Dandelion Wine (17 page)

“Poor boy” said her husband. “Innocent, like you say, and about to be torn limb from limb, bargain-basement day at the Honeysuckle Lodge.”

“Tom'll survive,” said Elmira, and, taking the bubbling concoction with her, hid inside a Quaker Oats box with the lid on, went out the door without catching her dress or snagging her new ninety-eight-cent stockings. Realizing this, she was smug all the way to Tom's house where he waited for her in his white summer suit as she had instructed.

“Phew!” said Tom. “What you got in that box?”

“Destiny,” said Elmira.

“I sure hope so,” said Tom, walking about two paces ahead of her.

 

T
he Honeysuckle Ladies Lodge was full of ladies looking in each other's mirrors and tugging at their skirts and asking to be sure their slips weren't showing.

At one o'clock Mrs. Elmira Brown came up the steps with a boy in white clothes. He was holding his nose and screwing up one eye so he could only half see where he was going. Mrs. Brown looked at the crowd and then at the Quaker Oats box and opened the top and looked in and gasped, and put the top back on without drinking any of that stuff in there. She moved inside the hall and with her moved a rustling as of taffeta, all the ladies whispering in a tide after her.

She sat down in back with Tom, and Tom looked more miserable than ever. The one eye he had open looked at the crowd of ladies and shut up for good. Sitting there, Elmira got the potion out and drank it slowly down.

At one-thirty, the president, Mrs. Goodwater, banged the gavel and all but two dozen of the ladies quit talking.

“Ladies,” she called out over the summer sea of silks and laces, capped here and there with white or gray, “it's election time. But before we start, I believe Mrs. Elmira Brown, wife of our eminent graphologist—”

A titter ran through the room.

“What's graphologist?” Elmira elbowed Tom twice.

“I don't know,” whispered Tom fiercely, eyes shut, feeling that elbow come out of darkness at him.

“—wife, as I say, of our eminent handwriting expert, Samuel Brown … (more laughter) … of the U.S. Postal Service,” continued Mrs. Goodwater. “Mrs. Brown wants to give us some opinions. Mrs. Brown?”

Elmira stood up. Her chair fell over backward and snapped shut like a bear trap on itself. She jumped an inch off the floor and teetered on her heels, which gave off cracking sounds like they would fall to dust any moment. “I got plenty to say,” she said, holding the empty Quaker Oats box in one hand with a Bible. She grabbed Tom with the other and plowed forward, hitting several people's elbows and muttering to them, “Watch what you're doing! Careful, you!” to reach the platform, turn, and knock a glass of water dripping over the table. She gave Mrs. Goodwater another bristly scowl when this happened and let her mop it up with a tiny handkerchief. Then with a secret look of triumph, Elmira drew forth the empty philter glass and held it up, displaying it for Mrs. Goodwater and whispering, “You know what was in this? It's inside me, now, lady. The charmed circle surrounds me. No knife can cleave, no hatchet break through.”

The ladies, all talking, did not hear.

Mrs. Goodwater nodded, held up her hands, and there was silence.

Elmira held tight to Tom's hand. Tom kept his eyes shut, wincing.

“Ladies,” Elmira said, “I sympathize with you. I know what you've been through these last ten years. I know why you voted for Mrs. Goodwater here. You've got boys, girls, and men to feed. You've got budgets to follow. You couldn't afford to have your milk sour, your bread fall, or your cakes as flat as wheels. You didn't want mumps, chicken pox, and whooping cough in your house all in three weeks. You didn't want your husband crashing his car or electrocuting himself on the high-tension wires outside town. But now all of that's over. You can come out in the open now. No more heartburns or backaches, because I've brought the good word and we're going to exorcise this witch we've got here!”

Everybody looked around but didn't see any witch.

“I mean your
president
!” cried Elmira.

“
Me!
” Mrs. Goodwater waved at everyone.

“Today,” breathed Elmira, holding onto the desk for support, “I went to the library. I looked up counteractions. How to get rid of people who take advantage of others, how to make witches leave off and go. And I found a way to fight for all our rights. I can feel the power growing. I got the magic of all kinds of good roots and chemicals in me. I got …” She paused and swayed. She blinked once. “I got cream of tartar and … I got … white hawkweed and milk soured in the light of the moon and …” She stopped and thought for a moment. She shut her mouth and a tiny sound came from deep inside her and worked up through to come out the corners of her lips. She closed her eyes for a moment to see where the strength was.

“Mrs. Brown, you feelin' all right?” asked Mrs. Goodwater.

“Feelin' fine!” said Mrs. Brown slowly. “I put in some pulverized carrots and parsley root, cut fine; juniper berry …”

Again she paused as if a voice had said STOP to her and she looked out across all those faces.

The room, she noticed, was beginning to turn slowly, first from left to right, then right to left.

“Rosemary roots and crowfoot flower …” she said rather dimly. She let go of Tom's hand. Tom opened one eye and looked at her.

“Bay leaves, nasturtium petals …” she said.

“Maybe you better sit down,” said Mrs. Goodwater.

One lady at the side went and opened a window.

“Dry betel nuts, lavender and crab-apple seed,” said Mrs. Brown and stopped. “Quick now, let's have the election. Got to have the votes. I'll tabulate.”

“No hurry, Elmira,” said Mrs. Goodwater.

“Yes, there is.” Elmira took a deep trembling breath. “Remember, ladies, no more fear. Do like you always wanted to do. Vote for me, and …” The room was moving again, up and down. “Honesty in government. All those in favor of Mrs. Goodwater for president say ‘Aye.'”

“Aye,” said the whole room.

“All those in favor of Mrs. Elmira Brown?” said Elmira in a faint voice.

She swallowed.

After a moment she spoke, alone.

“Aye,” she said.

She stood stunned on the rostrum.

A silence filled the room from wall to wall. In that silence Mrs. Elmira Brown made a croaking sound. She put her hand on her throat. She turned and looked dimly at Mrs. Goodwater, who now very casually drew forth from her purse a small wax doll in which were a number of rusted thumbtacks.

“Tom,” said Elmira, “show me the way to the ladies' room.”

“Yes'm.”

They began to walk and then hurry and then run. Elmira ran on ahead, through the crowd, down the aisle.... She reached the door and started left.

“No, Elmira, right, right!” cried Mrs. Goodwater.

Elmira turned left and vanished.

There was a noise like coal down a chute.

“Elmira!”

The ladies ran around like a girl's basketball team, colliding with each other.

Only Mrs. Goodwater made a straight line.

She found Tom looking down the stairwell, his hands clenched to the banister.

“Forty steps!” he moaned. “Forty steps to the ground!”

 

L
ater on and for months and years after it was told how like an inebriate Elmira Brown negotiated those steps touching every one on her long way down. It was claimed that when she began the fall she was sick to unconsciousness and that this made her skeleton rubber, so she kind of rolled rather than ricocheted. She landed at the bottom, blinking and feeling better, having left whatever it was that had made her uneasy all along the way. True, she was so badly bruised she looked like a tattooed lady. But, no, not a wrist was sprained or an ankle twisted. She held her head funny for three days, kind of peering out of the sides of her eyeballs instead of turning to look. But the important thing was Mrs. Goodwater at the bottom of the steps, pillowing Elmira's head on her lap and dropping tears on her as the ladies gathered hysterically.

“Elmira, I promise, Elmira, I swear, if you just live, if you don't die, you hear me, Elmira, listen! I'll use my magic for nothing but good from now on. No more black, nothing but white magic. The rest of your life, if I have my way, no more falling over iron dogs, tripping on sills, cutting fingers, or dropping downstairs for you! Elysium, Elmira, Elysium, I promise! If you just live! Look, I'm pulling the tacks out of the doll! Elmira, speak to me! Speak now and sit up! And come upstairs for another vote. President, I promise, president of the Honeysuckle Ladies Lodge, by acclamation, won't we, ladies?”

At this all the ladies cried so hard they had to lean on each other.

Tom, upstairs, thought this meant death down there.

He was halfway down when he met the ladies coming back up, looking like they had just wandered out of a dynamite explosion.

“Get out of the way, boy!”

First came Mrs. Goodwater, laughing and crying.

Next came Mrs. Elmira Brown, doing the same.

And after the two of them came all the one hundred twenty-three members of the lodge, not knowing if they'd just returned from a funeral or were on their way to a ball.

He watched them pass and shook his head.

“Don't need me no more,” he said. “No more at all.”

So he tiptoed down the stairs before they missed him, holding tight to the rail all the way.

“F
or what it's worth,” said Tom, “there's the whole thing in a nutshell. The ladies carrying on like crazy. Everybody standing around blowing their noses. Elmira Brown sitting there at the bottom of the steps, nothing broke, her bones made out of Jell-O, I suspect, and the witch sobbin' on her shoulder, and then all of them goin' upstairs suddenly laughing. Cry-yi, you figure it out. I got out of there fast!”

Tom loosened his shirt and took off his tie.

“Magic, you say?” asked Douglas.

“Magic six ways from Sunday.”

“You believe it?”

“Yes I do and no I don't.”

“Boy, this town is full of stuff!” Douglas peered off at the horizon where clouds filled the sky with immense shapes of old gods and warriors. “Spells and wax dolls and needles and elixirs, you said?”

“Wasn't much as an elixir, but awful fine as an upchuck. Blap! Wowie!” Tom clutched his stomach and stuck out his tongue.

“Witches …” said Douglas. He squinted his eyes mysteriously.

A
nd then there is that day when all around, all around you hear the dropping of the apples, one by one, from the trees. At first it is one here and one there, and then it is three and then it is four and then nine and twenty, until the apples plummet like rain, fall like horse hoofs in the soft, darkening grass, and you are the last apple on the tree; and you wait for the wind to work you slowly free from your hold upon the sky, and drop you down and down. Long before you hit the grass you will have forgotten there ever was a tree, or other apples, or a summer, or green grass below. You will fall in darkness....

“No!”

Colonel Freeleigh opened his eyes quickly, sat erect in his wheel chair. He jerked his cold hand out to find the telephone. It was still there! He crushed it against his chest for a moment, blinking.

“I don't like that dream,” he said to his empty room.

At last, his fingers trembling, he lifted the receiver and called the long-distance operator and gave her a number and waited, watching the bedroom door as if at any moment a plague of sons, daughters, grandsons, nurses, doctors, might swarm in to seize away this last vital luxury he permitted his failing senses. Many days, or was it years, ago, when his heart had thrust like a dagger through his ribs and flesh, he had heard the boys below … their names what were they? Charles, Charlie, Chuck, yes! And Douglas! And Tom! He remembered! Calling his name far down the hall, but the door being locked in their faces, the boys turned away. You can't be excited, the doctor said. No visitors, no visitors, no visitors. And he heard the boys moving across the street, he saw them, he waved. And they waved back. “Colonel … Colonel …” And now he sat alone with the little gray toad of a heart flopping weakly here or there in his chest from time to time.

“Colonel Freeleigh,” said the operator. “Here's your call. Mexico City. Erickson 3899.”

And now the far away but infinitely clear voice:

“Bueno.”

“Jorge!” cried the old man

“Señor Freeleigh! Again? This costs money.”

“Let it cost! You know what to do.”

“Si.
The window?”

“The window, Jorge, if you please.”

“A moment,” said the voice.