Hippomobile! (15 page)

“And Thomas Jefferson sailed on the boat stain?”

“Bingo! People's always saying he was the smart one of the bunch.”

That's when we started having fun with it. We sat James Madison down in our booth and had him order a groundhog,
¹
and James Monroe served him one slathered with yucky relish. John Quincy Adams wasn't hungry and went to the library to read
Lectures on the True, the Beautiful, and the Good
, while Andrew Jackson just sat there throwing a hissy fit about the weather report. The weatherman on the TV was Martin Van Buren, and he was saying, “Looks like it's gonna be another scorcher,” and that was why William Henry Harrison was up at the lunch counter hogging the fan. And before we knew it, we were already up to nine presidents!

“Who taught you this trick, Grandpa Chester?” we asked.

And he said, “Read about it in some book long time back. Some kinda encyclopedia or somethin'. Funny, but can't seem to remember the title just now.”

We looked at each other and knew what we were thinking.
²

“Well, I guess I'll be gettin' back to my ball game,” Grandpa Chester said with a wink, and stuck his transistor radio up against his ear. And we were certain we heard bat strike ball and the crowd roar.

 

 

 

 

WE GRABBED OUR CLIPBOARD
and made another round through town. Several clunkers were reflecting the sunlight for the first time in years, and near half the tires were still holding air. Grandma Elsie had a garbage pail full of weeds, and even though Grandpa Bert was brown with dust, the sidewalks looked as clean as a dish. A poster in the appliance store window read
SUMMER SALE
! The barbershop pole was turning sometimes, to the tune of an awful squeak, and up on the hotel roof we saw our grandpas nailing up the sign. The letters looked good now. The only problem was a couple of them were in the wrong place. We yelled, but our grandpas must've had their hearing aids unplugged. And that's how our hotel came to be called the Slantey.

Being beautificationists kept us busy till the shadows grew long. But in between things, we still had the chance to work on our presidents some. Millard Fillmore became the bubble dancer
¹
with a sink full of pots and pans to waltz with, and Franklin Pierce was at the prep table plucking a chicken.
²
And by dot nine o'clock that night when Mom called, we were already down to Rutherford B. Hayes and James A. Garfield, two guys we never could've remembered otherwise. Now Rutherford was studying a book called
How to Win at Checkers
while Garfield kept showing off the new anchor tattoo he had on his left bicep.

We ran our story by Mom, and she said, “Sounds like you had a good talk with Grandpa Chester.”

And we asked her, “He ever tell you about the Flying Dutchman?”

She said, “Honus Wagner? Sure. He got hit by a pitch once in the 1917 season. But I couldn't tell you where exactly.”

After we got off the phone with Mom, we still weren't in the mood for sleeping, even though we were yawning like we were getting paid for it. So we went over to our window and breathed in deep against the screen and worked on our story a little more.
³

“Hey, look at that, Jimmy James.”

“What?”

“Streetlight's flickerin'.”
⁴

“Sure is. We better get it fixed.”

“Otherwise them June bugs won't have no place to congregate at.”

“Shoot, they can fly off to McFall. They got more than enough lights up there.”

“That's true.”

“But I'll tell you one thing, Stella.”

“What's that, Jimmy James?”

“We ain't goin' with 'em.”

 

 

 

 

EARLY NEXT MORNING
a deep and long horn blast rattled the windows. And although the sun hadn't as yet been able to pry our eyelids open, that horn sure did. We knew right away that it was Pops's horn, and that got us moving faster than a drumroll.

We threw back our sheets and ran to the window just in time to see his big rig pull into the square and make that big sigh noise it always did when it came to a full stop. Then Pops's door opened, and we watched him climb down all stiff and sore at the back and then stand in the dusty square and stretch his arms out and scratch his beard and spit out a seed of some kind into the dirt. We're pretty sure Pops is the only trucker who ever wore a beret.

The next big surprise was that the other door opened, and there was Mom. She looked kinda dizzy standing way up there, so Pops went around to help her out and lifted her down with one arm and placed her gently as a feather on the ground. Then he reached back up into the cab and pulled out a little box with a bunch of stickers stuck all over it, and we knew right then and there that it was our school box.

We didn't bother none with our hair, and we didn't care about our faces, and we didn't give a hoot about what kinda crud might be stuck behind our ears. We just dashed clean out of our room still in our PJs and up the hall and down the stairs and through the lobby and out the door of the hotel
¹
and into the sun and across the square and right into Mom's and Pops's waiting arms. Everybody smothered everybody else in hugs so much until none of us could breathe anymore and we had to come up for air.

The first thing we said was, “Show us the dingsbums!”

Pops said, “Dingsbums? What in the heck's a dingsbums?” He jiggled our school box up above his head just to make us squirm some.

But that was all right because we already knew what it looked like. Besides, we had lots to show them. And as we made our way over to Mabel's, we kept pointing at all the changes that had taken place in town under our supervision, and Mom and Pops couldn't stop marveling at how nice the square looked.

Mom said, “What a difference a day makes . . .” Actually she sung it, and her voice sparkled like honey.

And we said, “Hey, that's one of them songs Grandpa Homer and Grandpa Virgil sings!”

Then Pops picked up the tune and sung the next line. And we shouted, “Aww, Pops!” and covered our ears.

Pops cleared his throat and said, “Guess my singing days is over.”

And Mom said, “I hadn't realized they ever started!”

Once we got to Mabel's, Pops grabbed the screen door and jerked hard on it until it opened and said, “On tray voo!”
²
It sure was great to be all together again.

It must've still been early because there wasn't no one else in the diner, and Grandma Ida was still busy laying place mats. Mom and Pops went to thank her kindly for looking after us all week, and we saved their spots for them at our booth and couldn't sit close enough to make up for all the lost time.

Grandma Ida followed right up with two cups of joe for Mom and Pops and a large glass of moo juice
³
for each of us. “What kinda birdseed can I get y'all this morning?” she asked.

Mom ordered an Adam and Eve on a raft,
⁴
and Pops went for a bowl of red, heavy on the breath
⁵
because that's just the type of thing he likes eating in the morning. We asked for checkerboards with extra axle grease.
⁶

Then Pops said, “Ain't you two turkeys gonna have a look?”

He was talking about our school box, which was sitting right in the middle of the table. We reached over and opened it up. There was our dingsbums—along with about ten other dingsbumses mixed in with it. We didn't know what that was supposed to mean.

Pops said, “Spark plugs! Just like I thought. So I picked up a few more of 'em on my way into town. I reckon one of 'em's gonna get that hippomobile up and runnin'.”

“You mean you can just buy a dingsbums nowadays?”

“If you got a couple bucks in your pocket you can,” Pops said.

“Does that mean that all this time the hippomobile could've been working, and that alls it needed was a dumb old spark plug?”
⁷
we asked.

“I dunno,” Pops said. “But that's what I'm doing here to find out.”

That was when Grandma Ida arrived with the food. “Clear the runway!” she called out before putting our plates down.

Pops rubbed his hands and said, “Bone appatee!” Which was more French for “Enjoy your meal.”

And we did, too, all of us working our elbows and filling our shirts like we were Family Grubstruck. Mom only interrupted our chewing once or twice to have Jimmy show her that hole in his mouth again. Otherwise no one spoke anything until Pops put his spoon down in his empty bowl and patted his stomach twice and said, “So, let's go!”

But before we could even say “Yeah!” Mom said, “Smitty, wipe your mouth.”
⁸

Pops said, “On the road it's a sign of respect to leave a little somethin' clingin' to your beard when you eat.”

Mom just said, “Wipe it!” And he did. But she wasn't finished, neither. Because to us she said, “Go get your helmets!”

And we said, “Aww, Mom!”

And Pops said, “Aww, Mom!”

But Mom just said, “Helmets! And while you're there, put some clothes on!”

We knew there wasn't gonna be no discussing the matter, so we ran back to the hotel and did as we were told. By the time we returned to Mabel's, Pops was outside with a can of gas and having a closer look at that screen door.

“Where's Mom?” we asked.

Pops just said, “She needs another cup of joe. Too much dancin' last night. But don't tell her I said that.” And he winked.

So it was just the three of us, and Pops couldn't get over how good the square looked.

“And we were in charge, too,” we said.

Pops looked at the items on sale at the appliance store, and the lady in the beauty parlor window, and the sign on top of the hotel that read
SLANTEY
, and he said, “I can tell.”

That made us feel real good.

No one else was out and about yet, and as we made our way to Hill Street, we didn't even come across Grandpa Milton walking his old mail route. We tried tugging on Pops to get him to go faster, but he either wouldn't or couldn't, and there wasn't a thing we could do about it.

When we finally got to the old factory building and saw the battered door, we slapped ourselves square on our foreheads. We forgot all about the key.

But Pops said, “Key? Who needs a key? C'mon!”

So we shrugged our shoulders and followed him around through the weeds and out to the back of the building, where there was a big barn-door kind of a door.

Pops tried prying open the latch. “This is how we snuck in here back when we was kids,” he said. “Thing's all warped now, though. You're gonna have to loan me some of your iron.”

So we all grabbed that latch and on the count of twa,
⁹
we gave it all we had and then some. What happened next was the latch busted clean off. That made the barn door start to wobble. Then it swung wide open and came right off its hinges and teetered just long enough for us to jump out of the way. Then it fell toward the grass with one big
whoosh!
and hit the ground with one big
whump!

We all stood there looking at it a second, and then Pops scratched his head and said, “Guess I know what I'll be doing tomorrow.” By which he meant fixing it back together.

Then we walked into the building, and there stood the hippomobile. We could tell that the sight of it nearly blew Pops's beret clean off. He said, “Dang!” and that was it. It was a long time later before he said, “I bet I ain't been in here in over thirty years.” The whole time he was walking around real slow and running his hand over the hippomobile and enjoying the moment like it was a plate of meat and gravy. And then he said, “You believe that? We used to sit up on this thing for hours playing stagecoach.” But it wasn't even like he was talking to us or even knew we were still there.