Bookends

"I put a sheet of paper across the face of an especially mossy old marker, one you couldn't even read. With my No. 2 pencil, I revealed a hand pointing up to the dear dead person's heavenly home. I hunted for another really old tombstone and found an even neater one. Biting my lower lip, I rubbed my pencil fast. A face appeared, an angel's face with eyes like headlights and bird wings on its shoulders. And then, calendar dates: November 25, 1814 ~ April 11, 1873. Bookends, they seemed like, on each end of Sarah Somebody's shelf of days."   Carmen Cathcart, my main character in my 2006 book Just For You to Know.

       Bookend-wise, today  marks one of some significance. The long & glorious shelf-full of the days of Leonardo Da Vinci,  which began in Tuscany, in mid-April, 1452, came to an end in Clos Lucé, a grand house in Amboise, in central France, on the 2nd of May, 1517.  495 years ago today.

Half a Century

So, five decades ago less one night, my girl-self was sitting on the steps of a house that's been torn down for years. Probably a good thing, seeing as all the sadness and mess that house contained and who knows what sort of lives were lived, what ideas were thought w/in those walls. My mom was pacing back and forth past our pink wall phone. TE 3-1640. That was our number. 715 North Cottage. That was our address. Years later I'd set a book there. The fictitious Cathcarts would live there and in a way, they still do. We still do.

Mom was wearing a bathrobe made of pinwale corduroy, turquoise: her favorite color and certainly it did favor her high rosy coloring, her freckles, and her wavy auburn hair. She was debating about just when to call the doctor. Don't know just when, but sometime the next day, fifty years ago today, she gave birth to my sister - a big deal, considering that my siblings then consisted of a trio of little brothers.

My folks let me name her so I gave her the name of my favorite author and my favorite character in books: Laura Ingalls Wilder. So: Laura Jeanne. Pretty little girl - and how is it that I'm so young and my little sister is 50 years old?

Golly.

Time's a runaway train.

Just For You to Know: Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen

In which Old Yeller goes too far, Dad goes nuts,

and we go back to the past.

Jimmy was on the front porch holding Velvet in his arms. “I called the fire department already!” he yelled. “Where were you? You said you’d be right back! I called up Dad at his job.”

“You what?”

“Those dumb pies started burning and smoking and I couldn’t put’em out! And I burned my finger.”

“Oh, don’t be such a baby! Is everybody out safe?” I hollered back as Robin and I ran into the house. Mrs. Culpepper followed hard after us, shouting about baking soda, yanking down and stomping on a fiery windowshade. I was pouring water into the fire flickering out of the wastebasket while Robin flung water on anything that smoked. We heard the siren and the bells.

Firemen yelled at us to get out of their way.

Chunks of yellow light appeared up and down our dark street as neighbors opened their doors to see the excitement. Hardly a half hour later, the firemen were rolling up their hoses. Our kitchen was black, and Mama’s soda straw castle was a soggy, trampled tangle on the living room floor.

The Monroe ladies had wrapped quilts around the boys. Our stationwagon came careening through the confusion. Dad jumped out and stalked over to take wriggling, fussing Velvet out of Mr. Herman’s arms. One of the sooty-faced firemen asked Dad, “You the owner? It was just a kitchen fire that got out of hand...”

Dad just nodded, goggling at our dripping, smoky house. I couldn’t believe it either. Mrs. Culpepper’s tightly folded arms could not hold in all of the opinions that started spurting out of her. “Mr. Cathcart, you’ll pardon me for saying so, but I’ve looked the other way, knowing these children were over here by themselves, night after night with no one but a girl to look after them, but I thought she was pretty responsible even though she was only thirteen.” She flared at me.

“I was only gone a few minutes,” I put in. “It could happen to anyone!” I hoped Dad would believe that.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid me.

“I’ll deal with my own daughter,” said Dad. “Now, ma’am, I thank you for helping us the way you have but that doesn’t give you leave to find fault.”

“I was determined to mind my own business,” said Robin’s mom. “I’ve got half a mind to contact the authorities.”

“You’ll what?” Dad’s voice sounded dangerous.

Robin’s flustered-looking mom clasped her hands together. She talked like she was trying to calm herself down and Daddy too. “Now there’s no need to take that tone, Mr. Cathcart. I’m just saying that there are agencies to help people like you. A foster home for the younger ones, temporarily, perhaps.”

“Jan!” Mr. Culpepper grabbed his wife’s arm. “Now you’re going too far.”

She shook him off. “I know you’ve had a tragedy, but someone’s got to look after these children properly!”

“Stop saying that!” I shouted, hardly hearing Robin’s “Mom! Be quiet!”

Dad snapped at me to be quiet and he raisevoice to Mrs. Culpepper.

“We’re getting along all right! What are you saying – a foster home! You’re gonna sic the government on me and my family?”

Mr. Culpepper’s deep voice chimed in again, “Now we’re all tired –”

“Everybody be quiet!” said Darren.

“Everyone’s getting all worked up,” said Mr. Herman, but Dad and Mrs. Culpepper just went on getting madder and more upset.

“You’re gonna have the government take away my children?” Dad made his voice low again. I’d never seen Dad so mad and that’s saying something. The Monroe ladies raised their hands to their worried faces.

“I never suggested any such thing. I only have these children’s best interests at heart,” said Mrs. Culpepper. “They all could have been burnt alive and be as dead as their poor mother –”

“Why, you harpy!” Dad exploded.

“– and if it wasn’t for me –”

“Jan, shut up!” Mr. Culpepper shouted at Robin’s mom and sparks flew out of her eyes. “Don’t you talk to me like that!”

Robin and Darren looked angry, sad, and scared. Dad smacked his hand down through the air like he was shooing everybody away. “Nuts to this!” he growled, and turned on his heel, snapping his fingers at me.

“Carmen, you come in the house with me and help get some things together. Jimmy, don’t just stand there with your mouth open. Get your brothers in the car. Put the back seat down so’s you can all spread out.“ He pushed his hand through his wild hair.

Miss Effie said, “Now, Mr. Cathcart, you’re all upset.”

“We’ll just bring over some mops and buckets,” said Miss Lillian.

“You don’t want to be runnin’ off,” said Robin’s dad.

“Dad!”

“No back talk,” Dad interrupted Jimmy and me both before we could even ask where in the Sam Hill

Daddy thought we were going. Old Mr. Herman took a couple of steps up our front walk and said to Dad’s back, “Now, Gene, where you goin’ this time of night?”

He and Mr. Culpepper and the Monroe ladies all seemed to be talking at once.

“Mr. Cathcart, there’s no need of taking these children –”

“Mr. Cathcart!”

“You can’t –”

“Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving!”

I had a quick glimpse of Robin’s shocked face as I ran after Dad into the house.

“Daddy, you’re being crazy!” He flashed a hard look at the mashed straw castle before he stomped on it and kicked an overturned chair. He stalked through the smelly house, listing things for him and me to grab. “I’ll get some blankets. There’re those loaves of bread and some baloney and didn’t we get a sack of oranges at the store? Bottles and diapers for the baby. Don’t forget that half jug of milk.”

“Dad?”

He clattered down the stairs with pillowcases full of clothes and blankets.

“Come on,” he said. “Grab that radio over there, Carmen. Let’s beat it out of here before God only knows who comes breaking down the door.”

He tossed the pillowcases through the Rambler’s back window and I hardly had my car door shut when we were down the driveway and into the street with a bounce. Jimmy and Clark and I looked back at our worried friends and neighbors standing about in the chilly evening, watching us go.

I wedged the grocery sacks full of supplies onto the floor between my feet. Velvet, wriggling on Jimmy’s lap, was the only one of us who didn’t ask Dad again and again where we were going, but he only had three answers: “You’ll see. Everything’s going to be fine. Just go to sleep.” None of them were any good.

He hushed Georgie who’d begun crying and said, “Harry, you and Larry settle him down and take a nap or something.”

“We’re hungry, Daddy.”

“When are we going home?”

“Are you going to give Carmen a spanking for leaving us by ourselves?”

I bit my lip.

“Just curl up and have a little sleep,” said Dad. “We’ll stop in a while.”

Velvet’s baby pigeon sounds got fussier as the dark spaces between lit-up businesses and dark houses got wider and wider and we were on the highway heading east out of town. Jimmy, Clark and I exchanged worried looks. Every now and then the flare of a stranger’s headlights splashed across Dad’s thrust-out lower lip, his pointy nose, and the pale knuckles of his two big hands on the steering wheel. In the blackness below the bill of his ball cap, Dad’s eyes were twin sparks aimed straight down the long road.

I looked at the glowing numbers that showed how far we’d gone. Ten miles ticked away before I had the nerve to ask Dad, “Is this kind of like when you ran away to be a hobo?”

“Carmen, this isn’t anything at all like that.”

“Because if it is –”

“I was a kid then and on my own. Now I have all of you and I’m not going to lose you.”

“But Dad, you’re not –”

“No more. Just be quiet now and try to keep the baby calmed down.”

***

I must have slept somehow or how else could I have woken up the next morning, all shivering cold even if someone had put a blanket over me? My legs ached. When I tried to stretch, my feet pushed against something hard. Where was I anyway? I opened my eyes and saw a steering wheel in front of my face. It was a shocker to sit up and find out I had the car to myself. I turned my head to look out the window.

If I’d found myself parked by myself in a rusted Rambler in front of a pointy-towered palace, I don’t think I could have been much more surprised. What I did see was a tall, dingy farmhouse and a couple of trees. Behind them was a brown hill which I knew perfectly well would be covered in cornflowers sometime next summer. Dad had driven us all the way to Blue Top.

At the sound of steps rustling through dry leaves, I spun around to see a long hairy face with large light eyes separated by a white stripe. I jumped back, bumped my head and covered a scream with my hand. The pupils in its eyes were shaped like rectangles and, as the head moved from side to side, they both looked in at me through the driver’s side window. “Gertie? Is that you?”

“Baa-aah,” our old goat answered as a sudden knocking behind me whirled me around again the other way. Jimmy was staring at me too.

“What time is it?” I yawned and rolled down the window.

Jimmy checked his Timex. “Almost seven.”

A lot of families’ moms were sliding fat turkeys into their ovens. They’d be reminding their children to be thankful for their blessings. I was grateful that my pies didn’t completely burn our house down, but I’d wait and see what was going to happen next before I turned loose any more gratitude.

I opened the car door and climbed out. My blue coat bunched around yesterday’s wrinkled clothes. All of me was crumpled. I pushed up my glasses and smoothed my hair away from my face as I stared open-mouthed at our old house. “Why did Dad bring us here?”

“Come on inside and get warm,” Jimmy said. “He sent me out to get you. He’s making breakfast.”

My stiff legs carried me across the yard, up three steps to the slanting porch and into the house. It still had some furniture: a long table flanked by two scuffed-up church pews. Georgie sat on an old telephone book on one of them. Larry, Harry, and Clark sat on the other, looking like they’d used an eggbeater to comb their sticking-up hair. It seemed to match their bewildered brains, judging by their talk and the looks on their faces. “I’m going to be a fireman when I grow up,” said Harry.

A kerosene lamp stood on a cupboard by the window. I flicked the light switch by the door.

“No electricity,” said Clark. Dad had filled our old cooler with most of what there was in the refrigerator back home, then stopped along the way for gas, ice, and a jug of cider. I walked over to the sink in the corner of the room.

“I already tried,” said Jimmy. No water.

Velvet waved both of her arms at me from her baby-carrier, which sat in the center of the table. She kicked her legs. Dad, who was still wearing his ball cap and coveralls from work last night, stood at the iron cookstove frying bacon and eggs. A dented coffee pot was percolating so I figured that he’d gotten water from the pump outside. Breakfast smells, at least, were something to be thankful for.

“Good morning,” he told me. “I would’ve had you come inside, Buddy, but you were sleeping so sound there in the car I didn’t want to wake you.” He didn’t exactly seem crazy but, just the same, it was going to take me awhile to figure out how our family was in the Thanksgiving episode of the Beverly Hillbillies in the Twilight Zone. Why’d I have to show Dad Janice’s letter about this place being empty? And why had I ever missed this place?

Dad draped an arm around my shoulders. “Hungry?”

“I guess so.”

“How ‘bout opening up that package of paper plates?” For now, I gave myself up to breakfast. Time enough later for questions. He knew we had to go back to school on Monday. We knew that he had to go to work.

“Dad, are we going to go back home soon?” Clark asked.

“Yeah, Dad,” said Jimmy. “Are we?”

“If it’s not too burnt up.” Larry flicked his eyes at me. “Our room didn’t get on fire anyway.”

“Yeah, Daddy,” Harry added, with an enormous yawn, “I don’t like sleeping in the car.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Dad. “Here’s nice.”

“No, it’s not,” said Jimmy. “There’s not even anything to read. Why are we even here? And what about Aunt Bevy? I bet she’s there right now, wondering where we are.”

That really got my imagination going, thinking of the look on Aunt Bevy’s face when she and her turkey got a load of our empty, smoky-smelling house. “There’s no television,” said Larry. “ I want to watch cartoons.”

“Me too,” said Harry.

Me too, I thought. Dad was really worrying me. After breakfast, he sat back on one tall-backed church bench and propped a foot on the other. He kept a pleasant look pasted on his face as he bounced Velvet on his knee. She wore one of Georgie’s knitted babysuits. She laughed and made spit bubbles.

I went to explore the rest of the house. Echoes and boys trailed me up the narrow stairs. The house seemed so different than when we lived here not even a year ago. Of course, what wasn’t different now? We didn’t belong here any more. This cold, musty place wasn’t home.

An empty bird nest rested in the corner of the boys’ old room. In the room that’d been mine, I stood where I’d daydreamed away a million hours, in front of a tall cobwebbed window. My hand floated up so I used my finger to draw in the dust a picture of a long-haired girl. She seemed to be walking up the brown hill beyond the window.

Jimmy, then Clark, and soon the three littler boys were all around me, looking in the closet, flicking dead flies and spiders off the windowsills. Georgie took hold of my hand and Jimmy asked me what we were going to do.

I didn’t know.

“It’s like we’re marooned,” said Jimmy, looking around. Clark told Georgie, “You were a baby when we moved here.”

“Like Velvet?”

“Uh huh.”

Harry said he remembered.

“He’s still a baby,” Larry teased.

“Nuh UH!” Georgie retorted.

“Let’s go downstairs and see what Daddy’s up to,” I said, hoping we’d find him up and loading the Rambler for our return trip. But no, both of Dad’s feet were propped on the bench now. He was singing Row, row, row your boat to baby Velvet on his lap. Gently down the stream...

“How long are we going to stay here, Dad?” Clark asked. “‘Cause we gotta go to school. And you gotta go to work.” It turned out that Dad didn’t much care if he went to work or if we went to school on Monday.

“But I’ll miss my friends,” Clark said. “I miss them already.”

“We’re going to learn take-away next week, Dad,” Harry added. “And on Monday, Mrs. Culpepper was going to read us a new story.”

“Don’t talk to me about her,” said Dad.

“Why not?” Larry asked.

“I like her!” said Harry. “And anyway, I have to go to the bathroom.”

“Take me!” said Georgie, looking up at me.

I’d been avoiding thinking about the cold splintery privy out back. It had been an adventure two years ago when we moved here, but now, just thinking about it made me need to do the very last thing on earth I wanted to do which was to pee.

Okay. Fine. “Come on, you guys.“

Harry put his hand in mine. “Will you wait outside while I go?”

Larry said, “I’m scared of that goat.”

All of us but Velvet, who happened to be wearing her personal bathroom, braved the outhouse. Like it or not, we’d gone back in time for Thanksgiving and it was all my fault, mine and those stupid pies.

Georgie held on to me while I helped him with his zipper and snaps. I smoothed his rough hair and shielded him from the wind sifting through the board walls. He asked me, “Is Daddy sad?”

“Yeah, he’s real sad.”

“He misses Mama.”

“We all do, but maybe it’s harder for Daddy ‘cause they’d been friends the longest, huh?”

“Yeah.” Tears welled up in Georgie’s blue eyes.

Helping a nervous little kid go potty in a drafty privy in November really helped you to appreciate people who lived in the olden days before some brilliant person invented indoor plumbing. And something about the way Georgie clung to me while I did up his pants made me better appreciate my baby brother.

“They had indoor toilets on the island of Crete in the Mediterranean Sea, two thousand years before Jesus was born, just for you to know,” Jimmy informed me when I told him how thankful I would be from now on for being able to go to a nice, regular bathroom. As far as I was concerned, up until there were indoor potties and Thomas Edison’s electric light bulbs, the whole history of mankind was a big bunch of crummy camping.

“How’d you know that?” I asked Jimmy.

“I just do,” he shrugged his shoulders which were hunched against the autumn wind. His hands were fisted deep in his pockets.

I reached out to punch his arm. “Are you like a genius?”

“Maybe.” A sliver of slyness curved a corner of his mouth.

“Well, at least you’re more fun as a know-it-all than the Gloomy Gus like you’ve been being.”

“You’re one to talk.”

Georgie and I set out tramping through the dried hollyhocks and grasses.

“Carmen?”

I turned back to Jimmy.

“I was wondering,” he said, frowning at me. “Are you ever afraid? I mean, do you worry if we start being the way we used to be – not sad all the time? More normal like? That it will be like we’re forgetting about Mom?”

Georgie looked up at to see what my answer would be because it was a real good question.

“Yeah,” I said, as I shivered in the cold wind. “But if Mom is watching over us, and she is, I think she’d be unhappy to look down from heaven and see us being sad forever, don’t you imagine?”

Jimmy nodded then he tugged at the outhouse door. “She’d be surprised to look down and find us here, I’ll bet.”

Georgie and I petted Gertie who seemed awfully happy to have company for the holidays. Afterwards, Clark and the twins ran ahead of us to the top of the hill behind the house. They turned somersaults in the chilly wind and the dry grass. They lay down flat and rolled themselves like pencils down the hill, making themselves dizzy, but Georgie held tight to my hand. He used his other hand to point at a noisy crow, then a long V of geese. After they disappeared in the high clouds, we could still hear them honking to each other.

I searched the sky and found a patch of the palest blue. I wondered, are you up there, Mama? Boy, how I’d love to call you up and hear what you’d say about this, about us being here like this, because anyway, I can’t remember the sound of your voice. It’s like you’re already fading. It’s as if every day we live, we’re moving down a road, leaving you further behind, like we’re turning our backs on you, like we didn’t care, but we do, Mama. We really do, but now Dad’s falling apart.

If only I could hand that magic phone to him. Mama would know how to help Dad be steady.

I had to think of something.

Did he really think that Robin’s mom could break up our family worse than we already were? Would she try? “That’ll be the day,” I muttered. We might be a bizwang, messed-up family, but we were mine. Georgie was holding my hand tightly. “Come on, kiddo, we’d better go back inside. It’s cold out here!”

“Look,” he said, pointing a chubby finger at our stationwagon. Jimmy was sitting in the driver’s seat.

“Let’s go see where Jimmy’s going,” I said. “Maybe he’ll take us home, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Jimmy was frowning out the windshield, stretching to touch the pedals with the toes of his tennis shoes as he turned the steering wheel this way and that. “I’m really worried about Dad,” he said, keeping his eyes on his imaginary road.

“Well, yeah.”

“Darn you, Carmen, why did you have to stay next door all that time? What were you doing over there anyway?” He scowled at me and picked at the bandage on his burnt finger.

“I said I was sorry a million times and why didn’t you keep an eye on things like I asked you?“

Jimmy gave the inside of the car door a gloomy sort of kick and changed the subject. “We gotta go home. Do you think you could drive this thing?”

That’d give Walter Cronkite some news: me at the wheel, Dad in the back with the baby and the boys. Dad came out on the broken-down porch. “What are you kids doing out there?” He pointed to his wristwatch. “This thing says it’s lunchtime.”

We bowed our heads and closed our eyes so Dad could say grace for our Thanksgiving dinner of baloney sandwiches, cider, and oranges. Through a curtain of eyelashes, I saw Dad’s folded hands tremble and a muscle twitch in his red-stubbled cheek as Velvet went on baby-talking to herself.

“Dear Father in Heaven, I want to thank you for Velvet, Georgie, Harry, Larry, Clark, Jimmy, Carmen, and please tell their mother, there with you in heaven, that... that we all miss her.”

We stole glances when Daddy paused. Clark bit his lip.

“Thank you, Lord, for getting us here safe, sound and all together. We humbly ask your help in keeping us that way and we sure thank you for this Thanksgiving Dinner. Amen.” Dad looked at us and tears glittered in his red-rimmed eyes. He cleared his throat and said, “Now all of you say Amen too.”

“Amen.”

Daddy gave Velvet her bottle. “Now eat up, everybody. And Carmen, I’ll thank you and Jimmy to quit looking at me like I’ve snapped my cap and lost every marble in my head. Sit up and eat your lunch.”

“Aunt Bevy was going to make us a turkey,” said Clark. “I’ll bet she’s really worried about us.” He talked the way people talk to kidnappers on TV.

Dad bowed his head and covered his eyes with the hand he wasn’t using to hold Velvet’s bottle. He muttered, “Bevy knows enough to know that if you all are with me, you’re just fine. You all worry too much.”

Then he looked up and squared his shoulders. His voice and his eyes went hard. “You know, I didn’t go off to war and fight for no government that would up and take a man’s children away from him.”

Clark’s eyes widened over the edge of his paper cup of cider. Jimmy and I exchanged alarmed glances.

“That woman’s a schoolteacher.” Dad bit out the words. “The authorities – the social workers, like she said – they’ll listen to her!”

“But Dad, Robin’s mom was probably upset about stuff that had nothing to do with us and she just got carried away. And that fire could happen to anybody!” I cried.

“And this isn’t even our house anymore, Daddy.”

“Don’t argue with me, Harry, or any of you.”

Dad’s voice was tired and soft again. “I know we can’t stay here. I just had to, you know, get away from there, from that hard-luck joint.”

“But Dad,” I burst out, “we’re the part of the house that’s in trouble!”

“Yeah, Dad,” Clark put in. “And this place doesn’t look very lucky either.” He waved his hand in the direction of the drafty, spidery old rooms. “Besides, at home we have friends.”

“And,” Jimmy’s voice was even and mild, “if we stay here and you get fired and we miss a bunch of school, then people really will think you can’t take care of us.” Through his thick, slippy glasses, he returned Dad’s stony stare, flint for squint. “Maybe we can find us a grownup to help Carmen cook and look after us. I’ll get a paper route or something to help pay.”

Dad was in no mood for reasonableness. He rolled right over our arguments. “You kids are too young to look after yourselves. Your Aunt Bevy has all she can do to manage her own life, getting her outfits to match her toenail polish. I just don’t see how we can live without...” Dad bowed his head again and Clark put his arms around him.

“That battle-axe was right. I haven’t been taking good care of you – not while I’ve had to earn a living at the same time. We may just have to make some adjustments, that’s all.”

“But, Dad,” I interrupted.

Slowly, Dad stood and handed Velvet to me so he could go look out the window in the front door. “We have to cut our coat to fit the cloth. Maybe...” His voice trailed off and he wrapped his big hand around the china doorknob.

“Aren’t you going to even eat dinner?” I asked.

“I’m not hungry. I’m just going to go for a little walk. Don’t you kids worry so much, for crying out loud.” He pulled the door shut and even Velvet watched him go past the window and out into the yard. What the heck were we going to do? If Dad was as hopeless as he looked, us Cathcarts really were doomed.

Clark slid down in his chair and frowned across the table at me. “How come Darren’s mom’s so mad about us being by ourselves anyway, Carmen? We were doing okay enough.“ Then he lowered his eyes kind of shifty-like and mumbled, “Until those stupid pies caught on fire.”

Before I could say anything, Harry piped up, “If only Daddy didn’t have to go to work.”

“Yeah,” Larry interrupted. “He has to go away before we even get home from school.”

Georgie frowned over the top of his cup. He lowered it and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, and said, “He needs to stay home with us!”

I cocked my head to one side and looked at my baby brother. “Boy, for a dopey little kid, that’s a pretty good idea!”

“I’m not dopey!”

“If Dad could do his job when we were at school,” I said, ”we could be together at night.”

“But,” Jimmy asked, “what about Georgie and the baby? In the daytime?”

“Well, what if...?” I took a bite of my sandwich and tried to think of a way to fix things.

”I like Mr. Herman,” said Georgie. “He gives me candy.”

Clark rolled his eyes. “So?”

“So,” I said, “maybe Georgie’s the real genius of the family.” Georgie’s dirty face brightened up as he stuck his tongue out at Clark. “We’ll ask Mr. Herman and the Monroe ladies and anybody else we can think of if they can help us find people to take turns babysitting while Dad’s at work in the daytime.”

Harry and Larry traded glances, then nodded at me. We’d make adjustments, like Dad said, like giving up art class. I clenched my jaw, flipped a towel onto my shoulder, and picked up the baby.

“Let’s go talk to Daddy,” said Clark.

“Yeah,” I agreed as I patted Velvet’s back.

“Maybe then,” Jimmy added, “we can get away from this rotten little house on the prairie.”

Velvet brrupped. Giggling brothers surrounded us, tucking in their chins, swallowing, and broadcasting fine burps of their own.

“Watch ’em, Georgie. This is something big boys gotta know,” I said, gathering up Velvet’s blankets. “Come on, you guys. Finish eating, then get your coats. Let’s go tell Dad it’s time to go home.”

Outside, brown leaves whirled around us in frosty gusts of air. We heard rackety crows and bluejays as we crunched through dry leaves and weeds, me with the baby, Jimmy carrying Georgie piggy-back, squinting our eyes against the windy light, looking for Dad.

“There he is!” Larry called out.

I watched Larry, Jimmy, and Georgie, following after Harry and Clark, speeding toward Dad and calling to him. I saw Dad, up on the crest of the hill, turn and stretch out his arms to the boys, and it was the weirdest thing. I was standing there, beside the old house, letting it protect Velvet and me from the wind, and I looked up at my family, what was left of it. And it sort of seemed like I was seeing them for the first time. There they all were, silhouetted against the clear sky over Blue Top.

I liked them.

Just For You to Know: Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen

In which I write a letter, Dad tells a ghost story, Jimmy and I get mail, Walter Cronkite tells us the last straw and there are the best and worst of times.

I found a box of stationery, a present from Aunt Bevy to Mama, who’d never opened it. “I guess it’s mine now,” I muttered to myself. With my blue ballpoint pen and my best handwriting, I wrote a letter on a sheet of the pink paper, folded it up and stuck it in its pink envelope.

Friday, October 11, 1963

Dear Mrs. Montisano,

I already went to the office this morning before First Hour and told the counselor that I wanted to take Study Hall instead of your class from now on. I hope this does not hurt your feelings. I would really rather be in your class, but if I don’t start taking Study Hall on Monday, I will flunk.

Your former student,

Carmen Cathcart

Before Art class was even over, I’d put most of my art supplies into my crumpled lunch sack, my heart pounding every time Mrs. Montisano walked past my table. It took me a while to get up the nerve to hand her the pink envelope and say,

“This is for you.”

“What is it?” Then, loudly, “Class, start cleaning up. The bell’s about to ring.”

“Uhm...” I looked away from her smile and gathered up the rest of my things. “You’ll see.” Greg and some other kids shot puzzled frowns at us as everybody milled around the sink and the door, all noisy and busting for school to be over for the weekend. “You in trouble?” Greg whispered as Mrs. Montisano’s eyes flitted over my note. Her eyebrows furrowed and her lips parted.

“No. Well, kind of...” I answered him through gritted teeth, not wanting to see his blue eyes looking at me. The bell clanged. Mrs. Montisano shouted over the racket, “See you Monday!”

I was going to make for the door with everybody else, but she clamped her hand on my arm. “Carmen –?”

“I gotta get to Mr. Henderson’s class.”

“I’ll write him a note,” she said, jerking her head in the direction of her cluttered-up desk. I wished I could run out into the hall. Instead, I followed her, her smock billowing out like a purple sail. Already ninth graders, coming in for their last class of the day, were giving me curious looks as I rehearsed what I’d say to Mrs. Montisano. I wasn’t planning on what she said to me.

“Carmen, I know about your mother’s passing.”

Huh?

“The other teachers and I have talked about your dilemma.”

They had? My – what?

“Your problem,” Mrs. Montisano explained, seeing my frown. “I just wanted to tell you I know how hard this decision must have been for you.”

I looked down at the pennies in my loafers. “It was Robin Culpepper’s idea.”

“Well, it shows a lot of character on your part. Robin’s smart. She sounds like a good friend, too. You’d better get going now.” Mrs. Montisano began scribbling on a piece of her yellow notepaper. “Give this to Mr. Henderson.”

“Okay.” It’d be too sappy to tell her I was going to miss her, besides, I was getting a lump in my throat. “Thanks,” I said.

She gave me a sad sort of smile. “Will you stop by if you have any art questions?” I nodded. “Tuck your supplies away somewhere safe,” she said. “I know you’ll use’em again.” I was just about out the door when Mrs. Montisano called out, right in front of all those big kids, “I’ll miss you in my class, Carmen. You were my best artist!”

The trees got prettier as October went by and school got better as I was able to get my homework done, but home? In a way, it was getting worse. My dad was making me more worried than usual. Mostly he was his regular self, except he never sang anymore. And it wasn’t just that he looked extra tired when he came dragging in from work or that he punched his bedroom wall and hurt his hand. Or that sometimes he drank a little bit more beer than a normal thirsty person oughta drink. It was all that stuff put together. I wouldn’t dare remind him of that crazy thing he said, about us moving again, but I could tell from his gloomy ways that he was still thinking about it. Jimmy was worried too. He was good at noticing.

“We gotta cheer Dad up,” he said, turning around from his sinkful of supper dishes to look at all of us.

“How?” Larry asked. Georgie thought we should get him some candy.

“He needs to make some friends,” said Clark.

Having a party was Harry’s idea.

“Hey!” I patted the little squirt on the back. “That’s a perfect idea! It could be a combination party: part Robin’s birthday, part thank you for our neighbors being so nice to us here lately.”

“And,” said Jimmy, “the other third to cheer up Dad.” He’d been studying fractions.

It wasn’t hard to get the boys to print and color invitations once I told’em they could use up my leftover tempera paints. “But don’t you guys bother any of my other art supplies,” I said, giving Georgie the skunk eye. They were put away, safe under my socks, like Mrs. Montisano told me. “Harry, you and Larry and Clark decorate the front room, okay?”

“For Halloween or for birthday?”

“Both,” I told them.

A grin split Clark’s pointy face. “Neat!”

I baked Robin a cake, chocolate, with extra frosting.

“Could you buy some orange candles?” I asked Dad. “But what about a present?”

“Hmmm....,” he said. He was chopping onions for the stew he was making for supper. Then he looked up at me. “Oh, I got me a good idea for that.”

“What?”

“You’ll see.” He just wiggled his eyebrows at me and began prying the lid off of a jar of Mama’s tomatoes. “You better go check on the baby and see what Georgie’s getting into.”

I asked him again, but he didn’t tell me his neat idea until right when it was time for him and me to begin on it. Now, he only talked about us straightening up the house for company.

My little brothers taped a bunch of black paper bats to the soda straw castle and made a banner of cut-out letters: HAPPY SPOOKDAY ROBIN. All this swayed over and surrounded Robin’s family, us Cathcarts, the Monroe ladies and old Mr. Herman. We filled up our old couch and every single chair we had. Mr. Beeler sat on the floor by Aunt Bevy, but I guessed he wanted to anyway, so they could hold hands and look lovey-dovey at each other.

“Happy birthday, there, Robin,” Dad said. He beamed a rusty smile at everybody. “Gosh, it’s nice to have you all here.”

I was pretty sure he’d realize now that it’d be horrible to ever move away from all these people.

Mama and any other spirits who might be listening heard about Mr. Herman’s young manhood in Philadelphia “when I was a shoe salesman and had to wear a suit every day! Different suspenders for every day of the week!” Mr. Herman, who held baby Velvet in his lap, used his free hand to snap the stripey suspenders that were holding his old-man pants up under his armpits. Robin got her dad to tell about his barbershop quartet.

“And,” she said proudly, “he sings in the choir at church too.”

“You all ought to come hear us on Sunday,” said Mr. Culpepper. “I should’ve invited you before now.”

“Oh yes,” said Miss Effie. “You Cathcarts need you a church home.”

“We go to that church over on College Street sometimes,” Jimmy offered.

I told Mr. Culpepper, “We’d like to come hear you sing though,” in case Jimmy had accidentally hurt his feelings.

“My, Carmen,” Miss Effie went on, “did you bake this cake?” Then she told us how she almost got married to a baker in North Carolina. “Oh my, he was a good looker in his white coat.”

“But he was like a rug: he lied all over the place,” put in Miss Lillian.

Miss Effie snorted. “He was a charmer, even so.”

Before they retired, the Monroe ladies were schoolteachers, like Mrs. Culpepper.

“Oh, yes,” said Miss Lillian, “up in Des Moines, Iowa. I taught high school. Effie there taught the little ones.”

Harry smiled up at Robin’s mom, displaying his new front teeth. “I think you’re the best teacher, Mrs. Culpepper.”

Robin and I stole glances at each other, but the smile her mom gave Harry didn’t have a smidge of crankiness in it. “It’s good of you to say so, Harry,” she said. “Thank you.”

Darren tugged on Dad’s sleeve. “Clark said you used to be a hobo. Is that true?”

“Is that so?” Miss Effie exclaimed. Everybody looked at Dad, especially Mrs. Culpepper, whose eyebrows lifted like she didn’t much approve of how Dad spent the good old days.

Dad jutted out his jaw and sucked on his teeth like he does when he’s thinking. Then he said, “Well, that was bad times when there were plenty of fellers, some as young as Jimmy here, out ridin’ the rails, looking for work to do. We weren’t bums, I can tell you.” Daddy glanced at Mrs. Culpepper. “I can tell you all a tale from those days, son, a Halloween tale, as a matter of fact. A lot of good stories come out of bad times. Wouldn’t you say so, Mr. Herman?”

“That’s a fact,” said the old man.

“Oh, that’s true,” said Miss Lillian.

Dad rubbed his eyes and began telling us about the Halloween night “back in ‘39 out in Tennessee” when he crawled into a boxcar and met an old man named Sam. “He told me a tall tale ‘bout -- well, you all know the statue of General Andy Jackson on his horse up on the Square, right there by the courthouse?” The little boys nodded, open-mouthed.

“Well, there’s statues like that all over the country. All over the world, in fact. That old Sam told me that every hundred years, all those horses and riders of metal and stone come alive!” Daddy strengthened his voice a notch on the last word. Velvet stirred in his arms. “Those horses go leapin’ off their pedestals down into the streets. You can hear them clip-cloppin’ and clatterin’ ‘round town carrying their ghostly riders on a search and quest for each other to make an army. Fight their old battles and smell the gunsmoke one more time. Sam told me they go gallopin’ all Halloween night. ‘I seen ‘em wid me own eyes,’ he said, ‘back in 18 and 63, in the time of the turr’ble war. I was nought but five year old,‘ Sam told me, but...“ Daddy paused for effect and Mr. Beeler squeezed Aunt Bevy’s hand. “Came the dawn,” he whispered, “the statues were back on their blocks of stone, each and every one, nothin’ to show for the gallivantin’ but the mud on the horses’ hooves.”

Jimmy broke the stillness after the story. “Say, Dad, this is 1963.”

“Oh gracious,” said Miss Lillian.

“This is the year they ride.” Robin’s voice was creepy.

“Halloween,” said Dad. He glanced at the wall calendar then slid a sly gaze over to me and said, “Thursday night.”

“Now that I’d like to see,” said Mr. Culpepper as my dad got up and hurried off to the kitchen. Robin’s mom’s eyes smiled over the rim of her coffee cup at the sight of the little kids’ ooglie-booglies.

“Hey Buddy!” Dad hollered from the kitchen. “Turn off all the lights in there!” Which I did, of course and Miss Lillian said, “Oh my!” as a glowing face floated towards us. “Robin,” said my dad, kind of panting, “here’s your present. Sorry we didn’t wrap it -- man, this thing is heavy!”

“Jeepers!” she exclaimed like she’d never gotten a giant jack o’ lantern for a birthday present.

Right then, I was so glad Dad was my dad, even when, later on, he and I had to go calm Larry’s nightmares. On the morning after Halloween, Dad got us all up out of bed before school so he could pile us into the stationwagon and take us over to where I did all my crying. He showed us the hooves of General Jackson’s horse. It was impressive even though I pretty much guessed that he’d driven by the courthouse in the middle of the night after he got off work just so he could muddy up the statue. I put my hand in my dad’s rough hand. I felt sure that he was himself again.

A couple weeks later, right after Clark’s eighth birthday, when Jimmy and I came home from school, Dad told us we’d both gotten mail. The person I would be two weeks in the future might have told the person I was right then that the scrawled postcard and the letter were warning bells, but of course, she couldn’t do that.

November 15, 1963,

Fort Hood, Texas

Dear Jimmy, I bet you’re surprised to hear from me. I went and joined the Army. It was real tough at first, but no tougher than my old man. I hope you aren’t too lonesome without your mom. I know about that. I gotta go, but maybe you’d like to write me sometime? No one else does. Did you hear that the president’s coming here to Texas next week? Yours truly,

Private Richard D. Scudder,

United States Army

The smeared-pencil return address on my letter said it was from – Janice? From my old school in the country? She wrote it on notebook paper and she drew an angel in the corner. A pretty crummy one, too.

November 16, 1963

Dear Carmen,

How are you? I am fine. Some of us read in the Kansas City paper that a lady named Dorothy Cathcart died last summer. A bunch of kids didn’t remember you but I did. I wanted to tell you that’s really awful about your mom and I hope you’re okay.

Me and my folks, we drive by the house where you used to live sometimes and there’s a mean, wild goat there eating the weeds. It won’t let anyone catch it, my dad says. Write me sometime.

Your friend,

Janice McFarland

(I sat behind you in Mrs. Cameron’s class, remember?)

Sure, I remembered. It was kind of a nice surprise that she remembered me. I figured that Dad would want to know about Blue Top, so I read him Janice’s letter. Maybe later, I’d get out the pink stationery and tell her about our first Thanksgiving without Mama.

Aunt Bevy had already called me two times to talk about our plans. “I’ll be over there bright and early Thursday morning, me and a fat bird and all the other fixin’s. We’ll stick him in your oven, Carmen, then we’ll work on everything else. I’ll bring a couple of pumpkin pies from the bakery and just not tell anyone they’re storebought, okay?”

“I can make pumpkin pie,” I blurted into the phone. “I watched Mama do it a hundred times. She used to let me roll out the crust.”

“Are you sure?” Aunt Bevy sounded doubtful.

“Sure I’m sure.” Kind of a little white lie, but it was important, wasn’t it, to have homemade pies for Thanksgiving?

Now it was five days away and the entire idea of Thanksgiving, along with the worst, most horrible cold ever made me homesick for Mama and sick enough to be home. Or else I would have been at school on that Friday afternoon, on the 22nd of November, when the words SPECIAL BULLETIN flashed white on the dark television screen. Then Walter Cronkite said, so it had to be true, “From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official, President Kennedy died...”

Daddy stood watching, slump-shouldered in the center of the room. “I swear, if that ain’t the last blasted

straw that broke the camel,” he said, “I don’t know what.”

Aunt Bevy and Mr. Beeler came to our house on Monday to watch President Kennedy’s funeral. I blew my nose and studied the way her black veil made shadow-slashes across the First Lady’s face.

“There’s General Ike,” said Daddy, pointing at one of the sad old men on the television, come to the President Kennedy’s funeral.

“You mean President Eisenhower?” asked Jimmy.

“Yup,” said Daddy. “And that there’s Harry Truman. I was out in the South Pacific, I remember clear as day, when he became president, when ol’ Frank Roosevelt passed on in 1945. Shoot, Jimmy, he’d been president since I was a kid your age. Truman was his V. P. so he had to take over. Told everybody he felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen down on him.”

Huh? I leaned in closer to the screen.

“I’ll bet,” said Mr. Beeler, “that President Johnson feels just like that right now.”

Oh my goodness. “That’s him!” I cried.

“Didn’t I just say?” Daddy took a swig of his Dr. Pepper.

“No – I mean, yes. He talked to me!”

“Nuh UH!” said Clark.

“Who?” asked Jimmy. “President Truman? In person?”

“Just a few weeks ago, up by the statue on the Square. He was real nice to me.” I told them a little bit about the bad day I had that day. “He told me not to give up and to do my best.” Dad bit his lip and shook his head at me.

I’d met a genuine president and didn’t even know it. His hankie was folded up in my underwear drawer this very minute. The corners of my mouth curved up a bit when I imagined Mr. Truman cheering up Mrs. Kennedy like he did me.

“There’s a story to tell your grandchildren,” said Aunt Bevy.

“Not havin’ any,” I told her. “Oh, look at John-John!” Mrs. Kennedy had her little son salute his dad’s casket passing by. Poor baby.

Mr. Beeler pulled a hankie out of his pocket, wiped his eyes and blew his nose. “It’s his third birthday today,” he said. “Just imagine.”

Was President Kennedy just now joining the beginners’ class up there? Seeing his little baby who died and greeting the Alabama Sunday School girls? Meeting Mama? She wouldn’t even be bashful because, after all, this was heaven. I could imagine her meeting Cleopatra or comforting the president. ‘Look down there in Independence. I used to live with those people. I suppose they’re going to be getting ready for Thanksgiving now.”

***

By Thanksgiving Eve, I was seriously pooped. Even baby Velvet, in her basket, in the kitchen, had flour in her fuzzy hair and eyelashes. “Velvet’s finally asleep and the boys are watching TV. I’m gonna run over to Robin’s and see if I can borrow some, uh, celery,” I told Jimmy. “Keep an eye on things, will ya?”

“Okay,” he said, without looking at me.

“I got those stupid pumpkin pies in the oven, but I’ll be back way before they’re done, okay? Are you hearing me?”

Mr. Nose-in-his-Book gave me an exasperated look. “I said okay.”

Really, I wanted to get out of our kitchen and go tell Robin about almost putting chili powder instead of cinnamon into the pie batter. Hardly any time at all had gone be, it seemed like to me. I was just helping Robin polish her mom’s drinking glasses while we talked about the next book Mr. Fisher wanted us to read: The Witch of Blackbird Pond. Just the title made lonely, windy-looking pictures in my head. “It sounds even better than A Tale of Two Cities.”

“I hope the ending won’t be as sad,” said Robin.

Her mom came into the kitchen just then. “Carmen? I didn’t know you were here. Who’s --?”she was asking me when we heard Clark and Jimmy shouting. “Carmie! Where are you! Come home quick! Car - men! The house is burning!”