Then There Were Five (13 page)

“‘Sunday, August 8, 1886,' it read. ‘Today my son Jasper Joseph Titus caught a 12-pound catfish. Probably the largest ever caught in Abbot's Slough.'”

Oliver thought this over.

“So he wasn't mad, after all,” he said at last.

“So he wasn't mad, after all,” agreed Mr. Titus. “I was kinda glad to know about it.” Then he laughed a little. “But that sure was a mighty convincin' spankin' he gave me behind the barn.”

By the time he had caught another sheephead and Oliver had caught two bluegills it was time for supper. Mr. Titus's basket always contained surprises and Oliver watched its unpacking with appreciative attention. At the appearance of each item he said, “Boy!” or “Oh, boy!” with enthusiasm. Deviled eggs, oh, boy.
Boy,
minced chicken sandwiches! Orange layer cake, oh, boy, oh, boy, oh, boy!

“Yes, and root beer,” said Mr. Titus.

After they had eaten every crumb they fished some more. Minnows began jumping in the still water. The shadows deepened. There was a sound of cows returning to their barns.

“Time to go, Oliver, time to go,” said Mr. Titus, getting up from the ground in sections. “We done pretty good today. Next time we'll do better. Now, where's that dog of mine?
Hambone!
Here, sir, come here.”

Hambone appeared almost at once, bounding eagerly, his coat full of sticktights and one of his ears turned inside out.

“It's a good thing Hambone ain't a fisherman,” said Mr. Titus as they crossed the pasture. “He'd be awful unlucky.”

They negotiated the fence once more, and side by side walked up the dusty road, in shadow now. Mr. Titus's walk was a little stiffer than at midday, and Oliver's was a little slower. But they had their fish and their empty picnic basket and they were well content.

Several times they passed long lines of cows going home to be milked. They were soft-colored animals, and the dust rose in clouds about their hoofs. Great velvety melancholy sounds came from their throats. With each herd there was a little boy in overalls. Each time they said, “Hello,” and the boy said, “H'lo, catch any?” And they held up their fish for him to see.

An evening fragrance came from the woods and ditches. The sky was deepening up at the top.

“Gee, Mr. Titus,” Oliver said. “My, I wish
I
could ever catch a twelve-pound cat.”

“You will, son, you will. And bigger, too,” said Mr. Titus generously. After a moment he added, “But not in Abbot's Slough.”

CHAPTER VIII

A Noise in the Night

Cuffy had a cousin, a widow, named Mrs. Theobald. The Melendy children had never seen her but they knew about her. They knew that her first name was Coral, that she lived in Ithaca, N. Y., was very fat, had two little old white poodles, couldn't stand the heat, had fallen arches, and knew how to make the richest fruitcake in the United States.

One day Mrs. Theobald sneezed as she was going downstairs, lost her footing, fell and broke three ribs. The doctor and the neighbors begged her to go to a hospital. But no, she would not go and leave her poodles to the care of another.

“My cousin, Mrs. Evangeline Cuthbert-Stanley, will be delighted to look after me for a week or two,” declared Mrs. Theobald. “I will telegraph her.”

Mrs. Evangeline Cuthbert-Stanley, believe it or not, was Cuffy's real name, and when the telegram came she was far from delighted.

“Why, I can't just go and leave you children by yourselves,” she clucked. “Here Mr. Melendy's down in Washington for the Lord knows how long.”

“Willy's here,” Mona said. “He wouldn't let anything happen to us. And there are the dogs, and after all I'm past fifteen.”

“It's not anything
happening
to you that I'm worried about,” sniffed Cuffy. “I'm only thinking of the state the house'll get into with me gone. Rush will step out of his clothes every night, leave them on the floor, and step into clean ones every morning till they're all gone and he has to go without any. Randy will leave paint water around in glasses till they make rings on the furniture, or someone drinks one of 'em by accident and dies of paint poisoning. Mona will forget to make her bed day in and day out till I get home. She'll get talcum powder into the rug, and her shoes will collect all over the house. She's always taking them off and going barefoot nowadays. Shoes on the mantelpiece, windowsill, piano, everywhere. I know her. And
nobody
will wash the dishes!”

“What will Oliver do?” asked Randy, who was listening with grave interest.

“Oh, Oliver. Well, if you were all like
Oliver!
He's just as tidy as a little cat, aren't you, my lamb? Picked up his toys good as gold, ever since he was a baby. But I know what he will do, though. He'll disappear at bedtime meek and quiet as can be. Just disappear. And you'll never be able to track him down till he's good and ready, hours later. Next morning he'll have circles under his eyes from lack of sleep—oh, no, I can't leave you alone—”

“Yes, you can, Cuffy, yes, you can,” they told her. “On our honor, we'll be tidier than we ever were before. We'll make Oliver go to bed at half past seven if we have to tie him in.”

Almost persuaded but still reluctant, Cuffy went to pack her suitcase, and Rush, before she could relent, flew to the telephone to send her wire to Mrs. Theobald. He loved Cuffy, they all did, but wouldn't it be delicious to savor absolute freedom from authority for a while?

“But what about food?” moaned Cuffy suddenly, sitting down on her bed, with her best shoes in her hands. “Oh, I can't go. Left to yourselves you'll eat nothing but liverwurst and baloney, and jelly sandwiches and bought doughnuts and cheese. Oh, no, I can't—”

“Cuffy,” said Mona, taking a shoe out of Cuffy's hand and putting it firmly on her foot. “We will drink a gallon of milk a day. We'll eat carrots for breakfast. We'll eat spinach and oatmeal till it comes out of our ears. We'll be good as angels. We honestly, honestly will!”

“Well, all right,” said Cuffy unhappily. “But if Coral Theobald had any sense she'd of chloroformed them blame poodles long ago. Don't see how she broke her ribs anyway. All padded in fat like that—”

“Now, Cuffy, be charitable. You know you like her, she's a very fine woman,” said Rush, sitting on her suitcase and snapping it shut with a click of finality. “This will be a nice vacation for you.”

“Vacation, my eye,” retorted Cuffy, banging on her hat as though she were slapping the lid onto a kettle. “You don't know Coral, poor soul. And you don't know them poodles. But I'll be back before the week is up, you mark my words.”

Willy had harnessed Lorna Doone to the surrey and driven around to the front door. Rush carried Cuffy's suitcase, Randy her handbag (her satchel, Cuffy called it), and Mona had her coat. Oliver brought up the rear with three graham crackers and a slice of cake done up in a piece of paper towel, because “She might get hungry on the train.” It was his own idea.

“Don't forget to keep the screen doors closed,” commanded Cuffy, one foot on the carriage step. “If it storms don't forget to put a pan under that leak in the Office. Mona, you remember to give Oliver his vitamin B, and, Rush, you're to lock all the doors every single night! Don't change the beds till Friday. The doctor's telephone number is hanging by the hall phone. Oh, dear, there's so many things that I don't think I ought—” Cuffy took her foot down from the step.

But between them Rush and Mona simply boosted her into the surrey.

“We'll be
all right,
” they assured her. “You go on and don't worry. Make your cousin Coral give you a fruitcake to bring home.”

Still looking anxious and rebellious, Cuffy was driven away from her brood.

“Go to bed on time!” they heard her calling from far down the drive. “Call me long-distance if anything goes wrong. Don't forget to feed the
dogs!
”

As if any of them would forget that!

They went back into the house feeling reckless and independent. Rush went galloping up the stairs three at a time, and in a few minutes they could hear him banging out the Revolutionary Etude fortissimo, with the sustaining pedal down. What a noise! Mona took her shoes off and put them on the hall table.

“I think I'll make a pie,” she said, stretching her bare toes luxuriously. She walked over to the mirror and began fussing with her hair. “And I think I'll wear my hair up all the time Cuffy's gone.”

“Okay, and I'll do a portrait of you,” said Randy. “I'll make it big this time, life size almost. I'll make you wearing a long dress and jewelry, and I'll call it ‘Reverie,' or ‘Youth,' or something like that.” All the time she was talking Randy was moving the living-room furniture. Pushing tables and chairs against the wall, and rolling up small rugs.

“What are you doing, for heaven's sake?”

“Making more space. I want to practice my arabesques here where I can look in the mirror. Cuffy never lets me.”

“Oh. Well, I don't see why not. As long as you move it all back again.”

As for Oliver, he was busily sliding down the banisters over and over again. Cuffy didn't like him to because there was no newel post at the bottom, and she was always afraid he would fly off the end and crack his spine. Oliver knew he never would, but was kind enough to humor her. However, now that she was gone it seemed too good a chance to waste. Down he went, wind whistling in his ears, stopping just short of the end, and then up he went again, one sturdy foot after the other. He was singing to himself. He sang two lines of a song.

“Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition,

And we'll all stay free-ee.”

These two lines he sang over and over, without amplification and without much tune, but he enjoyed it, and while he was singing and climbing upstairs he was planning not to weed his garden at all until the day before Cuffy came back. He was planning not to take any baths until the night before she came back. He was planning to fish all day, taking his lunch with him, and no nonsense about resting afterward.

“Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition,

And we'll all stay FREE!”

Mona's pie was a terrible failure. Randy found her almost in tears over the dough.

“Every time I try to roll it out the darn stuff just follows the rolling pin and curls up around it like a snake. I can't make it lie down!”

“Cuffy puts flour on the rolling pin.” Randy, hot and panting from a half hour of arabesques, sank into a kitchen chair.

“Oh.” There was silence for a minute.

“But now look at it, will you. It won't stretch. It just goes into holes.”

“Put it on anyway, and maybe we can patch it.”

By the time they'd patched it, the pie (lumpy with rhubarb) looked like a badly built igloo.

“But I bet it will taste delicious,” said Randy warmly. And it probably would have, too, if Mona had remembered to put in the sugar.

Willy Sloper had supper with them. As a special treat they had it out on the lawn among the mosquitoes, because it was so hot; and Mona made iced coffee. “Just this once,” she said. “I don't think Cuffy'd mind, do you?”

“Maybe she wouldn't,” Randy agreed doubtfully. But Rush only winked at them over his glass, and prudently said nothing.

When they had tasted the pie, and each according to his manners and temperament repudiated it (Oliver leapt to his feet at the first bite as if he'd been stung, uttering howls of anguish), Willy saved the day by driving them all to Carthage in the surrey, and buying ice-cream cones. When they got back it was only half an hour after Oliver's bedtime, and he went to his room as docile as a lamb.

By nine o'clock it was so hot that Rush suggested a swim before they went to bed.

“We shouldn't,” Mona said. “Cuffy wouldn't like it.” But her tone had no conviction.

It was almost dark, and there were no stars. The sky glared suddenly with heat lightning, and there was a trembling of thunder in the air. Dead still it was, not a breath anywhere. They could hear a whippoorwill someplace in the woods.

“It sounds more like a machine than a bird,” Rush said. “Sometimes it almost runs down when it's been going on for a long time. It begins stuttering: ‘Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will, whip-ip-ip-ip-oor-will, whip-ip-ip.'”

The water in the pool was warm. They basked in it up to their chins, like crocodiles. Mosquitoes whined along the surface and they splashed them away. It was too late in the summer for fireflies, but now and then a pale moth, almost luminous, hovered just above their heads.

Something, the iced coffee perhaps, or the heat, kept Rush awake for a long time that night; and even when he began to doze he had restless dreams. He kept seeing Oren Meeker, and the harsh faces of the men at the still. He imagined himself running through a midnight forest with these men in pursuit. Among the trees sat giant whippoorwills with phosphorescent eyes, and their calling was so loud that it was terrifying. Only what they were calling was, “Meeker's still! Meeker's still! Meeker's still!”

He kept running and running, more and more frightened, and then suddenly the woods split asunder and he was face to face with a terrible animal, a sort of fiery hippopotamus, and it was making a hideous, braying noise.

Rush opened his eyes. The dream vanished but the noise remained. He sat up in bed, heart knocking, and listened. It was, yes, of course—it was the Carthage fire siren.

Rush tumbled down the stairs to the telephone, hardly knowing what he was doing. He took down the receiver and waited for the night operator's sleepy question, “Number, please?”

“Hello, Miss Clisbee, where's the fire?” Rush said.