Whether it related to the activities that Boy and I engineered that day, or whether it ultimately related to my father's killing and eating of their rooster, Tweedle Dum, I can't really say.
I didn't eat Tweedle Dum. It seemed sort of barbaric, and anyway, I didn't like rooster meat. My mother was of course apologetic to Evelyn, and I don't think Evelyn held it against her. In fact, I think Mother sent them a big plate of Tweedle Dum, and they didn't seem overly sad about his passing since they too had been attacked by the big old bird.
I thought my father could have done it in some other way, and I was glad I didn't see my father hit the bird with a baseball bat, killing him instantly. There may not have been any witnesses, but word got around anyway.
There didn't seem to be a lot of criticism. I myself had questions, but they went unvoiced. Of course, most people in town said they would have done the same thing as the bird jumped on my father's chest and face with his spurs and tried to rake his eyes out.
The same day that Tweedle Dum launched his last attack, I was busily playing at Boy's house. We couldn't go outside, so we had to find ways to entertain ourselves in the house.
He didn't have a lot of toys, and we soon got bored watching television. There were only about four stations to choose from, and Evelyn liked to watch game shows while we liked to watch cartoons or sitcoms. She sat in her rocker, her arms folded, her face taut, and there was no arguing with the channel choices.
Finally, Boy said we ought to go in the living room and find a board game. Only problem was, Boy didn't have any board games. Once in the living room, we shut the door and had to come up with our own entertainment. I looked around the room, furnished with only an old couch and one straightbacked wooden slatted chair. One lonely round wooden table, with no lamp or decoration, not even a doily, finished out the furnishings. Nothing to do there, but then my eyes fell upon the wallpaper.
It was a light pink color, with a pattern with some sort of farm motif. There were men, women, and children, all clad in overalls, bonnets, and hats in shades of gray and brown. They held utensils like pitchforks, hoes, and shovels and were walking in front of small trailers filled with golden hay and wheat or some crop with a grainy head . I couldn't tell for sure, but the idea was clear. They were hardworking people bringing in the sheaves like we sang about at church.
The problem with the wallpaper was that there were places on every wall where it appeared that someone had loosened the paper, then torn off good-sized pieces. This made the pattern lopsided, and left holes where there should have been people.
Boy could actually draw, having some sort of innate artistic ability. I had none, but I did have a sense of color and balance. I suggested to Boy that we replace the scenes where the paper was torn. That should improve the looks of the shabby paper ,and we thought it would make Evelyn happy.
We set to work. Boy went and searched out some crayons and yellow #2 pencils. He started drawing people in one of the holes and we agreed on my completing rainbows above their heads since I couldn't draw a person at all.
We started on the wall opposite the front door since people would see that wall first on entering and we thought if we didn't get through today, we could at least make a good start. We worked for a full hour and a half before Evelyn decided to open the door and check on us. She was going to offer us some mustard and sugar sandwiches for lunch, a staple at her house.
The look on her face was not what we expected. Her mouth opened, then shut; she started to speak, uttered some little sound, and then became utterly silent. We watched as her lips appeared to seal completely into a straight tight line. At the same time, her head and face appeared to be filling with air, causing her skin to stretch tightly, the color to turn from white to pink to reddish, and her eyes to bulge. When her head appeared the size of a medium sized balloon and on the verge of exploding, her mouth suddenly opened and all the air escaped in one long loud question, "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?"
I was startled. By the look on Boy's face, so was he. I felt sort of scared though Evelyn had never seemed a violent woman. Boy looked scared , too. I had never heard her talk so loudly.
Then he started stammering, "Mama, mama, we wuz just trying to make things look purty, mama. Did we do somethin' wrong? Mama don't be mad. We wuz tryin' to help."
I had edged nearer the couch. It was angled across one corner of the room., forming a triangular hole behind it. I had scoped out a way to hide back there if things got any worse. The triangle formed by the couch and the two walls would be space for me to hunker down if I needed to get out of the way. I'd just have to make a quick jump onto and over the couch.
Evelyn took a step back, looked at the wall, covered her mouth with her hands and walked quickly into the other room where we heard Bill Cullen giving out prizes on The Price Is Right.
I had never seen her cry. To me, she seemed too brittle to cry. But I definitely heard a sob, and Boy looked like he would collapse to the floor himself at any second.
We just stood there for a while, wondering what we should do. I still liked the way the rainbows looked, and I didn't see why Evelyn was so upset. The paper was ruined by the ugly holes in it anyway. I wondered if she would tell Mother.
I sat on the old rose-colored couch, kicking my feet against the worn fabric. Suddenly I didn't want to look at the rainbows anymore. I looked all around the room, but not at the rainbows or the people Boy had drawn. Let them bring in the sheaves, as many of them as could. The rest of the sheaves would have to wait for another day, maybe forever.
"Come on in to the kitchen, "a husky voice said. "I have your mustard and sugar sandwiches ready."
The rest of the day was uneventful until the last game Boy and I made up, and this was the thing that seemed to cause Evelyn to reach some sort of meltdown point. We had spent several hours entertaining ourselves on the front porch, rain pouring off the roof making us feel damp, and we wanted to come inside.
Boy motioned to me to sneak quietly into the kitchen, past the door where Evelyn sat watching afternoon soap operas. In one corner of the dark room, there was a floor to ceiling curtain, strung across between two giant nails by a ropethick drawstring. I had always wondered what was behind that curtain, but had never asked.
Boy pulled the curtain back, revealing the biggest pile of laundry I had ever seen , and silently motioned for me to jump in. It was a small mountain, and we began to dive into it, burrow under like rabbits in their warrens, bump into each other head to head, jump up like whales breaching, and fall down backwards fulllength, doing flips, somersaults, and cartwheels.
We were able to do this quietly for about three minutes, but then we couldn't contain the hilarity or our laughter, and that caused the end of our game.
Evelyn came barreling into the kitchen, snatched the curtain back, gave us the most disgusted look I had received up to that point in my life, and said absolutely NOTHING. Scary. She scowled at me, pointed to the door, and pointed Boy to his room.
It was not the perfect ending to a perfect day. I ran home, and I never did know if Evelyn told my mother what we had done to her wallpaper. That was probably dwarfed by news of the death in midafternoon of Tweedle Dum.
Anyway, after that day, Boy and I hardly ever played together. I would be starting first grade soon and making new friends, and both Boy and I would find out that a tonguelashing from Evelyn was going to seem tame by comparison to events of the next few years.
Installed
No comments:
Post a Comment