Ghost Girl (16 page)

Mrs. Hoover looked up from her knitting. “Weegie!” she said as a big black dog with pointed ears ran up the porch steps. He trotted over to her and pushed his long nose into her lap. Mrs. Hoover scratched him behind the ears.

Just then two men came around the corner. “Here they are,” Mrs. Hoover said. “I knew if Weegie was here, they couldn't be far behind.”

“How was the fishing, Joel?” she called out.

“We got a few bites,” the man said, setting his pole against the side of the cabin. “But the president wasn't in the mood for biding his time.”

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Hoover said. “Well, never mind. Come have some lemonade and meet your new patient.”

Dr. Boone walked over and introduced himself, but I barely heard a word he said. I was busy watching the man behind him. I knew it was the president, but he looked so tired and pale, so different from the steady-eyed man in the portrait at the schoolhouse who calmly guarded over us every day. There were deep lines around his mouth and eyes and his hair seemed thinner and grayer. It was hard not to stare.

“Can't you sit down and join us, Bert?” Mrs. Hoover asked. “Miss Vest was just telling me a wonderful story about the barbershop she's opened.”

“A barbershop, eh?” Dr. Boone asked, sneaking a worried glance at the president.

Miss Vest smiled. “That's right. When I cut April's hair last year, all the other girls started asking me to bob their hair, too. But I was a little nervous about cutting off all those braids and getting into trouble with the girls' parents, so I've limited my business to boys. They sit on an old chestnut stump in the yard behind the schoolhouse and I go to work. . . .”

Her voice trailed off. The president wasn't listening. He was still jingling the coins in his pocket, gazing out toward the creek.

“Bert, dear,” Mrs. Hoover said, “Christine was trying to tell you—”

The president gave himself a little shake. “Oh, of course, of course. I'm sorry, Miss Vest. . . . How's Mr. Jessup doing? Has he decided to go back to his preaching yet?”

“I'm afraid not,” Miss Vest said. “He
still
doesn't think he's ready, even though he's been coming for lessons in the evenings for almost two years now. He's just about worked his way through the whole Bible.”

“I met him the other day out riding,” Mrs. Hoover said. “He told me he can't wait to cast his vote in November.”

President Hoover raised his eyebrows. “Oh, really? Who's he going to vote for?”

“Bert!” Mrs. Hoover scolded.

“Well, Lou, you never know. Loyalty's a hard thing to come by these days.” He forced out a hard little laugh. Then, before anybody could change the subject, he told us he had to go back to his office and get some more work done.

After he had gone, Mrs. Hoover turned to Dr. Boone and said under her breath, “Joel, can't you get him to take a rest this afternoon?”

“I'll see what I can do,” Dr. Boone told her quietly, then he spun around to face me and clapped his hands. “
Now
, young lady, what's this I hear about a sore arm?”

Somehow Dewey found out I was going to Washington, D.C., with Miss Vest to have my arm fixed. Ever since I had moved into the schoolhouse, we had been getting along fine. I never told anyone about his father's late-night reading lessons, and Dewey never dared to call me names or whistle the old Victrola songs anymore. But my trip to Washington must have set him off again. One day at recess he cornered me while I was eating my lunch on the bench by the new flagpole.

“So I suppose you're gonna get to visit the White House, too?” Dewey asked with his mouth all twisted to one side.

“Probably not,” I lied. I pulled an apple from my lunch pail and pretended to be busy polishing it on the hem of my skirt. “Miss Vest says we won't have much time before we have to get to the hospital.”

Dewey crossed his arms over his chest. “I reckon you ought to be thanking me for breaking that arm of yours.”

I started to take a bite of my apple, then froze, letting my mouth drop open wider. “
Thanking
you?”

“That's right,” he said. “You know your broken arm's the only reason you got to go to Camp Rapidan and now Washington, D.C.—and probably the only reason you got to move into the schoolhouse when your mother kicked you out. Mama says Miss Vest felt like it was all her fault and she felt like she
had
to take you in.”

Dewey started to turn away.

But it was too late. I flung my apple back in my lunch pail, so hard that it clunked against the metal bottom. “Well, maybe you're right, Dewey,” I said. I stood up and brushed the crumbs off my skirt. “Maybe I should thank you. I wasn't going to say so at first, but come to think of it, I'd break two or three more bones to pay for all the fun I'm gonna have in Washington. Miss Vest ordered me a new dress and a hat and my own pocketbook for the trip, and we're gonna ride the train from Charlottesville and stay in a fancy hotel and go see all the museums, and then we're gonna have lunch at the White House—”

“
Shoot
,” Dewey spit back. “I wouldn't eat horse feed with those Hoovers.”

“What are you talking about? You're the possum boy, remember? You've always fallen all over yourself trying to make friends with the Hoovers.”

Dewey shook his head. “Not anymore. Not after what they got planned for us.”

I rolled my eyes and acted like I was getting ready to walk away.

Dewey squinted at me harder. “You haven't heard, have you?” he said. “I bet you don't even know why they're making that new road across the mountain.”

“'Course I do. Paved roads are better than dirt ones.”

Dewey snorted. “You don't know nothing,” he said. “I'll tell you why they're building that road. President Hoover and his men are planning to make a big park right here—right where we're standing.” He jabbed his finger toward the ground.

Now I was the one crossing my arms. “What do you mean, a park? What kind of park?”

Dewey was almost shouting now. “I mean the kind of place where city folks come with their cars and their blankets and their camping tents. They'll be driving all over creation, nosing around and taking pictures, trying to get away from the city.”

“Where'd you hear that?” I said, letting my voice fill up with disgust.

“Everybody knows it. They're all talking about it down at Taggart's. Mr. Taggart says we ought to be getting ready to fight, because the government's gonna try to move us off our land—just because they gotta make room for a park.”

“
I don't believe a word you say
,” I said through my teeth.

Dewey put on a high, singsong voice. “‘I don't believe a word you say,'” he mocked. “Well, Miss Priss, if you're so sure of yourself, why don't you just ask those Hoovers for yourself. You're gonna be right there in the White House next week. You ask them—ask them if it ain't true they're gonna try to move us out and put a park on our land.”

“I
will
ask them,” I snapped back. “Don't you worry. I'll ask them first chance I get.”

“Where to?” the driver grunted
once he had loaded our suitcases in the back of the bright yellow taxicab and climbed behind the steering wheel.

Miss Vest winked at me. “The White House, please,” she sang out.

I could see the driver's face in the little mirror up front. He raised one eyebrow. “You want the White House, ma'am?”

“That's right,” Miss Vest said. “But not the front entrance. We'd like the north portico, please.”

This time the driver turned around in his seat to give us a hard look. “The north portico, huh?”

Miss Vest nodded. Finally, the driver shrugged and steered out into traffic, mumbling, “Whatever you say, ma'am.”

I leaned back against the leather seat and closed my eyes. My whole body felt wobbly and my head was whirling so hard I had to remind myself to take slow, deep breaths. Miss Vest had warned me—about the honking horns and the crowds of people and the tall buildings. Before our trip, she had gone through the guidebook with me page by page. But no amount of explaining could have prepared me for it—the train barreling along like a thunderstorm and the blur of farms and fields turning into acres of houses, one on top of the other.

Then there was the strange town of shacks we rode through right before we pulled into Union Station. Some of the shacks were made of cardboard and old rusted pieces of tin, and as we rumbled by I caught sight of a group of scrawny kids cooking something on a stick over an open fire.

“What was
that
place?” I asked Miss Vest as I looked back over my shoulder. One of the little girls had broken away from the fire and was hopping up and down, waving at the train.

The man in the seat behind me spoke up. “That was Hooverville, honey.”

When the man had gone back to reading his newspaper, Miss Vest leaned over and said, “You know that place wasn't really called Hooverville, right, April? He just said that because poor folks live there and some people think it's the president's fault that they're out of jobs and proper homes.”

I nodded. “
Out of proper homes
,” she had said. All at once, I remembered my fight with Dewey. According to him, we'd be living in cardboard shacks, too, once the Hoovers and the government got finished with us. But I was sure it was all a big lie, and first chance I got, I'd ask Mrs. Hoover myself and she would tell me so.

As we rode along in the taxicab, I took another deep breath, trying to push Dewey out of my mind. Miss Vest must have heard me sigh. She reached over and squeezed my hand. My hands didn't even look like my own, folded in my lap, hiding inside a new pair of white gloves. “You must be worried about the hospital,” Miss Vest said.

I shook my head. “Not too much,” I told her. Luckily, my appointment at the army hospital in Washington wasn't until the next day. Dr. Boone had said the doctors would need to break the bone again and then reset it in a cast. But with all the rushing around before the trip, there hadn't been an extra minute to think about what they were planning to do to my arm.

I sat up taller in my seat, and Miss Vest started pointing out the best sights: the U.S. Capitol and a long stretch of park called the Mall, where people sat on benches throwing bread crumbs to fat-chested birds.

“Is that the Washington Monument?” I gasped, craning my neck so that I could stare higher and higher to its sharp tip-top. I had seen it in the guidebook, looking like a giant exclamation point hanging over the city. I always wanted to use exclamation points in my writing at school, but my words never seemed exciting enough to deserve them. Now I gazed out the taxi window and pictured myself scribbling, “Tall buildings! Fancy stores! Water fountains shooting into the air!”

Then, all at once, the taxi was slowing down. “Look, April,” Miss Vest said under her breath. “We're here.”

We drove through a set of iron gates, and stretched out in front of us were acres of smooth green grass with the president's mansion sitting right in the middle like a big frosted birthday cake. Now I understood why people called it the White House. It was so dazzling white, it made my eyes water just to look at it.

A swarm of butterflies fluttered up into my throat and my hands started to sweat inside my gloves. The taxi was pulling to a stop under a stone arch and a guard was hurrying out to open the car door for us and pay the driver for our ride.

“Here we go,” Miss Vest whispered, and I slid across the seat and stepped out after her, trying to smooth down the wrinkles on the back of my dress.

An old man who called himself the chief usher and wore a tie knotted tight around his wrinkly neck was waiting for us inside. He gave a little bow and told us he would be pleased to escort us to meet the first lady. As we followed him down the long, quiet hallways, our feet didn't make a sound on the thick carpets. It felt as though we were gliding, as if the rooms to the left and the right would go on forever.

Every once in a while, the chief usher stopped and showed us something new. “The China Room,” he said, pointing at glass cases filled with plates and cups and dishes. “You can see the patterns used by former presidents.”

We glided along more until we came to a wall of statue-ladies wearing long gowns of satin and silk covered with pearls and sparkly beads. “Favorite gowns worn by first ladies of the past,” he announced in his serious voice. Miss Vest nodded. I nodded, too.

Finally, he led us up a wide flight of stairs and into a beautiful room with no corners. It was shaped like an oval and filled with light. “Mrs. Hoover will be with you shortly,” the usher said and slipped away. Miss Vest and I sat in chairs that reminded me of the thrones in the storybooks at school.