Dinner Along the Amazon (4 page)

The Pekinese immediately flung itself at his toes.

“Stop that!” squealed Miss Kennedy. “That’s Harper.”

The dog wagged its tail and backed away, voicing a high pitched greeting.

“Hello,” said Harper, nervously.

“You sit in there, dear, while I fix the lemonade.”

Miss Kennedy gestured, with a long arm, to a sitting room to the left of the dark hallway.

Harper went in. It was cool in the sitting room and there was an organ in the corner, with dust on the keys.

“Hasn’t she got a maid?” Harper asked the dog, touching the keys. There was a loud noise. Harper was so startled that he sat down on the horsehair sofa, the leather of which felt cold and comforting against the back of his legs.

There were pictures on the wall of people who wore strangling, old costumes and who all looked as though life had been extremely painful for them. He concluded that they well might have been Miss Kennedy’s ‘victims.’ Not one of them smiled. Harper sat very near the edge of the seat.

In a moment Miss Kennedy returned. She carried a tray on which she had placed two tall glasses with long-handled spoons in them and a squat cut-glass pitcher filled with lemonade.

“Let’s sit outside, shall we? You take the tray.”

With great relief Harper rose and bore the tray outside.

They went onto the front porch where he set the tray on a table and Miss Kennedy sat down in a high-backed rocking chair. Harper stood facing her formally. Miss Kennedy pointed to a wicker chair and told him to sit down.

She poured lemonade into the two glasses and pushed one of them towards Harper, and then, taking up her own glass, she sat back in the rocker and smiled. Harper left his lemonade on the tray, and watched it closely to see what would happen.

“Here in my lap I have two Chinese fans,” said Miss Kennedy. “You may have one of them—but you must choose which one you like. I assure you, I’m equally fond of both of them, so you mustn’t worry about which one I like the best. Here.”

She offered him two silver bars.

“How do they open?” he asked.

She opened one of the fans ceremoniously and demonstrated its use.

“It’s very pretty,” remarked Harper.

He opened the second fan himself with a little difficulty and imitated Miss Kennedy’s floating gesture perfectly.

“You’re a born orientalist,” she said, obviously pleased with the grace with which Harper manipulated the Chinese fan.

“Thank you,” said Harper, unaware of the meaning of orientalist. He wondered if it was another word for witch—perhaps a definition of ‘male witch.’

He sipped at his lemonade delicately. It tasted fine.

The Pekinese jumped into her mistress’s lap and sat with her tongue dangling out towards Harper.

“What a funny face she has,” he thought.

Miss Kennedy read his mind and said:

“Her name is Ming Toy.”

“That’s very pretty. Hello Ming Toy.”

Ming Toy smiled and shook herself delightedly.

For a moment they sat fanning themselves and drinking their lemonade. Miss Kennedy regarded Harper patiently and with pride. Children never came to call on her. In fact no one came to call on her, and it pleased her that someone, especially someone so fine as Harper Dewey, whom she regarded as the most interesting child on the street, should be her first summer visitor.

“You said you wanted to speak to me, Harper. What is it, dear?”

Harper blushed and set aside the sweating glass of lemonade.

“Well, it’s about the oak tree.”

“About the oak tree, Harper? What about it, dear?”

“I want to live there,” said Harper bluntly.

“You want to live there. Mercy me! Whatever for, dear?”

“Only for one night, Miss Kennedy. Just for one night.” He began to lie. “You see, some of the other children—we had a sort of bet.”

“Abet?”

“Yes.”

“About the oak tree?”

“Yes. We bet that I was afraid to stay in the oak tree all night.”

He waited vacantly for her reaction.

“And of course you bet that you weren’t afraid at all.”

“Yes’m. That’s it.”

“And your mother? Does she know about this?”

“Oh yes’m. She knows all about it. And she said ‘why certainly’ I was to go ahead and do it.”

“I see, and so you want to have my permission to stay there. Well—so long as your mother says it’s all right I guess I can’t say no. When do you wish to do this? Tonight, I suppose.”

“Yes. If I can stay there all night then I just have to say so in the morning.”

“And do I have to say so in the morning?”

“Oh no, m’am. That’s the point of my coming here now, you see. You aren’t supposed to know all this. But I sort of thought that, well, if you sort of heard me getting into the tree and all, well then it would be all off, unless you knew what I was doing there. But please, you’re not to say anything, not to anyone, no matter who asks. It’s meant all to be a secret.”

Miss Kennedy pondered for a moment, her left hand poised on Ming Toy’s tiny head, her right hand gently motioning the fan through the air a few inches from her nose. Then she stopped fanning and bit the silver tip lightly with her teeth.

Harper waited, apparently nonchalant, drinking his lemonade and looking out along the street.

After a moment, Miss Kennedy said “You’ll want a blanket, I suppose. And how will you keep from falling out?”

“Well, I figured I’d tie myself in.”

“That’s wise. You know if you fall to sleep you’re liable to tumble down and we don’t want that.”

“No m’am.”

Miss Kennedy commenced to organize the whole thing.

“And Miss Ming Toy will have to sleep at the back of the house so she won’t disturb you.”

“Yes m’am.”

“And I’ll leave a sandwich and a thermos of cocoa on the porch so’s you can sneak it off after it’s dark. When will you arrive, Harper?”

“Well, I figured as soon’s it’s dark.”

“Fine. And I’m not to say a word?”

“No m’am, if you please.”

“Very well then. I’ll expect you after dark.” She stood up.

“This ought to be a great adventure,” she said. “It’s not the kind of thing we do every day, is it?”

“No m’am. Only once in a while.”

“Yes. Only once in a while.”

Miss Kennedy looked along the street. Sunlight fell amottle on her high red hair.

“I have been waiting for adventure all my life,” she said distantly, “how lucky that you’re so young.”

Harper did not understand this so he said nothing.

“Perhaps it only comes to those who make it come. I’ve never been one to ask the world to enter my life—but oh—I’ve wanted, Harper, I’ve wanted and I’ve waited. Yes—it’s lucky that you’re so young.” She glanced at the oak tree. “But look how long he’s waited,” she said. “Ah well.” She sat down again with a sigh. “Thank heaven I can’t expect to wait that long.”

It got dark at ten o’clock.

Harper’s bedtime was at nine.

At nine-thirty he crept from his bed and put on his shorts and a shirt and a heavy wool sweater, for in spite of the present heat he knew that by morning he would be cold. He put a flashlight into his pocket, together with his jackknife and twenty-five cents and then he put on his socks and a pair of running shoes.

Harper had planned to leave the house by climbing out of his window and crossing the rooftop to the front, where there was a drainpipe which he had climbed many times.

Bertha moved in the kitchen below his room. He crept to his door and locked it.

At ten-thirty, after despairing of his mother’s arrival, and fearing that Bertha would soon return to the attic where she would certainly hear him crossing the roof, he went to his window and clambered out.

The stars were out too, and for a moment he stopped and stared at them and then quickly climbed to the roofs crest and down the other side. He had one brief moment of panic when a car drew up across the street and he feared that it was his mother returning—but it disgorged whatever passenger it wished and drove away into the dark, music blaring from its radio.

He went down, monkey fashion, to the ground, clutching the drainpipe with toes and fingers alternating his balance. At the bottom he waited, standing in the flowerbed, and then he ran quickly down the lawn and through the gate of the driveway and along the street.

Once near Miss Kennedy’s he slowed his pace and soon stopped at her gate, where he heaved a loud sigh and crept inside.

There was a light on in the upper floor and Harper guessed that Miss Kennedy had lain awake to make sure of his safe arrival. He was quite right, for at the sound of the gate clicking closed he saw her high-swept head appear in silhouette at the window and nod in his direction. To show her that he had seen her he gave a brief flash of his flashlight in her direction and a moment later her light went out.

He went to the porch and found on the topmost step, just as she had promised, a packet of sandwiches and a thermos of cocoa. He stuffed all of these into his sweater front and approached the oak tree.

In the dark it loomed huge and monster-like, holding out its many arms toward him. He reached up and grasped gingerly, just within tiptoed reach, an arm that felt sturdy enough to support him.

He swung up into the bowl of the tree and sat there, breathing hard, wondering how much higher he must climb to be safely out of view of anyone passing in the morning light.

He clambered carefully inch by inch into the tree’s heart. A squirrel further up in the branches scampered away, giving him a moment of terror, but then everything settled into absolute quiet. On the whole street there wasn’t a sound.

Harper suddenly remembered that he had forgotten to bring a rope to tie himself into his nest and he also remembered that Miss Kennedy had warned him to bring a blanket.

“Oh well, I’ll just have to keep awake and forget about being cold,” he said to himself.

He ate one of the sandwiches and listened for some sound on the street. There was, at first, nothing to be heard; but gradually, almost imperceptively he became aware of whatever strange noises the night made when he was usually asleep.

Crickets and creakings, birds stirring in their nests and chirruping in their sleep; distant cars moving through the city on unknown missions; late streetcars electrically humming far away on the main street. Late walkers conversing seriously upon subjects utterly unknown to Harper; cats yowling in darkened yards; dogs dreaming of rabbit hunts; the poor, distantly arguing over money; a woman’s mysteriously rapturous scream; a telephone’s insistent ringing in one of the doctors’ houses; music, mice and the hum of telephone lines—the crackle of street lamps and once, he even imagined, the tinkle of stars.

Eventually he began to doze and he dreamt that he was holding on to his father, who was carrying him across a field that was strewn with the bodies of the dead. His father was talking to him about a letter.

It was a letter which Harper knew as his ‘Duty Letter’ which he kept in his top bureau drawer at home. His father had written it to him from England a week before the invasion of Europe, in which he knew he must partake and in which he must, perhaps, die. It was a very serious letter. In it his father spoke of Mrs Dewey and of Harper’s responsibility towards her—of his ‘Duty’ to obey his mother and always ‘to love her more dearly than all the earth.’ The letter also mentioned other things—some of which Harper understood had enormous importance: the future if his father lived—the future if he did not. But the main thing Harper clung to in the tree in front of Miss Kennedy’s house that night was the part about his mother—and his duty to love her. And the fact that his father had underlined the words that came at the letter’s end: “
While I am gone you are all your mother has. She loves you. As do I
.” Then it was signed: “Your Father.”

Over and over again those final words were repeated—“all your mother has.” Harper awoke with a start, when his father stumbled and fell, pitching them both forward towards the ground.

He grabbed wildly at a branch and only barely managed to save himself. He hoped that he hadn’t cried out.

He re-established himself in the heart of the tree and sat there pondering over his dream. “All your mother has…” his father had said—but Harper knew that his mother had escaped from that, and that now she had something else which had taken his place.

Toward morning a policeman walked along, boldly and noisily below him, singing under his breath.

Just before it began to be light beyond the rooftops Harper fell asleep again. This time he awoke before falling, however. He took a long slow breath. The morning air was cool and a breeze flurried the leaves and began to waken the other tree residents: squirrels and birds and chipmunks and mice. Soon, all about him there was action, which he did not disturb (his fellow dwellers obviously having investigated his presence in the night and endorsed it) for they passed in and out of their home as though it was the most natural thing in the world to have a representative of the human species in their treetop midst.

Harper began to wonder if his plan had worked. Of course, not until Bertha discovered his absence would any reaction be set in motion. He regretted having to incorporate her despair with his mother’s, but he had to obtain some sort of notice and he felt that running away, even so near at hand, must bring some sort of attention to himself from his mother.

He only hoped that Bertha would hesitate for an hour or so before reporting his absence to the police. What he hoped for was that his mother would call out for him, find him gone and then take his absence into account and ask to have him back.

At what he judged to be about eight o’clock he climbed out of the tree and went to Miss Kennedy’s front door.

He rang the bell.

In a moment she appeared carrying Ming Toy in her arms, still dressed in the Victorian wrapper as though she had not even retired following their conversation of yesterday afternoon.

“Well, did you fallout?”

“No, m’am.”

“Did you sleep?”

“Not much m’am. Only for a moment.”

“Well—you come in and we’ll have a nice big breakfast.”