The 25¢ Miracle Page 3

  “Well, like I said, I was just talkin’ to her, and she says that your Uncle Roy and Roy Jr. and her might be comin’ through here in about six weeks—somewhere around the end of August.…” Hank’s voice trailed off again. He seemed to be having a hard time saying what he wanted to say.

  “Yessir?” said Elvira, trying to help him out.

  Hank cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Well, you know, they got a big old house up there in Sulphur Springs.… Well, I’m forgettin’ myself—you been to that house, ain’t you? You remember that Christmas we spent up there.…”

  “Yessir.” Elvira remembered that Christmas, all right. She had been eight years old, and she had worn the new dress that Hank had bought for her especially for the holiday. It was red with white trimming—$14.95 at K-Mart—a lot for Hank to be spending—and Elvira had felt real proud and pretty…until she had overheard Aunt Darla (who had dressed her substantial self in red, too, so that she looked an awful lot like a giant-sized version of a molded Jell-O salad that Elvira had seen one time at the Piccadilly Cafeteria) talking to Uncle Roy in the kitchen:

  “Did you see that tacky little dress he’s got her in? It just breaks my heart, that’s all. He don’t have any idea about how to do for a little girl, and I intend to tell him so, too.”

  Elvira hadn’t waited to hear any more, but she had hated Aunt Darla after that. She hated her for saying her dress was tacky and for calling her Ellie and for being so fat. And she hated Uncle Roy and Roy Jr., too. She hated them for their identical boringness. It seemed to her that all they ever did was nod their twin pinheads and agree with everything Aunt Darla said. And she hated the white plastic Christmas tree, and she hated the taco casserole they had had for Christmas dinner—whoever heard of taco casserole for Christmas dinner?—and she had been glad beyond belief when Hank had quarreled with Aunt Darla and had taken Elvira and slammed out of the house long before the day was over.

  But all she said to Hank now was, “Yessir, I ’member.”

  “Well, you liked that house, didn’t you?”

  Elvira hesitated. It was always easier to say what Hank wanted her to say, and Hank wanted her to say that she liked Aunt Darla’s house, though she couldn’t imagine why he cared if she did or not. Anyway, she decided that it wouldn’t be a lie to say that she liked it. It wasn’t the house that she didn’t like; it was the people in it.

  “Yessir, it was all right.”

  “Well, I guess so. Your Uncle Roy told me he paid seventy thousand dollars for that house. I guess he’s made hisself some money, all right.… Funny thing, I never did think Roy Bledsoe would ever be worth a nickel.”

  Hank seemed to be talking more to himself than to Elvira. She wondered why in the world they were having this strange conversation.

  “You know, Sulphur Springs is a nice town, too,” Hank went on. “A real nice little town… Don’t you think so?” He looked hard at Elvira now, as if it really mattered to him what she thought of Sulphur Springs.

  “Yessir,” Elvira said politely, although she hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary about Sulphur Springs. It had looked pretty much like all the other towns they had passed through in their wanderings.

  There was another pause. Hank seemed to be right on the edge of saying something else—of coming to some point. But instead, all he said was, “Well, I was just—just wonderin’ what you thought about it, is all.” He got heavily to his feet.

  Hank’s head was thudding painfully. He hadn’t said a third part of what he had intended to say. But he had to get out of the trailer now; it felt like it was closing in on him. He just had to get out for a while.…

  “I got to go see a man about some work,” he said in a strained voice. “I’ll—I’ll see you later on, all right?”

  “All right.”

  Well, he sure was actin’ peculiar, thought Elvira, once Hank had gone. It was like—like he had somethin’ else on his mind the whole time.

  Suddenly, a wonderful thought struck her. I bet he’s thinkin’ about my birthday, she told herself. I bet he’s gonna surprise me, like on that old “I Love Lucy” show, when Lucy thought Ricky and Fred and Ethel had all forgotten about her birthday, and then it turned out they were plannin’ on surprisin’ her all the time. I bet that’s it, all right—all that talk about Aunt Darla and her house and Sulphur Springs—that was just to throw me off the track. Well, I’ll hafta act real surprised, even though I already figured it out. He’d be real disappointed if I let on that I knew all along.

  She decided to wait and go back to the library the next day. She didn’t want to be downtown when Hank got home, just in case. She fixed herself some tuna fish. Celery seed and mayonnaise—that was all she put in it—that was the way she and Hank liked it. No onions. Elvira hated onions. Aunt Darla probably puts onions in her tuna fish, Elvira reflected, as she mixed it up. She put the tuna fish between two slices of bread, and then another idea came to her. She’d have herself a picnic. There was a hill just a little way down the road—not a real hill—this was the flattest of flat country—just a little mound of earth that had been piled up by the bulldozers when the highway was built. But it looked pretty much like a real hill now that grass and clover and a few stumpy trees and bushes had grown up on it. Elvira liked to go over there sometimes and sit and just sort of think things over. She could easily see the entrance to the trailer park from there, so she’d be able to see when Hank got back, and she could run home in five minutes. That would make the surprise even better, if she gave him a chance to set it all up. And then she’d come running in, acting like she didn’t suspect a thing.

  She packed her lunch and walked to the hill, humming a little as she went.

  There was a big old ant bed right on the top of that hill. Black ants—not red ones—not the biting kind. Elvira wasn’t one bit scared of them; they were sort of pets of hers. She sat down beside the ant bed and ate her sandwich and drank her Thermos-ful of milk, and then she took a stick and poked a few tiny holes in the bed. The ants came pouring out.

  “Okay, now, y’all don’t get mad—look, I brought you some lunch.” She dropped the crumbs of her sandwich down where the ants couldn’t miss them, and then she watched as the ants poked and prodded and worried over the crumbs. “Look—you missed one over here. That’s it. There you go.… Oh, you’re just showin’ off—you ain’t big enough to carry that all by yourself! Well, look at that, you got some muscles, don’t you? Naw, you leave him alone, now. He got it first.…”

  She liked the ants. She liked to wonder about them—if they ever thought about anything. She had this idea that maybe they had set up little tiny ant temples underground, where they preached about the great goddess Elvira and prayed to her to keep on sending down manna from heaven. Elvira had learned about manna from heaven a long time ago, when her mother used to make her go to Sunday school. Elvira wasn’t all that religious herself. The only person she had ever known to be really gone on God was Noreen Able, and that wasn’t saying much for God. Nobody with a lick of sense ever put any stock in anything that came out of Noreen Able’s mouth.

  Noreen Able had sat in front of Elvira in Miss Reba Foxworth’s class in Angleton. Noreen claimed to be a close personal friend of the Holy Ghost. She used to brag that He had inspired her on at least five separate occasions, and that, on the last one, she had spoken in tongues. Elvira had never believed a word of it.

  She sat on the hill a long time, watching the ants with one eye and keeping the other one on the highway and the entrance to the trailer park, so she wouldn’t miss Hank’s pickup truck. The sun beat down on her head. The sky was blue as blue could be; not a trace was left of the early morning rain.

  She sat there for a long, long time. The pickup didn’t appear. Finally the sun sank, away off to the left, over toward Houston. The sky turned reddish-pink, then purple, and the first stars glimmered in the gathering darkness.

  Star light, star bright,

  First star I see tonight,

/>   I wish I may, I wish I might

  Have the wish I wish tonight.

  She was too old for nursery rhymes, but they were always running through her head. Her mother used to read them to her out of an old book with a checkered cover—over and over and over again. I wish I may, I wish I might…

  Well. It had been silly of her to think that Hank was going to surprise her. He had just flat forgotten, that was all.

  It didn’t matter. Birthdays didn’t really matter, except to little kids—cakes and candles and birthday wishes and all that stuff. That was for little kids.

  She walked back home after a while. It was past suppertime, so she fixed herself another tuna fish sandwich. She ate half of it, wrapped the other half in tinfoil, and put it in the ice box. She turned on the television. Nothing very good was on. Everything was reruns this time of year. Don Rickles was hosting “The Tonight Show”; Elvira didn’t care for him as much as she did for Johnny Carson. The Sands of Iwo Jima was on channel thirty-nine. Hank would have liked that, but he wasn’t home yet, and Elvira didn’t feel much like watching it by herself. She and Hank had already seen it about forty-seven times.

  She brushed her teeth. Hank always made a big deal out of her brushing her teeth. He said he couldn’t afford dentist bills. She probably should have taken a shower—Hank was big on showers, too—but suddenly she was too tired to do anything else. She was tireder than she had ever been in her whole life. She climbed into bed, and sleep started tumbling everything together in her head.… ’Bye, birthday girl, you come back soon.… No guarantees worth piddly squat… You, too, can have year-round roses.… Star light, star bright… Make a wish, baby! Don’t you want to make a wish?… It don’t matter, Mama…. My birthday’s over, anyhow.

  4

  Elvira woke up the next morning in a foul humor. The air was hot and heavy and generally disagreeable, and it smelled funny, too. The wind must be blowin’ from over by that old Goodyear plant again, she thought disgustedly.

  Hank was still asleep. Elvira supposed he had been out late again last night. This worried her a little; Hank didn’t usually stay out late like that two nights in a row.

  She walked outside with a drink of water for her rosebush. The last of the yellow blossoms had fallen off, and the leaves were beginning to break out in ugly brown splotches.

  “You don’t look too good,” she told it irritably, as she poured the water in the dirt around it. “What’s the matter with you, anyhow?”

  She started to go back inside the trailer, but then she stopped and sighed and turned around half-apologetically. “Look, I’m gonna get some books that’ll tell me how to do for you. They got ’em over at the liberry. I’m fixin’ to go right now, so you just sit tight till I get back, you hear me? Don’t you dare die.”

  She went inside, got the library card application, and was on her way out the door again when a picture of Miss Ivy floated in front of her mind. She could see her just as clearly as anything, all sweet and pretty and ladylike. And suddenly Elvira was conscious of her own dirty feet and grubby fingernails.

  It don’t matter, she told herself. Nobody cares what you look like. She prob’ly wouldn’t even notice.

  But all the same, she went back to the bathroom and took a quick shower. She even washed her hair and cut her fingernails.

  Well, that’s a big improvement, she told her reflection when she was done. Now you got sawed-off fingernails and hair that looks like wet string. But at least you’re clean.

  And at least today she wasn’t afraid of the old gray castle/church/library. It didn’t look any less forbidding than it had the day before, but Elvira felt older and wiser now. She went inside, looked sideways at the Wicked Witch of the West (Why, she ain’t a witch atall, thought Elvira—she’s just ugly as homemade sin, poor thing), and climbed the spiral stairs fearlessly.

  Miss Ivy was by the window. “Good morning, glory,” she called, when she saw Elvira. “Don’t you look nice today!”

  Elvira flushed. So Miss Ivy had noticed, after all.

  “Thanks,” she murmured.

  “I was sorry you didn’t make it back yesterday afternoon, but I hope you were busy having a fine time. Was it a good birthday?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Elvira. “It was all right.” The words sounded pretty lame and lonesome, and suddenly she found herself embellishing. “My daddy, uh, he—he took me out to eat.”

  “Oh, how nice! Where did you go?”

  “Oh, uh, well—I-I cain’t remember, exactly—the—the name of it, I mean—I think it was—well, it was a M-Mexican restaurant.…”

  Elvira wished the earth would open up and swallow her. The way she was blushing and stammering, any fool could see that she was lying through her teeth.

  But apparently Miss Ivy wasn’t just any fool—or, if she was, she surely didn’t let on that she had noticed anything. Her blue eyes didn’t even blink. “Well, that must have been quite a treat,” was all she said, and then she changed the subject. “I’ve still got your rose books here, safe and sound. Were you able to get your application signed?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Elvira, handing it to her.

  “Wonderful,” said Miss Ivy. She looked it over. “Elvira—why, what a pretty name! I don’t believe I’ve ever met an Elvira before.”

  “Me, neither,” said Elvira. “I mean—’cept for me.” Well, that was a dumb thing to say, she thought. But Miss Ivy didn’t seem to think so.

  “I’m the only Ivy I know, too,” she said. “I was always glad of that.” She smiled, and suddenly Elvira felt sure that an unusual name was a fine thing to have.

  “All right, Elvira, this will only take a minute.” Miss Ivy got out another card and typed all the information from Elvira’s application onto that.… Then she put that card in a little boxy machine that made a peculiar punching noise when she stuck some other cards in it.… Then she put date-due cards in all the pockets of the rose books.… Finally, she handed the stack of books to Elvira. “They’re all yours,” she said. “At least, for two weeks.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.” Elvira hesitated. She was glad to have the books, but she really didn’t feel all that much like leaving. She almost wished she had some other excuse to hang around. But she couldn’t think of any.

  “Well, ’bye,” she said, after a minute.

  “Good-bye, Elvira,” said Miss Ivy. “Hurry back and tell me how your garden grows.”

  Elvira smiled. That old nursery rhyme—that had been in her mother’s checkered book, too.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Elvira. “I sure will.”

  For the next few days, Elvira’s head swam with Floradoras and Charlotte Armstrongs and Crimson Glories and Red Pinocchios. She read about roses from morning till night. She even skipped Johnny Carson to find out the difference between an everblooming hybrid and a hybrid perpetual, just in case it mattered. She read till her eyes ached, but nowhere in any of those books could she find one word about a Davidica rose. She began to suspect that the slick-haired man who had sold it to her had just made it up. But whatever her rosebush was, it was no wonder that it was dying. The more Elvira read, the more clearly she saw that she had made enough mistakes to kill off any rose grown on the planet earth.

  In the first place, she should never have bought a plant with the flowers already on it. That wasn’t the way to do it at all. The flowers were supposed to come later. And she should never have planted it during the summer. The books all said that you should plant roses in the spring—or maybe in the fall, in a pinch—but never, never in the heat of the summer. And then the soil was all wrong—it should have been “a rich, deep loam,” or “a balanced combination of soil, sand, and gravel, mixed with some well-rotted manure”—not just plain old Texas dirt. And she had planted it all wrong, too; she should have made the hole deeper, so that no roots were lying flat.

  “I’m sorry,” she apologized to the rosebush, when she had exhausted all the books and not found much comfort in any of them. �
�I sure didn’t mean to hurt you. I never wanted to do that.” She picked up a withered leaf and turned it over in her hand. “Maybe if I start again, you’ll do a little better. At least I can dig a deeper hole for your roots—I sure can do that. But I cain’t do anything about it being summer, and I just don’t know where I’m gonna get you that stuff you need. You really ought to have some of that well-rotted manure.… I don’t know, maybe buryin’ them Wheat Crackles around you wouldn’t have been such a bad idea.… But don’t you worry, you hear me? I’ll figure out somethin’.”

  That afternoon, she walked back over to the library. The books seemed a lot heavier than they had when she had taken them home. They weren’t even close to being due, but she didn’t want them around her anymore. They made her feel like a murderer every time she looked at them, with their full-color illustrations of gorgeous, healthy roses and their impossible rules about how to grow them.

  “Why, Elvira, it’s nice to see you again,” said Miss Ivy, when the girl plunked the books down on the desk. “Don’t tell me you’re already finished with all of these!” Her tone was admiring.

  “Yes, ma’am, I read ’em all.” Even though she was feeling kind of low, Elvira was glad that Miss Ivy was impressed. And she had remembered her name, too. That was something, wasn’t it?

  “Well, my goodness, you’re quite a reader, aren’t you? I hope they helped you.”

  Elvira really didn’t feel as if they had helped much, but she didn’t want to hurt Miss Ivy’s feelings. She had worked so hard to help her find them. So she said, “Yes, ma’am—they—they did fine.”

  “Oh, good,” said Miss Ivy. “I’ll bet your roses are going to be just beautiful now.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I guess so. They’ll be real pretty. I mean, they’ll be—well, they’ll be…” She stopped. A picture of her rosebush, all scraggly and pitiful, had just come into her mind, and she couldn’t say any more. The lie stuck in her throat.