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Authors: Ruth White

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BOOK: Belle Prater's Boy
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C
oal Station Elementary and Coal Station High School were both located a little piece up Slag Creek at the end of Residence Street, just before the road started getting narrow and wound on up Cold Mountain toward Kentucky.
Woodrow entered the elementary school with me the next day, and it was an experience that beat going to the fair. First of all, they put him in my room, which was Miss Hart's 6-B, one of the better places to be if you really wanted to learn, which we did. Then kids started peeking in to see him. His fame had preceded him, as the old saying goes. The tapeworm story had gone through about fifty revisions.
Even some of the uppity eighth- and ninth-graders trotted over from the high school to catch a glimpse of him. Of course, part of all this curiosity was on account of his being Belle Prater's boy, but Woodrow set everybody straight the first time her name was brought up.
“I don't know what happened to her, and I don't want to talk about it!”
He said it loud and clear so there was no misunderstanding his meaning. It made me a little ashamed of myself that I had attacked him with that question on his first night even though Mama had told me not to. But he had been real patient with me.
Anyway, the curious noses stopped twitching for the time being, so we could move on to other business. Woodrow was friendly with everybody, but especially so to Rita Presley, who was fat and always got picked on. He smiled at her and told her she had pretty hair, which she did, and then when somebody teased her, Woodrow said that was about the rudest thing he ever did hear tell of. I was proud of him, because I always had felt sorry for Rita but I never had the nerve to stand up for her like he did.
During science class that morning we talked about caves, and Woodrow made a favorable impression on Miss Hart. How he did it was first-class clever. He merely pointed out in his bashful voice—so as not to appear too know-it-all—that the way you could remember
the difference between the upper and lower calcium deposits in a cave was that a stalagmite with a g formed from the ground, while a stalactite with a c formed from the ceiling.
Miss Hart was so pleased with his little lesson, I thought for a minute she was going to hug him, which would have been embarrassing, but she didn't. She grinned instead.
Woodrow was encouraged and asked if he could tell a story about a cave.
“Oh yes, please do,” Miss Hart said.
Whereupon she sat down, and once again Woodrow was at the front of the class.
Woodrow's story was about Floyd Collins, a man who liked to explore the great Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. And what happened to him when he went spelunking alone one day was a sorrowful thing. He got stuck in a crevice, where he died because rescue workers could not reach him. I nearly wanted to cry when Woodrow was finished, for it was a true story.
So we went to our arithmetic lesson in a mood of seriousness. Our minds tended to hark back to that cave in Kentucky where poor Floyd suffered so awfully for weeks preceding his death. But once again it was Woodrow who saved the day.
“A puzzle! A puzzle!” The word was whispered around the room. “Woodrow has an arithmetic puzzle.”
Miss Hart was smiling again.
“There were three men, see?” Woodrow began. “Went to a hotel in New York City, where I hear tell everything costs more than anywheres else. Anyway, they were charged thirty dollars just to sleep one night in a hotel room, if you can believe it. They grumbled, but each man paid his ten dollars, which makes thirty dollars, right? Then they went up the stair steps to their room, which, by the way, had three beds in it, so nobody had to double up. It wadn't no sleazy place.
“After they went up, the hotel manager suffered a ‘cute attack of conscience, and he thought, well, maybe he might have overcharged the men. So he took five one-dollar bills out of his money box there under the counter, and he told the boy he had to run errands for him to take the bills up and refund the gentlemen some of their money.
“So the boy goes, and on the way he puzzles over how he can divide the five ones evenly amongst three men, and he sees no way to do it. So what did he do? He stuck two of them ones in his own pocket. Then he gave each of the three men one dollar apiece.
“Now, if you're following me, that means each man paid nine dollars for his room, right? That's twentyseven dollars. The boy had two dollars in his own pocket, right? That's twenty-nine dollars. So what happened to the other dollar?”
Woodrow sat down. We scratched our heads. We
started scribbling and figuring. Miss Hart was calculating mentally on the ceiling. Woodrow then admitted he didn't have the answer. There was no satisfactory answer.
Next thing we knew, it was lunchtime and it seemed like we had just got to school. Rain poured down and we couldn't go outside to play. So we sat around in the classroom whispering and playing games—hangman and tic-tac-toe.
Then somebody said, “Woodrow, do you know any more puzzles?”
Naturally he did, sort of.
He went to the blackboard and printed in large letters.
C M PUPPIES?
M R NO PUPPIES!
O S M R PUPPIES,
C M P N ?
L I B!
M R PUPPIES
Once again we were stumped, until Woodrow gave us the first line, which was, “See them puppies?”
Miss Hart couldn't keep the lid on for the rest of the afternoon. She said it was like trying to hold thirty corks underwater at the same time.
As for me, I never had a better school day. I told
Woodrow that very thing as we walked home at 3:30.
“Can't you hear your calling, Woodrow?” I teased him. “You're a natural-born teacher. You make learning fun.”
“Oh no,” Woodrow said. “I'm going to make picture shows when I grow up. My first one will be about plants that eat people. Besides, those were all Mama's stories, even the men-in-the-hotel one and the puppies one. Now, the Floyd Collins story is true, and she used to talk about it when she was blue. She said she knew exactly how Floyd Collins felt, trapped like he was in Mammoth Cave, just like Ed Morrell felt in the straitjacket … and just like Belle Prater felt on Crooked Ridge.”
Once again we had come full circle back to his mama. And I knew it was a thing that gnawed at him all the time, and wormed its way into everything he said and did.
Granny's phone started ringing off its cradle that evening—always for Woodrow—and it didn't slow down for as long as he lived there. Which proved to me that my cousin was the most popular feller since the country singer Little Jimmy Dickens.
F
riday evening, right after supper, Woodrow and I, along with Granny and Grandpa, were watching
I Led
Three Lives
on television. Grandpa had to keep jumping up to adjust the horizontal hold, because the picture was flipping and rolling, and there was some snow on the screen. Other than that, you could make out people's faces for a change, and I could tell what Richard Carlson really looked like. I commented that he was right nice-looking.
“Huh!” Woodrow snorted. “I bet if a feller had his money, even the ugliest person could be good-looking!”
“How can money make you good-looking?” I said.
“You never heard tell of operations people get on their faces?” he said. “It costs lots of money. That's why all the movie stars look so good. Did you ever see an ugly movie star? No, you didn't. They have money. And I bet if the truth was known, a bunch of 'em were borned uglier than a mud fence.”
We were stretched out on our bellies on Granny's braided rug, a box of Cracker Jacks between us. Woodrow had found the prize—a rubber ring—and I let him keep it even though it was pink and should have been for a girl.
That show ended and Dinah Shore came on singing, “See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet! America's the greatest land of all!” And throwing us a kiss.
Dawg could be heard barking outside, and at the same time there was a knock on the front door. Woodrow and I scrambled to our feet. He beat me to the door. It was Uncle Everett.
“Howdy, son,” he said quietly.
He was tall and shaggy-looking. He was wearing overalls, and in his hands was an old beat-up hat, which he twisted around and around like he was nervous.
“Howdy, Daddy! Come in!” Woodrow said, and I could tell he was tickled, but they didn't hug or even shake hands.
Woodrow held the door open for his daddy, and
Uncle Everett stepped inside. He nodded to the rest of us.
“Howdy-do,” he said.
Granny and Grandpa stood up and greeted Uncle Everett and offered him a seat, which he took. At least he took the edge of it, where he perched, and didn't appear any too comfortable. I could barely remember him being in this room once … maybe twice before, and it occurred to me for the first time that it could be Uncle Everett felt self-conscious with us, just like Woodrow had felt that day in his oversized pants with the rope holding them up, and me in my frilly dress.
“Just wanted to check in on you, boy,” Uncle Everett said. “See you're doin' okay.”
“Doin' fine,” Woodrow said, and parked on the floor beside his daddy's chair.
I eased down there beside Woodrow.
“You started school here, I reckon?” Uncle Everett said to him.
“Yeah, and they put me in Miss Hart's room,” Woodrow said, “with Gypsy.”
Uncle Everett glanced at me and nodded.
“How ya doin', Gypsy?”
“I'm fine. How's things with you, Uncle Everett?”
“I'm getting by. Yeah, I reckon I am.” He said it like he wasn't too sure.
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence.
“How's Daisy and Milkweed?” Woodrow said.
“They're fine, too. No, I take that back. Daisy's fine. Milkweed busted her right front hoof on a mattock. But she's mending.”
“Oh,” Woodrow said. “Was she bad hurt?”
“Nah, not bad.”
Another silence.
“And I guess …” Woodrow began, then thought better of it. “Oh, nothing.”
“I don't know a bit more about her now than I knew when you left, Woodrow,” Uncle Everett assured him. “But I'll be bound to come and give you any news I learn straightaway. I trust you'll do the same?”
Woodrow nodded.
“You needin' anything?” Uncle Everett asked.
“No, I got more'n I need,” Woodrow said.
“Well, that's a blessing, son,” Uncle Everett said. “'Cause I'm broke as the Ten Commandments.”
Then they went on with more small talk like that before Uncle Everett stood up and eased out the door. Woodrow went to the window and watched his daddy go out the walkway to the road, where the old Ford was parked. I walked over and stood at Woodrow's elbow. It was still light enough out there that I could see somebody in Uncle Everett's car. It was a blond-headed
woman. Woodrow clutched the windowsill with one hand, and I could see his knuckles turning white. I didn't say a word about who that might be in Uncle Everett's car, and Woodrow didn't say anything the rest of the evening.
G
ranny, Grandpa, and Mama got their heads together and came to a decision about mine and Woodrow's habit of running to every picture show that came to town. I thought the new law was dumb. It said children should spend as much time as possible in the fresh air and sunshine. Therefore, no moviegoing or even television watching was allowed during daylight except when the weather was bad. Bad meant rain or freezing cold. Since we saw no hope at all for cold that spring, Woodrow and I prayed a lot for rainy Saturdays, because Rocket Man was being serialized, and Tarzan and Roy Rogers took turns as the main feature afterwards. But for reasons unknown to us, God did
not want us to see those shows. He did, however, give us an okay on Alfred Hitchcock's
Rear Window
by sending rain one Sunday afternoon.
From Granny's porch after church we gleefully watched the first drops splatter on the walkway.
“Show starts at 1:30,” Woodrow said. “We'll just have time to eat dinner first.”
In the living room Grandpa and Porter were sharing sections of the Sunday paper, which already had been carefully dissected by Woodrow before church. He had developed a compulsion to be the first one to read the paper on Sunday morning.
Mama and Granny were busy in the kitchen with pot roast and potatoes, biscuits and gravy, peas and carrots.
“Can we help?” Woodrow asked.
Mama and Granny were both startled enough to stop what they were doing and look at him.
“Help in the kitchen?” Granny said. “Boy, have you had a hard lick on the head?”
“The sooner we eat, the sooner we can go to the show,” he said.
“The show?” Mama said, and looked out the window. “Oh, I see, it's raining.”
She and Granny exchanged one of those amused grown-up looks that said, “Ain't they cute?”
“We'll set the table,” Woodrow said.
That's when Porter came in from the living room,
ignorant of our conversation—I think—and said to Mama, “Let's go see
Rear Window
this afternoon. It starts at 1:30.”
“Oh, is that what's playing?” Mama said as she carried a pitcher of iced tea to the dining-room table right there beside the kitchen. “I don't care about it, but the kids are chomping at the bit to go. Why don't you take them?”
“Yeah!” Woodrow said, without even consulting me. “Why don‘tcha?”
Oh brother. Me and Porter and Woodrow at the movies together. It was at that precise moment that my head started to hurt.
“Okay by you, Gyp?” Porter said to me.
Gyp? Now he was going to start in with that buddybuddy stuff.
I shrugged and slapped one of Granny's blue willow plates on the dinner table.
“Reckon so,” I mumbled.
What else could I say when it was put to me like that in a room full of people? I couldn't say I'd rather stick pins under my fingernails, which I would. There was a silence you could just about bump into, and I knew the grown-ups were reviewing the situation; you know, thinking, When is this young'un going to drop her grudge against Porter?
Well, I could tell them when—never!
“Isn't it nice of Porter to take y'all to the show?” Granny said too sweetly.
I guess Porter left the room about then, because when I glanced up again he was gone, and Mama with him. I could imagine them discussing the upcoming event and how to manage me.
“How come you don't like Porter?” Woodrow surprised me by asking.
“He makes me sick!” I said, low enough that Granny couldn't hear me.
“I think he's keen,” Woodrow said.
Keen? Where'd he pick that one up? Nobody said keen except maybe Jughead in the Archie comics.
I slapped six napkins onto the table.
All through dinner Woodrow and Porter jabbered about Alfred Hitchcock, and they didn't ask me what I thought about anything. It was like they were suddenly old pals and I was a bump on a log.
I couldn't eat. I felt nauseous. I had half a mind to stay home. I would. I could practice the piano and do my homework and vacuum Dawg, and help Grandpa listen to the Cleveland Indians on the radio. I wouldn't play with Woodrow when he got home, and I would go to bed early.
But then I would miss Grace Kelly and Jimmy Stewart.
I felt hot. The rain went on. Now I wished it would
stop and the sun would come out, so we couldn't go at all.
Mama was eyeing me. I'll declare she could read my mind.
Porter drove us down to Main Street and parked his car in front of the Ben Franklin Dime Store. Then we walked next door to the theater.
“Three whole tickets, Pearl,” Porter said to the little woman in the ticket booth. “I can't get 'em in for half fare anymore. They're both twelve.”
“That's what you get for marrying into a ready-made family, Porter Dotson,” Pearl said. “That'll be ninety cents.”
“Hey, Gypsy,” she went on. “Hey, Belle's boy. What's your name again?”
“Woodrow.”
“Oh yeah, that's right. I'll remember next time. Did you know I used to sell movie tickets to your mama and your Aunt Love when they weren't even big enough to see up here into the ticket booth?”
“Didja?” Woodrow said. “Did they have to wait for it to rain?”
“Huh?” Pearl said, but Porter was pulling us along, and I was trying to keep up.
I was thinking either I would have to sit between them, in which case Porter would have to be on one side of me, or I would have to put Woodrow between us, in which case Porter would hog all of Woodrow's
attention. Putting Porter between me and Woodrow wasn't even an option for me, but it looked like that's what Porter was trying to manipulate when we found three empty seats together in the balcony.
He maneuvered Woodrow into the seat against the wall. Then he started to follow, but I darted in front of him quicker than a hummingbird and got in the middle seat. Porter scratched his head and cleared his throat, but said nothing. I turned my back to him and pulled my knees up to my chin, facing Woodrow.
But it simply was not my day. The two of them leaned in and started talking over my head like I wasn't even present. Then the movie started and nobody talked.
My headache was worse, and I knew I was feverish. I tried my best to concentrate on what was happening in the movie, but the Technicolors started melting together and running down the screen. Jimmy Stewart wavered; Grace Kelly got real, real big, then teeny tiny. She was climbing up the fire escape, fixing to look in the murderer's window, when I remember feeling a sudden panic. My mind went into a fog; I lost my grip and began screaming, “Don't look in there! Don't look in the window!”
Porter was so startled he couldn't move. It was Woodrow who put his hand on my arm and discovered I was burning up with fever.
“She's dying,” Woodrow said to Porter, because as
he told me later, he didn't see how anybody could get so hot and not die.
I went on screaming at Grace Kelly, “Don't look in there!”
But she didn't hear me. The people trying to watch the show, however, heard me loud and clear. And they hollered for me to put a cork in it.
Porter came to his senses, grabbed me up in his arms, and carried me out, with Woodrow trotting along behind.
“Call Doc Dot!” Porter yelled at Pearl as we passed the ticket booth. “Tell him to meet me at my house straightaway.”
I remember sinking … sinking … I was hot, and so sad. Don't look in the window. Something ugly is inside.
 
It was dark when I opened my eyes to the real world again. I was in my own bed, and Mama was there beside me, mopping my face with a cool, wet cloth. My lamp was on, but a scarf was thrown over the shade to dim the light.
I didn't remember much of the day.
“Hey,” I mumbled, “whatsa matter?”
“Measles,” Mama said. “A very bad case.”
Was that all? Every pore of my body ached right down to my hair follicles. Even my eyelids were sore. And she called it the measles.
“Where's Woodrow?” I said.
“Grandpa took him back to the 7:30 show.”
“Why? Did we miss something?”
Mama smiled. “You could say that. Woodrow can tell you how it ended.”
Right then I didn't really care. I had never felt so bad.
“Porter is in bed, too,” Mama said. “Doc had to give him a sedative.”
“How come?”
“You scared him nearly to death. You were delirious, you know, and he thought you were having some kind of fit.”
“Do I have to go to school tomorrow?”
“Oh no, you won't be going back until September. When this term is over next week, you will have to stay in bed, and in the dark, for at least ten more days.”
“In the dark?”
“Well, only dim light. No reading. Measles has been known to settle in the eyes.”
All that night I had strange dreams and hallucinations. One time I thought I had these little-bitty green slits for eyes like a lizard's. And then I dreamed of Blind Benny wandering around town singing.
“It's not so bad being blind,” he told me. “I don't have to look at ugly things.”
And the old nightmare came and went like a bat
swooping down on me, then retreating into the dark musty caves of my memory. Each time I woke up in a frenzy, my mama was there, calm and cool and beautiful. She sat by me all night long, and the next day she stayed home with me. She made arrangements to take off that whole week from her teaching job to take care of me. Porter, Granny, and Grandpa came in one at a time, but I didn't feel like visiting with them. Doc Dot came around 10:00 and took my temperature. He and Mama went out into the hallway and talked about me.
“ … nightmares.” I heard part of what Mama said. “Don't look in the window.”
“ … her father” was part of Doc's response.
I put my pillow over my head.
Mama brought my meals and put azaleas and honeysuckle sprigs on my tray. I thought that was real sweet of her, and I was sad that I didn't feel like eating or talking to her.
Late that evening I opened my eyes and there was Woodrow just about a foot above me, his crossed eyes looking into my face.
“When you said Porter makes you sick, you weren't foolin', were you?” he said.
I tried to smile.
“How you feel?” came the inevitable question.
“Well, one minute I'm afraid I'm going to die, and the next minute I'm afraid I'm not.”
He grinned. We had heard that line from Minnie Pearl on
The Grand Ole Opry
last Saturday night.
Woodrow sat down in a chair beside my bed.
“You've heard the expression ‘cute as a speckled pup'?” he said.
“Sure.”
“Well, that's what comes to mind when I look at you, Gypsy.”
He was trying to be nice.
“Am I speckled?” I said.
“You're one big speckle, nearabout,” he said. “Wanna mirror?”
“No.”
“Wanna know how the show ended?”
“To tell you the truth, Woodrow, I don't remember how it started.”
“Oh.”
“Okay, time for medicine,” Mama said as she came in with a small glass of something liquid.
“What's that?” Woodrow said.
“Just a little hot rum to help Gypsy sleep. Doc Dot ordered it.”
“Wow! Rum!” Woodrow said. “Wonder why Daddy didn't give me some of his rum when I had the measles.”
He watched, fascinated, as Mama helped me sit up and drink the rum.
“How is it?” he said to me.
“Awful!” I said, because it was.
“Daddy always mixed it with apple cider or pop. He said that made it taste better.”
Mama gave me a quick drink of water.
“We'll remember that next time,” she said to Woodrow. “There now. Time for rest. Visiting hours are over.”
“Oh sure,” Woodrow said, and stood up. “‘Nite, Gypsy.”
“'Nite, Woodrow.”
And that was the end of the worst part of having the measles.
BOOK: Belle Prater's Boy
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