This Side of Jordan (14 page)

He drank another glass of water, and belched.

The dwarf was in the yard outdoors, fooling with the birdcage. Alvin could hardly see through the dirt-smudged windows, but he heard him plain as day. Rascal had crawled into the cage where the fox had torn a hole and was fiddling with the dangling perch, making it swing.

A small door just outside the kitchen pantry led down to the basement and a quick peek from atop the stairs showed it was darker than a cow's innards, so Alvin left the kitchen for the dining room, telling himself again there wasn't no harm done just looking around. He wasn't a thief. One day if he ever got healthy enough to work again, he'd own a house of his own, and if somebody ran in while he was away and didn't do nothing except have himself a glass of cold water, why, that'd be all right. A mahogany sideboard across from the dining room table displayed a set of small porcelain jars with flowers painted under the rims and a silver tea service beside the jars. Dust covered everything and Alvin guessed the fellow didn't drink much tea, nor had any use for little jars with flowers on them. He opened the top drawers to the sideboard and found white lace table covers and linen napkins neatly folded one on top of the other. He saw a fine set of silverware, too, then shut the drawer to prove he wasn't tempted. He listened briefly to a pair of catbirds chirping in the hackberry. Wind clattered at the backyard door. The interior of the house smelled musty. Alvin went into the front room where the mantel clock was ticking.

This reminded him of Uncle Henry's parlor on the farm: a couple of shaded table lamps, two easy chairs and a fancy green velour Morris chair, an old phonograph console beside a long sofa, a Windsor upright piano, a blue Axminster rug in the middle of the floor, and a crystal set on an oak Bible stand near the fireplace. Alvin considered switching on the radio, but thought better of it. His sisters did nothing except listen to radio shows, hour after hour at home. They favored those fellows that sang and played the ukulele and cracked jokes. He didn't care for none of that. He and his daddy and Uncle Henry only tuned in when there was a horse race or a boxing match. One night they heard Jack Dempsey knock a fellow out quicker'n lightning. Uncle Henry jumped up out of his chair and shook a fist at Alvin and his daddy, cackling,
“Now you see it, now you don't! Now you see it, now you don't!”
Alvin's daddy had bet fifty cents on the other guy.

He picked up one of the magazines piled on a walnut table and riffled through it. He stopped at a lingerie advertisement for Hickory Shadow Skirts and gave a good once-over to the smiling girl posed in her undergarments.
“Begin to know the comfort, beauty, and style of Hickory. Ask for Personal Necessities by Hickory. At your favorite notion department.”
Almost before he knew it, he'd torn the page out of the magazine, folded it up, and stuck it into his shirt pocket. Then he slipped the magazine under the bottom of the pile and pretended he hadn't noticed it was there at all.

He went over to the staircase. There was a cob pipe left on the newel post, half-full of tobacco as if its owner had intended to bring it with him, but had forgotten. Alvin could hear a shade flapping at an open window upstairs. Family photographs decorated the stairwell, rising to a stained glass window at the top of the steps. As the farm boy mounted the staircase to study the portraits, he heard a squirrel land on the rooftop from one of the shady hackberry trees. Then the dwarf came into the house through the kitchen, letting the screen door bang closed behind him. When Rascal called out, Alvin went upstairs.

At home, his bedroom was in the rear attic with a window facing over his mama's vegetable garden toward the pinewoods north of York's peacock farm. He'd painted a sign that ordered his sisters to keep out. Though Alvin protected his own privacy, an irresistible curiosity sent him up these stairs to the top where a short hallway led to three bedrooms and a toilet closet. He felt jittery. It was scorching under the eaves, airless and humid. Wind had sucked the bedroom doors shut, so the hall was dusky beyond the stained glass window. He paused outside the nearest door and listened to the window shade flapping in the draft. Downstairs, the dwarf was wandering room-to-room, calling out Alvin's name as if they both belonged in the house. The radio came on, spilling orchestra music into the silence, then switched off again. Alvin opened the door in front of him and peeked inside. It was a young boy's room, cluttered with cowboy paraphernalia and wooden aeroplanes and toy soldiers. There was a single bed and a nightstand and a writing desk beneath the window. On the wall above his bed was a large movie photograph of Tim McCoy from
War Paint
and several others of Douglas Fairbanks and Rod La Rocque and Rin-Tin-Tin and Mickey Mouse. The boy's writing desk was covered with paper thumbnail sketches of automobiles. His bed was carelessly made and a pair of denim overalls lay on the floor by the closet. Alvin went to the open window and lifted the shade and took a look outdoors where he could see clear to the grassy horizon, miles and miles away. Nebraska seemed almost as lonesome as Kansas. Old farmhouses. Silos and barns. Dirt and sky. Wind probably most days. On the way here, he had seen a remarkable sight: fields of cornhusks unattended to, stalks wilting, wildrye and hound dogs chasing through the empty rows, ash barrels stuffed with fodder, the dust of wheel-worn roads blowing to heaven.
No point in owning the land,
his daddy once told him,
if you aren't willing to do nothing with it. Work it, or it'll go tired on you. Won't grow nothing, won't feed your children. A man who won't work his own land, deserves to live in a house built by strangers.

Alvin heard the dwarf at the bottom of the stairwell, so he went back out into the hall. He knew it was wrong sneaking around like this, yet he couldn't help himself. At least he hadn't stolen nothing. Chester hadn't told them not to go indoors. Besides, they'd gotten thirsty sitting in the creek bed and it was hot as blazes out. What did he expect? Alvin went down to the room at the end of the hall. Inside was nothing but a common iron bed with brass knobs and a mattress with a green blanket and a feather pillow, a plain oak bureau, and a small chamber-set table and lamp. No rug on the floor. Bare walls painted white. Like living in a stall, Alvin reflected, without the straw. There ought to at least be a pretty picture or two on the walls. He had a few swell boat pictures in his attic room and a racy tabloid photograph of Peaches on her honeymoon that Frenchy had gotten for him in Chicago. Alvin didn't hold much for decorating, but he knew what he liked.

Stifling a cough, the farm boy went back across the hall to the next room just as the dwarf arrived on the second floor landing. From the door, a smothering odor of sweet lilac filled Alvin's nostrils. Inside, he found a shade-drawn bedroom jammed with lavender draperies and gilt curtain bands, a grand chamber suite in carved black walnut: bed, chiffonier, dresser, washstand and mirrored wardrobe, a marble top center table with an ormolu kerosene lamp, brass cameo miniatures, and a blue china vase stuffed with frayed peacock feathers. The bedroom walls were adorned with wire-hung paintings and floral lithographs and the floor covered by a crimson tapestry rug. Velvet pincushions and stuffed pillows were piled upon the bed under a fringed gauze turnover canopy. Awed by the elegant clutter, Alvin wasn't sure he ought to go in. He'd never seen such a pretty bedroom in his whole life. Aunt Emeline had some fancy stuff all right, and so did Granny Chamberlain with her porcelain dolls and papier-mâché, but how a lady in a house as plain as this could fix out her room so swell, he couldn't figure. No doubt somebody had some pretty high coin.

Promising himself not to bust anything, Alvin walked into the middle of the bedroom. The ceiling overhead was painted like the summer sky outdoors, fluffy clouds drifting about here and there, tiny swallows on the wing. A vine of stenciled ivy encircled the outer border. If he hadn't known better, he'd have thought the lady who slept in here was a queen. On the dresser were Ivorette hairbrushes, and hair combs and tuck combs, nail files, lingerie clasps, perfume bottles, skin lotions, Pompeian night cream, a powder puff box, a pair of bevel glass bonnet mirrors, and a Mavis 3-piece set. How could anyone on earth ever use all that?

The dwarf came into the bedroom behind him, holding a cloudy glass of lemonade.

Alvin frowned. He hadn't seen any lemons in the kitchen.

The dwarf asked, “Why didn't you answer when I called?”

“I didn't hear you,” Alvin lied, checking his look in the dresser mirror. His freckles were nearly hidden under the dust on his face. He felt hot and grimy and knew he needed a bath. Maybe Chester would hire a couple of rooms in a hotel later on after supper.

“Wasn't the creek refreshing?” the dwarf asked, strolling across the rug, a dreamy look of contentment on his misshapen face. He sipped from his glass of lemonade.

“It ought to be,” the farm boy replied, as he sorted through a pearl button collection in a corner of the dresser top. “That water's cold enough to freeze the whiskers off a brass monkey.” He stared at the dwarf's drinking glass. “Say, how come you didn't fix me up with a lemonade?”

“You didn't wait for me,” Rascal said, walking over to the dresser.

He plucked a Japanese fan from a dry rosewater and glycerine bottle, and carefully unfolded it. “He's a widower, you know.”

“Who?”

“The fellow who lives here.”

“How do you know that?”

“I read a note of bereavement downstairs,” the dwarf explained, replacing the fan. “His wife Annabelle passed away a year ago Christmas. Apparently it was quite unexpected.” He put down his lemonade and opened a top drawer, rummaged around a little, then took out a jewelry box and sprung the clasp, revealing a splendid assortment of scarf pins, rings, lavallieres, necklaces and silver thimbles.

“Don't steal nothing,” Alvin warned, suddenly protective of the late woman's possessions, though he had no idea why. He didn't even know what she looked like.

“Do you think I'm a thief?” Rascal drew out a gold Daughters of Rebekah pin. “Why, I've never stolen anything in my life. I couldn't imagine stooping so low.”

“Says you.”

The dwarf returned the enameled pin to the jewelry box. “What in the dickens are you talking about?”

Alvin found a matchstick in a silver child's cup and stuck it in his mouth to chew on. He smirked at Rascal, and gave him the bad eye.

That prompted the dwarf to grouse, “I suppose this is what I deserve for traveling with a no-good like you.”

Alvin shut the jewelry box drawer. “Lay off the wisecracks.”

The dwarf picked up a brown bottle containing pure sweet spirits of nitre. “Here, try some of this. It'll fix you up all right.”

Alvin scowled, sure this was a gag. He grabbed the bottle, anyhow. “What's it good for?” Reading the label didn't offer much instruction. He didn't recognize half the words.

The dwarf giggled. “Whatever ails you, and if nothing ails you, it's good for that, too.”

“Aw, cut that stuff,” Alvin growled, putting the bottle of nitre back on the dresser top. The heat upstairs had begun to irritate him. “If you weren't so cuckoo, I'd take out my cast-iron knucks and knock you flat.”

Rascal smiled. “There's no need to offer alibis. Why, I'm more than willing to rough it up a bit. Uncle Augustus taught me several nifty wrestling holds when I was younger. If I were you, I'd think twice about who you'd be scrapping with.”

Alvin heard a motorcar coming up from the county road. He went across the hall into the plain room to look out the window, and saw Chester's tan Packard Six rolling to a stop by the front of the house. “He's back.”

The dwarf darted out of the woman's bedroom, and hurried off to the stairwell.

“Hey!” Alvin shouted, rushing after him.

The dwarf bounded down the stairs.

Alvin followed him to the first floor and went outside through the kitchen door, while Rascal left the house by the front porch. Wind kicked up in the driveway, sweeping leaves from the hackberry trees and stirring dust about the yard. Chester stood beside the automobile, his foot on the runningboard as he lit up a cigarette. The dwarf had engaged him in conversation before Alvin reached the plum tree on the side of the house. Chester flicked the burnt match away. His eyes were bright blue in the sunlight. Alvin guessed his pow-wow in Stantonsburg had come off all right. Maybe he'd even found another girl downtown to play post office with.

When Chester noticed the farm boy, he smiled and called across the wind, “Well, we made a ten-strike today, kid!”

“How's that?”

“It's like I've been telling you right along. Some fellows furnish the manure while others grow the flowers. They tried to cut in on us, but I wouldn't let 'em because they're all a lot of damn four flushers and they know it.” Alvin hadn't any idea what Chester was talking about. He coughed into his fist.

“Well, they weren't half through before I gave 'em the raspberry and put on my hat. That's when one of them got the big idea that we were all set to throw everything over and go home unless they came around pretty damn quick.”

Chester opened the passenger door and took out a small black traveling bag. Then he slung it through the air over to Alvin. The cowhide bag skidded in the dirt at the farm boy's feet. “Go on, see for yourself.”

Rascal scampered over as Alvin undid the latches. Inside, the bag looked stuffed with greenback bills.

Chester told the farm boy, “With what we got there, you could buy that whole hick town of yours and make yourself mayor.”

“Like Al Capone!” the dwarf enthused, reaching in and riffling through a handful of bills.

Chester frowned. “Don't be a wiseacre.”

Alvin just stared at the dough. Chester had told them if he cashed-in downtown, they'd be able to settle some obligations. He hadn't said anything about striking oil. Too scared to touch it, the farm boy stepped back from the bag.