Swan Place (27 page)

“Think this will be enough?” she asked.

The paper in my hands felt heavy and rich—and at the top of each page were scrolled initials
M.E.S.

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

Buzzard looked at the pages and smiled. “Mary Elizabeth Swan,” she said, almost dreamily. “Miz Swan’s very own personal, pure linen stationery.”

“Won’t she mind me using it?” I hated the thought that one of these days, the elegant, elderly Miz Swan would come home from France and wonder who used so much of her beautiful paper!

“She won’t mind,” Buzzard assured me. “She doesn’t write many letters anymore. Now here’s you a pen, as well. Are you all set now?”

“Yes. Oh yes.”

I got Molly and Little Ellis into their bed for a good nap and then tiptoed downstairs. The television was on in the little room off the back hallway, and the soap opera had a young man and young woman who were having a fuss with each other. “You don’t love him,” the young man said. “You love me.” “No, Dan,” said the woman. “That’s always been your imagination. Only your imagination!” When I peeked further into the room, I could see that Buzzard was in the recliner chair—but she was sound asleep. I went into the kitchen, where that stack of beautiful, cream-colored paper was waiting, and I started right in to writing a story called “Mr. and Mrs. Swan and the House They Lived in Together.” There would be plenty of time later to remember all my other stories and get them onto paper again, but first of all, I wanted to write this one.

Why, I could have spent the entire rest of that day writing the story of Mr. and Mrs. Swan—that big house so quiet and peaceful and the kitchen filled with the sweet smell of all that fruit Buzzard had bought and put into a big bowl in the middle of the table. And the way the pen felt on that fine paper was something I hadn’t expected. Made me feel that every single word I was putting down was fine, indeed!

But after a long time, Buzzard came into the kitchen, with her face all soft from her good nap and her eyes a little cloudy.

“You doing okay?” she asked.

“Oh, yes!” I breathed. “Thanks for letting me use this beautiful paper.”

“Might as well,” was all she said. A little later, Molly and Little Ellis woke up from their naps, and their cheeks were pink and they were well rested. We all had some milk and ginger snap cookies—another expensive thing Buzzard had bought at the store. But oh, they were so good! Then Buzzard started all of us in to doing the housework. She got a whole drawer full of real sterling silver tableware out of the buffet in the dining room, sat Molly and Little Ellis down at the table, gave them some soft rags, and set a jar of silver polish between them.

“Here’s how you do this,” she said, and they were both watching her intently.

“You put just a little bit of this stuff on the rag—just a little, mind you—and you rub the silver until it shines.” She demonstrated for them, and on a spoon that I couldn’t see how it could be any shinier than it already was. But when she finished and showed the spoon to Molly and Little Ellis, their eyes went wide and Molly smiled.

“Do it just that way,” Buzzard said. Then, “Now, Dove, you come with me.”

I followed her to the pantry and she gave me another soft rag and a bottle of red-colored furniture polish. “I’m going to trust you to do all the furniture in the parlor,” she announced, and she made it sound like she’d given me something very, very special to do. We went into the parlor together and she showed me just how much of the polish to put onto the rag and how to polish all that beautiful mahogany furniture until it gleamed.

The furniture polish had such a lovely aroma to it—like something magnificent and old and very precious, and the furniture was beautiful indeed. Down the hallway, I heard the vacuum cleaner start up, so I guess Buzzard was cleaning up somewhere else. That’s the way we spent most of the afternoon, and when we were done, Buzzard inspected the silver and showed Molly and Little Ellis a few places where they hadn’t wiped off all the silver cream. Then she came into the parlor and looked at the furniture.

“You’re a good learner, Dove,” she said. And that pleased me mightily!

Then we all went outside, and Buzzard showed Molly and Little Ellis how to get some of the ground ready for begonia plants she wanted to put in. And I walked down to the little pond and stood there for a long time, imagining all the beautiful, white swans that used to sail across it—back when Mr. and Mrs. Swan were young and beautiful and so much in love.

The last thing we did that day was to make Aunt Bett’s pork chop casserole, and when it was simmering away on the stove, I heard Crystal’s car come up in the back of the house.

“Crystal’s home,” I called. Molly and Little Ellis came out of the little room where they had been watching television, and when Crystal came in the back door, we were all waiting for her.

“Goodness, what’s going on?” she asked. She looked tired, but her face wasn’t that awful, pale color anymore.

“We’re just glad you’re home,” I said. “We’ve almost got supper ready. Did you have a good day at work?”

“Sure did,” Crystal laughed, digging into her smock pocket and coming out with a whole handful of dollar bills and some change. “Tips were just great!” Then she frowned, “Buzzard, did Dove remember to give you grocery money?”

“She sure did,” Buzzard said. “But wasn’t any need of it.”

“Oh yes, there certainly was,” Crystal argued back. And from out of the handful of bills, she pulled out three dollars.

“You put this away toward the next time you have to buy groceries,” she said, thrusting the bills at Buzzard.

“No need,” Buzzard said softly, but she took the bills anyway, after she got a good look at Crystal’s determined face.

“And were the little ones good for you?” she asked me.

“Good as gold.”

“And it wasn’t too much for you, having our family around all day?” she questioned Buzzard.

“Not at all,” Buzzard beamed. “Matter of fact, they did lots of good work for me. Saved my old hands and back a little.”

“Well, that’s good,” Crystal said. “Let me run upstairs and change my clothes before supper,” she said.

When Crystal came back downstairs, wearing blue jeans and with her hair in a ponytail, she looked almost like a little girl herself. But one with something tired-looking around the eyes. Buzzard and I had the table all set and a big platter of Aunt Bett’s pork chop casserole in the middle of it, and white rolls with real butter and big glasses of lemonade—because Buzzard said it was dangerous to drink milk when you ate pork. I remembered that we’d had milk with our sausage and biscuits for breakfast, but I didn’t say anything about that.

“Not good for you,” Buzzard declared. “Won’t have you all getting sick.” So lemonade it was, and we all ate and ate and didn’t say much, we were enjoying that casserole so much. And right when supper was over, we heard a low roll of thunder and the lights flickered.

“Storm coming,” Buzzard declared, getting up from the table, going to the pantry, and coming back with a big kerosene lantern.

“Sometimes we lose our power for a little while,” she said, putting a package of matches on the table, right beside the lantern. And sure enough, right at that moment, another low roll of thunder came, and the lights flickered once again and then went out.

Such darkness! But then we heard the scratch of a match and a little light put to the wick of the lamp, and in only a moment, there was a pool of warm, yellow light all over the table where we were sitting together. I looked around at Buzzard and Crystal and Molly and Little Ellis, and they were all leaning into the pool of light. And behind every one of them nothing but darkness.

I don’t know why, but I liked that ever so much. Us all huddled around the light, together and safe, while the thunder muttered and the wind came up. A few flashes of lightning lit the kitchen windows and the door to the back porch, but we didn’t really seem to care.

“We need a good storm. It’ll bring rain to water your begonias,” Buzzard said to Molly and Little Ellis. “Help them make pretty flowers.”

“Buzzard showed Molly and Little Ellis how to get the ground ready for new plants today,” I explained to Crystal.

“That was good of you,” Crystal said.

“No trouble,” Buzzard muttered. “Just wish you folks would stop thanking me all the time, is all.”

Her words surprised Crystal. “But we
should
thank you,” Crystal argued. “Look what you’ve done! Taken us all in when we had nowhere to go and had to run to keep Molly with us.” She stopped and clapped her hand over her mouth. But Molly was resting her cheek on her arms and watching the flame in the lamp.

“Be careful,” Buzzard whispered. Outside, the soft, warm rain started falling, sending the curtains lifting out from the window and putting a sweet perfume through the kitchen. We all just sat together, nobody saying much of anything. But we were content.

Buzzard was right: The storm didn’t last long, and within a few minutes, the lights came back on and the big refrigerator began its purring sounds.

“See?” Buzzard blew out the flame in the lamp.

Crystal said, “Buzzard and Dove, do you mind if I don’t help with cleaning up tonight? I’m just so tired, I want to go to bed early. But I’ll help next time, okay? And tomorrow, I’ll start in to finding us an attorney.”

“I know one that’s good,” Buzzard said, and I was thinking about those letters that had come in the mail to Buzzard that day. “You just work on getting some good rest, and we’ll get all the rest figured out.”

“I’ll be feeling better tomorrow—I promise,” Crystal said.

Buzzard and I cleared the table and did up the dishes, and when we were through, Buzzard said, “I’m right tired myself tonight, Dove. So can you get Molly and Little Ellis to bed?” I thought that was kind of a strange thing for her to say, but later on, I figured that maybe it was because we were getting ourselves all twined around each other—but in a real nice way.

“Sure. You go on to bed. We’ll be just fine.” So Buzzard made sure all the doors were locked, and I took Molly and Little Ellis upstairs. I didn’t want to give them a tub bath, because I was afraid we’d disturb Crystal, but I gave them sponge baths and got them into clean pajamas and read them another three stories before I went back downstairs and sat at the kitchen table once again, enjoying the story of Mr. and Mrs. Swan.

It was pretty late when I turned out the lights and went upstairs to bed. And lying there in that beautiful room, with Crystal breathing so sweet and steady, I thought long and hard about the first day of our new lives. About Mr. and Miz Swan and what Buzzard told Miz White, and about Molly and Little Ellis learning how to plant seeds, and about that heavy, fine paper I was writing on, and at the last, about how nice it was to be in a beautiful bedroom high up in that solid house, with all the sounds of the countryside around me. Crickets chirping, and somewhere far off—probably down at the pond—a big old frog adding his deep sound to the night. So that was the way our very first day at the Swan Place turned out, and when I finally fell asleep, I was thinking of two beautiful white swans gliding across the pond, swimming back and forth, back and forth—and with their graceful necks bowed and twined together.