Hippomobile! (6 page)

We ain't ever gonna forget that moment, neither. The way our grandmas and grandpas just turned their heads and stared at us or didn't even bother turning their heads at all and just sat there stirring their cups of joe
⁴
or chewing on timber
⁵
or twirling a red checker on the table like Grandpa Milton was, or how Grandma Ida was twisting her dishrag around one of her fingers and Grandma Mabel was sitting there like a statue with her chef hat off.

We could tell something was wrong—we just didn't know what. We thought it might have something to do with the weather report. So we walked over quiet to our booth and slid on in and put
The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing
⁶
down next to the napkin dispenser and the greasy bottles of ketchup and mustard and the bottle of relish none of us ever touched. We were still antsy as a picnic but sat there all the same, just twiddling our thumbs and swatting at a fly that must've snuck its way in through the back kitchen door.
⁷

We were glad when Grandma Ida finally got up off her chair and walked over our way. We couldn't wait to tell her the news. But it turned out she had news for us instead. She said, “You better order somethin' real good because you ain't gonna have many chances left.”

That was strange talk coming from her. And we noticed she wasn't cracking her gum like usual. That made us suspicious as a sheriff. “Whaddaya mean by that, Grandma Ida?” we asked.

And Grandma Ida said, “Mabel's is closing, kids. Come the end of summer.”

That was all she said, too, because her jaw started to quiver and her nose started to twitch and then tears rolled down her cheeks, just like always happened whenever she served a dish with raw onions.

And we said, “Mabel's is
what?
” Because she might just as well have told us that snow was in the forecast or one of our grandpas had grown a ponytail.

She took the dishrag off her shoulder and blew her nose in it and stuffed it in her apron pocket and sat down at our booth and talked turkey to us. And the only thing we were able to say the whole time was, “Yeah, but . . .” Like when she said that Mabel's just didn't do enough business, we said, “Yeah, but . . .” And when she said that it ain't no use and that they'd seen this day coming from miles away, we said, “Yeah, but . . .” The only time we didn't say “Yeah, but . . .” was when she left to go get us each a belch water
⁸
and a bucket of mud.
⁹

Nine hours later, up in our room and in our PJs, we still couldn't believe it. Then the phone sprang to life and it was Mom calling.

“Mabel's is closing!” we shouted.

And Mom said, “I know.”

“What? How could you know? You're not even here.”

And that's how we found out that she and Pops knew, and everybody in Wymore knew, and they all had been discussing the matter for quite some time without ever bothering to tell us.

Well, that didn't sit square with us, and so we asked, “Why didn't you tell us nothing, Mom?”

“Anything,” Mom corrected us. Then she said, “We didn't want to worry you about things you have no control over.”

No control over . . . ? Well, we'd show her! Though at the time, alls we managed to say was, “Yeah, but . . . Where we gonna eat, then?”

That was when things turned serious and grave and made us feel that “serious and grave” should've been in that list of good diction in
The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing
.

Because Mom said, “In McFall.”

And we said, “McFall? Is Mr. Buzzard gonna be driving us to McFall three times a day just so we can get our grub?”

And Mom said, “Well, no . . .”

“Then how are we gonna get there? By boat?”

Mom finally spit out the bone. “We'll just have to move there, is how.”

Well, that was the straw that busted the hayloft. There was no way we were gonna move away from Wymore and Mabel's and Old Tom Wood and our room at the Any Hotel and the roof up on top and all the dust down in the square. And so instead of saying, “Yeah, but . . . ,” we found some dogged determination and said, “You can pack up and move to your big city if you want to, but we sure ain't!”

We thought we had her good and cornered because we knew how hard it was for her to be away from us even for the summer. But she just up and laughed.
Laughed!
And she didn't even say nothing about us saying “ain't.” Instead she called us what she always called us when she thought we were being cute. “Honey pies,” she said, “how about we talk about this tomorrow? I have to go to work now.”

That's where our conversation stopped at. We didn't even get a chance to tell her about
The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing
and the letter about the hippomobile we'd found stuck in the book. Mom sent us a good-night kiss over the phone, and we sent her one back, even though we didn't feel much like it. But we were a little afraid that we might not sleep so good if we didn't.

So we hung up the phone, and it was just the two of us again alone in Room #10. We didn't give a care about presidents no more, that's for sure. In fact, we were so thunderstruck that we didn't say nothing else at all. We just hit the light switch and climbed up into our beds. It would've been a good night to take our sleeping bags and go sleep up out on the roof, but now we didn't feel like enjoying nothing. Anyway, you needed a key to get up on the roof, and it was already too late to go ask Grandpa Bert up in Room #33 for it. He kept it on a string around his neck.

On any normal night, we'd both of us drop right off into a deep slumber after a day of getting wore out playing in the hot summer sun. But that night there was so much fidgeting going on in our beds that it sounded like the box springs were performing a concert. And then one of us coughed and the other one of us sneezed. Finally the burden of bad news got so great that we broke the silence.

“Jimmy James?”

“Yeah, Stella?”

“You awake?”

“Might be. You?”

“Yeah. I think I might be too.”

We got out of our beds and tiptoed over to the window and tried not to step on the floorboards that made the loudest creaks. They creaked so loud that our grandparents in the other rooms would hear them, and then they'd know we were up and about and they'd tap on the wall with their walking sticks to tell us to get back to bed.
¹⁰

But that night we made it to the window silent as a prayer and knelt down at it and put our noses up to the screen. It had an old dusty air smell to it that we loved. It smelled just like Wymore itself. And believe us when we say that there ain't no rose ever smelled that good to us.

It was already as dark as a frown outside. The square was almost all dark, on account of that only one streetlamp still worked anymore. All the June bugs in town congregated there, even though it was July. We watched them bouncing off the light and listened to the cicadas making their music, and for a while we didn't say nothing to each other. We both knew what we were thinking, and what we were thinking about was the place we called home and that we sure didn't wanna leave it for nothing in the world. Thoughts like them are best for thinking and are a lot harder to talk about using real words, even if you're just talking to your twin. And so when we did finally say something, it was about all kinds of other stuff just to avoid talking about what we really wanted to be talking about.

“Jimmy James?”

“Yeah, Stella?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Go ahead.”

“Um . . . What state you think Pops is driving through right now?”

“You know I ain't no good in geometry.”

“You mean geology?”

“Yeah, geology.”

“Jimmy James?”

“Yeah, Stella?”

“Um . . . You think it'll be hot tomorrow?”

“I reckon.”

“Say, what are you doin' with your mouth the whole time?”

“Wigglin' my tooth.”

“You got a wiggler? I didn't think we had none left.”

“Wouldn't be wigglin' it if I didn't.”

“And you ain't told me?”

“Just happened today. When we jumped off Old Tom Wood and I banged it.”

“Which one is it?”

“This one right here.”

“Well, yank it and stick it under your pillow.”

“That's what I'm tryin'. But it ain't comin' out.”

“Gimme a try, then.”

But for all the wiggling we did on it, it was stuck in there like a corn in a cob. We wanted to put it under Jimmy's pillow and see how much we'd get for it,
¹¹
but we could tell we wasn't gonna get it out with our fingers.

“Wasn't there a chapter in
The Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing
with tricks on how to pull a tooth?”

“I think you're right, Jimmy James.”

That rose our spirits an inch, and we agreed we'd look it up the next morning. But before we got back into bed, we took one more big deep smell out of the window screen.

“Jimmy James?”

“Yeah, Stella?”

“I ain't leavin' Wymore.”

“If you ain't leavin', I sure ain't leavin'.”

“Then we're gonna have to figure out a way to stay, ain't we?”

“Maybe we can say I gotta go to the dentist.”

“That ain't no good, Jimmy James.”

“Why not?”

“There ain't no dentist in Wymore.”

“What's your idea, then?”

“I ain't got one yet. But if we use some dogged determination I bet we can think one up.”

 

 

 

 

WANTING TO FIGURE OUT
a way to stay in Wymore sounded good the night before, but when you wake up the next day and it's morning and the sun's shining you in the eyes and giving you the sun grins,
¹
and you're down in the middle of the town square kicking dust around, and you don't see nothing but closed stores and empty buildings and rusty cars all around you, then it don't look so easy as it sounds.

We'd just come out of Mabel's after each having a Battle Creek in a bowl,
²
and Jimmy was chomping on a carrot because Secret Trick #1 in
The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing
on how to work out a loose tooth was by biting into something hard. The suggestions the book gave was a carrot, a radish, a turnip, a beet, and something called a rutabaga. With choices like that, that's how come Jimmy picked a carrot. Grandma Ida was a bit surprised to hear he wanted one, but she didn't ask us no questions, and we didn't feel like offering any explanations. We were just in one of them moods for having a secret that only us and the Tooth Fairy knew about.

“That carrot doing you any good?”

“Naw. You want it?”

“No thanks. My teeth ain't wiggly.”

Jimmy stuffed it in his back pocket, and we spent some time throwing pebbles at the old broke-down cars and trying to figure a plan to stay in Wymore.

“Stella?”

“Yeah, Jimmy James?”

“You know how Mom's got heightophobia, right?”

“You mean acrophobia?”

“Yeah.”

“So what?”

“Well, why don't we say we got McFallophobia?”

“They ain't gonna buy that, Jimmy James.”

“How about traffic lightophobia?”

“They ain't gonna buy that even less.”

“Well, at least I'm sayin' somethin'.”

After a while, we decided to go up onto the roof of the Any Hotel because that's where we sometimes got our good ideas at.
³
We walked over to get the key from Grandpa Bert, who like usual was out sweeping the sidewalk with his wood broom. We almost couldn't see him on account of all the dust he was whirling up.

“Good morning, Grandpa Bert,” we said.

He stopped his chores and leaned on his broom and shaded his eyes and looked up at the sky and said, “Looks like it's gonna be another scorcher.” Which was how people in Wymore often greeted each other, instead of just saying plain-old “Howdy!”

Just to be nice, we inquired about the forecast
⁴
before asking for the key to the roof.

“Just don't stay up there too long. You'll dry out like raisins on a day like this.”

We said we wasn't gonna, and Grandpa Bert started taking the key off from around his neck. Before he handed it over, he asked us, “First name me the first five presidents.”

So word was out about our homework, but lucky for us we now knew the first three good as our back pocket. While we were getting dressed that morning, we'd discovered that president number four and president number five both had the same first name, but we didn't remember what it was.