A Long Way From Chicago (7 page)

I noticed Mary Alice’s eyes on me. She was watching me around Grandma’s rowing arm, and she was reading my mind. It was then we decided never to tell Dad.

You could say one thing for Grandma’s method. You got all your fishing done at once. It wasn’t later than eight o’clock, and maybe we’d gotten away with it. It seemed to me we ought to have brought some poles along, and a can of worms, considering our catch. But I thought maybe things would settle down now, and we could have the quiet day in the country Grandma wanted. Then we heard singing.

I almost jumped out of the boat. It had felt as if we three were alone in the world. Now this singing warbled up from around a bend in the creek, like a bad barbershop quartet with extra voices chiming in:

Grandma nudged the boat into the bank just where the creek began to bend. Through the undergrowth we saw a ramshackle building on the far bank. Above the porch was a sign, a plank with words burned in:

ROD & GUN CLUB

A row of empty whisky bottles stood on the porch rail and from behind them came the singing:

The porch sagged with singers—grown men in their underwear, still partying from last night. Old guys in real droopy underwear. It was a grisly sight, and Mary Alice’s eyes bugged. I wasn’t sure she ought to be seeing this. They were waving bottles and trying to dance. I didn’t know what they’d do next. Grandma was fascinated.

As we watched, a skinny old guy with a deputy’s badge pinned to his long johns stepped forth and was real sick over the rail into the water.

“Earl T. Askew,” Grandma muttered, “president of the Chamber of Commerce.”

But now a fat old geezer in the droopiest drawers and nothing else pulled himself up on the porch rail. Bottles toppled into the water as he stood barefoot on the rail, teetering back, then forward, while the others behind him roared, “Whoa, whoa.”

“Shut up a minute,” he roared back at them, “and I’ll sing you a
good
song.” He took a slug out of the bottle in his fist, and began:

Then he fell back into the arms of the cheering crowd.

“Ain’t that disgusting?” Grandma said. “He couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.”

“Who is he?” I whispered.

“O. B. Dickerson, the sheriff,” she said, “and them drunk skunks with him is the entire business community of the town.”

Mary Alice gasped. The drawers on some of the business community were riding mighty low. “They’re not acting right,” she said, very prim.

“Men in a bunch never do,” Grandma said.

They were tight enough to fight too, and we were on their private property. Not only that. We were in a boat full of trapped fish almost under the bloodshot eye of the sheriff. I thought it was time to head upstream as fast as Grandma could row.

But no. She jammed an oar into the bank to push us off. Then she began rowing around the bend. My heart stopped. The full chorus was singing again, louder as we got nearer.

The Rod & Gun Club came into view, and so did we. Mary Alice was perched in the bow. Grandma was rowing steady, and I was in the stern, wondering if the fish showed.

It took the drunks on the porch a moment to focus on us. We were sailing right past them now, smooth as silk, big as life.

They saw us.

And Grandma saw them, as if for the first time. She seemed to lose control of the oars, and her mouth fell open in shock. Mary Alice was already shocked and didn’t have to pretend. I didn’t know where to look.

Some of the business community were so far gone, they just stared back, unbelieving. They thought they owned this stretch of the creek. A few, seeing that Grandma and Mary Alice were of the opposite sex, scrambled to hide themselves behind the others.

But you never saw anybody looking as scandalized as Grandma was at these old birds in their union suits and less. She was speechless as her gaze passed over them all, recognizing everybody.

It was a silent scene until Sheriff O. B. Dickerson found his voice. “Stop in the name of the law!” he bellowed. “That’s my boat!”

Before the Rod & Gun Club was out of sight, Grandma had regained control of the oars. She rowed on as if none of this had ever happened. The sun was beating down, so she didn’t push herself. After all, the sheriff couldn’t chase us downstream. We were in his boat.

Around another bend and a flock of turtles sunning on stumps, Grandma pulled for the remains of an old dock. We tied up there, and now we were out of the boat, climbing a bluff. Grandma led, dragging the net of catfish. I was in the rear, doing my best with the picnic
hamper. Mary Alice was between us, watching where she walked. She was scareder of snakes than she let on, if you ask me.

An old house without a speck of paint on it stood tall on the bluff. Its outbuildings had caved in, and the privy stood at an angle. There were still prairie chickens around in those days, and they were pecking dirt. Otherwise, the place looked lifeless. Rags hung at the windows.

The porch overlooking the creek had fallen off. Grandma tramped around to the far side of the house. She dropped her fish on the ground and waved us inside. Even in full daylight the place looked haunted. I didn’t want to go in, but Mary Alice was marching through the door already. So I had to. “Is anybody inside?” I whispered to Grandma as I lugged the hamper past her.

“Nobody but Aunt Puss Chapman,” she said, like anybody would know that.

It had been a fine house once. A wide black walnut staircase rose to a landing window with most of its stained glass still in. But it was creepy in here, dim and dusty. Smelled funny too. We went into a room piled up with furniture. Then one of the chairs spoke.

“Where you been, girl?”

Mary Alice flinched, but the old woman lost in the chair was staring straight at Grandma. And calling her
girl
?

She was by many years the oldest person we’d ever seen up till then. Bald as an egg, but she needed a shave. And not a tooth in her head.

“Who’s them chilrun with you?” she demanded of Grandma.

“Just kids I found along the crick bank,” Grandma said, to our surprise. “They was fishing.”

“I don’t know as I want them in the house.” Aunt Puss Chapman sent us a mean look. “Do they steal?”

“Nothin’ you’ve got,” Grandma said, under her breath.

“Talk up, girl,” Aunt Puss said. “You mumble. I’ve spoken to you about that before.” She pulled her shawl closer, though it was the hottest day of the year. “I’m hongry. You hightailed it out of here after breakfast, and I ain’t seen hide nor hoof mark of you since.”

“She ain’t seen me for a week,” Grandma mumbled to us. “But she forgets.”

Then she called out to Aunt Puss: “Catfish and fried potatoes and onions, vinegar slaw, and a pickled peach apiece. And more of the same for your supper.”

“I suppose it beats starving,” Aunt Puss snapped. “But hop to it, girl. Stir yer stumps.”

I thought I might faint again. Nobody could talk to Grandma like that and live.

She led us back to an old-time kitchen. It was in bad shape, but well stocked: big sacks of potatoes and onions, cornmeal, things in cans. And we’d brought a full hamper to add to Aunt Puss’s larder.

I had to fire up the stove with a bunch of kindling while Grandma and Mary Alice went to work on the potatoes and onions. Mary Alice was in as big a daze as I was. “Grandma, is that nasty old lady your aunt?”

I stopped to listen. If she was, that made her our great-great-aunt.

“Naw, I was hired girl to her before I was married,”
Grandma said. “Lived in this house and fetched and carried for her and slept in the attic.”

“You had a room in the attic?”

“Naw, I just slept up there. Had a bed tick with straw in it and changed it every spring. I haven’t always lived in the luxury you see me in now.”

“What did she pay you, Grandma?”

“Pay? She didn’t pay me a plug nickel. But she fed me.”

I thought about that.

“And now you feed her,” I said, but Grandma didn’t reply.

We cleaned the fish on a plank table outdoors. I didn’t care much for it. It made me kind of sick to hear Grandma rip the skin off the catfish. She had her own quick way of doing that. But every time, it sounded like the fish screamed. She put me in charge of chopping off their heads, but I didn’t like chopping off the head of anything looking back at me. And catfish have mustaches for some reason, which is just plain weird. Finally, Mary Alice took the rusty hatchet out of my hand. And
whomp
, she’d bring down the blade, and that fish head would go flying. Mary Alice was good at it, so I let her do it. Grandma gutted.

It was afternoon before we sat down at the dining-room table under a cobwebby gasolier. Aunt Puss was already at her place, so she was spryer than she looked. Grandma settled at the foot of the table. Without her hat, her white hair hung in damp tendrils. We’d been working like a whole pack of bird dogs.

Watching Aunt Puss gum catfish was not a pretty
sight. “These fish taste muddy,” she observed. “You’uns catch ’em?”

“Yes,” I said.

“No,” Mary Alice said.

“What did you use for bait?” Aunt Puss said, looking at both of us.

“Cheese,” I said.

“Worms,” Mary Alice said, more wisely.

Since we couldn’t get together on our story, Aunt Puss changed the subject. “You chilrun still in school?”

We nodded.

“Do they whup you?”

“Do they what?” Mary Alice said.

“Do they paddle yer behind when you need it?” Aunt Puss looked interested.

“If they did, I’d quit school,” said Mary Alice, who’d just completed third grade.

“They whupped that girl raw.” Aunt Puss pointed her fork down the table at Grandma.

I had a sudden thought. Aunt Puss thought Grandma and Mary Alice and I were all about the same age. She hadn’t noticed the years passing. That’s why Grandma didn’t say we were her grandkids. It would just have mixed up Aunt Puss.

“That’s when she come to work for me. They’d throwed her out of school.” Aunt Puss peered down the table. “Tell ’em why.”

We looked at Grandma, naturally interested to know why she’d been throwed—thrown out of school. Grandma waved us away. “I forget,” she said.

“I don’t!” Aunt Puss waved a fork. “It was because you wadded up your underdrawers to stop up the flue on the stove and smoke out the schoolhouse. That was the end of yer education!”

“Working for
you
was an education,” Grandma muttered, though only Mary Alice and I heard.