Lavender-Green Magic (5 page)

It was good that they did not have to wait too long. The bus came to a stop. Grandpa and Crock took Mother's suitcases over for her. She kissed Holly and Judy and went
across the road, to climb up the steps quickly, as if she could not say anything now either. Then the bus snorted and it was gone. Holly raised her hand and waved, though she was sure Mom could not see her, then let her arm fall.

“Freshenin' up a mite.” Grandpa led them back to the dingy truck. “You young'uns get yourselves in the front now. Don't want none of you to turn to ice 'fore we get there an' back again.”

Crock sat crammed in next to Grandpa, Judy perched on Holly's lap. Most of the outer world was hidden by her body, and Holly was glad. She had not cried, but it was a battle not to.

The truck swayed as it turned from one street to the next, then it pulled into a driveway and around to the back of a big dark house. They scrambled out as Grandpa shut off the motor. Here was a stable barn, not as big as the one at Dimsdale. The doors of it were all shut and the windows boarded over. But at the side of the large door were some barrels and boxes, and with them a couple of old and very large trunks with broken hinges and many dents.

“Here we be,” Grandpa said cheerfully. “Lucky nothin's too heavy to shift.”

Crock was eager to get at that shifting, but Judy and Holly held back. Holly frankly did not want to touch the dusty, dirty stuff, and perhaps. Judy felt the same. But with Grandpa looking as if he expected their help, the girls moved in.

It was when Holly found a much smaller trunk, behind the large one, and it broke out of her grasp (it was such an awkward thing to carry)
that the pillow fell out on the ground. It was small (more a pillow for a baby, or maybe a large doll), and the slip which covered it was patterned all over with lines of stitching that did not even try to make a picture, but just ran round and round in broken circles. She picked it up hastily from the ground and a scent came from it, a strange smell which seemed—no, Holly was not quite sure what the smell made her think of. She tucked the pillow inside her windbreaker and the scent kept coming up into her face every time she moved. Such a queer thing—but, somehow, important. Why, she could not have told.

They had shoved the boxes and the two trunks into a shed, Grandpa saying that what these contained could be sorted later. From what she could see, Holly did not think there was much worth using. But both Crock and Judy seemed to believe that there might be treasure hidden under the top layers of trash, Grandpa having told them stories all the way back from town about things which he had found from time to time.

“Folks,” he announced, “don't rightly know what they've got sometimes. They want to clear out th' attic, or th' cellar quick so they just pitch out stuff without lookin' 'cause they say they ain't got th' time or nothin' good would be stuck away there nohow. Now you take that trunk—”

“It's all broken up,” Holly said. With Judy on her lap, leaning back against her, the smell from the pillow stuffed inside her jacket seemed stronger than ever. She was still uncertain whether she liked it or not. And she began to wish
she had tossed it back into one of the boxes before they had driven off.

“Yes, it sure is.” Grandpa did not seem at all annoyed by her interruption. “But it can be fixed. An' nowadays some folks pay good money for them old trunks—paint 'em up pretty—Mr. Correy, he's sold three of them what we found, a couple lookin' even worse'n this to begin with. Th' Elkins, now they's an old family, been 'round here ever since there was a town—them an' th' Dimsdales. So we'll take care when we go over this here trash stuff—no tellin' what'll turn up.”

“We can help, Grandpa?” Crock demanded.

“You sure can. Need some sharp young eyes.”

Even Holly felt a stir of curiosity.

Then Grandpa continued: “We can't git to it today, nohow. Mrs. Dale, she's bringin' out some o' th' Cub Scouts this afternoon. They wants to go through th' toy shop—see what they can get fixed up for their fair next month. Always sell good at th' fair, an' then they'll pick out what can be made up as good as new again for the young'uns over to th' home.”

So the trash, or treasure, from the Elkins place was stored in the shed, and they went back into the barn all very ready for the food Grandma was putting on the table. She had opened a small door set into the wall of the big fireplace to slide out, using a small shovel with a long handle, a big brown crock.

“Sure gives a man an appetite, Mercy”—Grandpa stood unwinding a very long scarf which went several times around his neck and then had the ends tucked in under his coat—“just to go sniffin' 'round in here.”

“Beans an' pork,” Grandma said briskly. “Fillin' enough. You get it all in one trip this time?”

“Yes. Seein' as how I had some good help to hand.” Grandpa nodded at the children.

“Water an' soap waitin', over there.” Grandma thumped her glasses into place and nodded at a bench to one side. There were three basins there and a dish with a queer lumpy bar of soap in it. A big can of water stood at the end.

Grandpa sloshed some of its contents into all three basins and beckoned. “Wash up it is, 'fore we git to Mercy's table.”

Crock followed him over. Judy looked dubious, but obediently started for the bench. This was so different from running upstairs to the bathroom to wash at Mom's bidding. Holly again felt that need to be safely home where all was ordered and—right! She unfastened the zipper of her jacket and took it off slowly. As she did so the small pillow bumped out and fell, almost right in front of Grandma as she came with her quick steps to put a platter of sliced bread on the table.

Holly picked the cushion up. The scent from it was now almost too strong. And it did not feel like a regular pillow, rather as if it had been stuffed tight with bits of leaves, or grass.

“It fell out of a little old trunk when we were loading,” Holly said quickly. “It's a pillow—I think—” Now, seeing it in the light, she almost doubted her first impression. It was too small for a bed pillow, surely, and not pretty enough to lie out on a divan or couch.

The material which covered it was coarse and yellow. And
the embroidered lines on both sides ran around and around in circles which were broken here and there, as if some of the stitches had unraveled. Even if those lines had still been firm and complete, it would not have been a pretty design, not like the crewel-stitch pillows with ferns and flowers Mom had made last year.

Mom had made—Holly's hands tightened on the ugly little pillow. Her throat closed up and hurt again. Mom—who was gone with all the rest of that life which was safe and happy.

Grandma set the bread down on the table. Now she held out her hands, and Holly surrendered the pillow. She was glad to be rid of the dirty old thing. Grandma turned it around, looked carefully at the broken circles on either side, took her fingernail and pushed a little at the old stitches by one of those broken places in the circle. Then she raised it up to her face to take a long, long sniff.

“Lemon balm, costmary.” She sniffed again. “Rose petals, mint—an' cloves an'—something else I can't rightly set name to.” She favored the pillow with three more long sniffs. “No, me, I can't figure out that there last one. But with the rest—why, this here is an herb pillow, Holly, one made for them as can't sleep good at nights. Miss Elvery—now she had one she used when she had one of her headaches—showed me how to make 'em. For them you put in mints, an' bee balm, an' some orris root. But this is a sight more interestin'. That linen's real old, wouldn't surprise me none if it were hand wove, has th' look o' it. An' just about as good as th' day 'twas made, too.” She squeezed the pillow
energetically. “Insides might be gone all to powder. But this here”—she started tracing the design on the upper side with her finger and then stopped—“that do remind me of some-thin'. Only I can't think jus' what at the minute. Laws, them beans is coolin' off. Go set this up with th' fixin's in the china stall, Holly. I'd like to think a bit more about this here—puts me in mind—only I can't remember what it puts me in mind of now.”

Holly plumped the pillow down on a vacant portion of one of the shelves holding the broken china and washed in the basin. The soap, for all its strange appearance, smelled good—spicy. When she came to the table, Judy was pointing to an unusual thing made all of metal tubes cut off at one end but fastened to each other, open ends up, in a block. “What's that, Grandma?”

“That there's what earns me a bit of pin money, Judy. Mr. Correy, he lets me put out some things in his shop. An' I make herb candles in that. People like th' smell of them, it seems. That there mold, I'll wager it's nigh as old as this town. Now, Luther, will you say grace?”

Holly dutifully closed her eyes and listened to Grandpa's words about the food the good Lord had given them. He added something about Mom, and then about Daddy. She tried to shut her ears then, for fear she would be babyish enough to cry.

She took a big mouthful of the beans as quickly as she could. They
were
good, as good as the stew last night. Holly found she was hungry, after all.

“Grandma”—Judy spooned up the last mouthful of something
Grandma called hasty pudding and served with maple syrup poured over it—“why don't you have any real lights, like we have at home?”

“Well, Miss Elvery—she didn't have no money to pay for 'em runnin' a line in when they brought the 'lectricity out this way. An' after she died an' the town took over Dimsdale, th' folks there weren't gonna pay for it. Selectmen, they don't pay out not a dime more'n they have to. Me an' Luther, we'd always used lamps an' such. It just come natural to us. Just like using well water an' some other things folks in town think is strange nowadays. My mammy, she was real poor, Judy. Only she was wishful for all of us to do better, an' we did. My brother, Jas, he went on the railroad an' did right well for hisself. Missy an' Ellie May, they went to th' big city, got themselves smart jobs workin' for families as 'preciated all they done.

“Me an' Luther, we done well, too. We ain't livin' off'n no relief an' we got us our own home place. Luther has hisself a good business here. Your daddy, he was always one as wanted to get ahead, too. He went clean through high school. Then he joined the army—said as how he was going to learn a lot there. 'Cause the recruitin' man told him as how there was chances to learn a trade, even if you did it while you were soljerin'. He got right good at what he was doin'—th' radio thing. Did so good”—Grandma stopped a moment in her stacking of their pudding bowls—“done so good that th' Colonel hisself wanted him with him in Vietnam, said he knew he could depend on Joel. I guess Joel, he was kinda pleased to be goin', too—in some ways. He always had a
hankerin' to see 'round th' world. Lawsy, how he used to get out all them old
National Geographic
magazines we fetched in when people came dumpin' an' jus' read and read. Got me an' Luther to readin' along with him.

“We never had much schoolin', you see. 'Cause we had work to do. Luther, his pappy died when he was jus' about Holly's age here, so he went to work then over to th' sawmill at Riverton. His mammy sure was able to use what he brought home. But he could read, an' figger, an' write—an' you can keep on learnin' if you're not lazy-minded. You come an' look here—”

She turned away from the table abruptly, beckoning so urgently that not only Judy, but Crock and Holly followed her away from the warmth of the fire-stove portion of the barn toward the more chilly space at the far end. Here were more shelves nailed to the portion of the last stall on the outer side. And these were crowded with books. Some looked badly battered, had even lost one cover or two. But they stood straight, and Grandma touched her fingers to the backs of the nearest ones gently.

“Library—we've got a library to our ownselves. Me an' Luther, we've read nigh every single one of these here. 'Course th' library truck comes around twice a month, down to th' Forks. But it ain't always easy to get down there, not in winter. Th' country men, they cleans off th' main road, but in winter th' lane's sometimes too snowed up to make it. But we ain't without books, even if we can't git down to the truck.”

Crock inspected the shelves. “They're real old, some of them, aren't they?”

“Guess so. Miss Sarah, she takes those the library can use, but there's a lot left over. Magazines, too. So we got ourselves a library an' it's a good thing to pass th' time when it's winter an' we ain't got much business with th' junk. I found me a parcel o' books about herbs. Them I keep right to hand 'cause I try things they tell about—they being old an' sorta forgot in these days. There's some books for young'uns, too. But mind you, treat 'em right. Books should be real treasures, I always think. A lotta thinkin' an' hard work must go into writin' a book.

“Now then.” She returned to the table. “Mrs. Dale is bringin' out those Cubs of hers after school, so we have to git everything smartened up a bit. Luther, you an' Crockett here, why don't you go an' see as how things back in the toy stall are loosened up a mite so as they can crawl around an' look at 'em good. We'll just clear way these here dishes—”

A little to her own surprise, Holly found herself with a dish towel made from an old sack in one hand, using it on the warm plates, mugs, and bowls that emerged from the big tin pan in which Grandma vigorously plunged them, while Judy took them when dry to stack on the proper shelf.

“Many hands make light work,” Grandma said. “That's an old sayin' an' it is a true one. I'm glad Mrs. Dale is comin', gives you young'uns a chance to meet her. She teaches fifth grade at th' big school—”