by Richard Peck
Anyway, Mother hired extra help just to polish the silver. And she interviewed a baker on the subject of petit fours. The invitation cards were ordered engraved from a St. Louis firm.
“If it rains, I’ll kill myself,” Lucille often remarked.
When they told Uncle Miles he was to built a latticework pavilion on the lawn for serving refreshments from, he had a good deal to say. Then when Mother told him that all the best people serve lawn-party refreshments from a pavilion, he told her a number of things about the best people she didn’t want to hear.
One of the things he pointed out was that the Van Deeters never accept invitations from people they don’t receive. Which turned Mother’s cheeks to chalk. But Uncle Miles reckoned the Hacketts would come since they’d feel obligated. And why not pass around a silver tray of laxative pills just to make them feel at home?
Then he got down to work, pounding laths into latticework all over the back yard. I helped him after school. As far as I can remember, Dad spent that whole month of May at his office, only slipping back home after dark.
We had our hands full with all the preparations. But the only part I enjoyed was working outside with Uncle Miles, though he did fuss at me quite a bit for not driving straight nails. Inside the house was a regular hell after the dressmaker took over in there.
One time Uncle Miles and I were working late. We were trying to finish up the long back pavilion wall and had it stretched out flat on the lane right in front of the barn doors. The sun was down, and I felt edgy that near the barn. I’d as soon have been up at the house.
“You believe in ghosts, Uncle Miles?”
“What brought that to mind all of a sudden?” he wanted to know. But I noticed he laid down his hammer and took out a plug of tobacco.
“Oh—I was reading a book—a library book—of ghost stories, and I just wondered if you maybe had an opinion.”
Uncle Miles took two nails out of his mouth to make room for the plug. “Well, I am no hand at reading,” he said, settling back against the hitching post. “But I don’t hold with written-down ghost stories anyhow. They leave a person with the idee you have to have castles and dungeons and like that to attract a ghost. A lot of them stories are German anyway, so you got to take that into account. Some of them is English too. So you want to take into consideration that they’re the products of two pooped-out peoples.”
He worked his jaws in silence for a while, getting the plug into a chewable shape. I knew the day’s work was at an end. “No,” he said, “I wouldn’t put any stock in made-up stories, especially them that claim to have took place in ancient days gone by. But of course there is ghosts.”
It was evening then, and the katydids were starting up their whine in the Dutch elm. The latticework stretched out in the lane was glowing a sickly white. And the barn towered over us. Nothing moved but Uncle Miles’s jaw as he chewed.
“Naw,” I told him. “There aren’t such things as ghosts.”
“Don’t say what you don’t know. I bunked in with a feller who seen one to his sorrow.”
“Naw,” I said hopefully.
“Boy, I don’t lie.”
Then he told me the story.
“Oh, it was twenty years ago and being restless I took off for the southern part of the state. Had a job down there at Teutopolis as drayman for the Star Store. I was weary of carpentry for a time and wanted a change.
“At the boarding house where I put up was a feller name of Cleatus Watts. He’d lost his best friend during an epidemic of the swamp fever which could be very bad down there at that time. People dropped like flies, laid in a coma, and flickered out.
“Anyhow, they’d buried Cleatus’s friend a month before I come to town. And one time Cleatus come back to his room late. And there stood his friend in the room, facing away from the door. Why, for a minute it seemed so natural that Cleatus forgot the feller was dead. Then when he got his wits about him, he was in the room alone.
“He come down the hall and told me about it, and I said he was being fanciful.
“Well, the next night it was the same story. Cleatus come into his room, and there the ghost of his departed friend stood, facing away from Cleatus and in a great anguish. The ghost was as real as the living man, Cleatus said. And it was tearing its hair and clawing the air something pitiful.
“Cleatus hotfooted it down to my room again, but when we went back, the ghost was gone, though the room smelled something wicked. Cleatus said that this sort of thing was getting on his nerves and did I think he ought to take lodgings elsewhere.
“I told him no, since the ghost of his friend was appearing to him for some purpose and would likely follow wherever he went. Cleatus took no comfort in this but saw the sense of it.
“Well, sir, third night running the ghost returned. And I tell you, I heard it myself. I was in bed but awake and heard Cleatus go into his room. There was quiet then, but I smelled graves.
“Then a voice I never heard before echoed down that hallway like a bell pealing. ”Turn me over, Cleatus!’ it said. I can hear it yet. ‘IN GOD’S NAME, TURN ME OVER!’
“Cleatus come pounding down the hall, half wild. But I stepped out and told him I’d heard it too, which was some relief to him. Why, that voice raised everybody in the place. There was a head poked out of every door and witnesses a-plenty.
“ ‘But what can he mean?’ Cleatus says to me, grabbing hold of my arm like a child. ‘What does TURN ME OVER signify?’
“I didn’t know the answer to that one. But a bunch of us in the boarding house lit a lamp and went downstairs to the dining room table to put our heads together. The landlady set in with us, very concerned that her place might develop a bad name.
“It was her idee to take this problem to another woman who lived down there right outside of town. She sold herbs and root-mixtures and was otherwise a woman of wisdom. So that night Cleatus slept on the floor of my room, and the next day all of us paid this woman a call, a very dried-up old party but highly respected.
“She heard us out and nodded like she knowed where to put her finger on the problem. ‘Get an affidavit from the county coroner,’ she said, ‘and have your friend’s grave dug up and opened.’
“Some of us didn’t like the sound of that and didn’t see the point to it, but Cleatus was takin’ the whole thing so bad we thought it couldn’t hurt.
“Well, the coroner was under the influence of this wise woman anyway and oversaw the diggin’ up of the grave personally. Of course, we all went along, wanting to get to the bottom of it.
“I don’t know,” Uncle Miles interrupted himself. “The rest of the story’s grim. I don’t know if you want to hear it.”
I explained to him that I did.
“They dug down to the coffin and cleared the dirt off the top. And the first thing we all seen was that the nails on the lid was all wrenched loose. A gasp went up at that. And it was an easy matter to lift up the lid.”
Uncle Miles paused a minute and ran his old knobby hands over his eyes. “When they got the lid off, we all seen the problem. The dead man was a-layin’ face down in his coffin with his arms throwed back behind him.”
“You mean—”
“That’s right. What with the swamp fever panic and all, they hadn’t let the body cool. And they’d buried him alive. He must have come to hisself underground. And I reckon it drove him mad and he thrashed around before the air in the box give out.”
“What happened then?” I whispered.
“Well, the damage was done, wasn’t it? They turned him over. I won’t tell you what he looked like in the face. He’d eaten off his mouth. Then they nailed the lid on good and shoveled back the earth. He rested easy then. Cleatus Watts took it severe. The ghost never come to him again. But Cleatus started goin’ to revival meetings and church twice of a Sunday, and was just generally not very good company thereafter.”
“I think I better be getting up to the house, Uncle Miles. It’s late.”
“Well, that’s enough for one day, I reckon,” Uncle Miles said. But I was already halfway to the back door by then.
Chapter Seven
Mostly to drive Mother half out of her head with worry, Uncle Miles didn’t knock the latticework pavilion together till the morning of Lucille’s party. We had it all done but the sinking of the posts to hold it up. Mother had driven stakes in the yard to show us just where the thing was to stand. And Uncle Miles was enjoying himself no end.
“I never been to what they call a party, Alexander,” he said to me. “But I take a lot of pleasure in watchin’ what folks put theirselves through to lay on a big show. Your maw, though, she takes the cake!”
“Well,” I replied, “I guess she wants to give Lucille a good coming out.”
“Many a big battleship has sank at its launching,” said Uncle Miles who has never seen an ocean.
We had the sides up by midmorning on that sunny Saturday. Then Uncle Miles sent me up a stepladder to stretch a striped canvas awning over the top. He’d had the idea to fly a couple of American flags from the highest part. But Mother said she was having a party not a circus. Uncle Miles mentioned that on the whole he preferred a circus.
From the top of the pavilion I had a good view of the property. I was getting to the point where I could look at the barn without visualizing pink halos and burning candles. There was a brushpile between the barn and the streetcar tracks which was there because we’d picked the lawn clean. And I saw somebody lingering back behind it. It didn’t give me much of a start. I dropped the hammer, but I didn’t fall through the awning.
“Who’s that over yonder?” I yelled out, and Uncle Miles looked pretty sharp through his spectacles.
At that, Bub Timmons stepped from behind the brushpile and said hey to both of us. I was surprised to see Bub who isn’t one to drop by and was looking especially hangdog. Bub is the one who’s still learning the mechanic’s trade at the Apex garage. I thought maybe he’d stopped by to admire our Mercer as interested people will.
Bub is a good fellow, though not forthcoming in his conversation. He’s had a rough row to hoe on account of his father, Amory Timmons. Who, if it hadn’t been for my dad, would have had worse reason for grief than he did.
Amory Timmons worked as a common laborer all his life. He lost a hand while laying track on the Woodlawn Avenue extension of the Bluff City Surface Lines streetcar company. It happened while they were just finishing off the trestle over Snake Creek out near the end of the line. It was the end of the line for Amory’s hand.
He slipped and fell in new loose gravel just as a workmen’s car came down the track. He’d have been cut in two if he’d moved slower. But the end of it was that the flanged wheel caught him just at the wrist. Witnesses said Amory’s hand fallen there on the far side of the rail clenched up and shook. But witnesses will say a good deal to make a long story out of a short happening.
After that, everybody thought Amory would not be fit to do any kind of work and would have to live off the county. But my dad went to him and offered him a job in construction. Amory said he was useless, but Dad convinced him he could mix mortar and make cement one-handed, and Amory found he could. So he had steady work.
But still, ever after, Amory was given to bitterness against the streetcar company and went into states of mind that even liquor wouldn’t touch. His wife and Bub told it around that Amory would get down at the foot of his bed some nights and bark like a dog. There were people who said he was a public menace, and they proved to be right. But Dad said he could do a good day’s work when he wasn’t low in his mind.
When I called out from the pavilion top, Bub walked right up to us and spoke without preamble, as the saying goes.
“My pa is took especially bad,” he said to me. “And Ma told me to skin over here and get word to your pa that he’ll be off work for several days.”
“Is he barkin’ in his bed again?” Uncle Miles wanted to know.
Bub shook his head and fidgeted. “Worse,” he said. “He’s out in the creek bottoms crashin’ through the underbrush and actin’ wild.”
“Had we ought to send out a party and bring him in?” Uncle Miles asked.
“No, nothin’ comes of tryin’ to deal with him when he goes off wavin’ his stump and cussin’ the streetcar company. Better to let him run loose till he comes to himself.”
Uncle Miles nodded. And I told Bub I’d get word to Dad. Then Bub went on his way, heavy-laden with troubles. “A pitiful situation,” Uncle Miles said, “and no two ways about it.”
Then we turned back to our handiwork, the pavilion, which was up and looking very stylish but bare.
“The wonder is,” said Uncle Miles, “that Luella—your maw—don’t command a stand of rose bushes to grow up around that thing in time for the party.” Then he marched off and untied Nelly Melba from the hitching post, climbed in his buggy, and was gone.
When Gladys called me in to noon dinner, I found Mother and Lucille making a whole batch of paper roses. They were at the dining-room table rolling up pink and green crepe paper and were in a fine old sweat. “These are to be stuck in the sides of the trelliswork on the pavilion, Alexander,” Mother said, waving a rose at me but never looking up.
They were cutting it pretty fine with those paper flowers, since the company for the party was due in three hours. But I guess with all the things they had to do, they’d naturally be working at something right down to the wire.
“As quick as you’ve had something to eat,” Mother said, “I want you to arrange these roses on the pavilion and not just any old way. Put them in nice and don’t bother about the back wall which won’t show. It doesn’t look like rain, does it?”
Lucille moaned. She was sitting there rolling up roses that looked like a lot of wadded paper to me. Her hair was done special, high on her head, and she was wearing her old wrapper. The ribbons on her corsets were poking out from her busts. I knew she hadn’t eaten anything since Friday noon in order to get into her coming-out dress.
I had my dinner off the sideboard. And before I finished it, Mrs. Wysock came in the room, holding up Lucille’s dress which was a mass of roses and ribbons. Mrs. Wysock is the dressmaker and usually pretty quick with her mouth. But she was keeping silent that day because she knew any little thing could set Lucille off into hysterics. She was right there on the edge.
Mrs. Wysock wanted to know where she could put the dress so it would hold its shape till time to put Lucille in it. Mother studied a while and then remembered her old dress form. And so she sent me to the barnloft to fetch it, though she had to tell me twice.
Venturing up the barnloft at high noon should not have been any big event for me. Still, I had to reason with myself somewhat. And just as I got to the barn doors, a cloud came across the sun that worried me worse than it would Lucille. It was like evening on the steps. I pushed the loft door open and made a quick grab at the dress form without looking around any.
But out of the corner of my eye I saw a girl’s green skirt-tails brush across the floor and whisk into a corner behind a pile of boxes. I knocked the dress form down instead of getting a grip on it. When I reached down to pick it up, I figured Blossom was hiding up there and had nipped out of sight.
I’d wanted to think right along that Blossom passed her time up there. But I didn’t stay to flush her out. If I’d caught a glimpse of her face, it might have been different. But as it was, I decided to leave and think about it.
So I hightailed it back to the house with the dress form, which was bigger than I was and shapelier.
I knew this party meant I’d have to take a bath and put on a high-collared shirt. So I took my time poking the roses into the pavilion and setting up a plank table in there for the punch bowl. Every once in a while, I’d glance up to the barn window, but it seemed to be blank. I was trying to think of something smart I could do to let Blossom know I was on to her. When I was down to my last paper rose, the idea came tome.
I went up to
the house for a pencil and a piece of paper from Gladys’s grocery pad. The kitchen was full of big trays of small iced cakes with sugar roses on them. There was a dusky-looking woman with gold crosses hanging down from her ears. She was arranging the cakes on platters. She shot me a narrow look from her black eyes but never said anything.
I printed a note very careful on the top sheet of the pad. Then I ripped it off and ran down to the barn with it and the rose. This time I pounded up the stairs, making extra noise. Right in the middle of the floor up there where it couldn’t be missed, I laid the rose down and the note with it. This is what it said:
Here’s a blossom for you, Blossom,
you spidery-legged little spook.
I was pretty sure Blossom would rise to that. And if she had any good sportsmanship about her, she’d wear the rose tucked in her shirtwaist Monday at school. I was well pleased with myself for this cleverness.
Chapter Eight
Nobody had told me I was to pass the refreshments at this event. Mother saved that news till the last minute. Then she poured salt into the wound by hauling out a Buster Brown collar and told me I was to put on my Sunday knicker suit including the coat. Which is wool.
Mother’s idea was for us all to receive the guests on the porch and then invite them to wander down to the pavilion where they’d refresh themselves with fruit punch and cakes.
Down there Cousin Elvera Schumate was to ladle the punch into little cups. And I was to circulate, offering seconds on the cakes. The reason I had to do this, said Mother, was that neither Gladys nor the extra help were presentable enough to be seen. She must have made this known in the kitchen, too, because Gladys was out there pining away with her feelings seriously hurt.
We began to assemble on the front porch before three o’clock because company in Bluff City are always right there on the dot if they’re coming at all.
Dad said he was going to have one of his Antonio y Cleopatra cigars as we were on the porch, not in the house. Mother said he wasn’t. She asked him how he thought she looked, and he stepped back to get a good view of her. She was uninterrupted ruffles with up at her throat a cameo as big as a saucer. Dad told her she looked just like the girl he’d married in 1892. So then she let him smoke his cigar but told him to flip his ash over the porch balustrade.