The story, as she told it, goes like this. Way back in the dark days of World War II, Elizabeth joined the WACs and went away to England to do some work for the war effort—that’s the Women’s Army Corps, you know. She liked England so much that after the war was over she decided to stay, and there she’d been all these years, until her English husband died almost at the same time as her sister back home did. Then she decided to come on back to New York State to revisit her old girlhood stomping grounds, and to take care of business—Emma having left behind an old farmhouse, and an acre of two of land that would need to be disposed of.
Of course, Miz Powell would never have used a phrase like stomping grounds herself. It was too ungenteel.
After I got myself cleaned off and had put on a fresh skirt—ironically, I was going to be wearing skirts for a long while, at least until the cast came off—I listened as she rattled off her story. We sat in the parlor chatting, me with my leg propped up on an ottoman. I hate chatting—I even hate the word “chatting”—but I felt like I could afford to lower myself a bit if it meant I could learn more about her. A person like Miz Powell did not come along every day, after all. She was fascinating, like a walking, talking museum exhibit plopped down in our very own living room. And things were going along just fine until Mother heard us talking and had to get in on the action herself. She made us some tea and broke out the sweets, and just like that I was trapped in the middle of a regular old hen party.
Now, this was not what I’d intended. Under normal circumstances, I would’ve busted out of there faster than you could say Nat King Cole. I’d rather sit in a bathtub of acid than hang around with a couple of yappy old broads. But being in the condition I was in, I was forced to sit there and take it.
“What an interesting life you must have led!” Mother kept saying, in a voice so high and sweet and full of fake politeness it just about made me ill. It was the same voice she used with the minister. She was a great one for laying it on thick, especially if she was talking to someone who acted like they were better than the rest of us—which I must say I thought Miz Powell was doing. I guess it was the English accent. If she was born here, which she was, then she would have talked like a regular person, now, wouldn’t she? But there she was, ripping out one “rawthah” after another, saying things like “jolly good” and “brilliant show,” which try as hard as I might, I couldn’t imagine anyone actually saying outside of a book—and all of it in this strange kind of pronunciation. She was practically talking through her nose, and you had to watch close if you wanted to see her lower jaw move, because it seemed like the object was to hold it as still as possible. The worst part was that Mother started trying to imitate her, in her own pathetic way. “Do have anothah cookie,” she kept saying. I wanted to smack her. Even I knew that English people didn’t say “cookie.” They say “biscuit.”
But Miz Powell just went along with it. I’m not sure she even noticed Mother’s cheeseball attempts to sound English herself. “Thenk you,” she said. “Delightful.” She took a tiny, mouse-sized nibble of a Nabisco vanilla wafer that I knew for a fact was about six thousand years old. Then she took a sip of tea, and damned if that pinkie didn’t come flying out. I knew that for the rest of her life Mother would hold her pinkie exactly that way whenever she drank anything, even water.
“Whatever happened to your leg, Haley?” Miz Powell asked me.
“Oh, well,” I said, “that’s a funny story. I was just—”
“She fell down the stairs,” Mother interrupted me. “Just slipped and fell. A dreadful accident.”
“Oh, dear,” said Miz Powell. “Did it hurt very badly?”
“It hurt like a thundering bitch,” I said, fuming. Oh, Lord, I was about ready to blow a gasket. First of all, I hate being interrupted. And second, I knew why Mother was lying: because climbing barns was unladylike, and above all she wanted us both to appear like a couple of proper misses in front of this fancified, stuffed old specimen.
But I learned long ago how to fight my battles with Mother. It didn’t work to attack in the open, like an army would, because she just started sniffling and crying and then she would run upstairs and slam her door, and if that happened in front of the Queen here, we’d both look like a couple of idiots. I would use guerrilla tactics instead. I’d take potshots at her from behind bushes and trees, when she was least expecting it. That was how I would get my revenge. Later.
The two of them went on nattering at each other for a while longer, and I learned more of Miz Powell’s story, which as much as I hated to admit it to myself sounded kind of interesting. She had all kinds of tales about bombs falling on her, or near her at any rate, in London during the war, and others about how tough the English folks had it with rationing, much worse than it had been here in the States. Even years after the war was over, she told us, an English person couldn’t get a bag of sugar or some butter without having to move heaven and earth. Mother made sympathetic little noises at that, because she was old enough to remember those days. I myself was underwhelmed. Like I said, history is not one of my strong points, and neither is cooking—though I did like the stories about the bombs.
Miz Powell didn’t have any children. She and her husband, who she called the Captain, seemed to have traveled a lot. She mentioned about six countries in one breath. Though I wanted like crazy to hate her for being a show-off and a priss, the fact was I couldn’t. She was too damn interesting. For one thing, Brother had trusted her enough to let her lead him back into his stall. Now, that was something. It told me she must have been all right, because Brother was an excellent judge of character. For another thing, she’d been everywhere. She’d gone to places I hadn’t even heard of before—where the hell was Kuala Lumpur? Where was Singapore?—but she didn’t talk about them like a regular tourist would. She just mentioned them, as casual as if she was talking about going to Buffalo. And I couldn’t forget that fellow she’d talked about earlier, the one she’d called Flash, who ended up getting shot by the East Germans. Now, how on earth did she even know someone who would find themselves in that kind of predicament? I barely knew what an East German was. I knew that once upon a time there’d been a wall dividing Germany down the middle—the good ones lived on one side and the bad ones on the other, or so I heard it, and the wall ran the length of the country. I figured they had to put it up after Hitler came along, to keep all the Nazis in line. They’d taken it down since, though. If I thought about it, I could recall hearing stories about people trying to escape from the bad side onto the good side, and sometimes getting shot at. I wondered if this Flash fellow had been an East German himself and was trying to make it over to the West. I made up my mind to ask her later, when Mother wasn’t around. Mother had a way of taking a conversation over and making it sound stupid, no matter what it was about.
After about eighty years of us sitting around and making nicey-nice with each other, Miz Powell said she had to be getting along home. I hopped up on my crutches and said I would walk her out the door. I said it fast because I didn’t want Mother coming along.
“Rawthah delighted to meet you, Ms. Powell,” said Mother. “Do come by again.”
Oh, Lord, just shoot me now, I thought.
But Miz Powell nodded and smiled. If she’d picked up on what a fruitcake my mother was, she didn’t let on. “I shall, my dear Mrs. Bombauer,” she murmured. “I shall.”
“Let’s skedaddle,” I said, and I headed through the screen door and down the steps as fast as I could.
“Thank you, dear,” said Miz Powell, when we were outside. “It’s not necessary for you to walk with me, though. Your leg must be quite painful.”
“It ain’t that bad,” I said.
I usually never said ain’t. I prided myself on speaking better than most of the yahoos in this pisswater burg, because of all the reading I’d done. But Ms. Powell’s speech and accent and everything else about her were so dandified and high-toned that it kind of brought out the worst in me. “I didn??
?t fall down no stairs, neither,” I said.
“You didn’t?”
“No, ma’am.” I picked my way down the porch steps and crutched along the driveway to the road, Miz Powell walking beside me. “I fell through the roof of that there barn.”
“You fell through the—” She cut herself off as she looked at the barn. “Why did your mother tell me you fell down the stairs?”
“She gets kind of embarrassed at me,” I said. “I’m too boyish for her liking, I guess. Doesn’t want to admit she has a daughter who likes climbing things.”
“Why, it must be fifty feet high!”
“At least,” I said. I dropped my local-yokel act. It wasn’t lost on her, but suddenly I felt pretty stupid.
“What were you doing up there?”
“Just looking around,” I said. “I was bored.”
“Ah, yes. I see.”
“You see what?”
“I mean, I understand how easily one grows bored around here. Don’t forget, I grew up here myself…although that was a very long time ago.”
Miz Powell was starting to sound less foreign and more normal, though maybe that was just me getting used to her. She took a moment to look around the countryside. From our house, you could see three other houses—the Grunveldt place, Emma’s house up on a slight rise maybe half a mile away, and then in the other direction the Shumacher farm, which at that distance was just a dark cluster of buildings on a hillside. That was it. It was all pastureland and cornfields around here, with a couple of vegetable patches thrown in for variety. If you stopped and listened, you wouldn’t hear a blessed thing. Maybe a tractor belching somewhere, or a cow fart.
“When I was your age,” she said, “there were times I thought I would go absolutely mad if something exciting didn’t happen to me.”
“Yes, indeed!” I said. “Lord a’mighty! I know exactly what you’re saying.”
“The country is peaceful enough,” she said. “Heaven knows there have been times in my life when I missed it terribly. But if it’s all you’ve ever seen, it just seems like…”
“Slow death by roasting?” I suggested. “About as much fun as a mouthful of pins?”
Miz Powell laughed. Not a prim, proper laugh with a handkerchief pressed to her mouth, but a good, open hearty chuckle.
“You do have a way of saying what’s on your mind, don’t you, Haley?” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“I think we understand each other perfectly,” she said.
By now we’d only just passed Frankie’s house, but my hands were already getting sore. I still wasn’t used to walking on those crutches.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but I think I’m going to stop here and turn around,” I said. “This is about as far as I’ve gone on these things, and I don’t want to overdo it.”
“I understand, dear,” she said. “I’ll be fine from here.” She stopped. “What on earth is that young man doing hanging out of that window?” she asked.
“Oh, that’s just Frankie,” I said. I lifted up one crutch and waved it at him, but he was too busy staring at us to wave back. “He’s a little touched in the head. He spends all his time spying on people. He doesn’t mean any harm, though. He saved my life, actually.”
“Indeed,” said Miz Powell. “I wonder what kind of binoculars he’s using.”
That was a curious statement. What on earth would she know about binoculars? I wondered.
“Anyhow, thank you for tea, Haley, and I’m sure I’ll be seeing you soon,” said Miz Powell. “Do stop by sometime, when you’re more able to get around.”
“You’re welcome, ma’am,” I said. “I sure will.”
“And you can stop calling me ma’am,” she said. “My name is Elizabeth.”
“All righty,” I said. “Elizabeth. Can I ask you something?”
“May I ask you something.”
“May I…ask you a question?” I felt shy, suddenly. I was so surprised at myself I forgot to get mad at her for correcting me.
“Yes, you may.”
“How come you talk with an accent?”
“Do I, dear?” She seemed surprised. “Oh, no. I tried so hard to stifle it. I didn’t want anyone to think I was…” She trailed off for a minute. “I’ve been gone a long time, that’s all,” she said. “A very long time. My friends in England always teased me because of how American I sounded, but I suppose after almost fifty years…oh dear. I’ll have to work on that, now, won’t I?”
“That’s all right,” I said. “I like it, actually.” I realized, as I said that, that it was true—I did like it. “I just wondered, because you said you were born here and everything, but you sounded so—”
“People can be changed by places, Haley,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “That was the reason I left home in the first place—to be changed. I was looking for adventure, you see, and the war came along at just the right time.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I mean, Elizabeth.”
“Someday I’ll tell you some more of the story,” she said. “I think you’re the kind of woman who would appreciate it. You’ll come by for tea this week, yes?”
“All righty,” I said, though two tea parties in one week was about twice as many as I thought I could handle.
“See you then, dear,” she said, “and by the way.”
“Yeah?”
“Come alone, if you don’t mind.” She winked at me. I smiled.
“I don’t mind one bit, Elizabeth,” I said. I guess Mother had gotten on her nerves after all. Well, she’d certainly done a good job of hiding it.
Elizabeth turned and marched on up the road like marching was what she’d been doing all her life. I had completely forgotten to ask her about Flash—the other Flash, I mean. That could wait until I saw her again. As far as I was concerned, I was the original: Flash Jackson, stuntman extraordinaire, who on top of having to suffer the indignity of living in a girl’s body was now confined to crutches, and to having a twenty-pound deadweight attached to his leg.
You’re probably wondering by now whether I wasn’t just as crazy as poor Frankie, what with my carrying on about this invisible person inside me. Did she really believe there was a man trapped inside her? you may be asking yourself. Was she plumb loco? Did she have a screw loose? Well, that’s actually a separate question. Living out in the country will make anyone crazy, if that’s not what they’re cut out for. And just because you’re born in a place doesn’t mean you’re cut out for living there. I didn’t mind it much, to be honest, apart from the occasional bout of mind-numbing boredom, but I certainly had to come up with my own ways of entertaining myself, and pretending I was Flash Jackson was one of them.
It was actually my old Dad who came up with that name, not me. We used to play games together when I was little—hide-and-seek, cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, and my particular favorite, stuntman. Stuntman involved doing all kinds of things that seemed awful exciting, such as swinging out of trees on a rope, or locking myself in a trunk and then making my daring escape. Of course, the branch I swung from was only about three feet high, and the trunk was never locked at all. My dad was always standing right there in case anything went wrong. But it was his imagination that made it all seem so dangerous and exciting—that, and the fact that I was about seven years old.
We both had stuntman names. Mine was Flash Jackson, and his was Fireball McGinty. Fireball McGinty’s specialty was jumping a bicycle off a ramp and over a row of my dolls. I wasn’t allowed to do that one, because it really was dangerous—I mean, it wasn’t life threatening, but there was always the chance that I would fall over and crack a tooth or something when I landed. We would drag a piece of plywood out from the storage area under the house and prop it up on cinder blocks. Then Dad, who had a bit of a wild streak in him, would start off on his bicycle at the far end of the driveway. He’d race down as fast as he could, shouting at the top of his lungs, and then launch himself over. The ramp was
only about a foot high, if that. It was hardly death defying. But it seemed to me at the time that it was.
Poor old Fireball. As it turned out, his stunt name was sort of a prediction of how he would die. I wasn’t home when it happened—I was in school. The principal came and got me out of my classroom, which was nothing new. I figured I was in trouble again. In fact, I’d been in a fight that very afternoon, my fortieth or forty-first of my career—I was a great brawler in my younger days, but that’s going back to first grade now—and I just assumed I was going to be hauled in and lectured one more time about the evils of violent behavior and the need for “self-control,” which is still a phrase that raises the hair on the back of my neck.
That never happened, though. Instead the principal gave me a lollipop, put me in his car, and drove me home. The first thing I noticed when we got there was that Dad’s workshop was gone. In its place was a great gaping crater, with a couple of chunks of smoldering wood lying here and there.
That’s how cigarettes killed my Dad. It wasn’t lung cancer, which is how they usually get you. It was that he was smoking too close to his stash of nitroglycerin, which he’d bought from a friend of his who owned a construction company and which he was planning on using in one of his experiments. God only knows what he was going to do with it. Not being licensed to handle such stuff, he didn’t know just how volatile it was, and I guess he thought his cigarette was safe enough. Nobody knows exactly how it happened, of course, but since he was a smoker, that was the likeliest explanation. That’s what the fire chief said, anyway.
You can laugh if you want to. I’ve had a giggle or two over it myself, after enough time had passed that it didn’t hurt quite so much to think about him. I mean, it was a fitting end, though it was way too soon for him to go. And dramatic, too. People still talk about that day. You could hear the explosion way off in Mannville, and folks felt it for miles around. His workshop was obliterated—I mean, just gone. It was a huge blast. Luckily, the shed was far enough from the house so it didn’t blow up too. It knocked out all our windows, though, and for a while there wasn’t a cow in this neck of the woods that would give milk. Mr. Shumacher lost a whole week’s worth of dairy money, though he never complained about it. And there was just this big hole in the ground where Dad’s shop used to be. As chance would have it, there turned out to be a natural spring running just under the surface there—there’s aquifers like that all over the place—and within a few days, the hole was filled with water.