Terrible, Horrible Edie

by E. C. Spykman

  “You know what’s the matter with you, don’t you?” said Hubert. “You’re starving yourself.”

  She finally let him stop when they were just outside Mansett. There was a thread of cool breeze by that time, just a thread, bringing the sea, and yet it somehow went all over you like salt water. The daisy fields of the middle country had been left behind. Now it was mostly scrub pine and little oaks, but they found a grove of them a little way from the road.

  “The animals must need a rest too,” said Edie.

  “We’ll take them all out,” said Hubert, “and give ’em a treat.”

  “What kind of a treat?” Edie asked suspiciously as she was carrying Jocko to the trees.

  “Oh, a little liberty,” said Hubert airily.

  “Hubert,” said Edie, “if you let one of these animals out of its cage, I’ll—” She could not think of any threat bad enough, but she did think that looking after a man was the hardest work you could do in a dog’s age.

  But after lunch, and after the animals’ lunch, Hubert said he hadn’t the strength of a flea. He lay on his back and patted his stomach. “It would be nice if there were a fire somewhere,” he said, “just for a little excitement.”

  “And several people roasted, I suppose,” said Edie.

  “I wouldn’t go as far as that,” said Hubert. “Just a baby or two thrown out the window.”

  He did not exactly go to sleep, but he took a rest with his eyes closed and what Edie thought was a very sinister look on his face, that is, half smiling to think how wonderful he was. She stayed near the cages and did not shut an eye.

  Still, she could not possibly blame him for what happened next. When they were on the road again, he drove as sedately as a grandmother. He kept saying he was being suffocated; he loosened his tie to show her his sufferings, but he did not speed; he did not even go fast enough so that the smell blew backwards. If there were a party of hens in the road, he practically stopped until they had all gone shrieking to one side or the other, and with horses he did stop and ask the men who owned them if he could help. This was hard on his politeness because the men swore at him just the same.

  “You’re being awfully proper,” said Edie rashly.

  Hubert said nothing until he had taken out a cigarette and lit it right under her nose. He could do it with one hand by cracking the match with his fingernail.

  “Have you forgotten, my good woman, that our respected parent may be behind us. They were all stopping at Bay’s Landing, remember, to show off the kids to that friend of Father’s.”

  “What I’d like to do most is cool off my feet.”

  “If they’re that hot, I’d rather have them out than in,” said Hubert, “so go ahead.”

  Edie fixed herself comfortably by leaning against him with her feet over the door until he unexpectedly leaned forward and jogged her up too. They had reached Barnet Bay, where the road ran along by the shore for a while, and the cool, damp air was delicious. All her insides had begun to dance around at the thought of the sea. Tomorrow she might be in it. Tonight she might even be able to go out and polish brass on one of the boats. She didn’t like being disturbed in the middle of such good thoughts.

  “What’s the matter now?” she said.

  “Do you know what that is?” said Hubert, stabbing his finger at some rolls of cotton wool low down on the horizon.

  “Yup,” said Edie. “Fog.”

  Hubert reached into the back without taking his eyes off the road and pulled out an alarm clock. “Pretty good in one try,” he said. “It is now a quarter past three. At four o’clock we ought to be turning in the avenue at Aunt Louise’s. The fog doesn’t usually come in until five, but it looks awfully close today.”

  “What do we care,” said Edie. “We’re on dry land.”

  Hubert just took to whistling through his teeth.

  They met the fog, or rather, it met them at a quarter of four as they were going through a long stretch of scrub land beyond Barnet. They did not see it coming, or dive into it. The day gradually got gloomy, that was all, and Hubert had to keep getting out to wipe the windshield. Very soon he was driving with his head out the side window and the door a little open. The animals, he said, would have to take it or leave it; he had never seen it so thick in his life.

  Presently no matter what Hubert did he could hardly see where they were going. He tried lighting the headlights. At any rate, he explained, it would be a good thing not to get hit in the rear, especially not by Father. This made him open his mouth and laugh silently, but all the time he was wriggling in his seat and peering with all his might, and so was Edie. This road through the scrub was small and winding and lots of other roads ran off from it. It was a relief when they ran again into the moorlike country that on clear days gave a view all the way down to the beaches and the sea. Just now the only way they knew it was there was because the air had become a little lighter. Hubert made Edie get out and feel the brush at the side of the road. She disappeared a yard from the running board. “Come back,” he called.

  “I’m right here,” said Edie with her face almost in the car. She and Widgy got in together. “It’s the Mount Harbor road all right,” she said. “At least I think it is.”

  “What does the brush feel like?”

  “Stiff and prickly and about two feet high.”

  “It sounds right,” said Hubert.

  He waited a minute with the mist all around them thick and white. They could see the road at their feet if they stared; everything else was shut away. Hubert shut off the lights; they only reflected back and made things worse. He felt sure they couldn’t be far now from Mount Harbor, but for all he could really tell, they might be on the moon. In fact, it felt very much like the moon. Or they might have turned round and be going back to Summerton. Fog did some pretty funny things to you. He started the car again, however. “We can’t stay here,” he said. “I wonder why there’s no traffic.”

  They had thought they knew every inch of the way, every turn of the road and curve of the shore, but the fog took away even the memory of how things were. Hubert could only keep his eyes fixed on a spot that looked like the crown of the dirt road. Edie was looking for the turn that went to Aunt Louise’s. If they didn’t make it, they would be off down the beach for miles and miles. Mount Harbor was the last town until you got to Melboro at the end of the beach altogether. They jerked along for what seemed at least an hour. Where the dickens was Mount Harbor itself?

  “You’ve missed it,” said Hubert suddenly accusingly.

  Edie looked at the clock. “According to you it isn’t time yet.”

  “According to me it’s more than time.”

  Their voices had become serious and quiet, their faces and hair were dripping, and Edie’s cotton dress clung around her. But she was very alive inside it, trying to see through the fog by sheer will power. When the road began to get bumpy, however, she sat back holding Widgy, as still as a mouse.

  “This must be the avenue,” said Hubert.

  “We haven’t gone through Mount Harbor yet,” said Edie into Widgy’s hair.

  Hubert paid no attention, but bumped along regardless. “Aunt Louise ought to have this road fixed,” he said, annoyed.

  Just after this the bumping stopped, the front wheels slewed a little, the back wheels settled down, and the car stalled. For a minute there was absolute silence except for Laza’s hopping. Through it presently they could hear the tiny lap and swish of water on a beach. Edie jumped down into sand. That’s where they were—on a beach. She picked up some sand and dribbled it before Hubert’s eyes.

  “Oh for the love of Jehosephat!” said Hubert. “How did we get here? And where is it?”

  They stood next to each other in front of the Ford and looked from side to side. It was perfectly nice and clean and decent, but blind. Ahead of them was still the lap and swish that must be part of the sea, but they couldn’t see it. They went backwards toward it, carefully keeping the black lump of the car in
their eyes, and almost wet their sneakers it was so near.

  “Well,” said Hubert, sounding quite pleased, “we are in a fix. Let’s go swimming.”

  “And get lost in the ocean,” said Edie. “No thanks.”

  Hubert thought they could take care of that by putting the alarm clock on the radiator of the car and setting it for five minutes from now.

  “And if that’s not enough for you, you stay on the beach while I go in and I’ll stay while you go. We can yell at each other.”

  Widgy was already sitting at the edge of the water looking as if he could see through the fog way out to Spain.

  Hubert’s idea worked perfectly. The alarm clock went off making a terrible noise and guiding him safely back to shore. He generously gave Edie ten minutes and did himself up in a comforter Madam had put over Laza at the last minute. She conversed with him from behind the white curtain. It was lonely out there when all you could see was yourself. Besides, she kept hearing things. She told Hubert so when she came in. He gave her the comforter and went out and listened.

  “You certainly do,” he called to her from the water.

  “What is it?” said Edie, shivering a little.

  They had been long enough in the fog for everything to seem queer. It was queer just listening to Hubert behind the white veil.

  “It’s voices,” he said. “I’m going to see. Keep letting off the alarm clock, and for goodness sake don’t lose your hearing or your voice.” She could hear him flapping and splashing and then diving back into the water. “Edie,” he called when he came up, “can you hear me? Use the car horn once in a while. Did you hear?”

  “YES!” yelled Edie, till her voice almost split.

  Hubert had some wonderful ideas sometimes, she had to acknowledge, but at the moment she was hating him. And she was hating every single boy in the world. Look at the poor fool going out to get lost in the Atlantic Ocean. It would serve him right if he drowned. It would serve him right if a shark got him. There weren’t any sharks at the beach, her mind said. All right, she would make one. All the time she was walking back to the car to blow the horn she was so mad at Hubert that she was killing him off right and left, but when she got back to the beach and heard nothing, even though she called and called, she began to worry. Hubert was lost at sea, that was sure. And those noises, what were they? She became so anxious she began to forget her good sense and took a step into the water and then went farther and farther out, calling louder and louder and more and more furiously. She would pretty soon have to begin to swim. The water was up to her chest when something bumped her from the back. “OOOPS,” she said, jumping, her heart almost stopping. A spook had her! She was so far in the water that it took a long time to turn, and Widgy came round in front. The sight of him splashing and panting brought her back from the land of spooks. She couldn’t take him along. “You can’t come,” she said. “You go on back.” She waved him toward what she thought was the shore and then realized that with her twisting and turning she had lost it. There was no car, no beach, nothing but the white veil. “Now I’ve done it,” she thought, trying to steady herself to think what to do next. The tips of her toes were still on the bottom. That knowledge came to her like a drink of fresh, cold water. Maybe Widgy could help too; although right now he was trying to cling round her neck like a drowning sailor. She turned him round and started him swimming and then very, very slowly moved her toes forward, while she pushed the water back, to see if they would go uphill. Widgy tried to come back. “Bad dog,” she said. “Go home!” Reluctantly he turned again. He might be right, but she still couldn’t feel whether she were going uphill or down with her feet. A feeling so bad and terrible began to come at her that she thought it might kill her right there. She began to talk to Widgy loud and fast. “Good dog,” she said as if she were telling him to get a rat. “Good dog, find the shore, that’s a dandy dog. Hurry, Widgy, hurry.” The sound of her voice so longing and so nice turned Widgy back of course, but by that time it did not matter. She found that she was able to set down one foot flat on the ocean bottom and still be chest high out of the water. She must be going uphill. In a second more she was at the water’s edge and in another few steps she could see the car. All this time Hubert had been without any direction finder! She ran. And for the next three minutes she set off one thing after the other—clock and horn. She followed them by going down to the beach and standing just out of reach of the water yelling: “HUBERT!” at the top of her lungs, leaning out into the mist.

  “Shut up,” said Hubert’s face right in front of her, and he came stalking out of the water with a rope over his shoulder. Edie could not decide if he looked more like something out of the Bible or out of a fairy book. She backed up in front of him. “Where have you been? What have you got?”

  “A—Great—Big—Fish,” said Hubert, pulling a boat into sight.

  Of all the sights she ever saw in her life! In the boat were three maids, well maybe one was a cook, in their uniforms with their caps on their heads and their aprons on. And they were all dying of some kind of—well, what was it? Probably embarrassment, because the maids in the stern had their heads down and their faces were bright red, and the cook in the middle had her head up and she was almost purple. She, Edie saw, had oars in her hands. Hubert pulled them in as far as the load would go up the beach.

  “May I assist you?” he said to the cook, holding out his hand at the bow.

  Edie would certainly have liked to know how Hubert got so wonderful all of a sudden, but she would have liked too to give him a little advice. That really wasn’t the thing to say to that cook. She was too fat. If Hubert had assisted her, she might have squashed him flat, but she had the good sense to get over the side about amidships by herself—into a little water but never mind that. The maids, who were thin, took his hand and jumped down to dry land. They each made him a little curtsy. “Thank you kindly, sir,” they said. Then like two sandpipers and a gull they all went off up the beach.

  “Hey,” said Edie, “they’ll get lost, won’t they?”

  “Do you know where we are?” said Hubert solemnly, watching the maids. “We’re on the Waldrons’ beach just before Mount Harbor. We’ve been down that road a hundred times. Right there,” he said, pointing into the fog, “is the Waldrons’ pier. You can go over and look if you want. And right there”—he pointed in the other direction—“is that big rock where they have picnics. Go and look, go and look.”

  “I believe you,” said Edie, “but we’re stuck just the same.”

  “They’re going to send some men and a horse,” said Hubert. “All we need to do is get turned round; home’s just round the corner.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “Oh, they just went for a row on a sunny day,” said Hubert. He tugged the boat as far up the beach as he was able to pull it with Edie’s help. “But I don’t believe,” he added, “that that cook can row very well.”

  Edie and Hubert, in spite of all their delays, arrived at Aunt Louise’s first. Instead of sending horses, Mrs. Waldron’s maids sent three men who with Hubert picked the Ford up, turned it round, and set it on firm ground.

  “The most remarkable performance ever perpetrated,” Hubert said, as he again twitched the accelerator and rattled off.

  “Well, you saved their lives,” said Edie.

  “Most people aren’t so grateful,” said Hubert wisely. “How about keeping your head out the window instead of your feet so we can tell where we’re going.”

  Mount Harbor, misty and indistinct, showed up almost as soon as they had turned off their side road, and from there they counted the houses to Aunt Louise’s turnoff, saying their inhabitants by name. They rattled over the rail-road bridge at the beginning of her avenue and ran down the shell road. There it was, as misty and indistinct as the Mount Harbor houses, but wonderful, they thought, to have been found at last—a big wood and plaster house with ells, balconies, turrets, piazzas, and a cupola, sitting on a little bluff guarded
by some gigantic pines and pressed upon by bayberry bushes that climbed up from the shore. When they stopped at the front door and Hubert had turned off the ignition, they were again enveloped in the silence and loneliness of the fog. They sat there a minute listening to it and stretching.

  “What was our hurry,” said Hubert finally. “No cook, no food, no family.”

  “The key’s under the first log in the wood pile by the kitchen door. Madam said so,” said Edie.

  “Get it,” said Hubert. “I’ll take out the animals. I hope they’re still alive. I haven’t heard a croak from that blamed bird since we were at lunch.”

  While Edie was gone, he decorated Aunt Louise’s steps with the contents of the Ford. Laza was all right, but he was glaring with rage and opening his bill ready to snap off anybody’s finger who dared to come near. The goat had his mouth open too, and also Father’s beagle, who was panting. Jocko was crouched in a corner of his small traveling cage looking sad and wilted.

  “They all need water,” said Hubert when Edie came back.

  “It isn’t there,” said Edie.

  “Go get some.”

  “I said it wasn’t there.”

  “What? Water?”

  “No, the key.”

  “Blast!” said Hubert, who had got as far as the ice-cream freezer and was trying to tug it out from between the egg and butter container and some pots and pans.

  “I’d get some from the garden faucet, but what in?” said Edie obligingly.

  “Here, take this saucepan.”

  The garden was on the other side of a tiny wood above the railroad tracks, and it did not take her long. They let the beagle have the first drink, and he lapped until the saucepan was entirely empty so that she had to go for more. Then it was the goat’s turn, but he would not drink except from his bottle, and that had to be found among the mess on the steps. He took three bottles before he started chewing the nipple, and Hubert had had time to bravely hook out Laza’s drinking cups with one finger and fill them.