Part 18 (2/2)

She had her hand halfway over the picture of an actor. 'From here up don't you think he favors that boy who used to date with--'

'How you feel this morning, Etta?' Mick asked. She looked down under the bed and her private box was still in the exact place where she had left it 'A lot you care,' Etta said. 'You needn't try to pick a fight' Etta's face was peaked. There was a terrible pain in her stomach and her ovary was diseased. It had something to do with being unwell. The doctor said they would have to cut out her ovary right away. But their Dad said they would have to wait. There wasn't any money.

'How do you expect me to act, anyway?' Mick said. 'I ask you a polite question and then you start to nag at me. I feel like I ought to be sorry for you because you're sick, but you won't let me be decent. Therefore I naturally get mad.' She pushed back the bangs of her hair and looked close into the mirror. 'Boy! See this b.u.mp I got! I bet my head's broke. Twice I fell out last night and it seemed to me like I hit that table by the sofa. I can't sleep in the living-room. That sofa cramps me so much I can't stay in it'

'Hush that talking so loud,'Hazel said.

Mick knelt down on the floor and pulled out the big box. She looked carefully at the string that was tied around it. 'Say, have either of you fooled with this?'

'Shoot!' Etta said. 'What would we want to mess with your junk for?'

'You just better not. I'd kill anybody that tried to mess with my private things.'

'Listen to that,' Hazel said. 'Mick Kelly, I think you're the most selfish person I've ever known. You don't care a thing in the world about anybody but--'

'Aw, poot!' She slammed the door. She hated both of them.

That was a terrible thing to think, but it was true.

Her Dad was in the kitchen with Portia. He had on his bathrobe and was drinking a cup of coffee. The whites of his eyes were red and his cup rattled against his saucer. He walked round and round the kitchen table.

'What time is it? Has Mister Singer gone yet?'

'He been gone, Hon,' Portia said. 'It near about ten o'clock.'

'Ten o'clock! Golly! I never have slept that late before.'

'What you keep in that big hatbox you tote around with you?'

Mick reached into the stove and brought out half a dozen biscuits. 'Ask me no questions and Til tell you no lies. A bad end comes to a person who pries. If there's a little extra milk I think Til just have it poured over some crumbled bread,' her Dad said. 'Grave yard soup. Maybe that will help settle my stomach.' Mick split open the biscuits and put slices of fried white meat inside them. She sat down on the back steps to eat her breakfast. The morning was warm and bright. Spare-ribs and Sucker were playing with George in the back yard. Sucker wore his sun suit and the other two kids had taken off all their clothes except their shorts. They were scooting each other with the hose. The stream of water sparkled bright in the sun.

The wind blew out sprays of it like mist and in this mist there were the colors of the rainbow. A line of clothes flapped in the wind--white sheets, Ralph's blue dress, a red blouse and nightgowns--wet and fresh and blowing out in different shapes. The day was almost like summer-time. Fuzzy little yellowjackets buzzed around the honeysuckle on the alley fence.

'Watch me hold it up over my head!' George hollered. 'Watch how the water runs down.'

She was too full of energy to sit still. George had filled a meal sack with dirt and hung it to a limb of the tree for a punching bag. She began to hit this. Puck! Pock! She hit it in time to the song that had been in her mind when she woke up. George had mixed a sharp rock in the dirt and it bruised her knuckles.

'Aoow! You skeeted the water right in my ear. It's busted my eardrum. I can't even hear.'

'Gimme here. Let me skeet some.'

Sprays of the water blew into her face, and once the kids turned the hose on her legs. She was afraid her box would get wet, so she carried it with her through the alley to the front porch. Harry was sitting on his steps reading the newspaper.

She opened her box and got out the notebook. But it was hard to settle her mind on the song she wanted to write down.

Harry was looking over in her direction and she could not think.

She and Harry had talked about so many things lately. Nearly every day they walked home from school together. They talked about G.o.d. Sometimes she would wake up in the night and s.h.i.+ver over what they had said. Harry was a Pantheist.

That was a religion, the same as Baptist or Catholic or Jew.

Harry believed that after you were dead and buried you changed to plants and fire and dirt and clouds and water. It took thousands of years and then finally you were a part of all the world. He said he thought that was better than being one single angel. Anyhow it was better than nothing.

Harry threw the newspaper into his hall and then came over.

'It's hot like summer,' he said. 'And only March.'

'Yeah. I wish we could go swimming.'

'We would if there was any place.'

There's not any place. Except that country club pool.'

'I sure would like to do something--to get out and go somewhere.'

'Me too,' she said, 'Wait! I know one place. It's out in the country about fifteen miles. It's a deep, wide creek in the woods. The Girl Scouts have a camp there in the summertime. Mrs. Wells took me and George and Pete and Sucker swimming there one time last year.'

If you want to I can get bicycles and we can go tomorrow. I have a holiday one Sunday a month.'

'Well ride out and take a picnic dinner,' Mick said.

'O.K. I'll borrow the bikes.'

It was time for him to go to work. She watched him walk down the street. He swung his arms. Halfway down the block there was a bay tree with low branches. Harry took a running jump, caught a limb, and chinned himself. A happy feeling came in her because it was true they were real good friends.

Also he was handsome. Tomorrow she would borrow Hazel's blue necklace and wear the silk dress. And for dinner they would take jelly sandwiches and Nehi. Maybe Harry would bring something queer, because they ate orthodox Jew. She watched him until he turned the corner. It was true that he had grown to be a very good-looking fellow.

Harry in the country was different from Harry sitting on the back steps reading the newspapers and thinking about Hitler.

They left early in the morning. The wheels he borrowed were the kind for boys--with a bar between the legs. They strapped the lunches and bathing-suits to the fenders and were gone before nine o'clock. The morning was hot and sunny. Within an hour they were far out of town on a red clay road. The fields were bright and green and the sharp smell of pine trees was in the air. Harry talked in a very excited way. The warm wind blew into their faces. Her mouth was very dry and she was hungry. 'See that house up on the hill there? Less us stop and get some water.'

'No, we better wait. Well water gives you typhoid.'

'I already had typhoid. I had pneumonia and a broken leg and a infected foot.'

'I remember.'

'Yeah,' Mick said. 'Me and Bill stayed in the front room when we had typhoid fever and Pete Wells would run past on the sidewalk holding his nose and looking up at the window. Bill was very embarra.s.sed. All my hair came out so I was bald-headed.'

'I bet we're at least ten miles from town. We've been riding an hour and a half--fast riding, too.'

'I sure am thirsty,' Mick said. 'And hungry. What you got in that sack for lunch?'

'Cold liver pudding and chicken salad sandwiches and pie.'

That's a good picnic dinner. 'She was ashamed of what she had brought.' I got two hard-boiled eggs--already stuffed--with separate little packages of salt and pepper. And sandwiches--blackberry jelly with b.u.t.ter. Everything wrapped in oil paper.

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