The 25¢ Miracle Page 6

  “It’s yours, all right. You earned it, fair and square,” said Miss Ivy. “Now, give it plenty of water today, and then just enough every day after that to keep the soil moist, not soggy.…”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And watch out for weeds, just the way you did for me.…”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And if you see any bugs that look like they’re hurting anything, let me know. We can dust the leaves with something, if we really need to.…”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And I guess that’s all your garden needs—except love. But I don’t need to tell you that, do I?” Miss Ivy tucked a loose strand of hair behind Elvira’s ear.

  “No, ma’am,” said Elvira. She would love it, all right. It felt as if her heart would burst, there was so much love inside it.

  8

  For a good while after Miss Ivy and the boys had gone home, Elvira just sat there on the ground in front of her garden, loving it.

  It was well past noon when it occurred to her that she was hungry. She went inside and was about to fix herself a can of macaroni and cheese, when the trailer door slammed behind her, making her jump so that she dropped the can and the pan and the spoon in a confused clatter. Hank came into the kitchen. His lips were set in a tight, straight line.

  “Got off work early today, huh?” asked Elvira. She meant it to sound cheerful, but the words fell flat. Something was wrong.

  “Ain’t no more work,” muttered Hank. “They gave the job to somebody with friends in high places. Never mind about that—where’d you get the money for all that stuff outside?”

  “It didn’t cost nothin’. I got it from Miss Ivy.”

  Hank looked perplexed. “You mean that little girl you’ve been playing with—you got all that dirt and them plants from her?”

  “N-no, sir…I guess I never told you—I meant to—Miss Ivy ain’t no little girl. She’s a lady.”

  This news didn’t make Hank any happier. “What are you sayin’ to me, Elvira? Are you sayin’ that some strange woman’s been givin’ you stuff?”

  Elvira wasn’t about to stand for anyone calling Miss Ivy names. Not even Hank—especially not Hank. She drew herself up as tall and straight as she could and made herself look him squarely in the eye. “Miss Ivy ain’t strange! She ain’t one bit strange. She’s a real nice l-lady.”

  “I don’t care if she is nice. We don’t take handouts from nobody, not in this family. And I don’t appreciate it one bit that you’ve been deceivin’ me, neither. Makin’ me think you had made yourself a friend, when all the time—”

  “Miss Ivy is my friend!” Elvira cried. “She’s the b-best friend I ever had. And she didn’t g-give me no handouts, neither. I worked hard for that stuff. We had a d-deal—”

  “Don’t you raise your voice to me, young lady!” Hank’s eyes flashed fire. “You just try and show a little respect, do you hear me? I don’t know what’s come over you lately.…” He broke off suddenly and began to pace around the little room, running his fingers distractedly through his hair so that it stood up like question marks on the top of his head. Then, as suddenly as he had started, he stopped pacing and turned to face Elvira. He looked as if he had made up his mind about something. “Look, I guess it’s gettin’ pretty plain that there’s got to be some changes made around here. I thought for a while that maybe things would work out, but I was just foolin’ myself. I can see that now.”

  A chilly feeling oozed all over Elvira. A kind of cold, clammy feeling that made her think of that old movie they had watched on television the other night—The Blob, that was it—only it wasn’t so funny now. “Changes?” she asked, in a smaller voice.

  “That’s right, changes. I’ve been thinkin’ it over some lately.… Matter of fact, I thought about it a lot.…” Hank stopped, cleared his throat, and then started again. “Well, I was talkin’ to my sister on the telephone a couple weeks ago.… You remember, I told you I talked to her before.… Anyway, we agreed—her and me—we decided that maybe it would be better for everybody if you went to live with her and her family in Sulphur Springs.” Hank’s voice had gotten lower and lower during this speech, so that it finally was hardly more than a whisper, but he might just as well have shouted. The words rained around Elvira’s ears like blows. She stared at her father, not understanding.

  “D’you hear me?”

  “Y-yessir,” she managed, with an effort.

  “Well, say somethin’, then.”

  “You mean—you mean Aunt Darla?”

  “Acourse I do. She’s the only sister I got, ain’t she? You remember I told you that your Uncle Roy and Roy Jr. and her’s gonna be comin’ through here on the way back from their vacation. We already got it all settled and planned out. You’ll go on back with them to Sulphur Springs in time for the start of school. You ought to like it just fine over there—you said before how much you liked that house.…”

  That other conversation came back into Elvira’s mind. It had been on her birthday, hadn’t it? Right about the time that Hank had started acting so strangely. Or had it been after she got the rosebush—was that when it was? She struggled to make some sense of it all; there had to be some reason.…

  “I-I c-could t-t-t—”

  “Quit stutterin’, Elvira. You got somethin’ to say, then say it.” Hank didn’t usually criticize Elvira’s stuttering, but it seemed neither of them could do anything right today.

  “I could t-take back the rosebush—”

  “Forget that blasted rosebush! It ain’t that.”

  “Then why?”

  “It’s just that, well, a girl ought to have a woman around her to teach her about—well, about female kinda things.”

  Elvira looked up hopefully. “I know about that stuff already, and anyway, I got Miss Ivy now.”

  “Don’t you interrupt me! I don’t want to hear no more about Miss Ivy. She’s no kin; she’s got nothin’ to do with this. The Trumbulls don’t need nothin’ from no outsiders. You got your Aunt Darla—she’s family—and she’s anxious to have you. She’s married to a rich man, and there’s just some things she can do for you that I could never—”

  “I don’t care about any of that!” cried Elvira. “I’d ruther stay with you. You’re my daddy.…”

  Hank gritted his teeth to ward off the pain. It made him look fiercer than ever. “You hush, now—didn’t I tell you not to interrupt me? You got to pay attention. The truth is…” Hank cast about desperately for words that would say all the right things, but none would come, and then he heard himself saying, “The truth is I want you to go, do you hear me? I want you to go. So there ain’t no use talkin’ any more about it.”

  For a moment, neither of them said anything. Silence hung in the air between them like thick, black smoke.… Somewhere in the distance, a child laughed. Elvira wondered dully what he had to laugh about.

  “You really want me to go?” Her voice was flat.

  “That’s what I said,” Hank muttered. He was glad, for once, that Elvira wasn’t looking him in the eye. “You’ll do just fine over there, once you get used to it. And your Aunt Darla—she’s crazy to have you. She ain’t never had a little girl. She’ll prob’ly spoil you rotten.”

  Elvira nodded. Something was happening to her throat. It felt as if somebody had tied a scarf around it too tightly, so that she couldn’t speak or swallow. She could hardly breathe.…

  Look,” said Hank, after what felt like forever. “I, uh—I got to go out for a while. Don’t wait up. I-I might be late.…” He wanted to get away—he had to get away and hide someplace where the pain couldn’t follow him.

  Elvira nodded again. She stayed very still, because she felt as if her head had a trillion tiny explosions going on inside it, and any sudden movement might send pieces of her brain flying around the trailer.

  Hank started toward the door. Then he stopped and stood there, struggling with himself. “It’s the best thing, you hear me? So don’t go actin’ lik
e no crybaby.”

  The trailer door slammed, and he was gone.

  No guarantees worth piddly squat. The words swam through Elvira’s mind; she couldn’t think why. She picked up the can of macaroni, the pan, and the spoon, and put them away. She wasn’t hungry anymore.

  9

  Little by little, the explosions slowed down inside Elvira’s brain, and a merciful numbness wrapped itself around her. For no particular reason she could name, she went outside and started walking. After a while, she found herself on the hill. She hadn’t really meant to go there, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. It was as good a place as any. She sat down beside the ant bed. The ants were scurrying about importantly.

  “I didn’t bring y’all nothin’ today,” she told them. “I forgot. I guess you didn’t pray hard enough.”

  The ants didn’t seem to notice, anyway. She wondered if they had ever noticed her. Probably not. They didn’t know anything; they didn’t care about anything. They were lucky.

  She stared out at the highway. The heat was making the air shimmer, the way it does in a movie when someone is supposed to be dreaming.…

  She had always had vivid dreams—so vivid that sometimes she couldn’t tell if something had really happened or if she had dreamed it. Her earliest memory was of a morning when she was very young—younger than five, anyway, because her mother had still been alive. She had awakened early, before her parents were up, and walked outside. The trailer door was never locked. And there, scattered all around in the dirt and gravel and occasional clumps of grass, were the bodies of maybe a hundred little snakes, all of them with their throats cut wide open. She had stood there, staring, not really frightened—they were dead, after all—but puzzled. And then she had walked back into the trailer. Her mother was just getting out of bed. “Mama,” she had asked, “what’s all them dead snakes doin’ outside?”

  Her mother had smiled serenely. “Why, darlin’, your daddy killed those snakes in the night. They were tryin’ to get us, but he wouldn’t let them. Now, hush—don’t wake him. He’s tired out from all that hard work.”

  Elvira had suddenly felt tired, too, and had gone back to bed. She would think about that morning sometimes and feel glad that her daddy wouldn’t ever let anything get her, but she never mentioned it again, until the day of her mother’s funeral. It had come back into her mind then, and this time, for some reason, it had seemed important to talk about it.

  “Daddy,” she had whispered, tugging on his coat sleeve (she couldn’t remember ever seeing him in a coat and tie, except for that one time; it made him look stiff and strange). “Daddy, do you ’member the time you killed all those snakes? Musta been a hunderd of ’em.”

  But Hank had looked down at her with eyes that didn’t really see her. “Hush up, Elvira,” he had said. “I never killed no snakes. Now, you keep still.”

  That was how she had found out that it had been a dream.

  She wondered now if someday she might find out that this day was no more than a dream, too. “Daddy,” she’d say, “do you ’member the time you said that I was gonna hafta go live with Aunt Darla?”

  “What are you talkin’ about, Elvira?” he’d say. “I never said no such thing. You musta been dreamin’ again.”

  No. There was no use in thinking that way. Not a bit of use. Aunt Darla wasn’t exactly dream material. Nightmare, maybe…but this was no nightmare, either. Nightmares at least felt like something. This felt like nothing. Nothing at all.

  Elvira wondered vaguely if she ought to pray, but she doubted that it would do any good. She didn’t figure that anybody would hear her, any more than she had ever heard those ants down in their hidden temples. Anyhow, she had never known anybody to actually get anything out of praying, unless she was supposed to believe that baloney about Noreen Able being best friends with the Holy Ghost. Besides, Elvira didn’t know any prayers but the “Now I Lay Me,” and that didn’t seem particularly appropriate right now.

  A bird started singing somewhere close by.

  “Shut up,” she told it. “I got to think.”

  The bird went right on singing. Elvira lay down on her back and stared up at the sky. It was high and blue… blue and high… Friends in high places—Hank had said something about friends in high places.… That’s what I need me, thought Elvira. A friend in a high place. Maybe ol’ Noreen had the right idea, after all. You’d have to look pretty hard to find a friend in a place any higher up than that.

  That fool bird was still singing. Elvira spotted it in the branches of a spindly little sweet gum tree. It was a beady-eyed, potbellied mockingbird, just as fat and sassy as Aunt Darla. Elvira sat up and glared at it.

  “I won’t go,” she said out loud. “I just flat won’t go. They cain’t make me.” Just saying it made her feel better, so she said it again. “You hear me?” she hollered at the mockingbird. “I said they cain’t make me go!”

  The bird stopped singing, eyed her disapprovingly, and flew away.

  Elvira’s brain was working again. It was as if her defiant words were magic—they had opened a door somewhere deep inside her head, and the goo started oozing out. The Blob was beginning to disintegrate.…

  She had to think. She had to think. The end of August was still three weeks away. Maybe there was still some way to get Hank to change his mind—not that Hank had much of a history of changing his mind about anything. He was hardheaded as all get-out. But there had to be a way this time. There just had to be. Because Elvira wasn’t going to Aunt Darla’s. Not ever.

  She had decided.

  She had to think. There wasn’t any use in arguing with Hank about it; she knew that. Arguing would only make him more dead-set on it than ever. What she needed was a plan. An inspiration… She thought again of Noreen Able and how she had claimed to have a corner on the inspiration market. Elvira knew it was nothing but blabber, but she couldn’t help wishing now that it had been true. Noreen had never won any prizes for brains; if she could get inspired, well, then maybe Elvira could, too. She knew it was silly, but she whispered a quick “Now I Lay Me,” just for luck.

  She had to think. She had to think.

  For the next few days, Elvira did nothing but think. She thought so hard her brain ached. It raced around like A. J. Foyt at the Indy 500—round and round and round again. It wouldn’t stop even when she lay in bed at night. Only half of her would go to sleep; the other half was thinking, thinking, thinking.…

  She thought up a thousand different plans and threw them out as fast as she thought them. She thought about all the old movies and television shows she had ever seen; she searched in every corner of her memory for a plot that might give her an idea. But she couldn’t think of a one that would do her any good. As far as she could remember, every time things went wrong for kids on television, the kids would just run away. That wouldn’t help her any—she didn’t want to run away—she wanted to stay right where she was. That was the whole point, wasn’t it? Sure it was.

  Friday came and went, and so did Saturday and Sunday, and still she was no closer to thinking of a plan. But the certainty inside her was growing steelier by the minute. She couldn’t go. She wouldn’t go.

  And then, on Monday morning, the answer came. It was as clear as a bell ringing—or a telephone ringing, anyhow—the pay phone outside of the trailer court office. (Hank and Elvira didn’t have their own private phone.)

  Hank was out that morning, talking to somebody at the Steinman Arms about a job as a night watchman. Elvira was sitting at the kitchen table, making a list in her spiral notebook. She was big on lists. She had learned that from Mrs. D. W. LeBlanc, who had taught her the second half of fifth grade back in Silsbee. Mrs. LeBlanc used to say, “When in doubt, make a list.” Elvira was, so she did:

  THINGS I MIGHT DO.

  1. Write the police an anonamous letter saying that Aunt Darla and Uncle Roy are communist spies.

  Good side—They might go to jail.

  Bad side—They might not. An
d even if they do, when they get out, they will still come get me.

  2. Tell Hank that I will die if he makes me go.

  Good side—This is the truth.

  Bad side—He probly would not beleave me.

  3. Go on to Sulfer Springs and when I get there act like that girl in The Exercist.

  Good side—They will get rid of me in nothing flat.

  Bad side—They might send me to Rusk and lock me up in the insane asilem.

  4. Last rezort. Run away.

  Good side—I wouldn’t have to go to Aunt Darla’s.

  Bad side—Where would I go? Plus of, who would water my garden while I went there?

  Elvira was biting on the end of her ballpoint pen and trying to think of a number five when somebody knocked on the trailer door. She jumped up, thinking Hank must have accidentally locked himself out. Hardly anybody else ever came to their door.

  But it wasn’t Hank. It was the tall, skinny man who worked in the office.

  “You got a phone call,” said the man. Elvira didn’t even know his name.

  “My daddy ain’t in right now.”

  “Not your daddy—you. You’re Elvira Trumbull, right?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Well, come on, then. And tell whoever it is to make it snappy. That phone oughtn’t to be tied up.”

  He didn’t sound any too friendly, but Elvira didn’t waste any time worrying about him. There wasn’t anything worth noticing about him, anyway, except for maybe his Adam’s apple, which happened to be the largest Elvira had ever seen on a human being. But her thoughts were all trained on that phone call. Who in the world would be calling her? She ran all the way to the pay phone, so that she was out of breath when she answered.

  “H-hello?”

  “Elvira, is that you? This is Ivy Alexander.”

  Elvira’s heart gave a glad little leap. “Yes, ma’am, it’s me.”

  “Well, how are you, sweetheart? We haven’t seen you in a few days.”

  “I’m just fine.…” This was close enough to the truth, Elvira figured. She was all right now that she had decided she wouldn’t be going to Aunt Darla’s. Her brain was just tired out from thinking so much, that was all.