Ginger Pye (22 page)

that Martin Boombernickles was postponed indefinitely—perhaps she would be a better finder of Ginger if she joined up and learned lore of different sorts. And she, too, went to sleep.

Rachel planned to go to the brick lot with Addie Egan. But Addie also had the measles as she found out the next afternoon when she whistled for her. This made Rachel feel very lonesome and as though she were the only one in the world without measles. Mama saw how lonesome she felt and gave her two pennies to spend, one for her and one for Jerry.

"What do you want?" Rachel called up the stairs to Jerry.

"A yo-yo," said Jerry. "They have them in that penny shop behind the fields, behind the old brick lot."

"That's where I was going anyway," said Rachel. Jerry needn't think she had forgotten about the meteors or anything. Now, she had so many purposes, her head swam. One to look for Ginger in the fields and new houses. Two, to examine the meteors, and make sure they were still there. Three, to spend the pennies. One, two, three. Supposing she should be the one to find Ginger all by herself? And bring him home to Jerry? And Jerry should suddenly get well of the measles, the measles falling off him like little pink sugar pellets? He would be so happy, and there would be him and her and Ginger again, as there used to be. And Gracie, too.

It was such a bright sparkling day anything might happen. She might pick some tall violets also by a little brook. Her head spun weaving these lovely plans and she ran all the way over to New Dollar Street. This was really quite a long run and she arrived at the old brick lot hot, panting, and out of breath.

The meteors were still there and she climbed up on one to rest and consider. These were truly wonderful big meteors, square chunks of red-purple rock. It was astonishing to think that two pieces of star would break off in such neat, perfect rectangular-shaped blocks and land right here side by side in the old brick lot. It was lucky they had not landed on the yellow house next door, where once the Moffats had lived.

Some grown-ups had the idea these rocks were not meteors at all, but were parts of the foundation of the huge brick manor house that used to stand in this lot. But all the children knew better than that. They knew the rocks were meteors, parts of star, that had come shooting through the air and landed here. It was surprising a fence had not been put around the meteors, as around Judges Cave. Souvenir hunters might begin chipping them all away.

Rachel examined the meteors all over to see if she could find a little piece of mica for Jerry. She did find a tiny speck shining in the sun and she chipped this off and put it in her pocket for him. She didn't think she was in a class with souvenir hunters who would chip away the whole thing, for mica was something extra that was added, not the meteors themselves. It was Rachel's intention to bring home plenty of treasures to Jerry. She found an interesting rock and put it in her pocket, hoping it was quartz. She still didn't know whether a rock
was a quartz or not. But then, she was not going to be a rock man; she was going to be a bird man and help Papa. She was already a member of the Audubon Bird Society and she always wore her button. She had it on now.

In the brick lot and beyond, in the broad sunny fields, a deceptive quiet prevailed. The quiet was of the sun and the sky. It was not a field quiet for crickets and grasshoppers were making a racket and jumping all over the place. Rachel sat on her meteor listening to the sounds of the insects and turning her two Indian pennies over and over in her moist palm.

Though it was only May it was as hot as the hot height of summer. The fields with their multitude of restless insects stretched far and wide. They were carpeted with tall field grass which later on would, she knew, reach above her waist. Sturdy field flowers, Indian pipe, star grass, and sour grass, with butter-and-eggs, daisies, and even buttercups beginning to blossom, made a varied pattern.

Rachel jumped off her meteor and wandered unevenly across the flashing sunny field that led eventually to the toy store. She would have liked to stop and gather an enormous bouquet for Mama, but gathering a big bouquet was not in the one, two, three errands she had for today.

Ordinarily when she and Jerry came over to this field, they picked such big bunches of flowers they could hardly hold on to them. They had to use both fists. They couldn't ever put the bouquets down on the ground. If they did, no matter how carefully they had laid them there, though at first they might stay in a fine firm bunch, suddenly they would sag and spread out like jackstraws and it was almost impossible to gather them up again.

She found the new street and the new houses being built, but the houses were still in the skeleton stage and there seemed no place where Ginger would be likely to be concealed, either in the fields or the new houses. So two of her errands were done—seeing that the meteors were still here^ they were; seeing whether there was any sign of an imprisoned Ginger, there wasn't. Now she had only to cross another wide sunny field, go through a dense little thicket, cross a little brook, and she would come out on the street where the penny shop was.

As she sauntered along she listened to the sounds, the hot music of the insects, the low murmur of a small buckle shop in the distance. She hoped she would not hear the whistle. There was a strange sort of whistle that could be heard in this lot. It started low and worked itself up to a screaming high note in a series of gasps. It was a horrible sound. "What
is it, do you suppose?" she once asked Addie Egan who happened to be with her, looking for things—empty cigarette boxes, tinfoil, red glass, and treasures in general. "It's the Gypsies at five o'clock," said Addie.

That was all Addie said and she said it in so positive a manner that Rachel would not have dreamed of asking for more information. "Oh, of course," said Rachel. After all, she had been wrong and Addie had been right about vilyun being villun. Rachel decided the whistle was a signal for all the Gypsies all over the world to get together around the campfire for their pot of stew. Possibly they gathered in this lot in the maple grove. One thing Rachel did not want was to be in this field all by herself at five o'clock for the stew gathering, though the spectacle would be interesting.

Then, suddenly, Rachel began to think about all the tramps. And suddenly, the sun having gone under a cloud, instead of the familiar fields of daytime in which she played and picked flowers, the fields had become the perilous fields of nighttime. It would have pleased Rachel simply to go back home, or at least go back to the main streets and get to the penny shop the safe and other way. However, she had come this far, the whistle had not
blown, it was not five o'clock, it was not nighttime, the sun had come out from under the cloud, what was the sense of going back?

When she and Jerry and, sometimes, Uncle Bennie sat on their little upper veranda at home on Beam's Place, and looked across the street to their own field, watching twilight inch across it, every man they saw there was a terrible tramp. A terrible tramp with his sacks and burlap bags. But, Rachel reassured herself now, plucking a piece of sour grass and chewing it, these were not the evening fields of tramps and burlap bags, these were the sunny fields of daytime. Moreover, all tramps are not bad, she reminded herself happily as she trudged across the field.

When a tramp knocked at the back door Mama always gave him a bowl of soup, a cup of coffee and a bun, or whatever she happened to have on hand, even apple pie. These tramps usually came in the morning when Rachel and Jerry were at school. However, once one came on a Saturday morning and Mama gave this tramp a plate of steaming corn beef and cabbage. "My, he went for that!" said Mama happily, for Mama, like Gramma, loved to see people eat. "He cleaned the plate," she said with satisfaction.

Mama said the tramps had her door marked, so many of them came and asked for a cup of coffee. Rachel was familiar with marks on doors from reading
The Tinder Box.
She often studied their back door for this secret mark the tramps had placed there but she could not find it.

"Oh, it's invisible," her mother said. "The tramps have a secret way of passing the news on to one another as to who has a kind heart and will give them a bite and not sick the dog on them. It goes way back in my family," she said, "never to turn a hungry person away from the door."

"Do the tramps have Gramma marked too?" asked Rachel.

"Gramma, too," said Mama. And she would then tell the story about the poor old fellow in New York, not that he had come to their door exactly.

It happened that one night when Mama and her family were living for a time right in the heart of New York City, they had an extra pork chop for dinner. No one wanted it. Everyone had had enough to eat. The chop was brown and crisp and fresh and it was a pity not to have it eaten up immediately while it was so good. That was what they thought.

So Mama—this all happened just a few years before she met Papa on the escalator—put the chop
on a clean paper napkin and carried it downstairs and laid it carefully on the top of the ash can. "They pick up your ashes and garbage every day in New York," Mama explained. "You have these big cans to put your rubbish in and by morning, presto, your rubbish has been removed. Not like this town where you have to pay for everything."

Then Mama had gone back upstairs and she and her Mama, that is Gramma, had watched from the window. Presently along there came a poor old man. Did he brighten up when he saw this beautiful chop! And he didn't have to go rummaging through the garbage for it either. There it lay, nice and clean and still warm, mind you, right on top of the ashes. Even so, he thought there must be a catch to it and he took it to the lamplight and examined every inch of it and sniffed it. It smelled so good and then, did he eat it!

Every time Rachel ate a pork chop she thought about the one the poor old fellow had had that he hadn't had to rummage through the garbage for, and she wondered if hers tasted as good. It seemed to her that his was the best pork chop there ever was, the way it was told.

Those tramps, the ones who came to the back door for a cup of coffee and the pork-chop tramp, happened to be good ones. But there were bad ones too, her pounding heart reminded her as she entered the dark woods, leaving the sunny fields behind.

The woods were hushed, but already she could hear the tinkling music of the swift and clear little brook at the end of them. After the sunshine it seemed very dark in the woods but Rachel did not run because running, she cautioned herself, makes you scared. And she picked her way quickly over the roots and rocks that covered the path.

But then, had thinking about tramps made a tramp appear? Just as thinking about shooting stars sometimes made a shooting star appear, or a four leaf clover in a patch of threes? Anyway, there was a tramp lying under a tree on the side of the path, halfway in the thick bushes, his hat over his eyes.

Rachel stopped short. Was he asleep? She moved on quickly but softly, hoping he was really asleep and not merely pretending in order to grab her and put her in the burlap bag his head was resting on. She hoped, too, he was one of the good sort of tramp who knew about the mark on her back door and on Gramma's door, and how the marks went way back in her family, probably to Great-Gramma. And that here he was, this good sort of tramp, just taking a little nap.

As Rachel tiptoed past the sleeping tramp she tried not to think of the burlap-bag tramps about whom she and Jerry made up spooky stories. She tried to think only of the pork-chop tramp. Nevertheless her heart did pound and once she was well
past him she broke into a wild run, leaping across the brook without stepping on the rock steps, and she did not stop running until she came out of the woods into the bright sunshine beside the little penny shop.

Then she thought, that tramp back there might not have been a good sort of tramp or a bad sort of tramp either. He might have been the mysterious footstepper, the unsavory character. Here she might have had a chance to get a clue about Ginger and what had she done? She had run. What color had this tramp's hat been? She had been too frightened to notice. She could tiptoe back and see what color the tramp's hat was, that was all. She could stand on the safe side of the brook, this side, and just look at his hat that was pulled down on his face so he could sleep.