Rabble Starkey Page 8

  Walking through Millie Bellows's yard after we left, Veronica suddenly said, "Her grass is going to be ruined if nobody rakes these leaves up before winter."

  "Well, shoot, I'm not going to do it. We're already doing her housework for no pay. Anyway, she has crummy grass. Her yard is the worst-looking on the whole road, because she don't take care of it."

  "Doesn't."

  I made a face. "Okay, doesn't," I said. Veronica is the only person in the whole world who I don't mind if she corrects my grammar. Mrs. Hindler corrects me, but I resent it some because she does it in public, in front of the whole sixth grade, though she don't—doesn't—mean to embarrass me, she just wants me to talk elegant.

  "I got an idea, Rabble," Veronica said.

  "What?"

  "We still have that choir hat, and we never did anything to punish Norman."

  "I told you we ought to take it to the police station and turn it in as evidence."

  "The police wouldn't do anything. It's only circumstantial evidence anyway. Maybe the most they would do is call Norman in and talk to him, and they've already done that—"

  "About a million times," I agreed. It was true. Norman Cox was always being hauled in for a talking-to by the chief of police. "What's your idea?"

  "Blackmail him into helping Millie Bellows in her yard and stuff. It would be the best kind of punishment, Rabble, because it makes amends to the person he wronged."

  "Raking a dinky old yard isn't much punishment, though."

  "But there's other stuff. Her whole house needs painting."

  We looked back toward Millie Bellows's little house. Once it had been white. But the white was gray now, and dirty, and the paint had bubbled and peeled and flaked. The vines that hung all about the porch had died in the cold weather, so's only the stems was there, twisting about, brown and stiff. Underneath all the tangle of vines and the wrecked paint, it was a pretty little house, with a nice shape.

  "I would admire it yellow, I think," I said. "Not ugly old Day-Glo yellow like some of the houses over in that new development. But a deep, important kind of yellow. Like Gulden's mustard maybe."

  "Gold," Veronica said. "That would be called gold."

  "Shoot, Veronica, wouldn't that be something? For Millie Bellows to have a golden house? Maybe it would cheer her up so's she wouldn't be such a grouchy old thing." I squinted my eyes, looking at the house, picturing it all fixed up. "We'd never get Norman Cox to do it, though. Never in a million years."

  Veronica didn't say anything, and we started walking on toward home. "I could," she said, finally.

  "Could what?"

  "I could get him to do it."

  I busted out laughing. "How?" I asked.

  Veronica looked all shy. "Promise you won't get mad?" she said.

  Mad at Veronica? Never in my entire life in Highriver have I ever once got mad at Veronica. She's my best friend. Like a sister. I was some startled when she said that. I just looked at her, puzzled-like, and she bent her head down so's I couldn't see her face.

  "Norman likes me," she said.

  I just stared. But as I stood there, staring at her, I knew it was true. While I wasn't even paying no attention, over the past weeks, Veronica had gotten taller and more filled out. Her hair was curly, not unusual-colored like mine, but even so, thick and nice. Her eyes was deep blue, and she had the sweetest smile I ever saw, bar none.

  And I remembered the way Norman acted around her in school. Yelling insults, acting stupid and show-offy all the time. Sometimes he passed her notes in class, and they was always just dumb jokes or stupid drawings of warfare and stuff. She showed them to me before she crumpled them up. One recent one was a ballpoint-pen drawing of a fat hog wearing a sunbonnet, and a balloon coming out of its mouth said, "Oink oink." Underneath Norman had written "Veronica Pigelow."

  When she showed me that one, she giggled, and I muttered something about how insulting it was. But now I remembered that the pig had a sweet smile. As pigs go, it was a pretty one. Remembering it, I knew what she said was true. Norman liked her.

  "You're mad, aren't you?" Veronica asked.

  "No. I was just thinking he has a dumb way of showing it, is all."

  "Boys don't know how to act around girls," Veronica said. "So they do dumb stuff, like Norman, throwing stones and yelling insults. It's just a way of getting attention, I think."

  "Maybe."

  "I'll tell you something else."

  "What?"

  "Parker Condon likes you. He gets all nervous around you."

  "Around me? Parker Condon's nervous around everybody."

  Veronica laughed. "That's true. But especially around you, Rabble. I've been noticing."

  I felt funny. I felt funny because I hadn't known.

  "Here comes your daddy," Sweet-Ho said that evening to Gunther while he played on the kitchen floor. She was looking through the window. Gunther jumped up and ran to her to be lifted so's he could see, the way he did every night when Mr. Bigelow came home from work.

  "Daddy! Daddy!" Gunther said, all happy, when Mr. Bigelow came through the door.

  Sweet-Ho handed him to his daddy. "Hi, Phil," she said, and smiled when Mr. Bigelow hoisted Gunther up to his shoulders for a ride.

  "Rabble and Veronica? Is the table set?" she asked. "It's almost time for supper. Put your cards away now."

  Me and Veronica had been playing Go Fish at the kitchen table. We hadn't talked any more about Norman Cox. It was a thing we had to think about before we did more talking.

  "You got any kings?" I asked. But Veronica had already commenced to gather up the cards, so I gave her my hand. She was winning, anyway. We started collecting the plates and silverware to take them to the dining room.

  "Can I do the napkins?" Gunther asked, and his daddy lifted him back down so's he could help us. He was real good at folding the napkins into triangles and putting one beside each plate.

  "I got a call at the office today," Mr. Bigelow said to Sweet-Ho. "From Meadowhill."

  Gunther went on about his business, folding napkins real careful. Sweet-Ho kept right on stirring something on the stove, but she looked over at him with a question in her eyes. I counted forks and didn't say nothing. Veronica picked up a stack of five dinner plates and headed for the dining room, but I noticed she kept the door open so's she could listen from where she was.

  Meadowhill was the name of the hospital where Mrs. Bigelow was. Where she had been now for two months. The doctors there had told Mr. Bigelow no visitors, not even family, at least for a while. He talked to them once every week; I knew because Sweet-Ho told me. They always said no change.

  Veronica never said nothing about her mother, never asked nothing.

  "Veronica?" Mr. Bigelow called. "Honey? Come in here for a minute."

  Veronica set the plates on the table and came back to the kitchen real slow, with her eyes on the floor, like she might see something scary if she looked up.

  Her daddy put his arm around her.

  "I talked to one of the doctors at Meadowhill," he said. "And he said they'd like you and me to come for a visit on Saturday."

  "Rabble and I have to help Millie Bellows on Saturday," Veronica said, real quiet. "We're going to scrub her kitchen floor."

  "And wax it, too," I added. "We can take a can of floor wax from here, can't we, Sweet-Ho?"

  "Self-polishing is what we need," Veronica said, still with her head down. "She has loads of rags there, old clothes all ripped up, so we don't need rags, but she doesn't have any self-polishing wax, so—"

  Gunther trotted off happily to the dining room with his hands full of folded napkins.

  "I'm very proud of you girls, for the way you've been helping Millie Bellows," Mr. Bigelow said, with his arm still around Veronica. "So is Sweet-Ho."

  "I surely am," Sweet-Ho said, and she took the stew from the stove and turned the burner off.

  "We won't leave till after lunch on Saturday, so you can do her floor in the morning if you want. A
nd we'll be back by suppertime." Mr. Bigelow was looking at Veronica as he talked.

  She finally lifted her head up. "Do I have to?" she asked.

  He didn't say nothing for a moment. Then he said, "No. But I hope you will."

  Veronica pulled away from him and picked up the pile of silverware on the table. "I'm hungry," she said. "Can we eat now?"

  Sweet-Ho nodded. "Everything's ready. Rabble, bring the salad, would you?"

  "I'll go if you want me to," Veronica said to her father. She went to the dining room with the silverware.

  I carried the bowl of salad to the table. It wasn't heavy, but I felt a great powerful weight inside me.

  Later that night, in bed, I felt the feeling again. I didn't cry. I never cry. Not once have I cried since the time that Gnomie died, and even then I wasn't crying for me but for her, that she had to leave her flowers behind before they bloomed, and that there was no way to be right-out absolute-positive that there would be prizewinner delphiniums wherever she was headed.

  But the weight came back, inside me, during that time before I went to sleep. And I felt all choky. It was the feeling that things was changing and I couldn't do nothing about it.

  11

  "Norman might come to help," Veronica told me while we walked to Millie Bellows's house on Saturday morning.

  I stopped right where I was and stood still, with my arms full of floor wax, the giant can Sweet-Ho had given us. Veronica was carrying a bag of date-and-nut bars that Sweet-Ho had made for Millie, for her sweet tooth.

  "When did you talk to Norman Cox?" I asked. "Or did you write him a blackmail letter and not tell me?"

  "I didn't even need to," Veronica said. "I sent him a note in school, that I wanted to talk to him, and yesterday afternoon, when you and Sweet-Ho took Gunther to town to buy his new shoes? He called me on the phone."

  "Why didn't you tell me?" I demanded.

  Veronica looked apologetic. "I didn't have a chance. When you got home, Gunther was showing off his shoes and dancing around, and then Daddy came home and we ate dinner and all. And then afterward, when Gunther was put to bed, we all played Monopoly, remember?"

  "Yeah." It was true. Me and Veronica and Sweet-Ho and Mr. Bigelow played a game of Monopoly that lasted so late we was all practically asleep, and even then we just had to quit; no one won.

  We started walking again. "Well, did you threaten him about the choir hat? That we'd tell on him?"

  Veronica shook her head. "I just told him that we were helping Millie Bellows with her housekeeping, her being so old and not able to keep up, and that we could use some more strong arms for the floors and like that."

  "I'm strong, Veronica! You didn't need to pretend we was weaklings!" I tried to stick my arm out to make a muscle, but I was lugging this monster can of floor wax, so's I couldn't. Veronica knew about my muscles, anyway.

  "Well," she said, "I just thought I'd flatter him. And it worked. He said he'd probably come over and help out this morning."

  One part of me could see she was right, and that it did work. But shoot, we didn't need him to help with the floor. She missed the whole point, which was to punish Norman Cox and force him to make amends. The other part of me got powerfully angry, the first time I ever felt so angry at Veronica.

  "Here!" I said all of a sudden. "You think I'm so weak, maybe I shouldn't be carrying this here heavy old floor wax!" I shoved the can at her and grabbed the bag of date-and-nut bars in exchange.

  We didn't say anything else but when we got to Millie Bellows's porch, I remembered something and felt sorry for my anger. I remembered that in the afternoon, after lunch, Veronica was going to Meadowhill with her father. I knew how mixed-up she must feel about that because I felt mixed-up about it myself, and shoot, it wasn't even my mother who was crazy.

  "Probably he won't even come, dumb old Norman," I said, as we rang the bell and opened the door. Millie liked for us to ring first and then let ourselves in.

  But he did. Me and Veronica was barefoot in Millie Bellows's kitchen, hunkered down and scrubbing at that dirty old floor, which probably had never been washed since several husbands ago, when we heard the doorbell ring. Veronica jumped up and almost fell because her feet slid on the soapy floor.

  "You don't have to go," I grumbled at her. "It's Millie Bellows's house. Let her answer her own dumb door."

  "I have to explain to her about Norman," Veronica said, and rushed out of the kitchen, leaving me scraping away at cruddy stuff by the corner of the refrigerator. I grabbed up a knife from the kitchen table and pried at the sticky old wad of spilled food, pretending it was old Norman Cox and I could just pry him up and throw him away.

  I could hear them talking in the other room, Veronica and Millie Bellows and Norman. Millie Bellows was quarrelsome as always, complaining that she didn't want that Cox boy in her house, but Veronica was talking all sweet, saying as how we needed his muscles for the heavy work. Next thing I knew, there they were in the kitchen, Veronica and Norman, and Millie was mumbling and shuffling back to her chair in front of the TV.

  Just you say one nasty thing, Norman, I thought, glaring at him. Just call me one name, and I'm gone. You can do this old floor your whole self and I don't care none.

  But he didn't say nothing. He just stood there, shuffling his old sneakers, while Veronica explained to him about the floor and handed him a scrub brush and a pail of soapy water. Then he knelt down and started in on the corner by the back door.

  We worked all morning. Mostly we was pretty silent. Sometimes we'd stand up to dump the dirty water and run fresh from the sink, and to rinse our rags and brushes out.

  Sometimes Veronica tried to make conversation. "I declare," she said, all cheerful, "have you ever seen a floor this filthy? I'm amazed she doesn't have cockroaches, aren't you?"

  "Probably does, in summer," Norman said.

  I didn't even enter into that conversation. I just glared at my corner of the floor and scrubbed at it like I wanted to murder it. Underneath all the dirt, a yellow speckled linoleum was commencing to appear. If me and Veronica was alone, like usual, we would've been talking about a million different things, movies and books and school and gossip. But Norman ruined all of that.

  "You know what, Norman?" Veronica said, as she rinsed her rags at the sink. "Millie Bellows had a brother named Howard when she was a girl. And when Howard was fourteen, he fell through the ice in the river and was drowned. Isn't that the saddest thing?" She took her rinsed rags back to her bucket and knelt down on the floor again.

  Norman grunted something. Then he said, "A deer went through the ice last winter. Right near the edge, down by the Mobil station. Dogs chased him and he ran out on the ice where it was thin."

  "Oh, that's a shame," Veronica said. "Deer are so pretty." She moved her bucket and hitched herself across the floor to start on a new place.

  "Remember we saw them two does with babies in the meadow last spring?" I said real loud to Veronica. "Like a couple of little Bambis? We oughta go back to that same spot this spring, I bet we'll see some more of them. Let's start out real early in the morning. We can take sandwiches and stuff." I felt this need to start a conversation with Veronica which would leave Norman out and remind him that me and Veronica had all this private stuff we was accustomed to doing together.

  But Veronica was doing just the opposite. She was shifting things so they always included Norman. "Do you ever do that, Norman?" she asked, all polite. "Go off outdoors for a whole day, and take your lunch?"

  I interrupted so's he wouldn't even have a chance to answer. "Let's do it on a Sunday, Veronica," I said. See, I knew that the Coxes always had to go to church on Sunday morning. "We can take Gunther. I don't believe Gunther's ever had a chance to see a live deer close up, only the ones on them nature shows on TV." I stood up and walked real careful over the wet floor to the sink, to empty my bucket. While the water was running, I said real loud, aiming my voice at Norman, "Our family doesn't go to church so me and Veronica ha
ve all this free time on Sunday mornings."

  "We go at Easter," Veronica said. "And at Christmas." She was doing it again: saying stuff that would include Norman, and I couldn't figure out why. All of a sudden I hated Veronica.

  Millie Bellows interrupted us by coming to the kitchen door and demanding tea. Talk about rude; she could see that the kitchen floor was all sloshy and wet and that we was in the middle of hard work on it. But she insisted she wanted tea right then, and Veronica got up to put the kettle on. When the tea was ready, I dried my hands and took it in to her. Then I sat there with her and looked at the old photographs for the billionth time. But this time I didn't even listen to her stories about those olden days, nor ask any questions. I was-listening to the voices of Norman and Veronica in the kitchen, talking to each other while they scrubbed at the floor.

  After a while Veronica came in all smiles, and said that the floor was done. "Now that it's clean it's the prettiest yellow linoleum, Millie," she said. "And as soon as it's dry, Norman says he'll put the wax on."

  "I guess I'll just go on home then," I said, "since you don't need me. I have a lot of stuff to do."

  No one said anything. So I stood up and put my jacket on. Before I left, I said in a cool, cruel voice, "Don't be late for lunch, Veronica. Because you and your father have to take that trip this afternoon."

  Then I walked home all alone.

  I didn't see Veronica and Mr. Bigelow leave for Meadowhill. I heard the car drive away, but I was in Gunther's room getting him cleaned up and dressed to go for an outing with me and Sweet-Ho. That's what Sweet-Ho called it, an outing. "Maybe we'll have us a little outing along the river, Gunther," she said, "and see if we can find us some ducks to feed. We'll take along some bread, how's that? You and me and Rabble, off for an outing."

  "Okay," Gunther said. So he didn't even notice that his daddy and Veronica headed off in another direction.

  In the other car, the old one that Sweet-Ho used for the shopping and all, we set Gunther up beside Sweet-Ho in his car seat, all buckled in, and opened the window wide beside him. Gunther always got to feeling carsick if the window wasn't open, so we was accustomed to being cold in the car. It was a choice of being cold or having old Gunther throw up, maybe right in your lap.