by Richard Peck
“Gittin’ about suppertime, ain’t it?” She glanced over to a bare cupboard and a cold stove. “How does a nice fried chicken sound to you?”
Reaching down on the floor, she fished up a burlap sack and tossed it across the table at me. My heart sank.
“Git a nice plump one,” she ordered, “and don’t take all night about it.”
I took up the sack with a heavy heart I don’t mind doing chores, but I hate rifling around in other people’s henhouses every time Mama gets a taste for fried chicken.
“One of these fine nights,” I mumbled at the door, “I’ll get my head blowed off.”
“Keep yore head down,” Mama advised. Then, just as I was crossing the threshold, she added, “Who’d you say them two lovebirds was, carryin’ on in the woods?”
“That was Miss Mae Spaulding, my old grade—”
“Never mind about her,” Mama said. “Who was the dude?”
“Oh, him, he’s my history teacher, name of Mr. Ambrose Lacy, and a regular snake in the—”
“I thought I knowed him!” Mama nodded wisely. “He’s trouble with a capital T and always was!”
Over my shoulder I saw Mama’s gaze shoot to her crystal ball to make me think she’d read some special knowledge there. I doubted that, but how she knew of Mr. Lacy I couldn’t tell. Mama is not exactly a member of the PTA.
There was no time to ponder this point. “You stick to yore own business,” Mama said, sending a jet of brown tobacco juice onto the floor. “Curiosity killed the cat.”
But satisfaction brought that cat back, I remarked to myself as I followed Mama’s long, crooked finger pointing out into the night.
An open-sided streetcar, all lit up, clattered past on the tracks outside our house. I followed along in its wake, walking a rail with my sack over my shoulder.
There on the far side of the Armsworth barn, I supposed, Alexander and all the Armsworths were tucking into a good roast beef and mashed potato dinner. Some people have all the luck.
Hoping to make quick work of my chore, I planned to pay a call on the first henhouse I came to. When you’re borrowing chickens, it’s best to work the other end of town. But I was half-starved, and Mama’s temper is short.
As luck would have it, I came up on the back lot of Old Man Leverette’s town property. There, beyond a row of dry hollyhocks, was the Leverette privy, and there, at an angle across his punkin patch, the Leverette henhouse.
A light glowed from the window in the kitchen door, but it seemed locked up for the night. I waited a moment in the privy’s shadow and then drifted with care across the punkin patch.
Working along a woven-wire fence, I found the gate into the chicken yard and made my way across hen grit and worse. Then I eased open the crude latch on the henhouse door. From within came the little sighs and flutterings of chickens gone to roost.
Nothing you can name smells worse than the inside of a henhouse on a windless night. I slipped inside and waited for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. The Rhode Island Reds were all but invisible on their perches, but the white breeds glowed dimly.
I took a careful step on the slick floor, and a large hen stirred by my ear. The bead of her eye observed me, and I froze. She tucked her head under a wing again. My watchful eye scanned down the row to find one of her sisters less alert.
Chickens aren’t the brightest of birds, but easily flustered.
I found a likely specimen, well feathered out. Her beak was tucked beneath her wing, and her neck curved plumply. My hand moved out, fingers itching. In a sudden gesture I had her by the throat, shutting off her wind.
Then things went seriously wrong.
From behind me the henhouse door was nearly wrenched from its hinges. Night air gusted in, and every hen in the place rose up and screamed bloody murder. I turned my particular fowl loose, and she flapped, squawking, away to the rafters.
There’s nothing louder than surprised chickens, and the air was white with feathers. I have no doubt they all laid eggs at once. I could have laid one myself.
“REACH FOR THE SKY,” a voice roared, “I GOT YOU COVERED.” I dropped my sack. It was one of those days.
“TURN AROUND SLOW AND EASY.”
As I turned, I saw a great bear-shaped shadow filling the henhouse door. I was also staring into both barrels of a shotgun. “Hold your fire.” I sighed. “I am unarmed.”
The barrels twitched. “ARE YOU A BOY OR A DWARF?”
“Neither,” I answered, somewhat discouraged.
As there’s no back way out of a henhouse, I was soon in the open air, which cleared my head, though both barrels were still trained on me.
“Why, there you are, Old—Mr. Leverette,” I said quite politely. “I been looking all over the place for you.”
“I’LL BET,” Old Man Leverette thundered. A rising moon played on his thatch of white hair and whiskers. He’s an immense old person, but spry. He squinted at me down his gun barrels. “Durned if you aren’t a girl!”
“That’s right,” I replied, “come to pay you a neighborly call. If you recollect, I dropped in on you last Halloween.”
“How many chickens did it cost me that time?” he asked in a threatening voice.
“It was a visit in your best interests. So is this one. Last year I saved your privy from being knocked over. This is your lucky day, as I’m back to do you another good turn.”
“If you ain’t cool as a cucumber!” Old Man Leverette marveled. His barrels lowered. “Seems like I do recollect a young gal hanging around my privy. What did you say your name was?”
“Letty Shambaugh,” I answered, since I always give Letty’s name whenever I’m in a tight corner.
He rested his shotgun in the crook of his arm. “Well, Letty, I was just setting to my supper, so talk fast and make it good.”
I meant to do my best. “It’s like this. Purely by chance I happened to overhear three boys from the high school laying plans to make a regular mess of your front porch and do you an injury the night before Halloween.”
“Do tell,” Old Man Leverette said. “Who’d you say these boys is?”
“I didn’t. Kindly don’t interrupt. They mean to set a paper sack of fresh horse manure on the porch floor in front of your door. They’re going to ring your bell and set the sack of horse manure afire. Then they’ll hide in your shrubbery and watch you run out and stomp on that sack to put the fire out. It could burn your feet and set your nightshirt afire. You could also slip in that mess and break your hip. At your age a broken hip is no joke. Of course, that won’t happen now that you’ve been warned by a responsible person such as myself.” I paused to catch my breath.
Old Man Leverette uttered an oath and tugged on his chin whiskers. “The old horse manure stunt,” he said in a remembering voice. “We used to pull that one when I was a kid.”
“Boys will be boys,” I observed, “unless somebody stops them.”
“Oh, we’ll fix their hash, Letty.” A devilish grin lit up his craggy face. “I suppose you are free the night before Halloween to give me a hand?”
“I can make myself available,” I replied, always willing to help out.
“Good.” Old Man Leverette then outlined a plan that he devised right there on the spot. It seemed a sure cure for Halloween mischief, and I could see nothing wrong with it.
At that we shook hands on this still-secret plan. I was ready to slip away, but my hand remained locked in Old Man Leverette’s big grasp. “If you’ll kindly turn me loose,” I said, “I’ll be on my way.”
“You and me has some unfinished business,” he rumbled. I felt a sudden chill in the night air. “Chickens.”
“Chickens?” I squawked.
Old Man Leverette dragged me out of the henhouse yard and up to his back door. I set my heels, but he was two hundred pounds over my weight.
“Let’s us discuss this in a neighborly fashion,” I piped. But we’d crossed the threshold into an old-fashioned kitchen. The table was set for one,
and the large frying pan on the stovetop was red-hot.
He dragged me to a drainboard. There sat a plump fryer, cut up and rolled in cracker crumbs and ready for the pan. It was even salted and peppered. With his free hand Old Man Leverette reached into a Hoosier cabinet and drew out a checkered napkin.
Then he freed me, saying, “One good turn deserves another. Leave me a drumstick and a thigh, and you can take the rest home in that napkin.”
With a pounding heart, I scooped up chicken parts, making short work of this. I was just sailing through the back door when Old Man Leverette raised his voice.
“I bid you good night, Letty, and the next time I catch you anywheres near my henhouse, YOU’LL BE PICKING ROCK SALT OUT OF YOUR BACK END TILL THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.”
I cut and ran.
At home I found Mama dozing in her chair. Before her, the cards were laid out in a pattern on the table. She’d been telling herself her own fortune, which puts her to sleep every time. She jerked awake in her usual sudden way.
“You took yore sweet time,” she snarled. “A person could have died of starvation and bin cool enough to bury.”
Her sharp eye fell on the checkered-napkin parcel swinging in my hand. “What in tarnation do you call that?”
“Supper,” I replied briefly.
“That ain’t no chicken! Let me remind you a chicken’s got claws and feathers and a comb and two little beady eyes. Girl, sometimes I wonder if you got good sense.”
I unfolded the napkin on the table with a small flourish.
Mama’s eyes widened, and her jaw dropped. “Well, I’ll be a . . . It’s cut up and ready for the pan. It’s even salted and peppered! Girl, how’d you work that?”
“Powers, Mama.” I smiled sweetly. “I got wonderful Powers.”
7
ON MY WAY TO SCHOOL the following day I had much on my mind, as I often do.
There was that son of a gun Mr. Lacy, horsing around with two respectable women of the community. Somebody ought to fix his hash.
There was Alexander Armsworth, who was liable to be shocked senseless by Old Man Leverette’s plan to foil the vandalism of his front porch. Unless Alexander was given a timely warning.
There was Mama, as there always is. Her sly hints that something was seriously amiss with the old abandoned Leverette farmhouse nagged at me. If I didn’t get to the bottom of that for myself, I’d begin to question my Second Sight.
There was even the freshman fund raiser for the Halloween Festival to plague me. I seemed to have no part in planning it whatsoever. A person doesn’t like being left out, especially me.
I decided to tackle Alexander first. As Daisy-Rae says, he’s standoffish and getting worse. But I figured I owed him a debt. If I hadn’t informed Old Man Leverette about what him and Bub and Champ were planning, then Alexander wouldn’t be about to get the daylights scared out of him.
Besides, after I’d saved him from making a jackass of himself, he’d be the one to owe me a debt. I liked the sound of that.
But when we all filed into homeroom that morning, his desk stood empty. Old baldy-headed Miss Blankenship was just closing her door to latecomers when Alexander slipped in.
He darted up the aisle with his head scrunched down between his shoulders and his eyes on the floor. You talk about sheepish. When he slipped into the seat ahead of me, his ears looked on fire.
He’d have looked different to me anyhow since he had his clothes on. But with so much on my mind, I couldn’t think why he was looking hangdog and embarrassed to death.
While roll was being taken, I poked him once between the shoulder blades. “Say there, Alexander,” I whispered into his red ear, “I got some real important information for you regarding Old Man—”
“Lemme alone, Blossom,” he hissed hatefully out of the side of his mouth. “You and me are not on speaking terms, and that’s permanent. Keep out of my way, or I won’t be responsible for the consequences. I could wring your scrawny neck, and you know why!”
I blinked at these cruel words. From the corner of my eye I noticed Letty Shambaugh smiling snidely from her seat.
This is no way to start a day. I drooped through till afternoon, lonely as a cloud. Without Daisy-Rae to call on, I’d have considered quitting school. During history class I drifted down to the girls’ rest room.
“It’s me, Daisy-Rae,” I said in that echoing place.
The door of her stall edged open. While I propped myself up at the sinks, she eased out of her hiding place when she was sure the coast was clear.
“If you don’t look like somethun the cat drug in,” she remarked. “Why such a long face?”
Daisy-Rae’s face is at least as long on her best day, but I let that pass. “If you’d heard how Alexander Armsworth lit into me this morning, you’d know,” I told her.
“Well, what can you expect?” Daisy-Rae said. “After he seen you was spyin’ on him bucknaked.”
“He seen—saw me?”
Daisy-Rae folded her bony arms across her front and nodded. “Wasn’t me and Roderick still hidin’ up that tree? Yore Alexander caught sight of you scattin’ away through the timber. He had no more sense than to tell that Champ and Bub.
“They both blamed Alexander for the whole thing, sayin’ you’re sweet on him and foller him wherever he goes.”
“That’s a dad-burned lie,” I said.
“I’m only tellin’ you what they said,” Daisy-Rae replied. “Say, listen, you wouldn’t have nothin’ on you to eat, would you? I brought me an apple for lunch, but it didn’t stick with me.”
As it happened, I’d brought a chicken leg, but I’d been too low in my mind to eat it at lunch. I pulled it out of my pocket and handed it over. Daisy-Rae commenced gnawing on it, lint and all. Soon she was chicken fat from ear to ear.
Watching her work over that drumstick reminded me of Old Man Leverette, so I told her all about his plan and my part in it. “Alexander will have to take his chances,” I said with some satisfaction, “now that he won’t let me warn him.”
Daisy-Rae is a good listener, particularly if you feed her. To the sound of her gnawing, I told her all about how Mr. Lacy was two-timing Miss Fuller with Miss Spaulding. Getting more off my chest, I added, “And I don’t have a Chinaman’s chance of taking part in the Halloween Festival. Seems like Alexander and Letty have got that all sewed up.”
“That ain’t all they’re up to,” Daisy-Rae said, throwing the polished bone reluctantly away. “I eavesdropped on them lollygaggin’ in the schoolyard at lunch. Yore Alexander and that Letty’s going out tonight to one of them moving picture shows.”
I bristled. “Well, if that don’t—doesn’t take the cake!” I said. “She’s set her cap for Alexander, and she’s using her position as freshman class president to win him. That snake in the weeds Mr. Lacy could take lessons from Letty!”
And Daisy-Rae agreed, which is what friends are for.
That’s how me and Daisy-Rae and Roderick happened to attend the moving picture show ourselves that very same Friday night.
If rumor had it that I followed Alexander everywhere he went, then so be it. Besides, I wanted to see for myself how that little simp Letty was playing up to him. Being a boy, Alexander is gullible. Some responsible person might have to save him from Letty’s clutches.
Moving pictures are the coming thing, and since Bluff City is a progressive place, we have the Bijou Picture Show, which is downtown on the square.
You’d think two country children such as Daisy-Rae and Roderick would be hard up for novelty. But I had to talk fast to persuade her. She swore she’d get lost in town at night and all the bright lights would strike her blind. You talk about backwoodsy.
In the end I had to meet them in the schoolyard at dusk and lead them downtown. When we got there, though, Daisy-Rae’s eyes were big as cartwheels at all the lighted-up shopwindows. When we came to Shambaugh’s Select Dry Goods Company, she threw on her brakes.
“Would you look at that?�
� she said, giving me a nudge. “Ladies’ housedresses at ninety-eight cents! Prices is going through the roof. And looky here, a buck and a quarter for shoes.” She hitched up her patched skirt and examined her boot, which was tied to her foot with baling wire. “Lucky for me I still got plenty wear left in this pair.”
Roderick pressed his nose against the shopwindow and took everything in, though I doubt he can read prices.
When we got to the square, we hung around in the shadow of the courthouse across from the Bijou. Soon Alexander arrived with Letty on his arm. He paid her way, and into the show they went. Us three followed unnoticed.
In former times I’ve snuck into the Bijou free at the stage door. But I had three nickels laid back for a rainy day, which this was. So I treated Daisy-Rae and Roderick. Up over the Bijou entrance was a name written in electric lights:
MISS PEARL WHITE
Daisy-Rae nudged me. “Who might she be?”
“Miss Pearl White? Shoot, Daisy-Rae, she’s the most famous moving picture star in North America.”
“Well, I ain’t never been in one of these places before.” Dragging Roderick along, she followed me inside.
The lights were dimming for the organ recital. We lingered at the back till we saw Letty and Alexander in two on the aisle up near the screen. Luck was with us, as the row behind them was empty.
“Easy does it,” I muttered to Daisy-Rae. Like two Indian scouts—three, if you count Roderick—we skulked down the aisle and settled silently into seats behind them.
Letty was twitching her little shoulders in a taffeta blouse. Alexander’s arm was snaking around her.
“Oh, Alexander, you better not,” simpers Letty, “at least till the lights go off.”
Daisy-Rae pretended to run her finger down her throat at this sickening scene.
I strained to hear their conversation but only caught snatches. The organ music was swelling up, playing variations on the popular “When You Wore a Tulip and I Wore a Big Red Rose.” Still, I heard the odd word or two.
“. . . If I do say so myself,” Letty remarked, “it is a first-rate idea that nobody but myself would have thought of.”