The Search for Belle Prater

by White, Ruth

  We sat on our quilts before the fire again, and thought some more.

  The bottom of the ocean at midnight. Lost in a deep dark cave. A cemetery. Buried alive! Yeah, that was it. It was unanimous. Waking up in a casket buried alive had to be the scariest place in the world.

  “That reminds me of something,” Cassie said. “You know that old saying ‘saved by the bell’?”

  Yeah, we had heard it.

  “Well, let me tell you how it got started. See, long time ago, they didn’t use to embalm people. They just buried them, guts and all, when they quit breathing.

  “Then one time when they had to move a graveyard, they found some skeletons that looked like they had been trying to get out of the grave. And the people felt bad that they had maybe buried some people alive.

  “So after that, they started tying a string around the dead person’s finger. It would lead up to the top of the ground where the other end was tied to a bell. So if the dead person woke up, he would pull the string and the bell would ring. That’s why people say ‘saved by the bell.’”

  “That’s interestin’,” Woodrow said. “Did you read that in one of them history books?”

  “No, I remember it. I was there.”

  “You were there?” Woodrow and I said together.

  “Yeah … well, maybe I wasn’t there as Cassie, and maybe I wasn’t there in the flesh, but I remember it. It’s a kind of ancestral memory that runs in my family.”

  Me and Woodrow gave each other our private “talk to you about this later” look, and I realized we were all the way back to being buddies again, and sharing moments like this that maybe nobody else would appreciate.

  “Well, I have heard,” Woodrow said, “that every story that’s ever been told to us, and every book we’ve ever read, is still inside of us. And even though we don’t know it’s there, a little reminder can bring it to the surface again.”

  “And speaking of bells,” I said, “I am reminded of a real good joke.”

  “Oh, goody!” Woodrow said, and moved closer to me.

  “When the Hunchback of Notre Dame died,” I started off, “the word went out that a new bell ringer was needed for the church tower. The first man to apply didn’t have any arms.

  “This priest they had in charge asked the man, ‘How can you ring a bell without arms?’

  “‘Come on and I’ll show you,’ said the man.

  “So him and the priest went up into the tower. To show his skill in bell ringing, the armless man took a running-go-start and ran into the bell with his face, and the bell rang loud.

  “‘Well, all right, then,’ said the priest. ‘The job is yours.’

  “But it so happened that on the very first day of his new job, that poor armless man took a flying run at the bell, missed it complete, fell down from the tower, and was killed dead.

  “There was a crowd gathered around the dead body and someone said, ‘Who is this man?’

  “The priest came upon the scene and said, ‘I don’t know his name, but his face rings a bell.’

  Cassie and Woodrow started to laugh, but I put out a hand to stop them. “Wait! Don’t laugh yet. There’s more.

  “Several days later,” I went on, “another man came to apply for the job as bell ringer, and he told the priest that he was the brother of the poor armless man who fell to his death. This man was clumsy, but he did have two arms.

  “‘Well, all right, then,’ said the priest. ‘You can have the job.’

  “But, lo and behold, on the very first day of his job the poor man stumbled and, just like his brother, he fell from the tower to his death.

  “Once again a crowd gathered around the dead body and someone said, ‘Who is this man?’

  “The priest, who had come up on the scene, said, ‘I don’t know his name, but he’s a dead ringer for his brother.’”

  Cassie laughed until every curl on her head bounced up and down. In fact, we all had the silly giggles bad. For once I was glad that Grandpa was hard of hearing, or we woulda woke him up for sure. But I knew in my heart that Grandpa wouldn’t come out and fuss at us even if we did wake him. He always said he loved to hear kids laughing. That’s how he was.

  “Bells, bells, bells,” Cassie was able to say at last, and she wiped a tear away from her cheek.

  “That’s right,” Woodrow said, “Belle, Belle, Belle. Her name just keeps on coming up. I wonder where she is tonight. Is she safe and warm?”

  There was quiet again as we pondered Woodrow’s words. The dark and cold combined to make us shiver, grateful to be inside the cabin. We were all lost in our own thoughts, and the air was thick with unanswered questions.

  16

  It had to be near midnight when we finally decided it was time to turn in.

  “I wish I’d brought my nightgown,” I said as Cassie and I started to climb the ladder to the loft.

  “You’re better off sleeping in your clothes,” Woodrow advised.

  “There’s plenty of covers on the bed, ain’t they?” Cassie said.

  “Yeah, but it’s still cold up there,” said Woodrow. “You can take your boots off, but keep your socks on.”

  So we climbed into the loft and closed the gate. Woodrow was right. It was freezing up there. You could feel cold air coming through the cracks in the wall. Me and Cassie tugged each other’s boots off and quickly slipped under the covers with our clothes on. We lay on our backs and scrunched up close to each other for warmth.

  We could hear Woodrow banking the fire; then he called good night, dimmed the lamp, and took it into the bedroom, closing the door behind him. The fire had burned down and threw very little light into the loft.

  “You skeered, Gypsy?” Cassie whispered.

  “Not much,” I said. “Are you?”

  “No, I just thought you might be.”

  I looked out at the night sky through the porthole in the slanted roof.

  “I don’t think it’s gonna snow anymore,” I whispered. “The stars are really coming out now.”

  But Cassie was asleep. I snuggled deeper into the quilts and watched the night sky through the tiny window, until my eyes slowly closed.

  We’re far away, I was thinking, as I drifted off … far away from everybody … in the dark … in a loft … in a cabin … in the snow … in the hills … in the place … where …

  I am dreaming of the place where the two worlds touch. I am falling in and swirling round and round and down through dim lights and muted voices. And everything is in slow motion. I am thinking what a slowed-down world this is, how cloudy and dull it all seems, when I see Aunt Belle just ahead. She is shining through the haze like a brilliant star.

  Then came a piercing scream.

  “She’s on the ladder!” It was Cassie. “She’s there on the ladder!”

  “What … ?” Still asleep, I jumped up and bumped my head on the low ceiling. Where was I anyhow?

  The room was black as coal. I could barely make out the porthole in the roof, but it brought me to awareness of being in the cabin. Cassie was sitting up in bed, and I eased myself down beside her, rubbing my head.

  “She’s coming up the ladder!” she screamed again. “Look! Here she comes!”

  I felt a jolt of panic then. There was so much agitation in her voice that I couldn’t help feeling afraid. Was somebody on the ladder? I crawled in close to Cassie and put my arms around her.

  “Who’s on the ladder?” I whispered.

  “Belle Prater!” Cassie continued with her ranting. “She’s coming up the ladder!”

  Then it dawned on me that Cassie was having a nightmare.

  “Wake up!” I began to shake her. “You’re dreaming!”

  Suddenly I heard real noises on the ladder, and there was a dim light below the gate. Somebody was there!

  “What’n the world’s all the hollerin’ for?”

  Woodrow’s head popped up over the gate. He threw the light across me and Cassie in the bed. Grandpa came right behind him.r />
  Cassie put up her hand to ward off the light. “Whatsa matter?” she mumbled.

  “You like to scared me to death!” I told Woodrow.

  “And y’all like to scared us to death!” he shot back.

  “We heard screaming,” Grandpa said. The two of them peered over the gate. “What’s going on, anyhow?”

  “Cassie had a nightmare,” I said.

  “I did?” Cassie said, seeming totally bewildered. Then, “Oh yeah, I did. I remember. It was the same dream, Woodrow. She was here on the ladder. I don’t mind saying she skeered me good. She was talking like them voices in that place out yonder—that hole in the air. But she had an envelope in her hand with your name on it.”

  “What? Who?” Grandpa wanted to know.

  Woodrow lifted the lantern over the gate, set it on the floor, then unhooked the gate, and eased up the last few steps to sit on the floor beside our bed. Grandpa stayed on the ladder as Woodrow told him about Cassie’s dreams.

  “I’m serious, Woodrow,” Cassie said. “I know there’s a letter here for you somewhere.”

  “Well, what can I say?” Woodrow said. “We searched this place good for any clues the day she left, and there was nothing.”

  “Did you and your mama maybe have a secret hiding place?” I asked.

  “No, not that I can recall,” he said thoughtfully.

  “Well, okay,” Grandpa joined in, and laid a hand across Woodrow’s shoulder. “Supposin’ you put yourself in her place and you’re going out the door that morning, and you want to leave a letter strictly for Woodrow that nobody else will find, where you gonna put it? Think about it.”

  Woodrow did think, and we were silent.

  “Well,” he said at last, “I think I’d put it somewhere up here.”

  “In the loft?” Cassie said.

  We all glanced around us.

  “She prob’ly wouldn’t want to wake me,” Woodrow went on, “so she’d slip it under the gate. But in that case I woulda seen it as soon as I woke up.”

  “Under the gate,” Grandpa said thoughtfully, chin in hand.

  All eyes went to the spot where the letter would have been if Aunt Belle had come up the ladder that morning and slipped it under the gate. I guess the same lightbulb went on in all our brains at the same time, and everybody made a dive for the edge of the rug. But it could not be moved. It was nailed down at each corner and along the sides, too. Woodrow tried to slip his hand underneath, but it was too snug to the floor.

  “Okay,” Grandpa said. “We may have to tear the rug apart. Is that all right with you, Woodrow?”

  “Yeah, it’s older than you are, Grandpa.”

  With that we all started tugging at the rug’s edge, struggling to pull it loose from the nails, and little by little it yielded. Strings of braids tore loose from the rug and stuck to the nail heads. We ceased our struggle and Woodrow’s hand shot under the rug again. This time his face went bright with triumph.

  “I feel something!”

  And he pulled out an envelope with one large word written in block letters on the front—WOODROW

  It was obvious to us what had happened. When Aunt Belle had hastily pushed the letter underneath the loft gate that morning, she had accidentally slipped it under the rug. It had been there ever since.

  Woodrow tore the letter open, and Grandpa held the lantern for him to read by. You could see his eyes scanning the single page rapidly, before he handed it to Grandpa, with a puzzled expression on his face. Then Grandpa read the letter, and Cassie and I nosed right in there and read for ourselves. It was one strange letter, for sure, all the sentences being strung together, with no punctuation.

  “She was really crazy,” Woodrow whispered, and shivered in the raw morning chill. “Just look at this letter. It’s nuts.”

  “She was overwhelmed with emotional problems,” Grandpa said kindly, as he placed an arm around Woodrow. “I think she was having a nervous breakdown. She didn’t understand what was happening to her, and she was afraid.”

  Woodrow read the letter through once more, but this time aloud. Then he read it to himself again, moving his lips as he mouthed each word. We watched his brow wrinkle up and his fingers clutch the paper until the knuckles turned white.

  “I will send for you,” he said out loud. “Wait for me.”

  “She went to find her own self,” I said. “That’s what she had to do.”

  I was remembering last summer, when Porter had said to me about Belle, “She actually vanished, you see, many years ago, when she was about your age. Now she is out there trying to find herself again.”

  17

  AS we left the cabin just before noon, Woodrow looked back only once at the home of his childhood. He was probably thinking he would never spend another night there. Then he turned his face frontward, with a set to his chin that I recognized as determination. He loaded a cardboard box full of his mother’s things into the trunk of Grandpa’s car, and we were gone.

  There was not a lot of talk among us as we drove back to Coal Station. You couldn’t drive a car all the way to Cassie’s house, so we dropped her off at the end of the bridge that crossed the river. From there, she would have to walk only a short distance down the railroad tracks.

  For breakfast we had polished off the popcorn and some peaches that Aunt Belle had canned, so by the time we arrived home we were just about famished. I followed Woodrow into Grandpa’s house first, hoping Granny might have something delicious to eat. Of course she did.

  Grandpa went directly to the kitchen table. Me and Woodrow greeted Dawg, then settled down with Grandpa. Dawg curled up under the table, waiting for scraps. Woodrow didn’t bring out the letter from Aunt Belle right off, or even mention it. But I knew he would share it in his own good time.

  Granny began to pull things out of her refrigerator just as Mama entered the back door with a flourish. Fresh from singing in the choir, she was dressed in an emerald green wool suit, her blue eyes sparkling. She looked for all the world like Doris Day. It occurred to me that Woodrow and I had missed church two Sundays in a row, and God had not struck us dead.

  “Did you tell them?” Mama said to Granny.

  “No, I’ll let you tell them,” Granny said, also smiling.

  She had our attention.

  Mama sat down at the kitchen table with us and said, “You will never guess who called!”

  She waited for a guess, but we all sat there staring at her. Hunger had dulled our wits.

  “Miz Lincoln!” Mama said.

  We reacted quick enough to that.

  “What’d she say?”

  “She wanted to know if the snow had kept you from Bluefield yesterday, and she asked if you were coming next weekend. She has something to tell you.”

  “Did she say what it was?” Woodrow asked.

  Granny set a platter of carrot sticks, celery, cukes, and radishes on the table.

  “Yes,” Mama said, and she made a big production of plucking a stick of celery from the platter, biting into it with a resounding crunch, and smiling triumphantly around the room.

  “And?” I tried to hurry her along.

  “She remembered seeing Belle.”

  “No foolin’?” Grandpa said. “Where?”

  “It was last summer,” Mama went on, “when the circus was in town. Miz Lincoln went to see some of her old friends and former students who were performing. She said one morning while she was visiting with the ringmaster, who is a special friend of hers—she calls him Roy—a woman came to apply for a job. It was Belle!”

  “Was she all right?” Woodrow said quickly.

  “I think so!” Mama said excitedly. “Miz Lincoln said she walked close enough to her so that she got a good look at her face, and she was sure it was Belle Prater.”

  “She was all right,” Woodrow said, letting out a long breath. He smiled then for the first time that day. Mama returned his smile and patted his hand.

  “Well, did they give her a job?” I asked.


  “Yes. Miz Lincoln said they hired her on the spot, to sell popcorn and peanuts in the stands.”

  “So she’s with the circus!” Woodrow exclaimed.

  “But people from Coal Station go to the circus in Bluefield all the time,” I said. “Surely somebody would’ve recognized her.”

  “Not if she’s a clown!” Mama said with a big grin.

  Woodrow was so tickled he laughed out loud. “My mama a clown?”

  “Yes,” Mama said. “All the vendors are dressed as clowns.”

  “Then she really is in Bluefield?” Grandpa said.

  “That’s what we don’t know,” Mama said. “Miz Lincoln said it was probably a temporary job.”

  “Temporary?”

  “Right. When they are in a town, the circus hires local people to do things like that. The temps don’t usually stay with the circus, but some have been known to join. We don’t know if Belle joined or not.”

  “Did Miz Lincoln say anything about Joseph?” Woodrow asked.

  “Yes, Joseph is adjusting to his new home and school. Everything is going well for them so far. Y’all were right about her. She’s a very nice lady.”

  “Yeah, I need to go back next Saturday,” Woodrow said. “I’ll look for Mama just one more time, and I also wanna see Joseph and Miz Lincoln.”

  Porter popped in the back door just as Granny set a plateful of ham salad sandwiches on the table. We teased him about knowing exactly when to make an entrance. Then all hands went to the sandwiches.

  “Miz Lincoln gave us her telephone number, so you can call her if you like, Woodrow,” Mama said. “She has already written to her friend Roy, the ringmaster, to see if she can find out anything more.”

  “And where is this ringmaster now?” Grandpa said.

  “With the circus in Florida for the winter.”

  We sat eating and absorbing this new information.

  “We have news for you, too,” Woodrow said after a while, and pulled the letter from Aunt Belle out of his pocket. He tossed it on the table, and Mama picked it up and began to read. Her pink mouth fell open and she gasped. When she was finished, she handed it to Granny without saying a word.