The Book of Bright Ideas (11 page)

I felt like I was gonna puke.

“What happened? What happened?” Aunt Verdella yelled as she burst out of the house and sprinted across the lawn, her bumps and belly thumping. I'd never seen Aunt Verdella run so fast.

Tommy and I backed up when Aunt Verdella reached us. “I didn't mean it, Mrs. Peters!” Tommy said. “She started beating up on me, and I bumped it.”

Aunt Verdella gasped when she saw the spilled ma on the grass, that dead chicken's foot lying next to it, and Winnalee on her knees, her face wet with tears, her eyes pulled wide with scared.

“I tripped!” Tommy said. “It was an accident!”

“Here, here, honey. Let me,” Aunt Verdella said, as she cupped her hands under Winnalee's and waited for Winnalee to pour what she was holding of her ma into her hands. The breeze was strong, and it caught flecks of the ashes that poured from Winnalee's hands into Aunt Verdella's and carried them in the air. I held my breath so none would get into my mouth or up my nose.

Aunt Verdella scooped up the big mound, then spread the powdered blades of grass and pinched the ash that was sunk down to the dirt. The same way she had picked through my knots to examine my sunburned scalp the day before. While she did this, I put my hand on top of my head so none of the ashes that were floating could seep down and settle on my scalp either.

While Aunt Verdella got all of Winnalee's ma scooped up that she could, she kept telling Winnalee that everything was going to be all right. That those bits she couldn't get were just gonna go right into the ground when the rain came, and how then at least a little part of her ma would have a resting place in the ground, like people are supposed to have.

After Aunt Verdella screwed the lid on tight, she pressed Winnalee right up to her fat ball. She rocked her side to side as she patted her head and cried right with her. The harder Winnalee sobbed, the harder Aunt Verdella patted her.

Tommy had to go home, because Aunt Verdella said he should have gone straight home in the first place when Uncle Rudy told him he didn't need his help till after he got back from the hardware store. “I know you didn't mean for it to happen, but you just stay away from these little girls from now on.” Tommy's ugly head nodded with little jerks. “Yes, ma'am, yes, ma'am,” he said. Then he hurried off to where his truck was parked, half on the grass, half on the driveway, over near the barn.

I stayed behind to scoop the scattered loops back into the plastic bags, while Aunt Verdella walked Winnalee to the house. Winnalee was tucked under one of Aunt Verdella's arms. Her other arm was holding the jar.

Try as hard as I could to keep my eyes on only the loops, I couldn't make my head stop cranking around so that I'd have to look at those patches of dusted grass and that dead chicken foot—both of which were giving me the willies.

Even from the yard, I could hear Winnalee's cries pouring through the screen door. I felt bad, knowing I should just be feeling sad for Winnalee, not thinking about what I was seeing and breathing.

When she was mostly done crying, Winnalee went home to tell Freeda what had happened. “And I don't want to make pot holders anymore today, because my head hurts now,” she said before she went out the door.

After she left, Uncle Rudy came home, and before he could even get his hardware-store bag set down, Aunt Verdella told him the whole horrible story of what happened. “I'm just so upset, Rudy! It's not right. None of it's right. That poor child. That poor little girl. If you could have seen her face, Rudy.” Aunt Verdella cried till she was shaking. Uncle Rudy patted her shoulder, but he didn't say anything.

Aunt Verdella marched out of the room then and came back carrying her jewelry box and the milk jug where she kept her change. She opened the jewelry box and took out a wad of rolled bills tied with a rubber band. She emptied the change jug, coins clinking onto the table and some rolling over the edge. “Help me make piles, Button,” she said. She flattened the pile, then used her pointy finger to slide dimes out of the heap.

“What are you doing, Verdie?”

Aunt Verdella looked up at Uncle Rudy. Her freckly face was even more blotched than it usually was. “I'm going to use my savings to buy a plot and a gravestone for that poor little girl's mama. That's what I'm gonna do. That child wants nothing more in this world than for her mama to have a final restin' place. And by George, I'm gonna see to it that that's exactly what she gets.

“I'll find out where her mama's family's buried, and I'll go there and buy her a plot and a stone, once I have enough. Then when it's all set up, I'll take Winnalee and Freeda there to see it, and we'll put their mama to rest.”

Uncle Rudy's bottom lip sucked in a bit—at least as much as it could, with that wad of Copenhagen tucked inside it. “Verdie, you've been saving that money for a color TV set for almost four years now. You sure about this?”

Aunt Verdella looked up. “Rudy, all the color television programs in this world couldn't give me as much happiness as one glimpse of that little girl's face when she sees her ma's final resting place. It will be our little secret, Button. We won't say nothing to Winnalee or Freeda until it's all set up, okay?” I nodded.

Uncle Rudy stood there for a minute, his thumb tucked under one striped suspender. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. He picked up his bag from the table and then patted Aunt Verdella's shoulder again. “You're a good person, Verdie,” he said.

While Aunt Verdella and I made neat rows of stacked money, Aunt Verdella chattered and counted out loud, while I counted to make sure each row had ten dimes in it. And while I worked, I thought up
Bright Idea #87: On days when your head hurts on the outside because you didn't know when to get out of the sun, or on days when your head hurts so bad on the inside that you don't want to make pot holders because your ma got spilled, it can still turn out to be a good day if even one good person does one nice thing for you.

10

“You girls moving out?” Uncle Rudy said as he came out of the house and saw me and Winnalee and Aunt Verdella lugging boxes of junk for the community sale into the Malones' truck.

Aunt Verdella giggled. “It looks like it, don't it?” Aunt Verdella hoisted a box of junk into the back of the truck, then straightened up, brushing her hands off. “A couple more boxes, and I'd've had to ask Freeda to borrow the wagon too!” she said.

It was so early in the morning that the grass was still dewy, because the sun wasn't yet high enough to reach over the treetops to warm it. “Here, let me give you girls a hand,” Uncle Rudy said.

“This box, not that. You're dirty from the barn,” Aunt Verdella said when he tried to take the box of baked goodies.

We packed up the truck, then Uncle Rudy helped wave us out of the driveway.

Me and Winnalee were excited as we held our plastic bags of pot holders on our laps. We'd made a whole eleven pairs, and if we sold them all, we'd practically be rich. “Just smile cute, and when people come by, you just ask them nicely if they want to buy a set. You girls are so darned cute that no one will be able to resist buyin' from you.”

“Me and Button are gonna buy a camera today, if we make enough money, and if we find one. And a compass too.” I nudged Winnalee's leg with mine so she'd shut up.

“A compass? Now, why would you girls want a compass?” When Aunt Verdella asked that, my throat got all gunky and tight, so that I had to clear it a couple of times. Luckily, we didn't have to answer, because Aunt Verdella got busy whacking the horn so two deer would get out of the road. After they did and we got moving again, she'd forgotten all about the compass question.

“Oh, look at this traffic!” Aunt Verdella said, all happy when we got to the community sale. There were two lines of cars and trucks. One was parked on the right edge of the dirt road, and those were the customers who were waiting to get in, even though the sale wasn't gonna start for another hour. Then there was our line, where the sellers drove slowly, waiting their turn to be let in to the mowed field where the sale would take place.

There was a chain strung across the grassy dirt road that led inside the sale part. A skinny little man in bib overalls was standing by it, checking for a seller's receipt that told him that whoever was trying to get in early was a seller and had paid for their spot. “Good morning, Pete,” Aunt Verdella said, as she dug in her fat purse for the little slip of paper.

“Mornin', Verdella. It's gonna be a hot one today,” he said. “Hope the rain holds off.”

“It will!” Aunt Verdella said as she pulled her orange ticket out of her wallet and held it up so Pete could see it.

“You got the front lot,” Pete told her, after he checked his clipboard. “How'd ya fandangle that one?”

Aunt Verdella giggled. “Oh, I got my ways!”

He unhooked the chain, then waved us through. As we drove over the wavy field, the truck rocked so that me and Winnalee and Aunt Verdella were bumping into each other.

Even though it was early, the field was already busy with sellers lining their stuff up on tables. Aunt Verdella had her window open, her freckly arm braced on the door as she waved good morning to the old man pushing a rusty bike across the road, which was nothing but a wide path worn down to the dirt from people walking on it year after year.

It took longer than it should have to lay our stuff out on the tables, because Winnalee kept putting things in dumb places. Then I'd have to switch things around so that the baby-sweater sets were over by the tiny crocheted blankets, and not over by the canning jars or the kitchen junk. I was glad when Winnalee got busy digging around in the bottom of her foot, looking for what was poking her, so that I could lay out our pot holders on the card table Aunt Verdella brought just for us.

“Oh, honey, didn't Auntie tell you to go home and put on some shoes?” Winnalee didn't answer Aunt Verdella because she was too busy digging and flinching.

I spread my seven pairs of pot holders out in two rainbow-shaped lines, on the side of the table closest to my folding chair. I didn't want people thinking that I'd made Winnalee's ugly pot holders. Winnalee didn't find what was poking her foot, so she just stepped on the toe part and got busy putting her pot holders out, matching them into pairs (even if they weren't pairs) and plunking them any which way.

She didn't even have all of hers spread before sellers who already had their stuff laid out started wandering by, gawking to see what we brought.

“Oh, pot holders,” an old lady dressed like a man, and wearing a patterned scarf, said.

Winnalee smiled up at her. “You wanna buy some? They're a real deal. Just twenty cents each. Thirty cents for a pair. So you save a whole dime if you buy two of them.”

I leaned over and whispered in Winnalee's ear. “They're supposed to be a quarter a pair.” She practically shoved her finger up her nose, trying to signal for me to hush.

While she was showing the lady practically every pot holder and telling her about them, I went to Aunt Verdella and tattled into her ear that Winnalee was saying our pot holders cost more. Aunt Verdella just giggled and said, “She's one smart cookie, isn't she?”

Soon as all the sellers were mostly set up, Pete took the chain down, and a fat guy carrying an orange stick waved the waiting cars over to the parking field. The people looked like a swarm of bees heading to a flower bed, as they hurried from the parking area to get to the sale tables.

I was too shy to say anything when two old ladies came to our table and asked about our pretty headbands and if we were sisters. Winnalee wasn't though. She told them we were twins. I kept my head down when she said that, so they wouldn't see that I was too ugly to be Winnalee's twin sister.

The people didn't think my pot holders were ugly though. They bought every one of them, for thirty cents a pair. And by the time Aunt Verdella unpacked our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and poured us each a glass of Kool-Aid, even Winnalee only had three pot holders left.

We wanted to sell those three pot holders bad, so we could go do some shopping of our own. “Hi, mister.” I looked up to see who Winnalee was talking to. It was a man with a face as round as a baby's and a bald, shiny head. He was carrying a lantern and a paper plate filled with oatmeal cookies that he'd bought at Aunt Verdella's table. “You wanna buy three pot holders? All three of them for only sixty cents. That's a real steal, mister.”

The guy stopped and smiled. He had teeth like a jack-o'-lantern. “What you say you're selling there, little lady?”

“Pot holders. My twin and me made them ourselves.” I cringed a bit when Winnalee said this, because I didn't want him thinking I'd made those ugly-colored things.

As he strolled over to our table, Winnalee slipped our homemade sign with our prices on it off of the card table and scooted it under her butt. Probably so he wouldn't see that he wasn't getting any bargain at all. “I don't really have no use for pot holders. I'm a bachelor and I don't cook much.”

“You don't got a wife?” Winnalee asked.

“Nope,” he said.

“Well, mister, if you bought our fine pot holders and gave them to a nice lady, she'd probably be so happy, she'd marry you. Then she'd move in and make you good things like pot roasts and hams. Probably even some cookies. You'd have someone to piggyback-ride with too.” The man gave her a funny look, but he must have thought that Winnalee had a good plan, because he scarfed up all three pot holders and paid us our sixty cents.

“We're rich! We're rich!” Winnalee shouted after we counted our money. “Three fifty. We're rich!” Me and Winnalee hopped up and down while we hugged, and Aunt Verdella, who was stuffing the things some lady bought into a shopping bag she brought from home, giggled at us.

“Can we go shop now, Aunt Verdella?” Winnalee asked.

Aunt Verdella looked down the lane filled with shoppers. Her eyes looked worried. “Okay, but you two stay right on the path between the rows of tables. No wandering off, you hear? I want to be able to see you when I look.”

Winnalee limped as we walked, because something was still in her foot. We hurried from table to table, as fast as she could go, looking for a compass and a camera. Most tables were filled with so much junk that after a few we got smart and asked the saleslady or -man if they had what we were looking for.

We finally found one who said he had a compass. A guy as big as a giant, with long hair and a beard.

“It's an antique,” the giant said. “It was my grandpa's. Twenty-five cents.”

I looked at the compass he was holding. It did look old, but it didn't look very special to me. Not special enough to be worth a whole twenty-five cents. Winnalee must have thought so too. She put a real sad look on her face and said, “Ohhhhh. Our daddy wants a compass for his birthday, but we only have fifteen cents.” She said it so real-like that
I
almost believed her. “Did you know that we're twins?”

The giant guy scratched his dirty head, then said, “Twenty.”

I nudged Winnalee. We had a whole wad of money stuffed into the change purse Aunt Verdella let us use. We could afford a whole dollar if that's what he wanted for it, much less a lousy twenty cents.

“We'll take it,” I said.

It was Winnalee's turn to jab me. Hard, with an elbow poked right into my stomach. She gritted her teeth at me, then looked up at the man. “We'll take it for that twenty cents,
if
you give us a lesson on how to use it.”

The big man talked slow as he explained what the parts of the compass were. “Suppose you wanted to go straight west. How would you find it using one of those things?” Winnalee said, interrupting him.

“Well…” He scratched his head again. He didn't look really smart, so I figured even with the compass and his instructions, we still might get ourselves good and lost. “See this
W
on here? That's west. You turn this housin' part—this part right here—till the
W
is over the top of the direction arrow. Now, you keep it flat, mind you, and ya turn the base of the compass till the red end, the pointer end right here, is over the top of this arrow. Then ya just start moving. Following the direction arrow. And if you ever get lost and get rattled, the arrow's gonna get rattled right with you. So stand still and quiet, then the arrow will settle down too and point you the right way.”

I guess he was so busy talking that he didn't notice that Winnalee had wandered off to look at a ratty green purse-thing. “How much for this?” she asked, holding it up.

“The army bag?”

“If that's what it is, yeah.” I knew what Winnalee wanted that bag for. She wanted it to be our traveling bag, to put our stuff in when we went on our adventure.

“I'll give it to you for twenty cents,” he said.

“Fifteen,” she said.

“A deal. Thirty-five cents altogether.”

Winnalee turned around, so that he wouldn't see that our change purse was stuffed full, and she dug out a dime and a quarter and handed it to him. Just in time too, because along came Aunt Verdella. I saw her walking fast, her head cranking this way and that as she called our names. When she saw us, she waved. “Where were you? Auntie couldn't see you!” Winnalee grabbed the compass out of the giant man's hand and tossed it in our new adventure bag.

“What do you want with that old army bag?” she asked.

“Um, it's gonna be our purse,” Winnalee said.

Aunt Verdella giggled. “That sure is one ugly purse. Fanny Tilman's got some old purses in her booth. They'd be better than that old thing. Come on, Auntie will buy you each one.”

Fanny Tilman was wearing a jacket again, even though it was hot. “I get chilled easily,” she explained to Aunt Verdella when Aunt Verdella told her she was going to die of heatstroke. There was a mirror on Mrs. Tilman's table, and I thought maybe if she peeked at her red, sweaty face, she'd probably see that she wasn't as chilled as she thought. While me and Winnalee dug through the box of purses on the grass, Fanny Tilman and Aunt Verdella talked. “I hear that that Thompson boy has been hanging around Marty's ever since your cookout,” Fanny said. “I hear he's quite smitten with her—and I've no doubt about that, the way she was carrying on with him that night. I was telling…”

I glanced up at Aunt Verdella, who was shaking her head and pointing down to Winnalee, who was busy trying to open the gold clasp of a white purse.

“It might do her good to hear some common sense for a change,” Mrs. Tilman said with a huff.

“Hello, ladies!” Ada Smithy called. “Hi, girls.” Winnalee and me looked up and said our hellos back.

After Ada showed them the nice pair of shoes she'd bought, she opened a bag and offered us all a piece of homemade horehound candy. She laughed when I wrinkled my nose and shook my head.