The Dreadful Future of Blossom Culp

by Richard Peck

  Much to my surprise, I found her out in the open, staring through the barred window by the sinks. You can’t see anything through that window since it’s frosted for modesty’s sake. But Daisy-Rae’s long face was turned to the sunlight filtering in.

  “Hey, Blossom.” She turned slowly to me.

  “Hey, Daisy-Rae. Looks like you’re getting braver.” I gestured at the stalls. All of their doors were standing open.

  “The sun felt so warm on my face,” she said, mournful as a coot, “and I wasn’t gittin’ enough exercise in that place.” She flapped a bony hand at her favorite stall. “Anyhow, I bin thinkin’ about givin’ up this whole education idea. Roderick is gittin’ to where he can find his way to Horace Mann school by hisself.”

  I sighed. It seemed like everybody was in a glum mood today. I wondered how we’d get up enough freshman class spirit to run a crackerjack Haunted House tonight.

  Right then something began to dawn on me. I don’t know if I Vibrated or not, but somehow the sight of doleful Daisy-Rae slumped there by the sinks sent me a signal. I racked my brain, but I couldn’t quite think it through. Then the light began to dawn.

  “Say, Daisy-Rae, you coming to the Haunted House tonight?”

  “Well, you’ens is havin’ it right out by our place. I expect Roderick will want to go. You know how he is. But we ain’t got ten cents between us. Kin you git us in?”

  “Oh, shoot, Daisy-Rae, you won’t have to pay. I have an idea we might need you’ens—you and Roderick to help us run the place.”

  She drew back. “Well, I’m not rilly a freshman,” she said, “and I cain’t picture Roderick ever bein’ a freshman, so I don’t think it’d be our place to take part.”

  “Daisy-Rae,” I declared, “you are one shrinking violet. Just make sure you and Roderick are available tonight, as I think you two might come in real handy.”

  I left her drooped by the sinks, but she was looking as interested as she gets.

  Mama watched me like a hawk as I flitted around our place getting ready for the Haunted House. She’d been casting spells to while away the time. But she pushed aside all her little sacks of garlic and wolfbane and suchlike and took up a pack of cards.

  “Looks to me like if they’d wanted a real fortune-teller, they’d have had me,” she remarked.

  “Well, Mama, you are not a freshman.”

  She sent a jet of tobacco juice onto the floor.

  “Can I wear this?” I asked her, holding up her old purple washable velveteen shawl with the gold fringe. I’d already talked her out of a pair of hoop earrings for the evening and a black sateen skirt which she’d sewed silver moons and stars all over.

  As if by chance, I slipped my hand into one of the many pockets of this skirt and drew out her set of false teeth.

  “Why, looky here, Mama. You have stuck your teeth in the pocket of this skirt. You’re getting awful forgetful and liable to leave them around most anyplace.”

  Her eyes flashed and narrowed. “Gimme them things.” She slammed her teeth down on the table. “I bin lookin’ for them high and low,” she grumbled.

  I flitted away, seeming to busy myself. But I soon flitted back. Mama had just turned up the queen of spades, one of her favorite cards.

  “Girl, what you know about tellin’ fortunes I could put in my ear and still have room for my elbow.”

  “Well, Mama, I’m willing to learn if you have any pointers for me.”

  “It takes talent,” she said, studying the cards, “which you ain’t got.”

  “I’d hoped to make a good showing,” I said, “as it might send some business your way.”

  Mama brightened somewhat. Her hand hesitated over the jack of hearts.

  “There’ll be grown-ups at the Haunted House,” I observed, “with money to spend. As a matter of fact, one of the chaperons for the occasion is Mr. Lacy, the history teacher.”

  Mama grunted.

  “Mr. Ambrose Lacy,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “You heard me, Mama. I told you all about how Mr. Lacy was sparking both Miss Spaulding and Miss Fuller at the same time. You said Ambrose Lacy was trouble with a capital T and always had been. You said you knew him.”

  The jack of hearts seemed stuck to Mama’s hand. She raised the card to her forehead and closed her eyes, seeming to receive messages.

  “Ambrose Lacy,” she said in a distant voice. “Ah, yes, here comes Wisdom from the Great Beyond. Lay it on me!”

  There’s nobody like Mama for pretending to receive a message she’s known all along.

  “I see in my mind’s eye a young squirt down in Sikeston, Missouri, where we all come from. There is bad blood there, and bad blood will out! I see this young punk, name of Ambrose Lacy, bein’ shot at by a local farmer for foolin’ with his wife. And then along about 1905 or 1906 I see Ambrose Lacy gittin’ married to the daughter of a prominent feed and grain dealer. Oh, yeah, I see everything.”

  “Married!” I muttered.

  “That’s right,” Mama said. “This philandering dude married the former Blanche Potts in one of them two years.”

  “Well, I never,” I declared.

  “It gits worse,” Mama said, her eyes tight shut. “I see a little stranger in their midst. A small son born to this mismatched pair.”

  “A small son,” I breathed in outrage.

  “You heard me,” Mama said.

  “What’s the kid’s name, Mama? Think!”

  She flattened the jack of hearts against her forehead. “Leonard,” she said.

  “Leonard?”

  “Leonard. And before this youngen was weaned, his hardhearted papa—I’m talkin’ about Ambrose Lacy—deserted wife and child and skipped town. He hasn’t bin heard of in them parts since.”

  The jack of hearts fluttered from Mama’s hand. Her eyes opened and gazed into mine. “That any use to you?” she said in a voice normal to her.

  “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised, Mama.” I tucked her shawl around me, ready to be gone.

  She scooped up her cards. “You better take this deck with you, and the crystal ball, too. With yore puny Powers, you’ll need all the help you kin git.”

  “Many thanks, Mama.”

  When I reached for the deck of cards, her hand closed over mine. I thought she meant to read my palm, but she only gave my hand a little squeeze. There is no charting Mama’s moods.

  Wedging the crystal ball under my arm, I vanished out into the night, my hoop earrings swinging free.

  18

  CLOUDS RACED BEFORE THE MOON, and the old abandoned Leverette farmhouse stood tall against the night sky. I was about tuckered out from walking every step of the way from town burdened by the crystal ball. There was a touch of winter in the wind that gusted right through Mama’s shawl.

  The old house glowed, though not with electric light. An eerie candle burned in every window, planted there by freshman hands. Grinning jack-o’-lanterns flanked the front door.

  Lingering in the tall weeds, I thought of Jeremy-to-be. I strained to hear a distant beep or possibly a pyong. But I only heard the wind pump humming its familiar song. I stood there a moment between worlds and thought of how much time there is, and how little.

  A large Packard touring car advanced up the lane, raising a cloud of dust and chaff. It drew up with a flourish before the broken steps of the farmhouse. Letty Shambaugh with all her club tumbled out of the auto and ganged into the house under the sign that read:

  REPENT WHAT’S PAST; AVOID WHAT IS TO COME

  I had no doubt the boys were already inside the house, stretching Champ out on the drainboard and arranging the deadman’s guts in the dungeon.

  I hurried on, but not into the house just yet. Detouring around it, I made for the chicken coop. Except for details, my plan for drawing Daisy-Rae and Roderick into this evening’s events was all but worked out. Without consulting the crystal ball, I foresaw a busy and productive evening for us all.

  By nine o’clock the o
ld abandoned Leverette farmhouse was full of customers. Letty’s committee manned the door to relieve one and all of the dime admission.

  Garbed as ghosts, various freshmen led the unsuspecting to where Harriet Hochhuth in a trick harness was hanging from a fake noose in the china closet. The guided tour included everything from the attic, where Tess and Bess Beasley cavorted as twin bats, to the monster’s kitchen and the deadman’s dungeon and model torture chamber. The place was a regular beehive, and we were minting money. Even sophomores, juniors, and seniors had drifted over from their fund raisers to take a trip through ours.

  I sat at a table in an upstairs room, Jeremy’s room. Before me were the crystal ball, the pack of cards, and a guttering candle. Screening the broken plaster walls were several sheets draped to suggest the mystery of a Gypsy’s tent.

  Above the entrance was a hand-lettered sign clearly thought up by Alexander:

  FOR A NICKEL EXTRA, MADAME BLOSSOM TELLS ALL

  Beneath this corn-fed sign I was at my post, wrapped in Mama’s shawl, with a trick or two up my sleeve. Business was slow, but it was bound to pick up.

  My first so-called customer was Letty Shambaugh, who popped in early to snoop. Big Maisie Markham was with her, since Letty doesn’t like to face me alone.

  The sight of both of them gave me a start. Maisie was costumed as Cleopatra, queen of Ancient Egypt. She wore enormous bloomers tied tight with silken cords around her thick ankles. A bejeweled jacket strained around her form and showed her middle. A chain of gold coins festooned her forehead. Embedded in the folds of her fat arm was a fake snake. She looked like three Cleopatras, all struggling for the throne.

  Letty was tricked out as the new moving picture star Theda Bara of Hollywood. Her face was powdered dead white with arching eyebrows and a black rosebud where her mouth had been. She was all in clinging black taffeta with a Spanish mantilla of silk cobwebs and artificial spiders.

  I seemed to think of another girl of my acquaintance—a certain ballerina wielding her wand.

  “Well, Blossom,” says Letty, planting her little hand on her hip, “we are doing a land office business elsewhere in this Haunted House, while here you sit all by your lonesome. But never let it be said that the freshman class didn’t give you your chance.”

  “That’s right,” said Maisie.

  I shuffled my deck. “Which one of you . . . ladies wants to be first?” I inquired.

  “First what?” Letty elbowed Maisie out of the way.

  “First to have a reading,” I remarked, laying out the cards.

  Letty shrank somewhat. “Your job is to fool the public, Blossom, not us.”

  My gaze shifted sharply to the crystal ball like I’d just seen something real interesting in it. “I can offer you a choice of the cards or the crystal ball, or I can deal directly with your palm. Put up or shut up.”

  Curiosity overcame Letty. “Oh, well, Maisie, I suppose we ought to let her try. You better sit down and have a reading.”

  “Why me?” said Maisie.

  “Because I say so,” Letty replied.

  Maisie flopped into the chair, which threatened to collapse under her. I made an interesting pattern with my cards.

  “Cross my palm with silver,” I told her.

  “What?”

  “Gimme a nickel, Maisie,” I explained.

  Maisie whimpered. She had nothing but the coins on her costume. But Letty was quick to fish a nickel out of her Theda Bara outfit. Letty probably figured I was going to scare Maisie out of her wits and ruin her digestion. She wanted to see how I’d do it. I decided to use Maisie for bait.

  Slipping the nickel into one of my pockets, I reached for her hand. It was somewhat sticky and smelled strongly of licorice.

  “Hmmmmm.” I stared deeply into her palm, which was all hills and no valleys. Her Lifeline looked like a Parker House roll.

  “That’s real interesting, that is,” I murmured. She tried to pull her hand away, but I had a good grip on it.

  “See that little bitty line branching off there?” I asked, pointing at nothing. Maisie scanned her own palm. “That’s your travel line. You will make no great journeys in your life, neither over land nor sea. You will look upon no foreign shores.”

  Above us Letty made an impatient sound, but Maisie was falling under my spell.

  “And see that line right there?” I pointed at smooth pink flesh. “That’s your romantic life. Would you look at the size of that thing!”

  “Where?” said Maisie. The coins on her forehead jangled. Letty edged nearer.

  “Oh, yeah, romance with a capital R is heading your way. It will sweep you off your feet. Better yet, it will last. I see four children in here, maybe six.”

  Maisie was staring holes into her own hand. “Six!” she breathed. Letty was peering baldly over Maisie’s big bejeweled shoulder now.

  “Who is my great love to be, Blossom?” She was quivering like jelly.

  She had me there. I couldn’t imagine. I thought of giving her Champ Ferguson or even Bub Timmons. But then I thought: Oh, well, shoot, why get her hopes up?

  “My vision grows dim,” I moaned, letting my eyes roll halfway back into my head. “Your palm is an open book to me, but the print is fine and growing faint.” I let my head loll, but by now Maisie had a grip on my hand and was hanging on for dear life.

  “Your great love is a mystery man who will reveal his identity to you and you alone. All I can make out is that he’s a tall, thin fellow who—ah—likes big women.”

  “That’s me,” Maisie whispered, wringing my hand.

  It was not my best work, but it did a job on Maisie. I blinked and sat up straight. “What did I say? Where am I? What time is it?”

  Maisie slumped in a daze before me, staring off into space.

  Letty fished up another nickel and slapped it on the table. “Me next,” she said, elbowing Maisie out of the customer’s chair. I fanned the deck on the table.

  “Take a card, Letty. Any card.”

  While she was making her selection, I thought of what I knew of Letty’s fate. Recalling the future, I saw Letty’s granddaughter-to-be. I looked ahead seventy Halloweens and saw Heather, the spitting image of Letty. I saw Heather running her own little gang of girls at Bluffleigh Heights Magnet Middle School.

  I foresaw Letty herself living to a ripe old age down in . . . Sun City, Arizona. Probably in the lap of luxury if I know Letty. I needed no crystal ball or deck of cards or palm for her.

  But still, I pondered.

  She turned up the four of diamonds, which is not an interesting card in itself.

  “Hmmmmm, that’s real interesting, that is.”

  “Quit stalling,” Letty snapped, fiddling with her mantilla.

  “Draw another card,” I said, playing for time.

  She twitched over the ace of spades.

  “Whoops!” I jerked back and slapped my forehead. Letty flinched, too, and Maisie, looming over us, let out a little yelp.

  “Can’t be,” I gasped. “Draw one more time. You owe it to yourself.”

  Her hand quivered as she turned up another ace of spades. No wonder this is Mama’s favorite deck.

  Letty grabbed her throat, and Maisie grabbed her chins. I let my eyes roll all the way back. But I came to myself at once. Under all her white powder Letty’s face had gone whiter. I swept up the three cards, reshuffled the deck, and slipped it into one of my pockets.

  Fishing up a nickel, I flipped it on the table. “This here reading is at an end,” I explained. “You can have your nickel back, Letty.”

  She took back her nickel quick enough. But her little black rosebud mouth trembled. “You better tell me, Blossom,” she said in a tiny, tragic voice. “I better know what those cards are saying.”

  “Yes, she better know,” said Maisie.

  “Nobody thanks the bearer of bad news,” I remarked. “Besides, I could be wrong. Possibly.”

  “Oh, I doubt it,” Maisie blurted. “You were right on th
e button with me.”

  “Give me a hint anyhow,” Letty said, twitching.

  “I can’t take the responsibility,” I said. “I’ll just have a squint at the crystal ball to double-check.”

  “Do that,” Maisie urged.

  I made a couple passes over the crystal ball. The flame from the candle reflected on the smooth glass. Back went my eyeballs till I was showing all white and seeing nothing.

  “I see a peaceful scene and hear harps,” I moaned mournfully.

  “Oh, heaven help us,” Maisie murmured. Letty was speechless.

  “I see a group gathered around an open grave. Oh, how they’re weeping and carrying on! But the floral tributes are lovely.”

  Maisie whimpered, but Letty wasn’t breathing.

  “Too soon, too soon,” I lamented. “It’s the grave of a young girl cut off in her prime or possibly sooner. A young unmarried girl, prominent in this community.

  “My vision grows dim,” I continued. “I can read this ball like a book; but it’s clouding over, and we’re spared from knowing the name of this deceased young . . . spinster.”

  My chin fell on my chest, but I jerked upright at once. “What did I say? Where am I? What time is it?”

  But Letty was already at the door, and Maisie was struggling to keep her on her feet. “She’s a liar,” Letty shrieked, throwing her arms around and grabbing air. “It’s a well-known fact. Ask anybody.”

  “Well, all I know is,” Maisie said, “she was right on the button with me.”

  Cleopatra and Theda Bara went off down the stairs scared silly, which is about as good an advertisement for my business as I could get.

  Before that Halloween night was over, I had customers waiting in line. I was passing out fortunes left and right and getting real good. I nearly worked the spots off Mama’s cards, and my pockets bulged with nickels.

  You can’t go far wrong by giving the public what it wants and throwing in the occasional thrill.

  19

  IT WAS NEAR THE WITCHING HOUR of midnight before an important customer entered the Gypsy’s tent and fell under my power.