Hippomobile!

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Hippomobile! Page 5

by Jeff Tapia


  “Got any ideas yet, Jimmy James?”

  “Uh-uh. You?”

  “Not yet.”

  Another at least two minutes went by.

  “How ’bout now, Jimmy James?”

  “Nope. You?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  And after one more minute, we had another conference.

  “Jimmy James?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  It just wasn’t no use. Maybe you’ve noticed that too, how that you can’t have a good brainstorm when you need it most. Alls we were getting for our efforts was dry goozles.7 Plus our moods were turning worse than a burnt pot of whistleberries.8 So it suited us just fine when we saw some commotion down in the square that took our minds off our problem.

  Our grandpas were beginning to congregate in front of Grandpa Frank’s old furniture store, and that could only mean one thing.

  “Must be Train Day coming up, Jimmy James.”

  “Sure looks that way, Stella.”

  Now Train Day, you need to know, is the one day a week a coal train runs through town. It doesn’t stop none—a train ain’t stopped here in more than fifty years. But everybody gathers at the old train station to watch it pass by and hear it blow its whistle. And there warn’t almost nothing in the world we wouldn’t have liked more than to be able to ride on it someday.

  Seeing that not much else ever goes on in Wymore, Train Day constitutes a true town highlight, maybe even its truest, and everybody makes the most of it. Just picture twenty-eight grandmas all with trucker hats that say I ♥ TRAINS and matching shirts that have KEEP ON CHUGGIN’ written across the front.9 The grandmas are responsible for organizing the picnic and decorating the station with streamers and making sure everybody has a little flag to hold and wave as the train goes by.

  Our grandpas are in charge of hauling all the tables and chairs over to the train station.10 And that’s why they were there in front of the furniture store that morning, chewing on their timber and waiting for Grandpa Frank to show up and unlock his store.

  “Here he comes now!” someone said.

  And sure enough, Grandpa Frank was running up the street and putting on his second shoe and fastening his suspenders all at the same time. That was just like him because he was always late.

  “Lying around too long on the mule’s breakfast again, was you?”11 we heard one of our grandpas ask.

  “My alarm clock must not be workin’,” Grandpa Frank answered.

  Our other grandpas pulled the pieces of timber out of their mouths and made a big show of throwing them on the ground.

  “It ain’t been workin’ since February 2, 1974, Frank,” said Grandpa Chester.

  “I know, I know,” Grandpa Frank said. “Time to think about replacin’ the battery.”

  Then he pulled out a key chain with more keys on it than a barn has flies. Somehow he found the right one on the first try and unlocked the door to his store, and all our grandpas filed in one after the other just like schoolchildren.

  “Sure would be neat if the coal train broke down here in town one day,” one of us would always say when Train Day came. “Then we could at least climb up and take a look at it.”

  “Would be as neat as a pin. But you know it ain’t gonna happen.”

  We had to settle for the next best thing to riding the rails—standing there each week and counting the boxcars and hoppers as they rumbled by louder than buffalo. The most we’d ever counted was 132 of them, and that was just last summer.

  Soon enough our grandpas came back out of the furniture store. They were pulling and dragging and tugging old armchairs and rickety rockers and busted recliners and lopsided benches and three-footed ottomans and warped dining tables. And that wasn’t even the hard part. Then they had to lift and hoist and boost and rear everything up onto their golf carts so they could drive it over to the train station two blocks south. Most times they left a trail of furniture behind them like bread crumbs through a forest. It was enough to make you bust your gut laughing. We also got to hear some good old-fashioned cursing, but we won’t be including any of that here.

  Anyhow, there we were, watching preparations for Train Day get under way and wiping sweat off our foreheads and swinging our feet, and sometimes Jimmy would give his tooth a wiggle. In other words, nothing special was going on. And yet it was at that moment when we were least expecting it that we got the brainstorm we’d gone up to the roof looking for. It went something like this:

  “Jimmy James?”

  “Ahgrhruallla?”12

  “Ain’t it kinda funny?”

  “Ain’t what kinda funny?”

  “Goin’ through all this trouble just to watch a loud, dirty freight train go by?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “Shoot, Stella. People are always lookin’ for something to look at.”

  “Like how do you mean?”

  “Like remember what our teacher said about Paris? How everybody’s always going there just to take a picture of the Evil Tower?”

  “Eiffel, Jimmy James. Rhymes with ‘rifle.’”

  “That could be, Stella. And what about that Leaning Tower of Pizza in Italy? Remember learning about that one?”

  “Nope.”

  “You don’t?”

  “I remember learning about the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Jimmy James. But I guess you’re right.”

  “Course I am. Like Pops says, ‘Ain’t no use being wrong.’”

  We went on back to doing nothing for a while, but then suddenly all four of our eyes got wide and sparkly as silver dollars, and we both said, “That’s it!”

  We knew right away what each of us was thinking. If everybody’s always going all the way to Paris or to Italy just to look at some tower, why shouldn’t at least some of them come to Wymore instead? First off, it’s closer. Second off, there ain’t no lines. And third off, ain’t no one ever had their picture taken standing next to a hippomobile before.

  Alls we figured we needed to do was to dust it off some, give it a squirt of oil, and get it up and running again.

  WE BEE-LINED IT STRAIGHT to Mabel’s and direct into our booth. Grandma Ida must’ve saw our sweaty faces and read our minds because before we could even catch our breath, she said, “Two dog soups with hail, coming right up!” That may sound yucky, but it’s really just ice water.

  We were still breathing hard when she came and put down our drinks square in front of us. “Thanks, Grandma Ida,” we said, and started making the slurpy sounds that quench your thirst the best.

  “Looks like you two have a fire to put out,” she said.

  “We do,” we said, soon as we came up for air. “We’re gonna save Mabel’s!”

  Grandma Ida stopped chewing her gum. “Come again, now?”

  And we said, “You better go get Grandma Mabel for this.”

  She hurried off and got her from the kitchen, and they both sat down across from us, and we said, “Listen close, ’cause here’s our plan.” Then we talked about Paris, and we told them a thing or two about Italy, and we were careful to mention how tourists are always looking for a good place to eat. That perked up their ears, all right. And that’s when we hit them with the hippomobile.

  Grandma Ida sat there the whole time wiping little spots off the tabletop with her dishrag, like that made her concentrate more. Grandma Mabel wasn’t moving a muscle. She kept her arms rested on the table. They were red from cooking and thick like logs, and we were always mesmerized by the blue anchor she had tattooed on her left forearm. And whereas Grandma Ida sometimes said, “Uh-huh” and “I see” and “All right,” Grandma Mabel remained silent as a fish.

  After we finished talking, Grandma Ida wasn’t chewing her gum, and that worried us a bit. But it was Grandma Mabel’s reaction that threw us like a horseshoe. She was known to be tough as nails, and even though she still hadn’t moved none, we saw she was crying so hard, it almost looked like she was making a pot of tear soup.

&nb
sp; Grandma Ida said, “Mabel,” and put an arm around her.

  But Grandma Mabel just said, “It’s them confounded onions I was choppin’.” She got up and stomped back heavy through the swinging kitchen doors without another word.

  We waited until them doors finished swinging, and then we leaned in over the table and asked Grandma Ida real quiet, “Did we say somethin’ wrong?”

  Grandma Ida just smiled and said, “Not at all, kids. In fact, I think you said somethin’ right. Because if you ask me, it ain’t such a bad idea you got there.”

  That made us smile wide as a rainbow.

  “Except for one thing.”

  Our rainbows disappeared. “What’s that?” we asked.

  And Grandma Ida answered, “The hippomobile ain’t never run in my lifetime. And as far as I know, not in any of your other grandparents’ lifetimes, neither.”

  “That ain’t what Grandpa Homer and Grandpa Virgil told us once,” we said.

  “You know better than to believe everything comin’ outta them mouths of theirs.”

  That gave us a bad case of the slumps, all right.

  But then she said, “Of course, far as I know the Eiffel Tower don’t run none, neither.”

  That’s when we remembered the letter and took it out of The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing. “Maybe this here could help us some,” we said.

  Grandma Ida looked over the envelope a moment before pulling out the letter. She unfolded it and looked at it some in one direction, then turned it upside down and looked at it some in the other direction. “Where’d you get this here letter?”

  “Found it yesterday stuck in this book.”

  “You did, did ya?” Grandma Ida asked, and went back to sizing up that piece of paper awful close. She seemed to have something on her mind because we could just about hear the gears in her brain going click and clank.

  Finally she said, “You know what? I think we better run this by Henrietta. She’s the one person around here who just might be able to read this thing. Because if I ain’t mistaken, it looks like it’s from Gottfried Schuh.”

  WE AIN’T SURE HOW popular checkers is anymore outside of Wymore, but Grandma Henrietta and Grandpa Milton played it nearly every day. As far as we can remember, Grandpa Milton never won a single match. He calls that perseverance. But if you asked us, that ain’t the word we would’ve used.1

  By the time the three of us got over to their table, Grandma Henrietta was grinning like a shark and rubbing her hands together so you would’ve thought she was trying to start a campfire. Grandpa Milton had that fiddle-faced look he always got when he was about to lose. “It ain’t over till it’s over,” he said.

  We had a hard time disagreeing with that, but not Grandma Henrietta. “It’s over now, Milton,” she said, and she took her newly crowned king and zigzagged it clean across the board so fast, it near made us dizzy. And by the time we could see straight again, every last one of Grandpa Milton’s pieces had disappeared.

  “Gotcha again, Milt!”

  Grandpa Milton sat there a moment staring at all his checkers piled up next to Grandma Henrietta and then called for a rematch.

  “Kids,” she said to us, “your Grandpa Milton’s a glutton for punishment.”

  “Glutton nothin’. I wanna be red this time,” said Grandpa Milton.

  Someday you’ve just gotta hear Grandpa Milton talk. Because his voice is as deep as a well. We think that’s because he’s gotta be the tallest person you’re ever gonna see without the use of binoculars.

  “The color ain’t got a thing to do with it,” Grandma Henrietta said. “It’s all in the fingertips.”

  We didn’t want them starting another game, at least not until Grandma Henrietta looked at our letter. We asked if we could show her something.

  “It’s all right by me. I’m gettin’ kinda tired of winnin’, anyhow,” she said, and let out a fake yawn. “What do you say, Milton? Ain’t you gettin’ kinda tired of losin’? I know I would be.”

  Grandpa Milton flashed us a wink. “Kids, when I was growin’ up, I was always learned how you was supposed to give old ladies a break.” His deep voice made the table vibrate and the remaining red checkers dance on top of the board. Then he stood up—and kept right on standing up—and said, “But I’ll be back, Henrietta.” And in less than three large steps, he was out the door.

  “So what’cha got for me?” Grandma Henrietta asked us.

  “It’s the kids who came across an interesting item, Henrietta,” said Grandma Ida, and gave us a nod.

  So we pulled out the letter and handed it to Grandma Henrietta and watched her squint at it and move it closer up and then farther away and then closer up again. “This here’s from Gottfried Schuh,” she said.

  “What’d I tell ya?” Grandma Ida said to us, and we told her thanks and gave her a hug that squeezed the air clean out of her.

  “Where’d you two find this old document?” Grandma Henrietta asked us.

  “In an old book,” we told her.

  “What old book would that be?”

  We held it up in front of us like at show-and-tell.

  Grandma Henrietta leaned forward, squinted, and then took the book right out of our hands. First she said nothing and just ran her hand soft over the cover. “Ah, yes, The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing.” Then she leaned back, let out a sigh, and rested her eyes. “If it was going to be in a book, it’d have to be this one.”

  “How come is that?” we asked, but didn’t get an answer. Grandma Henrietta just went right on resting her eyes. So we finally coughed some and asked again.

  Her eyes popped open and she said, “Because the Handy Cyclopedia was the very first book the Wymore library ever did own. After the Bible, of course. It was a big sensation back in the day, I do recall, and there probably wasn’t nobody in town who didn’t come in to consult it at some time or other, whether to find a cure for itchy feet or just to read a poem by Shakespeare. When this letter came back, someone must’ve decided to use it as a bookmark.”

  Grandma Henrietta then dug around in her purse and pulled out her Ping-Pong paddle case. It wasn’t really a Ping-Pong paddle case—that’s just what we called it because it looked like one. What was in there was her magnifying glass. Grandma Henrietta couldn’t read much without it, and she always told us that being a librarian had its own special occupational hazards.2

  “Grandma Ida said you could read it,” we said.

  “Is that so?”

  “Now, don’t play shy, Henrietta,” said Grandma Ida.

  “My German’s rusty as an old gate, but I sure can try,” she said.

  Grandma Henrietta aimed her magnifying glass at the old letter she had flattened out on the table, and we stared over her shoulder. The small letters looked as big as hopper legs3 now.

  Meine liebe Schwester Magda!

  Von Herzen freue ich mich . . .

  Of course, we couldn’t make heads, necks, or tails out of it, but we hoped Grandma Henrietta could. Sometimes she nodded her head and sometimes she bit her lip and sometimes she itched her chin and sometimes she whispered German words to herself that didn’t mean beans to us.4 Then for a while she didn’t do anything at all, and we were afraid she might be asleep.

  “Grandma Henrietta?” we asked.

  Then she lowered her magnifying glass and said, “Ach, Gottfried!”

  “What’s it say?”

  “It’s a letter from Gottfried to his sister Magda. Seems she was about to marry a fellow named Heinrich Sonnenschein, and Gottfried was writing to say he would be coming to the wedding. And from what I can make out, he drops several hints that he’s mighty interested in Heinrich’s sister. Says right here how his heart aches every time he thinks of Kunigunde.”

  “Cooneygunda?” What kind of a name was that?

  “So he asks his sister if Kunigunde’s hand was still available. And if she thinks Kunigunde would be interested in coming back to America with him.”

&nbs
p; We didn’t care much about Kunigunde’s hand. “Yeah, but don’t it say something in there about the hippomobile?”

  “Sure does,” Grandma Henrietta said.

  Grandma Ida nodded to us and said, “Go ahead and tell her.”

  So we told Grandma Henrietta all about our plan to save Mabel’s, and even though she laughed some at our comparison between Paris and Wymore, she thought our scheme wasn’t without promise.

  “You just might be onto something,” she said. “Because Gottfried writes here how he’d just invented some kinda newfangled dingsbums for his hippomobile and . . .”

  “‘Dingsbums’? What’s a ‘dingsbums’?” we asked.

  “Oh, that ain’t nothing but a German word for ‘thingamajig.’ And, anyway, he writes how it’s this dingsbums of his that now starts the motor.”

  “So that means it’ll work!” we shouted. And Grandma Ida gave us a smile.

  But then Grandma Henrietta said, “Well, he says here how he was gonna remove that dingsbums before he traveled back to his sister’s wedding.”

  “Remove it?! Why’d he do that for?”

  “Says he’s worried that when he ain’t here, other folks in town might wanna take his vehicle out for a spin. And he didn’t want anyone wrecking it.”

  “You mean that without that dingsbums thingamabob, the hippomobile ain’t gonna work?”

  “I ain’t sure, kids. I’m no mechanic. But listen to this: he writes here that he was gonna put the dingsbums in his house for safekeeping. So that if anything happened to him on his voyage back home, his sister could send somebody back out here to claim it. Seems he thought he had a gold mine with that hippomobile of his. Maybe he was plannin’ on makin’ as many of them as he did Gottfrieds. Who knows? It’s all pretty amazin’, ain’t it?”

  Amazin’? We didn’t think so. Because who knew where in the heck that dingsbums was now? And if we didn’t have that piece, how were we gonna get the hippomobile up and running? And if we couldn’t get the hippomobile up and running, then what?

  “Save your poutin’ for a rainy day,” Grandma Henrietta said. Then she turned around in her chair. “Homer, Virgil, get your buns over here! I got some questions for you.”

 

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