“How do you mean?” Prudence said, as she filed her nails. “Do we have any nail polish remover?”
Phoebe’s mother retrieved a bottle of nail polish remover from the bathroom.
“Oh!” Prudence said. “Before I forget—do you think you could sew up the hem on my brown skirt so I could wear it tomorrow? Oh, please?” Prudence tilted her head to the side, tugged at her hair in exactly the same way Phoebe does, and smooshed up her mouth into a little pout.
“Doesn’t Prudence know how to sew?” I asked.
“Of course she does,” Phoebe said. “Why?”
“I was just wondering why she doesn’t sew her own skirt.”
“Sal, you’re becoming very critical.”
Before I left Phoebe’s that day, Mrs. Winterbottom handed Prudence her brown skirt with the newly sewn hem, and all the way home I wondered about Mrs. Winterbottom and what she meant about living a tiny life. If she didn’t like all that baking and cleaning and jumping up to get bottles of nail polish remover and sewing hems, why did she do it? Why didn’t she tell them to do some of these things themselves? Maybe she was afraid there would be nothing left for her to do. There would be no need for her and she would become invisible and no one would notice.
When I got home that day, my father handed me a package. “It’s from Margaret,” he said.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you open it?”
Inside was a blue sweater. I put it back in the box and went upstairs. My father followed me. “Sal—? Sal—do you like it?”
“I don’t want it,” I said.
“She was just trying to—she likes you—”
“I don’t care if she likes me or not,” I said.
My father stood there looking around the room. “I want to tell you something about Margaret,” he said.
“Well, I don’t want to hear it.” I was feeling so completely ornery. When my father left the room, I could still hear my own voice saying, “I don’t want to hear it.” I sounded exactly like Phoebe.
15
A SNAKE HAS A SNACK
It was hotter than blazes in South Dakota. In Sioux Falls, Gramps took off his shirt. Passing Mitchell, Gram unbuttoned her dress down to her waist. Just beyond Chamberlain, Gramps took a detour to the Missouri River. He parked the car beneath a tree overlooking a sandy bank.
Gram and Gramps kicked off their shoes. It was quiet and hot, hot, hot. All you could hear was a crow calling somewhere up river and the distant sound of cars along the highway. The hot air pressed against my face, and my hair was like a hot, heavy blanket draped on my neck and back. It was so hot you could smell the heat baking the stones and dirt along the bank.
Gram pulled her dress up over her head, and Gramps undid his buckle and let his pants slide to the ground. They started kicking water at each other and scooping it up and letting it run down their faces. They walked in to where it was knee deep and sat down.
“Come on, chickabiddy,” Gramps called.
Gram said, “It’s delicious!”
I gazed up and down the river. Not a soul in sight. The water looked cool and clear. Gram and Gramps sat there in the river, grinning away. I waded in and sat down. It was nearly heaven, with that cool water rippling and a high, clear sky all around us, and trees waving along the banks.
My hair floated all around me. My mother’s hair had been long and black, like mine, but a week before she left, she cut it. My father said to me, “Don’t cut yours, Sal. Please don’t cut yours.”
My mother said, “I knew you wouldn’t like it if I cut mine.”
My father said, “I didn’t say anything about yours.”
“But I know what you’re thinking,” she said.
“I loved your hair, Sugar,” he said.
I saved her hair. I swept it up from the kitchen floor and wrapped it in a plastic bag and hid it beneath the floorboards of my room. It was still there, along with the postcards she sent.
As Gram, Gramps, and I sat in the Missouri River, I tried not to think of the postcards. I tried to concentrate on the high sky and the cool water. It would have been perfect except for that ornery crow calling away: car-car-car. “Will we be here long?” I asked.
The boy came out of nowhere. Gramps saw him first and whispered, “Get behind me, chickabiddy. You too,” he said to Gram. The boy was about fifteen or sixteen, with shaggy dark hair. He wore blue jeans and no shirt, and his chest was brown and muscular. In his hand he held a long bowie knife, its sheath fastened to his belt. He stood next to Gramps’s pants on the bank.
I thought of Phoebe and knew that if she were here, she would be warning us that the boy was a lunatic who would hack us all to pieces. I was wishing we had never stopped at the river, and that my grandparents would be more cautious, maybe even a little more like Phoebe, who saw danger everywhere.
As the boy stared at us, Gramps said, “Howdy.”
The boy said, “This here’s private property.”
Gramps looked all around. “Is it? I didn’t see any signs.”
“It’s private property.”
“Why heck,” Gramps said, “this here’s a river. I never heard of no river being private property.”
The boy picked up Gramps’s pants and slid his hand into a pocket. “This land where I’m standing is private property.”
I was frightened of the boy and wanted Gramps to do something, but Gramps looked cool and calm. He sounded as if he hadn’t a care in the world, but I knew that he was worried by the way he kept inching in front of me and Gram.
I felt around the riverbed, pulled up a flat stone, and skimmed it across the water. The boy watched the stone, counting the skips.
A snake flickered along the bank and slid into the water.
“See that tree?” Gramps said. He pointed to an old willow leaning into the water near where the boy stood.
“I see it,” the boy said, sliding his hand into another of Gramps’s pockets.
Gramps said, “See that knothole? Watch what this here chickabiddy can do to a knothole.” Gramps winked at me. The veins in his neck were standing out. You could practically see the blood rushing through them.
I felt around the riverbed and pulled up another flat, jagged rock. I had done this a million times in the swimming hole in Bybanks. I pulled my arm back and tossed the rock straight at the tree. One edge embedded itself in the knothole. The boy stopped rummaging through Gramps’s pockets and eyed me.
Gram said, “Oh!” and flailed at the water. She reached down, pulled up a snake, and gave Gramps a puzzled look. “It’s a water moccasin, isn’t it?” she said. “It’s a poisonous one, isn’t it?” The snake slithered and wriggled, straining toward the water. “I do believe it has had a snack out of my leg.” She stared hard at Gramps.
The boy stood on the bank holding Gramps’s wallet. Gramps scooped up Gram and carried her out of the water. “Would you mind dropping that thing?” he said to Gram, who was still clutching the snake. To me he said, “Get on out of there, chickabiddy.”
As Gramps put Gram on the riverbank, the boy came and knelt beside her. “I’m sure glad you have that knife,” Gramps said, reaching for it. As he made a slit in Gram’s leg across the snake bite, blood trickled down her ankle. I grabbed Gram’s hand as she stared up at the sky. Gramps knelt to suck out the wound, but the boy said, “Here, I’ll do it.” The boy placed his mouth against Gram’s bloody leg. He sucked and spit, sucked and spit. Gram’s eyelids fluttered.
“Can you point us to a hospital?” Gramps said.
The boy nodded as he spit. Gramps and the boy carried Gram to the car and settled her in the back seat while I snatched their clothes from the riverbank. We placed Gram’s head on my lap and her feet on the boy’s lap, and all the while the boy continued sucking and spitting. In between, he gave directions to the hospital. Gram held onto my hand.
Gramps, still in his boxer shorts, and dripping wet, carried Gram into the hospital. The boy’s mou
th hovered over her leg the whole time, sucking and spitting.
Gram spent the night in the hospital. In the waiting room, the boy from the riverbank sprawled in a chair. I offered him a paper towel. “You’ve got blood on your mouth,” I said. I handed him a fifty-dollar bill. “My grandfather said to give you this. That’s all the cash he has right now. He said to tell you thanks. He’d come out himself, but he doesn’t want to leave her.”
He looked at the fifty-dollar bill in my hand. “I don’t need it.”
“You don’t have to stay,” I said.
He glanced around the waiting room. “I know it.” He looked away and then said, “I like your hair.”
“I was thinking of cutting it.”
“Don’t.”
I sat down beside him.
He said, “It wasn’t really private property.”
“I didn’t think so.”
Later, when I went in to see Gram, she was all tucked up in bed, pale and sleepy. Next to her on the narrow bed, Gramps was lying on top of the covers, stroking her hair. A nurse came in and made him get off the bed. He had, by now, put his pants on, but he looked a wreck.
I asked Gram how she was feeling. She blinked her eyes a few times and said, “Piddles.”
Gramps said, “They must’ve given her something. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
I leaned down and whispered in her ear. “Gram, don’t leave us.”
“Piddles,” Gram said.
When the nurse left the room, Gramps climbed back on top of the bed and lay down next to Gram. He patted the bed. “Well,” he said, “this ain’t our marriage bed, but it will do.”
16
THE SINGING TREE
Gram was released from the hospital the next morning mainly because she was so ornery. Gramps wanted her to stay another day, but Gram climbed out of bed and said, “Where’s my underwear?”
“I guess this cantankerous woman is getting out of here,” Gramps said.
I think fear had made us all a little cantankerous. I had spent the night in the waiting room. Gramps offered to get me a motel room, but I was afraid that if I left the hospital, I would never see Gram again. The boy we had met at the river curled up in an armchair, but I don’t think he slept either. Once he used the telephone. I heard him say, “Yeah, I’ll be home in the morning. I’m with some friends.”
The boy woke me up at six o’clock and said Gram was much better. He handed me a piece of paper. “It’s my address, in case you ever want to write or anything, but I’d understand if you didn’t—”
I opened the paper. “What’s your name?”
He smiled. “Oh yeah, right.” He took the paper and added his name: Tom Fleet. “See ya,” he said.
As we were checking out of the hospital, I asked if we should call my father. Gramps said, “Well, now, chickabiddy, I thought about that, but it’s only going to make him worry. Do you think we could wait to call him when we get to Idaho?”
Gramps was right, but I was disappointed. I was ready to call my father. I wanted very much to hear his voice, but I was also afraid that I might ask him to come and get me.
Outside the hospital, I heard the warbling of a bird, and it was such a familiar warble that I stopped and listened for its source. Bordering the parking lot was a rim of poplars. The sound was coming from somewhere in the top of one of those trees, and I thought, instantly, of the singing tree in Bybanks.
Next to my favorite sugar maple tree beside the barn is a tall aspen. When I was younger, I heard the most beautiful birdsong coming from the top of that tree. It was not a call; it was a true birdsong, with trills and warbles. I stood beneath that tree for the longest time, hoping to catch sight of the bird who was singing such a song. I saw no bird—only leaves waving in the breeze. The longer I stared up at the leaves, the more it seemed that it was the tree itself that was singing. Every time I passed that tree, I listened. Sometimes it sang, sometimes it did not, but from then on I always called it the singing tree.
The morning after my father learned that my mother was not coming back, he left for Lewiston, Idaho. Gram and Gramps came to stay with me. I had pleaded to go along, but my father said he didn’t think I should have to go through that. That day I climbed up into the maple and watched the singing tree, waiting for it to sing. I stayed there all day and on into the early evening. It did not sing.
At dusk, Gramps placed three sleeping bags at the foot of the tree, and he, Gram, and I slept there all night. The tree did not sing.
In the hospital parking lot, Gram heard the song too. “Oh Salamanca,” she said. “A singing tree!” She pulled at Gramps’s sleeve.
“Oh, it’s a good sign, don’t you think?”
As we swept on across South Dakota toward the Badlands, the whispers no longer said, hurry, hurry or rush, rush. They now said, slow down, slow down. I could not figure this out. It seemed some sort of warning, but I did not have too much time to think about it, as I was busy telling about Phoebe.
17
IN THE COURSE OF A LIFETIME
A few days after Phoebe and I had seen Mr. Birkway and Mrs. Cadaver whacking away at the rhododendron, I walked home with Phoebe after school. She was as crotchety and sullen as a three-legged mule, and I was not quite sure why. She had been asking me why I had not said anything to my father about Mrs. Cadaver and Mr. Birkway, and I told her that I was waiting for the right time.
“Your father was over there yesterday,” Phoebe said. “I saw him. He’d better watch out. What would you do if Mrs. Cadaver chopped up your father? Would you go live with your mother?”
It surprised me when she said that, reminding me that I had told Phoebe nothing about my mother. “Yes, I suppose I would go live with her.” That was impossible and I knew it, but for some reason I could not tell Phoebe that, so I lied.
Phoebe’s mother was sitting at the kitchen table when we walked in. In front of her was a pan of burned brownies. She blew her nose. “Oh sweetie,” she said, “you startled me. How was it?”
“How was what?” Phoebe said.
“Why, sweetie, school of course. How was it? How were your classes?”
“Okay.”
“Just okay?” Mrs. Winterbottom suddenly leaned over and kissed Phoebe’s cheek.
“I’m not a baby, you know,” Phoebe said, wiping off the kiss.
Mrs. Winterbottom stabbed the brownies with a knife. “Want one?” she asked.
“They’re burned,” Phoebe said. “Besides, I’m too fat.”
“Oh sweetie, you’re not fat,” Mrs. Winterbottom said.
“I am.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I am, I am, I am!” Phoebe shouted at her mother. “You don’t have to bake things for me. I’m too fat. And you don’t have to wait here for me to come home. I’m thirteen now.”
Phoebe marched upstairs. Mrs. Winterbottom offered me a brownie, so I sat down at the table. What I started doing was remembering the day before my mother left. I did not know it was to be her last day home. Several times that day, my mother asked me if I wanted to walk up in the fields with her. It was drizzling outside, and I was cleaning out my desk, and I just did not feel like going. “Maybe later,” I kept saying. When she asked me for about the tenth time, I said, “No! I don’t want to go. Why do you keep asking me?” I don’t know why I did that. I didn’t mean anything by it, but that was one of the last memories she had of me, and I wished I could take it back.
Phoebe’s sister, Prudence, stormed into the house, slamming the door behind her. “I blew it, I just know it!” she wailed.
“Oh sweetie,” her mother said.
“I did!” Prudence said. “I did, I did, I did.”
Mrs. Winterbottom half-heartedly chipped away at the burned brownies and asked Prudence if she would have another chance at cheerleading tryouts.
“Yes, tomorrow. But I know I’m going to blow it!”
Her mother said, “Maybe I’ll come along and watch.” I could t
ell that Mrs. Winterbottom was trying to rise above some awful sadness she was feeling, but Prudence couldn’t see that. Prudence had her own agenda, just as I had had my own agenda that day my mother wanted me to walk with her. I couldn’t see my own mother’s sadness.
“What?” Prudence said. “Come along and watch?”
“Yes, wouldn’t that be nice?”
“No!” Prudence said. “No, no, no. You can’t. It would be awful.”
I heard the front door open and shut and Phoebe came in the kitchen waving a white envelope. “Guess what was on the steps?” she said.
Mrs. Winterbottom took the envelope and turned it over and over before she slowly unsealed it and slipped out the message.
“Oh,” she said. “Who is doing this?” She held out the piece of paper: In the course of a lifetime, what does it matter?
Prudence said, “Well, I have more important things to worry about, I can assure you. I know I’m going to blow those cheerleading tryouts. I just know it.”
On and on she went, until Phoebe said, “Cripes, Prudence, in the course of a lifetime, what does it matter?”
At that moment, it was as if a switch went off in Mrs. Winterbottom’s brain. She put her hand to her mouth and stared out the window. She was invisible to Prudence and Phoebe, though. They did not notice.
Phoebe said, “Are these cheerleading tryouts such a big deal? Will you even remember them in five years?”
“Yes!” Prudence said. “Yes, I most certainly will.”
“How about ten years? Will you remember them in ten?”
“Yes!” Prudence said.
As I walked home, I thought about the message. In the course of a lifetime, what does it matter? I said it over and over. I wondered about the mysterious messenger, and I wondered about all the things in the course of a lifetime that would not matter. I did not think cheerleading tryouts would matter, but I was not so sure about yelling at your mother. I was certain, however, that if your mother left, it would be something that mattered in the whole long course of your lifetime.