by Richard Peck
During our homeward voyage we dined again at Captain Haddock’s table. We toasted Miss Dabney’s future wedding, and I was allowed a full glass of Madeira wine. Strong drink is a mocker, as the poet says, but this particular glassful only knocked me out as quick as I went to my bunk. And I dreamt till dawn.
It was one of those busy dreams with everybody you ever knew crowding in. Newton Shambaugh fell off the back end of a large cake baked to resemble the Olympic. All Letty’s Busy Fingers girls wrung their hands until Sybil appeared wearing Miss Spaulding’s pince-nez glasses. She pronounced them all chumps.
Old Man Leverette stepped forth from his privy nearby and fired off both rounds of his shotgun. The air filled with white bursting stars like the egret feathers on Miss Dabney’s hat.
Mama was there in her getup too, pouring a Rockingham cup of tea leaves over Professor Regis’s head. And then they all ganged into a Pope-Detroit Electric auto and drove away on the crown of the road into a haze of autumn smoke, arguing among themselves.
Then the scene cleared, and I saw Julian. Not as green and scummy bones being nibbled at by sea creatures. Nor as his waxy figure in Madame Tussaud’s. In the dream he scampered across flowered fields beneath a pale and watery sun. It may have been England. It may have been somewhere much farther off. I stood deep in daisies, watching him away into the distance. Alexander was there too, standing beside me.
Richard Peck was born in Decatur, Illinois. He attended Exeter University in England and holds degrees from DePauw University and Southern Illinois University.
In 1990, he received the American Library Association’s Margaret A. Edwards Award, which honors “an author whose book or books, over a period of time, have been accepted by young adults as an authentic voice that continues to illuminate their experiences and emotions, giving insight into their lives.”
His other books include The Ghost Belonged to Me (also about Blossom Culp), Are You in the House Alone?, and A Long Way from Chicago, which was both a 1998 National Book Award Finalist and the 1999 Newbery Honor Book.
Richard Peck lives in New York City.
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