‘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 ninetyfive 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 goin’ 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 torn 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.’
The ladies, all talking, did not hear.
Mrs Goodwater nodded, held up her hands, and there was silence.
Elmira held tight to Tom’s hand. Tom kept his eyes shut, wincing.
‘Ladies,’ Elmira said, ‘I sympathize with you. I know what you’ve been through these last ten years. I know why you voted for Mrs Goodwater here. You’ve got boys, girls, and men to feed. You’ve got budgets to follow. You couldn’t afford to have your milk sour, your bread fall, or your cakes as flat as wheels. You didn’t want mumps, chicken pox, and whooping cough in your house all in three weeks. You didn’t want your husband crashing his car or electrocuting himself on the high-tension wires outside town. But now all of that’s over. You can come out in the open now. No more heartburns or backaches, because I’ve brought the good word and we’re going to exorcise this witch we’ve got here!’
Everybody looked around but didn’t see any witch.
‘I mean your president!’ cried Elmira.
‘Me!’ Mrs Goodwater waved at everyone.
‘Today,’ breathed Elmira, holding on to the desk for support. ‘I went to the library. I looked up counteractions. How to get rid of people who take advantage of others, how to make witches leave off and go. And I found a way to fight for all our rights. I can feel the power growing. I got the magic of all kinds of good roots and chemicals in me. I got…’ She paused and swayed. She blinked once. ‘I got cream of tartar and…I got…white hawkweed and milk soured in the light of the moon and…’ She stopped and thought for a moment. She shut her mouth and a tiny sound came from deep inside her and worked up through to come out the corner of her lips. She closed her eyes for a moment to see where the strength was.
‘Mrs Brown, you feelin’ all right?’ asked Mrs Goodwater.
‘Feelin’ fine!’ said Mrs Brown slowly. ‘I put in some pulverized carrots and parsley root, cut fine; juniper berry…’
Again she paused as if a voice had said STOP to her and she looked out across all those faces.
The room, she noticed, was beginning to turn slowly, first from left to right, then right to left.
‘Rosemary roots and crowfoot flower…’ she said rather dimly. She let go of Tom’s hand. Tom opened one eye and looked at her.
‘Bay leaves, nasturtium petals…’ she said.
‘Maybe you better sit down,’ said Mrs Goodwater.
One lady at the side went and opened a window.
‘Dry betel nuts, lavender and crab-apple seed,’ said Mrs Brown and stopped. ‘Quick now, let’s have the election. Got to have the votes. I’ll tabulate.’
‘No hurry, Elmira,’ said Mrs Goodwater.
‘Yes, there is.’ Elmira took a deep trembling breath. ‘Remember, ladies, no more fear. Do like you always wanted to do. Vote for me, and…’ The room was moving again, up and down. ‘Honesty in government. All those in favor of Mrs Goodwater for president say “Aye.”’
‘Aye,’ said the whole room.
‘All those in favor of Mrs Elmira Brown?’ said Elmira in a faint voice.
She swallowed.
After a moment she spoke, alone.
‘Aye,’ she said.
She stood stunned on the rostrum.
A silence filled the room from wall to wall. In that silence Mrs Elmira Brown made a croaking sound. She put her hand on her throat. She turned and looked dimly at Mrs Goodwater, who now very casually drew forth from her purse a small wax doll in which were a number of rusted thumbtacks.
‘Tom,’ said Elmira, ‘show me the way to the ladies’ room.’
‘Yes’m.’
They began to walk and then hurry and then run. Elmira ran on ahead, through the crowd, down the aisle…She reached the door and started left.
‘No, Elmira, right, right!’ cried Mrs Goodwater.
Elmira turned left and vanished.
There was a noise like coal down a chute.
‘Elmira!’
The ladies ran around like a girls’ basketball team, colliding with each other.
Only Mrs Goodwater made a straight line.
She found Tom looking down the stairwell, his hands clenched to the banister.
‘Forty steps!’ he moaned. ‘Forty steps to the ground!’
Later on and for months and years after it was told how like an inebriate Elmira Brown negotiated those steps touching every one on her long way down. It was claimed that when she began the fall she was sick to unconsciousness and that this made her skeleton rubber, so she kind of rolled rather than ricocheted. She landed at the bottom, blinking and feeling better, having left whatever it was that had made her uneasy all along the way. True, she was so badly bruised she looked like a tattooed lady. But, no, not a wrist was sprained or an ankle twisted. She held her head funny for three days, kind of peering out of the sides of her eyeballs instead of turning to look. But the important thing was Mrs Goodwater at the bottom of the steps, pillowing Elmira’s head on her lap and dropping tears on her as the ladies gathered hysterically.
‘Elmira, I promise, Elmira. I swear, if you just live, if you don’t die, you hear me, Elmira, listen! I’ll use my magic for nothing but good from now on. No more black, nothing but white magic. The rest of your life, if I have my way, no more falling over iron dogs, tripping on sills, cutting fingers, or dropping downstairs for you! Elysium, Elmira, Elysium. I promise! If you just live! Look. I’m pulling the tacks out of the doll! Elmira, speak to me! Speak now and sit up! And come upstairs for another vote. President, I promise, president of the Honeysuckle Ladies Lodge, by acclamation, won’t we, ladies?’
At this all the ladies cried so hard they had to lean on each other.
Tom, upstairs, thought this meant death down there.
He was halfway down when he met the ladies coming back up, looking like they had just wandered out of a dynamite explosion.
‘Get out of the way, boy!’
First came Mrs Goodwater, laughing and crying.
Next came Mrs Elmira Brown, doing the same.
And after the two of them came all the one hundred twenty-three members of the lodge, not knowing if they’d just returned from a funeral or were on their way to a ball.
He watched them pass and shook his head.
‘Don’t need me no more,’ he said. ‘No more at all.’
So he tiptoed down the stairs before they missed him, holding tight to the rail all the way.
The Happiness Machine
On Sunday morning Leo Auffmann moved slowly through his garage, expecting some wood, a curl of wire, a hammer or wrench to leap up crying. ‘Start here!’ But nothing leaped, nothing cried for a beginning.
Should a Happiness Machine, he wondered, be something you can carry in your pocket?
Or, he went on, should it be something that carries you in its pocket?
‘One thing I absolutely know,’ he said aloud. ‘It should be bright!’
He set a can of orange paint in the center of the workbench, picked up a dictionary, and wandered into the house.
‘Lena?’ He glanced at the dictionary. ‘Are you “pleased, contented, joyful, delighted”? Do you feel “lucky, fortunate”? Are things “clever and fitting,” “successful and suitable” for you?’
Lena stopped slicing vegetables and closed her eyes. ‘Read me the list again, please,’ she said.
He shut the book.
‘What have I done, you got to stop and think an hour before you can tell me? All I ask is a simple yes or no! You’re not contented, delighted, joyful?’
‘Cows are ‘contented,’ babies and old people in second childhood are “delighted.” God help them,’ she said. ‘As for “joyful,” Leo? Look how I laugh scrubbing out the sink…’
He peered closely at her and his face relaxed. ‘Lena, it’s true. A man doesn’t appreciate. Next month, maybe, we’ll get away.’
‘I’m not complaining!’ she cried. ‘I’m not the one comes in with a list saying. “Stick out your tongue,” Leo, do you ask what makes your heart beat all night? No! Next will you ask, “What’s marriage?” Who knows, Leo? Don’t ask. A man who thinks like that, how it runs, how things work, falls off the trapeze in the circus, chokes wondering how the muscles work in the throat. Eat, sleep, breathe, Leo, and stop staring at me like I’m something new in the house!’
Lena Auffmann froze. She sniffed the air.
‘Oh, my God, look what you done!’
She yanked the oven door open. A great cloud of smoke poured through the kitchen.
‘Happiness!’ she wailed. ‘And for the first time in six months we have a fight! Happiness, and for the first time in twenty years it’s not bread, it’s charcoal for supper!’
When the smoke cleared, Leo Auffmann was gone.
The fearful clangor, the collision of man and inspiration, the flinging about of metal, lumber, hammer, nails, T square, screwdriver, continued for many days. On occasion, defeated, Leo Auffmann loitered out throug
h the streets, nervous, apprehensive, jerking his head at the slightest sound of distant laughter, listened to children’s jokes, watching what made them smile. At night he sat on neighbors’ crowded porches, listening to the old folks weigh and balance life, and at each explosion of merriment Leo Auffmann quickened like a general who has seen the forces of darkness routed and whose strategy has been reaffirmed. On his way home he felt triumphant until he was in his garage with the dead tools and the inanimate lumber. Then his bright face fell away in a pale funk, and to cover his sense of failure he banged and crashed the parts of his machine about as if they really did make sense. At last it began to shape itself and at the end of ten days and nights, trembling with fatigue, self-dedicated, half starved, fumbling and looking as if he had been riven by lightning, Leo Auffmann wandered into his house.
The children, who had been screaming horribly at each other, fell silent, as if the Red Death had entered at the chiming of the clock.
‘The Happiness Machine,’ husked Leo Auffmann, ‘is ready.’
‘Leo Auffmann,’ said his wife, ‘has lost fifteen pounds. He hasn’t talked to his children in two weeks, they are nervous, they fight, listen! His wife is nervous, she’s gained ten pounds, she’ll need new clothes, look! Sure—the machine is ready. But happy? Who can say? Leo, leave off with the clock you’re building. You’ll never find a cuckoo big enough to go in it! Man was not made to tamper with such things. It’s not against God, no, but it sure looks like it’s against Leo Auffmann. Another week of this and we’ll bury him in his machine!’
But Leo Auffmann was too busy noticing that the room was falling swiftly up.
How interesting, he thought, lying on the floor.
Darkness closed in a great wink on him as someone screamed some thing about that Happiness Machine, three times.
The first thing he noticed the next morning was dozens of birds fluttering around in the air stirring up ripples like colored stones thrown into an incredibly clear stream, gonging the tin roof of the garage softly.
A pack of multibred dogs pawfooted one by one into the yard to peer and whine gently through the garage door; four boys, two girls, and some men hesitated in the driveway and then edged along under the cherry trees.