A Year Down Yonder (11 page)

“Hoo-boy,” Grandma said.

When Royce could tear his eyes off Grandma in sleep-wear, heavily armed, he knocked back his lemonade. The noise from above was still terrific, like the ceiling could give way any second now. But Royce looked ready for anything, except what happened next.

Somebody was thundering down the stairs. When she came into view, it was Maxine Patch, the postmistress. Draped and coiled all over her was the biggest snake I’ve ever seen outside the Brookfield Zoo.

Maxine was screaming for her life, and that snake was all over her. It looped around her shoulders where it seemed to have dropped on her. It clung to one of her sizable hips. And there was still snake to spare.

And though I couldn’t believe my eyes—and heaven knows, Royce couldn’t believe his—the snake was all that Maxine wore.

She did a dance around the platform rocker, barefoot. Bare everything except for a rose in her hair. She was all ghastly pale flesh and black snake. And she couldn’t shake that snake for all the shimmying in the world.

Grandma worked around her to get the front door open. With a scream and a hiss, Maxine and the snake leaped through it. They did a fast Hawaiian hula off the porch and skimmed around the snowball bushes, making for town.

“That’s too good a show to keep to ourselves,” Grandma said.

With the thought, she was through the door and out in the front yard. Planting her house shoes, she jammed the Winchester into her shoulder, aimed high, and squeezed off both barrels. The world exploded. Birds rose shrieking from the trees, and the town woke with a start.

Royce and I watched from the door. I was half dead with embarrassment. Royce rubbed the back of his neck in a dazed way, but he was all eyes when it came to Maxine’s retreating figure. We saw the snake drop off her just as she left our property.

But Maxine kept going, racing for the post office. She lived with her folks, the Ivan Patches, but she couldn’t go home wearing only a rose. Did she think she could make it all the way to the post office unnoticed? If she’d been thinking at all, she’d have doubled back to brave Grandma and get her clothes. But she didn’t. When people alerted by the gunfire ran to their windows, they saw Maxine Patch as nature intended, speeding past their houses and straight into the annals of undying fame.

Grandma dragged the shotgun back to the porch pillar. There she sagged and seemed to weep, in mirth or joy. Then she came on back inside, pushing past Royce, who seemed turned to stone, though he was never a big talker.

“Grandma,
what in the world was a snake that big doing in the house?” I said, at the end of my rope. “What was any snake doing in here?”

She propped the smoking gun against the marble-topped table to wipe her wet eyes. She hooked her spectacles over both ears. “That snake lives here, up in the attic.”

So that was what had been thumping right over my room all this time. A hideous, huge, coiling, striking snake directly over my head. Bootsie knew.

“Grandma,
why?”

“It keeps down the birds,” Royce said, recovering.

“That’s right,” Grandma said. “Birds get in under the roof of an old house. You can’t keep them out. But a snake will keep them down.”

Royce was edging around her, to the door. “Well, I probably ought to get going,” he said. “But ... thanks. It was a real interesting afternoon. I never saw a—” But now he was gone, pedaling away down the walk. And all my hopes went with him.

I turned on Grandma. But then we both saw Arnold Green standing there, swaying at the foot of the stairs. He was gray-faced, ashen-lipped. His eyes stared out of his horn-rims. He was a wreck in an artist’s smock. A brush was frozen in his hand. He tried to speak.

Grandma observed him severely.

Still in shock, Arnold Green said, “Sh—sh—sh—”

“She’s gone,” Grandma said. “The snake peeled off, but Maxine kept travelin’.”

“It fe—fe—fe—”

“Fell on her in the attic. It lives in the rafters,” Grandma said. “I forgot to mention that.”

Arnold Green said, “It’s been up there a—a—a—”

“All along,” Grandma said. “And I don’t allow women upstairs.”

“She was po—po—po—”

“Posing?” Grandma said. “Well, I better make a rule against painting pictures of naked women in my attic.”

“Not na—na—naked.
Nude,”
said Arnold Green. “I studied in Paris.”

 

Grandma didn’t throw him out and send him on his way. Not at two dollars and fifty cents a day. Arnold Green brought his easel down from the attic that same Sunday afternoon. Something Grandma said left him with the impression that the snake was gone for good. Still, he nailed the trapdoor shut and painted in his bedroom.

I supposed my life was over. On Monday at school, I couldn’t even look Royce McNabb’s way. I supposed all his worst fears about me had been realized, and then some. Now he thought I lived in a madhouse with a trigger-happy grandma and snakes and naked—nude women in the attic.

But everybody was in such an uproar, I was lost in the shuffle. People who hadn’t even seen her could describe every square inch of Maxine Patch, speeding like Eve, headlong through town on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Augie Fluke said she did the high jump over tree stumps. Ina-Rae didn’t know what to think, but knew better than to quiz me about it. Then when we got up for the Pledge of Allegiance, Royce looked back and somehow caught my eye. And he winked. That could have meant anything, of course. But I tried my shy smile again and hoped for the best.

Before that week was out it began to dawn on me that nobody would hold a little excitement against you in a town as quiet as this one. And just as they’d begun to take him for granted, Arnold Green sparked new interest. There was some talk about running him out of town. Various church groups called meetings.

Shamed though she was, Maxine had to go back to work at the post office. From the stamp counter she sent forth word that Arnold Green had deceived her. Her reputation was in ruins, and he’d have to marry her.

I suppose word of this must have reached Grandma.

One night out of the blue, she said to me, “You better have your lady teacher here to supper one night.”

I jumped. “Miss Butler?” Here?

Grandma nodded. “She’ll be passing out grades pretty soon. You want to keep on the good side of her.”

I was already on the good side of her. I got the only A’s she gave in English. Grandma didn’t tell me to invite Mr. Herkimer, though she well knew how I was doing in math.

“Grandma, do I have to?”

 

Miss Butler looked startled when I invited her for supper. She was too polite to say no, but she gave me a long look, curious and dubious.

When the evening came, I sat waiting for her in our front room. Grandma had cooked all day, and I was a bundle of nerves.

At the sound of a timid knock, I opened the front door to Miss Butler. She was in her dotted Swiss.

“Well, Mary Alice,” she said, “how ... nice.”

Seeing my teacher in our front room was eerie. It was a new experience for Miss Butler too. When I showed her to a chair, her eyes roamed the room. She read Grandma’s Souvenir of Starved Rock pillow. She noticed the flat square in the carpet where we’d taken down the stove after winter. Since most of what she’d heard about us Dowdels didn’t make for polite conversation, ours drifted.

Grandma loomed suddenly in the door to the kitchen, in a fresh apron. “Come on in,” she boomed at Miss Butler, “and we’ll tie the feedbag on you.”

Miss Butler quaked.

So did I when I saw the kitchen table. It was set with four places.

Before I could think, Arnold Green stepped up behind us. His horn-rims flashed, and my brain buzzed. Miss Butler was so refined, even prim. And there was talk of running Arnold Green out of town for ruining Maxine Patch. And Grandma had invited him to supper. Oh, Grandma, I thought, what are you up to?

I fumbled over the introductions. “I have heard so much about—I mean, how do you do?” Miss Butler murmured to Mr. Green.

I knew I couldn’t eat a bite. But Grandma bustled around our chairs, loading the table. Fried chicken. Mashed turnips. Hominy with stewed tomatoes and a casserole of canned green beans and fatback. Since nothing was ready in the garden, there was a quivering green Jell-O mold. There were corn muffins and cloverleaf rolls. Two kinds of jelly in cut-glass dishes. A decorative butter pat from Cowgills’ Dairy Farm. You couldn’t see the oilcloth.

“Oh my,” murmured Miss Butler, “how ... much.”

But Arnold Green fell to it. He didn’t feed this well up at The Coffee Pot Cafe, and he was a starving artist.

Grandma presided from her end of the table, gazing at a gizzard and demolishing a thigh. She piled bones, waiting for the silence to force conversation.

At last, Miss Butler chanced a glance across the groaning table at Arnold Green. I was too young to know how much a dangerous man interests a good woman.

His glasses were steamed from the dinner, so it was hard to catch his eye. But she spoke. “I so admire the artistic temperament.”

In silence Grandma loaded a fork with mashed turnip.

Miss Butler had a low, pleasing voice when she wasn’t yelling at us in school. “My only talent is appreciation,” she said. “I sit at the feet of the Bard.”

Arnold Green flickered.

“Indeed, I look up to all men of artistic talent,” Miss Butler said, though she was no shorter than Arnold Green. He looked suddenly across cruets at her.

Their eyes met.

 

Somehow, Grandma knew. In a town like this, an unmarried man was either going to be packed off or picked off. She’d decided against Maxine Patch. She backed Miss Butler.

For the rest of the month until he went back to New York, most evenings found Arnold Green strolling to the Noah Atterberrys’. Miss Butler roomed there. They sat out on the porch swing in full view. At the time I supposed they discussed art and poetry and Paris. He used Vitalis now, and Kreml for his dandruff. Grandma kept him in clean shirts. Public opinion shifted his way. Maxine Patch was fit to be tied.

And I didn’t mind too much about Royce. He was friendly enough, but either he was keeping his distance, or I was keeping mine. We’d both been strangers in their midst here, but was that enough? I guessed not and didn’t mind too much. Really, not at all, hardly.

S
uddenly school was almost out and summer upon us. And I didn’t know what to think about that.

We had a stretch of perfect weather, here in the healthiest climate in Illinois. Little red blushes showed down in Grandma’s strawberry plants. The hollyhocks were every color. Trees leafed out overnight, and the streets were like tunnels with bright countryside at either end. One magic morning the whole town was scented with lilac.

Spring didn’t come to Chicago like this. I went around with a lump in my throat I couldn’t account for. Then a letter came from Mother with a postscript from Dad.

We’d written back and forth all year, though of course I didn’t tell them everything. Mother always tucked in a stamp for me to use to write back. Joey sent postcards: of a burro in a sombrero, of the Fort Peck dam. One was of the Great Salt Lake with a little bag of real salt sewn to the card. I still have them. Then this letter came from Mother and Dad.

I’d make my way to school every morning lost in thought. By now I knew who lived in every house along the way. I knew this town as I’d never know Chicago.

Graduation was coming, though we were only graduating five: four girls who never spoke to anybody younger, just like in Chicago, and Royce McNabb. They’d chosen their class motto:
Now plans were afoot for the all-school party to wind up the year. We’d divided into committees, though Carleen Lovejoy didn’t want me on hers. I was one of them now, but I hadn’t been born here.

Then, in the midst of an ideal day, the sky outside our classroom windows turned a shade of yellow I’d never seen. We were in Home Ec., and the room stirred. This was one of those times when everybody else knew something I didn’t.

The siren on the town water tower suddenly wailed. Mr. Fluke leaned in the door. “Miss Butler, get your girls down the basement, quick as you can.”

She laid a hand on her throat. She was wearing an engagement ring now, about an eighth of a carat. Something akin to the end of the world seemed to be happening. It was like evening in here. People were just shapes. I turned to Ina-Rae.

“That’s the tornado siren,” she said, bug-eyed and already out of her desk. She often looked worried. Now she looked scared. I was petrified. I’d heard about tornadoes, but thought they happened somewhere else. Everybody filed out, so orderly, I didn’t know them. Then we were on the stairs to the basement.

Then I’d shied off and was running across the school-yard, skirttails whipping, Cuban heels pounding. Anybody with good sense was taking cover, but I wanted to go home. A breeze came up. The Coffee Pot Cafe looked empty, and the screen door was beginning to flap.

Hanging pots swayed on people’s porches, and it kept getting darker. When I was in sight of home, rain bucketed from every direction. There was Grandma, making her way to the house up the back walk, leaning into the wind. She held something against herself, folded in her apron.

She looked astounded to see me and pointed to the house. The clothesline was twanging, and the wet wind was full of chaff from the fields. We made it to the kitchen, plastered with wet leaves. She sent me down the cellar stairs ahead of her. “Go to the southwest corner.”

But I didn’t know where it was. Everybody but me knew you always shelter in the southwest corner of the cellar. Tornadoes come from that direction, usually. With any luck, the house will be blown off you, not on you.