Hippomobile! (5 page)

That made a light bulb turn on in our heads, but then Grandpa Homer asked, “Why in the world would hippo mean ‘horse' in any language?”

That sounded like a good question to us, but we didn't know the answer and shrugged our shoulders. We were in kindergarten, after all, and didn't even know there was any other language outside of the one we talked.

Even Grandpa Virgil nodded his head and said, “Point well took, Homer.”

And Grandpa Homer said, “I'm at the conclusion that why Gottfried Schuh called it a hippomobile is just gonna remain one of them mysteries of nature.”

Since we both liked mysteries and thought nature wasn't too bad, neither, we asked, “So what ever happened to this mystery of nature?”

“Why, it's still in the old shoe factory down on Hill Street,”
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Grandpa Homer said.

“It is?” That news floored us more than the wood planks beneath our feet.

“Maybe we should take 'em there right now, Homer. Whaddaya think of that idea?” asked Grandpa Virgil.

And we shouted, “Take us, take us!”

And so it was settled.

We'd never been all the way to Hill Street before, and so walking all the way down there, as Grandpa Homer and Grandpa Virgil were proposing, was a right big adventure for us, and we were as excited as jumping beans. But we'd hardly even gotten off the square when Grandpa Homer and Grandpa Virgil started in with their singing.

Now, don't mistake us; we enjoy a lot of them songs of theirs. Even back then, we knew several by heart and were glad to sing right along with them. But the song they picked for our hike down to Hill Street was so full of “sweethearts” and soft words and sentimental thoughts that we almost wished we hadn't said we wanted to see the hippomobile in the first place. And here's just two lines from that song so you know we ain't exaggerating none:

 

Let me call you “Sweetheart,” I'm in love with you
.

Let me hear you whisper that you love me too
.

 

And the worse thing about it was that them lines were the refrain part of the song that they came back to over and over again like a dog to its dish. But we just stuck our fingers in our ears and hiked on like troupers. Soon, though, we turned a corner, and that lifted our spirits. We looked up at the rusty street sign hanging there crooked and read
HILL STREET
on it and knew we couldn't be far off now. And smack-dab there at the end of the street was an old brick building sitting there all by itself and surrounded by nothing but weeds.

We took off running and had time to inspect it before our grandpas got there. It was all closed up tighter than a secret, and the windows were too high to look through even when we jumped. We soon found a loose brick no higher than our chins on the side of the building. We tried to pull it out, and when that didn't work, we got a stick and shoved it in and heard the brick hit the ground on the other side. We peeked in, kinda like looking through a hole in a circus tent, but we didn't see no trapeze and no elephants, neither. In fact, it was too dark in there to see anything at all.

“Well, you two coming or ain't ya?” Grandpa Homer asked. We jumped out of our skin because there he was, standing right behind us.

We followed him around front, and there was Grandpa Virgil waiting with a giant key that looked to us more like a knucklebone. But he used it to unlock the door, and when he did, the door squeaked louder than a fiddle.

We let our grandpas go in first because it was mighty dark and cobwebby, and there was no telling what was lurking in there. We kept awful close to the doorway, at least until our eyes adjusted so we could see better. And once they did, we still didn't see no trapeze and elephants. But we saw something, all right. It was big and black and huge and went almost all the way up to the ceiling. It didn't remind us of anything we'd ever seen before, and we'll admit that we took a step closer to each other.

But it didn't seem to bother Grandpa Homer none. He went right up to it and took hold of a piece of it. Then he tossed it at us, and we caught it before we even had a chance to scream and jump out of the way. And it's a good thing we didn't scream and jump, because alls it was, was a shoe.

“That's one of them Gottfrieds we was telling you about,” Grandpa Homer said.

“Them are all the shoes he never sold,” Grandpa Virgil said. “Poor feller.”

There were hundreds of them, too. Thousands.

Then Grandpa Homer and Grandpa Virgil took us around the corner into the back room. The windows weren't so dusty back there, so this time we could see right away what we were standing in front of. It looked like a giant horse carriage on three big wood wheels, and the wheels were as tall as us. Up front we saw a big horn attached to it that looked like it could blow your ears off. There was a tall steering wheel that didn't look like it could ever do a driver any good, and it was sticking straight up in front of the bench where you drove at. All in all, it was a strange contraption, but it was also the coolest thing to play on we'd ever seen in our lives. We didn't even mess with asking and climbed right up it faster than a squirrel up a tree.

The horn just coughed out dust and didn't work none, and the steering wheel was all stuck. But that just meant we had to make our own noises instead, and that had never been much of a problem for us.

We yelled, “Watch out, grandpas!” like we were heading straight for them. But it didn't seem like they even heard us.

Grandpa Homer was saying, “Ain't she somethin'?”

Grandpa Virgil said, “A real beaut, Homer. A real beaut.”

“The pride of Wymore back when we was kids.”

“Don't I know it, Homer. Don't I know it.”

Then Grandpa Homer and Grandpa Virgil pulled out their hankies and blowed their noses so loud, we thought the horn was working after all.

“Would be somethin' to see her run again,” Grandpa Virgil said.

“You can say that again,” said Grandpa Homer.

But Grandpa Virgil didn't have a chance to, because we said it first.

No telling how long we stayed there playing on the hippomobile and how long Grandpa Homer and Grandpa Virgil stood down there reminiscing. That's what you call it when old people talk about the olden days and wipe their eyes and blow their noses.

We ended up having such a good time that on our walk back into town when Grandpa Homer and Grandpa Virgil decided to sing their song again, we even sung right along with them.

 

 

 

 

NOW, IT AIN'T LIKE
we never saw the hippomobile again after that first day. Once we grew up another notch on the wall, Mom agreed we were finally old enough to go down there and play on it by ourselves. We'd found out that playing on the hippomobile was just part of growing up here in Wymore. Pops told us he didn't do no different when he was our age, and even Mom had to admit that she played on it once or twice when she was just a girl in pigtails. The only problem was summer. Mom didn't want us leaving the square when she was off working, and Grandpa Virgil wouldn't give up that knucklebone key for nothing in the world, not even for a barbershop full of long-haired customers with long bushy beards. Like Grandpa Homer sometimes says, life ain't always a bed of roses.

That's why we were as excited as a hen house about that letter we found in
The Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing
. Because we was counting on it saying at least a little something about the hippomobile, and anything having to do with the hippomobile always made our eyes see stars and our hearts beat quick. Plus, we were sure as eggs is eggs that a few of our grandmas and grandpas would be interested right along with us. So we jumped right off Old Tom Wood to go and tell them. Stella scraped her prayer bones
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some upon landing, but that didn't matter. And when Jimmy landed, he said, “Ow!” but that didn't seem to matter none at the time, neither. We just both brushed ourselves off and raised a good deal of dust on our way back over to Mabel's.

Now, by that time of day, you could usually find our grandpas and grandmas out and about in town. Grandma Winnie would be zooming around town in her golf cart at five miles an hour, and Grandma Pearl would be walking back and forth on the square in her safari suit, swinging her metal detector in front of her. Grandpa Chester was usually sitting on the bench outside Mabel's with a transistor radio pressed to his ear, listening to a ball game, and Grandpa Bert swept the sidewalk in front of his haberdashery at least three times a day, so you were bound to see him. The same went for Grandma Elsie, who was always tending her daisies out front of her flower shop. But that day when we turned the corner, the town looked as empty as a cookie jar. The wind had picked up, and dust was swirling around on the street corners like little twisters. That's all we saw, and that was too bad, because we were ready to shout out our discovery to everybody.

So we ran over to Mabel's, and once we got the screen door open, we stumbled on through like tumbleweeds, ready to reveal our big surprise. But we noticed straight off that something was wrong. Sitting there at a table in the middle of the café was Grandma Mabel and Grandma Ida, and they never sat down on the job like that. Our other grandmas and grandpas were sitting around them like in a football huddle, and the TV weatherman report was turned off. In fact, the silence in the café ran so high it filled the cracks in the ceiling, and all the faces in there were as long as a rainy day. The only thing moving was the little fan up front on the lunch counter, rotating back and forth and making the pages of a menu flutter a bit in the breeze.

Even so, our excitement was popping out of us like a cork, and we couldn't help but shout, “Look what we found!”

But nobody so much as raised an eyebrow.

 

 

 

 

LATER THAT NIGHT WE
were up in our beds, studying our long list of presidents. We couldn't concentrate, though, and were really just waiting for Mom to call us like she did every night at dot nine o'clock and not a single second thereafter. Nine o'clock was right before we went to bed
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and right before Mom went to work. That graveyard shift of hers always sounded spooky to us, no matter how many times she said it wasn't really a graveyard. Alls it was, was just a huge warehouse with conveyor belts that transported gazillions of packages. It was Mom's job to stand there all night and sort them out. It didn't sound like a bed of roses to us, but Mom didn't complain none.

“Let's try it again, Jimmy James.”

“I ain't in the mood, Stella.”

“I didn't ask you your mood. George Washington.”

“John Adams.”

“Thomas Jefferson.”

“. . .”

“I'm waitin'.”

“Did you say Thomas Jefferson?”

“I did.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“Don't you remember who comes next?”

“Not exactly.”

“Me, neither. But at least we're up to three now.”

We stuck our lists back on our bulletin board and stared at the clock some more.

Our hotel room only has one phone in it. When it rings and we both wanna talk, we have to share, so we often bump heads as we try to hear what Mom's saying. She usually just says the same old stuff, like asking us if we brushed our teeth, even the ones way in the back, and if we combed our hair, and if we talked to our plates before meals,
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and if we were eating enough. Mom wouldn't be Mom if she wasn't worrying about something.

That night everything was so different, though, that Mom didn't even get around to asking none of her questions. We picked up the phone in the middle of the first ring and banged our heads together like two pool balls and shouted, “Mabel's is closing!” without even saying howdy or nothing. That's what all the long faces were all about earlier that day when we ran into the café like we had just discovered electricity.
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