The Book of Bright Ideas (8 page)

8

It was Aunt Verdella's idea to have a cookout. She said having one would help Freeda and Winnalee get to know their neighbors, and Ma get to know the Malones.

That Sunday, Aunt Verdella made some potato salad and baked beans and thawed frozen steaks and hamburgers for the grill, while I helped Uncle Rudy clean off the dusty lawn chairs that were kept in the shed and waited for Winnalee to take her bath and come over. I knew Ma was mad she even had to go to the cookout, much less go early so she could help Aunt Verdella put the food together, but Daddy didn't give her much choice.

“This is gonna be so much fun!” Aunt Verdella chirped, as she unscrewed a jar of pickles and popped the canning lid so I could stab them out with a fork and put them on a plate. “I've asked the Thompson twins—they're so good-looking, aren't they, and around Freeda's age? And of course, Melvin will bring his wife, June, and their kids. I'd imagine that the other one, Mike, is lookin' for a wife too, so who knows, Freeda just might meet her Prince Charming here in Dauber yet.”

“It doesn't seem to me that Freeda Malone has much trouble meeting men,” Ma said under her breath, as she stirred mayonnaise into a bowl of tuna, noodles, peas, and onions.

“Oh, and I told Tommy to tell his ma and dad to come too. Ada doesn't get out much, except to work at The Corner Store, and Elroy likes visiting with Rudy. And, let's see…oh, Fanny and John Tilman. I guess I sorta felt I had to invite them, since I ended up inviting Ada when I stopped for gas, and it turned out that Fanny happened to be back by the milk cooler. Not that I mind Fanny, of course, but, well, let's just hope that meeting Freeda at a social gathering will soften Fanny toward her a little.”

Aunt Verdella rapped on the window above the sink, then yelled out, “Reece, did you guys bring out the tub for the beer? The ice blocks are in the freezer in the shed.” She turned back to the table. “Oh, that's nice how you laid those pickles out, Button. Like a sunbeam.”

 

“Aren't cookouts fun?” Aunt Verdella said, as she came to the picnic table carrying a pitcher of lemonade clanking with ice cubes and a stack of yellow plastic cups. Freeda, who was probably tired from staying up most of the night or was still trying to coax Winnalee out of the tub, still hadn't come out of their house. “I couldn't think of a better way to bring us all together.” Aunt Verdella looked at Ma. “Why, you and Freeda hardly know each other, and you're neighbors.”

Before I knew it, the Smithys pulled in, and the Tilmans right behind them. Fanny Tilman wore a button-up sweater, even though it was about ten hundred degrees, and both ladies were carrying bowls covered with Reynolds Wrap. “You're lookin' good, Ada. Doesn't she look good, Jewel?” I guess that meant that Ada had had a good recuperation from her operation. Ada, who was short and chubby, said she'd lost ten pounds since her surgery. Elroy, tall and skinny, and as ugly as Tommy, rolled his eyes. “She'll have it all put back on, plus another twenty, by the next time you see her, anyway.”

Uncle Rudy and Daddy were at the grill, turning the steaks over with big metal pinchers, beers in their hands, so that's where the men headed. Aunt Verdella told me to bring them each a beer, so I grabbed some bottles out of the icy tub and brought them over to the grill. While the men yammered about farming over by the smoking grill, the ladies hovered around the picnic table, yammering about everything and anything. Mostly the Malones.

“So where are our guests of honor, anyway?” Ada said.

“Yeah, that's what I was wondering,” said one of the Thompson twins, who'd come over to the table to set down some still-sizzling steaks. I didn't know if it was Mike or Melvin, since they looked exactly alike—both with blond hair on their heads and white hair on their sun-darkened arms. The other twin chuckled, then called over the exact the same thing. June, the lady with a baby on her hip and a scrappy little boy wiggling in her free hand, shook her head and rolled her eyes at the one who repeated the words like a parrot, so I guessed that one was Melvin, her husband.

“Oh, look, here comes Winnalee, Button!” Aunt Verdella waved hard at Winnalee, who was coming across their yard, her ma in her arms.

“What's she got on?” June Thompson asked, talking about Winnalee's pink mesh skirt that was dragging across the grass.

“Oh, and she's got that urn I heard about. Poor little thing,” Ada Smithy said.

Fanny Tilman, who was sitting on the very edge of the picnic table clutching her purse, added, “I think it's disrespectful, carrying the dead around like a toy.”

I raced across the yard to meet Winnalee. She was wearing three strings of pearly blue beads, and her eyes were red, like either she'd been crying or gotten shampoo in them. Her loops were still damp and her eyebrows were bunched, which meant she was grouchy.

When she got to the picnic table, Aunt Verdella grabbed her by the shoulders and stood Winnalee in front of her. “This here is Winnalee Malone,” Aunt Verdella said proudly. “She's nine years old, and smart as a whip, just like our Button.” Ada and June, especially, started clucking about how adorable Winnalee was. “I'm not smart like Button,” Winnalee said. “But only because I never get to stay in one school long enough to learn much of anything.”

A bit of worry passed over Aunt Verdella's face. “Well, you'll learn lots in school here, honey, won't ya?” she said.

Ada smiled. “Well, sweetie, I don't know what brought you to Dauber, but we're sure glad you're here.”

“Harley Hoffesteader was going to blow our heads off. That's what brought us here,” Winnalee said. Fanny Tilman's eyes stretched behind her glasses, and she clutched her purse to her middle all the harder.

“Where's your—?” Aunt Verdella stopped talking when everybody suddenly looked past her and Winnalee and out toward Grandma Mae's yard. “Oh, here she comes now!” Aunt Verdella said.

I looked up to see Freeda coming across their lawn. She was dressed in a pretty pink sundress, her coppery hair stuck on top of her head in a stack of curls the size of juice cans. It looked like her feet were naked. “What's she got?” Aunt Verdella said.

“A cake,” Winnalee said.

A cake wasn't all Freeda was carrying though. She had a guitar too. Not the one from the attic, but a new one. A yellowwood one.

“Where'd you get that thing?” Aunt Verdella asked, nodding toward the guitar as she took the cake from Freeda and waited for Ma to clear a spot on the table so she could set the cake plate down.

“Oh, some loser left it at my place last night. I guess he thought he was gonna serenade me.” June Thompson giggled behind her hand as she glanced quickly at Mrs. Tilman. “Anyway, I thought Reece could play us a song.” Ma held a clump of her oatmeal hair flat against her head, so the wind wouldn't pick it up again. Her eyes were squinched into little lines as she looked at the guitar, or maybe the sun behind it.

“My, what a beautiful cake! Jewel, look how she swirled the frosting. Isn't that pretty? I didn't know you baked, Freeda,” Aunt Verdella said.

Winnalee stuck her finger into the chocolate swirls and Freeda swatted at her hand. “I don't do it often, trust me, so don't get used to it.”

Aunt Verdella got busy introducing Freeda to everyone, and as soon as the “nice to meet you”s were said, Freeda went to Daddy. “Here,” she said. She handed the guitar to him.

“What the hell you want me to do with this?” Daddy asked. Freeda grinned and shrugged, then, with her eyes still on Daddy, she backed up till she reached the picnic table and sat down, crossing her bare legs. Stupid Tommy rushed to sit next to her.

“I haven't played one of these in years,” Daddy said. He had his hand wrapped around the neck part of the guitar and was staring at it, while everyone else stared at Freeda. One of the Thompson twins slapped Daddy on the back and said, “You son of a bitch, if I could play a guitar like you, I'd never set it down.” Everyone nodded and added their two cents.

“Let's eat, shall we?” Ma said, standing up quickly and reaching for the stack of paper plates still in their plastic wrapper.

“Sit by me, Uncle Reece,” Winnalee said, her name for Daddy making Ma's eyebrows leap halfway up her forehead. Winnalee plunked down on the bench beside me and set her plate down before her. “Scoot over, Button!”

I slid over to the very edge of the bench, slipped my hands up over my ears, and Winnalee scooted against me to make room for Daddy. Well, until Ma told me and Winnalee we had to sit on the grass, so there would be enough room at the table and on the lawn chairs for the grown-ups. She picked up a big spoon and jabbed it into the potato salad.

There was lots of food. Some that went together, and some that didn't. Just like the crowd filling their plates.

While we ate, Aunt Verdella kept coaxing Freeda to tell everybody about herself. “You know, so they can all get to know you better, dear.”

“What do you want to know?” Freeda asked.

“Well, I don't know. Where you're from. Where you've been. Anything.”

“Well, let's see.” Freeda bit the tip off of a pickle and chewed it. “I went down to Chicago after I left home. Lived there awhile, then to Cleveland, then down to Orlando. I lived in the Dakotas for a time too. Hell.” Freeda laughed. “Where haven't I lived?”

“Detroit!” Winnalee said, from the grass near the picnic table, where we sat cross-legged. “That's where we were gonna go.” She leaned over then and wrapped her arm around my neck. “But I'm glad we ended up here instead, because Button lives here.” She gave me a squeeze. Aunt Verdella and Ada and June's “aw”s sounded like a church choir.

“I've never been out to the East Coast, but one day I'll get there too,” Freeda said.

“Seems to me, a child needs some roots,” Fanny Tilman said, as she scooped some sauerkraut stuff that she'd brought onto her plate. Even when filling her plate, she didn't set her purse down but had it slung over her arm.

Aunt Verdella leaned forward. “Where'd you start from, honey? Where'd you grow up?”

Freeda sat up straight and tried peering over the top of the metal tub that was parked under a shade tree. “That beer over there?” she asked.

“Sure is. You want one?” Uncle Rudy asked.

“I sure do,” she answered. Uncle Rudy was gonna get up to grab her a beer, but one of the Thompson twins hurried to grab her one instead, smiling at her with teeth white as the sagging plate he held.

“Where'd you say you were born and raised?” Aunt Verdella asked again. Her eyebrows were stitched together, like she'd crocheted them that way.

“Hopested, Minnesota,” Winnalee said, while she crunched a potato chip. “It was a hole. That's what Freeda said.” Fanny turned around and glared at Winnalee. I think because Winnalee didn't know (or didn't care) that children should be seen and not heard.

“Where's that, exactly?” Aunt Verdella asked.

Freeda didn't look like she wanted to talk any more about where she used to live. It looked to me like she just wanted to drink her beer.

“It's in the east central part of the state,” Uncle Rudy said. “Over by St. Cloud.” Then all the guys tried figuring out how many miles St. Cloud and Hopested were from Dauber. Not because they wanted to go there, I don't suppose, but just because men always seemed to have to know how far away other places were.

I stopped listening to their boring talk and looked over at Winnalee's ma, sitting a ways over from the picnic table, and I worried that the Thompson baby, who was crawling in the grass, would knock it over. I felt Tommy staring at me. When he saw me looking at him, he showed me his vampire teeth and slipped his pointy fingers behind his ears till they were sticking out sideways. I turned my head away, slipping my hands up over my ears.

After we ate, Uncle Rudy got up to go get the ice cream, but Aunt Verdella told him she thought everybody was full, so maybe we'd better wait for dessert. All the men—and Freeda too—were talking as loud as Aunt Verdella, probably because they were drinking beers. “How about some music, Reece?” Freeda said. Daddy glanced over at the guitar a few times before he grabbed it. There was a pick weaved in the strings at the top, and he plucked it loose and gave the guitar a strum. It sounded bad, so he twisted the little knobs at the top while he plucked at the strings, one string after another, until it sounded just right. Then he started strumming. “Play something, Uncle Reece!” Winnalee said. “I wanna dance!” Aunt Verdella grinned, and I knew why. She loved it that Winnalee was calling them all “aunt” and “uncle” now.

Daddy stood up then and propped one leg on the corner of the picnic-table bench. He hooked the curved part of the guitar on his leg and started to play.

“Oh goodie! ‘The Twist'!” Winnalee shouted.