On the Sunday afternoon of the four day rodeo holiday, we discovered that an old woman named Maude Moran, who scrubbed floors at the Arizona Historical Society, had been hired to baby-sit us while my parents attended a company party at a home in the desert foothills.
"Now listen here. Your father and I have made arrangements for a babysitter to come. We're up at the home of Mr. Mortimer Green in the Foothills, but you aren't to call there under any circumstance whatsoever. This lady who is coming is a wonderful person, who I have known personally for years and years. She is wonderful woman from, oh, somewhere in the Midwest and she has been scrubbing the floors of the Historical Society for eons. Every night in that old museum with all those old artifacts. She's not exactly normal, not exactly completely normal, but I'm sure you kids will get along with her easily and mind her always. She does not like disobedient children and I promised her my children were perfectly behaved. Children of mine will understand how spending so many hours alone at night might have made her a little bit touched in the head. Imagine the strain on her after all these years. She can't go down on the floor again. Poor old thing she must make a go of the babysitting and get out of floor scrubbing and of course because I used to work there and knew her I tried to hire her right away. I'm giving her name out to other ladies at the church, too. We're lucky to find such an upright old woman who wants to take care of you. She said she'd be very interested in you young people. She hasn't done much babysitting, but that's not important. I know any kids of mine are going to make her feel welcome. She has some TV dinners to heat for you and she'll play games with you, I think."
Father had to pick up Maud Moran at her little bungalow and bring her to our house because the old woman had never learned to drive. She lived in a teeny house on the edge of an arroyo. Our father said the house was back far from the road and some of the windows were painted.
Maude was a fat, toad-like woman from some unknown location in Minnesota. Her face had a hairy mole sprouting from her forehead. She had no waist and barely moved out of the kitchen chair once she had dropped into it, but her inactive body was made up for by her bullying behavior; she kept at us all the time actively suggesting, "If you wannah run around outside, that'll be all right with me. Or "If you wannah put on some rock and roll records, well, that'll be all right with me."
Meredith explained that though we loved rock and roll music more than anything in the world, we had been strictly warned not to touch the large, new stereo in its glossy cabinet of imitation mahogany. Punishments for touching the new stereo might include crawling around in the front lawn picking out gravel for an entire Saturday or even enduring a severe lickin' from our Dad's belt.
"When the cat's away the mice'll play," said Maude, gleefully undeterred. She checked the gray plastic timer on the oven and remarked that the TV dinners were half cooked. She slung a kitchen towel over her shoulder and then planted her feet on the floor before deciding to sit again at the table. She swiped her hands along the length of her thighs. Her old dress wrinkled up as though smiling at the thought of playful mice.
"I been scrubbing floors so long if I go in any house I can't help but look at the floors. Your mother is doing a remarkable job on these here."
"She makes us clean the tiles one at a time in the summer. And put on stinky polish with a rag," Jack explained angrily.
"And so she should. I made my son do the same every Saturday because I couldn't stand to scrub my own floors by myself so we did it together."
"Bet he didn't like to," said Meredith wisely.
"He never said so," said Maud tightly.
"Ah, as I say I have scrubbed floors in the old museum. Scary at night, that old museum. Those couches and living rooms with fake peas on plates. One night I saw the peas rearranging themselves on the plate. Sure enough. I hurry past those old rooms. Goodness it is strange there at night when you are alone. Carriages and stagecoaches sitting around by themselves. Look awful lonely. Awful spooky and lonely. I got up under one once when I was cleaning the floor underneath and I knocked myself out." Maud laughed at herself. "Woke up a few minutes later with a wet dress. I thought I wet myself, but it was my pail of mop water that I knocked over. I thought someone had snuck up and hit me on the head. Wasn't anything but my own foolishness. Hmmm. Least I think so. Well, let's have some music on that nice looking stereo of yours. I mean it. Get it out. I want to hear some."
"My parents will kill us if we turn it on," said Meredith, sounding horrified at this old lady's lack of respect for the property in the houses where she sat. "Mother said you would play games with us."
"No, I don't play any games," Maud assured us grimly.
What was she used to doing in people's homes, we wondered? Did she just march in and order kids around so that they broke all their parent's carefully devised rules? What had our parents been thinking when they hired this woman? Especially Mother. How could she be so critical of the seedy side of Arizona and leave in the hands of a woman like this? A floor cleaner pretending to be a babysitter! Or was Mother being really devious. Was she hired just to tempt us into breaking the rules? Were my parents working together to play some kind of strange mind game on us and get us to reveal our true insurrection?
"Pah! How're your parents gonna know we turned it on if at the end of playing the records we switch it off? The neighbors here are too far away, if you're thinking of that. You could fit another house between yours and your neighbors. I'm not going to tell. You need to think better, kid. You gotta think things through to their ending and then you've figured it out. Go get your rock and roll records. Get some of them. I don't care what they are, just rock and roll records. Hurry up. Let's hear 'em." She smacked her lips together in great pleasure and crossed her arms on her big belly in what was obviously a moment of intense anticipation and satisfaction. Rock and roll promised to enliven her meager existence as a floor scrubber at the historical society and she was not going to be denied by some rules-conscious little kids.
We sped away, ready to rip apart our closets in order to unearth all our rock and roll records and turn them over to the demanding form of Mrs. Moran, but as we banged against each other trying to get into the hall that led to our rooms, Jack froze, and turning back to our temptress he exclaimed: "We haven't got any rock and roll records!"
"You haven't got any!" barked the old woman hardly able to comprehend our incompetence.
"No," said Meredith, realizing the startling truth herself. "We want to buy some, but we haven't yet. We were going to save up for some 45s but they're pretty expensive. We just have kid records like stuff about farms and mornin' chores. And we have some folk music. There's no rock and roll records here at all!"
"Not even one?" she asked incredulously.
"No," we shouted in chorus.
"We got Benny Goodman," said Meredith. "Or Mantovani or Nat King Cole."
"That ain't it," said Maud. "That ain't rock and roll. None of it is. Too bad. I was counting on hearing some." Mrs. Moran stared up at the kitchen ceiling light with a look of deep disappointment. She seemed to consider several possibilities as one hand came up and squeezed her bottom lip. "Well, in that case I'll have to tell you a hairrah story after the TV dinners."
"A what?" asked Meredith.
"A hairrah story," she resolved. "That's the next best thing."
"What is that?" an astonished Jack asked.
"You do not know what hairrah is? Tairrah?"
"Terror!" we shrieked, understanding her suddenly all too well.
"A tairrah story," said Mrs. Moran settling in comfortably with her decision. She seemed to have delighted in our reaction.
"We'd rather hear any lovely fairy stories that you happen to know," said Meredith, thinking quickly.
"I'll bet you would," she said narrowing her eyes at Meredith with disdain, "but it just so happens that I don't know any loverly fairy stories. A hairrah story it will have to be."
Just then the timer bell on the oven dinged angrily. It sounded in my ear
s like a raucous ha-ha and we jerked our heads toward the oven and then the ominously dark winter window above the sink. We watched as the reflection of old Maud Moran rose incrementally and twisted the oven timer to off. We saw her squat figure glow with golden light when she tugged the handles and the two silver doors of our oven parted. Her peculiar features smiled slyly as she turned her back to us to pluck our space-age silver TV dinners from the oven. Like the stories of old, she resembled some terrible magical gnome or troll or demon that we had foolishly let in to our house while our parents were gone. We were under her spell and could not escape. In the window her true form emerged, even more awful than her physical being. She was a truly horrible hag with nothing but evil intent.
Old Mrs. Moran limped around the kitchen holding the aluminum trays in a dish towel and dropping TV dinners diffidently on plates in front of us. She threw one on the plate for herself.
"Hurry up eating you TV dinners and I'll think of which one of my tales is best for you kids." She sat down at the table with us.
"Shouldn't we set up our trays and watch TV with our TV dinners?" Meredith suggested slyly. She perceived that Maud could be lured away from telling us a story with the television.
This tempted the old lady, who perhaps did not own a TV. "Later," she said, thinking it through carefully. "I'll have plenty of time to watch it when you kids get to bed." She said this happily as though she was going to be delighted to use our TV and couch, but only in our absence. The thought that she would be sitting on my couch was heart-wrenching.
If she was a real babysitter, we thought, she would to know that horror stories right before bedtime were never good for kids. We ate slowly and fearfully while she studied us in creepy fascination. From the look of concentration on her face it seemed as though a particular horror story had to be brewed up inside her especially for us.
She sliced her Salisbury steak carefully and dipped it in the small square of mashed potatoes and then the oily gravy. For such a large cleaning lady, she ate in a delicate fashion, and gladly for us, slowly. Maybe she was trying to torture us with the thought of the terrible story she was brewing up for us.
"Okay," she said with very deliberate finality when we finished and we had licked every inch of our aluminum TV trays in order to delay the telling of this awful story. "The one that comes to mind for you is called The Bloody Stage."
"I think all three of us were supposed to have baths after our dinner," said Meredith cleverly. She tried to look every bit the part of the dutiful child suddenly remembering a parental instruction. She got up and started to leave the kitchen. I was afraid she would leave me alone so I scrambled to get off my seat, too.
"Sit down," said Maude coldly. "Sit down all of yah. You look clean enough to me. But if you want to go down that dark hallway alone when I finish my hairrah story, be my guest. Now, sit down. All of you!"
Jack and I, who had stood up with Meredith, collapsed at the chrome table in wobbly resignation when she yelled at us. This old bat was not someone you could resist easily. She was going to work her will on us and we were powerless to resist her. I admired Meredith for trying to save us, though it was futile against the power of this being.
"Now," Maude began, "this here story takes place out in the West, where you're from, here in Arizona. It happened in a real place called Skull Valley, which is not too far away from here. It was in the spring of 1885 and the whole town of Skull Valley was awaiting in the street outside the biggest saloon for the arrival of a certain stage from Nah Mexico. Everybody had turned out on the Main Street of the town because there was supposed to be some nah person of import on that stage. Some dignitary or someum. The mayor and all the people of Skull Valley were there, a lined up in front of the saloon, laughing and a joking, but they's wouldn't be fer much longer. That stage was late, very late, and people was then beginning to get worried. Sit down!" she thundered at Jack who was trying to sneak away.
"Where was the stage? Where was it at? That was what everybody was asking. Then they heard the hairrah of it. The hairrah of the jingling harnesses a coming down the hill at the end of Main Street in Skull Valley. A coming down? a coming down...in the dark desert night. What was it?"
"Ay!" shrieked Jack.
"I haven't even told you yet, you silly kid," said Maud. "Calm down. Sit down in your spot."
Jack fell back in his chair again. The scream had taken a lot out of him. His eyes were bugging out and I think he was having a mild asthma attack.
"Now, where was I before you took up and screamed like that? Oh yes. What was it? It was the Arizona stagecoach, sure enough. Down it came that long, lonely street with the wind howling like a banshee. Whooo, whooo. It was noon and-"
"You said it was night!" we all exclaimed simultaneously.
"I know I did. It weren't though. I realized that right now when I got to that part. I made a mistake telling the story. You outta have some patience with the storyteller. It's hard to remember all the details when you're trying to get the tarraih right. It was daylight. Noon. Bright as sin outside."
"You changed that," said Meredith sternly as though she were keeping count of the mistakes.
"I know I did, missie," she said wearily. "I said it was a mistake. Now, get ready to hear the end of my story!"
Meredith squinted at Maud, with disapproval and rebellion, but she thought better of doing anything to defy this strange lady. She sat down. Our parents had a lot to answer for by bringing this queer woman in our midst and letting her loose on our young imaginations. Of course, from my point of view she was just what a writer needs. The old cleaning ladies had good stories they could tell if you could stand to listen to them telling them smugly, wrapped in their old sweaters and smiling slyly. They were the best storytellers, but you had to endure the tairrah and the nasty comments about our intelligence, etc, in order to get from them the best stories they had to offer. Of course even years later I thought of her as a nuisance in my mind, something of no worth that I couldn't be rid of. I could still see her hunched reflection in the kitchen glass as "it" pulled our TV dinners from the oven. She had morphed into a hunchbacked gnome.
"The mayor of Skull Valley stepped out-he was a brave man-and stopped the horses with his big fist grabbing the harness of the lead horse. He was brave, but nobody, I mean to tell you nobody, wanted to look inside that there stagecoach because they sensed something was very, very wrong. Horrible, horrible wrong. They didn't want to see the tarraih. Then they began to see that the beautiful velvet cushions and the sateen walls inside that wonderful old stagecoach were all tord up."
"Don't you mean torn?" asked Meredith sharply.
"Yeah. Tord up to shreds, a hanging down the walls everywhere just as though somebody had clawed at them. Like a wild cat had been in there. But no cat coulda ever done it."
We could not keep our eyes off her terrible face.
"Then they saws the dead ones."
"Who?" asked Jack instantly.
"The dead stagecoach riders. All of them was slumped against each other in a corner of the stage. Sorta piled up like. As though they were raggedy dolls."
"What was it?" asked Meredith solemnly. "What was in there tearing the coach up like that and killing the people?"
"Yeah, Mrs. Moran, what was it in there?" asked Jack. He held himself rigidly on the edge of the chair and waited for her answer. All of us were hanging onto the hope that her answer would relieve us.
"Well you might ask," said Maude Moran, well satisfied as a storyteller that she maintained and whipped up our horrified interest in this "stagey" blood-soaked coach of hers which had drifted into a western town. She pulled her chunky hand-knitted pink sweater around her shoulders and sniffed loudly with great satisfaction. "Well you might wonder...everyone in town wondered, too. Everybody was silent and looking at that stagecoach to see what the answer would be to who had done such an ungodly thing. And then the stagecoach door creaked open ever so slowly. It took ever, ever so long for that door to open
the littlest bit...to make the narrowest crack. That door just barely creaked, creaked out a bit and then...out?popped..." Our babysitter sat not saying another word, but rolling her eyes around in horror.
The kitchen remained still as we hung on her next words.
"Was it a monster?" asked Meredith. I jumped at the sound of her voice.
"No," said Maude. She pursed her lips and shook her head dramatically.
"The devil?" asked Jack weakly, as I told you this was his favorite thing to be popping up everywhere.
"No," said Maude solemnly.
She leaned toward us in the kitchen chair and whispered, "It were...a crazy? CLOWN! Now get to bed!"