Signs and Wonders Page 4

  “Why?”

  “So we can get our new refrigerator in.”

  Arvella peered through the window and saw the refrigerator. “You can’t buy me off,” she said.

  “I’m not trying to,” Bob said. “It’s just my way of saying I’m sorry.”

  She was weakening.

  “Does it have an ice maker?”

  “Sure does. Plus a cold-water dispenser.”

  The door eased open. She looked at Bob.

  “What did you and Heather do?”

  “Just talked, that’s all, honey. I swear. Can I come home?”

  “I better never hear of anything between you two, or that’s it. I won’t stand for it, Robert J. Miles.”

  “I understand,” Bob said.

  She opened the door and let him in. They emptied the food out of their old Kelvinator refrigerator, which Uly hauled outside. He and Bob wrestled the new refrigerator into place.

  “Be careful, Bob,” Arvella said. “Don’t strain so. You know what the doctor said about heart attacks.”

  Uly hooked up the cold-water dispenser and showed them how to operate the ice maker. After he left, Bob and Arvella put their food in the new refrigerator, then had a glass of water out of the dispenser.

  They were sitting at the kitchen table. It was the best Bob had felt in a whole month. He was flattered Arvella would actually think someone like Heather might be attracted to him. He had a paunch and was losing his hair. The shirt he was wearing was older than Heather. But to Arvella he was still the object of a young woman’s desire.

  He reached across the table and took her hand. “I hope you like your new refrigerator.”

  “You didn’t have to do that, you know. Why’d you do that?”

  “Because I didn’t know what else to do. And because I love you. And to thank you for putting up with me.”

  She squeezed his hand, just a little, not too hard. “I thought I was going to lose you. I thought you were dying. I worry about you. You don’t exercise and you eat food that isn’t good for you.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t eat at the Coffee Cup so much,” Bob said. “Maybe I should stay home and eat.”

  “I’d like that.”

  It was supper time. She fixed him EggBeater scrambled eggs, two turkey-sausage patties, and toast with oleo.

  By the time he’d finished eating, the ice maker had made the first cubes. Bob poured two glasses of iced tea, and they went outside to sit on the porch swing. They rocked back and forth, not saying much, content with the quiet. After a while, Bob said, “You want to walk to the Dairy Queen and get an ice-cream cone?”

  “How about some frozen yogurt instead?”

  “Do they sell that at the Dairy Queen?”

  “Yes. It’s new. I saw it on their sign just the other day.”

  “Let’s walk,” Bob said. “I can use the exercise.”

  So that’s what they did. They walked east on Marion Street to Washington Street, turned north at the Royal Theater and headed down Main Street to the Dairy Queen. They held hands, just like when they were teenagers and going on dates at the Royal Theater.

  Bob thought about the four million, forty-eight thousand dollars he’d almost had. He thought of all the places he could have visited. But walking beside his beloved, holding her hand, with the crickets starting their evening song, he decided being home with Arvella was better.

  Three

  What Goes Around

  School let out the last Friday in May, just before Memorial Day. The school isn’t air-conditioned, so all the kids and teachers were glad for the year to end. It turned hot early, and even though they propped open the windows and the teachers brought fans from home, the varnish on the old desks was still sticky from the heat. Mr. Griswold, the janitor, had Uly Grant at the hardware store order an exhaust fan for the school attic, which he and Uly installed the week before school let out.

  It was a big fan. It’d looked smaller in the catalog when they’d ordered it from a company in Chicago. They had to take it apart to get it up the narrow attic stairway, then reassemble it in the attic. It took them two days. They had to cut a hole in the roof, wire up the fan, then climb out on the roof to caulk around the opening. It was a beautiful late spring day. The heat had broken, and the sun was shining with an occasional puffy cloud drifting past. Mr. Griswold and Uly sat on the roof looking out over the town. If they looked to the south, they could see Asa and Jessie Peacock’s new barn on the hill behind their house.

  The schoolhouse is the highest building in Harmony, if you don’t count the grain bin at the Co-op. It is three stories tall and was built in 1929 on the south end of Washington Street. The school was going to be four stories tall, but the Depression hit and the town ran out of money and had to stop at three stories. People moved to the city to look for work, and they didn’t need four stories after all.

  All the children in town attend there, though there’s been talk of building a new school out on the edge of the town for the upper grades. It’s always the new people who want to build a new school. They move here from other places, two or three families a year, and want to change things. It takes them a few years to learn that folks like things the way they are.

  When they first come to town they attend the school-board meetings and talk about how the school they came from had a swimming pool and a better football field, even though the football field at the park works just fine and has since 1911 when Coach Leedy marked off the field and installed the first goalposts.

  It’s a lucky field. The single victory over Harmony’s arch rival, the Cartersburg Carps, was accomplished on that field in 1958. The school took down the goalposts and cut them into one-foot lengths, which were given to the players. Mr. Griswold was the center on that team and he still has his section of goalpost, mounted on a board and hanging on the wall in his workshop next to the boiler in the school basement.

  He and Uly could see the football field from the roof of the schoolhouse.

  “Yeah,” Mr. Griswold said, recalling their victory, “we wouldn’t have won, except that the coach’s wife cut out brown cloth in the shape of a football and sewed it on the front of our jerseys so it looked like we was all carrying the ball. They didn’t know who to tackle and by the time they figured it out, we’d made a touchdown.”

  Uly laughed.

  “Yeah, they threw a fuss about it. Said it was cheating, but they couldn’t find anything against it in the rule book, and that’s how we won.”

  “I bet that was something.”

  They fell quiet, looking at the clouds. “Ain’t it peaceful up here,” Mr. Griswold said. “I like to come up here when the weather’s nice and eat my lunch. Lots to see up here.” He pointed up Washington Street. “That house with the red roof is Bea Majors’s place. Last week, I seen her carry her trash over and put it in Hester Gladden’s trash can when Hester wasn’t home.”

  They ate their lunch, looking out over the town. Uly didn’t say much. Mostly, he just listened. Being up that high reminded him of when he was a little boy and rode the Ferris wheel when the Happy Jack Carnival had come to town. He was maybe seven years old. It came the week after school let out, and his father, who was sober that day, had taken Uly to the carnival and let him go on the rides.

  Uly liked the Ferris wheel most of all. They were on their third loop when the Ferris wheel broke down with Uly and his daddy in the top car. They were stuck up there for two hours. It turned dark while they were up there. All over town, they could see the streetlights blink on, one by one. It was the most time Uly had ever spent alone with his father.

  At home his daddy would be watching TV, and Uly would say something and his father would say, “Don’t bother me now, son. I wanna see this.” But there wasn’t any TV on the Ferris wheel, so they talked. At first Uly was a little scared. Then his daddy told him about how when he was Uly’s age he’d been stuck on a Ferris for five whole days. “Yeah, it was something, and when they finally got me down, they had
a big parade for me and gave me all the ice cream I could eat, and that was a lot of ice cream ’cause I hadn’t eaten in five days. They even wrote a story about it in the newspaper. Now if you’re brave like I was, I’ll take you to the Dairy Queen when we get down from here and you can get anything you want.”

  He told Uly what the town was like when he was a boy growing up. “There was a train then and once a year, the week before Christmas, we’d ride the train up to the city to see the Christmas lights. We’d wear our nicest clothes. And if we were good, your grandma let us pick out a toy at Woolworth’s. Maybe when we get down from here, I’ll take you over to Kivett’s and you can pick out a toy.”

  He told how, when he was a boy, he’d skip school the first nice day of spring and walk the two miles out to the Hodges’ farm to go fishing. “That wasn’t a big deal back then. You could do something like that and not get in trouble, but now you’d get in trouble. Maybe this Saturday we can go fishing out there, just you and me.”

  He talked about how when he was little he would go to the movies at the Royal Theater. “Yeah, it cost a dime to get in back then. Jujubees was only a nickel, plus they gave you a free Spy Smasher comic book. It was during the war. They’d show the newsreels with all the soldiers.”

  Down below, they could see the men from the carnival working on the engine of the Ferris wheel. Exum Furbay, the volunteer fire chief, had left the fish-fry tent and was standing at the base of the Ferris wheel, every now and then yelling out for Uly and his father to stay put.

  “The idiot. Where’s he think we’re gonna go?” Uly’s dad said.

  With the sun down, it turned chilly. Uly’s dad took off his windbreaker and wrapped it around Uly. Then after a while they heard the engine pop, then catch, and they felt a lurch. Their seat rocked back and forth. “Here we go,” Uly’s dad said, as they advanced clockwise to the ground.

  When they climbed off the Ferris wheel, Uly waited for his dad to take him to the Dairy Queen like he’d promised, but instead he took Uly home. Then he went to the Buckhorn and got drunk. Uly fell asleep on the couch waiting for him to come home. His mother carried him upstairs to bed. Uly was so hurt he didn’t talk to his father for two weeks, but his father didn’t even notice. So Uly just forgave him. When someone you love is an alcoholic, you have ample opportunities to forgive. Later that summer the Happy Jack Carnival went bankrupt, and there hadn’t been a carnival in town since.

  Some thirty years later, on the Memorial Day after school let out, two men in an old pickup worked their way through town nailing carnival posters to the telephone poles. The carnival rolled into town Thursday and set up on the town square. There was a Ferris wheel, which they erected in front of Grant’s Hardware Emporium. The games of chance were arranged along Marion Street, from the Coffee Cup Restaurant east to the Johnny Mackey Funeral Home. The rest of the rides were assembled on Washington Street, alongside the library and Dairy Queen. The volunteer firefighters pitched their fish-fry tent in the empty lot between the Royal Theater and the Baptist church.

  Not everyone was happy to see the carnival come to town. The Baptists were especially concerned when they parked the Snake Lady trailer on the street in front of their church. On the side of the trailer was a painting of a woman with only a snake to obscure her feminine charms. Bernie, the policeman, had them move it over to the alley behind the Harmony Herald building. The Snake Lady, when she wasn’t wearing snakes, wore dirty blue jeans and a black T-shirt, helped set up the carnival rides, and sold sno-cones.

  The old Happy Jack Carnival used to stay a week, but this one lasted only three days. On Sunday evening, Uly Grant took his three little boys and walked uptown to the carnival. They rode the Scrambler and the merry-go-round; then he bought them sno-cones, which they ate while sitting on the bench in front of the library. They could just see the Ferris wheel rising over the top of the hardware store.

  “Did I ever tell you about the time me and your grandpa got stuck on the Ferris wheel? It was something. We were up there for two hours.”

  They took a loop on the Ferris wheel. When they reached the top, it stopped, just for a moment, just long enough for them to look out over the town. They could see the school and the football field and their house a few blocks south of the square. The sun was setting. Over on Mill Street, a streetlight blinked on. Then the Ferris wheel lurched and around they went.

  Uly’s been sober two years. His father is in his late sixties now and still drinks. Spends most of his evenings at the Buckhorn on the stool at the far end of the bar. He’s a quiet drinker, doesn’t visit much with the other men. Just sits on his stool and drinks, every now and then raising his head to watch the ball game, then having another drink. Sometimes, in the early afternoon, he stops past the hardware store, but Uly pretty much runs the place.

  Uly was following in his father’s footsteps. What saved him were his three little boys. Not wanting to disappoint them. Not wanting to make promises he wouldn’t keep. Not wanting them to be ashamed when the other kids laughed about how their old man was a drunk. So he went to AA in the Harmony Friends basement and stopped drinking. He still goes every Wednesday night. He’s not sure how it works, whether he’ll have to go every week for the rest of his life. A day at a time, he tells himself.

  A couple nights a week, Uly’s phone rings late at night. It’ll be Bill from the Buckhorn, calling Uly to come get his father. Uly drives down in his truck, loads up his dad, takes him home, puts him in the shower, then puts him to bed.

  “You shouldn’t do that,” Uly’s wife says. “When are you going to be done with him?”

  But all Uly can think about it was how when he was little his daddy took him to the carnival and took him on the Ferris wheel. When you have a father who’s broken every promise he ever made, but you still want to love him, you look for the smallest good in him. How he gave you his jacket when it turned cold. How when you were scared, he held you close.

  “There are things in him worth loving,” Uly told his wife.

  He had once asked Bill at the Buckhorn not to serve him anymore. Bill said, “It won’t work. He’d just drive over to Cartersburg and do his drinking. At least here he won’t hurt nobody.”

  Uly read somewhere that alcoholism might be genetic. He hopes it isn’t true. He worries for his sons, that they might go that way. He takes them to church every Sunday, and in the quiet time he prays for God to protect them. He’s cut back his hours at the store to be with the boys. They play pitch and catch in the side yard, and on Saturday evenings he and his wife walk them to the Dairy Queen.

  When Uly has a problem with one of his boys and doesn’t know what to do, he grows resentful at all the things his father should have taught him, but never did. Still, in the back of his mind is the recollection of how one night, in early summer, for two hours on top of a Ferris wheel, his father did exactly the right thing. So when his boys are scared, Uly tells them stories to help them be brave. And when they’re cold, he gives them his jacket and draws them close. The rest of the stuff he does by the seat of his pants, hoping he won’t mess things up too bad.

  The week after school let out, he walked with his boys down to the schoolhouse, unlocked the back door with the key Mr. Griswold keeps hidden behind the downspout, and took them up to the roof. They watched Bea Majors sneak her garbage out and put it in Hester Gladden’s trash can. They watched the moon rise over the lucky football field. Then it turned chilly, so they came down from the roof, passed through the church-quiet halls of the school, and walked home down Mill Street.

  There are things we see with our eyes, sitting high and looking out. And there are things we see with our hearts, sitting still and looking in.

  Four

  Deena

  With warm weather here, business has fallen off at Deena Morrison’s Legal Grounds Coffee Shop. In the winter, people come in, sit by the fire, drink their coffee, and visit, but in warm weather they shift their allegiance to Oscar and Livinia Purdy at the Dairy Que
en. With business slowing down, Deena has been thinking of closing the Legal Grounds the first week of June and taking a vacation. Her grandmother Mabel told her about the tanned young men in the Caribbean, and Deena thinks she might go there, meet one, get married, and bear his children before she gets any older.

  Deena had been planning on marrying Wayne Fleming after his wife, Sally, left him. Then Sally came home and told Wayne she had leukemia, and he took her back. She got herself healed, ostensibly by the Reverend Johnny LaCosta of the Johnny LaCosta Worship Center, and Wayne and Sally put their marriage back together. Everyone’s glad for them, even Deena, though it’s hard not to be bitter.

  Deena still attends church at Harmony Friends Meeting, having read in “Dear Abby” that if you want to find a good man you should go to churches, not bars. With the healing of Sally Fleming now fully accomplished, the Friendly Women’s Circle has taken on the marriage of Deena Morrison as their latest project. To that end, Fern Hampton invited Deena to dinner so she could introduce her to her nephew Ervin, something she failed to mention to Deena. Fern sat Deena next to Ervin, then regaled her with stories of his meteoric rise through the street department.

  “Ervin’s moving right up the ladder. He’s only been there six years, and he’s already in charge of the manhole covers.”

  “Thirty-three manhole covers in this town,” Ervin boasted. “And I know where every single one is.”

  “Amazing,” Deena said. “Absolutely amazing. How do you do it?”

  “A good memory is all it takes. You just got to train your mind,” Ervin said. “But there are days when the pressure can get to you.”

  “I can imagine.”

  She wasn’t sure what to say after that, so she smiled, ate as quick as she could, turned down dessert, yawned at six-thirty, and said it was time to call it a day.

  Fern suggested Ervin walk her home. “A lady can’t be too careful these days. That’s the nice thing about having a big, strong man by your side. Here, Deena, feel Ervin’s muscle.” She placed one of Deena’s hands on Ervin’s biceps. “That’s what comes from lifting manhole covers all day. And yet, feel how gentle his hands are.” She placed Deena’s other hand in Ervin’s hand. “Oh, it does my heart good to see two handsome people in the bloom of youth. Enjoy your walk, kids.”