The Great Unexpected

by Sharon Creech

“It ain’t mine.”

  Now, I could have guessed that. Everyone in town knew that one-armed Farley had been a whiskey-drinking, cigar-smoking man of questionable character. People said he’d been fired from every job he ever had, and he’d been tossed out of every diner and bar in a thirty-mile radius. One night he fell down drunk on a railroad track and didn’t even wake up when the 4:00 a.m. freight train ran over his arm.

  In the hospital up in Ravensworth, he met a woman named Mary-Mary, and he found love and religion and was pretty nearly reformed (according to Mrs. Mudkin) until he learned that Mary-Mary, far younger than he, was already happily married. He left Blackbird Tree for some time but returned three or four years ago, and ever since then, he had stayed in this room at Mrs. Broadley’s boardinghouse, leaving it only once a week when Mrs. Broadley forced him out so she could clean the premises.

  “None of this stuff is mine,” Mr. Farley said. “None of these fancy gewgaws, none of this furniture, none of these—these”—he flapped his hand at the lace tablecloth—“these frippy things. It’s all Mrs. Broadley’s. I think I’m living in her storage room.”

  Mrs. Mudkin explained to him why we were there.

  “I cain’t think of a single thang for them to do,” Mr. Farley said, jerking his head toward me and Lizzie. He was a flabby, pale man with heavy, sagging cheeks and a bald head. He wore faded blue jeans, a red flannel shirt, and brown slippers.

  Mrs. Mudkin surveyed the room. It was clean and dusted, the bed was made, and everything was as tidy as if it had been prepared for company.

  “They could read to you,” Mrs. Mudkin offered.

  “No, they cain’t.”

  “I’m saying they could, if you wanted them to.”

  “No, they cain’t. I’ll stuff socks in my ears if they try it. I hate being read to. Makes me feel like a baby. I ain’t no baby.”

  “Mr. Farley, sir,” Lizzie said, “we would be most happy to take you out for a walk. It is such a beautiful day with the sun shining all around and the green leaves so plentiful on the trees—”

  “Nope. Don’t like walks.”

  I wanted to bomp him on the head for being so stubborn. “What do you like, Mr. Farley?”

  Mr. Farley looked surprised. He opened his mouth and shut it again without any words coming out. He looked as if no one had ever asked him that question before.

  “I—I—” Mr. Farley bent his head, leaned forward, and covered his face with his hands. He appeared to be crying.

  Mrs. Mudkin, Lizzie, and I stood there like frozen turkeys. I gazed into the china cabinet, wishing I were anywhere else but in that room. Who eats off those dishes? I wondered. Is that a little Eiffel Tower statue? On one shelf, between the dishes, were two iron birds, about four inches high. Crows, maybe.

  Mr. Farley was saying something, but we couldn’t make out what it was.

  Lizzie put one finger on his shoulder. “Mr. Farley? What did you say?”

  “Meetumking.”

  “What’s that, Mr. Farley?”

  “Meetumking.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Farley, but we can’t quite understand—”

  Mr. Farley looked up abruptly. “MEET THE KING! Are you deaf? I said I want to meet the King!”

  “The King? What King?”

  With considerable trial and error, we discovered that Mr. Farley was desperate to meet the King of Ireland.

  “Does Ireland have a king?” I asked. “Are you sure?”

  Mrs. Mudkin turned to Lizzie. “Does he want to go to Ireland? How is he going to do that?”

  “HERE!” Mr. Farley said. “He is HERE.”

  Mrs. Mudkin moved toward the door and motioned for me and Lizzie to join her.

  “I do believe,” Mrs. Mudkin said, “that the poor, unfortunate soul is having delusions, and I do not think that you girls should be left alone with him today. We will try again next week.”

  Mrs. Mudkin approached Mr. Farley. “We have to leave now—”

  “Ireland? Are we going to Ireland?”

  “No, Mr. Farley—”

  “Are you bringing the King?”

  “Erm, the King? We are going to inquire about the King. Yes, we are going to see if we can locate him.”

  In the hallway outside Mr. Farley’s room, Mrs. Mudkin said, “The poor soul has lost his marbles.” Her papery, thin fingers fluttered at her lips. “Tragic, really. You two girls run along. I’ll stop in to see if Mrs. Broadley has any insights as to Mr. Farley’s unfortunate condition. Go on, and don’t forget to meet me again on Thursday for our next two souls.”

  Outside, Lizzie said, “Gosh, Naomi, heavens above, that poor soul is hallucinating! I thought he might conjure up the devil himself. I thought—”

  “Lizzie. Lizzie. STOP talking for two minutes. Catch a breath. Close your yap. Are you going to tell me what happened with Finn or what?”

  “Finn? Why, Naomi, whatever has come over you?”

  “Don’t act so innocent, Lizzie. I happen to know that Finn went to your house on Sunday, so fess up.”

  “He did? Finn came to my house? Whatever for? Do tell, Naomi, tell me all about it, oh, please, do.”

  Surely my head flipped right up off my neck, wobbled, and set itself back down. Maybe I was the one who was hallucinating.

  CHAPTER 25

  OF LIES AND SUCH

  One thing about Lizzie that was both reassuring and maddening was that she did not tell lies. She did not seem to know how to lie.

  If Bo Dimmens asked you what you thought of the ridiculous, lime-colored beret he had taken to wearing, you might want to tell a little fiction. You might want to say, “Looks cool, Bo.” If you told the truth, Bo Dimmens might dump a bucket of lard on your head.

  Lizzie, however, could not even tell that little lie and yet no one bopped her on the head. Why? Because she numbed people with an avalanche of words. She might say to Bo Dimmens, about his foolish hat, “Why, Bo, what kind of hat is that on your head? What is that called, and does it keep your head warm and do you want it to keep your head warm in the summer, or mightn’t it be better to have a cooler hat in the summer, or maybe I don’t understand the purpose of that kind of hat, seeing as I’ve never seen one before.” Bo would be standing there showing the insides of his mouth, not knowing whether he had been insulted or complimented.

  If Mrs. Mudkin asked you if you thought her doddery, rickety, stick-thin, wrinkled self looked old, you might feel obliged to take your own flight of fancy and say, “Surely not, Mrs. Mudkin. You’re a long way from looking old.” Otherwise, Mrs. Mudkin might launch into a sermon about not insulting your elders.

  But Lizzie might say to Mrs. Mudkin, “Of course you look old, Mrs. Mudkin, but in the most beautiful of ways, what with all your charming wrinkles. I do hope I have wrinkles like that when I get old. It shows so much character, don’t you think?”

  Even if you thought stingy Alice Krupkins with her dripping nose and whining voice was the last person on earth you’d want to be stuck in a closet with, you couldn’t actually tell her that, could you? You could think it, but you might not want to say it out loud or else she would hyperventilate and squeal and run to the nearest adults and inform them of your meanness.

  But Lizzie would say to Alice Krupkins (and I know this for a fact), “Alice, I am so entirely worried about you because your nose is running like a leaky cow udder, and perhaps you need to rest up and take some cod liver oil, which is what I take every day even though I do not like the smell of it one bit, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices for your health, don’t you?”

  The reason Lizzie’s inability to lie was reassuring was that if you asked her a question, you knew she would always tell you the truth, even though she might take way too many words to tell that truth. The reason her inability to lie was also maddening was because you could not get away with your own little lies if Lizzie was around.

  So, knowing that Lizzie was not able to lie, I was stumped as to why she was being so ignorant abou
t Finn having gone to her house on Sunday.

  “Truly, Naomi? Finn came to my house? I do wish you would tell me all about it.”

  “I know that he came to your house. He told me that’s where he was going. He asked me where you lived.”

  “He did? Now, whyever did he do that, Naomi? Didn’t I well and truly show him on the little dirt map I drew for him?”

  “It’s kind of hard to tell from scratches in the dirt exactly which house is which, Lizzie. Are you trying to say Finn did not come to your house on Sunday evening?”

  “I surely do not know, Naomi, do I? If I knew that he came, I would know what you are talking about. And how would I know anyway since I was not home on Sunday evening? As you well and truly know, I was back at church.”

  Sunday-night services. I’d forgotten. Naturally, I felt bad for thinking Lizzie was hiding something from me, but I still held a little something against her. I blamed her for Finn’s wanting to go to her house in the first place.

  I told Lizzie about running into Finn and his asking me where she lived. I tried to sound casual, as if it was not of any importance whatsoever.

  “Naomi! Isn’t that most interesting? I wonder why he would want to know where I lived. Did he want to know where anyone else lived? Isn’t that peculiar? What a fascinating boy that Finn boy is, don’t you think, Naomi?”

  My tongue had become saturated with jealousy. I could not speak.

  CHAPTER 26

  ACROSS THE OCEAN: THE CALL

  MRS. KAVANAGH

  Mrs. Kavanagh was in the orchard, her wheelchair parked comfortably in the shade, her feet resting on the back of one of her foxhounds. The other dog lay nose to nose with its sister. Both dogs slept comfortably, their ears and noses twitching occasionally at scents and sounds both dreamed and real.

  Mrs. Kavanagh was thinking about lies, small ones and large ones. Even the small ones had consequences, but then so did small truths. If you were twelve, say, and told your sister you’d never kissed a boy, it seemed a small lie, didn’t it? But if that small lie was discovered, a sister’s trust could be lost, and a sister’s trust was worth more than the gold in a rich man’s vault.

  And so it had been with Mrs. Kavanagh and her sister when they were young and both of them charmed by the same boy, that wicked Paddy McCoul.

  Mrs. Kavanagh’s reverie was interrupted by the appearance of Pilpenny.

  “I have news, Sybil, you’ll be pleased to hear.”

  “And what is that, Pilpenny?”

  “Your Mr. Dingle has rung, quite cheery, and says there are some ‘interesting complications’—those are the words he used, Sybil, ‘interesting complications’—and he will ring back in an hour’s time to tell you himself.”

  “Such a fine man, that Dingle chap. You can always trust a Dingle.”

  The dogs stretched and snuffled.

  “Wait,” said Mrs. Kavanagh. “Rook is nearby. I sense him.”

  They felt the fluttering of wings skim over their heads. The sleek black rook settled itself comfortably on Mrs. Kavanagh’s outstretched arm. The dogs did not budge.

  “There you are, Rook. I knew you were listening. Pay close attention tonight, won’t you?”

  Rook turned his head toward Mrs. Kavanagh, pecked gently at her shoulder, and hopped onto her lap as Pilpenny turned the wheelchair back toward the bridge.

  “Come on, lovies,” Mrs. Kavanagh called to her dogs. “Might as well all hear what Mr. Dingle himself has to say, mm?”

  After Mrs. Kavanagh had spoken with Mr. Dingle, she said, “That Mr. Dingle has done a bang-up job! He’s there, he is! I say, I haven’t felt so cheery in a long time, Pilpenny, have you? Bring us some sherry, won’t you? We’ll celebrate.”

  Mrs. Kavanagh stretched her arm toward the window. Rook flew to her from his windowsill perch.

  “And you, too, Rook. You, too, shall celebrate.”

  CHAPTER 27

  THE LIMITS OF FRIENDSHIP

  I’d spent all morning in the barn, clearing clutter from around Joe’s workbench and organizing what was left. I didn’t accomplish much in the first hour because I stopped to examine each thing: lengths of rope; balls of twine; jars of screws and nails and tacks; cans of paint, oil, and turpentine; parts of engines; screwdrivers and hammers. The oddest things made me stop, reminding me of ways they had been used.

  That near-empty green paint can: Joe had let me use that paint on an ancient bicycle I’d found in the barn. I liked that color so much that I went on to paint one of his ladders, Nula’s treasured milk can that she used as a flower container, and half a barn door. Joe and Nula didn’t look as pleased as I had expected. All Joe said was, “I guess you like that green color,” and Nula said, about her milk can, “It’s … very green, isn’t it?”

  A tangle of twine on Joe’s workbench reminded me of a time when I was maybe five or six and had taken a ball of twine and wound it all through the chicken yard, so the chickens would have little “rooms” of their own, and Nula came out in the near dark and tripped over the twine rooms and broke her wrist when she fell.

  She didn’t yell. She didn’t scold. All she said to me was, “Rooms for chickens?”

  After the first hour of poking around in the barn, I snapped out of it and became ruthless. Nine empty cans? Don’t need nine. Toss six. Six balls of twine? Toss three. Rusty nails? Toss ’em all. A growing pile of discards nearly blocked the barn door.

  “Hey, tree girl.”

  Finn’s voice.

  There he was, standing in the opening, with the morning light behind him, giving him a white-light halo all around his whole self. I didn’t know how he got as far as the barn without the chickens raising a ruckus.

  “I’m not ‘tree girl.’ I’m Naomi. Nay-oh-me. How come you remember Lizzie’s name so well and can’t remember mine?”

  Finn smiled that slow, sweet smile of his. “Okay, Nay-oh-me, but remember that I’m Finn and not Finn boy.”

  “Okay.”

  Finn bent to examine a tin can in the discard pile. “You tossing these?”

  “Yep. Got a million of them.”

  “I could sure use a couple.”

  “Help yourself.”

  Finn picked up a discarded ball of twine. “And this? Sure could use this.”

  “It’s all yours. What’re you going to do with it?”

  “Things. Stuff.” Finn inched closer. “Looks like you’re busy.”

  “Me? Naw. Me?”

  “Looks like you’re clearing out this old barn.”

  “Me?”

  He came closer. “Maybe you could use some help.”

  “What, me?”

  Finn was now standing directly in front of me. “I like your face.”

  “My face?”

  “Naomi! Lar-de-dar! Naomi! You here? I’ve come to help!” And there was Lizzie Scatterdinghead, all clean and smiling, bopping along with the chickens squawking and pecking at her heels. “Oh, it’s Finn boy!” she squealed. “What a surprise-a-dise! Lar-de-dar. Funny finding you here. Naomi and I were just talking about you yesterday, Finn boy. Naomi said you came over to see me on Sunday. Is that right, Finn boy? Whyever did you do that? What did you want? Hi, there, Naomi. You’re all dirtied up, aren’t you?”

  How is it that you can be close friends with a person, deeply close friends, closer than sisters maybe, and then one day you want that person to disappear off the face of this earth? Sure, I’ve wanted to slip some tape on Lizzie’s mouth a few dozen times, but I never before wanted her to vanish completely. That day in the barn, though, when my mouth was mere seconds from being magnetically drawn to Finn’s mouth, and Lizzie burst through the door warbling lar-de-dar, I had a powerful wish for her to vanish in a puff of smoke.

  I disliked her then. No, I hated her. I hated her clumsy babbling and her inability to see what a babbling idiot she could be. I hated that she thought she was so nice and so much a friend, when so many things she was doing seemed purposely aimed at making me miser
able.

  Finn’s reaction to Lizzie’s intrusion made me even more miserable. “Hi there, Lizzie—or would you rather be called Elizabeth?”

  “Why don’t you call her ‘tree girl’?” I said.

  Lizzie beamed. “Finn boy, you can call me whatever you choose. I don’t mind a bit what people call me, as long as it isn’t mean or cruel. Most people call me Lizzie, only a few call me Elizabeth, one person I know calls me ‘tree girl’—ahem!—and my foster parents, who will soon be my real adoptive parents, sometimes they call me Elizabeth Niamh. Niamh is my middle name. You spell it n-i-a-m-h, but you say it like this: NEE-av—”

  “You never told me that was your middle name,” I said.

  “Why, Naomi, you never asked me! I don’t even know your middle name, do I? And I don’t know Finn’s middle name, do I?”

  “I like your voice,” Finn said.

  He was talking to Lizzie. I wanted to choke her.

  “My voice? What a wonderfully sweet thing for you to say. I think I must be blushing all over the place. Am I? Am I blushing?” She put her hands to her cheeks. “Oh, I certainly feel warm, so I must be blushing. Naomi, rescue me, please! Finn boy, don’t you like Naomi’s voice, too? I think Naomi has a nice voice, a little low for a girl, but some people like those low voices better than my kind of voice.”

  Lizzie went on like that for some time until Finn said he had to leave. “Where do you have to go, Finn boy? Are you going back to the Dimmenses’? Do you like staying up there on Black Dog Night Hill? Aren’t you scared? Or are you going to Crazy Cora’s? Or Witch Wiggins’s place? You shouldn’t go there. I don’t understand why you go to such … such strange places with such strange occupants. Why do you do that, Finn boy?”

  Finn seemed numbed by her questions. “I don’t know which of those questions I should answer first, so I won’t answer any, if it’s all right with you.” He smiled at me and at Lizzie and sauntered out of the barn door and out of sight.

  “Well!” Lizzie said. “He could have stayed to help! Honestly, boys will do anything to get out of work. I’ll help you, though. What do you want me to do?”