Honey Jackson, age six, aspiring dancer and lover-of-life extraordinaire, sat barefoot and cross-legged at the top of the front-porch steps. She wore her best pink leotard and tutu. Around her neck, hanging from some string, was a pair of toilet-paper-roll binoculars. Behind her, in a short, straight row, sat seven small stuffed animals—her audience.
“House!” she shouted, scrambling to her feet. “House, where have you been! I’ve been waiting for you all the livelong day! Daddy! House is here!”
Honey twinkled down the steps and raced across the dirt yard for House, who was nearing the pecan trees in the front yard. Then Eudora Welty rose from her resting place next to a thicket of blackberry vines, and Honey’s world changed. She stumbled to a stop, whipped her binoculars to her eyes, and squealed. Eudora Welty plopped into the dust with a frightened thud.
“You brought me a dog!” Honey whooped. “Daddy! House brought me a dog!”
“What?” Leonard Jackson pushed open the screen door and appeared on the front porch, his face dotted with leftover shaving cream.
“Look, Daddy! A dog!” Honey ran right past House without so much as a never-you-mind.
House watched as Honey instinctively stopped short of the trembling Eudora Welty. She tiptoed toward her with her arms out as if she was a ballerina swan approaching her hesitant partner. Then she squatted so low in front of Eudora that her bottom swiped the dirt. She put her smooth, young face directly in front of Eudora’s wrinkled and snuffling one. They blinked at each other.
“How are you, son?” asked House’s father. He wiped his face with the towel on his shoulder.
“Fine,” said House. He reached the porch, adjusted his baseball cap, and peered up at his father.
His father gestured toward Eudora Welty. “I see where you came from,” he said quietly. “Did you spend the night there?”
House shook his head. “Eudora came and got me.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and discovered his note there again, like a surprise. He had read it now a dozen times on his short walk through the woods. “She scratched on the screen door by my bed. I can’t figure out how she knew where to find me.”
“How about that?” said his father. He stepped over Honey’s stuffed animals and sagged himself down onto the front-porch steps. “Is it over, then?”
“Yessir.” House licked his lips.
Leonard Jackson bunched the towel in his rough hands. Three of his fingers wore Band-Aids. “Did you call Doc MacRee?”
“Yessir.”
“Good. Did the undertaker come out?”
“Yessir. I hid in the bushes and watched.”
“Why did you hide?”
House shrugged. “Didn’t want to talk to anybody.”
“I see.” Leonard Jackson reached out and gave the brim of House’s baseball cap a tiny tug. “How are you, son?”
The tender way he said it made the back of House’s throat ache, the way it did when he was about to cry. He blinked back tears and blurted, “I don’t remember what time I’m supposed to take Honey to the audition.” It occurred to him that suddenly his mind was shot through with enormous blanks.
“You don’t have to go,” said his father. “I’ll call Mose and tell him I’ll be over later. I can take Honey.”
House shook his head. “No! I mean . . . no. I’ll go—I want to go.”
“You do?”
House fidgeted. “Not really.”
“What, then?”
House reached for the sunglasses that perched on the porch railing. He shoved them onto his face with both hands. “I got a toad to swallow.”
His father’s face slowly widened into a smile. “Your mama.” He gave his head a small back-and-forth, remembering. House teared up at the words.
“Have some breakfast first, then.” His father stood and flipped his towel onto his shoulder. “About Mr. Norwood. I’m proud of you, son. I know it was a hardship.”
House shrugged. His head ached from weariness.
“Want to tell me how it was this morning?”
“Maybe later,” said House. He was leaking all over the place. He slipped two fingers under his sunglasses and wiped his eyes. “Let’s eat.”
“Later then,” said his father. He disappeared into the house. House put his sunglasses on top of the bucket of baseballs by the door. He cast a look in Eudora’s direction.
Honey now straddled Eudora Welty. She had her arms under the dog’s belly and was trying to raise her to her feet.
“I need help!” she shouted.
“She can do it herself, Honey,” said House. “Give her some room.”
Honey stepped over the dog and trotted to the porch. She turned and slapped at her thighs. “C’mon, doggie!”
Eudora wagged her curlicue tail.
House whistled. “Eudora!”
Eudora struggled to her feet, shook herself, and began a wobbly walk up the curved lane to the porch.
“YouDoggie!” said Honey. “That’s such a good name, House!”
“Eudora,” repeated House.
Honey sighed with happiness. “YouDoggie, I love you!” She hugged her brother. “Wherever did you find her, House?”
House told Honey that he’d found the dog whining in a thicket, which was true. He didn’t tell her about the note, which felt like the size of a brick in his pocket. He knew what he had to do. When everyone went to bed he’d go back to Mr. Norwood Boyd’s house by himself.
“Hooooouse!” A coffee-colored boy on a licorice black bike careened around the curved lane and into the front yard, driving recklessly, making a beeline for Eudora Welty.
“Hey!” House jumped and waved his arms over his head.
“Cleebo!” screamed Honey. “Stop!” She lunged for Eudora and covered her with her tutued body. “YouDoggie!” she sobbed as she waited for the end to come.
4
You gotta be a man to play baseball for a living, but you gotta have a lot of little boy in you, too.
—ROY CAMPANELLA, CATCHER, BROOKLYN DODGERS
Cleebo dragged a leg in the dirt and turned his bike so sharply it nearly fell on him as it scattered pebbles and pecans and raised a rooster tail of red dust.
“Hey!” He hopped on one leg while bobbling his bike and himself upright. His catcher’s mitt waved back and forth on the handlebars.
“Cleebo!” House tried to pick up Honey but she was stuck to Eudora like a fly to a swatter. “You’re going to kill somebody like that someday, Cleebo.”
“Not today!” grinned Cleebo. He stared at Honey and the white lump cowering under her.
“What’s that?”
Honey detached herself from Eudora and dusted herself off.
“It’s YouDoggie!” She puffed with pride. Her binoculars were crushed. “She’s my dog!”
“That’s a dog?” Cleebo cocked a jet-black eyebrow in Eudora’s direction.
Honey patted on Eudora, who had seen more excitement in one morning than she’d seen in a lifetime.
“When did y’all get a dog?” asked Cleebo. He wore blue jeans with neatly ironed-in creases down the front of each leg. Even his T-shirt was crisply creased.
“Just now!” Honey held her head high.
“Where’d you get it?”
“House got her!”
“Yeah? From where?”
“Breakfast!” Leonard Jackson called from the kitchen.
Cleebo leaned his bike against a pecan tree. “Can I eat with y’all?”
“You always eat with us,” said House.
“Watch out for my audience!” Honey left Eudora Welty long enough to put her audience back in the basket they lived in when they weren’t watching her dance. She spoke their names as she put them tidily away: “Liesl, Friedrich, Marta, Louisa, Kurt, Gretl, Brigitta!”
Cleebo readjusted his baseball cap. “I don’t get it.”
“And I’m Maria!” said Honey to her basket of children. “I was a nun, but now I’m in love with Captain von Trapp and I’m goi
ng to be your dancing and singing mother!”
“You’re not supposed to get it.” House took the basket for his sister. “C’mon, Maria, let’s eat.”
Honey pressed her face to the screen door. “Daddy! Can YouDoggie come inside?”
“Are you sure that’s a dog?” asked Cleebo, as the three—four—of them went in to breakfast.
Eudora Welty ate three platefuls of scrambled eggs and drank an entire bowl full of water. Honey watched in fascination.
“Come eat, Honey,” said her father.
Honey hung her smashed binoculars on the back of her chair and plopped herself down at the table. “I have come to a big decision, Daddy.”
“Do tell.”
“I am going to leave my audience at home for the tryouts. I’m going to take YouDoggie instead!” House and his father exchanged a look. Honey forked a bite of scrambled eggs into her mouth and talked around it. “And . . . I am going to tap-dance!”
“You don’t have tap shoes,” said House. He used his fork to push his eggs around on his plate.
“Can we get some, Daddy?” asked Honey.
“I don’t see why we gotta go to this stupid audition,” said Cleebo. He poured himself a glass of orange juice. “I ain’t gonna be in any pageant. We got our onliest ball game that day and I told Mama I wasn’t—”
“You gotta be in the pageant!” interrupted Honey. “It’s for all the kids!”
“I’m not a kid,” said Cleebo.
Honey blinked. “What are you?”
“I’m a baseball player.” Cleebo drained his orange juice. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’m gonna play in the All-Star game on July Fourth. Forget that pageant.”
“Your mama said she signed you up,” said Honey in her most grown-up voice. “We saw her yesterday at the Piggly Wiggly—she was buying a whole grocery buggy full of starch for the Sunshine Laundry! She said your clothes are going to be the crispiest in Aurora County!”
Cleebo groaned. House stuck him in the ribs with the tines of his fork and mimicked the new radio ad:
“Sunshine Laundry!
Send us your sheets!
Under new management!
We can’t be beat!”
Cleebo shoved House until his chair almost tipped over. “Cut it out, House!”
Leonard Jackson sat back in his chair with his coffee cup. “You’re not eating, House.”
“You gotta be in the pageant,” cried Honey, trying to be heard. “All the Mamas were talkin’ about it yesterday, right, Daddy?”
“Right,” said her father. He put his cup down and wiped his mouth with a napkin.
Honey hopped off her chair. “Frances Schotz is the director!”
Cleebo snorted. “Watch your elbows, House!”
House shoved Cleebo. “Watch your crispy T-shirt!”
“Time to go, boys.” House’s father stood up and gathered plates.
“House started it,” said Cleebo.
“Shut up, Cleebo.” House clenched and unclenched his left fist. Sandy Koufax had crushed an artery in his left palm in 1962 and had developed gangrene in one of his fingers, but he still pitched.
“Don’t say shut up,” said Honey in a solemn voice. She patted Eudora Welty. “You didn’t hear that, YouDoggie.”
Leonard Jackson clattered plates into the sink. “I’ve got Mose Allison’s yard to mow and a delivery to make but I’ll be home after lunch. Come on, I’ll give you a ride.”
Cleebo tugged on his baseball cap and entreated House as they walked outside. “I checked with the rest of the guys—everybody’s signed up for this stupid pageant, thanks to their mamas—everybody but you. You’re team captain—what are we gonna do, House?”
“I don’t know,” said House.
“Well, you gotta know soon. The guys are countin’ on you . . .”
“I’ll think of something.” He had no idea. Facing a toad was one thing. Swallowing it was another.
House and his father stood on the porch together, as still as two tree trunks, while Cleebo retrieved his catcher’s mitt from his bike handlebars and Honey coaxed Eudora to the truck.
“Call me if you need me,” said Leonard Jackson.
“Yessir,” said House.
“Have you seen Frances since she’s been back?”
“Nossir. Not yet.” House stuck his sunglasses in his back pocket and felt the bend of his elbow as he did so.
“Maybe she’s less hazardous after a year away,” said his father.
“Maybe,” said House. His mind ticked around the word hazardous. Hazardous was going to Mr. Norwood Boyd’s empty house alone in the middle of the night. The place was full of shadows and felt haunted, even in the middle of the afternoon.
He grabbed his glove from the porch swing and a baseball from the bucket next to the door. “Heads up, Cleeb!”
Cleebo whirled. “A backdoor breaking ball and he’s got it!” he gloated. “You oughta play me at first base.”
House shook his arm. The elbow felt just fine. In 1965 Sandy Koufax had pitched the World Series for the Dodgers even though his elbow had turned black with pain. “Nobody else can catch like you can,” House said. “Let’s go.”
The sign on the side of Leonard Jackson’s truck read JACKSON’S MOWING AND SMALL ENGINE REPAIR. In the back of the truck sat two lawn mowers, a red wagon with a toaster in it, and an oscillating fan for the Sunshine Laundry.
The road was dusty and hot. They passed cotton growing in fields that stretched to the horizon. Houses dotted the roadside along with patches of gardens. An old tree sported a tire swing hanging from the sturdiest branch.
Soon they passed the house of Mr. Norwood Rhinehart Beauregard Boyd. A mountain of kudzu vines was strewn alongside the closed driveway gates.
“Hey! Lookee there!” Cleebo nearly gave himself whiplash.
House had to look. His heartbeat thrummed in his ears.
“What’s going on?” Cleebo craned his neck out the window.
“I think they’re getting ready to sell that old place,” said Leonard Jackson.
“Sell it!” said Cleebo. “What about Baby-Eater Boyd?”
“Excuse me?” said House’s father.
Cleebo stole a glance at Honey, who was absorbed in looking out the opposite window with Eudora Welty and describing to her every detail of the passing landscape. Cleebo brought his voice down to a hush. “Everybody knows there’s the ghost of a million babies in that house!”
House stared straight ahead and tried to breathe normally. Cleebo poked him in the side and hissed. “What about Baby-Eater Boyd?”
* * *
* * *
Twilight Edition, June 17
THE AURORA COUNTY NEWS
MURMURS FROM MABEL
By Phoebe “Scoop” Tolbert
One simply cannot buy carrots at the Piggly Wiggly in Mabel, Mississippi, without running into The Mamas. The Mamas congregate wherever Jell-O is sold, laundry is washed, and potluck is served. They generate a never-ending stream of talk and swapped recipes wherever they meet, which is almost everywhere, almost all day long.
The Mamas and their grocery buggies formed a fort in the produce section of the Piggly Wiggly this morning, making my grab at the cantaloupe impossible. The good news is that one can catch up on the most interesting conversation just by being near The Mamas and leaning over the cucumbers.
Which is where I observed Leonard Jackson (buying apples to make his late wife’s famous applesauce cake for the Methodist church bake sale) and Gladys Knight Schotz (in town to deposit her daughter, Frances, with her great-grandfather for the summer) in deep conversation about the Aurora County Birthday Pageant. It is shaping up to be a dramatic few weeks in Aurora County!
It seems that Leonard’s son, House, has not forgiven Gladys’s daughter, Frances, the faux pas she committed last summer when, in the middle of Schotz’s Barber Shop, in the midst of a vigorous interpretive dance to commemorate the Summer Solstice, Frances col
lided with House as he was exiting the barber chair, thereby causing a colossal crash whereby hair and beauty accoutrements went flying from here to Kingdom Come along with House and Frances. House’s left elbow was broken in two places. His pitching elbow. There went the one and only game the Aurora County boys play each year, against the Raleigh Redbugs. There went several family picnics in the weedy ball lot behind Halleluia School at 4pm sharp on July 4. (I should know: My grandsons, the Tolbert twins, play in the outfield and I always bring the deviled eggs in a Styrofoam cooler for a protein pick-me-up during the seventh-inning stretch.)
For her part, Frances suffered fractures of three fingernails and a bruised clavicle, not to mention humiliation galore . . . although there are those who say that, when it comes to Frances Schotz, humiliation is a relative term.
5
Be curious, not judgmental.
—WALT WHITMAN
“Darlings! Mes amours! Biquettes!” Frances Schotz, age fourteen, skinny and bumpy as a green bean, hair twisted into a wiry black propeller on top of her head, was in her glory. She sashayed into the small crowd of kids sitting in the shade under the chinaberry tree behind Halleluia School and flashed a smile so bright it prompted House to put on his sunglasses. “Welcome, everyone!” she warbled. “Bienvenue, tout le monde!”
House felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand at attention. There she was: his toad.
“What’s she sayin’?” asked Cleebo. He and the rest of the Aurora County All-Stars sat at the back of the crowd and stared at Frances as if she’d just stepped out of a UFO.
“I think she’s speaking Egyptian!” said Boon Tolbert.
Ned Tolbert, center fielder, shook his head in exasperation. “I told my mama I wasn’t getting within ten feet of Frances after what she did to House last year, and she still signed me and Boon up for this thing.”
“Mine, too,” said Evan Evans. He squinted at Frances. “What’s wrong with her?”
The Aurora County All-Stars Page 2