Hippomobile! (17 page)

So now all three of us started smacking the engine box in the hopes of getting it to stop or even go backwards again. But in the end what saved us from running through Mabel's screen door was nothing more than the plain old curb. The hippomobile hit it square on but didn't have enough oomph to get up over it, so we came to a stop.

For a moment there, no one dared to move a muscle. But then smoke started rising up out of the engine box higher than a woodpecker's hole, and the front wheel fell off, and that was when we figured it was time to bail.

Mom was down in the crowd by then, and we heard her shout, “No jumping!” But it was too late because we were already standing back up and dusting the dust off our knees.

It took Pops a little longer to get down, but once he did and got a kink out of his back, he came over and stood with us in front of Mabel's and watched and listened to the hippomobile shake, shudder, cough, and blow more smoke than a chimney. We didn't have to wait long before a back wheel gave out. Then the other back wheel gave out, and the whole shebang fell flat to the ground and turned silent as a stone. And for a stretch, alls you could hear was the ringing in your ears.

No one said nothing. Mom pulled us closer in to her. Some people covered their mouths with their hands. Some of our grandmas made the sign of the cross, and our grandpas removed their hats. There our future was, lying flattened out as a toad on the road. It wasn't hard to figure out that this wasn't a good development. And just when we thought nothing couldn't get no worse, the banner came loose and went flapping down to the ground like a ghost gone haywire. And still no one ain't said nothing.

Then Pops went over to the hippomobile and kneeled down best he could and examined one of them wheels and took a close look at an axle and said, “Looks like I know what else I'll be doin' tomorrow.”

We almost didn't dare ask. But we did, just not too loud. “You mean you think you can fix it?”

Pops turned around and looked at us. “You askin' an old grease monkey that?”

That's when the whole town of Wymore, all fifty-one of us, broke out in a cheer louder than a stampede. Everybody walked up and inspected the hippomobile and ran their hands over it like a long-lost pet. Many grandmas and grandpas shook their heads in silent wonder, several debated how long it'd been since they'd last saw it, and quite a few wiped their eyes.

At some point Pops said, “Yeah, you gotta hand it to that ol' Gottfried. He built himself one robust and rugged contraption.”

We looked at each other and said, “Pops, how did you know that phrase?”

Pops said, “Saw it in some old book I used to look at back when I was a little kid. It's where I learned my French at, too.” Then he grinned and said, “Now, where's that Mabel at?”

Everybody called for Grandma Mabel, and she finally stepped out of the crowd in her white apron and chef hat.

“I hear you're open for business,” said Pops.

We could tell that Grandma Mabel didn't know what to say at first. She looked all around at everybody else. When we all nodded our heads, she finally turned back to Pops and said, “I reckon I am.”

And Pops said, “Then gimme a blue-plate special, would ya?”

 

 

 

 

THE REST OF THE DAY
was spent in fun up to our ears. We all ate our fill and swilled fifty-fives
¹
and played games like red light/green light and washers.
²
Grandpa Homer and Grandpa Virgil supplied the live music, and Mom and Pops danced a slow dance until Pops said Mom kept stepping on his toes.
³
We all gathered around the hippomobile for a sing-along to “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” and Mom told Pops to go easy on the rest of us and to just mouth the words. Then everyone wanted Grandpa Homer and Grandpa Virgil to compose a special hippomobile ballad. They got right on it, but it was us who came up with the opening lines:

 

Way back when, down Wymore way

Lived a man named Gottfried Schuh

 

But that's as far as we got because Grandma Mabel came by and distracted us with a scrumptious-looking black bottom.
⁴

Later that afternoon, when some of us were playing charades and Grandma Ida was trying without much luck to be a teapot, Grandpa Milton bellowed out, “It's over now, Henrietta!” All our heads turned quick. Sure enough, he'd just won his first game of checkers.

Grandma Henrietta said, “I wanna rematch!”

But Grandpa Milton just said, “Read this first.” He pulled
How to Win at Checkers
out of his pocket and handed it to her.

And as if that wasn't enough to keep us remembering that day for years to come, something else happened. We lost our sun grins, and even our shadows disappeared from the ground. Grandpa Bert pointed up at the sky and shouted, “Hey, look at that!”

We all looked up, and there it was, a little cloud pretty as a pillow. We all gathered under it best we could, and it dropped down a drizzle on us for a good five minutes. And we were happier than ducks on a pond.

It was the most dramatically sensational and rarely exquisite day of our lives. Once we were back in our hotel room, it turned out it wasn't even over yet. Mom suggested we pitch the tent and sleep out up on the roof. We just couldn't hardly believe it none. Even when Pops claimed he couldn't pitch a tent on account of his back, Mom just said, “Smitty, get!”

Mom stayed down with us and put us through the wringer. She washed our hair clean to the roots and did a twice-over on our ears until they squeaked like mice. Then she trimmed our claws and was making sure we were brushing our teeth right when Pops yelled that he needed some help. She said she should probably give him a hand, and we didn't exactly hold her back none.

We put on our jammies and made sure they were right-side out for a change. But before we went up to join Mom and Pops, we kneeled down by our window and stuck our noses against the screen and breathed in deep. We were about to say something profound and meaningful, maybe something about dogged determination, but we heard Pops from up on the roof. “Hey, where you turkeys at?” he shouted.

And then we heard Mom. “Yeah, you comin' or ain't ya?”

Mom said “ain't”? Yes, indeed, it was truly a day for the history books.

“We're comin'!” we yelled. We jumped up and ran out of the room and were up on the roof while that four-letter word was still ringing in our ears.

There was still a sliver of sun out, and Pops had the tent set up just right so that when we all sat out in front of it, we were able to look clear out over Wymore and watch the sun go down. By then the town was quiet as a whisper, and the only thing you could hear were the cicadas and a grandpa or two snoring louder than a carpenter saws wood.

Mom sighed and said, “It's gorgeous up here.”

And Pops just looked at us and winked.

Then we sat there without saying nothing, just swatting mosquitoes and counting golf carts until the sun dipped all the way down behind Mabel's. Then a funny thing happened. That one last lamppost on the square that'd been flickering suddenly gave off a big buzz and flashed once and then went out. And it was like Wymore disappeared right before our very eyes.

And we said, “Aww!”

And Mom said, “That's too bad.”

But Pops just said, “Say lah vee.”
⁵

And so a second or two later, we did say it: “Lah vee!”

And then we all crawled into our tent and went to sleep.

 

The End
⁶

 

 

 

 

WELL, BOOKS MIGHT END
, but life don't. Not even life in Wymore.

We thought you might wanna know what all has happened since then. We've been back in school for a couple months now, and a whole bunch has happened since the end of summer when we finished our story. It started out with that picture of us on the front page of the
McFall Dispatch
. Soon as that paper landed on the porches in McFall, the city folk from up there began traveling down here to have a look at the hippomobile for themselves. And so it was mighty good that Pops had been able to rebuild it back together in a matter of days.
¹

By the time he was done, his back was more thrown out than the dishwater, and he was forced to sleep down in the hotel lobby in our tent for a week, since he couldn't climb any stairs. But the bright side was that the McFallians kept right on coming, and some even stayed for lunch and dessert just like we'd hoped they would. Mom was back from her summer job by then, and she started helping Grandma Mabel out in the kitchen.

People in McFall must've told folks in Muck City about what they'd seen here in Wymore, and soon enough them Muckers were also paying us a visit. And from there things snowballed in a way ain't no one ever could've expected. Because from Muck City word passed on to the town of Nuckles, and soon we had more Nucklites in town than we knew what to do with. Then came the communities of Slapout and Goobertown. And from there news of the hippomobile somehow crossed the waters of Mud Creek, and before we knew it, the citizens of Yeehaw Junction and Gnaw Bone and Weedpatch were piling into their pickups and taking a trip to Wymore. Then came the Pine Stumpers from Pine Stump, and our town square ain't never been so gritty as it was with all them folks kicking up dust.

By that time Mom was working full-time at Mabel's, and Pops was needed more and more in town to fix things up and keep everything running smooth for the growing number of visitors. And that was even before them two rich-looking reporters in fancy suits came to town to write an article they wanted to call “Thirty-Six Hours in Wymore.” And even though it ended up being called “Six Hours in Wymore,” the article appeared in a big newspaper, and that sealed it. Pops gave up his trucking job, but not his beret, and he became Wymore's around-the-clock maintenance man. He wore one of them big belts with all the tools stuck in it and not only fixed the screen door at Mabel's and put new bulbs in the streetlamps, but he also strung up Wymore's first traffic light. Because it's like they say, every silver lining has its cloud.

Mom and Pops weren't the only ones with new jobs. One day Grandpa Bert pulled a rack of his leftover clothes out onto the sidewalk and declared himself back in business. He renamed his store the Hippodashery, and within a week he sold his first shirt. Grandma Francine began offering “Hippo hairdos” at her beauty parlor. Grandma Pearl acquired two more Pioneers and started giving prospecting expeditions in and around Wymore. Anything you found you got to keep, and her business boomed, even though most people just went away with a pocket full of rusty nails. Grandma Mabel tried to come up with a new dish called hippomobile hash, but she was never completely satisfied with the results, and so it never made it onto the menu. Apparently some things just ain't meant to be. Whereas on the other hand, some things are apparently meant to be for a second time. Because now there's even been some talk about refixing back up some of the houses off the square for us to move back into. That way visitors from far off can stay at the Slantey just like in the olden days and carve their names in the wood right alongside Cager, Hepsie, and Zubia.

Well, that leaves the two of us. The first thing we did was organize a field trip to Wymore our third day back in school. We promised our teacher there was a lot of local history to be learned there, and we promised our classmates it'd be even better than an elevator. No one believed us at first, but we made believers outta the whole fifth-grade class, including our teacher, once our bus pulled into town and we gave them a ride around Wymore on the hippomobile.
²
Pops had to do the actual driving, but we were responsible for telling them the whole story about the young man by the name of Gottfried Schuh who one day arrived in Wymore fresh off the boat from a place called Germany. They ate it up, too.