Yoyo was the very picture of a villain. He had a black mustache that curled up at the ends and had one slightly yellow eye. It was said that he chewed adult aspirins. Yoyo wore a long gray coat, even in the warmest weather; the envy of every child in the county, for it had many pockets—twelve to be exact. They were full of nails, small wooden toys, sewing thread, nail clippers, perfume, jewelry and dried soup. All for sale. The cart held secondhand clothes, canning jars, fresh fruit and vegetables (and nearly fresh fruit and vegetables), writing paper, metal pots, books, wooden spoons, yarn, cold remedies and anything anyone wanted to be rid of or buy.
“Sooner or later, everything’s bound to come back to me,” Yoyo was fond of saying. “Just like the yo-yo comes back to the hand.” On his cart was a sign that said:
Use It for a Little While
Then Yoyo Buys It With a Smile.
Aunt Elda didn’t like Yoyo one bit.
“He’s greedy, mean to his wife, and he smells like cream of celery,” she grumped. “And he could sell sewing needles to a porcupine.”
“Elda knows,” bellowed Uncle Wrisby.
“Oh, hush,” said Aunt Elda.
She grabbed a broom and swept at Arthur’s and Uncle Wrisby’s feet, pushing them out the door.
Outside Jack turned to sneer at Arthur, and Pauline ran from the side yard, head stretched out, to peck at Yoyo’s boots.
“Blasted chicken!” yelled Yoyo, kicking at her and running behind the cart. Jack shifted and rolled his eyes. Yoyo’s coat flew out behind him as he ran, and Pauline grabbed it with her beak.
Uncle Wrisby and Arthur laughed.
“You’d better learn some French, Yoyo,” called Uncle Wrisby. “Allons! Arrêtes, Pauline!”
Pauline stopped, and Yoyo slunk out from behind his cart, eyeing her.
“I’ll make French casserole out of that rascal someday,” he threatened.
Uncle Wrisby’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Don’t you ever talk that way about Pauline. Ever,” he said softly.
Arthur looked up, surprised. He’d never heard his uncle talk that way. So softly, yet so firm.
“Now, now, Wrisby. Just a joke,” soothed Yoyo nervously. “Come, come. I have a new batch of your medicine, fresh from the pot. Two dollars and twenty-five cents a bottle.”
Aunt Elda came out to buy pickle jars, a dollar a dozen, and Arthur looked through the cart. There were no prices written on anything, and he soon discovered that if he asked Yoyo the price more than once, it could go up or down depending on Yoyo’s mood. It was like a game, knowing when to stop and when to ask again.
“This top, Mr. Pratt?”
“Seventy-five cents, Arthur. And call me Yoyo.”
“How much is the animal book, Mr. Yoyo?”
“One dollar and fifty-nine.”
“And the top?”
“Fifty cents even, boy.”
So it went, a game of sorts amid a tangle of treasures.
“Ah,” said Aunt Elda in a soft voice. So soft that they all looked up.
She picked up a piece of glass and held it up to the light.
“A prism! Like Aunt Mag’s. I’d almost forgotten.”
Aunt Elda moved the prism, and it caught the sun and tossed sprinkles of colored light across Jack’s wide back and Yoyo’s cart.
Arthur saw the look on her face. “Aunt Mag?” he asked. “Who is Aunt Mag?”
Aunt Elda looked at Arthur for a moment, a measuring look. Then she shook her head, one slight shake of dismissal. “Sometime,” she said. “Sometime.” She gazed at the prism, then without looking up she asked, “How much, Yoyo?”
“Six dollars,” said Yoyo.
Aunt Elda sighed and put the prism back in the cart. There was a silence as they watched her walk up the path and into the house.
“Well,” said Yoyo finally. “Anything you want?”
There was something Arthur wanted. The minute he had seen the long canvas case he had known what was inside. His mother had a recorder, a wooden one, that she kept in such a case. Once she’d let him play it, showing him how to finger some of the notes. He remembered the mellow, sad notes that had made the hair on his neck rise when his mother had played. He also remembered the rasping squawks when he had played.
Arthur pointed to the case.
“What’s that?”
Yoyo opened the case and took out the recorder. He held it upside down, blower end down. Arthur felt the first pricklings of excitement in his stomach. Yoyo didn’t know what it was.
“Looks like a musical instrument,” said Yoyo slowly. “Five dollars even,” he announced briskly.
Arthur forced himself to look at a box of fish hooks. He forced himself to think about the money in his pocket. Three dollars and seventeen cents. “How much are the fish hooks?” he heard himself ask. His throat felt dry.
“Thirty-five cents.”
Arthur hesitated. “How much is the canvas case? Without that thing . . . the instrument?” asked Arthur.
“The case alone?” asked Yoyo, surprised.
“It would be just right for my knives and pencils,” said Arthur.
Uncle Wrisby smiled and folded his arms, leaning on the cart. He looked at Yoyo.
“Well,” said Yoyo, turning the case over in his hands. “I guess this case looks like a dollar.”
“Okay,” said Arthur. He felt in his pocket and counted out a dollar. “Do you want an old rag or something to wrap the wood thing in?”
“Sure enough,” called Uncle Wrisby. “Those things are kind of delicate. You might not be able to sell it if the air got at it too much.”
“Oh, drat,” complained Yoyo. “More trouble than it’s worth.”
Arthur started toward the house to find a cloth. Then he stopped.
“If you want,” he called, “I’ll take it off your hands for, say, fifty cents.”
“Seventy-five,” said Yoyo promptly.
“Oh, all right,” said Arthur. His hands shook as he counted out the money.
Yoyo grunted his thanks and climbed back up on the cart.
“I’m late, Jack the Ass,” he called. “Git up!” The donkey backed up, snorted and flattened his ears. Then the cart rattled off down the road. Yoyo turned once to look at Arthur and Uncle Wrisby. Then he was lost around the bend.
Uncle Wrisby began to laugh. He laughed all the way up the path to the front steps. He took off his glasses and wiped his eyes. He hooted and slapped his pant leg. Arthur began to laugh, too.
“Yoyo,” said Uncle Wrisby, stopping to catch his breath, “will get all the way to the Hotwaters’ house before he realizes that he sold you a ‘five dollar even’ recorder for one dollar and seventy-five cents.” He took the bottle of medicine out of his pocket, drank some and hit his chest with a fist, still laughing. “You know, Arthur, I should have bought the bottle and had Yoyo throw in the medicine!”
Aunt Elda came out of the house to see what the noise was about. Then she shooed them off to feed Bernadette.
“You should have had Arthur buy the pickle jars for you, Elda,” he called over his shoulder. “Yoyo might have thrown in the lids!”
This put Aunt Elda in a wicked mood, and there was cold beet soup for supper with a hot dish of cut-up greens that Arthur suspected were dandelions. But he didn’t care. He had his recorder.
After supper he hurried to Moira’s house to show it to her. Pauline came after him, clucking softly behind him.
“Pauline, vite!” urged Arthur impatiently. He looked back once. “Vite!” he called crossly, and Pauline came after him, running in slow and fast spurts.
“Why, Mouse,” exclaimed Moira when he showed her the recorder. “You are really doing things.”
“Arthur,” said Arthur. He frowned. “You don’t think Yoyo Pratt will think I cheated him, do you?”
“Not Yoyo,” said Moira positively. “That’s the way he does his business. That’s the way he is.”
Arthur practiced the recorder all evening, sitting cross
-legged on his bed. But there was a soft prickling of worry, like the beginnings of a sore throat, something other than his mother’s baby or Bernadette’s babies. And it wasn’t until early dawn that Arthur sat upright in bed, suddenly awake and knowing what it was. Pauline had not come home with him.
He ran downstairs and looked behind the stove. Pauline wasn’t in her cradle. Her blanket wasn’t even warm. Arthur searched the yard and the barn, but Pauline was nowhere.
Finally he went to Aunt Elda and Uncle Wrisby’s bedroom, feeling sick with dread. He knocked at the door, and when Aunt Elda opened it, Arthur burst into tears.
“My fault,” he sobbed. “She’s gone. I’ve looked everywhere.”
Aunt Elda gathered Arthur up in her arms while he blurted out the story. He laid his wet face against Aunt Elda’s big, white night braid. And Uncle Wrisby threw on his clothes and went out in the stark morning light to look for Pauline.
The Casserole Threat
Arthur cried and Aunt Elda sat with him in the great wicker rocking chair by the bed. They could hear Uncle Wrisby calling Pauline outside, his voice sometimes far away and muffled, sometimes as close as breath on the window glass.
“It was my dumb recorder,” said Arthur tearfully. He sat up suddenly. “All I could think about was that recorder and playing it. And showing Moira I could do something.” He stood up and ran upstairs.
“Arthur,” called Aunt Elda. She pulled her cotton robe around her and went into the hall.
Arthur appeared with his recorder. He ran into the kitchen, opening the devil’s end of the stove.
“Arthur!” shouted Aunt Elda at the top of her voice.
Arthur stopped, his hand on the stove door. Aunt Elda never shouted.
“You’d better chop it into smaller pieces,” she said softly.
“What?”
“Here. Here’s the hatchet. Go chop the recorder into pieces so it will burn better. That will be more likely to bring Pauline back home.”
Arthur closed the stove door. He felt foolish. “I have to do something,” he said helplessly.
“I’ve got a good idea,” said Aunt Elda. “If it makes you feel better, go upstairs and throw the recorder out the window. Then put on your clothes, go get Moira and find Pauline.”
Arthur went over to Aunt Elda and threw his arms around her middle.
“I’ll find her. I promise,” he said, his voice muffled in the softness of her robe.
Upstairs, his mouse sat on the stone hearth, looking at him solemnly as he opened the big window and threw his recorder out. He looked down to see it lying in the flower bed. He felt better.
Uncle Wrisby was in the kitchen when Arthur came downstairs. Uncle Wrisby looked pale and thin, his long fingers clasped around a cup of tea. Aunt Elda made Arthur eat some toast.
“Arthur,” she said before he went out the door. “Pauline’s been gone before.”
Arthur knew that she was trying to make him feel better. But when he looked back through the window, he saw Uncle Wrisby put his arms around her.
They’re afraid, he thought. They’re afraid just like me.
The valley rang with French, and they rustled the bushes, calling.
“Bonjour, Pauline. Où es-tu?”
“Pauline! Viens!”
Moira knew no French, so Arthur gave her the French phrase book, and she called “Where is the restroom?”; “How old is your favorite uncle?”; and “Do you wish fresh towels brought to your room?” all in French.
“Maybe it doesn’t matter what you say,” said Arthur sadly. “As long as it’s French.”
They circled back to the gravel road again and walked toward Uncle Wrisby’s.
“Maybe I’ll go over to the Reverend’s,” said Moira. “Sometimes Pauline goes there for millet. You could try Yoyo Pratt’s. Maybe she followed his cart.”
It was then that Arthur suddenly remembered and told Moira about Yoyo’s threat: the casserole threat.
“He’d never really eat Pauline!” said Moira, indignant.
“But how do you know?” asked Arthur, miserably. “You’re the one who told me that you could never tell what people would do. When you told me about your parents.” His voice softened. “Do you remember?”
Moira said nothing. But Arthur knew she remembered. They both sat still, the noises of the day surrounding them, closing them in. Finally, Moira got up. She went over to touch Arthur’s arm.
“I think,” she began softly, “we’d both better get over to Yoyo’s.”
Arthur got up, his heart pounding. The sun was high overhead, and Arthur saw that it would be clear. The brightness of the day bothered him. He wished it were raining or gray. Chipmunks ran along the stone walls, plunging down, then popping up between the stones to watch them on their way to Yoyo’s house. They stopped once to look at a lárge spiderweb stretched across the side of a juniper. It was shaded from the sun, still shining with the wet of early dew. But they just looked at it, not speaking.
Yoyo’s house was a small, gray saltbox with weathered shingles, almost dwarfed by the large lilac bushes that grew around it. A larger barn stood behind, with Jack’s cart waiting in front.
“See the cart,” whispered Moira. “That means he’s leaving.”
The bush hid them well. Arthur sat with closed eyes and smelled the strong, sad scent of lilacs. He opened his eyes when he felt Moira stand up to look in the window.
“It’s the kitchen,” she whispered, pushing his head down. “There’s a pot boiling. I can see the steam.”
A pot. Arthur stretched up beside Moira just as Yoyo came in the kitchen door. They ducked down quickly, together, and crouched.
“Pot’s simmering, Maggie,” they heard Yoyo call. “Hurry up.”
The palms of Arthur’s hands felt wet. He rubbed them along his pants. “What’s in the pot, Moira?” he asked.
“Can’t see,” she whispered. “They’re leaving, though. Wait.”
Moira moved closer to Arthur and looked over at him. She reached out her hand and Arthur took it. He looked down at the big fist they made.
They heard the sounds of Yoyo yelling at Jack, then the grating of the wood plank across the barn door. The cart rattled, and from their hiding place, they watched it move slowly down the road. Yoyo drove, with Maggie sitting straight beside him.
Moira took a breath.
“Okay,” she said, her voice sounding suddenly loud. “I’m going in to look at the pot.”
Arthur stood up. “I’m going, too.”
The kitchen door wasn’t locked, and they walked into the room. Dismayed, Arthur saw that the table was set for supper: two blue-flowered plates and silverware.
Moira lifted the lid and peered into the pot. She took a large fork, stretched up on her toes and poked the contents. Then she carefully closed the lid again.
“It’s a chicken, Mouse,” she said.
“Oh, no,” said Arthur. He felt tears at his eyes. “What can I say to Aunt Elda and Uncle Wrisby?” he cried.
Moira didn’t speak.
Arthur looked down at the table, staring at the plates. Then, angrily, he picked them up, along with the silverware, and put everything back in the cabinets.
“Yoyo’s not going to eat Pauline, that’s for sure,” he said in a trembling voice.
Moira nodded.
“Let’s bring the pot, too,” said Arthur, his voice breaking. “We’ll have a proper funeral.”
Moira searched through the drawers and found two pot holders. She handed one to Arthur. And they walked out the door and down the road, each holding a handle of the pot.
Arthur began to cry, quietly. He was glad that Moira didn’t say, ‘Don’t feel bad,’ or ‘Everything will be all right.’ He knew he would feel bad forever. But worse—much worse than feeling bad forever—he’d have to tell Aunt Elda and Uncle Wrisby about Pauline. Silently, they passed by the spiderweb in the juniper, now almost invisible in the sunlight. When Uncle Wrisby’s barn came into view, Arthur felt
a sharp jarring in his stomach.
“Wait,” he cried out.
They put down the pot by the side of the road.
“I can’t,” moaned Arthur. “I can’t tell them. I can’t.”
Moira touched his shoulder. “You can,” she said softly. “You have to.” She bent down and put her hand around one of the pot handles. “Lift.”
Together they picked up the pot and walked slowly past the barn and turned into the yard.
“Arthur!” called Uncle Wrisby from the barn. “Where have you been?”
Aunt Elda opened the kitchen door and hurried out.
“We’ve been calling and calling you,” she said. She stopped when she saw the tear smudges under Arthur’s eyes and the look on Moira’s face.
Arthur went over to Aunt Elda and put his arms around her.
“She’s gone.” He lifted his face to look up at Aunt Elda’s face. “I’m sorry. So sorry.” He began to cry against Aunt Elda, his chest hurting and his body shaking.
“Arthur,” said Uncle Wrisby softly. He came over and untangled Arthur from around Aunt Elda. “What are you talking about?” He brushed Arthur’s hair from his eyes. “She’s not gone anymore.” He turned Arthur around and pointed his long finger toward the paddock fence. “See?”
A flash of rust flew to Arthur’s feet and began pecking his shoelaces. Brisk, hard pecks that hurt.
“Pauline!” cried Arthur.
“It is Pauline!” shouted Moira.
Aunt Elda put an arm around Arthur.
“We looked and called for you all morning,” she said. “We found Pauline sleeping in the tree outside your window.” She pushed Arthur’s hair back and wiped at his cheeks with her apron.
Arthur began to laugh and cry at the same time as Pauline pecked happily at his shoelaces. He knelt down and picked her up, burying his face in her feathers. He couldn’t remember, ever, being so happy.
“Oh, Pauline,” he said softly. “Je t’aime.”
Later, Arthur brought Pauline a pan of water and watched her drink. She tilted her head back so the water could run down her long neck.
“Never,” he promised her, “never again will I forget you.”
Suddenly Uncle Wrisby raised his head and sniffed. “I smell goose.”