Cornelius Russo swore revenge, and for weeks he pondered how he was going to achieve it. He thought better about approaching Mr. Willoughby directly, knowing it would be the wrong move. The boss, who was all too smitten with Miss Townsend, would have accused Cornelius of wanting a good look at the girl’s slender legs. Cornelius even played the scenario out in his head.
“Mr. Willoughby, Henrietta Townsend is a man.”
“Oh, come now, Russo! How dare you say such a thing about so lovely a young lady as Miss . . . .”
“I tell you, she is, Mr. Willoughby. And if you don’t believe me, just take a peek under her dress. I was under the table during part of her interview, and I saw what was between those legs of hers.”
“YOU WERE PEEPING AT HER FROM UNDER THE TABLE? YOU PERVERTED SON OF A BITCH!”
If Cornelius said anything at all to Willoughby, his boss would accuse Cornelius of being jealous of Henrietta’s success. You see, until Henrietta’s employment at the Willoughby Real Estate Agency, it was Cornelius Russo whose name was always up on that bulletin board at the end of every month for having the most sales. It wasn’t hard. The only other agents were Gretchen Beals, who was pregnant and would soon quit to raise her child, and Morris Coleman, who was 72 and only kept on by Graham Willoughby because Morris had been with the company since its inception.
As Cornelius sat in the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Auditorium of the town’s elementary school, he realized that he had to make all the townspeople see what was beneath Henrietta’s garb, not just Willoughby, and his reason was simple. If only Willoughby saw for himself, he’d just fire Henrietta. That wasn’t enough for Cornelius Russo. He needed to humiliate this man who, for some reason, dressed up in women’s clothes and stole all of his sales.
Cornelius went to work on getting to know Henrietta. He began talking to her during their lunch hour and even chatted her up one evening while the two of them stayed late at the office. Of course, Cornelius had a fraction of the work that Henrietta had because she’d again taken nearly all his customers that month. Cornelius found out two things about her: she loved The Wizard of Oz more than anything else in the world, and she was allergic to rhubarb pie.
It just so happened that the town theater was planning to run The Wizard of Oz the following week, and the tickets sold like hotcakes at a loggers’ convention. There wasn’t a single ticket left for opening night. Cornelius had bought several tickets beforehand. He then went to Henrietta’s house, which was located two towns away, planning to slip a ticket under her door with a note that said, “I had an extra ticket. I’ll see you there. Enjoy!—Cornelius Russo.”
As he approached the house shortly after eleven that night, he decided not to go to the front of the house because there was too much light, and he knew that if anyone caught him there he might be arrested. So instead he went around to the side of the house and ducked under one of the windows, which happened to be Henrietta’s bedroom window. Cornelius sneaked a peek and saw not Henrietta but a familiar-looking young man in his early twenties. It was this guy who had been pretending to be Henrietta Townsend, but Cornelius still couldn’t figure out why. Then Russo remembered where he’d seen him before. The man had come into Willoughby’s Real Estate Agency the day before Henrietta did, responding to an ad for the position to replace Gretchen Beals. Whatever his reason for dressing up in women’s clothes, it didn’t matter now to Cornelius Russo. He wanted revenge.
Cornelius went back around to the front, poked the ticket under the door, and then returned home. It would be only a matter of days before the first showing of The Wizard of Oz, the night of Cornelius Russo’s revenge.
At least three hundred people, all clutching tickets, were lined up outside the theater to see Billy Burke and Judy Garland in the epic tale. Present, in fact, were all of the town’s most important people. The mayor was there with his wife, as were the local congressman and his “girlfriend,” the elementary school teacher and her husband, the two postal workers, as well as all the store owners in town and their spouses. If ever there was to be an unveiling of something for the whole town to see, this was the occasion.
Cornelius had bought a total of four tickets. One he’d slipped to Henrietta, two he’d given to Mr. Willoughby and his wife, and the fourth was for himself. Just as surely as Cornelius was going to be present when his plan sprang into action, so he wanted Willoughby to be there as well. Cornelius Russo wasn’t going to let there be any chance that Willoughby might dismiss anything the following morning as hearsay.
Henrietta arrived before Cornelius Russo and the Willoughby’s, who had all come together. Cornelius had planned it this way so that he could coordinate where the three of them would sit in relation to Henrietta. As it turned out, there were three seats behind where Henrietta was sitting. People were still filing into the theater, so Cornelius, holding Mrs. Willoughby by the hand, lunged forward, jerking her and Mr. Willoughby forward and almost causing the two of them to lose their balance.
Graham Willoughby thought it was rather odd that Cornelius plopped himself down between him and his wife, but he didn’t object because Cornelius had been so generous in buying them tickets. The three of them sat behind Henrietta, with Cornelius in the seat directly behind hers. Henrietta was completely unaware of their presence. Graham Willoughby was also clueless as to the person sitting directly in front of Cornelius. As the film began, everyone cheered and applauded.
Cornelius Russo’s mind wandered back to the last few days, which had turned out to be the hardest part of his plan. He needed to make Henrietta Townsend remove all her clothes in front of Mr. Willoughby and the entire audience. His plan was simple in theory but rather complicated in its preparation and execution.
He had searched around every maple tree in town and gathered up as many whirligigs as he could find.
“Whirli-whats?” a voice interrupted. I stopped reading. It was Gabe, who had a confused look on his face. “What’s a whirli… ? What do you call it?”
Annoyed, I said, “They’re the seedpods that come off maple trees. You know what they are, Gabe. When they fall, they twirl around and around like propellers.” I searched for a few seconds and quickly found one not far from where I’d been sitting. I pulled the branch toward me, pulled off the whirligig, and showed it to Gabe. “This is what it looks like.”
Gabe took the whirligig between his index finger and thumb and studied it closely. I observed Billy pulling a couple off as well and showing them to Ziggy, who seemed fascinated by them. Billy peeled the back part of one, stuck it onto the end of Ziggy’s nose, and called him Pinocchio. Ziggy laughed.
“Now can I go on?” I asked the boys.
Everyone encouraged me to continue, and I did, anxiously now, because this was the best part of my story.
Cornelius rubbed each whirligig against his palms until the tiny hairs at the ends came loose. He did this over and over again, missing days of work at a time and claiming sickness. Cornelius had phoned Graham Willoughby at the start of his “illness” and told Willoughby that he didn’t expect to be feeling better until Friday at the earliest. Then Cornelius said, “And speaking of Friday, that’s the night that The Wizard of Oz is opening in town. I happen to have two extra tickets. Would you and your wife like to have them?”
The purpose of offering the tickets to Willoughby was twofold. Besides wanting his boss to see Henrietta when she was exposed, he also needed to butter up his employer so that Willoughby wouldn’t fire him for his excessive absences.
With the thin hairs of thousands of whirligigs now ready, Cornelius added ground rose hips to them. These two substances, if you’re not familiar with them, make the most unbelievable itching powder. Cornelius had learned how to make it as a kid when he and his older brother Jeb played a practical joke on their father during a camping trip in the Ozarks. They had put it in the old man’s sleeping bag, and within minutes after ret
iring for the evening he jumped up scratching himself something awful. In fact, it was so bad that he pulled off every layer of clothing he had on and, stark naked, started jumping around like an Injun prancing around a campfire.
After the movie had progressed for another ten or so minutes, Cornelius excused himself. He ran up to the balcony, which was empty due to renovation. Once there he retrieved the supply of whirligig hairs and pulverized rose hips he’d stashed that morning. Opening the bag, he rested it on top of the balcony’s ledge. He then walked over to the left of the balcony where a giant fan was circulating air and directed it toward the bag. Taking a deep breath, Cornelius regretted the mass chaos about to ensue among the townspeople, but he knew that this was the only way to achieve his objective. He would have preferred to sneak up behind Henrietta and blow the stuff off his palm and onto her, but that would be too conspicuous. He had no choice but to dose everyone with the mixture.
Cornelius pushed the fan forward, inch by inch, until the first hairs and powdered rose hips kicked into the air and floated down on the unsuspecting spectators. For a minute Cornelius worried that people would take notice, but they were so engrossed by the movie that not a soul was any the wiser.
By the time Dorothy had been instructed by Glinda to “follow the yellow brick road,” Cornelius was back in his seat. When it came time for Ray Bolger to start singing “If I Only Had a Brain,” a low-pitched mumbling came from several rows behind him. It quickly turned louder. In fact, Cornelius Russo kept getting nudged from either side as both Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby began scratching their necks. Directly in front of him he observed that Henrietta was also beginning to squirm.
After Dorothy had convinced the Scarecrow to come with her to the Emerald City, the entire auditorium was in an uproar. The lights came on, but the film kept rolling. People were screaming and clawing at their skin. By now the Willoughby’s and Henrietta were doing the same thing. Cornelius squeezed past Mrs. Willoughby and stood in the aisle, watching everyone as they began tearing off their clothes.
Mr. Willoughby was the first to tear off his shirt. Mrs. Willoughby went for the buttons on the back of her dress. After ripping off his clothes, the mayor tore off his wife’s entire dress with one tug. The congressman was so itchy that he couldn’t undo his belt buckle. He simply reached inside and pulled his underwear out with one ripping sound. The schoolteacher was stripped naked by her husband in front of her students. All this was going on while the Tin Man was singing and dancing his number. Cornelius then realized that he hadn’t paid any attention at all to Henrietta since he’d jumped into the aisle to watch everyone strip.
There was Henrietta, now revealed as a naked man, scratching at himself feverishly and wearing a long black wig. By this time everyone in the theater was buck naked and jumping around while scratching themselves, too busy to see what Cornelius had wanted them to see.
He didn’t want his plan to fail, so he shouted, “LISTEN! ALL THIS COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED IF A CERTAIN SOMEONE HAD NEVER LIED IN THE FIRST PLACE!”
Everyone stopped cavorting and locked eyes on Cornelius, including the Willoughby’s and the former Henrietta, who was no longer wearing the wig.
“THERE!” Cornelius Russo shouted. “THAT’S YOUR HENRIETTA TOWNSEND, MR. WILLOUGHBY! SHE FOOLED YOU, OR SHOULD I SAY HE FOOLED YOU!”
By this time people were realizing that they been the butt of a cruel prank. Still itching, they began to gather their clothes and cover themselves, feeling utterly embarrassed.
“ARE YOU INSANE, RUSSO?” Willoughby shouted. “THAT IS A MAN!”
“Oh,” said Cornelius lamely as he began scratching at his neck. “You didn’t see him strip, but if you check, you’ll find women’s clothes at his feet.”
No one seemed to care, however, least of all Willoughby who was enraged at the fact that he, his wife, and three hundred other people had been suckered into stripping naked in public. At that moment it didn’t matter to Graham Willoughby whether Henrietta Townsend was Adolf Hitler. All that concerned him and the rest of the theater’s audience was that Cornelius Russo had humiliated them beyond the boundaries of common decency.
“BUT I TELL YOU,” Cornelius pleaded. “THAT IS HENRIETTA TOWNSEND! YOU DON’T RECOGNIZE THIS FELLOW? WELL, I DO, MR. WILLOUGHBY!”
Suddenly Cornelius started to itch violently all over his neck and chest. Within seconds he felt as though an army of ants was crawling over his body, and he pulled off all his clothes in front of the entire town. Amid the commotion no one much cared about what Cornelius had to say about Henrietta Townsend, least of all Graham Willoughby. What they did care about was revenge on Cornelius Russo.
Everyone dropped their clothes and charged Cornelius, who was now just as naked as they were. Hoisting him over their heads, they marched him out to the street. Car drivers couldn’t believe their eyes. The angry mob hung Cornelius Russo upside down by the feet near the fountain in the community’s central park. He stayed there for the next twenty-four hours, and no one would help him down, not even the police who just mocked him as they walked by.
In the end it was Cornelius Russo who had been defeated. He was eventually cut down by the Pilsner Asylum and taken away in a straightjacket while screaming, “BUT HE’S A SHE! I MEAN, SHE’S A HE!”
As for the man who had impersonated Henrietta Townsend, he had the whole night to think of an alibi. Earlier Willoughby had told Henrietta of Cornelius’s ridiculous accusation: “He actually pointed to a man sitting in front of us and said that you were he.”
The young man who had been Henrietta Townsend reflected back on the first time he’d gone into the Willoughby Real Estate Agency. “I’m sorry, but we aren’t looking for any . . .,” Willoughby said and then stopped. The man noticed that Mr. Willoughby’s attention had been sidetracked by a sexy young woman walking past the agency’s main window. It was then that Mr. Henry Townsend decided to put one over on Willoughby for refusing to hire a man.
“Preposterous,” said Henrietta Townsend, who was happy that she had fooled Mr. Willoughby into offering full employment based on the ability to charm and deceive during a depression in which it was hard for a man to find work, but not a lovely woman so long as there was an employer to be charmed.
As I was expecting it, I took all the subsequent criticism and incessant questioning in stride that day in the tree. I entertained all questions from my brothers, no matter how juvenile they sounded. As I expanded on everything from how Henrietta got away with having fake breasts to how much a single theater ticket cost each patron, I neatly shuffled my papers into numerical order, among which was the first page that read in bold lettering, THE UNFORTUNATE CASE OF CORNELIUS S. RUSSO, BY OLIVER MITCHELL, and tucked them back into the empty folder I had taken off of Father Poole’s desk.
As I closed it, I smiled and said, “My tale has come to an end.” giving the boys a clear opportunity to cheer and applaud, which they did, and with great enthusiasm. We sat in the maple a while longer, laughing about the story I’d just read them, and then we began talking about the things boys our age were apt to talk about away from female ears.
The girls continued their search for the box until finally Jessie exclaimed, “HERE! IT’S RIGHT HERE!” She picked it up and brought the tattered box over to Swell.
“Happy Birthday, Jess,” Swell said, almost apologetically.
“Aw, thanks,” replied Jessie. “Gee, you didn’t need to do that!”
“You’re my best friend, aren’t you? I think it’s good for best friends to do nice things for one another. Besides, my birthday’s in six weeks!”
The two girls ran to the Benson porch, disappearing behind the front door. “Oh, Swell, it’s beautiful,” Jessie said. The crystal angel inside the box was damaged, but regardless of its condition Jessie loved it. She put it on top of the shelf just to the left of her headboard where the picture of her mother and father sat.<
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“Do you miss them?” Swell asked.
“It’s kind of hard to miss someone you don’t know,” replied Jessie. “But if you mean, do I wish they were around?”
Swell nodded.
“Let’s just say that today is my birthday, and I can’t tell you whether that’s what I’m wishing for, because if I do it won’t come true.”
She winked at Swell, who winked back at her in return.
“Hey, I’ve got news for you!” Swell said jovially.
“Oh!” Jessie gasped. “Don’t hold back another second!”
“Well, you know I like Billy Norwin.”
It was all Jessie could do to keep from frowning. She knew that Swell always acted fairly show-offish in front of Billy, but she never thought Swell would admit her interest in him, mainly because Jessie thought Swell knew that she too liked Billy and that they, being best friends, had a mutual understanding that neither one would pursue him.
“Sure I know,” Jessie said, trying to sound giggly and happy. “I’ve known for months ever since you two met.”
Swell giggled back. “Last Sunday I was sitting out on the porch with my father sipping iced tea and talking about old times with my mother, God rest her soul. Anyway, Billy came outside to walk General Lee. When I waved to him, he walked over.”
At first Jessie thought of responding with, Why would you wave, and why would Billy come over to you if you did?
“So,” Sue Ellen continued, “Billy came over and tied the dog up to our mailbox post.”
Jessie caught herself rolling her eyes. Hoping not to give away her feelings at that moment, she turned back to her friend and made it appear as though she were fully attentive.
“Billy waved hello to me,” Swell went on, “and smiled at me ever so sweetly. I said, ‘Hi, Billy. Nice night, isn’t it?’ and he smiled at me again and agreed that it was. Jess, I was so excited that he’d finally come over to see me.”
Embracing Darkness Page 37