Uncle Bert patted his round belly and said, “You’re a fat boy.”
“You’re a fat boy, you old goat.”
The last two gifts from Mom and Dad were a box of crayons and a cordless microphone.
“You won’t need that old stick anymore,” said Dad. “This is the real thing.” Speaking into the new microphone, he said, “Happy birthday.”
Punky looked startled at the magnified sound. He grabbed the mike from Dad, crammed it back into the box, and shoved it at Uncle Bert. “You have it,” he said.
“But Punky,” said Dad, “you can sing with it in the backyard.”
“Don’t want it. Bert have it,” replied Punky, and that was that.
I had saved my present for last. When Punky saw the little clown, he said, “Jellybean!” and planted a kiss on my forehead.
“Delrita, that’s beautiful,” exclaimed Aunt Queenie. “The last I knew, you were hacking away at a pitiful little lump of a snowman.”
“That was two years ago. I’ve learned a lot since then.”
“Well, I’m impressed. What other things have you carved?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I murmured, watching Punky as he disappeared again down the hall.
“She made these for me,” said Mom, opening the curved glass doors of her china cabinet and removing a girl, a boy, and a dog that I’d stained with an oak-tinted varnish. The creases and folds had stained darker than the bodies, so the pieces looked antique.
Aunt Queenie got up and studied each carving under the light. Smiling at me, she asked, “Have you ever thought about selling some of your work at a craft show?”
“Oh, no,” I said hastily. “My stuff isn’t good enough.”
“It certainly is. These pieces remind me of the ones I’ve seen at Silver Dollar City.”
“Thanks,” I said, glowing at the compliment. The carvings at Silver Dollar City were the work of a master, and I secretly longed to be as skillful as he was.
Punky came back with his metal Jellybean lunch box, where he carried his daily stash of treasures. Today the box held five of my painted carvings. “Clowns,” he said. He lined them up on the table next to Jellybean and counted, “One, two, three, four, five.”
“Hey, Punk-Man, I’ll take this one,” said Uncle Bert, pretending to pick out a clown for himself.
“Okay. You have it,” said Punky, but he was quick to remove the rest from his brother’s reach.
Uncle Bert chuckled and gave him back the clown. “Just testing you, Punk-Man, to see if I should give you this.” Reaching into his pocket, he said, “I’ve got a coupon book for one Richard Punk-Man Holloway. It’s worth five dollars at McDonald’s.”
“Big Mac! All ri-i-ght!” cried Punky. He went behind Uncle Bert, lifted his toupee, and kissed him on the top of his bald head.
After my aunt and uncle had left and my parents had gone to bed, I stayed up late with Punky. I liked spending Friday nights carving and watching commercials on TV, so why, all of a sudden, was I wondering how many girls had showed up for Cindi Martin’s slumber party?
I threw an old sheet over the couch to catch the worst of my wood shavings and sat down to work on a trumpeter swan. I used a tool called a veiner to shape the swan’s body. The head and neck were still just a hunk of wood, and I wouldn’t try carving them tonight. Maybe tomorrow, when I felt fresh and rested. I’d carved other kinds of animals without much trouble, but somehow my swans always ended up with broken necks. Punky already had three of them that could pass for deformed ducks.
Punky’s hands were busy, too. When he wasn’t flicking the channel selector, he was peeling the paper off his new crayons and breaking them into tiny pieces of exactly the same size. Beside him on the floor was a peck basket full of the crayons he had accumulated over the years—hundreds, maybe thousands of them, all peeled and broken. To Punky, they were treasures to be rolled back and forth endlessly on his sawed-off table.
Around midnight, when I heard the first TV station signing off the air, I brushed the wood shavings off my lap and got up.
“Flag, D.J.,” said Punky as he scrambled to his feet. He wouldn’t allow anybody to sit through “The Star-Spangled Banner,” even if it was just on TV. He snapped a soldier’s salute and held it for a full minute as the Stars and Stripes waved across the screen.
Twice more we went through the ritual as the other two stations ended their programming for the night. When the last notes of the last national anthem faded away, Punky stretched and yawned.
“Ready for bed, birthday boy?” I asked.
“Yup,” he said, switching off the television.
I glanced around the living room before turning off the light. Except for the antique love seat and the marble-top table with its pineapple-lace doily, every stick of furniture was cluttered with Punky’s and my belongings.
The carpet, littered with wood shavings and crayon papers, looked like the bottom of a hamster cage. I grinned. Aunt Queenie would declare herself into a snit if she knew about the pile of horn bones behind the TV.
FIVE
The Bratty Gregory Kid
“Delrita,” said Mom, shaking me awake, “I need to talk to you.”
“Mmmnnnggghh,” I grunted from the midst of my dream.
“Come on, get up, sleepyhead.”
I rolled out from under the covers and sat like a zombie on the edge of the bed. “Will you carry my eyes downstairs?” I mumbled. “I can’t see the steps in the morning.”
Mom laughed. It was the same silly question I’d asked her when I was four years old and we lived in Grandma’s old farmhouse. “Come on,” she said, “and I’ll fix you a cup of hot chocolate.”
In the kitchen, Dad was seated at the table. He was dressed for an auction, in khaki pants and a pullover shirt with a notepad sticking out of the pocket. “Good morning, squirt,” he said over his coffee cup.
Reaching for a slice of leftover bacon as I collapsed into a chair, I said sleepily, “Hi. What’s up?”
“Your mother wants to go to an estate auction with me today, if you think you and Punky will be okay here by yourselves.”
“Sure.”
Mom handed me a cup of hot chocolate that was mushy with marshmallows, and said, “They’ve advertised a roll-top desk that I’d like to look at.”
I nodded.
“Are you sure you and Punky will be all right? The sale is way down at Versailles, and we wouldn’t be within hollering distance if you had any trouble.”
By “trouble,” she meant the possibility that Punky would have another spell with his heart. None of us liked to talk about it, but it was always there—the worry that Punky might die.
“There won’t be any trouble,” said Dad. “Punky hasn’t been sick for almost a year. Besides, Delrita knows how to use the nitroglycerin pills, and the numbers of the doctor, the hospital, and the ambulance are right there by the phone.”
“Yeah, Mom, I know I’m supposed to put the pills under Punky’s tongue. And I can call for help if I need it.”
“All right,” she said slowly. “I really would like to get out of the house for a while.... Sam, should we tell her about next weekend or save it as a surprise?”
“Tell me,” I said, wide awake. “Don’t save it.”
“There’s a big estate auction,” said Dad, “and there’ll be antique buyers from all over Missouri.”
“But what’s the surprise?”
“It’s at Branson.”
“Branson?” I cried. “Does that mean we’re going to Silver Dollar City?”
Dad chuckled. “If you and Punky can stand to look at old furniture with Shirley and me, I reckon we can put up with a pioneer town full of hillbillies and old-fashioned rides.”
I pulled on my softest, most faded pair of jeans and my favorite knock-around T-shirt, then stood before the mirror of my heavy oak dresser.
The mirror was antique, and it reflected a wavy image back at me. As I brushed my hair, I thought how I looked li
ke the little wooden urchin that had caught my eye in the window of the woodcarving shop at Silver Dollar City. She had a heart-shaped face with a flat nose and almost no chin, and her eyes were big and blue as a summer sky.
I had pulled Punky into the shop that day, thinking I would choose the urchin as my souvenir. The price was way beyond what I could afford, but when we turned to go, I spied the master woodcarver at work. As I watched him create a trumpeter swan in flight, my own hands itched to shape something beautiful from a block of wood.
Later that afternoon, when we met my parents at the Old Mine Restaurant, Punky was sporting a black cowboy hat with a silver band, and I was clutching my first woodcarving tool in a crumpled sack.
My folks at first thought I’d wasted my money. They couldn’t understand why I would buy a cheap pocketknife and a six-inch chunk of basswood when the shops were overflowing with souvenirs more suitable for an eleven-year-old girl.
My first carving was that awful snowman. Besides not knowing how or where to start, I lacked patience and I kept cutting my fingers. I was on the verge of giving up woodcarving forever when, on my twelfth birthday, Mom and Dad gave me a set of tools and a woodcarving book for beginners.
What a difference it made when I had the proper tools, and guidelines to follow. Now I drew my designs on cardboard, transferred them to the basswood, and had Dad cut the basic outlines with his band saw.
I smiled as I fastened my hair in a ponytail. Dad was into carpentry, not woodcarving, but he was my biggest fan.
In the living room, the morning breeze was blowing through the window, scattering leftover wood shavings like dandruff on the couch and carpet. Wishing for luck, I opened the Barbie case and the plastic compartment.
I picked up the swan and studied it. The wings on my bird were folded against its body, and I wondered idly if I’d ever be able to carve one with outstretched wings, like the master woodcarver had. After selecting the right-sized V-tool, I curled up Indian fashion on the couch and set to work.
An hour or so later, Punky came into the living room, wearing his “Surf Bum” T-shirt and clean red jogging pants. His eyes were still puffy from sleep and he needed a shave. “Mornin’, pretty girl,” he said.
I grinned. Punky was the only person in the world who would ever think of me as pretty. “Hi. Hungry for breakfast?”
“I’m starved,” he said, sitting down and turning on the television.
“Is cereal okay?”
“Nope. Bacon, two eggs, and toast. Shirley said.”
“Well, then, clean off your table while I get it ready.”
“Wait a minute.”
I fried bacon and eggs and made toast, and then carried our food into the living room. Punky was watching TV with the sound off and listening to his new radio. His crayon pieces were in the basket, but now the six clowns were lined up like sentries at the far edge of the table.
Punky ate slowly, taking a bite now and then as he switched channels from cartoons to commercials and back again. When at last he finished eating, I decided it was time to clean up the mess. “Sorry, Punky,” I said as I dragged the vacuum cleaner from the closet, “this room is a pigpen.”
“Okay, D.J.,” he replied, placing the clowns in his lunch box and heading for the back door with the lunch box and the radio.
After unwinding the cord on the sweeper, I glanced outside. He was lining up a row of lawn chairs in front of his swing set for a make-believe audience.
I shook the sheet full of wood shavings out the front door and collected the horns from behind the TV. There were ten of them, all dry and hard and covered with fuzzies, and I laughed. If Queen Esther Holloway could see them, she’d throw a royal fit.
Later I went out to check on Punky. He was singing, holding his pretend microphone to his mouth and his radio to one ear. The sunshine made his whiskers glisten.
I sat in the other swing, wondering how it would feel to be like Punky, without a worry in the world.
Now that he had a live audience, he began swinging higher and singing louder, making up a song about Jellybean and Santa Claus and Uncle Bert all rolled into one.
I dug my bare feet into the soft dirt under the swing and watched it sift up between my long, skinny toes.
“Did you get a new radio?” someone asked, and I spun around to see the bratty Gregory kid spying on us.
“Hey, boy, what are you doing here?” I demanded, jumping off the swing as he jumped off his bike.
“I just wanted to see where the music was coming from. Is that against the law?” he replied, staring at Punky.
“My radio, my present,” Punky said proudly.
“It’s against the law to trespass on private property,” I snapped.
The brat continued to stare at Punky.
“I said it’s against the law—”
“I heard what you said. I just ...”
“Just what?”
The boy sputtered, “I just wondered—I mean—I—I didn’t know he had whiskers.”
I snorted my disgust. “Of course he’s got whiskers! He’s thirty-five years old!”
“But he swings and plays.”
“So he’s not like other people. That doesn’t give you the right to come snooping around all the time. This isn’t a sideshow.”
“I don’t snoop.”
“Oh, yes you do. You even bring your friends.”
“I’m sorry about that,” said the boy, scuffing the toes of his tennis shoes. “When they hear Punky singing, they want to see what he looks like.”
Punky didn’t appreciate being left out of the conversation. He opened his lunch box and showed off his clowns.
“Hey, those are neat,” said the boy. “We could play circus.”
“Circus. Yeah!” said Punky, clapping his hands.
“I don’t think so.” This was getting too complicated, and I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t remember anybody besides me ever wanting to play with Punky. Most little kids were afraid of him or just wanted somebody to laugh at.
“Couldn’t I play for a few minutes?” asked the boy.
I studied his face and decided maybe he did just want to play. He was only a second-grader, and if he started acting like a brat, I was bigger than he was. “All right, boy,” I said, “but I’ll be watching you from the house.”
I turned to go inside, and he called after me, “Marcus.”
“What?”
“My name isn’t Boy. It’s Marcus.”
I moved my carving things to the kitchen so I could keep an eye on the backyard. With the slightest twinge of jealousy, I listened to Marcus and Punky giggling and playing together in the dirt under the swing set.
I scolded myself as I worked on the swan. Why shouldn’t Punky have a friend? After all, he wasn’t invisible.
There were times I wished he were invisible, like when we went to church and he sang the hymns too loud with his pretend microphone. Or when he saw the flag at the post office and stopped dead in the middle of the street to salute.
I thought about the last time our family went to see a Walt Disney movie. Punky had gnawed at his fingers until they were all slobbery, and he twisted his hair into wet spikes. Every few minutes, he’d clap his hands and say, “Look, D.J.!”
My face turned hot at the memory of everybody in the theater staring at us and snickering.
I was gouging too hard at the swan, and suddenly I broke off the neck. I felt like crying, not because of the broken hunk of wood, but because I was ashamed of my shame. Punky couldn’t help being the way he was.
I rounded off the neck, then marched into Punky’s bedroom and plunked the deformed duck down beside the other animals on the shelf.
Frowning with frustration, I glanced around the room that represented Punky’s little-boy world. There were clowns on the curtains and bedspread and wallpaper, and clown posters on every wall. By the dresser was a big punching-bag clown, leering at me. I slugged him hard, wanting him to fall down and stay down, but h
e bounced back up on his balloon bottom and continued to leer.
When the cooing sound of Punky’s laughter drifted through the open window, my frustration drifted away, too. I went back to the shelf, swept all the animals into the bottom of my T-shirt, and carried them outside.
Marcus and Punky were making the clowns do tricks. Marcus had broken out with more freckles, and Punky’s bald spot had turned pink from sunburn.
As my shadow crossed over Punky, he looked up at me, all smiles, his whiskery moon face streaked with grime.
Marcus narrowed his eyes at me and wiped a hand across his forehead, making little dirt balls in the sweat. “We’re doing okay,” he said quickly, as if he expected me to give him a hard time.
“I know,” I replied as I knelt down to dump my burden. “I just thought of something. You can’t have a really great circus without animals.”
SIX
The Whistle
I heard Marcus’s mother calling him home to eat, so I started fixing lunch for Punky and me.
When Marcus left a few minutes later, Punky came in the back door, saying, “I’m starved.”
“I know,” I said, dropping ice cubes into a clown glass and filling it with tea.
Punky grabbed the tea and chugged it down while I said, “Wash your hands and face. The hamburgers’ ll be done in a jiffy.”
“Yeah, D.J.”
Soon I heard a suspicious sloshing in the bathroom, and in a flash I knew Mom had forgotten to hide the shampoo. Punky wouldn’t touch a full bottle of shampoo, but as soon as it reached the halfway mark—whoosh! down the toilet! I shot into the bathroom, but he was already replacing the cap on the empty bottle.
“Gone,” he said as he held the bottle up to the light and looked at the rainbow of bubbles.
I groaned. How was I going to wash my hair?
After lunch, I told Punky we had to get more shampoo, and sent him in to shave.
“Oh, boy,” he said, heading for the bathroom.
I shook my head sadly. I hated going to the store with Punky, because I never knew when he’d take something. He didn’t mean to steal, but his idea of a fair trade was to swap one of his treasures for an item he liked on a store shelf.