And Condors Danced (11 page)

“Nellie,” she asked, “when will I grow a bosom?”

Nellie started, as if she had pricked her finger. “Ummm,” she said, shaking her head and pointing to the pins she was holding between her lips. Then she bent her head quickly again over the hemming, but not quickly enough to hide the frown. Looking down at her sister’s curly red head, Carly sighed again, more softly. The question about bosoms, like lots of other questions, was one that Nellie probably wouldn’t answer, even if she hadn’t had a mouth full of pins.

Carly had learned by experience that Nellie disliked being asked certain kinds of questions almost as much as she disliked being “in charge.” “Ask your mother,” she usually said when Carly asked about such things. Carly guessed that Nellie had read somewhere that “Ask your mother” was what you were supposed to say to children who were too curious. But whoever had given that advice obviously hadn’t known Mama.

Not that Mama refused to answer such questions. It was just that the answer never had much to do with what you had asked. Usually what Mama had to say turned into a long story about how little she had known or even guessed about the troubles and burdens of life when she was a child—in the state of Maine. And about how innocent and carefree and happy the little Anna Elliot, the beloved daughter of Joshua and Eliza Elliot, had been in those long ago days. When she was finally finished you didn’t have any answers except for a vague feeling that not knowing anything way back then, in the state of Maine, was a lot more fun than not knowing anything in California in 1907.

Having given up on the question about bosoms, it occurred to Carly to wonder about Nellie’s plans for the Fourth.

“Nellie,” she asked, “who’s going to stay home with Mama on the Fourth? Is Father?”

Nellie shook her head. Taking the remaining pins out of her mouth, she sat back on her heels and looked critically at the pinned-up hem. “Turn around slowly,” she said.

“Is he? He is, isn’t he?” Carly repeated as she turned, her arms outstretched. She was beginning to worry. Although Father disliked parades and picnics and all such “entertainments,” he now and then decided that it was necessary for him to attend. “Not that I’d prefer to,” Carly had heard him say. “A matter of diplomacy. Can’t have our good neighbors thinking that I’m bored by their rustic social efforts.”

Carly wasn’t worried for herself—she wouldn’t be the one to stay home. If there had been times in the past when she felt hurt that Mama considered her too irresponsible, this wasn’t one of them. She would hate having to stay home on the Fourth, and she was sure Nellie would too.

Nellie shook her head slowly. “He’s not going to the parade. But he says that Aunt M. thinks he should go to the picnic to talk to people and find out what’s being said about the water company. Aunt M. wants him to see if he can find out if enough people want the city to challenge Mr. Quigley’s control. She thinks we’ll need—”

“Oh, Nellie!” Carly interrupted. “Will you have to stay home?”

“I’m to go to the parade. But I’ll have to come home before the picnic starts.” Nellie shrugged, smiling ruefully. “And just when Clarence got up his nerve to ask me to sit with him at the picnic.”

Carly stared at Nellie, suddenly seeing her in an entirely new light. “Did he? Really, Nellie? Did you say yes?” Although Clarence had been around for a long time, talking to Nellie when there was an opportunity, blushing madly and smiling his toothy smile, it had never occurred to Carly to think of him and Nellie in romantic terms. One naturally thought of Lila that way—Lila and her Johnny and scenes from forbidden, doomed romances like
Romeo and Juliet
and
Wuthering Heights
and
Lorna Doone.
But when one thought of Nellie the things that came to mind first were worried frowns and lectures. And then, of course, those sudden hugs and kisses—and cookies—and hems taken up and wrinkled crowns straightened.

Feeling guilty, Carly poked Nellie’s shoulder and asked again in her most enthusiastic tone of voice, “Did you tell him you would? That’s so exciting. I think that’s very exciting.” She wasn’t just pretending either. After all, there was no doubt that sitting with a young man at the Fourth of July picnic instead of with your family was a fairly romantic event—even if the man was only Clarence Buford.

Nellie’s smile was teasing but also, somehow, sad. “I was still deciding,” she said. “And now I don’t have to. Perhaps it’s all for the best.”

On the night before the Fourth, Carly had trouble sleeping. She tossed and turned until her nightgown was wrapped around her body like swaddling clothes and she had to stand up in bed to straighten herself out. Then she got back under the covers and tossed and turned some more. At last she got up and went downstairs for Tiger.

Strictly speaking, Tiger wasn’t allowed in the house because Mama was an Elliot. The Elliots, Mama’s family back in Maine, didn’t approve of having animals in the house and Mama still felt the same way. So Carly only let Tiger in when she really needed him—and when nobody was looking. But ever since she first got Tiger, right after she’d come to live at the ranch house, she sometimes needed him to help her sleep. Nobody else knew about it. It was her secret, and Tiger’s.

Tiger knew it was a secret. No matter how quietly she opened the back door he always heard, and he’d be at the door in a second, wagging his tail like crazy but not making a sound. She’d pick him up then, because his toenails on the stairs were too noisy, and tiptoe upstairs. Usually Tiger yipped when he was excited, but he never did on the way to Carly’s room, even though he was absolutely vibrating with happiness and excitement. Instead he only made a tiny growling sound almost like a cat purring and licked Carly’s cheek or ear or whatever else he could reach. Back in her room, with Tiger cuddled up beside her on top of the blankets, she usually went right to sleep and didn’t wake up until it was time to tiptoe him back downstairs before Nellie went down to the kitchen.

It worked again that night. With Tiger beside her Carly slept peacefully until dawn, when she got up to let him out—and to start preparing to be the Statue of Liberty. In spite of having to wash her hair to get out the braid crinkles, Carly was, for once, the one who was ready on time. Robed and crowned and with her slightly damp hair hanging loose on her shoulders, she fretted nervously while her brothers took forever to eat and dress, and Lila and Nellie fussed endlessly over the food they were taking to the picnic. By the time Arthur brought the surrey to the front steps, and Charles, in his slow, uncertain way, loaded and shifted and reloaded the baskets of picnic supplies, Carly was almost beside herself.

All the way into town behind poky old Prince, she worried and fussed, certain that the parade would be under way by the time they arrived, and she would have missed forever her opportunity to be a patriotic symbol. But although it was already five minutes past nine when Arthur finally reined to a stop at the assembly area near the end of First Street, the milling mob had only begun to form itself into a marching column.

“They’re still there,” Carly squealed, bouncing in excitement. “They didn’t leave without me, after all.”

T
HE MOMENT THE
surrey stopped, Carly leapt to the ground, Grecian robe flying. Behind her she could hear Nellie scolding and Arthur and Charles laughing as she straightened her crown and started off at a run around a team of bays hitched to a buckboard decorated with red, white, and blue streamers.

Near the buckboard a group of Women’s Club ladies, dressed in colonial costumes, waited as Mr. Hamilton and his grown-up son, Sam, struggled to get Mrs. Hamilton up onto the wagon bed. Mrs. Clara Hamilton, who was president of the Women’s Club, was wearing across her broad bosom a red ribbon with BETSY ROSS printed on it. On the wagon a copy of the original American flag was draped over a quilting frame, and around it the club ladies would represent Betsy Ross and her sewing circle, stitching up the famous first flag.

Ducking around Betsy Ross and her friends, Carly found herself in the midst of the Community Marching Band. In red and white uniforms decorated with lots of gold braid, the men and boys of the band were forming ranks and warming up their instruments, Carly dodged between tootling cornets and throbbing tubas and, a few yards beyond the band, finally arrived at the Presbyterian Church’s entry—the “Symbols of Patriotism.”

The Presbyterian float was an enormous freight wagon pulled by the Quigleys’ famous matched team, a pair of high-stepping dapple-grays, so light as to be almost white. When Carly arrived, all the other Symbols of Patriotism were already arranged around the bed of the wagon amid huge potted ferns and a number of small latticework trellises covered with real roses. Carly thought she had never seen anything so beautiful in her whole life.

“There she is. Our little Miss Liberty has arrived.” Reverend Mapes’s loud preacher’s voice boomed out from somewhere among the trellises. At least it sounded like Reverend Mapes, but when he leaned down over the driver’s seat, holding out his hand, for just a moment she wasn’t sure. Looking up against the bright sunlight, she hardly recognized the man in the bushy white wig, three-cornered hat, enormous frock coat, and unnaturally jovial smile. But once up on the wagon bed she saw that it was indeed the preacher, amazingly transformed by his elaborate costume.

Having never seen a preacher’s legs before, Carly was looking with interest at the Reverend Mapes’s hefty calves encased in tight white stockings, when he suddenly roared again, this time right in her ear.

“Welcome, Miss Liberty, to our illustrious ranks. Captain John Smith here, and may I introduce the lovely Princess Pocahontas.” A little guiltily Carly shifted her gaze from the fat white legs to the sweeping gesture that indicated Mrs. Mapes, who was wearing long braids of black yarn and an Indian maiden’s dress made from quite a lot of embroidered gunny sacks.

Carly curtsied to the Princess and then followed the Captain between trellises and potted ferns as he introduced her to the other lucky Symbols of Patriotism. The winners from the other Sunday School competitions were sixteen-year-old Ralph Bodger from the young people’s class as George Washington, Tommy Fenner from the infants’ class as a very small and roly-poly Uncle Sam, and George Freebody, representing the adult class, who was supposed to be the president himself, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, dressed for safari in a hunting jacket and Panama hat. Nobody scolded Carly for being late and everyone, except for little Tommy, said hello and told her she made a lovely Statue of Liberty, and even Tommy stopped scratching under his Uncle Sam beard long enough to wave his fingers and grin.

By the time Reverend Mapes had assigned everyone a background trellis and found a box for Uncle Sam to stand on so he could be seen over the potted ferns, Betsy Ross and her ladies had moved into the line of march, the band had formed ranks and begun to play, and the parade was under way.

Framed in her rose-covered trellis, Carly braced herself against the jolting of the wagon and shivered with excitement. Just ahead of her in the driver’s seat a lanky, sharp-faced man who worked for the Quigleys tightened the reins and shouted at the dapple-grays. “Easy there. Easy now,” he shouted, as the spirited horses, spooked by the noise of the band, tossed their heads and plunged against their collars.

The blare and beat of the band, the high-stepping grace of the dapple-grays, the lurching roll of the wagon as it went over the bumpy ground of the vacant lot and down into the street, and the sight of the long, glittering procession stretching out up First Street turned Carly’s shiver into a permanent tremble that quivered up and down her legs and out her arms to the tips of her fingers.

The shiver was unexpected, and unexpectedly exciting.
I’m trembling
, she thought.
I must be terrified. I don’t think I’ve ever been so terrified before
. It was an interesting idea. Concentrating on being terrified on the inside but calm on the outside, she raised her tissue-paper torch and smiled a bravely dignified smile at the first group of parade watchers on the corner of First and Palm.

That first burst of terror had smoothed itself down into a pleasant tingling excitement by the corner of Second Street, where, amid small clumps of waving spectators, Carly spotted Aunt M. and Woo Ying. Aunt M.’s face, under her broad-brimmed hat, was a wreath of smiles and even Woo Ying, whose public face was always solemnly calm, was grinning broadly. Overcome by delight, Carly forgot to be statuelike and jumped up and down, waving her torch wildly.

The wagon rolled on and Carly lost sight of Aunt M. and Woo Ying. Up ahead, in front of the Olympic Hotel, a solid mass of humanity waited, waving and cheering. Quivering with excitement, Carly regained her dignity and posed herself carefully with her torch held high. Then, just as the Quigley grays pranced grandly into the Main Street turn, a string of powerful firecrackers exploded almost under their hooves. As the deafening explosions echoed and reechoed, the terrified horses reared and then plunged forward in a headlong run. And the Presbyterian float turned into a lurching, tumbling, screaming madhouse.

A
T THE FIRST
wild forward plunge of the runaway float Carly’s rose trellis tipped over on top of her, pinning her to the bed of the wagon. A moment later little Tommy Fenner flew off the box he’d been standing on and landed across her legs, where he stuck like a leech, clinging to her ankles and screaming his head off. It wasn’t at all comfortable, bouncing around on the rough wagon bed under Tommy and the trellis, but it all happened so quickly that Carly’s astonishment was just beginning to turn into fear when it was over. The wagon lurched violently one last time and came to a sudden stop. Feeling dazed and hurting a little from splinters and rose thorns, Carly detached Tommy and crawled out from under the trellis and looked around her.

People were running toward the wagon from all directions. Voices were shouting, Tommy was still screaming, and the Quigley grays were snorting and stomping as three or four men clung tightly to their bridles. As she began to get her bearings, Carly could see that the wagon had traveled two blocks down Main Street while she was under the trellis. And during that time a great deal had happened.