by Richard Peck
“I swan,” she said to me, “I have to shake him down every blessed day, and you wouldn’t credit what I find on him.”
She got a good grip on his hand, and off the three of us strolled, out past the sidewalks and into open country.
“You can call me Blossom,” I said, just to put Roderick at his ease.
But Daisy-Rae said, “He won’t call you nothin’. He don’t have a lot to say.”
When we got out past the trestle bridge and onto dirt road, I noticed that Daisy-Rae was less gawky. Even Roderick, who had a tendency to drool, drooled less. When we reached the wire fence around Leverette’s Woods, they both vaulted right over it with easy grace. I had to take it in stages.
In the woods they followed a faint trail like a pair of Indian scouts. Not knowing the territory, I tended to crash through the underbrush. At length Daisy-Rae drew me up short, whispering, “When we get to the swimmin’ hole, we’ll skin up that big elm tree. I have an idee we won’t have long to wait.” Roderick had already slipped on ahead of us, quiet as a . . . mouse.
The swimming hole’s a quarter of a mile back into Leverette’s Woods. When we came to the elm tree beside it, I’d have given up if I hadn’t been set on getting the goods on Alexander and his chums. I’m no squirrel for climbing trees. I gazed up the elm’s tall trunk. There high in the foliage was Roderick’s face, peering down already like a somewhat dim-witted owl.
Daisy-Rae boosted me from behind, but I’ll never know how I shinnied up the ten feet to the first branch. I was about to give out when Roderick’s small, grimy hand shot out of the greenery and guided me onto a branch. There I settled while Daisy-Rae swarmed up behind me and eased onto a nearby limb.
Roderick settled on a perch of his own above us. They were both as natural up a tree as a pair of bats. I was giddy looking down until I got my bearings. Through the leaves I had a fine view of the swimming hole and a patch of tall grass directly below.
“Hark at that,” Daisy-Rae murmured before I heard them coining. She had ears on her like a librarian. “Sit real still, and don’t swing yore legs nor nothin’, and they’ll never know.”
Not a minute later, following the sound of small bushes being tramped down, Bub Timmons and Champ Ferguson stepped out of the woods right under me. With them was Alexander.
“Whooeee,” remarks Bub, “won’t that water feel good.”
“Last one in,” says Champ, “sucks eggs.”
Alexander said nothing but threw himself in the weeds and commenced wrenching his shoes off. Durned if they didn’t all three start shucking off their clothes. Somehow I hadn’t thought this far. The grass was soon littered with shoes and shirts and Alexander’s argyle sweater and boys’ union-suit underwear. Quicker than tongue can tell, Bub, Champ, and Alexander were all naked as jaybirds.
“Well, I never,” I whispered to Daisy-Rae.
“You have now,” Daisy-Rae whispered back.
They were soon all neck-deep in the water, but not before I had an eyeful. They splashed and ducked one another as boys will, playing the fool. Then Alexander heaved out of the pond on the far side and pulled himself up a tree where the big rope swing hung down.
What a sight Alexander was, clambering up that tree as naked as the day he was born. He looked for all the world like a plucked chicken. Then he edged out on the branch where the rope was.
Pounding his chest with both hands like Tarzan of the Apes, he roars out in his deepest voice:
“O, WHAT A ROGUE AND
PEASANT SLAVE AM I!”
which made Bub and Champ in the water hoot and catcall.
“What kind of talk would that be?” Daisy-Rae whispered to me. I explained it was just Alexander showing off with lines from Miss Blankenship’s Hamlet, which, of course, meant nothing to Daisy-Rae.
Nearly overbalancing, Alexander dragged up the knot end of the rope and swung out over the swimming hole. He swung right at me, his legs high and wide. I sat real still, taking in the view before he turned loose and hit the water.
By and by the three of them dragged themselves out to dry off in the last rays of the sun. They flopped down in the weeds beneath us and commenced to brag, describing what kind of tattoos they’d all get once they were grown and free of Bluff City.
Bub declared he was going to have a big heart tattooed on his shoulder with a place left blank for lettering in the name of his sweetheart when he was ready to settle down. Champ favored a Chinese dragon with a tail wrapping his arm from elbow to wrist. Trying to keep up, Alexander said he wanted the American eagle tattooed completely across his chest. But Champ remarked that on Alexander’s chest there wouldn’t hardly be room for a wren.
They all laughed like hyenas and wrestled around in the weeds till Bub pulled out a tobacco pouch and papers and rolled three cigarettes. The air was soon foul and blue from their puffing. Alexander had a job to keep his lighted. He was going green around the gills, though the rest of him was white as chalk. He barely got the thing smoked, and then if he didn’t say, “I’ll have me another of those coffin nails, Bub, if you don’t mind.”
I rolled my eyes at Daisy-Rae, and she rolled hers back from her branch.
Halloween soon came up in their conversation. I was all ears to hear Alexander say, “I won’t be available on Halloween night itself, what with the Halloween Festival that I am in charge of.” It was something to hear how important he could make himself without a stitch on.
Bub and Champ pointed out that it was fair and square to Halloween any night around the end of October. Indeed, to do all the damage they proposed, it would take them most of a month. And since boys rarely come up with any new ideas, their plot turned upon Old Man Leverette. They’re out to get him every year.
I found myself leaning far forward to hear their disgusting plan to plague Old Man Leverette. They could hardly get it discussed for rolling around in the weeds, helpless with laughter and anticipation. It was a nastier plan than turning over his privy, and I about had to give them some credit for originality.
I had no time for anything else because disaster struck right about then. I heard what seemed the crack of a nearby rifle. Daisy-Rae gave out with a little gasp, and above me Roderick drew up his bare feet.
Then the world went topsy-turvy. The rifle crack was, in fact, my branch breaking. It held my weight for an instant more. Then suddenly I was dropping through the air in a blizzard of whipping leaves, following my big branch to the ground.
I had only time to think that if I wasn’t killed, I might finish off anybody I lit on. There were startled yelps from the boys below as the sky seemed to fall on them. I believe they began to crawl different ways, but they didn’t get far.
I rode that thing like a bucking bronco, leaving Daisy-Rae and Roderick far above me. It seemed to take forever before I crashed to earth, jarring my eyeteeth. Where there’d been weeds and naked boys, now there was a jungle of leafy branches and quivering twigs. I nestled, somewhat stunned, in the midst of it.
Very near me I heard bad language from the surprised Bub. Champ muttered, too, and then I heard Alexander’s voice.
“Oh, no, lightning must have struck. Where is my underwear? I can’t go home like this, and I’d better be going.” Et cetera.
I had the sense to keep quiet. Let them all think lightning had struck, and it would be far better for me. I began to crawl backward along the limb, trying to slip away unnoticed while the boys untangled themselves.
Chancing a look up in the tree, I saw Daisy-Rae’s boots still dangling from her branch and all but invisible. Roderick remained up there, too, looking down at me, almost interested. Then I stole away in a low crouch, bruised all over.
I’d have made a clean getaway, but my toe snagged in a root, and I went sprawling. Glancing back, I saw Alexander’s head popping up, wearing a sort of wreath of elm leaves. He could see me, too, unless he was dazed. I had no intention of hanging around to find out. Boys are modest to a fault. I lit out like a jackrabbit.
Through the woods I sprinted until I got a stitch in my side and slowed to a walk. There was nothing to hear but birdsong. The evening shadows were growing long on the ground. Getting my breath back, I began to slip along, practicing Daisy-Rae’s and Roderick’s quiet way in the woods. With a pair of moccasins in place of my boots, I wouldn’t have made a bad Indian.
Having had enough excitement for one day, I took my time finding a way out of the woods. But there was more to come.
Sharpening my senses, I seemed to hear murmuring somewhere through the brush ahead. I thought of cooing doves before the sound became a man’s baritone voice.
Bending double, I made my careful way along behind a screen of elderberry bushes. More like a frontierswoman with every stealthy step, I sensed open country ahead of me. The man’s voice droned on, nearer now. One false step would betray me, so I worked along extra-careful.
Still, I almost blundered onto them. Ahead of me were open fields and Old Man Leverette’s abandoned farmhouse outlined against the sunset. Nearer, just within the woods, was the Lovers’ Lane, winding its way. Beside the gate into the Leverette pasture a pair of lovers stood beneath a weeping willow tree.
Luck was with me. I was still a good five yards away with an elderberry bush between me and them. I hunkered down quick, barely breathing. In that position I was to suffer several nasty shocks.
The lovers were locked in embrace. I couldn’t see the lady, she being in the arms of a broad-shouldered swain in a blue serge suit. He seemed to be reciting poetry to her. He turned his profile aside and proclaimed these well-known lines:
“Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.”
It was Mr. Lacy. The sunset played across his yellow hair. While he paused for a moment of dramatic silence, the lady emitted sighs. I was all ears.
“Oh, how perfectly lovely, Ambrose,” says the lady in a familiar voice. “It is like you to choose lines from Shakespeare, knowing how fond I am of all his works.”
Surely my ears deceived me. But no. Mr. Lacy bowed to cover the lady’s hand with kisses, and I saw her face plain. It was Miss Mae Spaulding, principal and eighth-grade teacher of Horace Mann School.
My heart was in my throat at horror and dismay to find my old grade school principal in the embrace of Mr. Lacy. You’re never too late for love, I suppose, but what of Miss Fuller, the deceived gym teacher?
While Miss Fuller was languishing in her locker room, here her beloved stood, quoting the same Shakespeare I’d provided her with to another woman. You talk about a snake in the grass.
They fell to kissing again, Miss Spaulding firmly under his spell. I’d thought she had better sense, but then I’d only seen her during a school day. The spectacles she always wears on a chain had fallen off her nose and were swinging free. Her hair was escaping from its bun, and Mr. Lacy was all over her. Before I could recover from this shock, I got another one, quite a lot worse.
Staring intently through the bush at these so-called lovers, I failed to protect my backside. Maybe I heard a twig snap behind me, maybe not.
A hand closed like a claw on my shoulder. Another thorny hand, scarcely human, clapped over my mouth. My breath was cut off, and my heart hollered. Pinned though I was behind the elderberry bush, I wrenched my head around.
I was staring up into a fearful face with eyes sharp as black diamonds boring into mine. Then I was scared for sure. There aren’t two faces like that anywhere in North America. It was my mama.
6
ANY SCENE WITH MAMA IN IT is always painful to recall. Though I could have walked, she dragged me clear back to town by the scruff of the neck. Over her humped shoulder was a sack of hickory nuts. Mama is a fortune-teller by trade, but in the fall we add to our income by nut gathering. We also do a certain amount of gardening, often in other people’s gardens.
On our homeward trip we paused once for her to cut a switch off a bush for my legs. Mama isn’t up-to-date on child raising and is liable to whup the tar out of me over any little matter.
At home she flung me into a chair and eased the sack onto the floor, saying, “Ooph’ll larn youoph to fool arounph in theph timber, youoph little—”
“Mama,” I said, “put your teeth in if you’re going to talk.” I can understand her anyhow but hoped to distract her. She won’t wear her teeth much, a good artificial pair, and will leave them around most anyplace. Luck wasn’t with me, as they were right there on the table between a pack of playing cards and her crystal ball. She popped them in, which fills out her face no end, and turned on me.
“Now listen, Mama,” I said, talking fast. “I only went out to the woods to learn what a bunch of boys were going to pull on Halloween. You know yourself what damage they can do if some responsible person such as myself doesn’t put a stop to it.”
Mama’s snaky eyes narrowed. She thrust her terrible face closer to mine, and her earrings swayed. They were a pair of gambler’s dice hanging from her lobes, which is an example of Mama’s taste in jewelry. I talked faster.
“I didn’t set out to spy on Mr. Lacy, my history teacher, who’s two-timing Miss Fuller, the gym teacher with Miss Mae—”
“Shut up,” Mama remarked, taking up the switch. Her mean gaze fell on my legs.
“It was an accident, pure and simple. I just chanced onto that Lovers’ Lane, where—”
“You was creepin’ up on that house. I caught you at it.” Mama lashed the air with her switch, testing it. I tried not to notice.
“What house?” I inquired.
Thwack went the switch on the tabletop with a dreadful sound. “The old Leverette place, don’t play goody-goody with me.”
It’s remarkable how plain Mama can speak with her teeth in. They grinned at me, but she didn’t.
“The old Leverette place?” I echoed. Mama seemed to be off on one of her tangents.
Thwack on the table again. “You heard me. You don’t go near that place. I tell you one time, you listen.” Thwack yet again.
“I don’t have any business in Old Man Leverette’s tumbledown place.”
“You can say that agin,” Mama mocked, but she’d turned loose of the switch. It rested on the table as a stern reminder. There was something going on in Mama’s mind.
“You keep clear of that place,” she advised, “or I’ll slap you to sleep.”
“Why, Mama?”
She grunted, somehow pleased. “I knowed you hadn’t figured it out. Ain’t I told you time and agin your Powers is puny compared to mine? I won’t have you dabblin’ in things you can’t handle. I got my reputation to consider.”
It began to dawn on me. “You mean the place is haunted?”
“I know what I know.” Her teeth clacked in some satisfaction. “You don’t know nothin’.”
Nobody likes to be talked down to that way, especially by a mother. I tried to reason the situation out. “It couldn’t be haunted by Old Man Leverette. He’s alive and kicking right here in Bluff City.”
Though she was still looming over me, Mama drew out a pouch of Bull Durham chewing tobacco from the black folds of her shroud. She pulled off a plug and popped it into her mouth. While she jawed it down to size, I gave the matter more thought.
“Was there a halo about the place?” I asked her. Mama can occasionally tell if a place is haunted if she sees a mystical halo arching over its roof. It’s one of her better ways.
“If you had any Powers whatsoever,” she responded rudely, “you’d know that for yourself.”
At least she seemed to forget the switch. A plug of Bull Durham will soothe Mama every time. “It ain’t that kind of a haunting,” she offered, just to show her superior knowledge.
I sighed. There isn’t much you can do with Mama. Her temper was cooling, though. She ambled around the table and sat down. She can strike a kitchen match with one flick of her thumbnail. She did so now, lighting up a coal oil lamp. W
e’re not wired for electricity because of the expense and because Mama says the fad for it won’t last.
“Draw up your chair, and I’ll give you a readin’,” she says in quite a civil manner, like I’m a customer. There is no charting Mama’s moods.
She swept up her pack of cards. There’s nobody like Mama for handling a deck. She can shuffle in the air and cut them one-handed. “Take a card, any card,” she said, fanning them out on the table.
I turned over the two of clubs, having no doubt she’d give the same reading to any card I happened to draw. There’s a lot of show business in Mama.
“Hmmmmm.” She squinted at it, then up at me. “That’s real interesting, that is,” she said, gargling tobacco juice.
“Well, Mama, let’s have it. Am I going to make a long journey and meet a handsome stranger?”
Mama doesn’t take any sass. “If it’s yore fortune you want to hear, I can give it to you in a nutshell: You won’t set down for a week if I catch you near the Old Leverette place. But I ain’t doin’ a reading on you. That there two of clubs is sending a message. If you don’t clam up, I ain’t tellin’ you what it is.”
Between Daisy-Rae and Mama it’s a wonder I have any grammar left. Her head began to bob and weave. Her eyes rolled back in her head, which is not a pretty sight.
“Oh, yeah,” she muttered, “I hear it clear. Here comes the message from the Great Beyond. Lay it on me!”
I waited patiently, having no choice. At last in a far-off voice she spoke: “Not all the Unliving are dead!”
Then she jerked awake. “Where am I? What time is it? What’d I say?”
I sighed. “You said, ‘Not all the Unliving are dead!’”
“Did I? Ain’t that interesting!”
“If you say so, Mama. Is that the entire message?”
Her eyes squinched to glittering slits. “It’s more than enough to them with the Second Sight, which you ain’t got much of.” She parked her Bull Durham up in her cheek in a final way, so I figured the reading was over.