Hippomobile! (10 page)

But that night we had our own stories to tell for a change. We told him everything and more and did so all at once and at the same time and didn't bother with coming up for air until we got around to the very end of what we had to say and how we was gonna save Mabel's. And then we asked Pops, “So what's a dingsbums look like, anyway, huh?”

Pops said, “Quit your gobblin', the both of ya's. I ain't understood a lick of what you've been sayin'.”

So we had to go back and repeat everything all over again from the very beginning. This time after we finished, alls Pops had to say was, “Jeez, my back's achin' me.”

So we said, “Pops! Ain't you been listenin' to a thing we said? Mabel's is closin'!”

And Pops said, “Course I been. But what I don't get none is why you didn't get Grandma Pearl to help you out.”

“What's Grandma Pearl got to do with anything?”

“Listen, I'll admit she can be a little funny-looking in them safari suits she likes to wear. But that's just between you, me, and the fence post.”

We told him mum was the word.

“However, I reckon that if you're ever gonna find a dingsbums down at Gottfried Schuh's old property, it sure ain't gonna be by diggin' with a sprinkler and a step stool.”

“Then what should we be diggin' with?”

“Nuthin', that's what.”

“Pops, you ain't helpin' none!”

Pops said, “Diggin' like that ain't gonna get you but a handful of blisters. But listen. I'm guessin' this dingsbums of his was probably nuthin' more than an early kind of electric spark plug is my guess. 'Cause that's what Gottfried was gonna need to jump his engine. You turkeys followin'?”

We said we were, even though we really weren't.

“Good. Now, you ain't so knuckleheaded as to think that a spark plug's made o' plastic, is you?”

“We ain't no knuckleheads!” we said.

And Pops said, “Good. That means you take after me.”

“Pops, come on!”

“
You
come on. You know your Grandma Pearl is Wymore's Lady Metal.”

And we shouted, “Her metal detector!”

“Vwah lah!”
¹
Pops said. “You go back out there tomorrow with Grandma Pearl and see what you can find. I'll give you a buzz tomorrow night, and if you unearth a dingsbums, then we'll see about getting this plan of yours up and runnin'.”

“You really think?” we asked.

“First you find, then I'll think,” Pops answered.

That made us happier than a lizard in the sun.

Then Pops had to go and say, “And speakin' of thinkin', how are them presidents of yours comin' along?”

 

 

 

 

THE NEXT MORNING THERE
we were again, on our way back down to Gottfried Schuh's plot of weeds. This time we weren't pushing no wheelbarrow. In fact, we weren't even walking. Grandma Winnie had offered to take us down there herself on her golf cart.
¹

You never needed to twist Grandma Winnie's arm much to have her take you out for a ride. If she wasn't in Mabel's flipping through an old wrinkly copy of a car magazine, you could find her out tinkering on her golf cart in a pair of gray overalls that had her name stitched on them in red just like a real mechanic. Sometimes there'd be a smear of grease stretching across her forehead, though some of our grandmas and grandpas said she put that there just for looks. She also wore racing goggles and had red flames on the sides of her golf cart, but it didn't go no faster than honey dripping from a spoon.

Once we got on, Grandma Winnie said, “So, kids, let's lay some rubber!” And off we rolled, smooth, silent, and slow, to the other end of the square to pick up Grandma Pearl. She was easy to spot in her wide safari hat and that vest that had more pockets than we had fingers and toes. Plus, she was the only one standing on the corner holding a Pioneer 505 metal detector.

Earlier that morning at Mabel's over a plate of cluck and grunts,
²
we had talked to Grandma Pearl about helping us find something rare and exquisite. And before we even had a chance to explain, she held up her hand and said, “Say no more. Know all about it.”

“You do?” we asked.

“Course I do.”

“How'd you find out?”

“Take one guess.”
³

“Well, can you help us any?”

“Kids, I ain't never passed up the opportunity to find a dingsbums. Meet me at the corner of Main and Market in ten.”

So there we were, ten minutes later, scrunched in between Grandma Winnie in her racing goggles and Grandma Pearl in her safari hat. Back behind us where the golf clubs were supposed to go was the metal detector. That's what we wanted to talk all about, but Grandma Winnie and Grandma Pearl got to stirring the breeze
⁴
quite good without us. While they recalled weather events like the Giant Drought of '93 and the Huge Gales of '94 and the Blazing Sun of '95 and the Muggy Nights of '96, alls we could do was sit still and watch all the old, empty, and crumbling houses go by.

Once we finally got to Gottfried Schuh's property and the golf cart came to a complete stop, we tore off our helmets and jumped right off the back and yelled, “C'mon, Grandma Pearl, let's metal detect!”

That's when we got our first lesson on the subject. Grandma Pearl told us that true metal detectors didn't even call it metal detecting.

“Well, it ain't plastic detectin',” we said.

“Kids, it ain't called detectin' at all,” Grandma Pearl informed us. “We experts call it prospecting.”
⁵

“Prospecting? Ain't that what Gottfried Schuh did out in Alaska?” we asked.

“Indeed, he did,” she said.

Well, that was the cat's meow! Because we'd had no idea we were gonna get to be just like Gottfried Schuh.

“Now, be so kind and help pull me to my feet,” Grandma Pearl said. “My knee ain't what it used to be.” So we each took one of her hands and tugged her up into a standing position, and once she got there, she was good as grits. “Now then, let's get to work,” she said.

We followed her around to the back of the golf cart, where she put on a set of headphones that were bigger than cream-filled donuts. She plugged them into her Pioneer and turned it on, and the whole display panel lighted up like a Christmas tree. It had more buttons on it than a Sunday shirt, plus two knobs besides.
⁶
Grandma Pearl also concerned herself with “Ground Balance” and something called “No-Motion All-Metal Mode.” She was an expert, all right.

Meanwhile we went and grabbed the supplies we'd left down there the day before. After some debating, we decided we'd be best off with that claw thing and the bent screwdriver. By the time we got back, Grandma Pearl was ready to go.

“Quiet, now, and follow me,” she said. “And no talkin', neither.”

Then off we went on our very own prospecting expedition. It was even better than we'd been hoping for. At least at first. We maybe weren't climbing up through snowy mountains, and we weren't sipping ice-worm cocktails, and we didn't get to have dirty beards and smell bad, but we were stalking through weeds that came up over our ears, and bugs and insects were buzzing all around us, and we had tools with us that we were hoping we could utilize real soon.

Grandma Pearl was in the lead, gently swinging her Pioneer 505 back and forth over the ground. Right behind her came Grandma Winnie, still wearing her racing goggles. Then right behind them was us.

We were willing and prepared to spend half the morning or more pacing slow up and down through the weeds in search of a dingsbums that no one quite knew what it would even look like. So we were knocked clean out of our socks when after no more than three minutes Grandma Pearl stopped walking and held her 505 over one and the same spot and consulted her display and announced, “I got somethin' here!”

Which was our clue to get to work. So we scrambled up front and got down on our prayer bones and started scraping furious at the ground right where the Pioneer was pointing at. Grandma Pearl had told us we'd never have to dig more than three or four inches, and we thought that three or four inches weren't nothing. And besides, we couldn't believe we'd already found it!

Except for two things. One was that three to four inches ain't as little as you think. And the other thing was that we hadn't found it. Alls it was, was a stinking old rusty nail.

“Crud!” we said.

And Grandma Winnie said, “Watch your mouths!”

“‘Crud' ain't a bad word,” we said.

“It's got four letters, don't it?” Grandma Winnie replied.

“That's all part of prospectin', kids,” Grandma Pearl said. “You gotta learn to see the beauty in everything. That's a good lesson in life.” She grabbed the nail from out of our hands and stuck it in one of them vest pockets. “I tag, record, and conserve everything I find,” she said. She didn't even sound disappointed at all.

Well, a rusty nail might've toasted her bread all right, but not ours. And that was just the beginning, too. As the morning wore on, our enthusiasm for the prospecting life wore off. Here's just some of the worthless stuff we dug up: a nail, a tin can lid, a nail, a flattened-out bottle cap, a nail, some wire mesh, a screw, a nail, a small hoop,
⁷
a piece of wire, a nail, a nut, a washer, a spring, a nail, a nail, a bolt, a nail, a nail, a nail, a nail, a nail, and another cruddy nail.

Each time Grandma Pearl's Pioneer 505 beeped or buzzed, she gave us the word, and we came around and dropped down to the ground and started digging. Until finally we were close to telling her to dig it up herself if she wanted it so bad. But we knew that kind of mouthing off would get us grounded for the rest of the summer, and so we bit our tongues and just kept on digging, one nail after the next.

“I got something here,” said Grandma Pearl for the gazillionth time. “Pretty strong signal, too.” She sounded as focused and untired and excited as she had at the out-set.

Whereas we thought,
Strong signal. How exciting!
But we got down and began to scrape and dig. Soon, at least, the tip of something came to light, and we rubbed at it a bit with our thumbs and got the dirt off and were relieved it wasn't another stupid nail. Then we dug and scraped a bit more and saw it wasn't a bottle cap, neither. Then we saw it wasn't a spring, and it wasn't a hoop, and it wasn't a washer. When we were finally able to pull it out of the earth, we gave it a solid rubdown and blew on it hard and placed it in the palm of our hands. Then we stood up, and Grandma Pearl and Grandma Winnie bent down, and all four of us stayed there like that just staring at this funny-looking piece of metal.

“You think this is it?” we asked.

 

 

 

 

“
YOU THINK THIS IS IT
?”

That's what everybody was asking everybody else that whole afternoon at Mabel's. And then they'd go passing it around careful as caution from one palm to the next, with everyone getting a good look at it before handing it on. “You think this is it?”

And the whole thing was that ain't no one had a clue. Alls we did know was that it was an odd-looking critter, something like a cross between a caterpillar, a corkscrew, and a fishing hook. And we also knew that we ain't ever seen nothing like it before, neither. But that was about all we knew. That, and that Pops would be the only one who could supply us with a definitive answer, since Grandpa Buster, who used to own the auto parts store, was no longer with us. But Pops hadn't called yet, so everybody at Mabel's was left to speculating. We listened close to what our grandmas and grandpas had to say on the matter while we sat in our booth sucking on the double black cows
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that Grandma Ida had been nice enough to supply us with.