“Dennis!” Aunt Julia said, opening the door. “Come on in—”
Uncle Arvie put his hands to his chest. “Oh, Heartfoot! Good carpet, Heartfoot!”
But she couldn’t see him and she didn’t hear him. She leaned down and kissed me and patted Bo. “I have company already,” she said. “We’re just having coffee.”
Uncle Arvie smiled at everything he saw. He touched the walls and the furniture. He took a deep breath, as if he wanted to breathe in everything.
In the kitchen was a tall, skinny man with greasy black hair. When he smiled, I saw two silver teeth.
“Here,” Aunt Julia said. “This is Colin.”
“Nod!” Uncle Arvie said. “Nod a pin box! Nod beany booger—” Uncle Arvie did not like the looks of Colin. He apparently did not like another man being in his house.
“What are you looking at, Dennis? Is something wrong?” Aunt Julia said. “And what on earth is wrong with Bo?”
Bo was quivering beside me as Uncle Arvie shouted, “Nod beany booger a pin box!” I couldn’t believe that Aunt Julia couldn’t see or hear Uncle Arvie. He was flailing all around, shouting and waving his arms.
“Dennis? What are you staring at?” she repeated.
“Oh nothing—sorry,” I said.
Aunt Julia sniffed the air. “What’s that smell . . . ? It reminds me of . . .” She stopped and shook her head. “No, it’s silly of me.”
She offered me some cookies. Colin sat down and smiled his silvery smile at me and at Aunt Julia. I didn’t like the look of him either.
She brought a vase of white flowers to the table. “Look what Colin brought me. Wasn’t that sweet? Don’t they smell lovely?”
“Nod!” Uncle Arvie shouted. “Nod!” Uncle Arvie pushed the vase off the table. It fell with a loud crash to the floor and broke into pieces. Bo barked.
“Oh!” Aunt Julia said. “How on earth—? What happened? My goodness!”
Colin stared at the broken vase.
“Dennis, why don’t you and Colin go on into the living room while I clean up this mess? I can’t imagine how this happened.”
In the living room, I went straight to the bookcase and looked at the titles. Which one did Uncle Arvie want me to show Aunt Julia?
Colin stood beside me. “Do you like books?” he asked.
“I guess.”
“I don’t, not much,” Colin said. “Gives me a headache to read a book.”
“Beany,” Uncle Arvie said. “Beany bud booger—”
Uncle Arvie examined the shelf. He looked and looked, at row after row of books. At last he said, “Wig pasta!” and just as he reached for a book, Colin reached up and took that same book from the shelf. “Nod!” Uncle Arvie said. “Nod pin wig pasta—”
Colin leafed through the pages. “This book would definitely give me a headache,” Colin said. “The print is too small.”
“Let me see it?” I said.
“Sure, just a minute. Wait, what’s this?” Colin had found something in the book. It looked like a letter.
Uncle Arvie was going crazy. “Pin wig pasta a deester! Pin deester!”
Colin took the letter from the book and put it in his jacket pocket. Bo growled at Colin.
Uncle Arvie clutched his chest. “Pin deester a Heartfoot!” He pulled at Colin’s jacket, trying to get the letter.
“Hey,” Colin said, brushing at his jacket. “Is there something on me?”
Uncle Arvie pinched Colin’s arm.
“Hey!” Colin said. “A wasp!” He took off his jacket and stomped on it.
Aunt Julia rushed in. “Why, Colin dear, whatever is the matter? A wasp? Are you okay?”
Bo dragged the jacket into the kitchen, and Uncle Arvie pinched Colin’s other arm.
“Hey!” Colin wailed. “Another one?” He slapped at his arm.
“Oh goodness, goodness,” Aunt Julia said.
In the kitchen Bo was scratching at Colin’s jacket. “Here, I’ll get it,” I said. On the envelope was written, “Pin Heartfoot.” I stuffed the letter into my own pocket and took Colin’s jacket back to him.
Uncle Arvie must have pinched Colin again, because Colin was saying, “Hey! Hey!” Colin swung at the air and slapped at his neck. “I’m going!” he said, rushing for the door.
“Oh, goodness,” Aunt Julia said.
“Aunt Julia,” I said, “I was looking at one of your books and I found something. I think it’s for you.” I gave her the letter.
“Oh!” She kissed the envelope. “It’s from Arvie!” She tore open the envelope and read the note inside. “Look,” she said, “it was written the day before Arvie died.” She read:
“Heartfoot a lalley
Heartfoot a sweel
Pin Heartfoot pin Heartfoot
Pin Heartfoot a teel.
“Oh, how lovely, how sweet,” she said.
Uncle Arvie was staring at her.
“What does it mean?” I asked.
“Well,” she said. “I’m not entirely sure. Heartfoot—that’s me. That’s what he called me after his stroke. And pin—that usually meant me or my. But I don’t know what lalley or sweel or teel mean. It’s still lovely, though. I’m sure it’s a love poem.”
Bo put his head on her foot and slobbered.
“I bet this was for my birthday,” she said. “He didn’t forget it after all.”
She read the poem again and again. Once she looked up and sniffed the air. “That smell,” she said. “Doesn’t it smell like—like Arvie?”
Uncle Arvie leaned down and kissed her cheek. She couldn’t see him, but she must have felt something, because she put her hand to her cheek.
“I’m feeling a little peculiar,” she said. “I think I’ll lie down. But thank you for finding this. I might never ever have discovered it.”
I thought Uncle Arvie might stay with Julia, but he followed me and Bo out the door. He looked tired and sad.
“You miss her, don’t you?” I said.
“Pin sweel Heartfoot,” Uncle Arvie said.
“I didn’t much like that Colin guy, did you?”
“Beany booger!”
“Exactly,” I said.
We were nearly home when Uncle Arvie said, “Two please?”
I had nearly forgotten about the three pleases. I had done the first one, by finding the book with its letter and giving it to Aunt Julia. Now what would the next please be?
5
SECOND PLEASE
As we were crossing the park on our way home from Aunt Julia’s house, a boy on a bike stopped us. The bike was spectacular, but the boy was not. It was Billy Baker, the one who had called me a liar when I had told him about my ghosts.
Billy Baker said, “Hey, Dennis. Is that your stinking dog?”
Bo growled a long, low, menacing growl.
“It’s my dog,” I said, “but he’s not stinking.”
“Oh yeah?” Billy said. “I bet he is.”
“Beany booger?” Uncle Arvie said.
“Yes,” I agreed. “A beany booger.”
“What?” Billy demanded. “Who are you calling a beany booger?”
“Nobody.”
“You’d better not be calling me that—”
Bo snapped Billy’s jeans in his teeth and pulled at them.
“Hey, get your stinking dog off me!”
“You shouldn’t have called him stinking,” I said.
Bo pulled at Billy’s jeans, making him lose his balance.
“Get this dog off me!”
“Come on, Bo. Let him go.”
Reluctantly, Bo let Billy loose. Billy hissed in my ear: “You’ll be sorry for this! I’ll catch you sometime when you don’t have your stinking dog or your father to protect you.”
What? I spun around. My father? Was he here? And then I realized that Billy must have thought Uncle Arvie was my father. What? Had Billy Baker actually seen Uncle Arvie? I spun back around to ask, but he was gone.
“Beany booger,” Uncle Arvie sa
id again.
“Exactly,” I agreed. “He likes to cause trouble.”
Back in my room Uncle Arvie mentioned the second “please” when I opened my desk. He whisked his hand in the drawer and fluttered through it.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“Hammertoe.” Uncle Arvie’s fingers flickered through pencils and pens, paper and a ruler. “Nod hammertoe?”
“I don’t know. What exactly is a hammertoe?”
“Hammertoe!” Uncle Arvie moved his hand in the air. “Hammer a needle. With hammertoe and needlinks.”
I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.
Suddenly, he shouted, “Ha! Hammertoe!”
“A paintbrush?”
“Hammertoe! Yin!” Uncle Arvie said. He rummaged some more, flipping out a twisted tube of blue oil paint. “Needlinks! Hammer a needle with needlinks!”
“You want me to paint a picture with the brush and paint?”
“Pin needle. Dinosaur flannelate,” Uncle Arvie explained.
“Your picture? You want me to—to—what?”
“Flannelate!” Uncle Arvie was frustrated. He didn’t know how to explain.
“Can’t you show me?” I asked. “With the paintbrush and the paint?”
Uncle Arvie thought a minute. He took a piece of paper and placed it on the desk. Next he opened the paint tube and squeezed a drop onto the paper. He dipped the brush in the paint and started to draw, but an odd thing happened. There was paint on the brush, and the brush was moving across the paper, but the brush was leaving no marks.
“Hey!” I said. “Invisible paint?”
Uncle Arvie slammed his fist on the desk. “Nod fraggle.” He dropped the brush and covered his face with his hands.
“Let me try.” I dipped the brush in the paint and stroked it across the paper. “Look, it works for me.” I painted a thin blue line across the paper, added a few strokes, and drew a house.
Uncle Arvie tapped at the picture. “Dinosaur needle.” He jumped up, took the paintbrush, and pretended to paint a picture in the air. “Pin needle.” Then he dropped the brush. “Nod flannelate.”
“Not finished? Is that it? Your painting isn’t finished?”
“Yin, riggle! Dinosaur flannelate!” Uncle Arvie shouted.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Let me get this straight. You’ve got a painting—an unfinished painting—and you want me to finish it?”
“Riggle!”
“I can’t do that,” I said. “I don’t know how to paint.”
Uncle Arvie held up my drawing of the house. “Dinosaur hammer,” Uncle Arvie begged.
“Where is your painting?” I asked.
Uncle Arvie shrugged. He wasn’t sure.
“Well, I guess we’ll go back to your house tomorrow and see if we can find it. But I don’t guarantee anything. Like I told you, I really don’t know how to paint.”
Uncle Arvie looked relieved. He cleared off the top of the desk. “Stamp!” he said, and he lay down on the desk and fell asleep. Bo curled up at the foot of the desk and he, too, fell asleep.
Uncle Arvie slept all day, and I was glad. It was very hard keeping up with a ghost who spoke his own language and asked for favors. I wondered where his painting was and how hard it would be to finish it.
That night, as I lay in bed, I remembered Billy Baker. If Billy really had seen Uncle Arvie, then Billy, too, had seen a ghost. Wouldn’t Billy be surprised to know that?
I stared out the window and searched the sky for a bright star. When I found one, I wished for my pepperoni.
6
HAMMERING THE NEEDLE
On Sunday morning I heard, “Dinosaur?” There was Uncle Arvie, floating near the ceiling again. “Good carpet, Dinosaur!”
“Good morning.” I could smell pancakes, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen Uncle Arvie eat since he had arrived. “Aren’t you hungry?” I asked him.
“Nod.”
“Do ghosts eat?”
“Nod.”
“What do you do all day—when you’re not visiting me, I mean? You don’t eat. What do you do?”
“Stamp.”
“Sleep? Is that all?”
“Nod.” Uncle Arvie flapped his arms. “Mailer.”
“Sleep and fly. I’d like that. Can you go wherever you want?”
“Nod.” Uncle Arvie wiggled his arms and twirled and fell over. “Pailandplop.”
“Oh, right. You can’t steer. But you can aim, right? And then you just have to go where the wind takes you, right?”
“Yin.”
Maybe that was why my father had not come to see me yet. Maybe he was aiming, but couldn’t find his way.
“Dennis?” my mother called. She tapped at the door and came in. “You awake?”
Uncle Arvie smiled at her. “Feather macaroni.”
“What is that smell?” my mother said. “It’s so familiar, and yet—”
“Does it remind you of someone?” I asked.
“Yes, I think it does, but I can’t exactly say who—”
Uncle Arvie jumped up and down. “Pin!” he said. “Pin! Pin!”
“So what are you and Bo doing today?” my mother asked.
“Hammer a needle!” Uncle Arvie said. “Dinosaur flannelate!”
“I thought maybe we’d go over to Aunt Julia’s for a while,” I said.
“That’s good of you. She’s so lonely now that Arvie is gone.”
Uncle Arvie looked sad. “Pin Heartfoot. Pin sweel.”
“I bet he’s lonely too,” I said.
My mother looked surprised. “But Dennis, he’s in heaven. He won’t be lonely.”
“Maybe you don’t stay in heaven all the time,” I said. “Maybe sometimes you ride around on the wind all by yourself and—”
“Dennis, what an imagination you have!”
“Do you think my pepperoni is lonely?”
“Your what?”
“I—I meant Dad. Do you think he’s lonely?”
My mother sat down on the bed beside me. “I don’t know for sure, but no, I don’t think he’s lonely.”
“I hope not,” I said. “I hope he isn’t lonely, but I bet he does miss us.”
“I’m sure he does, Dennis.” She stared at her wedding ring. “I miss him terribly. Most of the time I’m too busy to be lonely, but at night—”
“I know,” I said. “At night it’s harder.”
After breakfast Uncle Arvie dusted off his boots and straightened his hat. “Pin mailer,” he said, and he waggled his arms, lifted a few inches off the floor, and then came back down again. “Foomf!” he said. He waggled his arms again. Nothing happened. “Foomf!” Again he tried, and this time he lifted smoothly into the air and sailed through the window and over the trees, settling down in the grass across the road. At least he could steer for short distances, it seemed.
Aunt Julia was happy to see me and Bo again. “I love to have company,” she said.
“Pin Heartfoot,” Uncle Arvie sighed.
I said I had to use the bathroom. I knew the painting would not be there, but it would give me a chance to look in the bedrooms. I’d have to be quiet and quick about it, though.
I slipped into the spare bedroom and looked under the bed, behind the dresser, and in the closet. No paintings, except for one on the wall that looked completely finished.
In Aunt Julia’s bedroom I checked under the bed and in the closet. I felt terrible, like a spy.
“Dennis?” Aunt Julia called.
I hurried back down the hallway to the kitchen.
“I thought maybe you got lost,” she said, laughing.
I had an idea. “One time when I was here, I think I left something in your garage.” I had to think fast. “Remember those little plastic dinosaurs I had? Do you think I could check if I left them here?”
“Your dinosaurs? I don’t remember seeing them out there,” she said. “But you can go look.”
The garage was stacked
with boxes, gardening tools, an old bicycle, and paint cans. When I asked Uncle Arvie how big the painting was, he held out his arms to show how wide and then swiveled them to show how tall.
“That’s a pretty big painting,” I said. “We shouldn’t miss something that big.” I poked around the boxes, moved tools, and searched the rafters. “It’s not here. Can you think of anywhere else it could be?”
Uncle Arvie scratched his head. Suddenly he said, “Picket!” and pointed to the roof.
“I don’t think a painting is going to be on the roof—”
Uncle Arvie pointed toward the house and then toward the roof. “Picket! Picket!”
“The attic?”
“Riggle! Picket!”
“Did you find your dinosaurs?” Aunt Julia called.
“No, I must have left them somewhere else.” I was trying to think of a way to get into the attic. “Do you want me to do anything for you while I’m here?”
“Well, isn’t that sweet of you,” she said. “I can’t think of anything—”
“Do you need anything taken up to the attic?”
“The attic? My goodness. I haven’t been up there in years. I’m sure it’s a complete mess. No, I don’t think I need anything carried up there, though.”
Uncle Arvie was sitting beside her, staring at her with a smile on his face. He liked to watch her.
“Maybe I could go up there and straighten it up for you.” When I said this, I felt a little guilty, because my mother had asked me to clean our attic, and I was always finding excuses not to do it. “I like to poke around in attics,” I added.
“What a lovely boy,” she said. “If you’re sure you want to, it’s fine with me. Here, I’ll show you where the ladder is.”
The attic was dusty and crowded with boxes, old suitcases, a trunk, cast-off pieces of furniture, and plastic bags filled with blankets and clothing.
“I’ll be down in the kitchen if you need me,” Aunt Julia said from the foot of the ladder. Bo stared up at the hole through which Uncle Arvie and I had disappeared. He whimpered.
I moved boxes, clearing a space in the center of the attic. “I might as well straighten it up as I go,” I said. I made a neat stack of boxes and piled the furniture against one wall. Then I dragged the plastic bags across the room and piled them on top of the furniture.