Rabble Starkey Page 6

  But he said no.

  "I know!" Veronica said. "We still have all my old dance recital costumes. How about a ballet dancer, Gunther?"

  And Gunther began to grin. "With dancing shoes, too," he said. "And a magic wand with a star."

  So Sweet-Ho scooted up to the attic where the old clothes were, and she came back with the bag of old costumes. We dressed up Gunther right there in the middle of the living room, first in pink tights—they bagged at the knees because they was too big, but Sweet-Ho said she could tighten them up a bit with a needle and thread—and then in the little blue net skirt with a billion layers so it stuck out all around and he looked like a flower.

  "It's called a tutu," Veronica explained importantly.

  "Too-too," Gunther said, and wiggled his behind.

  Then he sat on his daddy's lap and Mr. Bigelow put the old pink toe shoes on him, and laced the satin ribbons up his legs over the tights.

  Gunther fell at first when he tried walking, because the shoes was too big—and toe shoes are hard to walk in anyway, I know because I've tried it—but then when he got the hang of it, he held his arms sticking out the way he thought a ballet dancer should, and he pranced around the room.

  "I have to record this for posterity," Mr. Bigelow said, after he was able to stop laughing. He went and got his camera and took pictures.

  The flashbulbs went off again and again as Gunther posed, dancing and stumbling, in the foolish tutu. Then, after we took the costume off him, Gunther posed again, all serious, in his new green outfit. Next Veronica and me put our new sweaters on for pictures. And finally, even though she got all embarrassed, Sweet-Ho agreed to put hers on, too, and he took one of the four of us together: Gunther on Sweet-Ho's lap, and Veronica and me arranged one on each side.

  Mr. Bigelow said we looked like a bouquet of flowers.

  That night before I went to bed, I put my yellow sweater, folded up, into the drawer where I keep my specialest things. In it I have a dried-up flower from Gnomie's grave; Sweet-Ho let me take it with me after the funeral back at the Collyer's Run Baptist Church. (I only got a B+ on my "My Home" composition after I handed it in. I would have got an A but it was dumb of me to say that my grandmother was lifeless. If I had used the thesaurus better, I would've chosen something else. There was lots of good stuff for "dead". "Depart this life", for one, or "Take one's last sleep". I'm certain I would've got an A if I had said my grandmother had taken her last sleep.)

  Also in my drawer was my dictionary, and the thesaurus that Sweet-Ho got me down at Highriver Books and Cards when I begged. I have the blue ribbon I won for fifty-yard dash at the school track meet last spring. And two photographs of Sweet-Ho with Ginger Starkey, sitting with their heads close together, one with both of them smiling, the other with their tongues sticking out, looking foolish. There was four in the strip, which they posed for in a Wool-worth's booth right after they got married, but Sweet-Ho cut it in half and gave me the bottom two. She kept the top. One of hers shows them kissing.

  After I put my sweater in with all those other treasures, I put on my nightgown and got into bed. I looked around the room. Now it was filled with our stuff, Sweet-Ho's and mine, that we had brought over from the garage. Even the patchwork quilts that Gnomie made—they were on our beds instead of the plain white spreads that were the Bigelows' guest room spreads. My schoolbooks were piled in a chair. Sweet-Ho's old blue robe hung on a hook on the back of the door, and her hairbrush lay on the dresser.

  She was still downstairs, and I could hear her and Mr. Bigelow laughing. She had gotten out the sewing box and was stitching up the pink tights so's they would fit Gunther's little legs, and I knew that they were laughing about that, about the thought of homely old Gunther being a ballerina.

  In his little bedroom, Gunther was sound asleep, probably dreaming about trick-or-treating in his tutu. And down the hall, I could hear Veronica still moving around in her room while she got ready for bed.

  A night breeze was blowing, and I could hear the oak tree—the one Veronica and me called the Family Tree—with its last few leaves rustling, waiting to be blown off to the ground. The tip of one of its branches touched the window now and then. I turned off the light, and thought about all of that, and about the gift of the yellow sweater that was folded in my drawer.

  It gave me such a strong feeling of belonging.

  Trick-or-treating night was a school night, a Thursday. We was all ready. Mr. Bigelow had brought home stuff he got at the dime store: for Gunther, a pink mask of a lady's face, with bright red smiling lips, and a wig of golden curls. For me and Veronica, just plain old eye masks, which was what we wanted. We was gypsies, with bright scarves tied around our heads, shawls over our shoulders, and a lot of junk jewelry, some borrowed from Sweet-Ho and some from Mrs. Bigelow's jewelry box. She hadn't worn no jewelry for a long time, but she still had fake golden earrings, real gypsy-like, which Mr. Bigelow said we could wear.

  "Is my magic wand ready?" Gunther asked, all anxious, after we had him dressed in his outfit.

  It was. We had painted a cardboard star with gold paint and glued it to the top of a long stick from his Tinkertoy set with Elmer's glue. He took it from us and waved it about, dancing in his toe shoes. Sweet-Ho had stuffed them with cotton balls in the toes to make his feet fit in better. At first he couldn't see good through his mask, and kept bumping into things. But Mr. Bigelow got the idea to cut the mask eyeholes bigger.

  So's he wouldn't get cold, we had painted his old blue flannel pajama top with marking pens, and now it was covered with red and yellow moons and stars, which suited his outfit just fine, and he could wear a sweater hidden underneath. It didn't even make him look too pudgy because old Gunther, he was so scrawny starting out.

  Me and Veronica helped him down the back steps, because it was hard going in the toe shoes, and we started out, each of us carrying a big paper bag for treats. When we got down into the yard and stood there in the dark, Gunther shivered, looking around at our neighborhood in the nighttime and at three pumpkins with faces cut out and candles inside so's they glowed on our porch. But it was from excitement, not from being scared. He was already shivering from excitement back when we was still in the warm house.

  We whispered to each other about should we go to the Coxes' house. If it was just me and Veronica, we wouldn't. We didn't mind Mr. and Mrs. Cox—they were really pretty nice—but somehow the thought of Norman rubbed off on the whole house and gave it a bad feeling, at least to us.

  But Gunther loved Mrs. Cox especially. She knew about his eating habits and didn't fault him none, and always at Easter she brought over special decorated eggs with his name painted on, knowing eggs was one of the things he ate.

  "Norman'll be gone," Veronica said to me. "He always goes out all over town on Halloween, soaping windows and stuff. Remember last year he got caught letting the air out of Dr. Briggs's tires?"

  "Yeah, I heard the door bang earlier," I said. "I'm sure he's gone already." But at the same time I said it, my eyes were darting around, checking the bushes and such, to make sure he wasn't lying in wait.

  "Come on," said Gunther, all impatient, and he tugged at my gypsy skirt.

  So we took his hands and headed across the yard, around the oak tree, to the Coxes'. On their porch we lifted Gunther up so's he could push the doorbell. It was one of them real chimey ones that played a sort of tune.

  Mrs. Cox came, wearing an apron, and pretended like she didn't recognize Gunther. "It's a ballerina!" she exclaimed in a delighted voice. "Harold, come and see this beautiful ballerina with golden curls, right here on our porch!"

  Mr. Cox, holding a newspaper, came into the hall and looked down over his glasses at old Gunther, who was hugging himself in excitement. It was the very first time that Gunther had ever been in disguise, except for when he was a baby and used to pull a blanket over his head and wait, giggling inside it, for us to find him.

  "I declare," Mr. Cox said. "That surely is the most amazing baller
ina I've ever seen! Do we have something to give him?"

  "Her," Mrs. Cox corrected him. "It's a lady ballerina, Harold. Can you do a little dance for us, miss?"

  Gunther held out his arms, waving his wand, and danced about on the porch. Then he bowed politely and the Coxes clapped their hands. Mrs. Cox put a banana into his bag, and she gave miniature Hershey bars to me and Veronica.

  Gunther was truly gleeful after they closed the door. While we was helping him down the steps, he said again and again, "They thought I was a lady! They did! They didn't know it was me!"

  We took him to some more neighborhood houses. People who didn't know Gunther so well, or his diet, gave him Tootsie Rolls and Charleston Chews, but he didn't mind; for him the fun was in the ballerina disguise—everybody admired it so—and the presents dropped into his bag.

  It was beginning to get cold, and as we left the McCarthys' porch we could see Gunther shiver inside his outfit.

  "We oughta take him home now," I said to Veronica. "Then you and me, we can do some more. We can go over to—"

  But Gunther grabbed at my hand. "We didn't go to Millie Bellows's yet," he said.

  "That mean old thing? We don't want to go there, Gunther."

  But good old Gunther, he stood firm. "I like Millie Bellows," he said.

  I looked at Veronica, and she shrugged her shoulders under her gypsy shawl. "Well," she said, "okay. Let's go there, and that'll be the last one, Gunther. After that one we'll take you home."

  He shivered again, and did a little dance, partly to warm up, and partly because he hadn't tired yet of being a ballerina, and beautiful. We took his hands once more and headed toward Millie Bellows's house, a place I most surely didn't want to go.

  8

  Most nights are quiet where we live. Maybe you hear a dog bark someplace, or far off on the highway a screech of brakes now and then. And always at night, except in the hottest part of summer, you can hear the trees move in the wind. But it's a quiet wind.

  But Halloween night was different. It was different because we were out in it, and most often after dark we were always inside, doing homework, watching TV, reading, getting ready for bed.

  Out in it, in the dark, we could hear new sounds in the quiet night. Someone's cat ran across a yard, silent as anything, but the shrubbery rustled when the cat disappeared into the bushes, maybe chasing a chipmunk. Across the road we could hear the thud as somebody pulled a window closed. We could hear our own feet scuffle through the dry leaves that was all over the ground.

  And sometimes we could hear the sound of running feet and muffled laughing. All the kids in town was out. Far down the road, under a porch light, we could see three people dressed as ghosts, with sheets over them, standing by a front door. Then, after the door closed, they ran down the steps and headed off in another direction, holding their sheet costumes up so they wouldn't trip over the dragging parts.

  Everything seemed spooky and strange. A bush would move, and Veronica and me, we would jump, all startled, thinking someone might be hiding there. The wind blew the tree branches so that their shadows moved on the road in the moonlight, dark and scary, so different from the normal tree shadows in daytime.

  Gunther tugged at us and we found ourselves nearing Millie Bellows's little house. Vines hung down from her porch roof. In summer they were shiny green, and we pretended they was poison ivy because we found Millie Bellows so poisonous herself; but of course it was only regular old vines, planted there for shade once and overgrown now because no one ever thought to trim them back. And probably years ago none of her husbands ever had the time, they was all so busy dying off one by one.

  The vine leaves was all papery now, in October. Lots of them had fallen off, but the ones that still hung there was rustling against each other like the newspaper pages heaped on the couch Sunday mornings.

  Millie Bellows, crabby old evil-tempered thing, hadn't turned her porch light on. Everybody left their porch lights on for Halloween, to guide the ghosts and gypsies. But not Millie Bellows. Not her. She probably hoped the kids would trip on their costumes, or on her rickety porch steps, and skin their knees. She probably hadn't even fixed any treats to give. She probably hoped no one would ring her bell.

  But we lifted Gunther up so's he could, and when he mashed the button we could hear it buzz inside the house. There was a light on inside—we could see it through the curtains—and a TV playing. Even though he was chilly, Gunther was still prancing about, all cheerful, waiting to do another ballerina dance when the door opened. But the door didn't open, and we didn't hear no footsteps inside.

  "She probably couldn't hear it, with the TV going," Veronica said, and she pushed the doorbell again, hard and long. "She's hard of hearing, being so old."

  I didn't really believe that. Well, maybe she was hard of hearing, but what I thought was that she was just sitting all hunched up in front of the television, ignoring us. Shoot, the only time she ever paid attention to us was when she called scoldings from her porch—scoldings we didn't even need.

  "She won't come," I muttered to Veronica while Gunther pranced, singing to himself, around the porch. "She hates us."

  "Well, she did bring that Jell-O," Veronica said, calling my attention to the day that Mrs. Bigelow went away to the hospital.

  "Hah. Melty old Jell-O," I said. "Here, let me ring it one more time." And I pushed the doorbell, holding it down with my thumb for a long, loud time. It was awful dark on the porch. Even with the moonlight outside, the creepy old vines made Millie Bellows's porch awful dark, and we could hear Gunther bumping into chairs as he twirled around in his ballet shoes.

  "Shh! I think she's coming!" Veronica said. We all three stood still and listened. Sure enough, we could hear her shuffling toward the door. If I walked that way, Sweet-Ho would say, "Rabble, lift your feet, honey." But I suppose you can't fault someone so old for their walking habits. Maybe by the time you're ninety years old, you just keep grabbing onto the ground with your feet for fear you might be plucked up to heaven any minute when you're not dressed for it.

  "Get ready to do your dance here in front of the door, Gunther," Veronica whispered. Gunther hitched up his droopy tights and got into his dancing position. Millie Bellows, muttering, pulled the door open so the light fell out onto the porch just like a spotlight falling over a dancer on a stage. Veronica and me, we hung back in the shadows, holding our bags and Gunther's.

  "Trick or treat!" called out Gunther happily, and he danced about.

  Suddenly out of the darkness in the yard something came shooting through the air. It missed Gunther, but it caught Millie Bellows, who was so hunched over she wasn't much taller than him, and she fell over on her knees, jarring the table in the hall behind her. We could hear glass break. Veronica ran forward to where Millie Bellows was crouched on the floor holding her head. But me, I turned and ran into the yard.

  Once I got down the porch steps I could see a figure, even though he was dressed in black and running. I dropped the bag I was holding and ran after the figure—through Millie Bellows's yard and up the road, my feet pounding. Instead of my sneakers I was wearing these dumb black sandals of Sweet-Ho's because I thought they was gypsy-like, and I couldn't run as fast as usual because they was too big. But I set my mind to fastness and forgot everything else. I forgot the flapping sandals and I paid no attention when my shawl fell off my head and shoulders and dropped on the ground. I pulled my mask off my face so's I could see better and I kept my eyes firm on that black figure up ahead.

  At the bend in the road he ducked into the woods. I was so close by then that I could still see the bushes moving where he had pushed through, and I went into the woods at the same place. But then I couldn't see nothing anymore—just thick trees and bushes. I stopped and stood still. For a minute I could hear someone breathing hard—I thought he was right there beside me—but then I realized it was my own breath. My heart was pounding, too, and I had a stabbing pain in my side from running so hard. But everything was qu
iet, and I knew I had lost him.

  After a minute I turned and pushed back out to the road. There wasn't no point to chasing on through the woods. He could be anywheres.

  I jogged back to Millie Bellows's house and on the way I picked up my mask, which was lying there in the road with its elastic busted. Farther down was my shawl, all dusty, and beside it something small and black. When I picked it up I could see it was a hat of some sort, and I rolled it up inside the shawl and carried them with me.

  The door was still open and I could hear Veronica's voice inside. When I went in I had to step over a mess of broken glass, and I could tell from a handle on the floor that it had been a pitcher. Lying on the doorsill I could see the stone that the person in black—I knew it had to be Norman—had thrown.

  I found Veronica in the front room, holding a dishtowel to Millie Bellows's face and patting at her as she lay on the couch. There wasn't any blood, just a swollen-up place by her eye.

  "I called my daddy on the phone," Veronica said, "and he'll be right here."

  Gunther was standing close by, with his ballerina mask pulled down so's it dangled around his neck. He was holding one of Millie Bellows's hands.

  In the corner some newscaster on TV was talking, and then he showed a film of a building with its side blown out by a bomb. I went over and turned the television off. "He got away," I said. "I chased him but he got away."

  In a chair beside the TV I spied a folded-up afghan all crocheted in shades of green and brown, a lot like one that Gnomie used to have. I took it over to the couch and spread it out over Millie Bellows's legs where they was sticking out from her flowered housedress. Then I reached under and pulled her slippers off and tucked the afghan around her gnarly old feet. It struck me that Millie Bellows wasn't talking none, wasn't sputtering evil-tempered comments like she surely had a right to. "Is she okay?" I asked Veronica.

  Before she had a chance to answer, Mr. Bigelow came hurrying through the front door and over to the couch. He knelt down and examined Millie Bellows's face. Then he felt for her pulse, even though he's not no doctor or anything. He looked real careful at her little squinchy blue eyes.