“It’s not funny,” I said, truly concerned. “I think that fall gave me asthma. I may need to go to the hospital.”
“You don’t have asthma,” Charlie said, still laughing. “You just lost your breath when you hit the ground. You’ll be okay now. His laughter slowed down, and he continued, “It happened to me once on the school playground. Remember that girl from Louisville, Amber Taylor, who moved last year. Me and her was seesawing on one of those great big seesaws during recess one day, and she let me get all the way in the air, then just stepped off. I slammed against the ground and couldn’t catch my breath at all for a few minutes. I thought I was going to die for a second there.”
I started laughing at Charlie’s story, stood up, brushed myself off, and walked over to a dilapidated old wagon that we often used when we were playing cowboys and Indians.
“Who in the world is that coming up the drive?” asked Charlie, abruptly, pointing in that direction. “It can’t be my sister. She didn’t have polio when she left the house this morning.”
I looked up and saw Charlie’s teenage sister, Angie, stumbling up the driveway.
“She must have went over to her friend’s house and got drunk or something,” said Charlie. “She can’t hardly walk.”
“Yeah, something must be wrong with her,” I said.
“How’s it going, guys?” she said as she approached, nearly falling on top of us. She had long brown hair and was wearing a flowery dress that came to about her knees. “How do y’all like my new shoes? I got them at that big yard sale the Powers are having up the road.” She stuck her right foot out and displayed a brown leather sandal with a huge cork platform heel. The shoe was obviously too big for her foot.
Charlie started laughing and said, “That’s the craziest pair of shoes I ever saw. I thought something was wrong with you when you came up the drive.”
“Well, I happen to like them,” said his sister, indignant.
“You might get a job at a circus,” continued Charlie, on a roll. “You wouldn’t have to have stilts. You could just wear them shoes.” He laughed louder, and I started laughing too.”
“These shoes are the hottest thing out right now,” said his sister. “Small children like you two brats wouldn’t know anything about high fashion. I don’t have time to talk to immature people, anyway. I’m going in the house.”
“Don’t fall and break your neck going up the steps,” Charlie shouted after her.
Charlie’s sister stumbled inside the house and slammed the door. Charlie and I climbed up on the wagon and sat down on the wooden seat.
Changing the conversation to a more serious topic, I said, “Do you believe that Mrs. Green really is a witch like some people say she is?”
“What in the world brought that up?” asked Charlie, chewing on a long weed that he had pulled up from a hole in the wagon.
“I went over there before I came over here, and she got real creepy on me—kind of wigged out.”
“Why in the world did you go over there for?”
“My mom wanted me to drop off some flowers. I gave her the flowers, and she goes and gets some lemonade. Well, she comes back and asked to see my hand.”
“What did she want to see your hand for?”
“She takes my hand and starts seeing the future. At first it was okay, then she acts scared all of a sudden and lets go of my hand. I asked her what was wrong. At first she didn’t want to tell me, but I made her tell me.”
“Oh man, I’d have been scared to death. So what did she tell you?”
“She told me she saw a serpent’s eyes. I came running out of that house like a wild rabbit. I thought for a minute she was going to lock me up in cage full of snakes, and no one would ever hear from me again.”
Charlie looked amazed and said, “Oh, man, that’s the scariest thing I’ve ever heard. Something’s not right about that woman. If she’s not a witch, she must be some kind of voodoo woman. She might have a doll that looks like you somewhere. If you start to fill little jabs every once in a while, you’ll know who to blame.”
I hit Charlie on the shoulder and laughed. “Yeah, and I’ll give her your name and a picture and tell her you got evidence that she really did kill all them husbands.” Charlie hit me hard on the shoulder, and we jumped off the wagon and started wrestling.
Charlie’s mother, Brenda, pulled in the driveway in her big green Lincoln Town Car, that had little oval-shaped windows on the rear sides. “Y’all quit that wrestling,” she yelled out the car window as she pulled in the garage. “One of you is going to end up getting hurt.”
“We were just playing,” Charlie yelled back.
“Hi, Brian,” said Brenda as she walked out of the garage. “How’s your mother doing?”
“She’s doing fine,” I said.
“Tell her we’ve got to get together soon,” she said and went inside the ancient house.
“You know what I think?” Charlie said, resuming our conversation, as we both sat back on the wagon seat.
“What’s that?”
“I think Miss Green might be a psychic.”
“Everybody already knows that. Like I haven’t been saying that for the last ten minutes.”
“See,” Charlie continued, ignoring my sarcasm, “my mom told me once that before I was born, Mrs. Green felt of her stomach and told her I was going to be a boy, and that I was going to be a few weeks early, but that everything would be okay. And you know what? That’s exactly what happened.”
“Yeah, everything was okay except for that brain damage you got,” I said, hitting Charlie on the shoulder.
“I think you should be real careful from now on. You’re liable to wake up some night and find that your room is full of snakes or something. She’s probably put some kind of evil spell on you. And to think, you was just being nice and bringing her some flowers.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said. “I feel so much better now.” A chill ran down my spine. My grandmother’s longtime housekeeper, Miss Hazel, as I always called her, had told me once that a chill running down your spine meant someone was stepping on your grave. But I’ll tell more about Miss Hazel later.
“Yeah, you better sleep with one eye open for a while.”
“This is just the pits,” I said, about to cry.
Mrs. Caldwell called out the back door, “Brian, do you want to stay for supper? I’m fixing spaghetti and meatballs tonight.”
“Yeah, that’ll be great.”
“I’ll call your mother and make sure it’s alright.”
“Okay, thanks.”
We had a great supper that night. I loved spaghetti with meatballs. Meatballs somehow made spaghetti taste so much better. Angie kept giving Charlie and me dirty looks across the table, which I did my best to ignore. Charlie’s dad, Bobby, tried to talk about all the political scandals in Washington, but Brenda said she didn’t want to hear about it while she was eating. I wanted to stay all night, but my mom said I’d have to wait until the weekend, so Charlie’s dad drove me home shortly after supper.
I lay in my bed that night trying to go to sleep, but there was a storm. I covered my ears with two pillows and buried myself under the covers, hoping to find a safe haven, realizing how ridiculous it was to cling to thin sheets for protection. I could just hear the news story: “The Haynes family home was completely destroyed by a terrible storm last night, but luckily, Brian Haynes escaped injury because he had the good sense to cover himself up in fine high-thread-count sheets his mother had bought at JC Penny’s.” Lightning flickered violently in the window, and thunder vibrated the house. The wind screamed like terrified children.
Just as I was finally dozing off, there came a tapping sound. Someone was tapping on my window. My heart pounding, I poked my head out of the sheet bunker and looked out the window. Someone was standing there. It was Miss Green, and she was holding a basket, the handle looped over her right arm. I tried to scream but couldn’t. It felt like I was still lying under the tire swing trying
to catch my breath.
“I’ve got something for you,” she said. “It’s a little gift I brought you because you were kind enough to bring me those flowers.” She held the basket towards me. I heard a hissing sound and froze in terror at the sight of what happened next: an angry king cobra, with glowing red eyes, rose its head up slowly from inside the basket. I tried to scream but couldn’t. I couldn’t move either.
Someone who was knocking on the closet door from within abruptly interrupted the scene. “Let me in,” I heard Miss Green say. She was no longer outside but was in the closet. “I want to give you this snake in appreciation for all you’ve done for me.” Then it sounded like she was beating the door with an axe. The hissing sound grew louder and louder. Finally, I produced a scream and woke up.
Everything was calm. I could hear a gentle rain outside. There was no snake or Miss Green. I was confused for a moment. My parents came running into the room to check on me. I told them everything was fine. I’d just had a bad dream—that was all. After they left the room, I sort of forgot to turn the lamp off and soon fell back to sleep.
I didn’t wake up until about 9:30 that next morning. I tossed on the same shirt and shorts I’d worn the day before and tied my shoes carefully, making sure one shoe was not tighter than the other. After a quick breakfast of Lucky Charms, a banana, and some orange juice, I grabbed my bike and rode over to Charlie’s, without so much as glancing up at Miss Green’s house. I was afraid of seeing her out on the porch, swaying in her rocking chair, surrounded by cats, and she would say, “Come up here. I’ve got a special gift for you inside my basket.” I breathed a sigh of relief when her house was out of sight enough that I didn’t have to keep my head turned a little to the right to avoid seeing it.
Charlie was dressed up in nice clothes and sitting on a swing inside of a gazebo when I got there. He didn’t look his usual happy self. I sat down on the swing beside him.
“What are you doing all dressed up in a bowtie?” I asked.
“I’ve got to go to Aunt Becky’s wedding shower with my mom today. I hate that.”
“Oh, man, that’s the pits. I was hoping we could play today.”
“Same here. I guess my mom thinks I’ll be thrilled to death to sit around and listen to a bunch of women cackling like hens and watching Aunt Becky open a bunch of boxes filled with dishes and kitchen stuff. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of. I think I’d have more fun chopping thistles with a butter knife. I don’t know why she don’t just let me stay here. She thinks Aunt Becky will be disappointed if I don’t go. That’s a bunch of bull. She won’t care if I’m there or not. I can think of a thousand places I’d rather be.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. I had to go to a wedding shower for my aunt last year. But I think my mom hated to go about as bad as I did. She said it was ridiculous to have a wedding shower for someone who’d probably be divorced in a month. Anyway, you see, we went, and I was bored at first, but then some of my cousins came, and we went outside and played in the churchyard cemetery and had a good time. They also had a pretty good cake. I ate three pieces, and we took some home. So, it wasn’t too bad.”
“Yeah, maybe they’ll have some good cake. I’ll see if I can sneak you a piece too.
“Yeah, that would be great. I love them fancy white cakes.”
“Where’s Bruno, anyway?”
“Oh, he’s probably running out in the field somewhere. He’ll take off sometimes, then come back when he gets ready. He’s got a couple of dogs he runs around with sometimes.”
“Wonder what Stephanie Reynolds has been up to?” said Charlie, changing the conversation.
I sat up a little straighter, suddenly realizing that I had a story to tell that Charlie probably wouldn’t be able to top for weeks.
“I saw her day before yesterday at Square Deal,” I began. “You’ll never believe what she did.” I paused here for emphasis. Charlie always seemed to have the biggest stories to tell, but not this time, and I wanted to make the most of it.
“What’d she do?”
“I’d better not say nothing. She could get in a whole bunch of trouble if I say anything.”
“Oh, come on. You can tell me.”
“No, I’d better not.”
“Oh, please, I won’t tell anyone.”
“Well, I guess I can tell you, but you’ve got to promise not to tell anyone else.”
“I promise.”
“Say, ‘If I tell anyone, I hope to die.’”
“If I tell anyone, I hope to die.”
“Okay, as long as you don’t tell anyone.
“You know those fancy kind of gold light-switch covers?”
“To tell the truth, I never paid too much attention to them.”
“Anyway, me and her was at Square Deal Lumber Company the other day, and she didn’t think anyone was looking, so she slipped one of them covers in her purse. But you know what? I saw her, and that’s not the worst thing about it. The worst thing is Mrs. Huffman saw her too. She saw her in the big round mirror on the ceiling. I couldn’t believe it. Well, I figured Mrs. Huffman would start yelling or something, but she didn’t even say anything about it when we were leaving. I thought maybe the police would surround the place when we walked outside because I figured Mrs. Huffman had hit an alarm or something, but the police never came.”
“That’s crazy. I wonder why she stole something stupid like that, anyway,” said Charlie, thoughtfully. “If I was going to risk spending the next fifty or so years in jail, I’d have at least stole something good. She must be one of those kleptocondriacs. I think that’s how you say it.”
“What’s a kleptocondriac?”
“It’s people who steal just for the fun of stealing. There was this girl at school last year—she moved away before the year was out—who said she had a sister who was one of those maniacs and got put in jail for stealing five pairs of the same earrings. Well, you know, one day this girl comes in for show-and-tell and brings a necklace and says her sister stole it from a jewelry store in Nashville. She was bragging about it and passing it around. The teacher acted shocked and gave us a lecture about how people shouldn’t steal things because it was against the law and made the prices of things go up for everyone else.”
“You know,” I said, “It looks like that girl would be afraid to bring a stolen necklace to school because they could blame her for taking it and put her in jail.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. If I had something stolen, I’d have it hidden where nobody could find it.”
“Even then the police could get a search warrant and come in your house and find it. They’ve got dogs that can sniff things out, you know.”
“Yeah, I think it would be best to put it in a box and bury it somewhere.”
“Yeah, but I bet them dogs would go right to it and start digging up the ground.”
Charlie pulled the swing back on his side and released it, causing it to wobble in confusion. Changing the subject, he said, “You know what I was thinking?”
“No, what?”
“I was thinking it would be a good idea for us to go up to Truck Mountain soon.”
As I mentioned previously, Truck Mountain wasn’t really a mountain but was more a wooded knob. There was a narrow gravel and dirt road that led to the top. At the top of the hill rested an abandoned old truck with a bubble-shaped hood. This truck fascinated us kids for some reason. It seemed like some sort of wise old man full of secrets. Truck Mountain was a name my friends and I gave the knob.
I took my turn to wobble the swing. “Yeah, that would be great. I was thinking about that the other day, myself. “
“And I could wear my camouflage outfit I got for Christmas last year,” said Charlie
“I can’t wait,” I said, clapping my hands together.
Brenda walked up to the gazebo wearing a black dress and carrying a white purse. “Hi, Brian,” she said. “How’s your grandmother doing?” My grandmother had gotten out of
the hospital at least a year earlier, after a bout of pneumonia, but Brenda still asked me how she was doing about every time I saw her. I thought sometimes about telling her she was dead, so she’d quit asking about her.
“Oh, she’s still doing okay, I guess. Hasn’t had any reoccurrence of the pneumonia yet, that I know of.”
“That’s good. I’ve been aiming to see if your mother wants to go shopping in Nashville, but I’ve been so far behind lately I think I’m ahead.” My mother and Brenda sometimes went on shopping trips, leaving early in the morning and not getting home until about 10:00 pm or later. There were no cell phones back then, and my dad and Charlie’s dad, who would often get together while the wives were out shopping, would be climbing the walls, wondering if they’d been involved in an accident, wondering how anybody could possibly stand to shop for that long.
“Well, guys,” said Brenda, spreading her arms out like a model, “How do you like my new dress?”
“It looks alright, I guess,” said Charlie.
“Yeah, it looks good,” I said.
“I just hope it’s not too dressy. I wouldn’t want to embarrass the bride-to-be by out-dressing her. I would never stoop to her level.” She looked at Charlie and said, “You ready to go?”
“About as ready as I’m going to get,” he said.
Chapter 4
After leaving Charlie’s, I rode my bike over to my grandmother’s house. She lived in a Queen-Anne style Victorian house less than a mile from the square on West Cedar Street. This was the home my dad had grown up in. It was a large two-story white house with a Corinthian-columned L-shaped porch. The house had tall ceilings and decorative fireplace mantels in many of the rooms. There were antiques and clocks it seemed everywhere. My grandfather, who had died of a heart attack a few years earlier, had collected them over the years as his real estate business became more and more profitable. A large staircase, a landing about halfway up, greeted visitors in the foyer.
The yard was beautifully landscaped. Something was always in bloom from early spring until late fall. The Bradford pears were the first to blossom and signaled the end of winter. Next came the red azaleas and the pink and white dogwood trees. Just as these started to fade, the huge magnolia tree my grandparents had planted years ago produced hundreds of large white flowers. Finally, the tall crepe myrtle next to the back porch displayed radiant red flowers until late fall.
Chips of Red Paint Page 3