The Four-Story Mistake (18 page)

They got a goat, too. Her name was Persephone and they called
her
Phoney for short. She was a snow-white nanny goat with long, wicked yellow eyes that belied her gentle, almost sentimental nature. Mona and Randy learned how to milk her, and felt like Heidi every time they drank the chalk-white milk. Phoney was a darling: they all loved her, even though she did eat up half the paper salvage one day, and a part of the metal salvage the next.

Oliver and Rush collected snakes. It was no trick at all to catch them now, for the snakes were still drowsy and slow from their long winter sleep and lay idly among the old leaves in the woods. They had two handsome king snakes named King Cole and King Kong, and a black one called Licorice. Licorice was Oliver's favorite, and accompanied him about the place wrapped around his arm or his middle, to Cuffy's horror and disgust.

“Not in the house, you don't!” cried Cuffy. “
Never
in the house. One alligator is all the reptiles we can handle in the house, and by the way, Willy, isn't it time you brought Crusty's tank outdoors? It's warm enough now.”

So Crusty, who had grown fat on a diet of canned fish, chop bones, and hamburger, was brought outdoors to lie in his own private swimming bath on the back lawn. The birds came to look at him curiously, and he looked back at them still as a log, smiling disarmingly, and daring them to come closer.

The newest and one of the best additions to their family arrived late in May.

One Sunday afternoon, tiring of his typewriter, Father went to the kitchen and opened the icebox door. There he saw part of a leg of lamb, and thought to himself, “Cold lamb sandwiches with horseradish.” Then he closed the door and thought, “Why not a picnic?”

So that is how it happened. In less than an hour they had all, including Isaac and John Doe, piled into the Motor. It was a heavenly day. The leaves burned with that pure-green light that is seen only in spring, and there were daisies and buttercups all along the roadside.

“Never plan a picnic,” Father said. “Plan a dinner, yes, or a house, or a budget, or an appointment with the dentist, but never, never plan a picnic.”

They all agreed with him: it was so pleasant to find themselves setting out with sandwiches made of this and that, to a destination which might be here or there.

“We may find an oasis with coconut palms, or a snowcapped peak, or a crater lake,” suggested Father. “We'll stop at the first place that takes our eye.”

But Fate, who was hovering by and cackling maliciously, chose to strike then and there on a back road three miles from home. The Motor suddenly lurched, stumbled, and waddled a short distance before Willy stopped it.

“Tire?” said Father.

“Tire,” replied Willy.

“Where's the spare?”

“That was the spare,” said Willy sorrowfully.

It was a bitter blow. Now, when tires were as hard to get as crowns of gold.

“Farewell to the oasis of palms,” sighed Father. “And farewell to the snow-capped peak. I guess we'll have to eat our supper over in that cow pasture, after all.”

But it tasted just as good in the cow pasture. And besides there was a fine brook there, all lined with watercress, which was a pleasant surprise.

Cuffy's picnics were very complete affairs, because along with the sandwiches and cookie box there was always a box of Band-Aids, and cheek-by-jowl with the bottle of horseradish there were always the bottles of citronella and iodine. “For a new taste sensation try a cold lamb sandwich with citronella,” Father said. “Or a dash of iodine is very interesting with peanut butter.”

At six o'clock they trudged homeward along the dusty road. Sometimes the dogs were running far ahead of them, and sometimes they were dawdling far behind, sniffing at hedges, but they hardly ever stayed beside them. Cuffy puffed along majestically, carrying cress done up in a handkerchief. Father was walking with a tall stick, like Tannhäuser, and talking to Willy in a low voice; whenever anyone came near he waved the stick at them, and told them to beat it. Between Rush and Mona the empty picnic basket knocked from side to side; and Oliver and Randy skipped, ran, sidled, hopped, climbed fences, balanced on rails, but never merely walked.

Far behind them the Motor leaned to one side, old, tired, and alone.

After that the Melendys rode to school on their bicycles, and Willy, to the astonishment and intense joy of the children, the village of Carthage, and in fact the entire county, refurbished the giant wheeled antique from Oliver's cellar room, and on it creaked, wobblingly, about the countryside like a mechanized Ichabod Crane.

But the tenth day after the disablement of the Motor the children returned from school to find Father and Willy out in front of the house waiting for them.

“Hello, kids,” called Father, and there was a certain jubilant quality in his voice. “We've got a surprise for you.”

“A surprise? Where is it?” cried Oliver, leaping from his bike.

“In the stable,” said Father, as they followed him along at a brisk clip. Could it be something alive?

Looking in they saw the Motor, propped up on a jack for the duration. And beside the Motor there was an old-fashioned surrey with a fringed roof, and in the first stall there was a horse.

A horse!

“Now the stable is really a stable,” said Oliver in the quiet voice of great happiness.

“And it's a dapple grey,” cried Mona. “My favorite color of horse!”

Already Randy was reaching up to pat the silky, dewy muzzle, and Rush had climbed the wooden wall in order to get a better view.

“Where did you ever get it, Father?”

“Up the valley from a farmer named Peterson.”

“What's the horse's name?”

“Lorna Doone. She's a mare.”

“And someday can she have a colt?”

“There goes Oliver living in the future again,” said Father, laughing. “Maybe she'll have a colt someday, and maybe she won't. But what's the matter with her as she is?”

There was nothing the matter with her. Willy showed Rush how to harness her to the surrey and they all took a ride. The fringes waved festively and Willy drove as though he had been a coachman all his life.

“It's so much better than the Motor,” Randy said, “because all you could smell in the Motor was gas fumes and old imitation leather. This way you get the benefit of the air and the flowers and grass with a nice smell of horse added.”

“Now we have eight animals,” mused Oliver, taking inventory. “A horse, a goat, two dogs, three snakes, and an alligator. But don't you think we ought to have a cow and a pig and some chickens, Father?”

“Yes, now that you mention it, I do. And a kiwi bird, and a laughing hyena, and a three-toed sloth.”

“Do you really mean it?” Oliver's face was a blaze of hope. “And next winter will the horse pull us to school in a sleigh?”

Early in June they had the first thunderstorm. It came after a hot, satisfactory day that had included a ride in the surrey and a picnic supper. It came, also, as storms so often do, in the middle of the night. In the eastern sky a distant growling had been going on for some time, but everybody in the Four-Story Mistake was fast asleep: they knew nothing about it until it arrived full force with the thunder booming and splitting, the rain beating down in steady hammers, and the lightning coming and going as swiftly and frequently as the flickering of a snake's tongue.

“Great day!” cried Cuffy, springing out of bed and reaching for her kimono with one hand and the light switch with the other. But the lights were out again (of course) and she had to go padding about with a candle, closing windows and wiping up puddles. Father got up, too, and after a while the whole family, except Oliver who slept through it, was twinkling about the house with flashlights.

“Ouch!” Randy would exclaim every time there was a particularly deafening crash. Then she would smile unconvincingly and say, “I think I'm getting so I kind of like thunderstorms.” But nobody was fooled.

Rush really did like them, and this was a good one. He stood looking out the window. During the frequent flashes he could see wildly tossing trees frozen for an instant in uncanny light. He could see the white, blank puddles staring back at the sky, and torn leaves driven through the air, and the iron deer bravely indifferent to it all: one standing proud and imperious, staring into space, the other forever grazing with a meek and downward neck.

“Get back to bed, now, get back to bed,” commanded Cuffy. “My lands, the peonies will be beaten to a pulp after this, I'm afraid. All right, Randy, you can come and sleep in my room if you want to. Only remember, no
talking!
”

It rained so hard that night that the brook again swelled its boundaries, and as Cuffy had predicted, the peonies were beaten down and completed their blooming in a supine position on the grass. It rained so hard that poor, forgotten Crusty's tank filled up to the brim and overflowed, and Crusty, seeing his chance, swam up to the edge and overflowed with it.

Flapping his tail, and stretching his short ugly legs, the alligator savored freedom and took his bearings. Ah, water! The smell of water! Not rain water, not tank water, but live water, going somewhere! Slowly, clumsily, but with something like a sense of adventure quickening his thick blood, Crusty crawled toward the brook, grinning from ear to ear.

At breakfast the next day Willy burst into the dining room.

“Say, Mr. Melendy! That alligator! He's gone, got out, beat it! I can't find him nowheres. Musta scrammed last night when the rain filled up his tank.”

“Gone?” cried Oliver and Rush and Randy in voices of consternation.
“Gone?”
cried Father and Mona in blank surprise.

But Cuffy said, “You mean he's honestly gone?” and on her face there was unmistakable relief.

“It's going to be very hard for me to believe that Mrs. Cuthbert-Stanley didn't have something to do with this. Did you, Cuffy?” said Father. They all turned to look at Cuffy, who, stainless of guilt though she was, blushed right up to the roots of her white hair.

They never saw Crusty again. They searched, advertised, warned the farmers in the valley, but never a trace of Crusty did they find. Two years later Father, returning from a lecture in Philadelphia, brought them a small clipping from a newspaper which was headed:

SEEING THINGS?

Natives of Humboldt Quarter, Pa., have recently reported the presence of a live alligator in Humboldt Creek. Five people claim to have seen it, the last being Herman C. Rollstoner, local butcher, who says he saw it Sunday, while fishing. Rollstoner took the pledge on Monday. Authorities claim it extremely unlikely that an alligator of the size reported (about two and a half feet) could survive in such northerly waters.

“Do you suppose it could be Crusty?” cried Randy.

“Could be,” Rush said. “The authorities probably never saw an alligator with such a determined character.”

CHAPTER XII

“Oh, Summer Night!”

Mona was going to a dance. A real dance at school: a Boy was taking her. No Melendy child had ever done such a thing before.

Randy sat on the foot of her sister's bed watching her get ready.

“I don't see what you want to go for,” she said, “and with that old Chris Cottrell, too.”

“He's all right,” replied Mona from her new adult altitude, and then descended from it to say anxiously, “Oh dear, I hope I don't step on his feet. Do you think I will?”

“You won't be able to miss them, they're as big as a couple of cellos,” said Randy crossly.

“I'm kind of scared,” confided Mona. But when she slipped the dress over her head, the new dress that she and Cuffy had made, the annoyingly distant composure returned to her face.

The dress was pretty. It had a long, full skirt, really long, right down to the floor; and it was made out of thin pink cotton stuff, nineteen cents a yard at the Carthage Dry Goods and Confectionery.

“Jeepers, you look old,” commented Rush, looking in at the door, “about eighteen or nineteen at least.”

“Do I really, Rush?” Mona was delighted.

“Yep. But I don't see why you want to.”

“I'm tired of looking callow. Listen, kids, shall I wear these roses on top of my head, or sort of on the side by the parting?”

“Oh, wear them between your teeth like Carmen,” said Rush, wheeling away from the door. “I think you're getting kind of silly, Mona.”

Mona didn't care. Her eyes were shining, her cheeks pink, as they always were when she was excited. The roses in her hair were very becoming. Randy sighed, and watched her gloomily.

“Gee whiz, you're getting so grown up. Pretty soon you won't be any fun at
all.
”

“Don't be silly. There's the doorbell!” Mona gave her a kiss without thinking about her, snatched up her summer coat and hurried down to the living room where Chris and her father were talking to Cuffy.

After they had gone Randy went slowly up the stairs to the Office. She felt awful. Rush was at the piano practicing the first of the Brahms-Handel Variations. “When I'm about twenty-one I ought to be able to do 'em pretty well if I start now and work hard,” he'd said.

Randy sat first in one chair and then in another. She tiptoed into Clarinda's room and back again, took a book out of the bookcase and replaced it; stared at one of the newspaper pictures on the wall; tiptoed up to the cupola, looked out at the moonlit world without seeing it, and then tiptoed down again. Finally she sat down in a creaky wicker chair and sighed deeply.

“Say, what's the matter with you anyway?” asked Rush, turning from his music. “You've been circulating around here like a draft.”

“I don't know what's the matter with me,” Randy said mournfully. “I guess it's that I hate having any of us grow up.”