by Richard Peck
“Sophie,” Uncle Miles interrupted, “can you put us up?”
“I can put you up, but can I put up with you? That’s the question.” She laughed immoderately at her joke. “Who are these young’uns? You don’t mean to tell me that at your time of life you—”
“This here is my great-nephew, Alexander. Say how do you do to Mrs. Pomarade, Alexander. And this here is Miss Blossom Culp, who is—ah—travelin’ with us.”
“My stars,” said Mrs. Pomarade, “quite a party!”
“There’s one more to our party,” Uncle Miles said. “Out in your hall is a box with Inez Dumaine in it.”
Mrs. Pomarade looked behind her in some surprise. “Not the Inez Dumaine I been reading about in the Delta Daily? The poor thing who—”
“The same,” said Uncle Miles.
“That’s not a very big box, considering, is it?” Mrs. Pomarade said.
“In fifty years’ time you won’t make quite such a big package yourself, Sophie,” remarked Uncle Miles.
Mrs. Pomarade showed Uncle Miles and me up to a room. Then she took Blossom off with her. These two must have confided in one another off on their own, for Mrs. Pomarade thereafter seemed to know all about our business. When we were alone, I said to Uncle Miles, “Was that Mrs. Pomarade an actress at one time?”
“Very likely. She’s had a busy life,” is all he said.
We washed up and he peeled off his overalls. Then he was ready to go down to dinner in his blue suit. He told me to change into a clean shirt, which coming from him was something of a surprise.
We cooled our heels downstairs in the sitting room long after the dinner gong went. A few other guests shuffled into the dining room, but there was still no sign of Mrs. Pomarade or Blossom.
“Nobody’s ever in a hurry down here,” Uncle Miles observed. “Time don’t meant nothin’ to them.”
My belly was flapping against my backbone from starvation when a young lady entered the room. Not wishing to stare, I examined her feet. They were small and neat, shod in a pair of little high-heeled shoes with bows. Above the bows were a pair of ankles in lace stockings. And above that a pink and white skirt held up by a small hand. Here is a dainty dish, I thought, feeling quite worldly. Then I looked up into the face of Blossom Culp.
She’d been transformed by Mrs. Pomarade, and no wonder it took so long. The dress came near to fitting Blossom, though it was filled out in the busts. Her hair was scooped up off her neck. She looked fifteen at the youngest, and her lips were rouged.
I was on my feet, suffering shock. “Evenin’, Blossom,” Uncle Miles said, though how he knew her I don’t understand.
Mrs. Pomarade stepped up behind her creation, beaming. She had put on a different dress herself, which was black and busy. So I took it that dressing up for dinner in New Orleans was an ordinary thing you weren’t to remark on.
“I trust you have kept your same good appetite, Miles,” she said.
“Sophie, I am in all respects the same man you knowed better’n twenty years ago.”
“Better’n twenty years! Don’t tell me it’s been that long!”
“Oh, you was nothin’ but a young girl at the time,” said Uncle Miles.
“That’s stretching a point somewhat. But then you always were a smooth-talking devil, Miles. Let’s step in to dinner.” She took his arm and I had no recourse but to offer Blossom mine.
Since she was altered out of all recognition, I whispered at her, “Blossom, if you aren’t a sow’s ear turned into a silk purse!”
“You always were a smooth-talking devil, Alexander,” she replied, smiling straight ahead at the dining room.
Having watched Mrs. Van Deeter drink coffee, I thought I’d seen elegant manners, but Blossom surpassed all. There was crabmeat to begin with, and her hand shot out for the smallest fork. There was gumbo soup, and her hand went directly to a spoon with a round bowl. There was a shrimp sauce that the maid poured over rice, and Blossom leaned back to be served. And at the end, there were bowls of water for washing up. In them were sprigs of mint and lemon slices. Blossom flicked this floating stuff aside and dipped her fingertips in the water.
She ate everything in sight, but you never saw anything so grand. Then I saw her black eyes were on Mrs. Pomarade the whole time. And she was copying her at every point with very close timing.
Uncle Miles was deep in conversation regarding our mission. His eyes were pink and watery, but his spectacles flashed. “Sophie, if it is all the same to you, I’d as soon leave that box of bones in your front hall as to let it fall into Brulatour’s hands. I want Inez settled, but that feller has got my dander up, and I’ll rob him of his newspaper story if I can.”
Mrs. Pomarade nodded, mentioning that as secrecy would work to our advantage, he’d better keep his voice down. “Those young’uns there are quiet enough,” she observed. “Are they sweethearts?”
“Certainly not,” said Blossom, patting her upswept back hair just like Lucille does.
“Let’s us stick to business,” said Uncle Miles. “How are we goin’ to locate the Dumaines’ cemetery plot? If memory serves me, this entire town’s half graveyard.”
“Oh Miles,” said Mrs. Pomarade, “the everlasting Delta Daily has been crowing over this business for days. Everybody in the city knows by now that the Dumaines are all in the old Cemetery Number One over on Basin Street.
“Why there was even a photograph of the family tomb in yesterday’s paper. Though how Mortimer Brulatour will explain to his readers the wrong body I don’t know.” She wheezed considerably with laughter, and some of the pencil marks above her eyes melted and ran down the seams in her face. “I do hope we can escape his notice when we take Inez to her crypt, for he’ll be shamed and looking for satisfaction. And now I don’t see why we cant excuse these young’uns to the parlor while we have a drop of brandy and recollect old times.”
When we were off to ourselves, Blossom unbended somewhat from her new appearance, though she was still so vastly changed that it put me on edge.
We had the parlor to ourselves as all the rest of the hotel guests had made for the porch rockers. Though there were plenty of chairs, we sat together on a sofa. Blossom kicked her feet forward to examine the bows on her little high-heeled shoes.
“Well, Blossom,” I said in a voice that was cracking again, “Bluff City wouldn’t recognize you now.”
“It never did, Alexander,” she answered.
Not knowing what to say to that, I fiddled with the tassels on the antimacassar. Finally I said, “Maybe Mrs. Pomarade would let you take those clothes home with you.”
“If she did, her maid wouldn’t have nothing to wear on her evenings off. Besides, where would I go tricked up like this? Do you reckon Lucille would invite me up on your porch to drink tea?” She grinned bitterly at this.
“You always think Lucille is a humorous topic,” I said. “But I can tell you otherwise. She liked to tear me limb from limb just the other night. And I’ll tell you something else,” I said, leaning over toward the pearl in her ear. “It’s my opinion that she has switched over from Tom Hackett to Lowell Seaforth. And though Lowell is an intelligent fellow, I suspect he’s fallen for her.”
Blossom shook her head and closed her eyes in the old way. “Oh, Alexander, you are a true dunce in matters of love. There’s no need to suspect what’s clear as day. Lowell and Lucille are just as taken with each other as—Uncle Miles and Mrs. Pomarade.”
“Uncle Miles?” I said, scandalized. “Why he’s too independent and too old. You are a peculiar girl with peculiar notions, Blossom, but I thought you had better sense.”
“Come on,” she sighed, slipping off the sofa. She stood up and put out her hand. “Follow me and tread lightly.”
We crept out into the shadows of the hallway and peered through a potted palm tree. There was only one light left on in the dining room, and under it Uncle Miles and Mrs. Pomarade still sat at the table.
Their brandy glasses touched, and
their heads were close. He was murmuring some tale, and Mrs. Pomarade’s head was nodding in time to it. In the dim pink light you couldn’t see that they were old. They might have been anybody. They might have been me and Blossom Culp.
Chapter Twenty- One
Uncle Miles was already out of his bed and gone when I stirred next morning. I couldn’t place where I was at first, what with the palm trees outside throwing their greenish color into the room.
When I got down to the parlor, Mrs. Pomarade was reading aloud from a newspaper to an audience of Blossom and Uncle Miles. The Delta Daily had dropped their commentary on Inez altogether. But their rival, the Louisiana Ledger, evidently had a spy in the enemy ranks. Mrs. Pomarade was quoting from the latter:Our worthy competitors at the Delta Daily have suffered a setback in promoting the myth of the Ghost Girl. The long-lost daughter of a once-prominent local family was to be returned from her northern “grave” on last evening’s Panama Limited.
The hoax was revealed in a strictly private Delta Daily conference when Mortimer Brulatour of the Delta staff introduced a mislabeled coffin to his colleagues. An examination of the contents revealed an unidentified, recently deceased male in good condition, origins and destination unknown. Mortimer Brulatour has not made himself available for comment.
Thus ends another attempt by the desperate Delta Daily to add readers, by fair means or foul, to their declining subscription list. Anyone expecting the body of a recently deceased male in good condition wearing a pinstriped suit and a Knights of Columbus lodge ring is urged to contact the Delta editorial staff who are not above preying upon the unsuspecting and bereaved in their relentless pursuit of yellow journalism.
Mrs. Pomarade ceased reading and wiped daintily at her eyes. “I know it’s a confounded outrage, but I can’t help but see the humor in it.” She cast a foxy look at Blossom, who only stared deeply into her coffee cup and looked smug.
Two of the hotel gardeners came into the front hall and bore Inez’s box away. The four of us issued quickly out behind it. On the side drive an old plug was hitched up to a buckboard. The gardeners spread a rug to conceal the box once it was on the wagon bed.
Then, with some puffing, Mrs. Pomarade and Uncle Miles climbed on the seat, and Blossom and I edged up on the tailgate and let our feet dangle. No onlooker would have known what we were about. There was something of the traveling patent-medicine show about us.
Uncle Miles squinted like an Indian in the sunlight and had turned his workshirt sleeves well back. In the open air, Mrs. Pomarade’s hair was fierier than ever nature intended, though she subdued it somewhat with a motoring veil and a parasol. Blossom wore her own shoes, which were more practical for a graveyard. But she had on another of the maid’s outfits. What with that and a sunshade she held in imitation of Mrs. Pomarade, she maintained some of her new grandeur.
I took it we were avoiding the main boulevards as much as we could. We threaded through streets where people were doing a big fruit and vegetable business on the curb. There were dark archways behind where others drank coffee and hard liquor under ceiling fans. It was a picturesque trip but long. And we stole along like thieves on an outing.
We were an hour getting to the Cemetery Number One on Basin Street. Though I had dreamed about a New Orleans graveyard, the place came as a surprise. There was marble in plenty above ground, but all in a ruinous state. It was more like an ancient city, much plundered, than I had bargained for. At the gate, Mrs. Pomarade handed down money to the care-taker to point out our way and to seal his lips.
The tombs were laid out along gravel streets. Most of them were overgrown, with here and there an urn of dried-up flowers. The sun pounded down, and occasionally a snake’s tail flipped off hot marble and into a cool crevice. It was as weird as any daylit spot could well be. Blossom peered out from under her sunshade at the wonder of it, but kept silent.
Some of the statuary, though chipped, was quite interesting. And I wouldn’t have minded the place except that the individual crypts were stacked up like dresser drawers, and several had been stove in, revealing crumbling interiors. Before we got where we were going, I was downright home-sick for the idea of burying people six feet down under a low mound.
Presently we drew up to a big family tomb as tall as an outhouse and several times longer. It was in an advanced state of decay, but the name Dumaine was still clear in carved letters at the top. There were maybe twenty or so places for bodies. Some of the cubbyholes were covered by square marble fronts with French names on them, mossed over. Others were open to the air, and the fragments of their fronts littered the ground. All the Dumaines seemed to have done their dying a good while back. There was a little lawn before the tomb, surrounded by a cast-iron fence with an open gate. We’d come at last to the place Inez’s restless spirit had hankered over down through the years.
I helped Mrs. Pomarade down from the wagon in stages. Uncle Miles was already reaching for the box, but she murmured, “Let the young’uns do it, Miles.” Blossom and I stepped up to pull it out ourselves. The box wouldn’t fit into any of the open spaces, and we all stood quiet under the blazing sun. It was a likely time for devotions, but none of us were praying-aloud people.
At length, Uncle Miles said, “Sophie, why don’t you take these children on a walk while I do what needs doing.”
Then I knew what had to be done, but I listened to Mrs. Pomarade explaining. “Cemeteries are crowded places down here, so it’s our way to use the same space over and over. As a rule, when a body’s been in one of these tombs a few years, it’s taken out, the coffin opened, and the bones disposed of. Then the space is used again. Well, these Dumaines have plenty of room, and I reckon under the unusual circumstances we’d better put Inez’s bones in one of these open spaces.”
She looked at Blossom and me from under her parasol, and in that dimness her face looked less clownish and more kind. “I think that would satisfy, Inez, don’t you?”
When Blossom and I nodded, she said, “And so let’s take a stroll around the grounds. I’ll give you a look at the tomb of Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen, which is a spot all the tourists visit.”
Blossom’s hand stole over and clutched mine, and I knew she meant to hold her ground. We neither of us had come all this way to be led around like children. “No, ma’am,” I said. “We’d like to see the Voodoo Queen’s place, but not till later. I—we’ll help Uncle Miles put Inez’s bones in. It’s only right.”
“Let them,” she said to Uncle Miles. He handed over a claw hammer from out of the buckboard, and I dropped down to pry up the box lid.
I worked all around it until the nails were standing high, and I remembered Uncle Miles’s old story about the man buried alive. My breath was coming in short gasps and sweat ran down my face. And when the last nail was lifted, I sat back on my heels. Uncle Miles reached down and took both sides of the lid in his thorny hands and lifted it clear.
I looked aside to see Mrs. Pomarade cross herself in a slow, private way. Blossom skitted off to one side and seemed to disappear. Uncle Miles reached in first and took out a human skull. He stretched past me and thrust it way back into the cavity of the tomb, first peering into the darkness in case a snake might be in there. The sun danced around in the open box—white bones against white, satiny stuff. It was more like a coffin within than without, and I didn’t care for it.
I reached for the little skull-Trixie’s, or whatever her real name had been. It was as warm as life and rested in the hollow of my hand. I remembered the draggled little bit of pink ribbon and the damp tangles in the fur. You won’t need to whimper any more, Trixie, I said, but not aloud.
We worked faster then and got caught up in the rhythm of the job. I reached without looking and pushed bones of various sizes into the cool place. In a moment the box was empty except for some crumbs of dirt from our backyard which I flung out on the hard-baked New Orleans ground.
“She’s home now,” Mrs. Pomarade said, “bless her heart.” Uncle Miles st
ood up and wiped the sweat off his brow. I stayed crouched where I was, and when I looked one last time into the box, my eyes swam.
Uncle Miles’s hand dropped on my shoulder. From far overhead he said, “Old folks don’t grieve over the mystery of death. But Alexander, you ain’t old.”
There was no sign that Inez knew she was home, and the white bones were a far cry from the heart-shaped face and rustling skirts in our barn. There wasn’t any sign of contentment from inside the peculiar tomb. Nor any moan of welcome from Inez’s people, whose own bones had maybe been cleared out who knows when. Inez was gone from me for good. And I was setting forth into life at just the age she’d left it, and doors seemed to clang shut through all the years between us. It was a fanciful thought, I know, and I didn’t in fact hear doors clanging. But I knew a time had passed that wouldn’t come again. And I knew as sure as if Blossom’s mama had said so that I no longer had the Gift and that there’d be no place for being receptive to the Spirit World in my future.
Then Blossom darted out from behind the tomb, busy as ever. Her finery was wilted, and her hair was frizzing out of control. As a result, she looked her normal self. In her hands was a double bunch of tired flowers clearly filched from other graves. She stepped up to Inez’s shelf and jammed the bouquet in as far as it would go. One black-red gladiolus drooped down outside.
Nobody pointed out to her that she’d robbed the dead to honor the dead. But still, she turned and said, “It was all I could think of to do.”
“It was right,” said Mrs. Pomarade.
I hammered the lid back on Inez’s box, and Blossom and I slid it back on the wagon. Then we all made off, but took the long way around to see the tomb of Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen, who was well known in New Orleans circles.
According to Mrs. Pomarade, Marie dealt in strong potions and various charms and generally had quite a hold on people down there during her lifetime. People still visited her tomb. There were X’s scrawled all over it in brick dust, which is considered lucky. The grass before it was all worn bald, and that’s part of the ritual too. People wishing to be on the safe side of her spirit mark up her tomb and then shuffle their feet at her door.