The White Elephant Mystery (21 page)

“Chattering chimps!” Djuna said with an excited voice. “I wish I had on bathing trunks.”

Mr. Williams laughed and said, “It’s too late today, Djuna. I’ve got to get out to my beanery before—”

“What’s that?” Djuna wanted to know, as Tommy snickered.

“My bean farm,” Mr. Williams explained. “You boys can come over here the first thing in the morning on Tommy’s bike.”

“Oh, that’s all right with me, Mr. Williams,” Djuna said. “It’ll look even better in the morning.”

Mr. Williams turned his car around and they re-crossed the bridge over the Inland Waterway and went down Atlantic Avenue until they crossed the Federal Highway and were on their way toward the business section of Dolphin Beach. The houses on the west side of the Federal Highway were much like the houses on the east side, with their lawns studded with colorful flowers; and here and there a flame vine blazed.

Djuna was so busy looking at all the strange vegetation that he wouldn’t have noticed the old lady who had told him her name was Mrs. Pulham, if Mr. Williams hadn’t stopped the car. He had stopped because it was only too apparent that old Mrs. Pulham was having difficulties. She had put the wicker bag she was carrying on the ground and was leaning against a jacaranda tree that stood beside the sidewalk. She was holding a handkerchief over her face and she looked exhausted. Mr. Williams put his head out of the car window and said, “Can’t I give you a lift wherever you’re going, madam?”

When Mrs. Pulham took the handkerchief away from her face it was startlingly white; but she looked relieved when she understood that Mr. Williams had offered to give her a lift. But before she could speak Djuna said, “Why, it’s Mrs. Pulham!”

He opened the door of the car and leaped out as Mrs. Pulham said, “I’d be very much obliged to you. I live only a half mile up this street.”

Djuna picked up the heavy cat bag and helped Mrs. Pulham across the street and into the front seat beside Mr. Williams, who smiled at her and said, “I thought it was too hot a day for you to be lugging that heavy bag.”

“This is Mrs. Pulham, Mr. Williams,” Djuna said politely. And then he said to Mrs. Pulham, “This is the Mr. Williams I was telling you about.”

Mrs. Pulham thanked Mr. Williams again and then she turned and smiled at Djuna who was holding Champ down on the floor in the back so he wouldn’t begin to bark at the yellow cat again. “I guess it was a lucky thing for me that your dog chased my cat,” she said. “I suppose this is Tommy?” Tommy grinned at her as Mr. Williams turned the car around and went back up Atlantic Avenue.

“That dratted dentist wasn’t in his office and there wasn’t even a note on the door saying when he would be back,” Mrs. Pulham said to Djuna. Then she turned back to Mr. Williams and said, “I took my cat to the new dentist to have his teeth fixed and he wasn’t even there.”

“I see,” Mr. Williams said, but he looked as though he didn’t quite understand what Mrs. Pulham was talking about. He turned his head to give her a fleeting glance and his expression showed that he thought she was a little crazy.

“My husband always used to keep the cat’s teeth in shape,” Mrs. Pulham went on. While she was explaining it to Mr. Williams, Djuna whispered to Tommy, “Could you carry me and that cat bag on the handlebars of your bike?”

“Sure,” Tommy whispered back.

Mr. Williams stopped his car in front of Mrs. Pulham’s house and after she had thanked him Djuna took the cat bag and carried it up on the front porch for her. On the way he said he and Tommy would come over the next day and get the cat and take it down to the dentist for her if she wanted them to.

“See, I told you it was lucky for me that your dog tried to chase my cat,” Mrs. Pulham replied. “I’ll give you each fifty cents if you will. You’d better come in the forenoon so that you can catch that dentist before he goes out.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Djuna said politely. “We’ll come as early as we can.”

“Not too early, though,” Mrs. Pulham warned. “I go to bed late because I can’t sleep and then I stay in bed late because I can’t get up.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Djuna said.

“And don’t bring your dog with you,” Mrs. Pulham went on, “or you’ll have trouble with the cat.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Djuna said, and he said good-by as he scurried down the steps.

When Djuna got back to the car he told Tommy how they were going to earn a dollar between them the next day. Mr. Williams laughed and shook his head but he didn’t say anything.

When they arrived at Tommy’s home out on the Dixie Highway, west of Dolphin Beach, Mrs. Williams came out on the porch while they were getting out of the car. She was a tall woman, nearly as tall as Mr. Williams, and had coal black hair and white even teeth that flashed a great deal of the time because she liked to laugh. She was laughing as she came off the porch and gathered Djuna into her arms and gave him a hug and a kiss.

“My, but I’m glad to see you, Djuna,” she said, and then she smiled at Tommy and added, “It’s nice to see you two together again. How’s Miss Annie?”

“Oh, she’s fine, thank you,” Djuna told her. “She is going up to spend Christmas with her sister, Mrs. Silvernails. She told me to be sure to give you her love.”

When they were inside Mrs. Williams wanted to know all about everyone in Edenboro, where the Williams family used to live and where Djuna still lived with Miss Annie Ellery.

Djuna told them all the news, including the fact that his friend Socker Furlong, a newspaper reporter, had driven over to Edenboro to wish them a Merry Christmas on the very day he had received the letter from Tommy asking him, Djuna, to visit Dolphin Beach over the holidays.

“He’s that newspaper reporter on the
Morning Bugle
in the city where Mrs. Silvernails lives, isn’t he?” Mrs. Williams asked.

“That’s the one,” Djuna said excitedly. “And I couldn’t have come down here if he hadn’t arrived, because Miss Annie couldn’t spare the money for my fare. Socker said he could get me a special rate through his newspaper, and he did.”

“Jeepers, Socker is an awful nice man!” Tommy said stoutly and Djuna nodded his head in confirmation.

After a while Mr. Williams stood up and said, “Look, you old ladies can gossip after supper tonight. What about taking a run out to my bean fields with me, now, while I give my supervisor the money to pay off the pickers for their day’s work?”

“Sure,” Djuna and Tommy said in unison, and Mrs. Williams laughed assent.

On the way to Mr. Williams’s bean fields they passed an enormous covered platform that was built a few feet above the ground. On the end of the huge building was a large sign in six-foot letters that read: D
OLPHIN
B
EACH
F
ARMERS
’ E
XCHANGE
.

“That,” Mr. Williams said as he drove slowly around the platform, “is the largest vegetable market in the world, Djuna. They ship out hundreds of thousands of hampers and boxes of vegetables to every part of the United States each winter. And over there,” he pointed, “where you see all those refrigerated boxcars lined up on the rails, they ship about a hundred boxcars full every day during the winter season.”

“Jiminy crimps!” Djuna said as he gazed with awe at the hampers of vegetables being unloaded from small trucks on conveyers to the platform, and then reloaded on other conveyers into larger trucks for shipment. “I didn’t think there were so many vegetables in the world!”

The platform was over a quarter of a mile long and several hundred feet wide. The ground around it was all paved and at the north end there were fifty or sixty enormous diesel trucks parked, waiting their turn to be loaded. All around the platform there were other enormous trucks backed up to take on hampers and boxes packed with ripe corn, green beans, peppers, potatoes, eggplant, and other vegetables. Beside the larger trucks were smaller ones that had brought hampers and boxes of vegetables in from the endless fields to the west. The voices of the buyers and sellers could be heard above the roar of the trucks as the farmers sold their vegetables to the distributors. There were great piles of hampers waiting to be loaded into the refrigerated trucks and sent scurrying over the country’s highways.

A little later Djuna was even more astonished when he saw Mr. Williams’s bean fields. He couldn’t believe it because he had never seen beans grown any place except in short rows in backyard gardens up north. He remembered the little fifteen-foot rows he had helped Miss Annie Ellery plant and pick up in Edenboro. Here, the rows of beans ran on and on and on, as far as the eye could see and until they seemed to disappear over the horizon.

“Gee!” he said in amazement. “I’m glad I don’t have to hoe them!”

A few minutes later they passed a group of Mr. Williams’s pickers and Djuna stared at them because they were talking some language that he couldn’t understand. Others were singing a plaintive, melancholy melody as they worked, swinging their bodies to the peculiar cadence of the tune.

After they had passed them, Djuna said to Tommy, “What were they talking about?”

“Search me,” Tommy said. “They were speaking Spanish. A lot of the pickers come from Puerto Rico and Jamaica and South America.”

“How do they get here?” Djuna asked.

“By plane and boat,” Mr. Williams said. “The ones from Puerto Rico and Mexico just need permits to get into the country. But the ones from foreign countries have to have regular passports. We pay them every day, because it’s pretty hard to keep track of them on any other basis. We make ’em all sign the payroll every day and produce their Alien Registration Cards or their passports. The East Florida Border Patrol keeps a close eye on aliens to see that they don’t slip north and disappear. If they lose their passports they’re really in trouble. They—”

“All right, Harry,” Mrs. Williams interrupted to say. “That’s enough beans for today. We’re going home now and have supper—and
not
beans—and then Djuna is going to bed. He probably only half slept on that coach last night and Miss Annie would skin me alive if he got sick down here.”

“Oh, I feel fine, Mrs. Williams,” Djuna protested.

“And I’m going to see that you keep that way,” Mrs. Williams said grimly, and this time she wasn’t laughing.

T
HE
sun was shining when Djuna opened his eyes the next morning. At first his surroundings were strange to him and he couldn’t remember where he was. When remembrance came to him he bobbed up in bed like a jack-in-the-box and saw that Tommy was already up. He hurried into sneakers, swimming trunks and a striped Basque shirt, gave his face and hair “a lick and a promise” in the bathroom and bounced into the kitchen, a kitchen gay with red-checked tablecloth and curtains, and with the sun and red bougainvillaeas peeping in the window.

“Lazybones!” Tommy scoffed from behind a bowl of cereal and strawberries.

“Morning, Djuna,” Mr. Williams boomed from his place at the table beside Tommy.

“Don’t let Tommy spoof you, Djuna,” Mrs. Williams said, flashing her teeth. “He has only been up two minutes himself. What about some dry cereal with strawberries and cream, a soft-boiled egg, toast, marmalade and milk? That’s what Tommy is having.”

“Strawberries at this time of year!” Djuna exclaimed. “Just give me anything, Mrs. Williams. I’m so glad to be here it really wouldn’t make any difference if I didn’t have anything to eat.”

“Well, we’re just as glad to have you, Djuna,” Mr. Williams said, “but you can’t live on sunshine. I was up and out in the fields at daylight. By the time I get back here for breakfast I can eat like a horse, and I do.” Djuna glanced at Mr. Williams’s plate and saw that it was piled high with ham and eggs and fried potatoes.

“Do your men start picking that early?” Djuna asked.

“Soon after it’s daylight,” Mr. Williams told him. “I get ’em started early and then give ’em a long siesta in the middle of the day, because it’s pretty hot in the fields at that time.”

“What,” Mrs. Williams asked, “are you boys going to do today?”

“We’re going to the beach on my bike,” Tommy said.

“Not until after lunch,” Mrs. Williams said firmly. “I have a special Florida dish for Djuna at lunchtime, so—”

“Besides, we have to take Mrs. Pulham’s cat to the dentist this morning,” Djuna interposed.

“Take Mrs. Pulham’s cat to the dentist!” Mrs. Williams said. “Why, I never heard of such a thing!”

“Neither did anybody else,” Mr. Williams chuckled and he told Mrs. Williams about Mrs. Pulham and her yellow cat. “She is the widow of old Doc Pulham who used to have his office over the bank,” he explained. “She says old Doc used to fix her cat’s teeth and she doesn’t see any reason why the young new dentist who bought her husband’s equipment can’t do the same thing.”

“Well, I never,” said Mrs. Williams and she laughed until there were tears rolling down her cheeks. “Can’t you just see the cat all dressed up in a checked suit and derby hat and carrying a cane, going into the dentist’s office! Oh, dear!”

“I’ll tell you, boys,” Mr. Williams said when they had all stopped laughing. “I’ve got to go over to the bank to get money for Hansen, my supervisor, for the afternoon payroll, so I’ll give you a lift that far. We can take Tommy’s bike in the trunk rack. Then you can go on up to Mrs. Pulham’s on your bike. You’d better leave the bike there and bring the cat back on foot, so you won’t drop it and lose it. Okay?”

“Fine, Pop,” Tommy said.

The Dolphin Beach Bank, the only one in the town, had just opened its doors when Mr. Williams parked his car diagonally in front of the old coquina rock building where the bank was. There was an open arcade in the center of the building. In the center of the arcade was a cigar stand that had four open sides. The right-hand side of the building, as you entered, was occupied by a bowling alley with eight lanes. On the opposite side of the arcade was the Dolphin Beach Bank, with its entrance on the sidewalk. From the back of the arcade, stairs led upward on both sides to the offices above. On the front of the building was an ancient clock which registered 8:45 as Mr. Williams parked. Above the clock the words
HAMILTON BLOCK
had been inscribed in the coquina rock.