The Luck of the Buttons (12 page)

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Authors: Anne Ylvisaker

BOOK: The Luck of the Buttons
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Tugs looked again at the photograph.
Could it be?
He wasn’t wearing a hat in the picture, but that too-wide smile was all too familiar. Harvey Drew, Jack Door. Harvey Moore. Tugs looked up from the paper. She was alone in the room. She could hear the heavy clump of Mrs. Goiter’s shoes above her head. Tugs carefully tore the picture and article out of the paper, folded it, and put it in her pocket. Then she closed the paper, checking the edges to make sure it looked as if it hadn’t been disturbed. Her hands shook as she carried it back to the shelf, removed the ruler, and laid the paper carefully on the stack where she’d found it.

Upstairs, she slid the ruler onto the checkout desk and walked as fast as she could toward the door, then ran three blocks before slowing down.

The next morning, Tugs wrapped up two pieces of her mother’s crumb cake in a kitchen towel for the Thompson twins. She grabbed her Brownie and slipped past sleeping Granny. How could the Marys think cameras were boring? And who needed to be hemmed in by a dress?

Tugs stopped at the curb to look back at her house through the lens of her Kodak. The shutters were akimbo. The paint was peeling. She hadn’t noticed before how homely her home was. But as she walked down the block, she saw that theirs wasn’t the only tired-looking house. Theirs wasn’t the only scrubby yard.

“Tugs! Wait up!”

Tugs turned. Ned was running after her. Ralph Stump was with him.

“My mom sent me to get you,” said Ned. “Granddaddy’s waiting on you.”

Granddaddy Ike! It was Wednesday. Checkers day. Tugs hesitated. She really wanted to get her pictures developed. Maybe just this one week. . . .

“Do you think you could take him, Ned? Maybe he’ll let you sit in on a game.”

“Really? I always wanted to be the one to take him, but you’ve always been the one and —”

“It’s a big responsibility,” Tugs said, interrupting him. “You’d have to watch out for him. And make sure he doesn’t put in your mother’s silver or —”

“I know,” said Ned. “I can do it. Ralph and I can, can’t we, Ralph?”

“I don’t have a granddaddy as old as yours, so I don’t know,” said Ralph.

“Well, we can,” said Ned. “Thanks, Tugs. I won’t let you down. Come on, Ralph.”

Tugs watched them run off. For a moment, she wished Ned was coming with her. But it was good he had Ralph. She had Aggie, after all. At least she hoped she had Aggie. She’d show Aggie her photographs when she got home from camp.

Eldora and Elmira were sitting on their porch of their smart, well-kept house when Tugs passed the library. Leopold was perched in a potted plant in front of the library, and as she passed, he jumped out and followed her up the walk to the house.

“Sissy!” exclaimed Elmira. “Looky here, looky here! Our Leopold has been rescued again! Thank you, young man.”

“Oh, Sissy!” cried Eldora. “Our Leopold!”

“I didn’t . . .” Tugs started, but the sisters were down the steps and scooping up Leopold between them.

“He’s been gone since breakfast and we feared the worst, didn’t we, Sissy?”

“Oh, my, yes, Sissy. Our Leopold never runs off, and when we sat down in our porch chairs like we do every morning after toast and bacon, with our cup of coffee like every morning, our Leopold did not come sit by our feet like he does every morning.” Eldora sighed into Leopold’s shaggy back as he struggled to get free.

“I said to Sissy, I said, ‘This could be the day we say good-bye to our faithful friend,’” said Elmira. “But you’ve saved him.” She looked more closely at Tugs. “Why, you aren’t a young man at all. You are the girl who got him out of the tree, aren’t you?”

Eldora pushed her glasses up on her nose and peered closer at Tugs.

“That’s her, Sissy. The very one. It’s the pants that threw us off.”

“I brought cake!” Tugs said. “And my camera. Remember you said you’d develop my film?”

“Cake!” said Elmira.

“She did bring back Leopold,” said Eldora.

“True enough,” said Elmira.

“Give me the Kodak, then,” said Eldora.

“And the cake,” said Elmira.

Tugs followed the sisters inside and sat on the sofa. They took the chairs across from her and leaned forward, staring at her like she was a show about to start.

“Well, I never,” said Elmira, taking the Brownie from Eldora and inspecting it. “She’s got herself a green F model. Old Pepper only had the blue, so he said. But we really wanted the green.”

“Looks like she’s dropped it,” said one.

“It’s a little banged up,” agreed the other.

Elmira held it up to the light and looked through the lens.

“Should still work, though. These are sturdy little boxes. I bet it’s just a broken mirror. We must have a spare around here we could fix in its place.”

“Oh, Sissy, won’t this be fun! I wonder what she photographed!”

“I . . .” Tugs started, but Eldora interrupted.

“No, don’t tell! It’s more fun to be surprised.”

“Yes!” agreed Elmira. “I do love a surprise. That is the best part. When we take photographs, we develop each other’s film. Eldora mine and I hers. Then we’re always surprised.”

“Except that she always tells me when she’s taken a photograph,” said Eldora. “Can’t keep a secret, that one.”

“Pshaw,” argued Elmira.

“Can I help?” asked Tugs.

“No,” said Elmira. “Not enough room. You wait here with Leopold. Come on, now, Sissy, let’s see what she’s got here.”

Tugs wandered the room. She took down cameras and held them in her hands, looking through their viewfinders, until she heard the creak of the darkroom door. She sat down quickly on the sofa.

“Here’s your Brownie. We did fix the mirror,” Eldora said. “Good as new. Though that dent is making some trouble for advancing the film. You’ll have to fiddle with it a bit. Here. We have lots of extra film. Take a few rolls, so you can keep snapping.”

“But the pictures?” insisted Tugs.

“Ah, yes, the pictures,” said Eldora.

“Sissy loves the suspense, she does,” said Elmira. “Let’s put the poor child out of her misery. They’re still drying. Come on back.”

“The first one is really very nice,” Eldora said, chattering on. “So much detail. So close up. Not at all blurry . . .”

But Tugs did not hear her. She stopped in front of the first photograph and saw her own face staring back. There were her big teeth, protruding, her thin lips barely stretched into a quizzical smile. There was hair popping out in every direction, a fat strand blown across her face. But most of all what Tugs saw were her own eyes staring back at her. Her eyes looked clear and bright. Friendly. They made her face the face of someone she’d want to be friends with.

“Hi,” she said to the picture, and then they all laughed.

“She’s kind of cute, that one,” said Eldora, taking the photo from Tugs’s hand.

But what about Harvey? She was sure her picture could prove he was really Dapper Jack Door.

She hurried down the line. Aggie was blurred as she spun away. The Rowdies were fuzzy in movement, too.

“Now, there’s the gent,” said Eldora, squeezing past Tugs to the last photo.

Tugs studied the photograph. Harvey Moore was holding his hat, and his face was clear for viewing.

“Let me see that again,” said Elmira. “Isn’t that Mr. Dashing?”

“Indeed it is. What was his name again?”

“He says it’s Harvey Moore,” said Tugs. “But I think he’s really a crook. Dapper Jack.”

“Really?” gasped Eldora.

“How exciting!” said Elmira.

“But how do you know?” asked Eldora.

“I found this article in the newspaper,” said Tugs. She pulled the folded paper out of her pocket.

“Let’s go back out where it’s bright,” said Eldora.

They laid the paper on the kitchen table near the window and studied it together.

“He does resemble our gentleman,” said Elmira.

“What about Daddy’s money?” said Eldora.

“I think he is taking people’s money and he’s going to leave town.”

“What about the
Goodhue Progress
?”

“I don’t think there is going to be a newspaper,” said Tugs.

“If there’s not going to be a newspaper, I don’t want to give him our money!”

“No. You can’t give him your money,” said Tugs.

“I’m going to ring the police,” said Eldora.

“Wait,” said Tugs. “I want to be sure.”

“What are we going to do when he comes to the house?” said Elmira.

“What are we going to do?” repeated Eldora.

“Don’t answer the door for Mr. Moore,” said Tugs. “I’ll figure out something.”

Mrs. Dostal was arguing with Granny over the fence when Tugs got home. Tugs took advantage of their distraction and knocked at the Dostals’ door. Mr. Dostal answered wearing just his undershirt and pants and looking like he’d just woken up.

“Yep?” he said.

“Is Mr. Moore at home?”

“Nope,” said Mr. Dostal.

Tugs sighed.

“OK,” she said, and Mr. Dostal started to close the door.

“Do you know when he’s going to be back?” she asked hopefully.

“Nope.” Mr. Dostal started to close the door once more.

“Wait!” said Tugs. Mr. Dostal opened the door again and raised his eyebrows.

“Did he teach you to sail yet? Mrs. Dostal said he was going to teach you to sail.”

“We don’t have a lake,” said Mr. Dostal. This time he left the door open but started to walk away.

“Did he fix your Ford?”

Mr. Dostal stopped, turned around, and came back to the door. He was looking a little more awake.

“No, he hasn’t, now that you mention it. No, he has not. In fact, he hasn’t fixed the sink, either, like he said, or picked up the tab for groceries, or repaid the small loan I gave him to send back home to his ailing mother. Well, I’ll be jiggered.”

“I was just wondering,” said Tugs, and she walked down the steps and across the lawn to her own house, waving to Mrs. Dostal and Granny as she went in the door.

Her mother was waiting for her.

“Look,” said Mother Button. “You got mail.” She held out a crisp white envelope embossed along the edge with a line drawing of a tree and lake entwined with an address in small type.

Mail. Tugs had only gotten mail once before in her life when Aunt Fiona had sent her a postcard. Georgia was spelled out in fat letters across the front, and inside each one was a picture featuring some aspect of Georgia life, which, surprisingly, didn’t look so different from life in Iowa. On the back was a note Tugs still knew by heart.

Dearest Niece,
Peach pie, pecan pie, cotton plants, ocean. People of every sort. Home soon.
Love, AF

But this was an envelope, licked and sealed and stamped.

Tugs looked it over front and back. There was her own name, hand-printed smartly on the front. She handed it back to her mother, who slid a knife under the flap, making a neat slice at the top.

Tugs opened the edges of the envelope and peered inside. She pulled out a folded sheet of paper that matched the envelope. She sank into a kitchen chair and laid it flat on the table. Her eyes skimmed directly to the bottom of the letter.


Your friend, Aggie,
it says! Aggie Millhouse! Aggie wrote me a letter!”

“Would you fancy that?” said her mother. “Read the whole thing.”

“Dear Tugs,”
she read. “Dear!”

“Go on,” said Mother Button. “That’s how most letters begin.”

Tugs smoothed the letter with her hand and read it again, silently.

Dear Tugs,

It is Monday. I’m at camp. They make us write letters here every day. I am writing to you first of my friends. It’s hot here, but we get to swim in the lake. They make us do crafts, but there is also archery. I’m going to ask for a bow and arrow for my next birthday. I hit the hay bale five out of ten times, a record for beginners, they said. I wish you were here. I bet you’d be good at archery, too. I brought my ribbon from the three-legged. It’s hanging on my bunk. See you in the funny pages.

Your friend,

Aggie Millhouse

“Well,” said Mother Button. “You’d better write back. Granny has stationery around here somewhere.” She walked to the door and called Granny.

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