And Condors Danced (10 page)

Everybody said that no man alive had ever doted on a child as much as old Mr. Quigley doted on Henry. He’d never had a son, and when his only child, Alicia, married he couldn’t wait to have a whole lot of wonderful grandsons. But all the poor man ever got was Henry. And what Henry got was spoiled, within an inch of his life.

After the first moment of surprise Carly remembered the ruined sign and the poor dead condor and her surprise turned to anger. She glared at Henry until he turned to look at her, and then went on glaring for several seconds, squinting her eyes and trying to look daggers. For a moment Henry’s flat brown eyes stared back, as blank and shiny as two marbles, but then he wrinkled up his pug nose and stuck out his tongue. Carly tossed her head and looked away.

After the greeting by Reverend Mapes there were two hymns and a prayer and then the visiting minister was introduced. His name was Brother Tupper and he had, he said, been called by God to come all the way from North Carolina to preach to sinners in California. Brother Tupper was a short, roundish man with a red face and a soft southern accent, and his words slurred together in an interesting way as he said how glad he was to see such a fine large congregation, and how he hoped that everyone, and especially the children, would stay after Sunday School to hear the word of God. Then they all marched to their classes while Miss Higginbotham played “Onward Christian Soldiers” on the piano.

On the church steps Carly stopped and told Mavis to go on and save her a chair, and when the boys went by she called to Henry.

“What do you want, Mehitabel?” Henry said, but he stopped and the other boys went on without him, snickering and making smarty remarks about Henry having a girlfriend.

Carly glared at Henry and he stepped back—outside of kicking range. She’d kicked him in the shins once when he threw a stone at Tiger. “What’s eating you now?” he asked uneasily.

“I just wanted to tell you,” Carly said, “that I know who was trespassing on Carlton property, and who shot that poor condor and hung it over our sign. And—and”—Carly took a deep breath—“and if you ever do anything like that again, you’re going to be very very sorry.”

Henry’s naturally blank face had gone even blanker. “How’d you know—” he started, before he caught himself and said, “What are you talking about, Hartwick? I don’t know anything about any condor.”

“Yes, you do,” Carly said. “The whole matter is under investigation and you are going to be in serious trouble.”

But Henry’s open-mouthed stare had turned into his usual spiteful grin. “What trouble?” he said. “I can shoot condors anytime I want to, and as far as that spring goes, it’s as much Quigley property as Carlton, and my Grandpa is going to prove it.”

“No, it’s not,” Carly said. “It isn’t either.”

“No, it’s not. It isn’t either,” Henry said in a mocking falsetto voice, and then he laughed and ran off after the other boys.

The Intermediate class met in the dining room of the parsonage so Mrs. Mapes could teach the class in between trips to the kitchen to see how her Sunday dinner was doing. As soon as everyone had found a chair, including some that had to be brought in from the kitchen, Mrs. Mapes said how pleased she was to see so many scholars in attendance on this fine Sunday morning. And the next thing she said was that it was a good thing so many were present, because on this very day someone would be chosen to represent the Intermediate class on the church float in the Fourth of July parade. The float was to be pulled by Mr. Quigley’s beautiful dapple-grays, and it would be decorated with flowers and crepe paper, and everyone on it would wear costumes representing themes of a patriotic nature.

Carly caught her breath, and forgot all about Henry and the condor and everything but the Fourth of July parade. Just last year Lila had been the Statue of Liberty on the high school float and she had looked so wonderful with her dark hair loose and hanging down over her white robe. People had talked for days and days about what a beautiful statue Lila had been. Picturing herself in Lila’s white robe and spiky golden crown, Carly felt a sudden pang of yearning. There was nothing in the whole world that she wanted more than to be the Statue of Liberty on the Presbyterian Fourth of July float.

Looking around the room, Carly assessed her chances of being chosen and decided they were pretty good. Of course, she wasn’t as beautiful as Lila, but she’d had good luck in winning elections in the past. She’d been elected class president once, and Queen of the May twice, and secretary so many times she’d lost track. Being elected secretary might not mean a great deal, since it depended mostly on spelling ability, but presidents and Queens of the May were chosen for more complicated reasons. Carly wasn’t entirely sure just what those reasons were, but she did know that she often did well in elections. She was thinking that her chances were pretty good—until she noticed what Henry was up to.

While Mrs. Mapes took up the collection and counted it, and filled out the register, Henry whispered to Luther Purdy and Emma Hawkins and then reached in his pocket and gave them something. She was beginning to suspect the truth, even before Mavis Johns told her what was going on. When Mrs. Mapes went into the kitchen to check on her pork roast, Mavis moved closer to Carly and whispered that Henry was buying votes for the float election. His mother, Alicia Babcock, was on the float committee and she’d told him that each Sunday School class would get to choose one participant. And Henry had been rounding up votes ever since.

“He already got Bucky and Frank,” Mavis whispered excitedly, “and I think he just got Luther and Emma.”

“How about you?” Carly whispered. “Are you going to vote for him?”

Mavis smiled sheepishly. “I’d rather vote for you, Carly,” she said. “You know that.” She reached in her pocket and pulled out a shiny new dime. She looked at the dime and then at Carly. “You don’t have an extra dime, do you?” she asked. “I’ll give Henry’s back if you do.”

Mrs. Mapes came back then, so all Carly could do was toss her head and turn her back on Mavis, and think about the remarks she could have made about people who sold their friendship.

The lesson started then. The assignment had been to read all of Matthew 23 as well as memorizing verse 33, and the quiz was about everything in the whole chapter. The questions weren’t easy, but Carly had read Matthew 23 just that morning before breakfast, so it was fresh in her mind. Henry made a mess of most of his answers, but, as usual, he managed to make a joke out of his mistakes, so that the class had a good time laughing at him. When Mrs. Mapes asked him what building was described as being “white and clean on the outside and full of uncleanness on the inside,” he said, “a whitewashed outhouse,” and everyone nearly died laughing. And when Carly gave the right answer, which was, of course, a whited sepulcher, Henry whispered, “Know-it-all! Just like her pa.”

When the clock on the dining room wall said ten fifty-five, Henry raised his hand and asked when the election was going to be, and that’s when Mrs. Mapes said that there wasn’t going to be one. “I decided I would select as our representative the person with the most correct answers to today’s quiz,” she said, “and the honor goes, without question, to Carly Hartwick.” Carly marched back into the church in such a haze of excitement that she barely noticed how everyone was avoiding Henry, in case he decided to demand the return of his dimes.

C
ARLY HAD BEEN
looking forward to Brother Tupper’s “generation of vipers” sermon because she felt quite certain it was going to be about sin. The Reverend Mapes was always disappointingly vague on the subject of sins and sinners, but there had been some visiting preachers in the past who had dropped some fascinating hints. Carly had been hoping that Brother Tupper would do the same.

It wasn’t at all hard, of course, to get information about the ordinary, everyday sins. But it was obvious that God wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble to create hell just to pay people back for things like disobedience and immodesty. So it was pretty certain there were a lot of much more interesting sins that no one would talk about, at least not to Carly. And right at first Brother Tupper’s sermon seemed promising.

Brother Tupper began by talking in his soft southern voice about how the world was becoming more evil and sinful all the time, and most of it was because of atheists. The atheists, he said, were spreading all over the country like a plague. According to Brother Tupper a lot of terrible things were going on in the world, things like immoral books and stage shows and strikes and bombings and assassinations, and the atheists were behind them all. Brother Tupper worked himself up to a rasping red-faced bellow over the atheists, and Carly was looking forward to what else he was going to say about sin when he suddenly changed the subject. After that he only talked about the End of the World.

The End of the World was coming very soon. Brother Tupper was sure of it, and he read a lot of verses from the Bible to prove it. The verses told about signs that would come just before the world ended—and all the signs had happened already or were just about to happen. Just before the end there would be wars and rumors of wars, and famines and earthquakes, and, the most convincing of all, horseless carriages. Brother Tupper reminded everyone about the wars in Casablanca and Moldavia, and the famine in China, and nobody needed to be reminded about the San Francisco earthquake, or horseless carriages like the one the Quigleys had just bought. There didn’t seem to be any doubt about it—the last days were well under way.

After church that day Carly went home with Aunt M. and Woo Ying, as she always did on Sunday afternoons, and all the way to Greenwood she was still thinking about the sermon and the end of the world. She didn’t even mention about being chosen to ride on the Fourth of July float, since it seemed pretty certain that the world wasn’t going to last that long.

Woo Ying started talking about what they were going to have for Sunday dinner, which was ordinarily a subject that Carly found interesting after the long morning in church. But with the world about to end, even chicken and dumplings and strawberry pie seemed unimportant. But it wasn’t until Aunt M. and Carly got out at the front gate, and Woo Ying had taken Chloe and the surrey on to the stable, that Aunt M. said, “Carly, child, what is the matter? You don’t seem like yourself at all.”

At first Carly shook her head because she was afraid what she wanted to ask would sound awfully selfish, but by the time they got to the veranda she couldn’t stand it any longer. “Aunt M.,” she said, “do you think the world will end before the Fourth of July parade?—because I was going to get to be the Statue of Liberty on the Presbyterian float.”

Aunt M. blew up. “Ridiculous!” she shouted, stomping down the hall, dragging Carly after her by the arm. “That ridiculous, sanctimonious old hayseed,” she yelled, shoving Carly down into a chair by the kitchen table. Stomping over to the sink, she began to pump water into the tea kettle, still shouting. “Red-faced—self-righteous—heartless old pulpit-thumper. Going around the country showing off his piety by scaring little children to death.” She was still shouting when Woo Ying came in the back door.

“Stop that,” Woo Ying hollered. “Be sick again, yell like that!” He took the tea kettle away from Aunt M. and made her sit down at the kitchen table and got her nerve medicine out of the cupboard.

Aunt M. sat down quietly enough, but after a moment she got her breath back and began to yell at Woo Ying. “I don’t need that. There’s nothing wrong with my nerves. And don’t you tell me what to do, you ridiculous—”

But Woo Ying was yelling, too, drowning her out. “Why yelling like that at poor missy? Look how sad missy. Look at poor little missy Carly.”

Aunt M. stopped yelling and looked at Carly and so did Woo Ying. She looked back at them. They were both peering at her with their wrinkled faces squeezed into worried frowns. Suddenly she began to giggle, and after a moment Aunt M. laughed too. But Woo Ying went on frowning until Aunt M. explained.

“I wasn’t yelling at Carly,” she said. “I was yelling about that caterwauling, puddin’-mouthed old preacher. Scared Carly half to death with all his talk about the world coming to an end.” She turned to Carly. “Listen to me, child. The world’s not going to come to an end. Not now and not for a long time. That—that”—she muttered a few more words under her breath and then went on—“that Brother Tupper doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

Carly nodded. She wanted to believe what Aunt M. said. She didn’t want to think about all those terribly convincing signs and omens the preacher had shouted about. She wished she could just forget all those proofs that the end was at hand.

Woo Ying was nodding his head. “Aha,” he said. “Woo Ying think maybe reason why missy so sad. Woo Ying think maybe missy worry about end of world.” He sat down in the chair next to Carly and tucked his hands into his sleeves. “Look at Woo Ying,” he said. “Woo Ying very old. In China very old people very wise. Know many things. Woo Ying know all about world. World very okay. Very okay.” He leaned forward and stared into Carly’s eyes. “Missy believe Woo Ying?”

Carly felt a smile tugging at the edges of her mouth. “Yes,” she said. “I believe Woo Ying.”

“F
OR HEAVEN’S SAKE
, Carly, stand still.”

“I am standing still,” Carly said. “I’m not moving anything but my eyes.”

Perched on a footstool in front of the long mirror in Nellie’s room, Carly turned her head ever so slightly and rolled her eyes toward her reflection. The crown looked fine again, now that Nellie had pressed the wrinkled points with the. flatiron, and the torch with its flames of orange and yellow tissue paper was as good as new. The gown itself was another matter.

Silky white and draped in Grecian fashion, the Statue of Liberty gown that had been so stunning on Lila was something of a disappointment. The bodice, a crisscrossing of softly gathered tucks, had fitted quite differently on Lila. Carly sighed. Taking a deep breath, she lifted her chest as much as she could, without much effect.