Wonderland Creek Part 2

I gulped down my gla.s.s of orange juice and stood. "I'm all done wallowing. I'm fine now. Really." His drumming fingers stopped, and I could see that he was about to preach a sermon on how self-pity was one of the Seven Deadly Sins. If I added up all of the sins that my father claimed were part of the Deadly Seven, there would be seven hundred of them. I was fairly certain that self-pity wasn't on the original list, but if I challenged him on it, he would make up something flowery and philosophical-sounding, like, Self-pity is the younger sister of sloth, dining on the same bitter foods, sleeping in the same sordid bed . . . or some such wisdom.

"Here is our list," Father said, handing it to me before I could escape. "You might want to use it as the basis for your own. And since your mother and I are both going out on errands today, we have agreed that you should accompany one of us. No more lying around all day."

I took the list from him and folded it in half without looking at it. "Where are you going?" I asked him, dreading his reply.

"I'm delivering donated food and clothing to Chicago's near West Side. They're calling the area 'Floptown' since so many people are forced to live on the street."

I quickly turned to my mother. "And where are you going?"

"I promised your aunt Lydia I would pay her a visit before she leaves."

"Where is she off to this time? Patagonia? Bora Bora?" Mother's younger sister was as odd as a cat with feathers. A visit with Aunt Lydia was like an hour spent in a windstorm, and I usually avoided it at all costs. But today it seemed like a better choice than a place called Floptown. At least I could bring along a book to read.

"I'll go with you, Mom."

When we finished the breakfast dishes, Mother put on her visiting hat and a pair of clean white gloves and we rode the streetcar to Aunt Lydia's house. I brought along an empty bag. These days, you couldn't travel two blocks without running into a poor person selling apples on the street, and I knew that by the time we traveled to my aunt's house and back, my softhearted mother would have purchased enough fruit to make a dozen apple pies.

Aunt Lydia and Uncle Cecil had no children-and the world should be thankful for that. They lived in an enormous house in the fashionable Beverly neighborhood and had vaults and vaults of money, even during this Depression. No one seemed to know what line of work Uncle Cecil was in or where all his money came from. I was convinced that he was mixed up with one of Chicago's notorious gangsters.

Mother always referred to her sister as "fragile." To me, Lydia was as jumpy as a cricket in a chicken yard. I never understood how my grandparents had managed to produce two daughters as drastically different as my saintly mother and my loony aunt Lydia.

A maid answered the door and led us inside Aunt Lydia's house. Her decor was a wild jumble of expensive, tasteful pieces of furniture perched alongside outrageous souvenirs and gewgaws from the many places she had traveled. In the sunny morning room where we sat down to chat, for instance, she had hung a stuffed moose head from the wilds of Canada above an antique Louis XIV writing desk. The moose, as gla.s.sy-eyed as my aunt, wore an embroidered scarf from Morocco tied around its head like an immigrant woman in a kerchief.

We chatted and sipped coffee for a while before Aunt Lydia announced her latest travel plans. "We're going to a spa in the Appalachian Mountains. The fresh mountain air is supposed to be marvelous for the lungs. So invigorating." My aunt carried a cut-gla.s.s tumbler of golden liquid in her hand at all times, ice cubes tinkling as she gestured. On the rare occasion when she wasn't holding the gla.s.s, she looked naked.

"Don't people usually go to the mountains in the summertime?" I asked. "Won't it be cold there in March?"

"Oh, but we simply must get away. The spa has a hot spring. I'll be taking a water cure."

"Drinking it or bathing in it?" I asked. Mother poked me with her elbow in warning, but I ignored the hint.

"Why, both, of course. They have a very rigorous schedule at the spa-we'll be eating a special diet, taking exercise, communing with nature. Cecil and I are looking forward to it immensely."

"Cecil is going, too?" Mother asked.

"Yes, we're driving down there together. He needs to get away as badly as I do."

I pictured a mob of gangsters chasing after him, car tires squealing, tommy guns rattling.

"We'll be driving down through Kentucky," she continued, and the moment I heard the word Kentucky, an idea struck me like a gong at the carnival after someone swings a big hammer and hits the target. Why not ride to Kentucky with my aunt and uncle and deliver the donated books I had collected, in person? My uncle's car was the size of a small steamship, with a trunk large enough to stash a couple of dead bodies. Surely it would hold my five boxes of books and the magazines. Best of all, I could get away from Blue Island-the gossip and humiliation. I could disappear!

"May I go with you, Aunt Lydia?"

She and my mother stared at me in unison.

"Alice Grace Ripley!" Mother said, when she finally found her voice. Her outrage could be measured by how many of my names she used. If I had been given a fourth name, she would have used it now. "You know better than to invite yourself. And you also know that we can't afford to send you to a spa." I'm sure she would have added that we weren't the sort of irresponsible people who frittered away money on useless luxuries like water cures and hot springs, but she would never insult my aunt to her face.

"If you need to get away," Mother continued, "why not spend some time on the farm with one of your sisters? I'm sure they would have plenty for you to do."

I made a face. "They'll make me chase their kids and round up their chickens. Besides, there's not a decent library for miles and miles out where they live."

"What has gotten into you?" Mother asked.

I looked down at the polished parquet floor, tears stinging my eyes. "As you may recall, I've been laid off work at the library because of the Depression."

"Then why not marry that strapping young beau of yours?" Aunt Lydia asked. "A rollicking good honeymoon will cheer you up in no time."

Mother's face turned the color of a ripe tomato at the mention of such a taboo subject as a rollicking honeymoon. My cheeks felt sun-warmed, too. "Alice and her young man have had a falling out," Mother said in a whisper-although I don't know why she needed to whisper. Aunt Lydia's maid didn't understand English and the rest of the world already knew about my breakup with Gordon, thanks to the diligent ladies in my father's congregation.

"Oh, that's too bad, darling," Aunt Lydia said. "Have you thought about taking a lover?"

Mother's face went from red to white in an astonishingly short time. Her ability to speak vanished completely. "It's a little too soon to look for another beau," I said quickly.

"Who said anything about a beau?" Aunt Lydia said with a wink. "What you need is-"

"Lydia, please!" Mother begged.

"Well, it sounds to me like Alice could use a few days at a spa. Of course she can come with us. Cheers, darling!" She lifted her gla.s.s in salute.

"I wouldn't be going to the spa," I explained, "just to Kentucky. I've been collecting used books and magazines for the poor people down there, and since you and Uncle Cecil are going that way, I thought maybe I could tag along and deliver the books in person."

"How would you get home again?" Mother asked, being annoyingly practical.

"I don't know. Maybe I'll just stay there, and Uncle Cecil can pick me up on the way home. I've been corresponding with a librarian down there, and I'm sure she must have some volunteer work for me to do while Aunt Lydia is taking her cure. I could help her catalogue all the donated books."

"I still think you'd enjoy the spa more," Aunt Lydia said, winking at me again. "But of course you're welcome to ride along, Alice. A nice road trip will cheer you up in no time."

I wondered if I might regret my rash decision later. Uncle Cecil's cigars smelled like burning tires, and for all I knew, nasty men with prison records might be chasing him all the way to Kentucky. But how wonderful it would be to simply vanish, leaving everyone to wonder where I'd gone.

On a cold, misty morning in March, my road trip to Kentucky began. We would travel the Dixie Highway, which ran all the way from Chicago to Miami and pa.s.sed right through my hometown of Blue Island. I had been eager to leave, wanting to get away from the pitying looks and prove to Gordon that I didn't care about him anymore-although I had no idea how leaving town would actually prove anything. But the moment Uncle Cecil's car arrived at the parsonage and I saw Mother's tears and Father's worried frown, I knew I had made a terrible mistake. I felt homesick, and I hadn't even left home. I had never traveled far from home before and had never been separated from my best friend, Freddy, for more than a week. My parents didn't take vacations.

Before I could stop them or say that I'd changed my mind, my father and Uncle Cecil had shoehorned the donated books and my one measly traveling bag into the car's trunk alongside Aunt Lydia's countless suitcases and hatboxes. "Lydia packed her entire wardrobe," Uncle Cecil grumbled.

"I heard that!" my aunt said. "Why do you always exaggerate, Cecil?"

I had forgotten how much they bickered. My parents never bickered; they simply exchanged lists.

Mother kissed me good-bye. Father rested his hand on my shoulder and said, "Remember who you are, Alice." It was one of his favorite admonitions. The answer he had drummed into me was, "I am a child of G.o.d"-and therefore I needed to act like one. But aside from that rote reply, who was I really? I used to be able to say, I'm Gordon Walters' girlfriend and I'm a librarian at the Blue Island Public Library. I could no longer say either of those things. I swallowed the lump in my throat and climbed into the car. The door slammed shut behind me, sealing me in like a pickle in a canning jar when the lid sucks shut with a pop. I gazed straight ahead so my parents wouldn't see my tears and I wouldn't see theirs. Uncle Cecil gunned the engine and headed south.

I had been eager for a change of scene, but unfortunately the scene never changed, mile after mile, hour after hour. We drove through scattered farming communities like Steger and Grant Park and Watseka, Illinois, and they all looked numbingly alike, their brick storefronts lined up like boxers facing each other across Main Street. Identical-looking filling stations and diners and roadside motels seemed to follow us like pushy salesmen, disappearing in the rearview mirror, then popping up again farther down the highway. And in between each town, farmland stretched endlessly as far as the eye could see. As the stench of cow manure filled the air, I nearly begged Uncle Cecil to light one of his cigars.

I couldn't recall reading any good novels that featured rural Illinois or Indiana as their setting, and no wonder. The book would be much too boring. Interesting plots were inspired by interesting surroundings, and who could be inspired by farmland? This probably explained why my life had been dull and uneventful so far. I lived in a boring state.

Rain spat from the clouds onto Uncle Cecil's windshield. The dull sky and gray pavement were the color of dingy dish towels. My uncle turned on his head lamps so he could see through the fog, and I feared our overloaded trunk would make the headlights shine up into the sky instead of down onto the road.

The terrain might have looked boring to me, but it became more fanciful and enchanted for Aunt Lydia the farther we drove. She had brought along her tumbler of golden liquid, pasted to her hand even at this early hour, ice cubes rattling like bones until they finally melted just outside of Danville. I saw her sipping from it, but I never saw her refilling it-and yet the gla.s.s never emptied. It was magical, like a sorcerer's trick.

"Look, darlings! A herd of buffalo!" she said, pointing to a dozen dairy cows huddling in the fog. My uncle and I exchanged glances in the rearview mirror. "And doesn't that castle over there remind you of the ones we saw in Germany, Cecil?"

"For crying out loud, Lydia, that's a barn!"

At this rate, she would be seeing leprechauns and unicorns before we reached Indianapolis. Uncle Cecil stomped the accelerator and whooshed past a slow-moving car as if in a hurry to deliver Aunt Lydia to her water cure as quickly as possible. I pulled a book out of my bag and began to read, praying that we wouldn't get into a head-on collision in the fog.

We stopped for lunch at a roadside diner, ingesting enough grease to lubricate a locomotive before getting under way again. I hadn't noticed any gangsters chasing us, but my uncle drove as if carloads of them were speeding after us. I continued to read my book, becoming the main character, living her life. It was so much better than my own.

The storm clouds lifted as the afternoon progressed, and every time I looked up from my book I noticed more and more hills-and more and more signs of the economic depression. Men in tattered clothing stood alongside the highway, thumbing for a ride. Entire families camped in makeshift tents beside the road, their laundry sagging on ropes strung between the trees. Overloaded cars waddled down the Dixie Highway like tortoises, with piles of possessions lashed onto their roofs in tottering bundles. We also pa.s.sed crews of unemployed men who had been put to work by the president's Civilian Conservation Corps, laboring on the roads, stringing telephone lines or repairing bridges.

We stopped in Lexington, Kentucky, for the night and started driving again early the next day. By now I was so engrossed in my novel that I couldn't have described what any of my real surroundings looked like. I was nearing the end of the story. The main character was achieving her goals, accomplishing something important, becoming stronger and more courageous. She was about to live happily ever after with the story's handsome hero when a very loud Bang! suddenly interrupted my reading.

Aunt Lydia screamed. "They're shooting at us!"

I knew it. The gangsters had caught up with us. Uncle Cecil wrestled with the steering wheel as he tried to bring the swerving car to a halt. He negotiated a curve, and we finally managed to stop alongside a gray weather-beaten barn. He leaned back against his seat, breathing hard. "No one is shooting, Lydia. I had a blowout."

"What did you do that for? We could have been killed!"

"I didn't do it on purpose. Tires blow all the time."

"Well, you must have been doing something wrong for it to explode like that. You weren't driving correctly."

He got out, shaking his head, and walked around to the back of the car. I heard the trunk groan open, then heard Uncle Cecil thumping around, moving books and suitcases as he searched for his spare tire. Aunt Lydia rolled down her window. "Are you going to tip the car up in the air? I hate sitting in the car when it's all tipsy."

"The only thing tipsy is you," he mumbled. He dropped the car jack and tire iron on the ground with a clang. "Yes, I'm going to jack it up." My aunt leaped out of the car as if it was on fire, so I leaped out, too.

We had stopped in a narrow valley surrounded by tree-covered mountains. I didn't see any houses, just the dilapidated barn. A faded sign painted on the front of it read: Church of the Holy Fire. Sunday Worship 10 a.m. Sinners Welcome. Uncle Cecil put the jack in place and turned the crank, grunting and straining. The heavy car rose and tilted as the rear wheel slowly lifted off the ground.

I heard a low growling sound, and a moment later a huge black dog hurtled toward us from behind the barn, barking and snarling. Before I had time to scream, it reached the end of its chain and choked to a stop. But it continued to lunge and bark at us, straining the rusted chain. Aunt Lydia gripped my hand.

"We have to leave, Cecil. Right now. This place you picked to have your blowout is unacceptable."

"I didn't pick this place; it's where the tire blew."

"Well, put the car down. Go farther up the road and change it."

"I'm not driving on a flat tire." He unscrewed the lug nuts and yanked off the tire. Dirt smudged his forehead and white shirt.

Aunt Lydia huddled close beside me as the dog continued to growl and bark and pace. "If that animal gets loose, he'll kill all three of us," she said.

"I told you to stay in the car, but you wouldn't listen."

"Well, we can't get in the car now. It's up in the air!" My aunt's fear was contagious, and we huddled beside each other, trembling. It seemed to take forever, but at last Uncle Cecil tightened the last lug nut and pumped the jack handle, lowering the car. The dog sounded hoa.r.s.e from barking, but his chain had held tight.

"That was a terrifying experience!" Aunt Lydia said as we climbed back into the car.

"What are you talking about? We had a flat tire. That's life, Lydia. A tire blows, you fix it, you move on."

Uncle Cecil's words seemed profound to me. As my racing heart slowed and we continued on our way, I felt ashamed of how I had reacted. No one had been shooting at us. The dog hadn't been a rabid beast, just an ordinary black dog on a very long chain. I realized that I was as out of touch with the real world as Aunt Lydia was, my imagination out of control from all of the books I had read. Is this what Gordon had meant when he'd said I lived in a dream world?

I didn't want to end up like my aunt. I made up my mind that from now on, I was going to wake up and pay attention to the world around me. I would put all of my problems behind me-tossing them into the trunk of my car, so to speak, like a worn-out tire. I would move on just as my uncle had done. I would go to Acorn, Kentucky, and be a heroine to all those poor people who needed my books. My life would have meaning and purpose again.

We drove for another hour or so, up and down a road that snaked into the mountains, following greenish rivers and rocky creeks. Trees surrounded us on all sides, and we plunged deeper and deeper into the woods as if entering the land of fairy tales. Not the nice, happily-ever-after kind, but the lost-in-the-woods-among-wolves kind. My newfound courage began to drain away.

"Where is this town, anyway?" Aunt Lydia asked at one point. "And why did they put it in the middle of nowhere?"

"There's lumber and coal up in here," Uncle Cecil replied.

"At least the roads are paved," I said, trying to sound positive. "There must be a town around here somewhere."

"These roads weren't built for the towns," Uncle Cecil said. "They were built to get the coal out."

In spite of my resolve to be heroic, the woods frightened me. What if we got lost and wandered in these woods forever? I decided to escape to the safer world of make-believe, and I hunched down in the backseat to finish reading my book.

Around midday, Uncle Cecil announced that we were coming to a town. I looked up from reading and saw a handful of houses wedged into a narrow valley between two mountains. Wherever there was a flat strip of land on either mountainside, someone had built a house or a building. If people came out of their front doors too fast, it looked as though they would tumble right down the hill.

"Is this the place we're looking for?" Aunt Lydia asked. I searched for a sign and spotted one on the side of a flat-roofed hut: U.S. Post Office, Acorn, Kentucky.

"Yes! There's the post office! This is it!" I a.s.sumed we were entering the outskirts of Acorn and that we'd eventually see a larger cl.u.s.ter of buildings when we reached the center of town, but Uncle Cecil drove straight through the village and out the other side before any of us could blink. He had to make a U-turn and go back, driving slower this time. I had thought Blue Island was small, but Acorn didn't deserve to be called a town.

On our second ride-through, I spotted a hand-painted sign in front of a shabby two-story house: Acorn Public Library. A smaller red, white, and blue sign identified the library as a project of the WPA, President Roosevelt's Works Project Administration.

We parked in front and I climbed out. The library sat very close to the street with no sidewalk and only a narrow patch of dirt for a lawn. According to the hours posted on the sign, the library was supposed to be open now, but when I tried the door it was locked. I knocked, then peeked through the front window. There were no lights, no signs of life, no response to my knock. I pounded harder, rattling the ancient door on its hinges.

The third time I used my fist.

An upstairs window slid open above my head and a wooly-looking man whom I nearly mistook for a bear peered out. "Hey! You trying to break the door down? What do you want?" His growl resembled a bear's, as well.

I shaded my eyes and looked up at him. "Do you know where I might find the librarian, Leslie MacDougal?"

"Who are you?"

"Alice Grace Ripley from Blue Island, Illinois. I have some books that I'd like to donate to her library."

"Just a minute." The window slammed shut.

"Well!" Aunt Lydia huffed. "The people aren't very friendly around here. Are you sure you don't want to come to the spa with us, darling?"

I had to admit that I was having second thoughts. This poky village and run-down library weren't at all what I had expected. But given the choice between spending a week in a library or taking a water cure-whatever that was-I would choose a library every time, no matter how tiny it was. I could be useful here. More important, there were books here.

"I'll be fine, Aunt Lydia. I've been corresponding with the librarian, and she sounded very kind in her letters. She was very enthused about the donated books and I told her in my last letter that I would stay and help her catalogue them." I didn't mention the fact that the librarian had never answered my last letter, nor had she officially invited me to stay. "This looks like a nice little town, doesn't it?" I added.

"What town, dear? I don't see a town. Where are the hat shops and the shoe stores?"

"They have a library," I said.

Meanwhile, Uncle Cecil had opened the trunk and was unloading the books, piling the boxes beside the library steps. "That's the last one," he said, patting the top of it. He was in a hurry to be on his way, and I didn't blame him. Aunt Lydia had insisted she'd seen a dead monkey in the road a few miles back, so I understood his urgency to get her to the spa. I pulled my suitcase from the trunk and set it down beside the car. "Thanks for bringing me. See you in about two weeks?"

"Right." He slammed the trunk just as the s.h.a.ggy man emerged through the front door, blinking in the sunlight like a bear that had awakened too early from hibernation. He had b.u.t.toned his shirt crookedly and fastened only one strap of his bib overalls. And he was barefooted. I approached him as cautiously as I would a genuine bear.

"I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm looking for Leslie MacDougal. I've been corresponding with her about these books that I've collected for her library." He gave a curt nod, lifted the first box, and carried it inside. I picked up a bag of magazines and followed him. "She's expecting me. I told her that I would be delivering them sometime this week."