was pumping. He sang and played so good that I felt proud that he was my daddy.

  “‘Jailhouse Rock’!” Freeda called out when “The Twist” was over. “Yeah!” Winnalee and Aunt Verdella yelled at the same time. Daddy paused to take a long swig from his beer, then he started playing the Elvis song they wanted.

  I didn’t know how to dance. Not like Aunt Verdella and Freeda, who had stopped doing the Twist and were doing some other kind of dance now where they held hands and moved their feet fancy while they moved apart, then came back together. Winnalee didn’t know how to do that dance either, but she didn’t care. She just hopped and kicked and waved her arms wherever they wanted to go, while Uncle Rudy grinned at her from his lawn chair, as Elroy Smithy leaned over to yack in his ear. I didn’t think I could do what Winnalee was doing, so I just started stacking the forks together, one dirty fork on top of the other.

  “Come on, Button!” Winnalee ran to me and started yanking my arm, just as the song ended. “Play it again, Uncle Reece! Again!” Daddy laughed. He took another gulp of beer, then lit a cigarette. He took two puffs from it, then wedged it between the guitar and strings, up at the top part where the tuning knobs were. He sat down on the edge of the picnic table and propped one leg on the bench part, then started the Elvis song all over again.

  “Come on!” Winnalee’s hands were gripped around my wrists, squeezing so hard that they were pinching my skin. I leaned back and dug my feet hard into the ground, but they just slid across the grass when Winnalee pulled. When she got me as far as where the women were, Aunt Verdella grabbed my arm and pulled me into their circle. “Come on, honey!” she shouted, while swinging my arm. “‘Everybody in the whole cell block was dancin’ to the jailhouse rock!’” Even her singing sounded like yelling.

  I watched Aunt Verdella, who was doing her own sort of dance now, her feet going, her bent arms rocking from side to side. Freeda was dancing her own kind of dance too. Her butt going this way and that, her arms lifted above her head. A clump of her hair had come down, but she was too busy leaning forward to shake her bumps at Mike Thompson to notice. She didn’t stop moving her feet as she tipped herself back and lifted her beer bottle, and she only laughed when two yellow streams poured out both sides of her mouth and sloshed over the front of her dress. I looked for Ma, but she was gone, along with half the bowls that had been on the table and Mrs. Tilman. I glanced toward the house and saw a shadow in the window above the sink. That shadow was not only skinny but tall too, so I knew it was Ma. Ada Smithy danced over to me, her shoulders shrugging, her fingers snapping, like she was showing me how to dance.

  I started moving a little, this way and that. “Like this!” Winnalee shouted, as she waved her arms above her head and hopped in circles. She grabbed my hand and started running in a circle around me, so that I had to run too. With her hurt hand held out to the side, and her other hand clutching mine, she stopped running, and spun in one place, twirling me and twirling me until my belly got the giggles, and the little Thompson kid begged her to twirl him too. After that, I was like a windup toy, and dancing was a bit easier.

  “I’m gonna die of heatstroke, dancin’ like that in this weather!” Aunt Verdella said when the song ended. She went over to a lawn chair and sat down with a plop. She told Tommy to hand her a clean paper plate and started fanning her neck, where frizzy strands were glued to her skin with sweat. “Reece, what’s that slow Elvis song I told you I like? You know, that pretty one that came out last winter.”

  Freeda headed to the tub where the beer sat in melting ice. She grabbed one and Mike hurried to open it for her. Ma and Fanny Tilman came out of the house then, both of them quietly watching as Freeda giggled, with one hand on the Thompson man’s chest.

  Daddy’s fingers fumbled around, then he sang just one line of a song and asked Aunt Verdella if that was it. Freeda pulled the cap off of her beer and said, “That’s ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’”

  Aunt Verdella clapped her hands. “Yeah, that’s it!”

  “I’ve never played it before, but here goes,” Daddy said.

  The minute Daddy started singing that slow, sad song, Knucklehead, who was laying next to Uncle Rudy’s chair, started howling, so Uncle Rudy had to rap him a bit on the top of his head so he’d shut up, and the Smithys and June Thompson and her husband got up to dance. Mike Thompson asked Freeda to dance. “You couldn’t wedge the ace of spades between those two if you tried,” I heard Fanny Tilman say to Ma, while Tommy gawked at the dancers with the same look on his face as Knucklehead wore when he watched Uncle Rudy eat his steak.

  Daddy played a couple more songs, then set the guitar down. He grabbed another beer, then reached for another piece of the cake Freeda had brought. “Damn, this is good. Homemade, right?” Freeda nodded. “Hell, I never thought I’d taste homemade cake again.”

  “Oh, stop!” Aunt Verdella said. “I make one boxed cake mix in my entire life, because I was busy getting things ready for next week’s sale, and this guy’s never gonna let me live it down.”

  Ma stood with her hands behind her back, watching everybody laugh.

  “I wasn’t talking about you, Verdella,” Daddy said. “I was talking about Jewel. If she hadn’t made friends with Betty Crocker, me and the kid would never get a piece of cake, period.”

  Freeda looked up at Ma, whose face had turned blotchy, then Freeda wrinkled her forehead at Daddy. “Too bad you can’t buy a carpenter in a box,” she said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Daddy asked, as he crammed half of his cake into this mouth, then wiped the chocolate from his lips with the back of his hand.

  “Sit down, Jewel. Sit down!” Aunt Verdella said, patting the lawn chair between her and Ada. “Tommy, bring that chair over here, will you? Come on, Fanny, you come sit too. Lord, it’s hot.” Aunt Verdella grabbed a plastic cup and asked Freeda to pour a little beer from her bottle into it. “I never drink, but, oh, what the hell.” She clamped her hand over her mouth, because she said a bad word, and then she ha-ha-ed.

  “It means what it sounds like it means,” Freeda said to Daddy. She poured the rest of her beer into Aunt Verdella’s cup, then grabbed another bottle from the tub. She came back to the table, sat down, and reached for the opener. Daddy grabbed it first and held it above his head. Freeda pretended she didn’t notice.

  “You guys, get a load of this one…” she said, while she bumped her side against Daddy. “Reece was supposed to fix the toilet so it wouldn’t keep running after it was flushed.”

  “I fixed it!” Daddy said.

  “Yeah. So you said.” Freeda laughed, then went back to telling her story. “Anyway, he must have been in there a good hour, then came out and said it was fixed. I flushed it after he left, and it started making these gurgling noises in the tank, so I took the lid off, and a goddamn geyser shot out of the tank! I’m not kidding. A goddamn geyser!”

  Daddy started to say something, but Freeda clamped her hand over his mouth. “Soaked the ceiling, my nylons hanging over the shower pole. Everything! Even the curtains were soaked!” Everybody laughed, especially Aunt Verdella, whose cheeks were pink from the beer she drained from her Styrofoam cup.

  Daddy pulled his head away from Freeda’s hand. “She’s bullshittin’,” Daddy said with a laugh. “I went over there to check it out, and it flushes just fine.”

  “Yeah, now and then, but
just this morning, it geysered again.”

  “It did!” Winnalee said. “That’s why I had to take a stupid bath. Because it geysered me! I was dressed already too!” Freeda reached for the can opener Daddy was holding again, and again Daddy lifted it out of her reach.

  “Sounds to me like maybe I’d better stop in and take a look at it,” Mike Thompson added.

  Freeda must have been looking out the corner of her eye, because the second Daddy’s hand started coming down, Freeda reached for the can opener. Daddy was too quick, though, and he jerked his arm back, the can opener going out of Freeda’s reach again. “You don’t talk nice about me, then you can’t drink my beer.”

  “I’ll get it!” Winnalee said. She dived at Daddy, her knee coming right down on his lap. Daddy’s arms came in, and his back curled, as he let out one of those noises that is a mix of a gasp and a groan. The men really laughed then.

  Winnalee grabbed the can opener and handed it to Freeda. “That’ll teach ya,” Freeda said to Daddy with a giggle. Winnalee jumped off of Daddy’s lap, distracted by a blue butterfly bouncing across the grass.

  Ma didn’t wait for the laughing to stop. She stood up and said, “Reece, I think we should get going. It’s going on nine, and I have to work tomorrow.”

  “You can’t go yet, Jewel!” Aunt Verdella said. “We haven’t even had our dessert!” Aunt Verdella hurried to the picnic table and started cutting more slices of cake. “Tommy, could you run in the shed and get the ice cream out of the freezer, please?”

  “You heard Verdella,” Daddy said to Ma. “We haven’t had our ice cream yet.”

  “I think we had enough sweets for today,” Ma said, propping her hands on her hips.

  Daddy got up and grabbed two more beers from the tub. “One for the road?” he asked Ma.

  “Since when do I drink?” Ma said.

  “Since now?” Daddy said, tilting his head to the side. The way he said it made me suddenly able to see him as that “cute-as-a-bug’s-ear” little boy Aunt Verdella said he once was.