Silver Rain (3 page)
He turned around and started walking, slapping his leg to bring Dog Bob to his side.
What's a dance marathon?
Elsie wanted to ask Scoop.
What's rhetoric? What's degradation?
But he had grabbed her arm with his bony hand and was hurrying her away as he ran to keep up with Uncle Dannell. “Did you interview someone?” she asked Scoop when they'd caught up. “Before we got there?”
“No one would say a word,” he told her. “Because I'm just a kid, I bet. But when I'm famous? They'll be lining up to talk to me.” He patted the bib of his overalls, where he'd tucked his notebook. “How about we find out more about these dance marathons your uncle was on about? After school?”
School!
There was a spelling bee today. And Elsie had not practiced one word. “Did you study your list?” she asked Scoop, skipping over a big puddle.
His hands were in his pocket as he kicked a stone along the street. “Sure I did,” he mumbled.
Elsie didn't believe him. Anyway, it wouldn't make a difference. Scoop, the newspaperman, was the worst speller in class. Probably in the whole school.
Elsie got top marks for spelling, but Miss Beeston kept her behind after school for sticking her tongue out at Jimmy Tipson when she should have been making a list of rivers of the world.
Scoop only got two out of twenty on his spelling test. He had to copy each word out thirty times before he was allowed to go. So it was nearly dark by the time they were let out of school, and they both had to go straight home.
T
he next afternoon Elsie helped Scoop paint his mother's summer kitchen. It was his job as man of the house, he'd explained to Elsie. And the Noises were afraid of getting paint on their clothes. He knew Elsie didn't much care if her clothes were secondhand, too small or covered in paint.
It was Friday before she and Scoop had the chance to go looking for the dance marathon. They walked halfway across town, asking directions from two newspaper vendors, a policeman, a lady with a little kid hanging on to each arm, and a big man rolling barrels into an alley.
Scoop was pink in the face and panting, and Elsie's shoes were rubbing by the time they finally stood on Main Street in front of a rickety building that had once been a garment factory. Big white letters saying
Taylor's Clothing
still ran sideways up the brick wall.
While Scoop checked the back door for a way to sneak in, Elsie studied the billboard propped on the sidewalk. In the picture, a man in a dark suit and a bow tie and a woman in a long slinky evening gown danced together under a big glittering ball of mirrors. They smiled, showing bright teeth, as showers of light fell like silvery rain all around them. The words beneath the picture read:
DANCE MARATHON
Starts Monday!
Thirty Couples Dancing for Thirty Days!
Admission: 10¢ before 6pm; 25¢ after 6pm.
Winners Take All!
  $1000 Prize!
“Does that really say one thousand dollars?” asked Elsie when Scoop came back. “That's a lot of money.”
He took a quick glance at the billboard. But instead of answering her question, he just said, “It's locked up tight. I knocked, but no one answered.”
“It's ten cents to get in,” she told him.
“How much have you got?” Scoop stood with his hands in his pockets, his notebook tucked in the crook of one arm. The pencil propped behind his ear looked like it might fall any minute.
“Uncle Dannell told me he'd give me a dime for my spelling test. Let's come back on Monday when it starts. Now we know how to get here.”
“Ask your uncle for two dimes,” said Scoop.
“Get your own. Or ask your mom. Or the Noises.”
“Fat chance!”
Fat chance?
Maybe it didn't really matter if Scoop couldn't spell. He knew all the best expressions. Surely this was enough to make him the perfect newspaperman.
“Maybe Mother will let me have a dime for you too,” said Elsie. “Mrs. Tipson paid her for cleaning their bathroom. What used to be
our
bathroom, before we got stuck in the garage.” She crunched up her face. “Now we just have that stinky outhouse.”
“You can use
our
bathroom anytime,” said Scoop grandly.
Elsie looked at the billboard again. “We'll get twenty cents by Monday. Somehow. Come on. I'll catch heck if I'm late for supper.” She walked away along the sidewalk.
Scoop didn't follow right away, so she turned back and grabbed his jacket sleeve to lead him down the street. He was too busy scribbling in his black and white book to look where he was going. Elsie had seen him walk into a lamppost or someone else on the street more than once. “Come on!” She peered sideways to read Scoop's notes about the dance hall.
She knew he always wrote very small so he would not be “scooped,” and so the book would last a long while. His spelling was bad. His handwriting was awful too. Elsie couldn't make out a word.
E
lsie could hear the ruckus when they were still half a block from home.
When Nan yelled, her voice warbled. Uncle Dannell's voice was a low rumble. And Mother sounded like a cat with its tail caught in a door. Elsie couldn't make sense of any of it. All she could hear were lots of words all jumbled together.
Scoop broke into a trot. “Let's check this out.”
“Wait up.” Elsie grabbed his sleeve.
The words were just starting to make sense. “Big chancer.” Nan's voice. “Can't be trusted farther than I can throw you.” Nan again.
“Oh, Dannell. Really!” It was Mother's voice this time.
“Will you let me speak?” Uncle Dannell suddenly shouted.
“That's some argy-bargy,” said Scoop, ready to turn onto her street. He was just curious, Elsie told herself. Like any top-notch news reporter would be. But you kept family business to yourself, Mother always said. And this sounded like family business, all right. “Better not,” she told him. “I'll see you tomorrow at the corner, like we agreed.”
“You sure? Could be important.” Scoop scuffed the ground with one boot as he looked hopefully in the direction of the shouting.
Elsie gave him a hard nudge with her elbow. “Go on. I'll tell you everything tomorrow.”
“All right, all right. I'm going. If you promise.” He stuck his tongue out at her and walked slowly in the direction of his own house. “I wanna know everything, mind,” he called back to her as she headed home.
Uncle Dannell stood in the doorway looking at Nan and Mother, who had been doing the wash outside in the old tub. Nan's sleeves were rolled up to her elbows, and her hands were red and puckered. Mother's hair was in a roll on top of her head. Wet strands hung down by her face.
“Go inside,” she said when she spotted Elsie at the end of the driveway.
Elsie would have liked to do as she was told. Dog Bob would be shivering under Uncle Dannell's bed. He never liked loud voices. Nor did she. But she wanted to know what was going on, so she dragged her feet as she came up the path.
“Didn't I say to go inside?” said Mother, doing up the top button on her shirtdress. “Oh, what's the point? You might as well know. Your uncle. My precious brother-in-law.” Her voice came out like a slow drip from a rusty tap. “He thinks he's clever. Too smart for his own good⦔
“Bugger in a bag. That's what he is now and always was.” Nan did not swear, not in the usual way. But she had a few special phrases she kept for really important occasions.
“Mother?” Elsie pulled up her socks as she watched her mother's face.
“Your uncle. We rely on him. It's hard without your fatherâ¦We rely on Daniel.” Mother retied her apron tightly and wiped her face with one hand.
Elsie knew this was serious. No one ever called her uncle by his real name.
“Now this,” Mother continued. “We have to eat somehow. With four mouths to feed. A few hours next door is not enough⦔ She held a wadded handkerchief to her mouth, as if she needed to hold back other words that might come out.
Nothing made sense to Elsie. “Uncle Dannell? What did he do?”
“Your precious uncleâ¦no relative of mine, mind⦔ Nan's voice was cold and flat now, far worse than her yelling. “Your uncle raffled his pay packet. Your mother needs shoes if she's to keep looking for work. You need feeding if you're going to learn anything. But the big man here? A fortnight's work
â
the first work in months
â
and he raffles his pay packet. Go on, Mr. Big Ideas. Let's have no secrets here. How much did you make on this scheme? Break this child's heart too, why don't you?”
“It was fail-safe,” said Uncle Dannell. “I explained it all. Remember?” He was still leaning in the doorway. But now he was looking down at the ground with his hands shoved into his pockets. “It worked for Jamie Mackenzie. He came home with forty-two dollars from raffling his twenty-nine-dollar pay. Thirteen dollars' profit. Seemed like a good risk. Don't you think?”
Elsie knew about raffles, sure. You took a chance and paid a penny for a ticket. You might win something worth a nickel. Or even a dime. But raffling a pay packet? “So what happened?” she asked.
Mother sniffed and patted back her hair. Elsie noticed how thin she was. Her eyes had dark shadows around them. “Your uncle sold tickets for a dollar at the Fraser Arms,” she told Elsie. Her voice now just sounded tired and sad. “He sold seven tickets. On a sixteen-dollar payday.”
Elsie couldn't work out the math in her head; she was better at spelling.
“If they'd given me one more night, I could have made up the rest,” said her uncle. “But the rule at the Fraser Arms is one night only. And they draw just before they close up. It was a quiet night, see? But rules is rules. I respect that.”
“Oh. So you do respect something, do you?” said Nan. Instead of waiting for an answer, she shoved the wooden rollers off the washtub, heaved it onto its side and let the scummy water trail down the sidewalk.
Usually Uncle Dannell emptied the tub and put it away for her on wash day. But today Nan did it with her back to him, wrestling it onto its side and propping it against the wall.
“Fair and square, you could say,” said Uncle Dannell. “Last week Edward Hooper took home twenty-four dollars for the price of a dollar ticket.” But he didn't sound so sure of himself anymore.
“His family must have been glad of that,” said Mother quietly.
It seemed a long time since Mr. and Mrs. Hooper had sat around in the front room with Elsie's family. They used to gather on Saturday nights to play whist and listen to Bing Crosby on the brown radio that sat on the sideboard under the mirror.
In Elsie's old home. Where Jimmy Tipson lived now.
“And you came home with eleven dollars for two weeks' work.” Nan pushed Uncle Dannell out of the way with her elbow and disappeared into the garage. “Shame on you.”
Dog Bob came out of the house as soon as Nan disappeared inside. In goes Nan. Out comes Dog Bob, thought Elsie. Just like the weather dolls in the clock that used to hang on the wall of Father's store.
Uncle Dannell's dog wandered from person to person. When no one petted him, he slunk out of sight around the corner.
It was okay for Dog Bob to disappear, thought Elsie. But she had nowhere to go. For a moment she was tempted to run after Scoop. Go home with him, where she was always welcome.
But this was family business. Her business. She would have to stay and see how it all turned out, whether she wanted to or not.
“W
hat will we do?” Elsie asked. “What will we do for money if Uncle Dannell raffled it all away?”
Mother's thin hip pressed against Elsie's shoulder as she drew her against the damp warmth of her dress. “We'll think of something. It shouldn't be your problem.” Her thin hands slid up and down Elsie's back. She smelled of soap and cooking fat; she used to smell of talcum and peppermints. It had been a long time since there had been candy in the house, and the lilac talcum powder Father bought Mother for Christmas had run out long ago.
When Elsie peered under her mother's arm, she could see Uncle Dannell crouched down against the wall. He was rolling a cigarette. He licked the edge of the paper and sealed it, then turned it between his lips and lit it with a match he pulled from a matchbox in one smooth movement. As he drew on his cigarette and held it away to watch the smoke that rose in the air, Elsie could tell he was trying to figure out what to say.
Mother was turned toward the street, looking at nothing.
“Would you believe I'm sorry?” asked Uncle Dannell finally.
Mother sighed.
If it's not one thing, it's another. That's what Nan would say, Elsie thought as she stood in her mother's arms, enjoying her warmth against her in the cool afternoon.
Nan's voice suddenly came from the doorway behind them. “Daniel Miller!”
Elsie's grandmother was rolling her sleeves back down, buttoning her cuffs. “Daniel. You have three days,” she said. “Find a job. You'll make up that nine dollars. Or you are not welcome in this house.” She pushed back her hair. “And that dog of yours neither.”
Uncle Dannell didn't answer. He just looked at Nan for a minute before he turned back to Elsie and Mother. When nobody spoke, he threw down his cigarette butt without salvaging the leftover tobacco for later and trudged off down the path without a word.
Dog Bob emerged from behind the house, his ears flat against his head. He followed Uncle Dannell along the street as Nan turned away and disappeared into the garage again.
“No use standing here,” said Mother. She took Elsie's hand and led her indoors. “I'm having a lie-down. I'm just not up to this.” Nan was sitting in Father's chair, knitting fast and furiously. She didn't look up when they came in.