by Andre Norton
“Quite a ride in from the old Dimsdale place.” Mrs. Pigot did not sit down with them, but leaned against the side of the door and chattered on. “In this weather Lute might find himself having to take it slow. That old truck of his has to be humored a mite, I wouldn’t wonder. You gonna stay at the junkyard long?”
Junkyard? Holly stopped chewing to stare at Mrs. Pigot. “Old Lute” and a junkyard!
“I’m going to be on the staff at Pine Mount,” Mom was saying cheerfully. “The children will stay with their grandparents.”
Mrs. Pigot nodded. “They’ll find that a lot of young’uns in this town will envy ’em. Why, I don’t know a boy hereabouts as doesn’t like to go grubbing out there whenever he can get a chance. Treasures for young’uns, some of that trash is, or at least that’s their way of seeing it. Was like that myself when I was their age. ’Course then it was just getting started, the dump. Lute and Mercy, they was just a young couple. Old Miss Elvery Dimsdale, she up an’ died the second year they was working for her. Then it came about that there was a big tangle—legal that was—over who was to inherit, though there sure weren’t much left.
“The big house, it burned down right before Miss Elvery died. She got touched in the head an’ used to go wandering about at night. Never had no ’lectricity put in, so she’d take a lamp or a candle to see by. Well, she had a fall, an’ Lute, he got her out. But the lamp she was carrying spilled out and the whole place—it was more’n two hundred years old—just went up in smoke! Folks started talking about the Dimsdale curse again, what with Miss Elvery getting so bad hurt that she died ’bout four months later an’ the house going that way. She was the last of the Dimsdales, as far as the lawyers could make out, ’cept for a cousin off in California or some such place.
“Then they couldn’t sell ’cause there was a flaw in the title, and the town didn’t have no use for the land, ’cept as a dump. That’s how the junkyard started—”
“What curse?” Crockett broke in, as Mrs. Pigot paused for breath.
“The witch curse, sonny, as was laid on all Dimsdales for almost as many years back as that old house stood. Story’s so old now nobody can tell you the right of it, ’less Miss Sarah over at the library. She makes a hobby of looking up old town history an’ might have found out something. There used to be witches hereabouts. Though they didn’t have the hangings like they had over to Salem. But anyway there was a witch that the Dimsdales got across somehow, an’ she laid a curse on them. Seems like they were a family mighty prone to ill luck in every direction. But some families are like that. Anyway they’re all gone now, just like that house of theirs. An’ Lute, he’s a good man—an’ Mercy, she’s a good woman. They ain’t been troubled none by something which was ended long ’fore any of us roundabouts was even born.”
“A witch—with a gingerbread house?” Judy looked down at the small piece she still held in her hand as if it might have been broken off that dread dwelling, a picture of which was in her favorite fairy-tale book.
“Just a story,” Holly said quickly, to show that she knew very well that witches and magic were only that. “People believed like that a long time ago, they don’t anymore.”
Mrs. Pigot was nodding again. “That’s the truth—tongues will wagwag over nothing at all. They used to take a spite at some poor old soul as lived alone an’ maybe had a cat to talk to. Then they’d call her witch an’ make a mite of nasty trouble for her. Don’t you fret none, honey, there ain’t no witches at Dimsdale, only a lot of interestin’ things, an’ you’re gonna like it right fine—”
As if her last words were a summons, the door of the store opened. Once more wind and rain came in with such force they seemed to propel with them a small man wearing a water-slicked raincoat and boots such as those which stood on the other side of the store.
He had a big yellow sou’wester hat, like those Holly knew fishermen wore, tied down on his head with a piece of cloth as if it were far too big and would be otherwise ripped away by the wind. And he fumbled with the knotting of this until he could pull it off and face them.
“Father Wade!” Mom was up, moving to meet him.
Daddy was a big, tall man, but Grandpa was hardly Mom’s height. He was smiling, showing gaps in his teeth, but his voice was very deep as he answered, “Pearl, now ain’t you jus’ as pretty as yore name. Mercy has yore picture right up on the wall, but you is twice as pretty!”
He seemed surprised when Mom kissed his cheek. Then he caught her arms near her shoulders and brought her closer to him in a kind of half hug, as if he were afraid he might hurt her if he squeezed her too tight.
“An’ th’ young’uns.” He swung about to see them, still keeping hold of Mom as if he were afraid she might disappear. “Does my eyes good to see you, it certainly do!”
“Grandpa!” Judy had made up her mind at once. She ran toward him as she would have greeted Dad, her arms outstretched, and he caught her in a big hug. But he shook hands with Crockett, as if he knew very well that hugging was for girls and women, and with men it was different. Holly approached more reluctantly.
This small man, wearing a patched sweater and overalls under his old coat, he—well, she could not greet him as wholeheartedly as Judy did. He was still a stranger. But she kissed his cheek as Mom had done, and when he hugged her she did not resist. Though her nose wrinkled at the queer smell of his coat, and she felt more apart than ever from what had always been warm and secure.
There was a small truck waiting outside. Mom and Judy could crowd into its cab with Grandpa. But Holly and Crockett had to go in the back, pulling a piece of stained canvas over them. Holly looked out gloomily at the window lights of the store as they bumped away from what now seemed like the last outpost of civilization.
“Where do you suppose we’ll live?” she asked Crock. “Mrs. Pigot said the house burned down—”
“There must have been another one,” her brother returned carelessly. “Or else Grandpa built a new one. He’s been living there, and Grandma. Dad was born there—”
“In a junkyard!” Holly exploded. “We’re going to live in an old, dirty junkyard. Crock, I don’t believe it! Mom couldn’t have known about that—she won’t let us—she won’t let us stay—not there!”
“Wait until you see it.” Crockett apparently was not as concerned, but then boys didn’t seem to worry so much about such things.
“We’ll have to go to school here,” she reminded him. “You want people knowing you live in a junkyard?”
“But Mrs. Pigot says the town kids like to come out to Dimsdale. They think it’s fun.”
“Maybe it would be,” though Holly had doubts concerning that also, “if you didn’t have to live in the middle of it. Mom just has to take us out of here—she’s got to—” Her voice was raised. But she stopped short as Crock caught her wrist in a grip so tight it hurt.
He was looking straight at her and his eyes were fierce. “Holly Wade, you leave Mom alone. Don’t you dare go whining at her now—you hear me!”
All the troubles which had ridden her for so long, ever since that hateful telegram had come, boiled up in Holly. She exerted all her strength and jerked free from his hold.
“You can’t tell me what to do, Crockett Wade!”
“I can sure try if you make any trouble for Mom. She’s had enough. You think you’re so smart ’cause you get good grades in school an’ are a year older than Judy ’n me. But you’re dumb, Holly Wade, you’re good and dumb when it comes to being helpful to Mom. You’ve done nothing but go around saying mean things and acting even meaner! Dad would be ’shamed of you, he sure would!”
Holly wanted to scream, to reach out and slap Crockett right across his big mouth. But that was being a baby—like being sick on the bus. She wouldn’t let him know how bad he made her feel. She’d never let him know that. Deep inside she also knew that Mom would not take them away, no matter how hard she might beg. No, she would have to be a new Holly Wade, one who lived in a junkyard, ro
de around in an old truck with a piece of dirty old canvas to keep off the rain, stayed in a place where a witch was supposed to have cursed a family—
Cursed a family—how would it feel to be a witch and, as in the old fairy tales, have wishes which would come true? Holly knew exactly what her first one would be: that the telegram had never come, that they were back in Boston with life going on exactly as it always had. If she were a witch, that’s what she would do with her magic.
She continued to add to that dream as the truck turned off the highway into a side lane and trees and brush began to wall them in, adding to the darkness and gloom of the day.
2
Treasure Trove
There was a house at Dimsdale, but such a queer one. The Wades did not get much chance to see the outside of it because they were hurried from the truck right in through a side door. But once inside, Holly pushed off her rain bonnet, which had hitched forward over her face like a mask with red flowers printed all over it, to see better.
There was one big room, darkish in the corners, for all the light came from a lamp set on a table. To one side an open stair went up steeply, but the room was divided in places by partitions which rose only to Holly’s chin, if she tilted her head a little. These ran along one wall like a lot of wide cupboards without doors. They were full of things, as if someone had shoved furniture and boxes in as tight-packed as they would go. Two of them had shelves around the walls, and on those were what looked like piles of dishes, even a row of electric toasters set side by side. In some ways that very cluttered section of the room resembled Mrs. Pigot’s store, except there was even less space to move between all the things which had been jammed in together.
At the side of the lamp table was a big fireplace, the largest Holly had ever seen in her life. So huge was its cavern that there were even seats in the side walls, as if people could creep in there and warm their toes and hands at a fire kept burning in its center.
Smells—such strange smells—some spicy, some like cake baking, others Holly had no name for. But good smells, she decided, against her own desire to find every fault with the house in the junkyard. There was no one to greet them. Grandpa had taken the truck on to wherever his garage might be—but where was Grandma?
On the table beside the lamp, newspapers had been spread out to protect a red-and-white-checked tablecloth. On these were some broken dishes: cups without handles, plates cracked across.
Were Grandpa and Grandma so—so poor that these were the only sort of dishes they had? Holly was shocked out of her private misery to consider that. Before she dared whisper such a question to Mom, a door at the end of the very long room opened and Grandma came in.
Just as Grandpa was much smaller than Holly had expected, Grandma was taller. She was thin and walked bent forward a little, as if she was always so eager to get to where she was going that she would push her head well before the rest of her. Her hair was pulled up to a tight knot on the top of her head and in that were two combs with glittering stones set in them, one red, one green. On her nose was a pair of glasses, their rims bright red, curving up sharply at the sides. And they did not stay in place very well; she kept raising her hand to shove them back closer to her eyes. She had a sweater on, in spite of the room being so warm from the fire (plus a big stove on the far side of the table) that the Wades had loosened their coats and allowed them to slip off. But over most of this and a bright plaid skirt, she wore a big apron which had so many spots and stains of various colors spattered over it one could not be sure it had ever been white to begin with.
“Praise the Lord for His mercy. Here you are safe an’ sound. An’ it is good, yes, it’s good, to see you, daughter!” She held out her arms to Mom, and Mom went right into them, as if she had wanted or needed nothing more than to have Grandma welcome her so.
“Good He is to us, child.” Mom’s head was hidden now on Grandma’s shoulder. And Holly realized, with another stab of that queer fear, that Mom, the always strong one, was crying. “Good He is. Things come right in their own good time. So it has been for us. Many’s the dark hours we’ve had in the past, Luther an’ me, but there is always somethin’ the good Lord sends to be a comfort. I ain’t believin’ that Joel is dead. Don’t you give heart-room, or head-room, to such thinkin’ either! Joel, he’s a fighter—he ain’t going to be downed, not Joel!
“Now you sit down here.” She led Mom over to a high-backed bench near the fire. “This is a day the Devil hisself might have sent to plague them what has to be out in it. Rest you, daughter, rest you an’ be comforted. You are safely home—an’ Joel will be, too. All in the Lord’s good time.”
Mom was smiling a little now, though there were still wet tracks on her cheeks. “You make me believe that, Mother Wade.”
“Mercy—call me Mercy, daughter. It’s more friendly-like here. Now—so here’s the young’uns—” She gave a pat to Mom’s shoulder and swung about to give a searching survey to the children, pushing back her glasses twice with a kind of thump as if she must have every bit of aid those could offer in order to make sure she would know her grandchildren the next time she laid eyes on them.
“Holly,” she nodded, “an’ Crockett, an’ Judy—”
“Daddy calls me Bunny,” Judy spoke up.
Grandma’s face crinkled in a smile. “Does he now. Well, he was always a boy to go giving things names what weren’t rightly their own. But somehow those names of his, they always fitted, anyhow. An’, look now at that clock! Luther, he’ll be wanting his vittles, an’ so might you. Feeling a little peckish?”
Crock had been sniffing. “Something smells awfully good.” He grinned back at Grandma. “You make gingerbread? That Mrs. Pigot down at the store—she gave us some.”
“Mrs. Symmes’s baking, I’ll be bound.” Grandma nodded briskly. “No gingerbread. But if you’re like your daddy, you’ll take a fancy to the heel of one of my new loaves—with honey-butter to liven it up a bit.
“Now”—she bore down on the table—“I’ll just get my busy work out of here an’ lay out for the full family of us.” Though the dishes on the newspaper were all broken, she lifted them with care, carrying them to the end shelf in one of those queer cupboard rooms as if they were treasures.
“They’re all broken,” Judy commented frankly.
“’Deed they are—that’s why they ended up here.” Grandma made a sweeping gesture to indicate the crammed small space between the wooden partitions. “But there’s things which can be done for ’em. An’ me, I do a right good job with a piece, if I do say so myself. All these things, they’re salvage, you see. It’s pure amazin’ to see what people want to dump—pure amazin’! What’s one folks’ trash can be another man’s treasure. Luther, he has fixin’ hands—that’s truly what you can call ’em—an’ he puts together a smart lot of what comes in.”
She swept around the table swiftly as she spoke, folding the newspapers on a pile by one of the cupboards, then going to a tall hutch against the wall and collecting more dishes, this time unbroken ones.
“Here, Holly.” She summoned her elder granddaughter with one of those jerks of the head which unsettled her glasses again so they had to be thumped back into place. “You an’ Judy can set table. Bowls for soup, the rest—”
Without question Holly found herself busy. Not one of the bowls she set around matched the other. But they were not broken, and one or two were very pretty, with flowers and birds on them. The plates did not match either, nor did the forks and spoons and knives that Judy laid out with care. It was an odd-looking collection of china and flatware. Mom came over to watch them and took up one of the bowls, turned it over to look at the marking on the underside, and made a little gasping sound.
“Moth—Mercy—this is Minton!”
Grandma laughed. She was busy at the stove, pulling lids off pots bubbling there and sniffing the steam which arose from them as if she could tell from that alone whether the contents were ready to serve.
“That was
one which came out just fine from my jigglin’ around bits an’ pieces. Can’t tell with your eyes now, can you, that that came in broke near clean in half. Takes a lot of time an’ patience. But, laws, I got time enough, an’ patience is somethin’ I need to learn, so I try my best. Here’s Luther, now we can get down to eatin’. Which is something a body can do without any patience, just a good appetite.”
While they ate Grandma’s stew (she called it soup but it was far more like stew, Holly thought) and her newly baked bread (Injun bread, she told Mom—corn and rye baked all night in the old hearth oven with “just a taste” of molasses and such to give it flavor) with the herb jelly or honey to slop over it generously—while they ate, Grandma talked and they learned a lot about Dimsdale.
Grandma always called it that, and she didn’t mention a junkyard. Instead she told about what lay outside, what was stored within the building which had once been a barn and was now their home, as if she and Grandpa were indeed keepers of a treasure house. Everything that was brought in to the dump was carefully sorted. Scrap metal went to a dealer in the city, who drove out three times a year. But the rest was Grandpa and Grandma’s concern. All those things now jammed tightly into what had once been the stable stalls were things they were sure could be repaired.
“Lem Granger, he came back from Korea without his legs. But Lem was never one to let the bad luck get him down, no sirree!” Grandma slapped another plate of bread down to take the place of one which had been so quickly emptied. “He went to some school the veterans run an’ learned how to repair electric things. When he gets a mite ahead of his repair work for other people, he comes up here an’ takes a look around. Them toasters now”—she pointed with her chin to the row on the shelf, her hands being busy—“he’ll look those over good. Likely he’ll be able to take the whole kit an’ caboodle an’ fix ’em up to sell in his shop.