Dotty’s Suitcase (4 page)

“How exciting!” Mary Beth said, her cheeks red, her eyes sparkling. “I never knew anything like this to happen around these parts. It's like living in a big city, Chicago or New York. That old Village Café will be crammed with folks talking about this tomorrow, you can bet your bottom dollar.”

“This town will never be the same,” Laura predicted. “This robbery will set this town on its ear for the next six months, if not longer, you mark my words.”

“I bet those old robbers are lickety-splitting down the road right this minute at about a hundred miles an hour,” Dotty said.

“A boy in my class is the son of the president of that bank,” Laura said. “He's not stuck up or anything. But his father is the president of that bank. Imagine!”

“I bet they're counting that money and chuckling, laughing enough to split their sides,” Dotty went on, “telling each other how smart they were. I bet they're planning on how they're going to spend it. If I had that much money,” she said dreamily, “I know what I'd buy, first crack out of the barrel.”

“
I'd
buy that wedding gown on the cover of the magazine,” Laura said firmly.

“And
I'd
buy the lace veil the color of cream,” said Mary Beth. “It'd be perfect with my coloring.”

Dotty put her chin on her hands and said nothing. But later, much later, she remembered their conversation and smiled ruefully to herself.

“Well, Dorothea,” Mr. Fickett said, after the older girls had gone off to wash their hair and to decide whether creamed chicken or filet of beef would be better wedding fare. “Come here, Dotty, and sit by me,” he said. “If you had all that money, what would you buy with it?”

He passed his hand over her hair, just grazing her face. All his daughters were dear to Dan Fickett, but somehow Dotty, his little one, reminded him so of his dear wife that every time he looked at her the tenderness rose in him, and the pain, and he longed to smooth her hair and pet her and tell her how much he loved her, but the words wouldn't come. He was not a man to express his feelings. After he'd turned seven, his own father had never again kissed him, and his mother had kissed him only when he got married and left home. And then only a peck on the cheek.

“Well, first,” said Dotty, leaning against her father's side, making a warm spot there, tasting her words, “first, if I had that money, I would buy me a suitcase.” She kept her head down as she said this, because somehow it seemed a shameful admission that with all those dollars in her hand she wanted such a small thing. “A suitcase with a brass lock and D. F. F. on it so everyone would know it was mine. No one else's, mine.”

“Yes.” Her father agreed. “I can see that would be a fine thing, to have a suitcase of one's own.”

“Even if I don't go anywhere,” Dotty said, raising her head to look at him, “it wouldn't matter. I'd have it waiting in case I ever did go someplace. I'd put it under my bed,” she told her father, “and I'd take it out and look at it every night before I went to sleep, and keep it polished so I could see my face in it.” She sighed and put her head against her father's cheek. “And if I can't have a suitcase,” she whispered into his ear, “I'd like to be pretty.”

Mr. Fickett closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the chair. He cleared his throat, and after a minute he opened his eyes and looked at her, wordless. She put up her hand and stroked his cheek.

“But a suitcase is my first choice,” she said.

CHAPTER 6

In the night Mr. Kimball's pigs woke dotty with their yelling. She lay with her hands behind her head and thought about the sound of the door closing in the empty house. If Olive had been there, she would've barged in, hollering, “Who's there?”, her red hair standing up as if charged with electricity, eyes flashing, fists clenched. Olive knew no fear. Instead, Olive lay tidily asleep in her four-poster bed over in Boonville, and neither the sound of pigs nor of doors closing disturbed her dreams.

You write me, you old Olive. You better. I know a stamp costs three cents. But you write me.

The pigs kept up their squealing. That meant a blizzard was on its way. Uncle Tom said that and he was usually right. Uncle Tom was an authority on all of nature's weather signals. Pigs making a racket meant a blizzard, spider webs shining in the sunset meant a frost, frogs croaking in the rain meant warm, dry weather. Lots more.

Suppose the bank robber was hiding down cellar. Suppose he'd snuck in while Dotty was seeing Aunt Martha home. Most likely he was sitting down there, filling his stomach with last summer's preserves. Dotty got so mad at the thought that she turned back the covers and stuck out her foot. She'd fix him. It was cold out there. She dropped back to think things over and was asleep before her head hit the pillow.

Early next day, before the rest were awake, she crept to the cellar door and listened. There was no one there. She felt it in her bones. Just as well. She didn't feel much like doing battle. Funny how the morning took care of a lot of things. On her way to the bathroom she saw her father sitting on the edge of his bed, putting something inside his shoe. His shoulders were bent and tired looking, even this early in the day. Poor Daddy. There had never been a time in Dotty's memory when he hadn't been worried about money. The depression touched everyone, and although Mr. Roosevelt was President and lots of folks, except rich ones, had faith in him, he was only a man, not a miracle worker. Dotty never missed one of his fireside chats. The entire family huddled around the radio as if it were a huge, bright fire, and listened eagerly to the sound of his beautiful, persuasive voice, telling Americans that things were bound to get better. He sounded so vigorous and hopeful, so confident and sure of himself that just listening to him made her feel better. Mr. Fickett looked ten years younger while listening to Franklin Roosevelt tell how he was going to put the nation back on its feet. It was only after the radio had been turned off that his face fell into its familiar patterns.

Dotty sighed deeply, thinking about money and how too little of it wore people down and out. She couldn't imagine what it would be like to have enough money or—praise be!—too much. If there was such a thing.

Her father raised his head and looked at her, startled.

“I didn't know you were awake,” he said.

“What're you doing?” She watched while he put on one shoe and tied it. Then he picked up the other one and she saw the hole in the sole. She put her finger through the hole, wiggling it and admiring the look of her fingernails since she'd given up biting them.

“Why don't you buy a new pair?” she asked.

He put out his hand and she gave him back his shoe. “Haven't had time,” he said. “There,” and he fitted the piece of newspaper he'd been folding over and over until it was nice and thick, into the hole, covering it completely so it might never have been. If she hadn't seen it.

“That ought to hold me for a while. When you're finished in the bathroom, Dotty,” her father said, “wake the girls if they're not up, will you?” He smiled at her, and in the new light of morning he looked, for a minute, quite young, almost the way he did in the picture on his bureau taken with Dotty's mother on their wedding day.

There was nothing Dotty liked better than waking her sisters. Especially Mary Beth. More than anything else in the world, Mary Beth hated to wake up. She scrooched down under the covers, moaning, “Five more minutes. Only five. That's all I ask.” Every day it was the same. When Mary Beth married her millionaire, she said she'd sleep as late as she liked, seven days a week. Laura, on the other hand, snapped open her eyes and sat up in bed, her hair as neat as if she'd slept sitting up. Laura was ready to spring from bed to attack the day.

“Rise and shine!” Dotty shouted.

Laura raised her head. “I wish you wouldn't say the same thing every morning,” she said. “I can't bear it.”

Dotty retreated, but not far. “Rise and shine!” she shouted again. Mary Beth started her moaning and Laura threw a heavy object, which just missed Dotty's ear. Probably a math book. That's what they usually threw. They never hit her, Dotty thought with satisfaction, but it was kind of tough on the book.

Jud's face was pushing against the glass in the door when Dotty got downstairs. Her father was drinking tea and eating a piece of toast and staring into space, not noticing Jud.

“Wait outside!” Dotty opened the door a crack and hissed. “We haven't even started breakfast yet.” Jud came in anyway. He sat down opposite Mr. Fickett and stared at the toast, running his tongue over his lips.

“You hear about the bank robbery?” he finally said.

“What?” Mr. Fickett pulled his thoughts back from where they'd been. “Oh, yes. Yes. Terrible. I hope they catch them today.”

The girls came clattering down. Their father put on his hat and absentmindedly kissed his daughters, one, two, three. He almost kissed Jud, too, but Jud ducked just in time. This set Laura and Mary Beth to giggling so hard they bent over, clutching their stomachs. “Oh, oh, I'm going to be sick!” Laura cried.

“What's so funny?” Jud said, frowning. There was one piece of toast left on the plate, decorated with a smidgen of Aunt Martha's peach jam, which had taken many a prize at the state fair. He let his fingers wander toward the plate. No one was looking at him.

He almost had it. “No!” Dotty's hand came crashing down. “You're supposed to eat breakfast in your own house.”

“I wasn't doing anything.” Jud's face assumed a look of innocence. “My brother says he would've let those robbers have it if he'd been in that bank,” Jud boasted, changing the subject. “He woulda crashed their heads against the wall, he said, and knocked 'em out.”

“You want an apple or an orange?” Laura asked Dotty. It was Laura's week to make the lunches.

“Both.”

“One or the other.” She threw a spotted apple into Dotty's bag, along with a scalloped-edged cookie that looked as if somebody had gotten to it first. “Don't forget to stop off at Aunt Martha's. She probably has some shopping she wants you to do on your way home.”

“Come on, let's go.” Dotty dragged her hat down to her eyebrows and said good-bye to the girls.

Silently Dotty and Jud climbed the stone wall and made for Aunt Martha's.

Uncle Tom met them at the door, suspenders dangling, one side of his face smooth and clean, the other covered with shaving cream.

“Hear the pigs last night?” he asked. “Blizzard's coming. Nothing like '88, I'll wager, but a blizzard nevertheless. Why, in '88 the drifts were so high they swallowed up a four-story building over in Earlville. Whole herds of cattle froze standing up and they didn't even find 'em until the thaw. Now,
that
was a blizzard.”

Last time she'd heard that tale, it'd been a three-story building over in Oriskany Falls, and Aunt Martha had said, “Tom!” the way she did when Uncle Tom was stretching the truth.

“On your way home, Dotty,” Aunt Martha cut in, “will you pick me up a loaf of bread—make sure it's fresh—a pound of hamburger, and a quart of milk?” She handed Dotty thirty-five cents. “And make sure you count your change before you leave the store. You got to watch him. You don't count it while you're in the store, he'll say you must've dropped some on the road. I know him. You got to keep a sharp eye on him.”

“Yes, Aunt Martha.”

“And tell him last time the meat was too fatty. When I pay fifteen cents a pound for hamburger, I expect it to be lean.”

Dotty pocketed the money and waited for further instructions. Apparently her aunt was finished telling her what to do and not do. Uncle Tom shaved the other side of his face, patted it dry, and saw them to the door. On the horizon the clouds were building themselves into a high wall, and the wind was from the northwest.

“Bundle up good,” he said. “And keep an eye out for the bank robbers. Radio this morning said they're still out there, preying on us innocent citizens. Got to watch for them. It's a big black car they're driving. Watch for it.”

“Let's go,” Jud muttered.

They hadn't gotten far, only to Kimball's orchard, where they'd picked all the apples they could eat or carry only a few months before, when Dotty clapped her hand to her head and said, “Sweet Jesus!”

“My ma says it's bad to swear,” Jud said piously.

Dotty made a grab for him, but he leaped away in time.

“You know what?” she shouted. “He doesn't have money for his own shoes. That's why he's got to fit paper in the holes! Sweet Jesus!” she said again.

Jud turned around to see who she was talking to. There were just the two of them.

Dotty took off her mitten and with her newly long fingernails she pinched her own cheek so hard she almost cried out. She wanted to punish herself for having been so stupid about her father's shoe.

“Don't!” Jud protested, glad it was her cheek and not his. “It's bleeding.”

“Is it? Good. I deserve to bleed.” Dotty put the mitten back on, and they walked the rest of the way in silence.

CHAPTER 7

Dotty skidded into her seat minutes after the bell had rung, and Mrs. Murray hollered at her for being late. Bad enough but only the beginning.

“Hello,” Janice Bailey said sweetly from the next desk.

“What are
you
doing here?” Dotty said. She felt her face go sour, like milk that's been left too long in the sun. Janice always had that effect on her.

Janice ran her tongue over her teeth and treated Dotty to one of her dazzling smiles. “My mother wrote a note to Mrs. Murray saying I had to sit nearer the blackboard on account of my eyes,” she said. Janice's two front teeth got in each other's way and gave her a slight lisp, which she thought was adorable. As a matter of fact, she thought everything about herself was adorable.