Whistling In the Dark

  A big Kenfield’s Five and Dime banner hung behind the prize table. Mrs. Callahan was congratulating the winners.

  “Hello, girls,” she said when we came up. “Congratulations, Troo.”

  Betty Callahan got up from the folding chair and put her arms around us. She had on a sleeveless white blouse, navy Bermuda shorts and gold earrings. She also had a lot of oomph in her hair that she had recently changed. “You two doin’ all right?” she asked.

  Mrs. Callahan smelled so good that I almost started crying, but then I looked over at Troo and she shot me a don’t-you-dare look. She must’ve also smelled that Evening in Paris.

  “I visited your mother yesterday,” Mrs. Callahan said.

  Troo was getting antsy, looking over at the prize table and not even listening. I knew what she had her eye on. It was a genuine Davy Crockett coonskin cap. Being the lover of hats that she was, she’d been admiring them up at the Five and Dime for the last week and now Artie Latour was running his hand through the fur.

  “My sister, Margie, who’s a nurse up at St. Joe’s, told me that Helen is holding her own,” Mrs. Callahan said.

  Troo wandered toward the prize table and got up right behind Artie and whispered something in his ear. Probably threatening to drown him in the Honey Creek if he didn’t let her have that coonskin cap.

  “You sure everything is okay at your house, Sal?”

  “Everything is fine, Mrs. Callahan.” Now Artie had that coonskin in his hand and Troo was grabbing the coonskin tail and if I didn’t do something, this would turn into the kind of roll-around-on-the-ground fight that Troo had a bad reputation for.

  I started to hurry toward them, but then I stopped and turned my head back to Mrs. Callahan. “Is that true what you just said about Mother? That she’s holding her own?” I wasn’t sure what that meant but it sounded pretty good and I wished she really was holding her own. Mrs. Callahan looked me directly in the eye and couldn’t say another word, so I pretty much knew she was just saying that to make me feel better.

  “Fight!”

  I turned and there were Artie and Troo wrestling and rolling in the dirt. She had the coonskin cap tucked under her arm and wouldn’t give it up, and then she kicked Artie a good one in the leg right before Mr. Lane came by to pull her off. Mr. Lane picked up the coonskin and set it on Troo’s head. I looked back at Artie Latour doubled over on the ground holding his leg. His shirt had got ripped and dirt caked his sweaty arms, and I thought in some special way our mother dying was working out okay for us because we were gettin’ cut all sorts of slack.

  Troo was thinking the exact same thing. Because she got up off the ground, flipped the coonskin tail at Artie and took off laughing, waving her ice cream torch back and forth and yelling, “Give me your tired, your poor. Your huddled messes.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  For fifteen minutes or so I lost Troo in all the red, white and blue, so I had a nice visit with Ethel, who had the day off from taking care of Mrs. Galecki. Ethel’d come with her gentleman friend named Mr. Raymond Buckland Johnson, who said we could call him Ray Buck for short. He was from the South just like Ethel. Georgia, I think he said. Ray Buck was a city bus driver and his skin was as black as a bad luck cat. Much blacker than Ethel, who was the color of a Hershey bar. Ray Buck was also tall, thin and a little hunched over in the shoulders, so when he turned sideways he looked like a question mark. Troo and me, we just adored Ethel and were getting to know Ray Buck a little bit better and were beginning to adore him as well.

  Some people around here didn’t like the Negroes. Like Hall. And Reese Latour, who called me and Troo nigger lovers every chance he got. Troo and me had asked Ethel about why that was. She’d told us she didn’t know why for certain, but that it was true that some white folks didn’t care too much for coloreds. Down in the South there was even this club called the KKK that was really mean to Negroes. They dressed up in sheets and burned crosses on the Negroes’ front lawns to hurt their feelings, which made me wonder for a second if Rasmussen belonged to the KKK because of that pillowcase he had on his head when he’d tried to grab me at the Fazios’.

  “So, Miss Sally, how’s your mama doin’?” Ethel asked, after she suggested that Ray Buck go off to the refreshment stand to get her a cool drink. Ethel always called us Miss Troo or Miss Sally because she had the best manners and liked manners in others. I just loved to listen to her talk. She was another one with an accent, but not like Willie’s Brooklyn one or the Goldmans’ German one, which were hard sounding, like they were just about to get in a fight with you. Ethel’s accent flowed like the Honey Creek water, and one time when I was helping her hull strawberries for shortcake I fell dead asleep on the kitchen chair because come to think of it, that’s what her voice really sounded like. A lullaby.

  “Mrs. Callahan just told me that Mother is holding her own, Ethel, thank you for asking,” I said.

  I pulled myself up onto the first limb of the tree that Ethel was sitting under, so I could get a better lookout for Troo.

  “That so? Your mama’s holdin’ her own? Well, Lordy, that is good news to these tired ears.” Ethel was below me in a plastic chair, barefoot and fanning herself with a newspaper, which she said she liked to read because it was important to be educated to the goings-on. She turned to gaze up at me. “How come you and Miss Troo ain’t been by lately?”

  “We been busy.” I wanted to tell Ethel how Rasmussen was trying to murder and molest me and I hadn’t felt much like coming by since she lived right next door to him. But as Mother always said, there was a time and place for everything. “How is Mrs. Galecki feeling?”

  “She’s been askin’ for you. And so has Mr. Gary.”

  “Mr. Gary’s here?” I asked, excited.

  Mrs. Galecki’s son, Mr. Gary Galecki, lived in California and would come and see his mother every summer. The last time he was here he played old maid with me and Troo for over two hours out on the screened-in porch and that made Troo say that she thought Mr. Gary especially must like kids because damn, you couldn’t hardly get a grown-up to do anything with you at all. Mr. Gary Galecki was another good egg.

  “Mr. Gary’s feelin’s are real hurt that you and Miss Troo ain’t stopped by to say hey.” Ethel looked scrumptious today. She had on a little straw hat with creamy pansy flowers and her dress was lemon colored and made her chocolate skin really stand out quite nicely. That’s why Ray Buck was looking at Ethel the way he was when he brought her back a cup of iced tea. She really did look good enough to eat. Ray Buck could see we were visiting so after he gave Ethel her drink and a wink, he moved over to the side with his smooth walk and lit up a cigarette with a snap of his lighter.

  “We’ll come by real soon, I promise. Troo was just tellin’ me today how much she was looking forward to seeing Mr. Gary.”

  “All right then, I’ll tell him he can be expectin’ you.” Ethel took a long drink out of her cup and then moved around in her chair a little to get comfortable because she believed in being as comfortable as possible at all times. Life had enough uncomfortable in it, she always said.

  “Are you little gals bein’ careful? I been readin’ in the newspaper that there’s a crazy man out there and I heard tell that somebody grabbed at you over at the Fazios’ yard the other night. You best pay attention when you’re out and about.” Ethel sounded like she knew what it meant to be grabbed at. “Alls I gotta say is thank the Lord that Mr. Rasmussen lives next door to me. Gives me a feelin’ of such safety.”

  Should I tell her? Shouldn’t I tell Ethel, my dear Negro friend, how very smart she was about certain things like how to take care of sick people and how to make the best blond brownies and how she had the singing voice of all the cherubs in heaven, but that she was wrong, dead wrong, about Rasmussen?

  I looked out over the crowd while I was deciding about that and spotted Troo’s Statue of Liberty torch. She was talking to Uncle Paulie, who probably wasn’t working today at Jerbak’s Beer ’n Bowl setting up p
ins for one dollar and ten cents an hour because the lanes were closed for the Fourth like everything else was. The other thing Uncle Paulie did to make money for himself and Granny was collect soda bottles out of people’s garbage cans and take them to Delancey’s Corner Store. Mrs. Delancey gave him two pennies for the bottles and Uncle Paulie always counted them real carefully, like maybe Mrs. Delancey was trying to gyp him.

  Uncle Paulie was looking at the ground and pointing at something. Troo bent down and handed it to him, and then he ran around her and put his hands over her eyes. I could see his mouth moving. I knew he was saying “Peek-a-boo.” Troo pushed his fingers off her face and ran.

  “Did you hear what I said, Miss Sally?”

  “Pardon me?” I had to use manners around Ethel or she would get after me.

  Ethel sighed, and when she did her bosoms went up and down just like Artie Latour’s Adam’s apple. “I said you and Miss Troo should come over to see the puppy that Officer Rasmussen got. I know how Troo is still missin’ that Butchy dog of hers.” She had probably told him about how we had to leave Butchy out on the farm. Rasmussen probably bought that puppy to trick me into trusting him. It was common knowledge that me and Troo had a fondness for animals of all kinds.

  “What happened to Officer Rasmussen’s wife?” I asked before I had even figured out I was gonna do that.

  Ethel turned quickly back toward me. “Dave Rasmussen don’t have a wife. He’s a bachelor man.”

  “Why do you think he doesn’t have a wife?” I was swinging my feet back and forth up in that tree. I was getting nervous now, talking about Rasmussen, because I already knew why he didn’t have a wife. Rasmussen didn’t like wives. Rasmussen liked little girls. From up in the tree crook, I could see what everybody was doin’. Troo had found Willie. They were holding hands, walking toward the gully that led down to the Honey Creek.

  Ethel said, “Come down here, Miss Sally. This twistin’ and turnin’ is givin’ me a pain in my neck and Lord knows, I don’t need another one of them.”

  I always did what Ethel told me to do so I hopped out of the tree and landed on the grass next to her. She ran her hand down my hair and told me it reminded her of a bag of just picked cotton.

  “You know, my mama, she died young,” Ethel said quietly. “It’s a sad thing when a woman gets sick and dies ’fore she’s done doin’ her mothering. It just ain’t right and not in the order of things. So you say a lot of prayers that your mama gets better, okay?”

  I nodded and then Ray Buck came over and said, “Time to take a stroll over,” and pointed toward the zoo. They were going over to see Sampson because that was what everybody liked to do over there. Admire the King of the Jungle.

  “I’ll see ya later, Miss Sally. Maybe at them fireworks.” Ethel stood, pulled her lemon dress down and smiled at Ray Buck when he offered her his arm. “You give my best to Miss Troo and tell her that Mr. Gary brought along his old maid cards and he’s a-rarin’ to go.”

  “You say hello to Mr. Gary for us and you can count on us this week to help you with Mrs. Galecki. I have a new book from the library with some beautiful pictures I think she’ll like. It’s called Black Beauty.”

  Ethel grinned and said, “Why didn’t nobody tell me that somebody done wrote a book about me?”

  Ray Buck started laughing so hard he had to clear his throat and spit.

  I didn’t get the joke until the two of them were walking on the path over toward Sampson, and then thought I better get down to the creek and get Troo because they just announced that the sack races would begin in five minutes. I’d tell Ethel later that was a good one.

  Mary Lane, who I think musta been on her third or fourth Eskimo Pie, because she had four of those sticks lined up in front of her, called me over and said, “Take these and give ’em to your uncle Paulie so I can put that in my charitable works story.”

  Everybody in the neighborhood knew about Uncle Paulie and his Popsicle sticks. Just like everybody knew that Mrs. Goldman wouldn’t ever wear the color gray and Ethel wouldn’t drink Coca-Cola unless she could drop peanuts in it and that Mrs. Latour was not going to have any more kids because she’d gone into the hospital and had an operation where they took all her insides out and threw them away.

  “Yeah . . . okay,” I said, picking up the sticks. Mary Lane didn’t want to give the sticks to him herself because Uncle Paulie was so odd. The way he always walked with his head down like he was searching for something. And the way he talked, which was real slow and sometimes didn’t make sense. And he also smiled too much, particularly at stuff nobody else smiled at. Like at that dead bird I found in Granny’s backyard. Before he had the accident and got his brain damaged, he hardly ever smiled. Granny used to warn me to steer clear of him, to not get on Uncle Paulie’s bad side because “That boy can get his Irish up.” The way she said it, I could tell she was afraid of her own son.

  I stuck Mary Lane’s sticks in my pocket and felt like a bad Catholic for sometimes not liking my own uncle, so I made up my mind to go look for him. But first I wanted to cool down with Troo and make sure she wasn’t throwing anything at Greasy Al.

  “Three minutes . . . three minutes, everybody, until the sack races . . . find a partner,” came over the loudspeaker.

  Everybody was laughing and eating and sweating and the sun felt so scorchy, like if we stayed out in it long enough we’d all melt like ice cream and there’d be nothin’ left of us to see but people puddles.

  I ran into Nell on my way to the creek. She seemed a little drunk because she was acting way more nice than Nell usually acted in the morning, or anytime really. She even hugged me, which was not something Nell generally did. But then she cried a little. When Eddie brought her over a cup of root beer, she started laughing again real quick. Clearly, Nell was going crazy. (Well, she certainly had the hair for it.)

  I stood on top of the hill and looked down at the creek. Kids were hopping across the rocks and sometimes falling in and laughing and then getting right back up, and then I saw Troo. She and Willie were sitting next to the little waterfall and even though it was so hot she had on her prize-winning coonskin cap. I yelled to her, “The sack races are getting ready to start.”

  She yelled back up, “Hold your horses.”

  When I turned to walk back to the race area, I ran smack dab into Reese Latour and his flat-as-a-frying-pan face. He was staring down at Troo, grinning and rubbing the front of his pants. Reese was always doing that. Fast Susie Fazio said that Reese’d told her he had a magic genie in there and he was making a wish.

  “What were you talkin’ to those two niggers about?” he slobbered out. Reese’d been drinking something that I thought might set my hair on fire, that’s how strong he smelled.

  Before I had a chance to tell him to mind his own beeswax, Artie came running up next to me and said, “Hi, Sally.”

  Without a word, Reese reached behind me and shoved his brother down on the ground. The bike-decorating prize Artie’d picked out, a silver bike bell, flew through the air and landed at my feet, making a noise like the ones at the beginning of a boxing match. “Can’t you see that her and me are talkin’?” Reese groused. “Aren’t you supposed to be watchin’ the idiot?”

  Reese was Nell’s age, almost grown up, and shouldn’t be shoving around someone younger than himself. I helped Artie up and handed him back his bell after Reese started singing, “Harelip, harelip, harelip,” loud enough for people to start looking at us. Then he took another swallow out of whatever was in that brown paper bag and got up close to me and said, “Why don’t you just marry a nigger if you love ’em so much,” and walked off.

  “Two minutes . . . two minutes, everyone. Get your partners and pick your sack.”

  “You wanna be my partner, Sally?” Artie acted like Reese pushin’ him down was no big deal because it happened every day, and then I realized it probably did and felt so sorry for him.

  I looked back at where Troo should’ve been coming up the gully.
Well, the heck with her. Let Willy watch over her for a bit. “Yeah, that’d be fine, Artie.”

  Artie and I went over to the pile of sacks and found one that looked strong and didn’t stink too bad. (Each year at the Fourth of July sack race, Mr. Lane said they used the same sacks they used since the American Revolution.) We slipped our legs in and Mrs. Callahan tied us together with a rope and we hopped over to the starting line. It was funny to feel Artie’s sweaty, hairy leg against mine. Troo was gonna be so mad if I did the race with him and not her. I wanted to say to Artie I changed my mind, but then I thought he’d think I didn’t want to partner with him because he was a harelip.

  I looked for Troo again and started to get worried. She loved the sack race and had been looking forward to it all year long since we had won it last year. Mr. Lane said, “On your mark . . .” Too late now to go lookin’ for her. “Get set . . .” I looked down the line at our opponents. Way on the very end was Troo. With Willie. She waved to me and gave me her teaser smile. And then more than anything I wanted to win that sack race.

  “Go!”

  Much to my surprise, to make up for that harelip, God had made Artie Latour a fast hopper. Real fast. Before I knew it, I was on the ground at the finish line and Mrs. Callahan was smiling and putting blue ribbons over our necks. Everybody was yelling congratulations. ’Cept for Troo.

  “A new record in the sack race, folks!” Mr. Lane yelled. “That’s Sally O’Malley and Artie Latour. Let’s give them a round of applause.” Everybody clapped and then Mr. Larsen, who owned the Tick Tock Coffee Shop over on Burleigh Street and seemed to be in charge of the cookout, hollered out, “Come and get it!” and waved a flag toward the picnic area, where you could eat for free and have watermelon and ice cream Dixie cups for dessert.