High Spirits

by Alice Duncan

  Well, that’s only because she didn’t know Stacy Kincaid. Aunt Vi, who had spotted the same phenomenon Billy and I had, sat with a thump on one of the hard benches. “My word.” A mistress of understatement, my aunt.

  But there she was. Stacy Kincaid. In the uniform of a Salvation Army minion. A private, I reckon, unless there’s a rank beneath private.

  But that’s unkind.

  But ... Stacy Kincaid?

  She gave me a little finger wave and a smile, and I smiled back uncertainly. Then she crooked her finger, inviting me over to where she stood.

  Billy and I looked at each other. Then he grinned.

  With a big sigh, I said, “Well, I guess it can’t hurt. Too much.”

  Oddly enough, it didn’t.

  Mrs. Kincaid told me the next time I visited her to read the cards or the board or whatever idiocy she wanted done that day that she was pleased Stacy no longer frequented speakeasies.

  “But I must say, Daisy, that I didn’t know the Salvation Army was what Rolly meant when he said something dreadful was going to happen to Stacy if she didn’t change her ways.”

  Some people are never happy.

  * * * * *

  I received the reward money, quite a bundle, by golly, around the middle of April. I didn’t tell anyone about it because I had a surprise to spring on my family. I was lucky when the funds finally came because by that time a good deal of progress had been made in the area where my interest lay.

  Sam Rotondo, who seemed to live at our house, Pa and Billy were all sitting around a card table in the living room, playing gin rummy, Ma and Aunt Vi were chatting at the dining room table while Ma embroidered a handkerchief, and Spike rested happily on Billy’s lap when I opened the front door.

  “Hey, Spike,” I said when heads turned toward me. “You’re falling down on the job.”

  “I told him it was you,” said Billy with a smile for me. He’d been very nice to me in recent weeks, and I appreciated him for it.

  “That accounts for it, then.”

  “He’s a good boy,” said Billy in that silly voice people use on dogs. Me, too. I’m not denigrating it or anything; I’m just reporting.

  “I have something for us,” I said as I turned around and picked up the parcel I’d lugged up the front porch steps. I fear the grunt I made while doing so was rather unladylike.

  It did, however, prompt Sam and Pa to get out of their chairs and hurry to the door.

  “What is it?” asked Pa, curious.

  “You’ll see. Take it inside and put it ...” I looked around, hoping for some free space. The only flat space was the card table. What the heck. “Put it on the card table.”

  “But ...”

  “Put it on the card table,” I repeated ferociously.

  So Sam put the parcel on the card table.

  “Ma and Aunt Vi, come here!” I called.

  They did.

  So I stood back, planted my fists on my hips, smiled hugely, and told Billy, “Open it.”

  Paper crackled before the first gasp went up. It went up from the men, since neither Ma nor Aunt Vi knew what Billy had just revealed. I wouldn’t have, either, if I hadn’t listened to the men in my life ooh and aah over radio signal receiving sets for a couple of years now. This one was a beauty, too, made by a company called Westinghouse, and came complete with a wooden cabinet and a head seat so that Billy could listen to whatever was being transmitted. I still couldn’t quite figure that part out.

  “The man at the store said that pretty soon more than one person will be able to listen at a time. This thing here ...” I pointed at what I hoped was the proper place on the machine. “. . . is where you’re supposed to be able to plug in what he called a microphone. He said that invention is only months away. That means that everyone in the room will be able to listen.” To what, I hadn’t a single, solitary clue.

  Silence greeted this announcement. I stood there, nervous as a cat, although I’m not sure why. Worried that my gift wouldn’t be appreciated, I reckon.

  “My God, Daisy,” Billy whispered, awed. “I don’t know what to say except ... thank you.”

  I relaxed. He liked it. That was the only important thing. I didn’t care what anyone else thought, although, I noticed, as I glanced around the room, everyone else looked to be pretty much in awe, too.

  “Wow,” said Pa.

  “How kind, Daisy,” said Ma uncertainly.

  “Laws a mercy,” said Aunt Vi. I think she’d said that one before.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said Sam Rotondo.

  He would.

  About the Author

  In an effort to avoid what she knew she should be doing with her life (writing—it sounded so hard), for several years Alice Duncan expressed her creative side by dancing and singing. She belonged to two professional international folk-dance groups and also sang in a Balkan women’s choir. She got to sing the tenor drone for the most part, but at least it was interesting work. In her next life, she’d like to come back as a soprano—and maybe as someone who longs to do something that makes money.

  In September of 1996, Alice and her herd of wild dachshunds moved from Pasadena, CA, to Roswell, NM, where her mother’s family had settled fifty years before the aliens crashed. She loves writing because in her books she can portray the world the way it should be instead of the way it is, which often stinks. She started writing books in October of 1992 and sold her first one in January of 1994. That book, One Bright Morning, was published by HarperCollins in January of 1995 (and won the HOLT Medallion for best first book published in 1995). Alice hopes she can continue to write forever!