Tom Sawyer and the Ghosts of Summer, page 10
CHAPTER 10
The big, comfortable Oldsmobile hummed down the highway, Uncle Ralph Dickason at the wheel and Aunt Sue sitting beside him. Jim and Joe Dickason, and Matt Lively occupied the back seat.
"I got five white horses," Joe said, "and Jim's got two, and you don't have any," he said to Matt.
"You guys have a lot more practice at this than I do. How many state license plates have we counted?"
Lean, black-haired Jim consulted his notebook. "Fourteen."
"Here comes another Burma Shave sign," Matt said, staring ahead.
Uncle Ralph slowed down slightly so the widely-spaced orange and white signs could be read.
"She doesn't kiss you…Like she useter…Perhaps she's found…A smoother rooster…Burma Shave," the boys chorused in unison. They convulsed with laughter.
Four miles later, another set of signs loomed up ahead. "Here it comes…"
"My job is…Keeping faces clean…And nobody knows…De stubble I seen…Burma Shave."
"I don't get that one," Joe said, running his fingers through his reddish blond hair.
"It's a take-off on the title of an old Negro Spiritual," Uncle Ralph said over his shoulder. " 'Nobody Knows de Trouble I Seen'."
"Do you use Burma Shave, Uncle Ralph?" Matt asked.
"No. I have an electric razor. My skin is too sensitive to be scraping it every day."
His uncle had plump, rosy cheeks and fair skin with only a light coating of whiskers. Joe resembled him in looks, while the older Jim took after his mother with her dark hair and blue eyes. Matt was somewhere in between in coloring, having brown hair and eyes.
They kept watch for more Burma Shave signs, but saw only one more set.
"Here it comes…" The boys pressed to the right side of the back seat for a good look.
"Within this vale…of toil and sin…your head grows bald…but not your chin…Burma Shave"
The boys howled with laughter.
After that, they saw no more and the time began to drag. Jim and Joe began to read books they'd brought.
Matt was ready for the trip to end. They'd finished a pack of sunflower seeds among them, and Matt's mouth was raw from the salt and opening the shells with his tongue.
Uncle Ralph had the car radio on low, and the smooth strains of Nat King Cole drifted into the back seat. "Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, men have named you. You're so like the lady with the misty smile…" Was the word 'misty', or 'mystic'? A neat song, anyway. Number one on the hit parade.
Matt's thoughts drifted to Thatcher, or whatever the tramp's real name was. That man was really strange. Obviously a deranged alcoholic. Matt would not have given him another thought, had not Thatcher known some details he never could have known except through some supernatural power. Matt shivered in spite of the hot air blowing in the car windows. Maybe Rob was right—this bum was really the devil, come to lead them astray. Matt didn't really need much help doing that. But just the possibility of the Evil One coming so physically close to him, caused his stomach to tighten and his heart to race. Even stranger was John the Baptist's warning to them about Thatcher. Maybe the ancient Negro knew the man in some previous life. After all, John the Baptist had lived at least twice as long as any man in town.
It was always a pleasure for Matt to visit his cousins—especially in summer. North-central Iowa was usually a lot cooler and less humid. He was given a room to himself on the back corner of the second floor. The open windows on each side of the room allowed cross ventilation for the cooling night air and made for very pleasant sleeping—a great relief from the muggy, windless heat of central Missouri.
He slept soundly the first night with no dreams that he could recall. Refreshed, he got up next morning, dressed, washed his face and came downstairs. Uncle Ralph was sitting in the breakfast nook, eating a bowl of Rice Krispies with the newspaper on the table in front of him.
"Well, I see North Korea has invaded South Korea," he said, looking up.
"What's that mean?"
"It means the Communists have started a war."
"Where's Korea?"
"On the other side of the world."
"Will you have to go back into the Army?"
"I hope not." He opened and folded the paper to the sports page.
"Hey, Matt," Jim hollered, sticking his head in the door from the breezeway that connected the house to the garage. "Come on outside. You gotta see this. Joe can walk on his hands for thirty seconds without falling. That's the record so far. Let's see if you can beat it."
"I'll give it a try," Matt said, grabbing an oatmeal cookie on his way out the door.
Before the contest had ended, Uncle Ralph had come out with his eight millimeter home movie camera and filmed the boys walking on their hands in the front yard. Joe was the eventual winner with a record one minute, twenty-eight seconds. He managed this feat by having a short, compact build, like many good gymnasts. When he got overbalanced, he allowed his legs to bend at the knees to steady himself and regain control. Matt came in second at just over one minute, but they all finished the contest somewhat dizzy, and red-faced.
Next, they tried a game of mumble-ty-peg and Matt came in last, with nothing to show for his efforts but tiny knife pricks on his fingers, wrist, elbow and shoulders from the point of the blade.
Then Jim and Joe got the idea of digging up a dead snake they'd buried the week before in a vacant, overgrown field next to the house. The nasty thing in the glass jar they unearthed was dissolving, and even the cap on the fruit jar couldn't completely hold in the odor.
"Take a look," Jim said, handing the Matt the jar.
"Ugh! No thanks. How long's that thing been in there?"
"A few days."
"Whew! Bury it again."
After lunch, the boys went to the creek with their fishing rods, the brothers supplying an extra one for Matt. They fished a little, with no success, then hiked along the creek, wading barefoot in the muddy water.
The creeks here, Matt recalled, were lined with the same thick, black mud that composed the surrounding farmland. Instead of rocks and gravel, as he was used to, Matt felt the creepy sensation of squishing mud between his toes. At least he didn't have to wear shoes to keep from cutting his feet on sharp rocks. And the most common fish in these creeks were bullheads—small catfish.
The boys followed the meandering stream for more than a mile to where it finally emptied into the Boone River.
"Got to be careful of this river," Jim said, as they stood in the creek, surveying the larger stream just ahead. "Lot of mud bars and quicksand. There's usually one or two drown in here every year."
The boys were carrying their shoes around their necks, tied together with the laces. They waded ashore from the creek and sat down to put on their footgear and start home.
"This black mud sure is sticky," Matt said, sitting on the grass and raking at the black gob on his calf.
Joe took a look. "That's not mud. You picked up a leech." He reached down and took hold of the black blob that was as big around as a silver dollar. With one quick motion, he snatched it off.
"Ow!" A circular red mark remained where the sucker had been attached.
"Best way to get rid of them is to do it quick," Joe said, tossing the creature back into the water.
"We don't have those where I live," Matt said. "They're nasty."
"You get used to them. Look, Jim picked up a little one." It was similarly pulled off and disposed of. "Blood suckers. Same as ticks and mosquitoes, only bigger."
"If you get enough of them on you, could they suck you dry?" Matt asked.
"I suppose so."
"I read in National Geographic or somewhere about a man in India during the war who fell down drunk about half in the water on the edge of a river. They found him dead next day where a lot of big leaches had sucked all his blood out."
They took to the high ground, cutting off a few loops of the creek on the way back.
"Wow! Look at that," Matt said, as the boys rounded the edge of a green, waist-high field of corn. "Let's explore it."
Standing forlorn in the sunshine was a wooden schoolhouse of ancient design, the clapboards weathered gray by time and the elements. It was a two-story building topped by a belfry with louvered slats on each of four sides.
"That thing looks so old, I'll bet Tom Sawyer could've gone to school there."
"Except that he lived in Missouri, not Iowa."
"Let's take a look."
"We pass by it all the time," Joe said. "Never pay any attention to it. It's been boarded up as long as I can remember."
He and Jim followed Matt to the old schoolhouse. They walked all around and checked the doors and windows, but it was securely boarded up, with no way in.
"Here's a loose board," Jim said, tugging a half-rotten board from a basement window.
The boys converged and wrenched back a second board, the rusty nails screeching in protest. One at a time, they crawled inside. The murky basement was dirty and they ran afoul of cobwebs that stuck to their faces and hair. "Too dark in here," Matt said.
"We'll get some flashlights and come back tomorrow and explore," Joe said.
They crawled back outside, dusted off and retrieved their fishing rods.
When they reached the house, they found their Uncle Mike, their mothers' youngest brother, had arrived for a quick, unannounced visit, with his wife, Jackie, and their baby daughter, Cindy, who was only a few months old.
Mike, a former Golden Gloves boxer, was short and muscular. He had an old dented bugle in his trunk and attempted to teach the boys how to play it. As far as Matt was concerned, it was hopeless. Jim managed to pick up enough of the technique to blow a few notes of Taps, but Matt could barely get a sound out of it.
Uncle Mike and his family stayed overnight and started home for Council Bluffs next day.
After they left, the boy cousins took three flashlights from a kitchen drawer and headed back to the schoolhouse where they entered again by the basement window. They made their way up to the main floor, ducking spiders hanging from webs, flashing beams of dusty light here and there over the old desks and chairs.
"Wonder why they closed this place?" Matt said.
"Probably got real old and cost too much to fix up," Jim guessed. "They got a couple nice brick schools in town."
"Yeah. I bet this place has been here since Webster City was first started."
Matt flashed his light beam to a stairway along the side wall. "Let's see what's up there."
He put a foot on the bottom step, then on the second that creaked. He stopped. "Watch out for rotten boards. Grab me if I fall through." He proceeded upward.
The second floor was a jumble of stored bookcases, extra desks, stools, broken blackboards and junk, all covered in a heavy layer of dust.
They took a few steps forward. A sudden thunder shattered the eerie silence. The boys recoiled, Matt's heart leaping, as he threw up his hands to fend off whatever was attacking them.
But the nesting pigeons flew outside through a break in the bell tower.
"Holy Cow!" Jim gasped. "I about had a heart attack."
"Me, too," Matt said, putting a hand to his chest as his heart rate began to subside.
A feather drifted down from the roost of the disturbed birds.
"That's like flushing a covey of quail," Joe said, "or a pheasant."
The floor was covered with bird droppings and dust, and they shortly retreated to the first floor. The air was stale and the dust they'd stirred up was sticking to the back of Matt's throat.
Satisfied with their exploration, they crawled out through the basement window and set the boards back in place.
That afternoon they went to the local swimming pool with Uncle Ralph who seemed to enjoy it even more than the boys. Joe had a pair of goggles they took turns using. Without them, opening their eyes to look underwater caused them to sting and burn from all the chlorine.
Uncle Ralph had taught Jim and Joe to swim several years before. He was a big man and seemed to stay afloat effortlessly, bobbing along like a great seal.
Matt, on the other hand, had to be constantly moving to stay on the surface. He'd taught himself to swim the summer before by watching his friends. Then he'd practiced treading water until he could stay up for long periods without touching the bottom or supporting himself by grasping the side of the pool. Little by little he'd gained confidence and worked on perfecting other strokes. By summer's end, he was jumping off the high dive at the deep end. Twice he'd even summoned up the courage to go head first, but the impact with the water jerked his head down and hurt his neck, in addition to driving water up his nose, so he gave up that particular maneuver. He did, however, teach himself to spring off the low board and do a one-and-a-half. It was successful more often than not. Only occasionally did that dive end up in a belly flop, his eyes blasted open by impacting the water with his face.
They were all scheduled to leave for Clear Lake on Monday so, to fill the time on Sunday afternoon after church, Jim and Joe set out to show Matt how to catch ground squirrels.
Adjacent to their big, white house was a vacant lot on the corner. Just across the graveled road from this lot lay the city cemetery.
They trooped across the road into the cemetery, each boy carrying a fishing rod and reel, the reels wound with at least thirty yards of braided 20 pound test line.
"These ground squirrels run around all over this graveyard," Joe said. "They make tunnels everywhere."
Matt followed as the cousins led him on a search among the hundreds of marble and granite tombstones. "There goes one!" Jim said, pointing at a brown rodent darting between stones.
In size, they appeared to be between a chipmunk and a regular tree squirrel.
"Okay, here's how we do it," Joe said, stopping next to a waist high granite marker, and pointing at a hole in the ground. "Entrance to a tunnel." He tied a slipknot in the end of his fishing line. Then he backed away, unreeling the line until they were twenty yards away. He crouched down behind a grave marker. "Now we wait."
Matt didn't have time to get bored. "There he is," Joe whispered as a brown head slowly rose from the tunnel. "Whoops!" The head disappeared back down the hole. "Gotta be patient and quiet."
A minute or two later, the head popped up again, and Joe snatched back on his rod and began reeling with the drag on. The loop tightened around the animal and yanked him out of his hole. Joe stood and walked toward him, reeling quickly. Then he reached down and grabbed the animal behind the head, picking him up. The rodent squeaked and squirmed, trying to get away while Joe loosened the slipknot and took it off. The ground squirrel seemed to settle a bit. "The big, older ones don't make good pets," Joe said. "This little guy could be tamed. If we weren't leaving tomorrow for the lake, I'd keep him."
Matt took a good close look before Joe set him on the ground where he scampered off to safety. "Sometimes they'll bite and they have sharp teeth they use to dig with. But other times, I can tame a young one so I can put him inside my shirt and let him run around. It tickles."
That afternoon was crowned with a world championship spitting contest. Because they needed a smooth, flat surface to show the marks, they at first thought of the basement. But, as long as it was still daylight, and the brothers' parents were home, the boys decided to conduct the contest on the level concrete driveway.
They flipped a coin to see who would start. Jim won. Toeing a seam in the concrete, he spat as far as he could. Joe marked the spot with a lump of blue chalk. Next up was Matt, with Joe last. The rules were simple: No running up to the mark like a javelin thrower. It was more like a standing broad jump. Each contestant had to toe the mark and spit as far as his internal compression, and the whip of his torso, neck and head could make the saliva fly. After several rounds, Matt thought he had the title with a distance of 10 feet, 3 inches. But Jim, who was three inches taller, got off a last shot of an even 12 feet to take first prize. Matt and Joe had to call him "Sir" and fetch and carry for him the rest of the day. They even had to take the seeds out of his slices of watermelon. Uncle Ralph had bought a big melon and chilled it in a tub of ice. The whole family sat outside in lawn chairs after supper, or hunkered on the front steps to immerse faces and hands in the juicy, red pulp until bellies were distended, sticky juice was dripping off elbows and mosquitoes were attacking without mercy. Then they adjourned indoors to wash up, lie around to read and talk and play cards until bedtime.
Next day, Uncle Ralph backed out the big Olds, everyone loaded up and they headed north about 70 miles to Clear Lake. He'd rented a rustic cabin with cooking facilities right on the edge of the lake. Twenty yards from their screened door was a wooden dock extending out over the green water. The boys had nothing to do but swim, fish out of a rented rowboat, and invent games, then come in to eat or sleep or read and rest. Their only duties were to keep the cabin's linoleum floor swept clean of sand and to do what few dishes were used. The most difficult thing they had to do was wait an hour after eating before they were allowed to dash outside, run the length of the dock and dive off into the lake.
Matt wondered if this was what heaven might be like. It was surely the closest he'd ever come to it for this length of time.
Uncle Ralph went out in the boat with them one day when a west wind was blowing hard, rolling up steep whitecaps on the water. He rented an outboard motor and the boys took turns riding in the bow of the boat as it shot up and over the crests, then plunged down into the troughs, throwing spray over everyone in the back of the boat.
The green wooden rowboat was not designed for these vertical three and four foot waves, and was nearly standing on end, the motor revving wildly when the prop was out of the water. The cousins let Matt be the first to ride in the bow of the boat and enjoy the leaping, plunging sensation of the roller coaster ride. But it was scary, and Matt soon relinquished his place and crawled back to straddle the center thwart. He'd never been on any rough water like this before. His parents didn't like the water and had never learned to swim. Matt's only experience in boats had been on a dead calm day when his Uncle Mike had taken him fishing on Lake Manawa in Council Bluffs.
