Hippomobile! (11 page)

“This really could be it.”

“Heck, could be.”

“It ain't no hairpin, that's for sure.”

“Just think if that hippomobile gets up 'n' runnin' again.”

“Sure would be somethin', wouldn't it?”

“Sure would.”

“Heck, maybe it really could save Mabel's.”

“Would be nice. Been eatin' here my livelong days, after all.”

“Don't I knows it.”

“Sure would hate to see Mabel's go.”

“If Mabel's goes, so does Wymore.”

“Can't let that happen.”

“We just need more people comin' to town, is what we need.”

“The more people come, the more people'll eat at Mabel's.”

“We done know that much. That's what them kids was talkin' about yesterday.”

“I guess they was, wasn't they?”

“Maybe we just wasn't listenin' that good.”

“Well, then, listen now. 'Cause if we're fixin' the hippomobile, why not fix up Wymore with it?”

“Now we're thinkin'!”

“Don't know about you, but I been thinkin' for over seventy years now.”

“I for one wouldn't mind takin' a wet rag to them clunkers out there. Put some shine back in 'em.”

“I guess I could pump up a tire or two.”

“And how about fixin' the sign up on the Any while we're at it? Have it spell out ‘Stanley' again?”

“I still got the
T
somewheres.”

“I got the
L
. Little rusty. But I gots it.”

And so on and so on. They were getting so excited that they didn't even tell us not to slurp our black cows. All it had taken was some dogged determination and a little old dingsbums. If indeed that's what it was. We were still waiting impatient for Pops to call.

Then sudden as a rooster crow, the pay phone on the wall rang, and everyone at Mabel's hushed as though a preacher just stood up. We left our booth fast as jackrabbits and ran to the phone and climbed up on a chair and picked it up and said, “Mabel's Café. How may we help you?”

 

 

 

 

“
SO, YOU TURKEYS
, what'd you find?”

“Well, we found somethin',” we said. “But it's pretty weird-lookin'.”

“Weird? How weird?”

“Hold on,” we said.

We asked for the dingsbums, and our grandparents started passing it down from one grandma and grandpa to the next like they were playing hot potato. Then it got to Grandma Ida, and she brought it over to us high on a tray like she was serving a black-and-blue
¹
on a silver platter.

“Okay, we're lookin' at it,” we told Pops.

“Then lay it on me.”

We laid it on him best we could and told him what we thought it kinda resembled like.

And Pops just said back to us, “A cross between a caterpillar, a corkscrew, and a fishing hook? You sure about that?”

“Well . . .”

So Pops put a number of questions to us, like how much we thought it weighed, and if it was heavier on one end than it was on the other, and what color it was, and if it looked like it was put together with different kinds of metal, and a host of other questions that didn't make no sense to us.

Finally Pops had to admit, “I can't be for sure if that's the dingsbums we're lookin' for or not.”

That made our hearts sink like stones.

Pops must've heard them go
plop
, too, because he said, “Now, just hold on a sec.”

So we held on and listened to Pops scratching his beard and making other thinking kinds of noises. And while he did that, we looked at all the stuff people'd scribbled there on the wall next to the phone over the years. There was lots of three-digit telephone numbers, and sometimes a name to go with it, like Cecilia or Harvey. And somebody wrote “By milk.” There was also some hearts there too, with initials in them and an arrow going through. But what we liked most was the train times scribbled there, like “Arr. 8:04”
²
and “Arr. 2:37” and one in military time that said “Dep. 17:01.”
³
And looking at them train times like that, all smeared and fading out, tickled our traveling bones something awful.

Pops pulled us back from our thoughts. “You turkeys still there?”

We said we were.

“Ain't tomorrow Train Day?” Pops asked.

And we said, “Yeah.”

“Then, I tell you what. I'll do some callin' around and see if I can't get that train to stop in town and have the engineer pick up what you found and bring it on down the line to where Mr. Buzzard can pick it up. And then I'll ask Mr. Buzzard to deliver it out to Dixie's.
⁴
And from there a buddy of mine'll truck it out my way so I can have a good look-see at it with my own two eyes. And if I reckon it's the dingsbums we need to get that hippomobile on its feet again, then I'll see about making a pit stop through town so I can fix her up. How's that sound?”

And we said, “Better than a root beer float!”

Then Pops said, “Good deal.”

We were about to hang up, but somehow that “Dep. 17:01” was still gnawing on us hard. And so we said, “Hey, Pops?”

“Hey, what?”

“We've got even a better idea . . .”

 

 

 

 

THE COAL TRAIN PASSED
through town at exactly 9:54 a.m. unless it was late like always. From our window that morning, we saw our grandmas already bustling like bees back and forth across the square. They had tablecloths draped over their arms and were carrying trays topped with party hats and napkins folded into pyramids and arrows and cones and rosebuds and candlesticks.
¹
Every week they somehow managed to decorate everything together in just the right way so as to make things look festive as fireworks.

We hurried and changed into our clothes and licked our hair down into place and rubbed the remaining sand out of our eyes and gave our teeth a good finger polish.
²
Then we grabbed our school bag that was waiting for us right by the door and left our room like we had wings.

Mabel's didn't serve food on Train Day since we all ate a picnic over at the train station. The café got turned over to whatever grandmas were in charge of the cooking that week, and that gave Grandma Mabel and Grandma Ida some well-deserved time off sitting on their backsides. Everybody agreed that it was the least we could do to repay them for the hard work they did for us all week long. However, we still stopped by Mabel's to pick up our birdseed
³
because even birdseed was something special on Train Day. It was always a whole tray of life preservers
⁴
spread out up on the lunch counter for you to pick and choose.

Mabel's was empty when we walked in, and the lights were off, and the chairs were all up on the tables. We guessed that meant ain't no one had started preparing the picnic food yet. You couldn't hear nothing but a fly or two against a windowpane. It always shivered us like a winter day to see Mabel's all deserted like that, and even more so that morning.

“If our plan doesn't work, Jimmy James, Mabel's is gonna look like this all the time.”

“Mabel's and Wymore, too.”

We didn't feel like spending any extra time in there. We just went straight up to the counter and grabbed off our two life preservers. They were easy to spot because they were the ones covered in rainbow sprinkles and stuck on a stick. Then we returned back outside quicker than you can say “You betcha.”

We caught up with Grandpa Homer and Grandpa Virgil, who were on their way over to the train station. Grandpa Homer was tapping along with his long white cane, and Grandpa Virgil had his box of teeth
⁵
strapped over his shoulder because him and Grandpa Homer were responsible for the day's musical entertainment. That always consisted of old barbershop standards and the traditional Wymore Train Day ballad they thought up all by themselves. Plus they had on those funny-looking singing hats we done described you about.

“You two must be right anxious,” Grandpa Homer said.

And we told him we were.

“You ain't forgot the dingsbums, I hope,” Grandpa Virgil said.

We showed him our school bag with the billy goat decal on it, which is our school mascot. “Right in here,” we said. Inside our school bag was our school box, and inside our school box was the dingsbums, or at least what we hoped was the dingsbums. We had it wrapped up in a little piece of sheepskin we once brought home from the state fair and which was the softest thing we owned.
⁶

Our railroad station wasn't no Grand Central, that's for sure. It was just a one-story brick building that didn't look any different than any other brick building in Wymore. There wasn't a line of yellow cabs honking out in front, and there wasn't any fancy-looking people fighting to get in them. Alls there was, was some buffalo grass growing up through the cracks in the blacktop and switch grass sprouting high as the roof and attracting butterflies.

We walked around the building and were as struck as a lightning rod to find our grandmas already setting out the plates and bowls of vittles, seeing as how we'd just licked our donut sticks clean and stuck them in our back pockets. There was everything and more laid out on the tables because our grandmas always made sure there was something for everyone. We spotted corn on the cob piled high as haystacks, and big bowls of steaming whistleberries accompanied by chunks of bacon, and tube steaks
⁷
floating like logs in hot water, and racks of first ladies
⁸
all smothered in homemade BBQ sauce, and leaning towers of hockey pucks,
⁹
and icebergs of potato salad, and giant pickles the size of submarines, and all sorts of other with-its. Then there was fly cake
¹⁰
and Georgia pie
¹¹
and Magoo.
¹²
Generally you could tell what we ate at Train Day just by looking at the stains on our shirts afterward.

“Why we eatin' so early?” we asked, and each nabbed a bacon bit out of the pot. The picnic usually didn't get under way until the train went by and Grandpa Homer and Grandpa Virgil had sung their ballad. That's just how the tradition was set up, and traditions die hard in places like Wymore.

And our grandmas told us, “'Cause you ain't gonna be here once the freight passes. Or did you forget?”

Forget? How could we have? Because that's what was making this Train Day even more special than normal. Remember when we told Pops we had an even better idea? Well, our idea wasn't just better—it was better than butter. We asked if instead of just handing off our school box to the train engineer and waving “oh revwah,”
¹³
why couldn't we hop on and ride with it for a spell?

And Pops said, “Ooh lah lah!”—which means something like “Oh, boy.” And then he said, “We just better not tell Mom about this until you're back home.”

And we said, “It's a deal!”

So that's why we were sitting down early to fill our shirts. One by one, our grandmas and grandpas joined us at the center table. But we didn't want to start grubbing until Grandpa Homer and Grandpa Virgil performed their Train Day ballad. Grandpa Virgil broke out his box of teeth, and him and Grandpa Homer took their seats at the edge of the long picnic bench, right where everybody could see them good. We all sat at attention while Grandpa Virgil pulled and squeezed his accordion and Grandpa Homer warbled with affection. And soon we all began singing along:

 

Train Day comes each week at ten

Unless the train runs late
.

Warn't never a town like Wymore is

That honors cargo freight
.