The Monsters of Templeton (25 page)

Then Ginger at last broke the silence. "First," she said, "won't you offer the weary travelers refreshments?" and I, ashamed for some reason, though they were not invited, in fact this was scandalous--they should never have been there, I was in heavy mourning!--I stood and cut some ham and bread and cheese (the good cheese, from Starlin Yeoman's farm), and made some strong coffee. The girls in the bright dresses wolfed down this meal as if they hadn't eaten in days. At last, Ginger slid my bowl over to herself, the soup that had long since cooled, and drank it down without asking me. When she was finished, she sat back, patted her lips, smiled--it was a terrible smile, Charlotte.

"No children? I heard you had yourself four husbands already, Cin, and you don't got no children? You barren?"

"I don't know," I whispered. "And you?"

"Nah," said my sister. "Lost one early. Never could have no more after. Guess it makes the job easier." And my sister's girls all snorted into their teacups, hinnying dreadfully.

"What job?" I said in a panic. "Why are you here?"

"Why we here? Ah, Cin, you know why we're here. Always playing the innocent, ain't you. Ah, Cin, Cin," she said. Until that moment, I swear I did not understand their presence, but it all fell into place--the bright dresses, the perfume, the slatternly girls, the boy in a girl's dress. I fear your innocence, Charlotte--I must tell you--to be blunt, they were there to set up a bordello.

"Oh, Ginger," I gasped, "so it's blackmail?" I thought she wanted me to give her money so she would go away. But she laughed and her eyes bulged and she said, "A good idea, that. But, no, you couldn't never give me as much as we're going to get usselves. We're here to stay." I felt faint--I looked at the girls--I saw one pluck at a louse that was crawling across her cheek, crack it under her fingernails.

"To stay?" I said. "Oh, no, Ginger."

"Oh, yes," she said. "Gold opportunity. My girls, they don't like following no army around no more--too much competition--too many dead boys we seen. Diseases, too. No, we seen that Templeton's a transfer station for regiments from up here, and with all them rich boys at the Academy and what with the new hotel at the bottom of Front Street for the health-nuts, it's going to be a fashion town. With fashion people, come fashion money. Picked up a few tricks on the Mississippi, going to open up a billiards, cards place, too, someday. No, we're here to stay. Stay out of your way, though. You won't need to worry about us. I call myself Papa Gin Stone--nobody going to connect you to me."

And that unnatural boy in the girl's green dress fluttered his eyelashes, said, "We be sure, Madam, to be quiet as church mice. No one ever know we here."

Ginger just stroked the boy's cheek, said, "That's right, darling. We'll stay the night here, only. We're gone in the morning." Then the fat one who had been lolling her head on her chest began to snore, and the others stood and unrolled their blankets on the floor. And in the morning my sister was gone, as was my entire set of family silver, and the housekeeping money for the winter from that canister in the pantry.

I do not know what to do, Charlotte. It is morning--I am still in my clothes from last night--Marie-Claude has come in and is muttering French curses as she scrubs the floor again--I simply don't know what to do. Please, please help me with your wisdom and your discretion. Please don't tell a soul. Tell me what I should do. Please forgive me for not writing a fresh copy--my hand aches--I must send this to you, or else I feel I shall lose my mind. I know this is hasty--I just beg of you to help.

Your friend in need, Cinnamon

Averell Cottage, Templeton Christmas Day, 1861

My dearest Charlotte---

You are an angel. What would I have done without you? You have provided such comfort on these dark and terrible days, even perhaps at the expense of your romance with your dear Frenchman. You have not had time to walk with him as you usually do. Oh, you did calm me, care for me. You are right--I must be patient--I am not my sister's keeper--the Lord will judge her, not I.

Charlotte, I do believe I would have harmed myself had you not hurried across the frozen lake and up the lawn to come to my aid. And returned, and returned, every day, until I was calm. I have taken the tincture you have sent again, and am drowsy, but before I sleep, I will send this present to you. I wrote Aristabulus Mudge and had him make it up for me--it is a love-potion--I have used it myself--believe me, it works well. You must put it into food that you make with your own hands, and have your beloved eat it.

Have I told you that when I am drowsy like this, I begin to see my husbands? It is quite alarming. They are in the shadows. They do not smile. What am I writing? I can barely follow my own pen, I am so tired. Now, my dear, I must sleep. I am forever in your debt.

Your loving, Cinnamon Averell Graves

Ginger "Papa Gin Stone" AverellMarch 1862. Taken by Telfer's Studios in Templeton, this photo shows Ginger in her woman's garb. She must have puzzled the poor photographer, showing up out of nowhere one day, and disappearing the next. One wonders why she chose to sit for her portrait as a woman: one suspects she would have made a far more attractive man.

Chapter
17

An Interruption

I HAD BEGUN to read Cinnamon's and Charlotte's letters late the night before, after a dinner with my mother and an old black-and-white movie on television that I watched after she left for work at eleven. I was surprised, then, when I looked out my window with still half of the pack of letters left to read, only to see the sun beginning to slip from behind the hills and paint the lake a paler color. I yawned and stretched, then told the ghost in my room that I needed a little break. It was lilac colored, had seemed to be pulsing quickly all night, like a rabbit-heart bared, still beating. When I tried to look at it directly, it made itself invisible.

I went downstairs and made some coffee, then turned on the television, and laughed. Sitting primly before me on the screen, like boys at a spelling bee, the Running Buds were yukking it up with a pretty, petite woman, and she was giggling like a fool. It was a repeat of their interview on the Daybreak! show. But I only caught the end. The woman thanked the Buds for being on, and the camera cut away to a very handsome reporter who was striding purposefully forward.

"For the past week," he was saying, "professional divers have been trying to reach the bottom of this nine-mile glacial New York lake, in order to see if Glimmey, the 'monster' that was discovered last week, is the only one of its kind. Remarkably, not one single diver has been able to reach the bottom. This lake is so deep that the divers cannot swim any deeper than four hundred feet below the surface. Today, however, that will change. Today"--the camera slid off center to show a bright yellow machine beside the reporter--"a deep-sea pod will go under the fabled waters of Glimmerglass and will discover what, if anything, lives so far beneath the surface of this placid, lovely lake. And," he said with great solemnity, "exactly how deep the lake goes." Here, the camera shifted again, to show my lake, pink and golden in the sunrise, wreathed with wisps of fog.

I turned off the television and looked toward the lake, saw the yellow pod heading out like a bullet into it on an overlarge pontoonlike contraption. I watched until it faded, and then I turned away so I didn't have to imagine it tunneling into the dark waters of the deepest parts of our lake.

AT PRECISELY SEVEN, the front doorbell rang. I was afraid for the moment that it was Ezekiel Felcher--I hadn't gone out the day before, but I had seen his truck parked in front of our house for quite a few hours--and almost decided not to answer it, for fear of losing my temper and smacking him a good one across the face. But then I began to think of calamities that could have befallen my mother; a semi running over her as she walked home from the hospital, one meth-crazed loony shooting up the hospital, a peaceful aneurysm that came over her as she did the shift-ending paperwork, and I ran to the door, fast, tears already in my eyes.

When it opened, it was all I could do not to let those welled-up drops fall, as all six of the Running Buds were standing there, grinning at me, saying their gentle "heyyy."

"Willie Upton!" said Frank Phinney. "We heard you were in town. What are you doing, girl, not coming out to run with us? We are mortally offended, kid. I'm not sure we'll be able to forgive you."

"Don't listen to him. Nice hair," added Johann Neumann. "You look good, Vilhelmina."

Tiny Thom Peters, my pediatrician, held out a white paper bag glistening with arcs of grease. "We brought doughnuts," he said, smiling up at me. "I promise not to tell Vi."

"Buds," I said, looking at these sweaty old men in their running gear, their legs almost indecently hairy in the soft morning. "It is wonderful to see you."

IT MUST HAVE been an hour that we sat at the table, but I began to feel a peace that I hadn't felt since I came home on the day the monster died. The Buds were their charming selves, spilling gossip and speculation. I learned that a baseball player who had just been inducted into the museum had had a little affair with a sixteen-year-old Templeton girl, and everyone was hopping mad. I learned that Laura Irving, Big Tom's daughter, had run away three weeks earlier, and nobody knew where she was. That's why he looked so fleshy, heavy. I learned that since I came home, I have been looking "pissed, pissed, pissed. Everyone told us so, so we came to see for ourselves."

This is what Doug Jones, my handsome high-school English teacher, said. He winked at me, then said, "But you don't look so angry to me. Just sad, I think."

For a moment, they just sat there watching and waiting for me to say something. To confess, I suppose, to what made me return home. I thought of telling them about Primus Dwyer and my arctic adventures, about the little nut of a Lump inside of me. But Tom Irving had sold me my car for fifty dollars; Doug Jones had cast me as Juliet and Desdemona; Sol Falconer had given me a college loan, and, as he was rich and childless, it was a loan that I was in no danger of ever having to pay back.

So I looked at them and remembered then the first time the Buds and I became aware of one another. It was June and I was four, and I had somehow learned that the Presbyterian Church was having an ice cream social on its broad lawn. I had only ever once had a bite of ice cream; one of my mother's male "friends" had slipped me some on a long silver spoon in Cartwright Cafe when my mother's back was turned, and I loved it. From what I knew of heaven, there it was, on my tongue: sweet and soft and cool and filled with surprising truffles of nut and fruit.

So the afternoon of the ice cream social I walked away from Averell Cottage, which was easy to do because my mother was painting the dining room walls, and the house was far too big to be able always to hear what a quiet four-year-old was doing in it. I went up the block and trudged past the Bold Dragoon and up the long hill toward the church. Though Frank Phinney was Jewish on his mother's side, Johann Neumann Lutheran, and Thom Peters Catholic, all of the Buds were there with their families, since the ice cream social was a Templeton institution, and no self-respecting gossip could possibly not attend.

By four years old, I had also somehow learned that if I spoke in a small, sad voice, and said that I had no father, I had a great mystical power over adults, and, mainly, over men. And so, when I leaned on tall Sol Falconer's knee, gazing hungrily at his rocky road cone, and he asked me what was wrong, and I whispered that I had no money and, softer, that I had no father to buy an ice cream for me, he leapt up and came back with a cup of vanilla.

"Here, sweetheart," he said, squeezing my little hand, and I stole off behind the bushes to eat the marvelous new food.

Tom Irving was my next target, because he was dozing in a lawn chair, and nobody else was around him. He smiled at me and bought me some mint chocolate chip, giving me a great fat kiss on the forehead. I was feeling wild and jittery by the time I approached Doug Jones, who was feeding his baby from a bottle. He looked at me a little skeptically--I had multicolored rings around my mouth by then--but handed me the remains of his bubblegum ice cream.

"Alas," said the English teacher. "I find I cannot eat with sad little waifs sighing nearby."

I think I stole, outright, Frank Phinney's death-by-chocolate, and he let me, laughing, and I was screeching around the church lawn like an airplane with the other children when Vi came charging up the hill. In the movie of my memory, she comes up the hill as grim and huge as a terrible troll, accompanied by organ music in a minor chord. But she was not quite twenty-two then, still had her baby fat, though her hair was always stringy and her face never quite lovely. She was much smaller than she became later, but to me, at four years old and guilty of unimaginable badness, she was immense. And when she collared me and saw the ice cream melted all over my body, her eyes bulged and she said, "Oh no, Sunshine. No, no, you're allergic to sugar!" and the men's faces paled and dropped. They, too, were frightened of her, I saw. And when, perhaps from suggestibility or too much of the rich food, I started retching everywhere, they rushed over in a six-man herd and apologized until my mother put the puking little me over her arm and walked back home.

From then on, the Buds looked out for me. And now, when they were asking me what was wrong, I just couldn't tell them the extent to which I had failed.

"Oh," I said, trying to smile. "The usual. Heartbreak. Blah blah blah."