It was always my job to say grace. “Dear Heavenly Father,” I began. Something made me look over at the strange old woman. Her head was turned away from the table. “We thank you for the blessings…” And the words died in my mouth. The room fell quiet. After a moment or two, Pop sort of coughed an “Amen” and my mother began to serve everyone.
(Part 1 here)
No one spoke. There was the clink of china, slurping sounds. Swallowing. The grate of knives on plates. My pop breathing through his nose. I glanced over at the old scarecrow. She was picking at her food, lifting up little bits, making little lizard licks with her tongue. Finally Pop spoke up. “I know what would be nice. Let’s have some radio. Billy, go turn on the Philco.”
I looked at my mother. This was in direct violation of one of her rules of digestion: No radio while eating. But she shot me a sidelong glance and nodded. I sprang out of my seat, glad to put some distance between me and the scarecrow. The “Baby Grand” was in the parlor, and its six tubes took a while to get going. I stood by the radio as long as possible. Since we only got one station, there wasn’t much to do other than fine tune the broadcast once it came in. I waited dutifully as the hum rose from deep inside the Philco cabinet, like an mechanical animal coming to life. I always imagined it was some sort of device Flash Gordon would have on his ship. An announcer scratchily introduced Ben Bernie from the Roosevelt Hotel and people, somewhere, were clapping.
I became aware of being watched. I turned and there was the scarecrow, her face scrunched up and shuffling across the parlor towards me. “That’s a… that’s a…” she croaked. “Radio? In the house?”
I nodded and backed away. She moved in on it, hunched forward and peering at the dial. Bernie’s band started up and the old scarecrow reached out and touched the wooden case. Almost at once, there was a pop as one of the tubes went, the music stopped and the dial went dark. She jerked her hand away and looked at me. “Oh, I’m sorry…” she turned and reached out to touch me with her devil claw. I yelped and tore up the stairs, into my room and slammed the door. There was talk downstairs, then the heavy thumping of my Pop coming up the stairs.
“William.” I opened the door and Pop caught me in a dead stare. “What’s this nonsense? You weren’t given permission to quit the table.”
“But Pop…” I was teetering on the edge of crying.
“You need a walk to the barn?” I shook my head vigorously. “We’ll have no more of this.” The Finger rose and pointed. “She’s here and we’re all just going to have to make the best of it. You. Your mother. Me. All of us. She’s family. Do you understand me? I know she doesn’t look it, but she is. You treat her with respect. You don’t have to like her, you don’t have to play patty cakes with her, but you’d be well advised to act proper. Do I make myself understood?” I nodded. “Then you march back downstairs, apologize to your mother, and finish your dinner.”
“Yes, sir,” I said then his face softened and he clapped me on the shoulder.
I trailed him down the stairs, but when we got to the dining room, the old bat had gone and her place setting had been cleared. Mom smiled at me. “She’s gone out back,” she said. “My cooking seems to be a bit heavy for her.” Pop grunted and we settled in and finished our meal.
:::
Because it was built on an half-acre hillock in center of the flood plain, our old house is one of the few old gingerbreads to survive ’56. I go out of my way not to drive past it, even all these years later, but there’s no escaping a local landmark. Tourists come to take pictures of the great green shingled Queen Anne. It’s featured on the opening montage of the Action News lead-in and you see it on souvienier tee-shirts and coffee mugs. I know the current owners, decent enough folks, but since we moved out, I’ve never set foot in the old place. I can be having a good day, a best day, and then catch a glimpse through the trees of the five-story tower, decked out in that ridiculous Victorian gimcrack, and something clangs in my heart like ship’s bell out in the fog bank. “What’s gone is gone,” Pop used to say, I know the wisdom of that. But still.
It was, and is, a fine old house. With more hallways to run through, corners to get hid in, banisters to slide down, and room after unused & half-finished room that old man Whitcomb had dreamed to fill with descendants. It had been decided, at some point, by somebody, that my cousin would take the small room on the south side of the second floor, the one with the view of the tree-shorn hills and the great Lutheran cemetery. It isn’t one of the better rooms, not by a stretch. From what I understand, it’s one of the cheaper rooms of the B&B now. But if my cousin was unhappy about it, she sure didn’t voice any objection I ever heard.
They could have put her on the third floor, all by her grand self. Or stuck her out in the barn, as far as I was concerned. But no one had consulted me. I lay in my bed that first night only too aware that the scarecrow cannibal from outer space was lying no more than 15 feet away from me in my own bed and that if I fell even half-asleep, she’d be there like smoke up a chimney, licking her lips and making slices across my throat. There’s was simply no way I was going to sleep that night.
I lay awake for what seemed ages after I’d heard my folks go to bed, counting the chimes past twelve to the quiet hours. I strained, but couldn’t hear anything coming from her end of the hallway. She was up to something, that much I was dead sure on. And it was driving me crazy. One of the good things about being a born sneak is that you end up acquiring all sorts of useful skills, like knowing which places are attractive, natural hiding spots for Christmas or birthday presents. Or how many cookies you can safely fiddle out of the jar before getting caught. Or, more to the point, how to open and close a bedroom door that usually groans and slip around the house unheard as shade when the mood takes you.
So it was the simplest thing to make my way down the second-floor hall in the half-moon’s light to see what was what. I stood there a long time. Not a sound. The keyhole told me nothing. I got down and peered under the door. The floor on the other side reflected a bit of moon. No shadows moved. But something was wrong. There was a dark lump of something on the floor. Not a tote sack, exactly, but not much bigger. I stared at it from under the door, trying to make my eyes tell my brain more. Then I got it. She was sleeping on the floor. The tote sack was her, that old woman. I watched for a while longer. She could have been breathing. Or not.
The thought hit me with the same confusion and relief you feel when you wake up from a nightmare and realize that what’s scaring you can’t possibly hurt you. Simple. Done. She was old, older than anybody else I knew by a stretch. Of course she’d died. But what if the nightmare wasn’t really over? I hadn’t heard her die. No groaning and carrying on like we did when one of us would get shot playing Cowboys and Indians. No crash when she knocked over a vase, no thump when she hit the floor. Maybe she was dead. Maybe she was faking it. Maybe she was waiting for me to open the door and then jump up like an Indian and brain me with a hatchet. The longer I looked, the more likely it seemed.
I needed a weapon. If I was going to do it, go in there and check and make sure, I needed something. Baseball bat? The room was too small to get a good swing. I prowled around the house in my mind and it came to me. Perfect. Mom’s meat tenderizing mallet in the kitchen. Five minutes later, I was back at her door, now in full tremble. The wooden-handled mallet hefted nicely. I swallowed, put my left hand out to the knob and just as my fingers grazed it, the damn thing turned on its own! I dropped the tenderizer, bang! onto the bare oak floor and shot down the hall to my room, slamming the door and rocketing under the covers of my bed.
Well, the house exploded. Pop shouting, Mom crying, the old lady babbling, all three of them in my room, Pop now waving the mallet at me, Mom grabbing his arm, the old lady crying, now me crying and Pop swearing blue, and somebody was going to call the police and lock me up in the crazy house and on and on it went until Pop dragged me down the stairs, out the kitchen door, through the garden, past the chicken yard and out to the barn just as the moon was kissing the ocean.
He wailed me good that night. But I think the reason I kept crying and crying is that I saw, in my mind’s eye, what I might have done to that old woman. I still sort of shiver when I think of it.
Related posts:
- Long Gone Cannibal Blues Lord, I miss her. After all these years, why should...
- Sharon Shannon’s “Neck Belly Reel” I can posit no reason this should be called The...
- A Save The kitchen in this house has been remodeled at least...
- First Winter This is our fist winter in the old house. And...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Pingback: Long Gone Cannibal Blues Yoneda Project | Yoneda Project