Hampton Heights, page 10
They’d finished the block and were back where they started, across the street from the house of Clyde Washington, their only sale. Through the window, they could still see Clyde at the table, unmoving and alone. But then Ryan noticed, past Clyde’s place, a house on the corner that they must have missed—a squat storybook cottage, nestled deep in the trees. “That must be 4601,” Mark said.
“Is it on the list?”
Mark looked at his clipboard and blinked. “Oh yeah, there it is. My bad.” He led them across the street.
In the gloom, they could see a dozen or more figures standing guard over the house: tall ones, short ones, lumpy ones, thin ones. Ryan said, “What are all those?”
“Statues,” said a voice. Both boys jumped. “The witches make them.”
A pair of the figures at the edge of the property moved and revealed themselves as kids, standing with their hands in their pockets. Oh man, Ryan thought, slipping the envelope with the ten dollars into his coat. As if they needed this. The kids looked tough. One was black and one was white. The bigger kid, the white one, wore a convincing-looking leather jacket and had the hint of a mustache. The smaller one, about Ryan’s height, wore a rainbow-colored vest and a White Sox hat. Here in Milwaukee, the hint of a connection to Chicago suggested you might be a very bad kid indeed.
Ryan could tell that Mark had as little interest as he did in mixing it up with these kids, in this neighborhood, on this night. Mark was taller than Ryan—that is to say, average height for a thirteen-year-old—but nothing about him suggested he welcomed a fight. He shoved his hands in his pockets and said, “What witches?”
“You’re not from around here, are you?” asked the big one.
“No,” said Mark. Don’t say you’re from Glendale, Ryan thought. “We’re from another part of town.” He looked at Ryan, and this time the imperative to add something was serious, and Ryan took it seriously.
“We’re selling newspaper subscriptions,” he said, trying to make his voice as confident as possible. “Our boss drove us here.” He waved in the direction he believed the van to be, hoping to convey that the boss could, at any moment, show up.
“The witches live there,” the smaller kid said, pointing at the little stone house in the shadows of the wood. “They make all those statues. There’s two of them.”
“What do you mean they’re witches?” Mark asked.
Both kids shrugged in unison. “Everyone knows it,” said the bigger one. “If they trap you in their house, you never come out again.”
“And that happened? Like, to someone you know?”
The boys shrugged again. “Everyone knows it,” the bigger one repeated.
“There’s always dead animals,” the smaller kid said. “I see those old ladies, they’re picking weeds and plants and shit, and there’ll be a dead fox right there.”
“One of ’em smokes a pipe,” added the bigger kid.
“Have you ever seen them, like, stirring a cauldron?” Mark asked.
Ryan felt himself smile, though he tried to hide it. “Do they fly around on broomsticks?” he said.
“Do they wear pointy hats?”
The kid in the leather jacket took one step closer to them, just to remind them how big he was. “That’s funny,” he said. “You guys are funny.”
“No, they don’t fly on no broomsticks,” the smaller kid said. “Don’t be stupid.”
“They drive a pickup truck,” said the bigger kid.
“But look at those statues.”
Mark and Ryan looked. The yard was crowded with them. A trio of small, ghostly shapes carved from wood gathered in a triangle. Their tiny black eyes looked out at the world. A stone fish walking on two feet peeked out from behind a tree. Two creatures with snakes for hair sat on a cement bench, as if waiting for the bus. Closest to them was a stone dinosaur taller than any of the kids, blue painted rocks for eyes, leaning forward to menace the sidewalk, its mouth in a frozen roar. The big kid opened his mouth wide in imitation. “Garrrrrr,” he said. His teeth were covered in braces.
“You gonna sell them a magazine subscription?” the shorter kid asked.
“It’s the newspaper,” Mark said. “And they’re on our list.”
“Well, that’s gonna be death of a salesman then, boy,” the kid said, and he and the bigger kid slapped five, laughing.
Ryan did not at all want to walk through those statues, with their blank, staring eyes. He didn’t want to knock on the door and meet the old women who made them, who plucked weeds from corpses, who lived in a house overgrown by vines and covered in dead leaves and dirty snow. But Mark rolled his eyes at the other boys and said, “They’re being gay,” and then turned to Ryan and beckoned him forward. “Come on, Ryan.”
Ryan couldn’t help admiring Mark’s bravery, even as he heard the word he used, a word that had always in his experience preceded some other, even worse taunt. But he followed him to the house’s front walk, which was flanked by two huge heads, like those statues on Easter Island. Behind them, the boys chuckled and muttered to each other. Somewhere in the distance, a group of dogs howled.
“I bet those old ladies need newspaper for, like, papier-mâché or whatever,” Ryan suggested.
“Hell yeah,” Mark said. They took a few steps up the walk and then Mark turned back to the kids. “If these ladies are so scary,” he called, “why are you here?”
The boys stared at them for a long moment. Finally, the taller one spoke.
“We were waiting for you,” he said.
The house, on a corner lot, was set much farther back than the others on the block, and the path wound its way through the yard. Even as they walked toward it, the little house seemed to recede into the dark trees, its porch light nearly dancing in the gloom. The statues seemed to be following him with their eyes, so Ryan tried to narrow his focus to Mark in front of him, the house in front of Mark.
The house.
It was one story plus an attic, and it was covered in creatures.
The front porch roof sported a bright-red fish skeleton—maybe meant to be a whale, it was so big. Holding up the screened porch were two wooden columns; carved into each were snakes and centipedes, making their way up the smooth surface in relief. There was a big picture window to the left of the door; in the bushes, a gaggle of toddler-size figures gathered, curiously looking up and into the window.
It was taking them so long to get to the house. The sounds of the neighborhood had fallen away and now all Ryan heard was the crunching of their feet on the icy path. The trees towered over them, bare branches like arms, evergreens like a blanket. The whole thing, in Ryan’s opinion, was way scarier than it needed to be.
Mark finally reached the porch door and rang the doorbell. Ryan expected one of those haunted-house BONG BONGs, but it chimed just like his doorbell.
“Maybe no one’s home,” Ryan said.
“They’re home.”
Indeed, the inner door opened with a creak, and through the dirty screen the boys saw a tall, heavyset woman flip on the porch light and make her way toward the door. She stepped silently in fuzzy slippers and wore a flowered dress. When she opened the door, she said in a cheerful voice, “Hello there! How can I help you two?”
Her graying hair was up in a bun and she wore reading glasses on a chain around her neck. Her face was kind. Ryan never knew how old grown-ups actually were—he had once enraged his uncle’s girlfriend by guessing she was fifty—but the woman at the door looked to be his grandparents’ age, or maybe a little older. She didn’t look like a witch.
“Hello there!” Mark echoed. His carnival-barker voice was back, only slightly diminished by nervousness. “I’m Mark, and this is Ryan.”
Ryan never knew what possessed him, but he blurted, “We’re traveling salesmen!”
The woman laughed, a big, happy laugh. Mark looked back at Ryan, grinning. Ryan felt something take flight inside him.
“My goodness,” the woman said. “Look at you two. What are you selling? Encyclopedias?”
“Ma’am, we’re selling something better than encyclopedias,” said Mark. Last year Ryan’s choir teacher had showed the class The Music Man, and this was what that was like. “Encyclopedias, what do they contain? The past. Ancient Sumeria and the like. But a woman like you, you want to know what’s happening right now. You need the newspaper. We’re offering subscriptions to the Milwaukee Sentinel. You can get today’s news delivered to your door every morning, plus business, entertainment, sports—are you a sports person?—and the funny pages, for just ten dollars for three months. But I recommend you subscribe for the whole year, just twenty-five dollars. That way for all of 1988 you’ll know what’s going on in the, uh”—here Mark spread his arms expansively and looked around, only to see, in the yard next to them, a second woman.
She had come around the house, it seemed, without them noticing. She was petite, brown-skinned, dressed in a suit, with glasses perched on her nose. She’d gathered branches and held them under one arm. She was giving them a teacher’s look.
“. . . what’s going on in the world?” Mark finished, a little weakly.
The woman on the porch clapped her hands. “Millie, look at this. We’ve got a talker.”
“We do,” the woman in the yard said.
The first woman reached out her hand, every finger bearing a sparkling ring, and draped it over Mark’s shoulder. She leaned close and looked him right in the eye. “I’m a talker, too.” With a brilliant smile, she added, “It’s awfully cold out here. Won’t you come in and tell us more?”
Ryan opened his mouth to say, “We’re not allowed,” but then Mark turned toward him, his face gleaming with joy. It was as if going into this old lady’s house was his dream coming true. Mark followed the woman onto the porch and through the front door.
Ryan’s feet felt glued to the ground. What had just happened? What was he supposed to do? At the second woman’s feet he saw, creeping from the ground that he could have sworn was frozen solid, a tiny green shoot. At its end a small flower opened, blue as a sky.
The woman followed his gaze and grunted. “No, no,” she grumbled, stooping down, still holding the kindling. She reached out with her other hand, took hold of the flower, and yanked it from the ground. She slipped it into her mouth and chewed. “We have warm apple cider,” she said to Ryan, standing back up. “Children like that.” Her face suggested she herself couldn’t imagine.
Still Ryan didn’t move. Finally the woman opened the screen door and stepped into the porch. “Please yourself,” she said. “But he will need you.”
Ryan took a step forward, another step. The statues watched him follow her through the screen door and into the warm house. Out on the sidewalk, the other boys were long gone.
Now Mark and Ryan were sitting together on a green leather couch in the ladies’ living room. “I don’t know what happened,” Mark whispered. “I just was there and then I was here.”
“We can go,” Ryan said. The ladies were clinking and clanking in the kitchen and not checking on them at all. The door was right behind them.
Mark shook his head. “We’re here now.” He set the clipboard on his lap and drummed a little rat-a-tat-tat with his fingers.
The décor didn’t at all match Ryan’s idea of what two old ladies would put in their living room. His grandma’s house was filled with flowery armchairs and Precious Moments. This living room looked—well, he was no interior designer, but it looked modern. He saw a low, round coffee table, and sleek gray chairs, and a rug that looked like it belonged on The Jetsons. Up on the walls were framed drawings of the forest, a river, a little house, the lady who’d answered the door.
The women were back in the room. “We haven’t introduced ourselves,” said the one in the dress, bearing a tray laden with steaming mugs. “I’m Vincel. And she”—she nodded over at the other woman, who was setting a plate of cookies on the coffee table—“is Millie.”
“Millicent,” the other woman said with a scowl.
“Everyone calls her Millie,” Vincel said cheerily.
“What kind of cookies are those?” Ryan asked.
“Lebkuchen,” Millie said.
“Gingerbread,” Vincel explained. Her voice was like the bell choir at Ryan’s church, chiming and chiming. “And here’s warm apple cider, as promised.” She set a mug in front of each of the boys. On Mark’s mug, Ryan recognized the logo of a bookshop he’d visited on the east side. Ryan’s read FAIR HOUSING NOW. He warmed his hands near the mug but for now didn’t pick it up.
Mark, too, didn’t take anything, and after a moment Vincel laughed. “Oh dear, those boys outside have told you stories, haven’t they?” She put up her hands and opened her mouth wide as a dinosaur’s, and looked for a moment so much like the big kid on the sidewalk that Ryan didn’t even know what to do.
“We’re not going to eat you,” said Millie, unconvincingly.
“We just want to feed you!” said Vincel.
“Where do those statues come from?” Ryan asked.
“We make them, of course,” said Vincel. “From wood and stone, not from children. Now, you poor boys, you’re cold and hungry. Have a bite and we’ll talk about your newspaper.”
Ryan picked up his mug. The cider smelled delicious, like cinnamon and evergreen. He brought the mug close to his face and let the steam touch him. Mark, next to him, had picked up a cookie and had broken off a piece. He held it up to the light as if, by staring at it closely, he might identify the danger.
Their eyes met. Ryan saw Mark shrug the tiniest shrug and raise one eyebrow. He was grinning again. Ryan grinned, too. How likely was it, really, that these two random old ladies were planning on poisoning them? And how cold and hungry were they? And how grateful, after house after house of rejection, to be welcomed into this warm and comfortable place? To be clucked over by these two women who even now smiled kindly at them from their matching chairs? (Well, Vincel smiled. Millie’s face showed more of a grimace, as if smiling was painful but she was making the effort.)
They nodded to each other and, at the same time that Mark popped the cookie into his mouth, Ryan brought the cider to his lips. It was so warm, the perfect temperature, and as it touched his tongue he felt his whole body relax, flooded with comfort. He was safe here. He saw Mark’s eyes close with pleasure at the taste of the cookie and he knew he felt the exact same way.
“You boys are in cahoots,” Vincel said happily. “I can tell.”
“Yeah,” Mark said, still chewing, eyes still closed. “We’re a team.”
They both sank back into the couch. Ryan held the mug carefully in both hands, close to his chin, so he wouldn’t spill. He took another sip of the cider and this time really tasted it: the apples picked from an orchard just a few miles from here, the steel squeeze of the press. A winter orange. Spices from the other side of the world. He saw the bark painstakingly stripped from a cinnamon branch by brown hands. He saw an ocean of cloves drying on reed mats in the sun. The cider swirled in a red enamel pot over a low flame.
Next to him, Mark took another bite.
Vincel’s eyes were bright. “I thought,” she said, “you might like to hear the story of how we met.”
“It is a tale of woe,” said Millie.
Vincel chuckled. “I prefer to think of it as a story where we overcome the woe, dear Millie.”
“Speak for yourself, dear Vincel.”
“Let me assure you,” Vincel said, “that you will be safe for as long as you wish to stay.”
Her voice was far away. Ryan could feel his arm pressed against Mark’s. He felt inexpressibly happy, at home in this weird place, for once at home in his disobedient body. The women told him a story, and he listened.
Deep in the forest, in the valley of the river that runs uphill, past the clearing where no sunlight shines, there once was a humble house of logs and thatch. In that house lived a mother, poor but hardworking, and her daughter. As a girl, the daughter did not understand all that they lacked, but as she turned into a young woman, she came to know how tirelessly her mother labored to provide for them and did all she could to help. She grew tall and strong, and soon could spin yarn from a wheel, tend to a sick animal, or repair a cart.
The house was steadfast against the cold wind of winter that blew through the valley but in the warm summers, after a long day of gathering food and mending clothing, the daughter sometimes felt how small and stuffy the house could be. On those evenings she would open the windows wide, light a candle to keep the mosquitoes away, and listen to the buzz and rustle of the night.
It was because of those open windows that, one night, she heard a faraway voice singing a song she could almost make out. The voice was strong and deep, a woman’s voice, and as it grew nearer the little house in the forest she at last recognized the song, one that, she recalled, her mother had sung to her when she was small.
I will remember
The black of your hair,
The green of your eyes,
The scent in the air.
I will remember
The wine on our tongue,
The candies and pies,
How it felt to be young.
I will remember
The touch of your hand,
Every sunrise,
This gold gimmel band.
The girl’s mother was asleep in her bed, and the daughter had no desire to wake her, but nonetheless she found herself singing along to the song she knew so well, joining her voice to the voice in the forest in sweet and lilting unison:
And if you remember the love that we share
Then find me again as the bird finds its nest.
For you are my home and my darling so rare
This gimmel ring shared with the one I love best.
