Whistling In The Dark Part 7

"Fell."

"Fell?" I yelled because I just wanted her to say Rasmussen hurt her so bad and then there would be two of us and maybe somebody would believe us. "You better not be lyin' to me."

Wendy started to cry because she cried real easy, especially if you raised your voice to her. "My ath-"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry . . . oh, don't cry." I picked up her stubby hand. Someone had painted her fingernails watermelon pink and there was that plastic Cracker Jack ring that she always wore on her wedding finger.

"Was it Officer Rasmussen, Wendy? Did he push you and that's why you fell?"

"Weeeeennnndy."

Wendy perked up. It was her ma calling her. If you had to call thirteen kids for supper every day, that would give anybody the lungs of an opera singer, Mother said, and you could tell that even though Mrs. Latour and Mother were in choir together up at church, Mother thought that anybody who had thirteen kids, even if they were Catholic, was dumb as a curb.

"Weeeeeendy."

She got up and started toward the Kenfields' steps. "Going to Ma, Thally O'Malley."

"Okay," I said, giving up, but then I thought I better try one more time. "Was Rasmussen down in the cellar with you?"

She nodded her head yes and then she shook her head no so I didn't know which she meant, but it was too late to ask her again cuz she'd already hopped down the steps.

She stopped at the bottom and said, "Rathmuthen," and then cut across the Kenfields' gra.s.s toward home.

"There's a bad man out there. Keep your eyes open, Wendy," I called after her.

She turned and opened her eyes really big and then took off again in that crazy-legged way of running she had. I sat there for a while and rocked and felt pretty good because now at least I had Wendy Latour on my side, even if she was a Mongoloid. After all, she'd pretty much just told me that Rasmussen had tried to murder and molest her.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

The first time I came down to the bas.e.m.e.nt by myself was the night after Mrs. Callahan's birthday party, when Mother and Hall were screaming so bad. Mother wanted Hall to stop drinking so much and Hall wanted Mother to shut the h.e.l.l up about his drinking. Troo was sleeping over at Fast Susie's and Nell was at a school dance. I was alone in my room reading My Friend Flicka when they started in on each other and then Dottie's ghost began crying and I just couldn't listen to all that. So I snuck out of bed and went on the tips of my toes through the kitchen, making sure I didn't step on that piece of linoleum right in front of the stove that always made a sound like it had a stomachache, and down the steps past the Goldmans' back door and down one more flight. I had my flashlight so it wasn't as bad as it sounds.

When I got there, I sat on this hard brown suitcase that belonged to Hall when he was a sailor and had stickers all over it from faraway countries. I was gonna stay in the bas.e.m.e.nt and read until the shouting coming down through the radiators stopped. I propped the flashlight up against this old lamp and made finger shadows on the wall for a while. I could do a bird and another kind of bird. When one bird was flying across the bas.e.m.e.nt wall, it came across a picture of a lady in a hat sitting on a bench. Since I'd just been down there that afternoon helping Mother put shirts through the wringer, which I just loved to do because sometimes she made jokes about how she wished Hall was still inside one of those shirts, I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed this picture. I got closer. When I touched it, it slid down the wall and behind where it used to be hanging was a hidey-hole. I could see the tip of something that looked like a shoe box. Then something squeaked like a mouse, which didn't scare me, but then I thought it might be a bat and those did scare me because of this movie me and Troo saw called Horror of Dracula and it really was pretty horrible. So I waited until I didn't hear the sound anymore and then stuck my hand inside that hidey-hole and lifted out the box and wondered whose it was. Mrs. Goldman's? I checked the side and it said "Shuster's Shoes, size 7," so it had to be Mother's because Mrs. Goldman had to wear special st.u.r.dy shoes, size 10, because her feet had gotten so bad in the concentration camp. And Nell wore a size 5. I lifted off the top. Two pictures and a little ring made out of a crinkly cookie wrapper like they put those chocolate chip cookies in up at the Feelin' Good Cookie Factory were laying on the bottom. One picture had kids in gowns and those flat hats with the ta.s.sels on them, the kind that Nell wore when she graduated. Only it wasn't Nell's picture. It was more old-fashioned and the kids had funnier hair than Nell's, which I had no idea was possible. "Washington High School . . . Cla.s.s of 1940 . . . Jim Madigan Photography Studio" was written in swirly letters across the bottom.

So that afternoon, after talking to Wendy, I got to the bottom of the bas.e.m.e.nt steps and took the shoe box out of the hidey-hole and sat down on the old brown suitcase. I slipped the cookie wrapper ring on my finger, but it fell off right away like it always did, so I stuck it back in the shoe box under the other picture. My favorite. The one of Mother with her wavy hair and freckles sitting in a rowboat down at the lagoon. She was about Nell's age in this picture and she had on shorts that showed her pretty legs and trim ankles and she looked so very, very happy, a kind of happy that I couldn't ever hardly remember seeing in her since Daddy died. Seeing her smile like that made me want to cry in that damp bas.e.m.e.nt that smelled of coal clinkers. Cry and not have anybody to tell me to shut up with that crying. For goodness sake, why did G.o.d give you tear ducts if you weren't supposed to cry?

The other picture, the graduation one, didn't make me sad. It made me feel good because I knew a lot of the people in it. There was Mrs. Callahan and Mrs. Latour and Mr. Kenfield and Mr. Fitzpatrick from the drugstore. And then I noticed two other people. A homely-looking boy whose ears kinda stuck out, but I couldn't really tell who it was cuz he had turned his face away from the camera. Who was that? I knew I'd seen him before, but it wasn't exactly him. And then way up on the top of this graduation picture, I noticed somebody who was tall. And had light hair. It was Rasmussen! I was shocked that I hadn't paid attention to that detail before. He hadn't changed very much. I would take this picture over to Granny's the next time I visited and ask if she could've told right off that Rasmussen was gonna be a murderer and molester. Some of the boys on Vliet Street I knew would grow up to go to jail. Like Greasy Al Molinari, whose brother Coochie got taken away not too long ago for stealing the Cadillac car that old man Holz hauer kept in his garage but didn't drive anymore. Reese Latour would go to jail, too. You could just tell by how mean they were that nothing good would ever happen to these boys. It shouldn't anyway.

When I heard footsteps coming down the back stairs, I quickly stuffed everything back into the box.

"Who is down here?"

"It's just me, Mrs. Goldman."

"What are you doing in that dark bas.e.m.e.nt, Liebchin?"

"Nothing."

She was quiet. Then she said, "I understand."

She went back up the steps, stopping on the landing. "When you are done with your nothing, please to come to the back door. I have made you a little something."

Her doin' that . . . I don't know what the heck came over me. I just really used those tear ducts of mine. When I was all cried out, I wiped my face off on a dirty white blouse that was laying on top of the washer and stuck the shoe box back into the hidey-hole. And then I walked up the back steps and found a green gla.s.s plate outside Mrs. Goldman's door. Six brown sugar cookies and a gla.s.s of cold, fresh milk in a jelly gla.s.s, just like Mother used to do for me, were on the floor outside Mrs. Goldman's back door.

I took the cookies and milk out to the backyard bench and looked over at Troo's Fourth of July bike and thought about Mother's happy, smiling picture down in the hidey-hole and how nice Mrs. Goldman was even though she didn't have to be, especially since those n.a.z.is had been so unnice to her when they took away her little daughter for a shower and never brought her back. And even though things really hadn't been going so hot for me lately, that fancy bike and that old picture and my sweet landlady made me feel so grateful that I brought my hands together and bowed my head and did what Daddy had always said to do when I was feeling this way. I thanked the Lord G.o.d Almighty for his blessings, especially for those luscious, luscious brown sugar cookies that I stuffed into my mouth faster than you can say Jackie Robinson. I didn't save even a crumb for Troo.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

Troo liked Willie O'Hara even though he collected stamps and was always asking everybody to bring him used-up envelopes. I thought that was sort of a dumb hobby, but it wasn't his fault. His mother was an artist and that's what made Willie weird. Mrs. O'Hara made things out of clay. Busts, Willie called them. I was sure that was a lie because busts was another word for bosoms. Willie probably just made that up to make Troo laugh, and I couldn't blame him. My sister, she had a laugh that sounded kinda like that "Chopsticks" song she played on the piano. It made you feel great just to hear it.

Willie was blubbery, but he called it big-boned, and had a funny way of talking. It was called a Brooklyn accent, Troo told me. He'd moved from New York onto the block last summer because his father had run away with his hubba hubba secretary and his mother had relatives around here who were helping Mrs. O'Hara out until she could get on her feet again. Which it looked like she had, because she was going out to supper clubs with Officer Riordan, and Fast Susie said they might get hitched.

The streetlights had gone on so we were all sitting out on the O'Haras' front steps, getting ready to start playing red light, green light, hope to see the ghost tonight. I didn't know then that it was the last time we'd play for a while.

Willie announced, "They found Sara Heinemann's body at the red rowboats today and my ma is so glad that I'm not a little girl because she doesn't think she could stand to live without me."

We were all quiet until Troo licked her lips and asked, "Was she murdered and molested like Junie?"

"Yeah." Willie bent over and tied his shoes with two knots. Willie was not very coordinated, and last week he had tripped and fallen down these very steps and gotten a nasty cut on his arm that he kept showing to everybody every five minutes. "That's what Officer Riordan told Ma anyway."

Artie Latour was sitting next to me and Wendy next to him. Fast Susie had stopped playing red light, green light, because she was getting too old she said. She was across the street at the playground, sitting on one of the green benches, bouncing one of the red rubber b.a.l.l.s while she talked to Bobby and Barb.

"Sara was going to make her First Holy Communion this year," Artie said. "I bet they'll bury her in her white dress. That's what they did with Junie."

That was so sad that none of us could even look at each other.

"My ma says not to worry," Willie said. "That they'll catch the guy soon because we have excellent policemen in Officer Rasmussen and Officer Riordan."

Oh, poor Willie. I guessed mothers who were artists were not all that smart because I thought if everybody would just take a breather and think about it for a minute, they would see clear as day that Rasmussen was not what he pretended to be. Everyone was judging that book by its cover, was what Granny would say.

I looked over at Wendy and she threw me a kiss with a big smacking sound like Dinah Sh.o.r.e on her "See the USA in Your Chevrolet" show.

"How's your ma doin'?" Mary Lane asked, from the step above me. I knew she was talking to me and Troo because somebody asked us that at least once a day.

Troo said, "She's a lot better," even though she had no idea how Mother was doing, because Nell had stopped talking to us for a couple of days because she and Eddie were having a bad fight. I'd heard her yelling at him. Heck, the whole neighborhood heard Nell yelling at Eddie last night since she was chasing him down Vliet Street waving a bra and screaming at the top of her lungs, "Melinda? Melinda? You went to second base with that outer-s.p.a.ce s.k.a.n.k Melinda?"

It wasn't beer at all that Aunt Nancy had seen in the trunk of Eddie's car. (Told you his eye twitched when he lied.) Nell had taken Eddie's car keys out of his jeans pocket when he was taking a nap after they had done their daily exercises in her room. She was planning to empty out those beer cans for him as a charitable thing to do so Eddie wouldn't get in trouble with his ma. Nell found the bra under the spare tire. She'd been in her room crying since Tuesday, so she hadn't gone up to St. Joe's to check on Mother. And I knew that Hall hadn't because he was too busy gettin' some from Rosie up at Jerbak's, and everybody knew about that now because there were no secrets in this neighborhood. Everyone had started to look at me and Troo with even bigger pity eyes and stopped talking when we came up to them.

Troo and me didn't care about Hall gettin' some with Rosie since it would be fine with us if we never saw him again. We agreed that we absolutely did not want Rosie Ruggins to be our new mother because she had these twin boys that were the worst. Rickey and Ronney not only picked their noses but did practical jokes like putting whoopee cushions on your desk seat or pulling out the chair just when you were going to sit down. What freams.

"Looks like it's gonna storm again," Artie said. The smell of it was coming through. I looked over at Troo, who was rubbing her arm. Across the street Fast Susie began helping Bobby and Barb pick up the b.a.l.l.s and bats and bases that hadda go into the shed because the playground closed when it rained so n.o.body would get hit by lightning.

We all agreed to try and get in one game before it started to rain so we did rock paper scissors to see who would be the first ghost. It was Artie.

He took off across the O'Haras' front lawn while the rest of us counted loudly together. "One Mississippi . . . two Mississippi . . . three Mississippi."

I really loved this time of night, when the parents were on their porches listening to the radio and maybe having beer in tall gla.s.ses and talking, like Mother and Daddy used to, catching up on what each of them had done that day.

"Ten Mississippi . . . eleven Mississippi . . ."

If someone led me to each of these houses, even if I was blindfolded, I would be able to tell you whose house it was by how it smelled after suppertime. The Fazios and their garlic and the Goldmans and their sauerkraut and the Latours and their slumgoodie and the O'Haras and their corned beef and cabbage.

"Fifteen Mississippi . . . sixteen Mississippi . . ."

I peeked down to where Mr. Kenfield was sitting on his front porch swing just sort of staring out at the street in front of him like he did every night, probably thinking about how Dottie had disappeared into thin air.

"Twenty-two Mississippi . . . twenty-three Mississippi."

I wondered what Mother was doing. I wished I could brush her hair a hundred times with her gold hairbrush like she let me do sometimes.

"Twenty-five Mississippi . . . ready or not . . . here we come!"

Wendy got caught right off like she always did. Artie had hidden in these bushes beneath his bedroom window, and when Wendy walked by singing, "Red light, green light, hope to thee the ghoth . . . ," he jumped out at her and yelled, "Boo!" But for some reason instead of laughing like she always did, Wendy started to cry, so we had to wait while Artie went into the bas.e.m.e.nt of their house and got a Popsicle out of their deep freezer, which was this enormous thing that had venison and a lot of other food just in case we got attacked by the Russians. Mr. Latour had also built a bomb shelter in their backyard, so Troo and me stayed friendly with them just in case. When we lived on the farm, Troo and me wanted to have a bomb shelter, but Mother said we didn't need one because that bomb business was a lot of silly nonsense and we had a lot of other things to worry about besides the Reds. Daddy laughed at that and said, "And we don't have to worry much about them either. Not with the way Lawrence has been pitching."

The second time around, we skipped the counting and just looked away from Willie and Wendy when they ran off and hid. The playground was lit up like County Stadium. A light drizzle started to fall. Eddie and Nell were snuggled in the corner of the school where they thought n.o.body could see them. I guessed they weren't mad at each other anymore because I could see that Eddie was sliding into second base.

Troo yelled, "Ready or not, here we come," and then we all took off again. I was walking between the Fazios' and the Latours', saying not too loudly, I admit, "Red light, green light, hope to see the ghost tonight. Red light, green light, hope to see the ghost tonight."

I had just circled behind the Fazios' side bushes and could see and smell through their back window that Nana was at the kitchen window making those yummy cannolis. I pinched myself so I wouldn't forget to tell Troo because those were her favorite and she would wanna eat over there tomorrow just to get those for dessert. Another thunder grumble rolled over my head, but beneath that there was a shout, like somebody had been caught by the ghost, so I turned to run toward it, and when I did somebody grabbed me by my braid and swung me down to the wet gra.s.s. Real hard. I could feel something come off him. Like a feeling. Like how you feel if you are afraid. And in a flash of lightning, I saw the pillowcase he had over his head with places cut out for his eyes and his mouth and it moved ever so slightly like the sails on a ship when he stood above me, his black spongy-soled shoes on either side of me. The rain started coming down hard, but I could hear Rasmussen just fine when he bent down to my ear and said, "Sally, dear, I love you," so, so sweetly that I almost believed him.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

Nana Fazio screamed Il mio Dio . . . il mio Dio and ran toward me in her long black dress, swinging her bosoms belt over her tiny head like a la.s.so. Rasmussen laughed a little and said, "Until we meet again," and ran off toward the alley. I felt something moving around in my head like you did if you stood up too fast and I saw some shooting stars even though it'd started raining so hard. Troo told me later that I'd fainted dead away just like Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind.

When I woke up, we were coming down the Fazios' front steps. I thought that Rasmussen had probably dodged Nana and run behind the Spencers' garage and taken off that pillowcase, and here he was with me in his arms and n.o.body was doing a darn thing to stop him. Where is Troo? I wanted to scream but nothing came out. I tried to push off him, but he acted like he couldn't even feel that. Like I was a bug and he didn't even notice. Then I relaxed a little because I figured out that he'd never murder and molest me in front of the whole neighborhood. Oh no, not tricky Rasmussen.

Held close to his chest, my face pressed against his badge number 343 as the rain came down, I sniffed his uniform, which smelled like my socks did after sledding, and that made me think of Mother and hot cocoa. And maybe it was because I was so tuckered out, or maybe I wanted to imagine for a little while that I was wrong and Rasmussen really was the good egg everybody said he was. So I'm sorry to have to say this, but I gave up, and didn't struggle. I just snuggled up to him, felt his breath going in and out of his chest, and tried to figure out what tune he was humming.

Right in front of the Kenfields' house Rasmussen looked down at me and asked, "Did he say anything to you, Sally? Did you recognize him?"

Ha! Like he didn't know what he said and he didn't know what he looked like.

I bent my head down and said, "Did you know Dottie Kenfield?" I was trying to get a look at his shoes. They were those brown ones he usually wore. He musta changed out of the spongy black ones he had on when he bushwhacked me.

Rasmussen looked over at Mr. Kenfield's cigarette burning red in the dark and said so low I almost couldn't hear him, "That is a sad, sad story that you are too young to know about." And then he said louder toward the Kenfields' porch, "Evenin', Chuck."

I never looked Rasmussen in the eyes because I was too afraid what I might see there. Daddy always said the eyes are the windows to the soul, which didn't make sense because I thought your soul was located sort of near your heart and not your eyeb.a.l.l.s, but if Daddy said it, it was true and I didn't ever, ever want to see into Rasmussen's raggedy soul.

I didn't have to worry because his eyes were covered by his police hat where the rain had beaded up on the rim, but the streetlight was shining on his lips. They were soft-looking like baby blanket satin. He had murdered Junie. And Sara. Like Granny said, three's the charm. The next time he would murder me, so a little "Ohhh" escaped out of me.

"You okay, Sally?" he asked like he cared.

The rain was starting and stopping like it couldn't make up its mind. I looked over at our front porch. Troo was sitting there with a jar full of fireflies. She was the most amazing firefly catcher. Fireflies flocked to Troo, probably because they began with the letter f. I knew she'd tried real hard to catch some quick to make me feel better because that's what she always did when I was out of sorts. The fireflies were flashing off and on in the jar that she held beneath her chin, and when she saw me she gave me a double thumbs-up. Daddy used to do that, so that made me finally cry. Because here I was in the arms of the man who wanted me dead and there wasn't one thing I could do about it. I felt like a leaf going down the Honey Creek after a storm.

Rasmussen walked me up the steps near the house and set me down next to Troo and said, "Make sure she gets a bath," and then he just walked away like he had something urgent to do. Probably to go cover up the footprints he'd left in the Fazios' yard.

Troo said, "You like 'em?"

I said with a shocked voice, "Rasmussen?"

"No, you fruitcake . . . these." She shoved the jar of fireflies into my hand. I could tell she was scared.

I looked down at the jar and said the first f word I could think of, "Fantastic." And that made Troo stop licking her lips.

It was only later, when I was floating in the warm bath that Nell had run for me, that I recognized what that tune was that Rasmussen had been humming on the way home from the Fazios'. It was "Catch a Falling Star" by Perry Como, which was my favorite song last year. Me and Troo would put on a little show in the living room and sing and pretend we were catching falling stars and putting them in our jama pockets, saving them for a rainy day, until Hall screamed at us to shut the c.r.a.p up.

Later, between the sheets, while she rubbed my back longer than she ever had, Troo said, "I figure it was Greasy Al who grabbed at you over at the Fazios'. You know how he's always bullying."

I didn't even bother telling Troo that I was sure it was Rasmussen. What was the use?

"Don't worry," Troo said from the dark, the heat of her body mixing in with mine, the fireflies flashing on our dresser. "I got a plan to get him back. And my bike, too. Night, Sal." She slipped her fingers into her mouth, squeezed her baby doll to her chest and turned over hard and quick like she couldn't wait until tomorrow because tomorrow was the Fourth, the most exciting day of the summer next to the block party.

"Night, Troo."

When I was sure she was asleep, I got up and went into Mother's room and pulled her yellow nightie out from the bottom drawer of her dresser, and then I got Daddy's Timex from the dressing table and put it on my wrist. After I said my prayers and told Daddy I was sorry like I did every night, I laid down at the foot of Mother's bed and drifted off to the sound of rain that was strong enough to be good for the crops, and tried and tried to remember the last time I felt safe.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

Saaally. . . Saaally." The sound of her scream chased my dream away. I tried to jump out of bed, to get to her, to help her. Was Hall after her? Rasmussen? "I'm coming," I yelled back, fighting to get untangled from Mother's yellow nightie.

Troo came running from the back stairs into Mother's room and flew up onto the bed next to me. "Wake the h.e.l.l up, it's almost seven thirty and we gotta be at the park by eight sharp." She smacked me in the head with the pillow and then walked over to Mother's dressing table. She didn't ask me what I was doing sleeping in Mother's room, but from her reflection in the mirror I thought maybe she already knew and was just daring me to say something about what she was doin'. She slid some blue eye shadow over her lids and ran a bit of the cherry red lipstick across her pouty lips and tipped the Evening in Paris bottle upside down and put some on her wrists. And then she got up and hit me one more time with the pillow and said, "I'll meet you downstairs. Hurry. I got something to show you," and ran off.

Just like Hall, Nell hadn't come home last night. (Troo added that to her tattletale list with a bunch of patriotic stars.) I pulled Mother's nightie off and kissed Daddy's watch and put them back where they belonged. When I was all dressed, I chased down the back steps, pushed on the screen door and had that radio weatherman ever been wrong. July Fourth, 1959, was beautiful. Today my Troo would win that bike-decorating prize because, boy oh boy, did her Schwinn look grand! She musta got up early and worked on it some more. I didn't think she'd be able to ride it over to the park cuz it was so covered in flowers and streamers and crepe paper.

Troo was standing in front of the bike holding on to something that looked like a giant ice cream cone made out of that old Kroger bag she'd found down at the lagoon. She also had a crown or something on her head made out of aluminum foil that came to a bunch of points that reminded me of Butchy's old dog collar.