Grab Bag (15 page)

Henry took out the fancy box with the voluptuous brunette lithographed inside the cover, and held it over the counter. Dan carefully selected three cigars and stowed them in his waistcoat pocket.

“I’ll give one to ’er old man. Good politics.” He winked, plunked down a dime and a five-cent piece, and turned to go. Halfway to the door, he paused.

“Say, Henry,” he drawled, “did you ever find out who it was broke into your store that time?”

Henry’s mouth drooped. He shook his head. “No, Dan, we never did.”

Sue stepped to his side, her white apron snapping. “Not till just this minute. Thank you very much.”

She took down the slate and picked up her slate pencil. In clear block capitals she printed, “DAN POTTLE OWES $49.57.”

Dan blustered, but he paid. One didn’t try to weasel on a woman like Sue.

MY FATHER HAD TWO
beautiful sisters. Both lived exceptionally long lives, both were widowed, and both kept their looks to a surprising degree. When well along in years, one of them was in fact wooed but not won by a childhood sweetheart who’d gone out west and made his pile. My father was incensed at his sister’s trifling with an honest man’s affection by accepting his candy and refusing his suit. He didn’t actually do anything but fuss about the matter and start me playing the writer’s game of “What if?” What if this had happened when Dad was a boy? What if she’d been the boy’s great-aunt instead of his sister? What if the whole family took a hand in the wooing?

By the time I’d got a plot worked out, nothing was left of the actual incident but the melachrino creams. This is what often happens. People ask, “Where do you get your ideas?” You get them from something that happens, something you see, something you hear, something you touch, something you dream … it doesn’t take much to set you off. And by the time you’ve turned the original motivation inside out and upside down and twisted it six ways from Sunday, you couldn’t possibly explain the process to anybody else and you’ve probably forgotten it yourself. Writing is tough, but seldom dull. You never know what you’ll pull out of the grab bag next.

“The Courtship of Miles Peabody” appeared in
Yankee,
November 1965.

“It’s disgraceful,” snorted my father. “She’s got no right to keep taking them.”

“Miles Peabody can certainly afford two pounds of melachrino creams a week,” said my mother.

“But she’s eating them under false pretenses.”

“Now John, you know Aunt Julia’s the last person in the world to do anything improper.”

“If trifling with the affections of an honest man isn’t improper, would you kindly tell me what is?”

Pop was getting mad. I could see the back of his neck turning red where it bulged out over his Sunday collar. In a minute, the ends of his mustache would start to twitch. They’d been twitching a lot since Miles Peabody got back to town.

It had all started one Sunday back in May. I’d skinned out of church ahead of Pop and Ma while they stopped to talk the way they always do. I was leaning against the big elm tree out front, wondering why it always has to rain on Saturday and be nice on Sunday when you can’t do anything that’s any fun, when I noticed a commotion over by the church steps.

A lot of people were buzzing around a dapper-looking old geezer I’d never seen before. I was just going over to see what the excitement was about when Mum and her Aunt Julia came out the church door. I have to admit they looked pretty swell with their pinched-in waists and boned lace collars up to their ears and new spring hats all over silk flowers and big bunches of ribbon.

Aunt Julia’s still vain about her looks even if she is almost a million years old. Fifty, anyway. She was putting up her lavender parasol in case she might get a freckle or something when she noticed the stranger.

“Miles Peabody!” She sailed down the steps with her long skirts streaming out behind her and waltzed up to the geezer like he was her long-lost brother.

“Julia! After all these years,” I heard him say. “And more beautiful than ever.”

I decided any gink who could say something as sappy as that to my great-aunt couldn’t be much. Anyway, Jimmy Hogan came along just then, so I went off with him. But when I got home, darned if I didn’t find the guy sitting on our parlor sofa with Aunt Julia.

“Miles,” said my father, “this is my son Davy. Shake hands with Mr. Peabody, son.”

When I’m Pop’s son Davy, that means he’s in a good mood. I stuck out my hand so as not to spoil it.

Mr. Peabody didn’t make any smart cracks about fine little chaps or favoring my Uncle Fred. He just shook hands and said, “Glad to know you, Davy.”

“I’m glad to know you, too,” I said.

After a while, I really was. Mr. Peabody was just back from out west. He’d panned for gold in the Rocky Mountains and lived in Indian camps and … well, he was just a snorter. He didn’t mind if a kid asked questions, even.

He had a stickpin in his necktie made out of a nugget from his own gold mine and a genuine timber wolf’s tooth on his watch chain that he’d shot himself when it was sneaking up on his cattle ranch. The wolf, I mean. He’d ridden horseback through herds of buffalo and shot rapids in a canoe and been down the Mississippi on a steamboat. There wasn’t much he hadn’t done.

The only trouble was, he kept stopping in the most interesting places to make some goofy remark about Aunt Julia. I wondered if maybe he’d got kicked on the head by a buffalo or something, but Ma and Pop didn’t seem to notice anything strange so I had to make believe I didn’t, either.

Mr. Peabody stayed to dinner and most of the afternoon and we got to be real good friends. Then we all walked him and Aunt Julia back to her house. Uncle Hiram left her this big place on Maple Street that she lives in all alone since she finally got Ma’s two cousins married off. She asked Mr. Peabody in for a cup of tea, which is a sappy thing to offer a man who’s shot a timber wolf if you ask me. He seemed real tickled, though.

“I don’t see why she couldn’t have asked us, too,” I said after my parents and I started home by ourselves. “I wanted to ask Mr. Peabody some more about that train that he was snowed up in going through the Rocky Mountains.”

“You’ll have plenty of time for that, Davy,” said Pop. “I expect we’ll be seeing plenty of Mr. Peabody from now on. He’s made his pile, now he’s going to sit back and enjoy it, he tells me. Smart man.”

“It’s so romantic,” said my mother. “In all those years he never forgot her.”

“Her who?” I said.

“Aunt Julia, of course.”

I don’t know why Ma always gets sore when I ask the simplest question. “What in heck for?”

Pop snickered, but Ma give him a look. “They were childhood sweethearts, Davy. I remember my mother teasing Aunt Julia about her old flame Miles Peabody when I was a girl. I don’t know why he didn’t marry her, but he went out west instead and she married Uncle Hiram and that was the end of it.”

“Looks to me as if it’s only the beginning,” said Pop.

He was right as usual. Mr. Peabody took a room at the Manor House and began sending Aunt Julia candy.

I got him going on that, I guess. We happened to bump into each other Monday after school and he invited me into the ice cream parlor. We had a real good time. Finally, while I was digging out the last of the strawberry syrup with my spoon, he asked me, “What does your Aunt Julia like best in all the world?”

“Melachrino creams,” I said. “She’s crazy about em.

So he went over to the candy counter and picked out the fanciest two-pound box they had. He told the clerk to wrap it up nice and send it to Aunt Julia.

“Do you want to put in a card?” the clerk asked him.

“Just write ‘With Miles Peabody’s compliments.’”

After that he kept sending her a box every week. He sent flowers, too, which seemed pretty dumb to me because she had a garden full already. He rented a buggy and took her driving. He took her to the Strawberry Festival and the County Fair. There wasn’t hardly any place he didn’t take her and all she ever did back was offer him a cup of tea once in a dog’s age.

I finally asked Ma. “What’s Mr. Peabody always hanging around Aunt Julia for?”

“Because he enjoys her company, naturally.”

“Then why does he look so glum all the time?”

Ma was up to her elbows in bread dough and looking pretty hot and flustered or I don’t suppose she’d have spilled the beans. “Because she won’t marry him,” she told me.

“Won’t marry
Mr. Peabody?
She must be crazy,” I said.

Ma got sore. “Davy, don’t you dare breathe a word of that to anybody. It’s nobody’s business but Aunt Julia’s. She’s just not in a hurry to get married again, after Uncle Hiram. I mean, he left her comfortably provided for. Now go and play or something.”

That night at supper I asked Pop, “Don’t you think Aunt Julia’s crazy not to marry Mr. Peabody?”

Pop choked on his soup, then he laughed. Not his big, jolly laugh but his short barking laugh he uses when he wants to cuss and can’t in front of Ma. “Aunt Julia’s got bats in her belfry, if you ask me.”

“Now John,” said my mother.

“Damn … I mean drat it, Alice, here’s your aunt stuck with that big house and no man to take care of it for her. She calls me over there for some dratted thing or other about sixteen times a week and I’m pretty d-dratted sick and tired of it, I don’t mind telling you. Now here’s Miles Peabody, nicest fellow she’d ever want to meet, plenty of cash in his pockets, wanting to settle down and make her a darn sight better husband than she deserves, in my frank opinion. So what does she do but turn up her nose and go right on stuffing herself with his chocolates?”

“Now John,” Ma said again, “don’t go getting yourself all worked up.”

But there’s no use telling Pop not to work himself up when he’s got a good mad started. He got so the ends of his mustache would start twitching every time he even heard Aunt Julia’s name mentioned. The night she came over about the pump, I expected him to explode.

She came sailing up the walk in her lavender silk dress and her big hat with the purple bows on it. “John,” she said, “I don’t know what’s the matter with that sink pump of mine. I can’t raise a drop of water.”

Ma and I held our breath. But Pop just grinned.

“Sure, Aunt Julia,” he said. “I’ll come right this minute. You probably just need a new washer. Run down to the cellar and get my tool kit, will you, son?”

I brought Pop his tools and tagged along to carry the box for him. I had a hunch he was up to something. Pop can think of the darnedest things when he gets going.

He started off quiet enough, tinkering away at the pump with his sleeves rolled up and one of Aunt Julia’s aprons tied around his middle to keep his pants clean. Aunt Julia was standing beside him holding up a lamp so he could see what he was doing. I was handing him the wrench and stuff. All of a sudden he sort of grinned to himself and I knew it was coming.

“Seen the burglar yet, Aunt Julia?”

“What burglar?” I thought she was going to drop the lamp.

“Oh, haven’t you heard?” Pop sounded so innocent I wanted to bust out laughing. “Broke into two houses out on the Millville Road, they tell me.”

He held up the old leather washer, offhand-like. “See, there’s your trouble right there. Won’t take a minute to … hand me that jackknife like a good boy, Davy. Yep, they say he snoops around till he finds a woman living alone, then he forces his way in. Oops, I didn’t mean to scare you, Aunt Julia.”

“You’re not scaring me, John.” she said. But she didn’t sound as if she meant it.

“Gosh, that’s a relief. After all, a big house like this with so much nice stuff around, some women would be worried stiff about having no man for protection.”

“I had twenty-six years of your Uncle Hiram. That’s enough man to last me a lifetime, thank you.”

“Not all men are alike,” Pop argued.

“You don’t know what they’re like till you’re stuck with one, and then it’s too late. If you think I’m going to make the same mistake twice, you’ve got another thing coming.”

“Well, it’s your business, not mine,” said Pop. “There, now she ought to do.” He gave the pump handle a couple of tugs and it worked fine. “Got the tools packed, Davy? We’d better be getting along. I don’t want to keep the kid out late,” he whispered to Aunt Julia. “Just in case, you know. You sure you’ll be all right here alone?”

“Quite sure,” said Aunt Julia. “I’m much obliged to you, John.”

“Think nothing of it. I expect Alice will drop over in the morning, just to make sure you’re all right. Be sure to lock your doors and windows. Though they do say … but there, I don’t want to get you worked up over nothing. You might want to take the dinner bell up to bed with you. You could ring it out the window for help, if you got the chance. Get a good night’s sleep, Aunt Julia.”

He waited till we were out of earshot, then he snickered. “If she does, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.”

“What are you going to do, Pop?” I asked him.

“None of your beeswax, kiddo.” He ruffled my hair. “Just keep your flytrap shut, eh?”

I grinned. “Sure, Pop.”

He came into the house whistling and scooted me off to bed. I didn’t go to sleep, of course. I waited till it got good and dark, put my clothes back on, and shinnied down over the porch roof. I scrooched down in the lilac bush and kept my eyes peeled.

Sure enough, around midnight Pop came tiptoeing out and I tell you, if I hadn’t known who he was, I’d have been plenty scared. He had on his old dark brown sweater that he wears around the yard and a cap pulled down over his eyes, and a scarf or something tied around the bottom of his face. He’d slung a sack over his back and you’d swear to goodness he was a real burglar.

For a big man, Pop can move mighty quiet. He snuck across the back yards like a cat after mice. I followed, keeping well behind so he wouldn’t catch me and send me home. Of course Pop did all the things a real burglar wouldn’t. He walked up bold as brass to the dining-room window that was right under Aunt Julia’s bedroom, then he took a crowbar out of his sack and smashed the windowpane.