Fair Weather

by Richard Peck

  “Be quiet, Rosie,” Lottie said.

  “What do you and Everett find to talk about?” I inquired.

  “This and that,” she said. “Nothing to concern you.”

  “Mama says Everett’s very probably been in jail.”

  “He says he feels like he has been,” Lottie answered unexpectedly.

  “Mama says she wants to nip—”

  The door to the hall moved. We thought of Buster. It opened, and Mama slipped into the room, barefoot in her nightdress. Though it wasn’t but nine o’clock, she put a finger to her lips as if the world was asleep. Her hair was loose around her face. You hardly saw the streak of white. She drew nigh us, throwing her shadow on the wall. Then she edged onto the bed, my side. We gazed at her, waiting.

  She cleared her throat. “. . . Your aunt Euterpe was always particular, you know,” she said, speaking low. We listened for more.

  “. . . And she’s kind of prissy, there’s no doubt about it. She always carried a long-stemmed rose in her teeth to the privy, to cut the smell.”

  We stared.

  “And she can be stiff-necked,” Mama said. “You’re to play by her rules. Remember, she never had children, so you’re all apt to come as a shock to her.”

  “Mama, don’t tell us we’re to spend the whole time up in Chicago trying to keep track of Buster,” Lottie said.

  “I don’t worry so much about Buster as I do about you two,” Mama answered. “Give me boys anytime. You know where you stand with boys.”

  “Well, Mama,” says Lottie, “if we step out of line, you can jerk knots in our tails.”

  A silence dropped on us. Quieter than before Mama said, “No, I can’t. I’m not going.”

  * * *

  My heart stopped. Time stopped. Lottie nearly nudged a hole in me. She’d known right along. Our two new straw hats with the grosgrain bands, mannish but ladylike, hung from the rocker. Where would we wear them now? Suddenly I wanted to go, like anything.

  “I sent my ticket back to Euterpe and told her to meet the three of you at the station up there without fail,” Mama said.

  We were going by ourselves? I liked to have fainted.

  “Mama!” Lottie slapped the sheet. “You’re sending us off on our own?”

  “I don’t like to.” Mama looked away at the wall. “I won’t draw an easy breath till I get you back.”

  “Does Dad want you home?” Lottie demanded.

  “He wants me to go with you,” Mama said, whisper quiet.

  “Then, Mama,” I said, “why don’t you?”

  “Oh, mercy. How could I get away at this time of year?” she said. “Can you picture your granddad playing milkmaid? He’d spill the cream and break the churn. You go on to Chicago and see the fair, then come back and tell me all about it.”

  She said no more, so I spoke up. “Mama, are you scared to go?”

  Lottie grabbed my hand and squeezed it to shut me up, though Mama could see. Then, very soft for her, Lottie said, “Mama, we’ll look at everything twice, once for you.”

  Mama turned away with her chin tucked down. Then she was gone. We didn’t think we’d sleep a wink. We slept like logs.

  * * *

  Then, as in a storybook, it was tomorrow. In the dazzling morning we were on the train, perched at the edge of the slick wicker seats in the chair car. The awful roar of the locomotive pulling into the depot had silenced our good-byes, which was just as well.

  Our picnic hamper was at our feet. Our hearts were in our mouths. We gazed out at Mama and Dad alone down there on the platform. The window was half open, but we couldn’t think of anything to say. We sensed the locomotive pawing the track, mad to move on.

  At the last moment Buster sprang from his seat and swarmed up the aisle. As the conductor lifted the metal step, Buster leaned out the door of our car and flung his sailor hat. The locomotive released steam, carrying the hat down the platform. I hoped Mama would get it and return it to the store.

  With an awful jolt we were off. Mama and Dad slid away from the window. Dad’s arm reached around Mama’s shoulders.

  I’d never gone faster than a horse gallops. We braced ourselves for speed as the town fell away. But before Lottie got Buster settled in the seat opposite, the train was shuddering to a halt. The brakes squealed, and so did we. This must be the Bulldog Crossing, but then the train lit out running and flung itself down the tracks.

  Soot billowed in the window, and we caught a familiar smell. A farmer was dragging a creosote-soaked log around a wheat field to repel the army worms. That was our last whiff of home.

  To save our skirts Lottie and I had brought tea towels hemmed out of feed sacks to sit on. As Mama said, you didn’t know who’d sat down there before you. We skidded on the slippery seat, scared we’d disgrace ourselves by sliding onto the floor. We jiggled, and I happened to notice that Buster’s pocket jumped.

  We knew to keep our tickets handy for the conductor to punch. The door at the end of our car opened, and I held up my ticket to show I knew how to act. But the man staggering through the door wasn’t the conductor. It was another man entirely, in a once-cream-colored suit, badly creased, and a curly-brimmed Panama hat, a high celluloid collar, and a silk cravat. A bachelor button hung in his lapel. Lottie gasped. I skidded off the seat and she caught me in midair.

  The old geezer scanned the car over his pushed-down spectacles. His crepy neck hung down in dewlaps over the unfamiliar collar. His knobby old hands clutched the chair backs as he worked his way along the car, ducking the kerosene lamps swinging overhead.

  “Hey, it’s Granddad!” Buster sang out, turning to see.

  Lottie and I slumped.

  FLYING TO THE MOON

  Buster grinned from ear to ear. In Mama’s own voice Lottie said, “Granddad, what in tunket are you doing on this train?”

  He scooted Buster over and sat. From nowhere he flourished forth a rustic walking stick and planted both hands on it. “I’m goin’ to the fair, same as you. Had to flag the train at the Bulldog Crossing.”

  “You’re going all the way to the fair with us, Granddad?” Buster beamed. Granddad had evened up the sides between girls and boys in Buster’s opinion.

  “I want to take in the livestock display,” Granddad said, mostly around his chaw. “They’ve got Eye-talian gondolas too, and I’m thinkin’ about having a boat ride in one. Might even take a turn on the big wheel. I’m studyin’ several things I plan to do.”

  Lottie sighed. “Granddad, where’d you get the train ticket?”

  “I’m ridin’ on your maw’s,” he said. “She was sending it back, and I didn’t want it to go to waste. Your maw’ll be easier in her mind if she knows I’m along to look after you young’uns.”

  We young’uns gaped.

  Lottie pressed on. “Granddad, how did you come by Mama’s ticket?”

  Granddad gazed down the aisle. “When your maw handed me the letter for Euterpe, it felt like there was a ticket inside.”

  “You tore open the envelope and took it out?” Lottie accused.

  “I was careful,” Granddad said in his own defense. “I gummed the flap back before I turned it in at the post office.”

  “What did Mama think about that?”

  “She don’t know yet. I left her a note in the kitchen, so my absence won’t worry her.”

  “And does Aunt Euterpe know you’re coming?”

  “It’ll be a surprise for her,” Granddad said.

  And we all agreed to that. Lottie sat back, murmuring, “As if Buster wasn’t going to be trouble enough . . .”

  “Granddad,” Buster piped up, “where’d you get them clothes?”

  Even the people across the aisle must have wondered. Granddad stuck out a mile in that old ice-cream suit, fly-specked with rust spots. He looked like a riverboat gambler down on his luck.

  “These is my traveling togs,” he explained with quiet pride.

  “Where’d you ever go?” Buster wondered.

&nbs
p; “Go? I’m a rolling stone, boy. I wore this out to St. Joseph, Missouri, here a while back.”

  “What for?” Buster kicked his new heels.

  Granddad stared down at him. “Same reason anybody goes to St. Joe. To see the house where they shot Jesse James. The bullet went clean through his skull and lodged in the wall. I wanted to see that and poke my finger in the bullet hole. It’s just something you do if you’re an American.”

  Everybody in the car could hear him. Lottie was mortified. The ticket was limp in my hand before the conductor came around to punch it. He was a big red-faced man in a blue uniform and a braided cap. He gave Granddad a second look.

  “Well, old timer,” the conductor said, “how you doing?”

  Granddad looked up suspiciously. “Can’t complain.” He fished for Mama’s ticket in his waistcoat. “Of course, my needs is simple.” Then Granddad spoke out, full-voiced:

  Beefsteak when I’m hongry,

  Corn likker when I’m dry,

  Pretty little gal when I’m lonesome,

  Sweet heaven when I die.

  The lady across the aisle lowered her veil suddenly. When the conductor recovered, he said, “I see by your ticket you’re traveling through to Chicago.”

  Granddad agreed and pointed us out. “These is my grandkids.” Lottie looked way too old to be riding on a child’s ticket, but Granddad had distracted the conductor. “I’m takin’ these young’uns to see the fair. They’s green as gourds and never seen nothing. I’m going to show them the sights.”

  “Well, sir,” said the conductor, moving on, “when you get to Chicago, there’ll be another sight to see.”

  * * *

  We sat at the big depot in Decatur while more people got on. Then we were up and running again. Granddad eyed the picnic hamper. I didn’t know if I could eat anything at this speed. But we laid out a picnic lunch with the big checked napkins over our knees. Of course there was plenty.

  A fried chicken had lost its head but yesterday when Lottie picked it out specially and wrung its neck off. To fill in we had sandwiches stuffed with ham smoked in our own smokehouse over green–apple tree wood. And an applesauce spice cake we could eat with our fingers and a jug of sun tea to wash it down.

  “Eat hearty,” said Granddad with his mouth full. “You never know what kind of day-old slop people have to eat in Chicago. And I’ll tell you one thing for free. Your aunt Euterpe can’t no more cook than she can fly to the moon.”

  But I thought we were flying to the moon this minute—eating a picnic lunch on a speeding train. And Chicago getting closer and closer, over the curve of the earth.

  Then keyed up though we were, we all took naps. Granddad went first. His Panama was on his lap, and his stick clattered to the floor. His head lolled back, and he was asleep at the top of his lungs. Buster’s eyelids got droopier than his socks. Then he was dozing in the crook of Granddad’s arm. Lottie went next, though upright with her hat on. I thought I’d better stay alert for us all, and dropped right off.

  So imagine our dismay when the train set its brakes, and Lottie and I both shot off our seat and onto the floor. Down on our hands and knees with Granddad’s stick. But now he was dragging us up. We were indoors someplace. We were in the great cavern of the station—there already. I could have wailed with fear.

  But there wasn’t time for that. We pulled down our egg crates from overhead. Everybody in the car was surging for the door. It was all too soon.

  We stepped straight out onto a concrete platform thronged with people filing in the same direction. As we approached the waiting room, Granddad dropped back.

  “You kids go on,” he said. “I have business in the baggage car.”

  So there we were, dragged down by our crates and alone in the world.

  “A fat lot of good Granddad’ll be to us,” Lottie said in a shaking voice. We were swept forward, keeping Buster between us. I nearly tangled in my new long skirt. The elastic that held on my new straw hat cut into my chin. You couldn’t see a step ahead, or a minute, and there was nothing to breathe but smoke.

  The crowds parted, and over there under a clock stood a woman. She was all in black, even the gloves in this stifling afternoon. The feathers on her veiled hat were stumpy raven’s wings. She was either the Angel of Death or Aunt Euterpe.

  We drew nearer her. She reached up and propped her veil back over her hat.

  “Adelaide,” she cried softly, reaching for Lottie. “Oh, Adelaide, you came after all.”

  Adelaide was Mama’s name. Dad called her Addy. Aunt Euterpe thought Lottie was Mama.

  “I’m Lottie,” Lottie squeaked.

  Aunt Euterpe’s hands flew to her long pale face. She was a wan woman, nothing like Mama. She wore spectacles on a chain, and her eyes were bewildered behind them.

  “I’m Rosie,” I said to help her out. “This here is Buster.”

  “Yes, it would be.” Aunt Euterpe spoke faintly. “But you’re all so . . . big.”

  “Granddad says we’re overgrown,” I told her.

  Aunt Euterpe started suddenly like a goose had walked over her grave. She stared past us, evidently seeing a ghost. I took that to be Granddad himself.

  When we turned, he had a surprise for us too. In his hands was a leash. Straining at the end of it was Tip.

  “Granddad!” Buster burst out. “You brought Tip!” Buster was tickled pink.

  “He pines and gets off his feed if I leave him behind.” Granddad dodged Aunt Euterpe’s stricken stare.

  “Papa,” she said, this sad greeting rising from her flat bosom.

  “Hello there, Terpie,” he croaked. “I rode your sister’s ticket up here to keep an eye on these children. Me and Tip.”

  “I see,” she said regretfully. Compressing her lips in martyrdom, she lowered her veil. We followed her out through a great stone arch to the teeming street.

  A polished black carriage stood tall in a line of hacks. Aunt Euterpe pointed us at the open door. Granddad gave Tip’s haunches a boost up. We milled around inside—hats and veils, elbows and paws, Granddad’s stick. While we settled, the driver tied our crates to the roof.

  “Land-a-Goshen, you’re spreadin’ your money around, girl,” Granddad said to Aunt Euterpe. He was impressed in spite of himself. You couldn’t hire a rig like this from the livery stable down home. The carriage had brass side lamps and leather straps to lower the windows. A cut-glass vase hung beside the buttoned seat with a single red rose in it.

  “I feel like a pallbearer at my own funeral,” said Granddad as Buster settled on his knee.

  “I could hardly get you all onto the streetcar with all your . . . luggage. Even before I knew about the . . . animal.” Aunt Euterpe spoke from behind her veil. I’d already forgotten what she looked like.

  We were in a procession of carriages and beer wagons. The street was laid in granite blocks, and we’d never ridden on paving before. We seemed to float. The city clattered and cried out around us. Granddad stuck his head out the window to see to the top of a building. Buster and Tip too.

  “It is the Masonic Temple,” Aunt Euterpe murmured, “the tallest building in the world.” So we were on State Street now.

  “How high is it?” Buster wondered.

  “Twenty-two stories,” Aunt Euterpe said.

  Granddad pulled his head back inside right quick like the building might fall on him.

  Bells rang when we came to an iron bridge swinging open to let a big boat through. You couldn’t see the river till you were right up on it for everything in the way. A peacock’s tail of scummy grease spread over the river water. The smell would have knocked you off your perch. I didn’t like to think what all those things floating in the stream might be. Mama had been right: Chicago was filthy as a hog wallow.

  We turned at a stone water tower, and by and by on our right was Lake Michigan sweeping flat and blue to the far edge of the world. On the other side of the road rose one palace after another.

  Granddad stared
. “Is them houses?” They were big as towns, gated like graveyards.

  “Private residences,” Aunt Euterpe said. “We have just passed the Franklin McVeahs’. We are now approaching the Potter Palmers’. Mrs. Potter Palmer is the President of the Board of Lady Managers for the fair.” There was longing in Aunt Euterpe’s voice, but I didn’t know what it meant.

  We turned at last into a narrower street, tree-lined. It was Schiller Street, and we’d never known anybody who lived on a road with a name. Here too the houses were fine, though run together in rows. We drew up with a jangle.

  “This where you hang your hat, Terpie?” Granddad inquired.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Aunt Euterpe replied.

  The driver dropped from the box to help us down. Tip went first in a great leap to the nearest tree.

  When Granddad’s turn came, he creaked down unaided. He didn’t like the look of the driver in his bulging black suit and derby hat to match. You wouldn’t want to meet up with him in a dark alley. He hustled our crates up the steps. At the top a maid in a frilly cap stood before double doors.

  Not wanting to be robbed, Granddad clutched his carpetbag. “You cain’t be too careful in such territory as this,” he muttered, though the man was driving the carriage away now.

  “The driver is my servant,” Aunt Euterpe said. “That was my carriage.”

  A solitary feather would have knocked us all down. Granddad’s old eyes expanded in his specs. He gaped up at the house, elegant with stonework and bay windows. It rose like the Masonic Temple.

  “You don’t mean to tell me you live in this whole house, Terpie?” he said.

  “I do,” said Aunt Euterpe, muffled by veils. “In the solitude of my grief.”

  Granddad scratched up under his Panama. “Hecka-tee, Terpie,” he said. “You’re settin’ pretty.”

  Lottie sagged against me. We’d never known anybody rich, and our aunt was. The cat had our tongues, though Buster was telling Tip that up here he couldn’t just roam around like he owned the place the way he did down home. Not in Chicago he couldn’t.

  BRIGHT LIGHTS AND BAD WOMEN