Dandelion Wine 7 страница

“Turn around here! ” Douglas grabbed him by the hair and turned him slowly.

“Okay, Doug. ” John opened his eyes.

“Green. ” Douglas, dismayed, let his hand drop. “Your eyes are green. . . Well, that’s close to brown. Almost hazel! ”

“Doug, don’t lie to me. ” “All right, ” said Doug quietly. “I won’t. ”

They sat there listening to the other boys running up the hill, shrieking and yelling at them.

They raced along the railroad tracks, opened their lunch in brown-paper sacks, and sniffed deeply of the wax-wrapped deviled-ham sandwiches and green-sea pickles and colored peppermints. They ran and ran again and Douglas bent to scorch his ear on the hot steel rails, hearing trains so far away they were unseen voyagings in other lands, sending Morse-code messages to him here under the killing sun. Douglas stood up, stunned.

“John! ”

For John was running, and this was terrible. Because if you ran, time ran. You yelled and screamed and raced and rolled and tumbled and all of a sudden the sun was gone and the whistle was blowing and you were on your long way home to supper. When you weren’t looking, the sun got around behind you! The only way to keep things slow was to watch everything and do nothing! You could stretch a day to three days, sure, just by watching!

“John! ”

There was no way to get him to help now, save by a trick.

“John, ditch, ditch the others! ”

Yelling, Douglas and John sprinted off, kiting the wind downhill, letting gravity work for them, over meadows, around barns until at last the sound of the pursuers faded.

John and Douglas climbed into a haystack which was like a great bonfire crisping under them.

“Let’s not do anything, ” said John.

“Just what I was going to say, ” said Douglas.

They sat quietly, getting their breath.

There was a small sound like an insect in the hay.

They both heard it, but they didn’t look at the sound. When Douglas moved his wrist the sound ticked in another part of the haystack. When he brought his arm around on his lap the sound ticked in his lap. He let his eyes fall in a brief flicker. The watch said three o’clock.

Douglas moved his right hand stealthily to the ticking, pulled out the watch stem. He set the hands back.

Now they had all the time they would ever need to look long and close at the world, feel the sun move like a fiery wind over the sky.

But at last John must have felt the bodiless weight of their shadows shift and lean, and he spoke.

“Doug, what time is it? ”

“Two-thirty. ”

John looked at the sky.

Don’t! thought Douglas.

“Looks more like three-thirty, four, ” said John. “Boy Scout. You learn them things. ”

Douglas sighed and slowly turned the watch ahead.

John watched him do this, silently. Douglas looked up. John punched him, not hard at all, in the arm.

With a swift stroke a plunge, a train came and went so quickly the boys all leaped aside, yelling, shaking their fists after it, Douglas and John with them. The train roared down the track, two hundred people in it, gone. The dust followed it a little way toward the south, then settled in the golden silence among the blue rails.

The boys were walking home.

“I’m going to Cincinnati when I’m seventeen and be a railroad fireman, ” said Charlie Woodman.

“I got an uncle in New York, ” said Jim. “I’ll go there and be a printer. ”

Doug did not ask the others. Already the trains were chanting and he saw their faces drifting off on back observation platforms, or pressed to windows. One by one they slid away. And then the empty track and the summer sky and himself on another train run in another direction.

Douglas felt the earth move under his feet and saw their shadows move off the grass and color the air.

He swallowed hard, then gave a screaming yell, pulled back his fist, shot the indoor ball whistling in the sky. “Last one home’s a rhino’s behind! ”

They pounded down the tracks, laughing, flailing the air. There went John Huff, not touching the ground at all. And here came Douglas, touching it all the time.

It was seven o’clock, supper over, and the boys gathering one by one from the sound of their house doors slammed and their parents crying to them not to slam the doors. Douglas and Tom and Charlie and John stood among half a dozen others and it was time for hide-and-seek and Statues.

“Just one game, ” said John. “Then I got to go home. The train leaves at nine. Who’s going to be ‘it'? ”

“Me, ” said Douglas.

“That the first time I ever heard of anybody volunteering to be ‘it, ’ “said Tom.

Douglas looked at John for a long moment. “Start running, ” he cried.

The boys scattered, yelling. John backed away, then turned and began to lope. Douglas counted slowly. He let them run far, spread out, separate each to his own small world. When they had got their momentum up and were almost out of sight he took a deep breath.

“Statues! ”

Everyone froze.

Very quietly Douglas moved across the lawn to where John Huff stood like an iron deer in the twilight.

Far away, the other boys stood hands up, faces grimaced, eyes bright as stuffed squirrels.

But here was John, alone and motionless and no one rushing or making a great outcry to spoil this moment.

Douglas walked around the statue one way, walked around the statue the other way. The statue did not move.

It did not speak. It looked at the horizon, its mouth half smiling.

It was like that time years ago in Chicago when they had visited a big place where the carved marble figures were, and his walking around them in the silence. So here was John Huff with grass stains on his knees and the seat of his. pants, and cuts on his fingers and scabs on his elbows. Here was John Huff with the quiet tennis shoes, his feet sheathed in silence. There was the mouth that had chewed many an: apricot pie come summer, and said many a quiet thing or: two about life and the lay of the land. And there were the eyes, not blind like statues’ eyes, but filled with molten green- · gold. And there the dark hair blowing now north now south or any direction in the little breeze there was. And there the % hands with all the town on them, dirt from roads and bark-slivers from trees, the fingers that smelled of hemp and vine and green apple, old coins or pickle-green frogs. There were the ears with the sunlight shining through them like bright warm peach wax and here, invisible, his spearmint-breath upon the air.

“John, now, ” said Douglas, “don’t you move so much as an eyelash. I absolutely command you to stay here and not move at all for the next three hours! ”

“Doug. . . ”

John’s lips moved.

“Freeze! ” said Douglas.

John went back to looking at the sky, but he was not smiling now.

“I got to go, ” he whispered.

“Not a muscle, it’s the game! ”

“I just got to get home now, ” said John.

Now the statue moved, took its hands down out of the air and turned its head to look at Douglas. They stood looking at each other. The other kids were putting their arms down, too.

“We’ll play one more round, ” said John, “except this time, I’m ‘it. ’ Run! ”

The boys ran.

“Freeze! ”

The boys froze, Douglas with them.

“Not a muscle! ” shouted John. “Not a hair! ”

He came and stood by Douglas.

“Boy, this is the only way to do it, ” he said.

Douglas looked off at the twilight sky.

“Frozen statues, every single one of you, the next three minutes! ” said John.

Douglas felt John walking around him even as he had walked around John a moment ago. He felt John sock him on the arm once, not too hard. “So long, ” he said.

Then there was a rushing sound and he knew without looking that there was nobody behind him now.

Far away, a train whistle sounded.

Douglas stood that way for a full minute, waiting for the sound of the running to fade, but it did not stop. He’s still running away, but he doesn’t sound any further off, thought Douglas. Why doesn’t he stop running?

And then he realized it was only the sound of his heart in his body.

Stop! He jerked his hand to his chest. Stop running! I don’t like that sound!

And then he felt himself walking across the lawns among all the other statues now, and whether they, too, were coming to life he did not know. They did not seem to be moving at all. For that matter he himself was only moving from the knees down. The rest of him was cold stone, and very heavy.

Going up the front porch of his house, he turned suddenly to look at the lawns behind him. The lawns were empty.

A series of rifle shots. Screen doors banged one after the. other, a sunset volley, along the street.

Statues are best, he thought. They’re the only things you can keep on your lawn. Don’t ever let them move. Once you do, you can’t do a thing with them.

Suddenly his fist shot out like a piston from his side and it shook itself hard at the lawns and the street and the gathering dusk. His face was choked with blood, his eyes were blazing.

“John! ” he cried. “You, John! John, you’re my enemy, you hear? You’re no friend of mine! Don’t come back now, ever! Get away, you! Enemy, you hear? That’s what you are! It’s all off between us, you’re dirt, that’s all, dirt! John, you hear me, John! ”

As if a wick had been turned a little lower in a great clear lamp beyond the town, the sky darkened still more. He stood on the porch, his mouth gasping and working. His fist still thrust straight out at that house across the street and down the way. He looked at the fist and it dissolved, the world dissolved beyond it.

Going upstairs, in the dark, where he could only feel his face but see nothing of himself, not even his fists, he told himself over and over, I’m mad, I’m angry, I hate him, I’m mad, I’m angry, I hate him!

Ten minutes later, slowly he reached the top of the stairs, in the dark. . .

“Tom, ” said Douglas, “just promise me one thing, okay? ”

“It’s a promise. What? ”

“You may be my brother and maybe I hate you sometimes, but stick around, all right? ”

“You mean you’ll let me follow you and the older guys when you go on hikes? ”

“Well. . . sure. . . even that. What I mean is, don’t go away, huh? Don’t let any cars run over you or fall off a cliff. ” “I should say not! Whatta you think I am, anyway? ”

“Cause if worst comes to worst, and both of us are real old—say forty or forty-five some day—we can own a gold mine out West and sit there smoking corn silk and growing beards. ”

“Growing beards! Boy! ”

“Like I say, you stick around and don’t let nothing happen. ”

“You can depend on me, ” said Tom.

“It’s not you I worry about, ” said Douglas. “It’s the way God runs the world. ”

Tom thought about this for a moment.

“He’s all right, Doug, ” said Tom. “He tries. ”

She came out of the the bathroom putting iodine on her finger where she had almost lopped it off cutting herself a chunk of cocoanut cake. Just then the mailman came up the porch steps, opened the door, and walked in. The door slammed. Elmira Brown jumped a foot.

“Sam! ” she cried. She waved her iodined finger on the air to cool it. “I’m still not used to my husband being a postman. Every time you just walk in, it scares the life out of me! ”

Sam Brown stood there with the mail pouch half empty, scratching his head. He looked back out the door as if a fog had suddenly rolled in on a calm sweet summer morn.

“Sam, you’re home early, ” she said.

“Can’t stay, ” he said in a puzzled voice.

“Spit it out, what’s wrong? ” She came over and looked into his face.

“Maybe nothing, maybe lots. I just delivered some mail to Clara Goodwater up the street. . . ”

“Clara Goodwater! ”

“Now don’t get your dander up. Books it was, from the Johnson-Smith Company, Racine, Wisconsin. Title of one book. . . let’s see now. ” He screwed up his face, then unscrewed it. “Albertus Magnus-that’s it. Being the approved, verified, sympathetic and natural EGYPTIAN SECRETS or. . . ” He peered at the ceiling to summon the lettering. “White and Black Art for Man and Beast, Revealing the Forbidden Knowledge and Mysteries of Ancient Philosophers! ”

“Clara Goodwater’s you say? ”

“Walking along, I had a good chance to peek at the front pages, no harm in that. ‘Hidden Secrets of Life Unveiled by that celebrated Student, Philosopher, Chemist, Naturalist, Psychomist, Astrologer, Alchemist, Metallurgist, Sorcerer, Explanator of the Mysteries of Wizards and Witchcraft, together with recondite views of numerous Arts and Sciences—Obscure, Plain, Practical, etc. ’ There! By God, I got a head like a box Brownie. Got the words, even if I haven’t got the sense. ”

Elmira stood looking at her iodined finger as if it were pointed at her by a stranger.

“Clara Goodwater, ” she murmured.

“Looked me right in the eye as I handed it over, said, ‘Going to be a witch, first-class no doubt. Get my diploma in no time. Set up business. Hex crowds and individuals, old and young, big and small. ’ Then she kinda laughed, put her nose in that book, and went in. ”

Elmira stared at a bruise on her arm, carefully tongued a loose tooth in her jaw.

A door slammed. Tom Spaulding, kneeling on Elmira Brown’s front lawn, looked up. He had been wandering about the neighborhood, seeing how the ants were doing here or there, and had found a particularly good hill with a big hole in which all kinds of fiery bright pismires were tumbling about scissoring the air and wildly carrying little packets of dead grasshopper and infinitesimal bird down into the earth. Now here was something else: Mrs. Brown, swaying on the edge of her porch as if she’d just found out the world was falling through space at sixty trillion miles a second. Behind her was Mr. Brown, who didn’t know the miles per second and probably wouldn’t care if he did know.

“You, Tom! ” said Mrs. Brown. “I need moral support and the equivalent of the blood of the Lamb with me. Come along! ”

And off she rushed, squashing ants and kicking tops off dandelions and trotting big spiky holes in flower beds as she cut across yards.

Tom knelt a moment longer studying Mrs. Brown’s shoulder blades and spine as she toppled down the street. He read the bones and they were eloquent of melodrama and adventure, a thing he did not ordinarily connect with ladies, even though Mrs. Brown had the remnants of a pirate’s mustache. A moment later he was in tandem with her.

“Mrs. Brown, you sure look mad! ”

“You don’t know what mad is, boy! ”

“Watch out! ” cried Tom.

Mrs. Elmira Brown fell right over an iron dog lying asleep there on the green grass.

“Mrs. Brown! ”

“You see? ” Mrs. Brown sat there. “Clara Goodwater did this to me! Magic! ”

“Magic? ”

“Never mind, boy. Here’s the steps. You go first and kick any invisible strings out of the way. Ring that doorbell, but pull your finger off quick, the juice’ll burn you to a cinder! ”

Tom did not touch the bell.

“Clara Goodwater! ” Mrs. Brown flicked the bell button with her iodined finger.

Far away in the cool dim empty rooms of the big old house, a silver bell tinkled and faded.

Tom listened. Still farther away there was a stir of mouselike running. A shadow, perhaps a blowing curtain, moved in a distant parlor.

“Hello, ” said a quiet voice.

And quite suddenly Mrs. Goodwater was there, fresh as a stick of peppermint, behind the screen.

“Why, hello there, Tom, Elmira. What—”

“Don’t rush me! We came over about your practicing to be a full-fledged witch! ”

Mrs. Goodwater smiled. “Your husband’s not only a mailman, but a guardian of the law. Got a nose out to here! ”

“He didn’t look at no mail. ”

“He’s ten minutes between houses laughing at post cards. and tryin’ on mail-order shoes. ”

“It ain’t what he seen; it’s what you yourself told him about the books you got. ”

“Just a joke. Goin’ to be a witch! I said, and bang! Off gallops Sam, like I’d flung Lightning at him. I declare there can’t be one wrinkle in that man’s brain. ”

“You talked about your magic other places yesterday—”

“You must mean the Sandwich Club. . . ”

“To which I pointedly was not invited. ”

“Why, lady, we thought that was your regular day with your grandma. ”

“I can always have another Grandma day, if people’d only ask me places. ”

“All there was to it at the Sandwich Club was me sitting there with a ham and pickle sandwich, and I said right out loud, “At last I’m going to get my witch’s diploma. Been studying for years! ”

“That’s what come back to me over the phone! ”

“Ain’t modern inventions wonderful! ” said Mrs. Goodwater.

“Considering you been president of the Honeysuckle Ladies Lodge since the Civil War, it seems, I’ll put it to you bang on the nose, have you used witchcraft all these years to spell the ladies and win the ayes-have-it? ”

“Do you doubt it for a moment, lady? ” said Mrs. Goodwater.

“Election’s tomorrow again, and all I want to know is, you runnin’ for another term—and ain’t you ashamed? ”

“Yes to the first question and no to the second. Lady, look here, I bought those books for my boy cousin, Raoul. He’s just ten and goes around looking in hats for rabbits. I told him there’s about as much chance finding rabbits in hats as brains in heads of certain people I could name, but look he does and so I got these gifts for him.

“Wouldn’t believe you on a stack of Bibles. ”

“God’s truth, anyway. I love to fun about the witch thing. The ladies all yodeled when I explained about my dark powers. Wish you’d been there. ”

“I’ll be there tomorrow to fight you with a cross of gold and all the powers of good I can organize behind me, ” said Elmira. “Right now, tell me how much other magic junk you got in your house. ”

Mrs. Goodwater pointed to a side table inside the door.

“I been buyin’ all kinds of magic herbs. Smell funny and make Raoul happy. That little sack of stuff, that’s called This is rue, and this is Sabisse root and that there’s Ebon herbs; here’s black sulphur, and this they claim is bone dust. ”

“Bone dust” Elmira skipped back and kicked Tom’s ankle. Tom yelped.

“And here’s wormwood and fern leaves so you can freeze shotguns and fly like a bat in your dreams, it says in Chapter X of the little book here. I think it’s fine for growing boys’ heads to think about things like this. Now, from the look on your face you don’t believe Raoul exists. Well, I’ll give you his Springfield address. ”

“Yes, ” said Elmira, “and the day I write him you’ll take the Springfield bus and go to General Delivery and get my letter and write back to me in a boy’s hand. I know you! ”

“Mrs. Brown, speak up—you want to be president of the Honeysuckle Ladies Lodge, right? You run every year now for ten years. You nominate yourself. And always wind up gettin’ one vote. Yours. Elmira, if the ladies wanted you they’d landslide you in. But from where I stand looking up the mountain, ain’t so much as one pebble come rattlin’ down save yours. Tell you what, I’ll nominate and vote for you myself come noon tomorrow, how’s that? ”

“Damned for sure, then, ” said Elmira. “Last year I got a deathly cold right at election time; couldn’t get out and campaign back-fence-to-back-fence. Year before that, broke my leg. Mighty strange. ” She squinted darkly at the lady behind the screen. “That’s not all. Last month I cut my finger six times, bruised my knee ten times, fell off my back porch twice, you hear-twice! I broke a window, dropped four dishes, one vase worth a dollar forty-nine at Bixby’s, and I’m billin’ you for every dropped dish from now on in my house and environs! ”

“I’ll be poor by Christmas, ” said Mrs. Goodwater. She opened the screen door and came out suddenly and let the door slam. “Elmira Brown, how old are you? ”

“You probably got it written in one of your black books. Thirty-five! ”

“Well, when I think of thirty-five years of your life. . . ” Mrs. Goodwater pursed her lips and blinked her eyes, counting. “That’s about twelve thousand seven hundred and seventy-five days, or counting three of them per day, twelve thousand-odd commotions, twelve thousand much-ados and twelve thousand calamaties. It’s a full rich life you lead, Elmira Brown. Shake hands! ”

“Get away! ” Elmira fended her off.

“Why, lady, you’re only the second most clumsy woman in Green Town, Illinois. You can’t sit down without playing the chair like an accordion. You can’t stand up but what you kick the cat. You can’t trot across an open meadow without falling into a well. Your life has been one long decline, Elmira Alice Brown, so why not admit it? ”

“It wasn’t clumsiness that caused my calamities, but you being within a mile of me at those times when I dropped a pot of beans or juiced my finger in the electric socket at home. ”

“Lady, in a town this size, everybody’s within a mile of someone at one time or other in the day. ”

“You admit being around then? ”

“I admit being born here, yes, but I’d give anything right now to have been born in Kenosha or Zion. Elmira, go to your dentist and see what he can do about that serpent’s tongue in there. ”

“Oh! ” said Elmira. “Oh, oh, oh! ”

“You’ve pushed me too far. I wasn’t interested in witchcraft, but I think I’ll just look into this business. Listen here! You’re invisible right now. While you stood there I put a spell on you. You’re clean out of sight. ”

“You didn’t! ”

“Course, ” admitted the witch, “I never could see you, lady. ” Elmira pulled out her pocket mirror. “There I am! ” She peered closer and gasped. She reached up like someone tuning a harp and plucked a single thread. She held it up, Exhibit A. “I never had a gray hair in my life till this second! ”

The witch smiled charmingly. “Put it in a jar of still water, be an angleworm come morning. Oh, Elmira, look at yourself at last, won’t you? All these years, blaming others for your own mallet feet and floaty ways! You ever read Shakespeare? There’s little stage directions in there: ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS. That’s you, Elmira. Alarums and Excursions! Now get home before I feel the bumps on your head and predict gas at night for you! Shoo!

She waved her hands in the air as if Elmira were a cloud of things. “My, the flies are thick this summer! ” she said.

She went inside and hooked the door.

“The line is drawn, Mrs. Goodwater, ” Elmira said, folding her arms. “I’ll give you one last chance. Withdraw from the candidacy of the Honeysuckle Lodge or face me face-to-face tomorrow when I run for office and wrest it from you in a fair fight. I’ll bring Tom here with me. An innocent good boy. And innocence and good will win the day. ”

“I wouldn’t count on me being innocent, Mrs. Brown, ” said the boy. “My mother says—”

“Shut up, Tom, good’s good! You’ll be there on my right hand, boy. ”

“Yes'm” said Tom.

“If, that is, ” said Elmira, “I can live through the night with this lady making wax dummies of me—shoving rusty needles through the very heart and soul of them. If you find a great big fig in my bed all shriveled up come sunrise, Tom, you’ll know who picked the fruit in the vineyard. And look to see Mrs. Goodwater president till she’s a hundred and ninety-five years old. ”

“Why, lady, ” said Mrs. Goodwater, “I’m three hundred and five now. Used to call me SHE in the old days. ” She poked her fingers at the street. “Abracadabra-zimmity-ZAM! How’s that? ”

Elmira ran down off the porch.

“Tomorrow! ” she cried.

“Till then, lady! ” said Mrs. Goodwater.

Tom followed Elmira, shrugging and kicking ants off the sidewalk as he went.

Running across a driveway, Elmira screamed.

“Mrs. Brown! ” cried Tom.

A car backing out of a garage ran right over Elmira’s right big toe.

Mrs. Elmira Brown’s foot hurt her in the middle of the night, so she got up and went down to the kitchen and ate some cold chicken and made a neat, painfully accurate list of things. First, illnesses in the past year. Three colds, four mild attacks of indigestion, one seizure of bloat, arthritis, lumbago, what she imagined to be gout, a severe bronchial cough, incipient asthma, and spots on her arms, plus an abscessed semicircular canal which made her reel like a drunken moth some days, backache, head pains, and nausea. Cost of medicine: ninety-eight dollars and seventy-eight cents.

Secondly, things broken in the house during the twelve months just past; two lamps, six vases, ten dishes, one soup tureen, two windows, one chair, one sofa cushion, six glasses, and one crystal chandelier prism. Total cost: twelve dollars and ten cents.

Thirdly, her pains this very night. Her toe hurt from being run over. Her stomach was upset. Her back was stiff, her legs were pulsing with agony. Her eyeballs felt like wads of blazing cotton. Her tongue tasted like a dust mop. Her ears were belling and ringing away. Cost? She debated, going back to bed.

Ten thousand dollars in personal suffering.

“Try to settle this out of court! ” she said half aloud.

“Eh? ” said her husband, awake.

She lay down in bed. “I simply refuse to die. ”

“Beg pardon? ” he said.

“I won’t die! ” she said, staring at the ceiling.

“That’s what I always claimed, ” said her husband, and turned over to snore.

In the morning Mrs. Elmira Brown was up early and down to the library and then to the drugstore and back to the house where she was busy mixing all kinds of chemicals when her husband, Sam came home with an empty mail pouch at noon.

“Lunch’s in the icebox. ” Elmira stirred a green-looking porridge in a large glass.

“Good Lord, what’s that? ” asked her husband. “Looks like a milk shake been left out in the sun for forty years. Got kind of a fungus on it. ”

“Fight magic with magic. ”

“You going to drink that? ”

“Just before I go up into the Honeysuckle Ladies Lodge for the big doings. ”

Samuel Brown sniffed the concoction. “Take my advice. Get up those steps first, then drink it. What’s in it? ”

“Snow from angels’ wings, well, really menthol, to cool hell’s fires that burn you, it says in this book I got at the library. The juice of a fresh grape off the vine, for thinking clear sweet thoughts in the face of dark visions, it says. Also red rhubarb, cream of tartar, white sugar, white of eggs, spring water and clover buds with the strength of the good earth in them. Oh, I could go on all day. It’s here in the list, good against bad, white against black. I can’t lose! ”

“Oh, you’ll win, all right, ” said her husband. “But will you know it? ”

“Think good thoughts. I’m on my way to get Tom for my charm. ”

“Poor boy, ” said her husband. “Innocent, like you say, and about to be tom limb from limb, bargain-basement day at the Honeysuckle Lodge. ”

“Tom’ll survive, ” said Elmira, and, taking the bubbling concoction with her, hid inside a Quaker Oats box with the lid on, went out the door without catching her dress or snagging her new ninety-eight-cent stockings. Realizing this, she was smug all the way to Tom’s house where he waited for her in his white summer suit as she had instructed.

“Phew! ” said Tom. “What you got in that box? ”

“Destiny, ” said Elmira.

“I sure hope so, ” said Tom, walking about two paces ahead of her.

The Honeysuckle Ladies Lodge was full of ladies looking in each other’s mirrors and tugging at their skirts and asking to be sure their slips weren’t showing.

At one o’clock Mrs. Elmira Brown came up the steps with ’ a boy in white clothes. He was holding his nose and screwing! up one eye so he could only half see where he was going. Mrs. Brown looked at the crowd and then at the Quaker Oats box and opened the top and looked in and gasped, and put the top back on without drinking any of that stuff in there. She moved inside the hall and with her moved a rustling as of taffeta, all the ladies whispering in a tide after her.

She sat down in back with Tom, and Tom looked more, miserable than ever. The one eye he had open looked at the crowd of ladies and shut up for good. Sitting there, Elmira got the potion out and drank it slowly down.

At one-thirty, the president, Mrs. Goodwater, banged the gavel and all but two dozen of the ladies quit talking.

“Ladies, ” she called out over the summer sea of silks and laces, capped here and there with white or gray, “it’s election time. But before we start, I believe Mrs. Elmira Brown, wife of our eminent graphologist—”

A titter ran through the room.

“What’s graphologist? ” Elmira elbowed Tom twice.

“I don’t know, ” whispered Tom fiercely, eyes shut, feeling that elbow come out of darkness at him.

“—wife, as I say, of our eminent handwriting expert, Samuel Brown. . . (more laughter). . . of the U. S. Postal Service, ” continued Mrs. Goodwater. “Mrs. Brown wants to give us some opinions. Mrs. Brown? ”

Elmira stood up. Her chair fell over backward and snapped shut like a bear trap on itself. She jumped an inch off the floor and teetered on her heels, which gave off cracking sounds like they would fall to dust any moment. “I got plenty to say, ” she said, holding the empty Quaker Oats box in one hand with a Bible. She grabbed Tom with the other and plowed forward, hitting several people’s elbows and muttering to them, “Watch what you’re doing! Careful, you! ” to reach the platform, turn, and knock a glass of water dripping over the table. She gave Mrs. Goodwater another bristly scowl when this happened and let her mop it up with a tiny handkerchief. Then with a secret look of triumph, Elmira drew forth the empty philter glass and held it up, displaying it for Mrs. Goodwater and whispering, “You know what was in this? It’s inside me, now, lady. The charmed circle surrounds me. No knife can cleave, no hatchet break through. ”

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