Lady (11 page)

"Don't!" cried Ag, who had run up to join us, and though I hoped Blue would try to dissuade me, he merely watched with interest as I battled the sail and tried to maintain my precarious position.

"Go ahead," Lew said, daring me. I grabbed the sail more tightly and leaped out into space. For a few seconds I felt the wind catch and lift me, but when the air slid from under the canvas I plummeted straight down. There was a terrific crash, the sound of splintering glass; as I struck the ground, I felt a sharp pain in my left leg. I had fallen into Jesse's cucumber frame.

Dizzily, I tried to assess the extent of my injury. I had felt something snap, and the amount of blood spurting from my leg sent the others dashing in panic for help, while I lay bleeding in the shattered frame, with the sky spinning overhead. Suddenly I knew what heaven must be like, for it seemed a vision appeared before me, an angel with a sweet smiling face and I was enfolded in a pair of smooth, gentle arms.

"Oh, my dear," said Lady, cool as one of the cucumbers I was sprawled in, "you've really done it this time, haven't you? Didn't anyone tell you you're not Icarus? No, don't move. You've cut yourself rather badly. Here's Jesse, to get you fixed up."

Wiping away my tears, she helped Jesse lift me out of the cucumber frame and lay me on the lawn, ignoring the grass cuttings staining her afternoon dress, holding me while he made a careful examination. "Stupidy thing," he said in succinct West Indian tones, fashioning a tourniquet with strips torn from an undergarment hastily snatched from the clothesline, then improvising splints from a garden stake. The pain was nothing to the new importance I now felt, being the center of concern: poor Ag's white face, Blue Ferguson, Lew and Harry looking sheepish, and Lady bending over and calling me Ignatz, and saying I was just as Krazy as Kat.

Again I was brought home in Jesse's arms and popped into bed, where Lady watched beside me until Ma returned from the Sunbeam. Dr. Brainard, who had by then arrived, agreed he couldn't have done a better job himself, and said Jesse ought to be a physician, and Harry said it sure was lucky Elthea's bloomers happened to be hanging on the line for bandages.

While I hobbled around in a cast, the Pequot Landing Pageant continued its rehearsals. It was to be a weekend-long anniversary celebration of the founding of the town. The pageant itself would take place on the Green and would depict various periods of the town's history. Lew and Harry and I were to be Pilgrim children, while Aggie was to be a fawn in a Dance Interlude. All the ladies of the town were busy sewing costumes and we boys had already been fitted for our gray serge suits with white collars and tall hats with buckles on them. Aggie got a spotted jumper with little ears.

During rehearsals, Lew, Harry, and I had been giving our all, preparing for the moment when we would dash across the Green toward the stockade, hollering bloody murder as the Indian warriors descended for the Pequot Massacre. Blue Ferguson and a number of other husky athletes were the Indians, and if they came tearing after us with loud savage whoops as they brandished their tomahawks and threatened us with the loss of our scalps, our cries of horror as we sought to evade capture were equally fierce.

It was Blue himself, and another, who were to carry off two Pilgrim girls (historically, their last name had been Rose) and kidnap them. I got what I thought was a brilliant idea: fleeing with the others, I would pretend to stumble and fall and almost get caught by one of the Indians -- a moment of great suspense -- but at the last moment leap up and race for the stockade. I broached the idea to Blue Ferguson, my hero, one morning after rehearsal.

"How about that, Blue?"

"Sounds okay to me."

"Hot dog! You want to be the one who catches me?"

Blue rumpled my hair and shook his head. "Listen, kiddo, I've got my hands full carrying Mabel Talcott -- she's
fat
. Better get someone else." He gave me a friendly punch and ran off to his delivery truck, and next I sought out Mrs. de Sales-Sprague herself.

I waited until she had finished directing the Dance of the Vegetables -- we were great seed growers in Pequot Landing -- then told her my idea. To my surprise, she thought this a clever theatrical stroke and wrote it into her script, and I considered myself a big shot because it was my own invention.

I needn't have felt so smug. The first morning after my accident, when I limped out on the Green to join the others for rehearsal, Mrs. Sprague sailed up and informed me that owing to my injury the part of the fallen Pilgrim boy had been given to Gerald Morrisey, and furthermore I would not be permitted to participate at all; my costume should not be wasted. Too sorry, cooed Mrs. Sprague, and sailed off to direct the burning of the witch. My anger was boundless. In the first place, Gerald Morrisey: a sneak, a cheat, and a liar -- all the things I myself was. But he was one thing more: teacher's pet. Awful Miss Grimes took particular pride in making Gerald an example to us all, and while I was kept in for recess, Gerald Morrisey got to clap the erasers, a prized chore. How I hated panty-waist Gerald Morrisey!

I spoke my woe to Lady.

"Is that a fact?" she blithely queried, then, spying Mrs. de Sales-Sprague directing the maypole dances, she swept out to her while I limped after.

"Dear Mrs. Sprague," Lady said in a sugary voice, "it seems we must give this matter second thoughts."

"Whatever in the world do you
mean
, Mrs. Harleigh?" asked the other in her own sugary voice.

"I
mean
, dear Mrs. Sprague," Lady said in a sugarier voice, "exactly what I said. We must give this matter second thoughts." Butter wouldn't have melted in that smiling mouth as she produced me from behind her skirts. "This boy wants to be a Pilgrim."

Spouse's smile was equal to Lady's. "I'm afraid that is impossible,
dear
Mrs. Harleigh. As you can see, he has a bad leg."

"But,
dear
Mrs. Sprague" -- in her sugariest voice -- "so did the Pilgrims from time to time, I should imagine. Have a bad leg, I mean. Can't we just pretend
this
Pilgrim boy has received an injury trying to warn the town against marauding Indians?"

"But,
dear
Madam," said Mrs. de Sales-Sprague in
her
sugariest voice, favoring Lady with a condescending smile, "if he hobbles so, I shouldn't think he could get anywhere in time to warn
anyone
about anything."

'Very well. Then he must have a horse to ride." Lady's smile was so bright as to be astonishing. She did not fling the gauntlet, but dropped it, carelessly, as she might a glove.

"A horse?" snorted Mrs. Sprague. "There are no horses in my script."

"Then may I suggest you write one in?"

"Lady Harleigh, are you presuming to tell me what I may or may not have in my pageant?" Mrs. Sprague gathered herself up, trying to tower over Lady, which was difficult because Lady was quite tall.

"I presume nothing, Edith Sprague. . . ."

"Very well, then. No horses and no boys with game legs. I cannot have the lad gimping around and holding up cues, now, can I?"

"Certainly not. I quite agree. No horses and no gimps. Come," she said to me, taking my hand and starting to pull me along after her. Having won the day, Spouse turned back to have a word with the witch whose agonized screams were not quite as loud as the directress might have wished.

"One other thing, however," Lady recollected over her shoulder as we went, "no more can I oblige you by opening my house for the Pilgrim Club." She tossed her head and I wondered how she could make her way across the turf, so grandly oblivious was she.

When Mrs. Sprague sailed toward us again, it was on another tack. "One moment, one moment -- please, let us not be hasty about this matter," she called breathlessly.

Lady halted in her tracks but did not turn. "Then you agree," she said as the other hove to, "we must give it second thoughts."

The directress peered at me through her pince-nez. "Do you ride, boy?" she demanded.

"Of course he rides, don't you, darling?" Lady quickly put in (I had a photograph of me taken on a Shetland pony in the schoolyard), "and if he does
not
ride perhaps Mrs. Sparrow will open
her
house for tea."

Mrs. Sprague was, of course, forced to capitulate. "You can catch a lot more flies with honey than you ever can with vinegar," Lady whispered gleefully as she led me away.

"But you told her I could ride a horse!" I urgently returned.

"Can't you?"

"No."

"Always say you can, even if you can't, darling. It's how to get on in the world."

Whether I would get on or not remained to be seen, at least in the matter of my heroics in Mrs. de Sales-Sprague's pageant.

To begin the celebration, there was a flurry of dedications. Plaques and inscribed boulders were unveiled at various historical sites around town, an address was made by the Governor, and then a parade. The following day, a fine, fair June day, was the pageant, and the bleachers around the Green filled rapidly. Since the Great Elm was to all of us a sturdy and venerable symbol of the town, it was fitting that the pageant should take place more or less under its spreading branches, and that the tide be "Beneath the Boughs." Each scene was introduced by a narrator, The Spirit of the Elm, and it may be imagined who this narrator was. Mrs. de Sales-Sprague's purple prose was amplified through loudspeakers the length of the Green, she being cleverly concealed at the base of the tree trunk behind some fast-wilting shrubbery. Exits and entrances were made from beside the Piersons' garage, next door to Lady, where, obscured behind the heavy screen of firs hiding the house from the street, the actors gathered before their entrances. And it was from this place that on cue I was to ride full tilt across the Green, shouting the line I'd been given, "The Indians are coming!" to warn the Pilgrim settlers of the approaching Pequot war party. Painted and feathered, Blue Ferguson held the reins as I clambered into the saddle astride the sorry nag who usually pulled No-Relation Welles's horseradish cart.

'"And lo, the seeds that had been planted sprang up, and this was good,'" came Mrs. Sprague's voice, "'and the Founding Fathers knew that the Wongunk braves had been right -- Quonehtacut was a good place. But then one day, as they tilled their plenteous crops, they heard the sound of madly flying hooves and a valiant voice cried out -- '"

Fiercely gripping the reins, I dug my one good heel into the spavined horse's flanks the way Blue had showed me, and old Dobbin took a step or two in the drive, then stopped. I looked wildly at Blue, almost unrecognizable under his feathered bonnet.

"'. . . the sound of madly flying hooves . . .'" came Mrs. Sprague's cue, "'and a valiant voice cried out -- '"

Again I kicked the nag, again she moved a step or two. I could hear the "Indians" snickering behind me. I kicked and yanked and urged, to no avail. The horse wouldn't go. I looked at Blue again, who seemed to be paying no attention to my dilemma. He was over at the bushes beside the garage.

The cue came again. "'. . . the
sound
of
madly
flying hooves! And -- '"

And a valiant voice cried out. Mine. Suddenly the horse whinnied, dodged from one side of the drive to the other, then took off, with me holding on for dear life, across the lawn, into the roadway between the bleachers, and onto the Green. Turf flew in all directions as I blindly headed for the group of farmers and their families. All eyes were on me as I shouted, "They're coming! They're coming!" though it could have been the British for all I managed of my line about the Indians. But Indians quickly made themselves apparent when Blue and his wildly shouting tribe dashed onto the Green. There was a moment of confusion as my mount continued wildly gyrating and threatening my fellow-actors with injury. While the horse wheeled and the Pilgrims headed for the stockade, I saw a rush of feathers and a painted grimace. I was yanked from my saddle, and a tomahawk swished past my head. Before the horse could spring away, the savage reached and pulled something from under its tail and the animal immediately receded into docility again.

Flat on the ground, I watched Blue dash toward the stockade, run nimbly up a ladder, and give out with a loud Tarzan cry. The crowd was spellbound as he disappeared for an instant, then reappeared with ferociously protesting Mabel Talcott slung over his shoulder.

When the smoke of musketry had dissolved, the appointed people went about to carry off the fallen, but no one had been assigned to me. As Mrs. Sprague paused in her narrative, I groaned awfully, rolled over, got to my feet, alternately clutching my head and my chest, and staggered to the palisade where Mr. Pretty, the vegetable man, helped me from view behind the palings.

"You were extraordinary!" Lady exclaimed later. "Jesse -- some ice cream for the young man. He was born to the sock and buskin." After hugs and kisses and ice cream, I got my Kodak Brownie from Ag, who had photographed all the parts of the pageant I was in, and then I went around snapping people in their costumes, making sure I got one of Blue Ferguson in his feathers and war paint. He obliged me by re-enacting the abduction of the "Rose" girl with the hefty Mabel Talcott. A small crowd had gathered around, and watched admiringly, saying that Blue Ferguson was the greatest guy. And he was. If ever he could have been called "True Blue," he was that day.

"Some ride, eh, kiddo?" he whispered, taking me aside and giving me a friendly jab. "I'll bet you never thought that glue-bait could shag like that." Then he made his confession: he'd gotten some burrs from the bushes and stuck them on the horse's bum, hence my thunderbolt entrance.

"You're pretty good, kiddo. You really saved the day." He said it loudly, so everyone overheard it; praise from Blue Ferguson was praise indeed.

And though the events of that weekend ended happily enough, there was an aftermath which, though inadvertently brought about by me, could scarcely be considered my fault. But it upset Lady to the degree that she withdrew from all our activities -- "retired," as Ruthie Sparrow so often put it -- and it came about in this way. When the rolls of film Ag and I had taken were developed, we decided to show them on the magic lantern in the garage. We invited the neighborhood to come and see the pictures of the pageant, which would be projected onto a sheet hung on the back wall. The audience was seated on benches and chairs, the doors were closed, and I showed my collection of postcard views; then everyone gave their undivided attention when I offered the main attraction.