Creatures of Habit (3 page)

But now in the prickly darkness of the woods, even with him there beside her, the fears came back. What if they did catch a snipe? What if one of those huge brown birds all of
the relatives talked about did fly from the woods to the hole in their big burlap sack? Caroline braced herself, determined not to scream when it happened, determined not to be a baby. Danny was already mad at her; he was mad at everybody and had been all day long.

She listened for her father's and Uncle Tim's footsteps but all she heard was the frogs and crickets. She tried to think about how she had felt earlier in the afternoon and the excitement of waiting for the relatives to arrive. The kitchen table was covered with food, big watermelons cooled on the back porch, and the box of fireworks that had been on a high shelf was down where she could see into it. But not touch them. Not even Danny could touch them.

T
HE RELATIVES HAD
arrived for the Fourth of July—“descended like a swarm of locusts,” Caroline's mother whispered—their paneled station wagon so loaded down with bodies and watermelons and Tupperware that it scraped its bottom coming up the drive.

Caroline was straddling the porch banister, holding a piece of twine tied around the post like reins, when they arrived. She had spent most of the day at the town pool and her eyes were burning. The whole world was a blur. The porch began to vibrate with music from the living room,
where the three teenage cousins immediately huddled around the record player. One of them had her hair rolled up around orange-juice cans. Two others, Uncle Tim and Aunt Patricia's daughters, had arrived with little round carrying cases filled with records. They sang “Where the Boys Are” and argued over who was the best-looking doctor, Ben Casey or Dr. Kildare. They marveled at the fact that Caroline's mother had a record of “Moon River” and a Chubby Checker album, which the one in braces said was her “fave.” They argued over what was the best way to tease hair and then they whispered about Mark Eden and laughed. Caroline was taking notes in her head. This was her assignment: Hear all you can but don't say one word, not to anybody. She knew that somewhere out in the yard Danny was hiding and watching to make sure she passed the test. If she passed today, he would let her go to the pool with him again tomorrow and he would even admit to people that she was his sister. Today she had been an orphaned neighbor child he was being paid big money to watch.

Next door, Mrs. Hopper was stretched out in her lounge chair even though it was after four. Her sprinkler sprayed water over her ugly brown yard and over her huge ugly son who lay out in the grass with his big bare feet propped on the end
of her chair. Occasionally Mrs. Hopper laughed and shook her head from side to side. Just the two of them lived there. Mrs. Hopper was a divorcée who had once lived in Chicago. Her son's name was Bo and her cat's name was Cat, after one in a movie she'd seen. She wore big round sunglasses and colorful beads and taught biology at the community college. These were the facts Caroline had gathered for Danny on another assignment. Mrs. Hopper looked normal enough but Danny said that at sundown her yellow hair stood straight up and her teeth grew long and mossy green. He said that her husband hadn't really left like the grown-ups said he had; she had eaten him.

N
OW
C
AROLINE WAS
thinking about
that
in the dark woods on this black moonless night. The picture in her head of Mrs. Hopper's teeth growing made her shaky, and then came the sick wave of school thoughts: the teachers with their paddles, the squat-necked man in charge. She tried to shut out of her head all the stories she had heard by reciting things. She knew “This Old Man” and “When You Wish Upon a Star.” She knew the words to “Don't Say Ain't,” which used to be Danny's favorite poem before he learned “Beans, Beans.”

Don't say ain't,
your mama might faint.
Your daddy might fall in a bucket of paint.
Your brother might die.
Your sister might cry
and your dog might call the FBI.

But she knew the scary things just would not let her alone. In fact, only yesterday she'd caught herself needing to cling to her mother's bare legs while she stood in the yard talking to Mrs. Hopper.

“Go on now, honey,” her mother had said. “Let me talk to Mrs. Hopper for a sec.”

“Lord, please let her call me Gail,” Mrs. Hopper said, lifting those big sunglasses. Her eyes were crayoned to look like a cat's. “I was never cut out to be Mrs. Hopper.” Her mother and Mrs. Hopper both laughed. Mrs. Hopper said she couldn't wait to get a load of those relatives, and Caroline's mama said that she could.

“I'll tell you about the relatives since you might not remember them so good from last time,” Danny had said that very morning, his spoon poised over a bowl of Cocoa Puffs. “They all eat like hogs and Aunt Patricia wants to hug and slobber all over you. Those
girls,
” he whispered the word
like it was a swear, “are just stupid, all of them. Uncle Tim is fat. The only boy cousin is Randy, who's okay except last time he brought a girl.” Danny knew these things. If he said Mrs. Hopper was friends with the devil and put him up in her basement then it was so. It gave Caroline a shiver to think of all the secrets he told her late at night when their parents were asleep: hunks of hair from dead people found in the cafeteria ravioli, kids' fingers bent backward by the principal until the bones snapped, parents getting arrested and sent to prison when their children talked too much.

Caroline's mother sometimes referred to the relatives as the dog people because they spent their lives going from show to show with these big scary Dobermans. They were always talking about “the circuit” and such. They had wanted to bring along some of the baby dogs but Caroline's mother said they could not.

“I don't blame you at all!” Mrs. Hopper had said, her tanned bare foot swinging back and forth while she sipped a glass of tea. She had a thin silver chain around her ankle. Caroline was hiding under the bushes near where they sat, a cowgirl hat pulled low to disguise herself. “Just who does this sister-in-law of yours think she is?”

“Doris Day.” Caroline's mother laughed and sat down. “Doris Day on the darkest night of her life.”

“I have never missed my ex-relatives,” Mrs. Hopper said. “Divorce is good for something.” Then they began talking about their yards. Mrs. Hopper said next she'd like to pave hers and then paint the grass and flowers in place. Caroline's mother said she pictured something different altogether: new place, new town, new weather.

Not an hour after that the station wagon scraped its awful sound, the car horn blasted several short notes, and Caroline's mother rushed past, her perfume sweet and clean in the still summer heat. Her father followed, the screen door slamming shut behind him. Mrs. Hopper was out in her yard just as she had said she would be, to catch a peek, her hair wrapped in a white towel as she sat in a lawn chair letting the sprinkler spray her tanned legs. Danny made a face and shook his head back and forth when Mrs. Hopper lifted her hand in a wave. Caroline was still looking for some sign that she really was a witch but aside from the big purple beads around her neck and the black thumbnail, which she
said
she got when she accidentally hit herself with a hammer, had not come up with anything.

“Fat as ever,” Danny said and nudged Caroline when Uncle Tim caught their mother up in a big hug and lifted her right up off the sidewalk. “Posse's coming,” Danny said and
sniffed the air, pointed to the walk where they all stood. Caroline counted eight of them if you included that baldheaded spit-up-smelling baby.

“I smell 'em all right.” Danny swung his legs over the banister. “You keep a watch while I blaze the getaway trail and set up camp.” He pointed to the rubber tomahawk strapped to his belt. Then he jumped down behind the box shrubs and was gone, scrambling on hands and knees to the back of the house.

Caroline was on the verge of following when her parents called to her, all the relatives lined up and waiting, baskets of food and a box of diapers at their feet. It was like playing firing squad that time when Danny tied a dish towel over her face and leaned her back against a tree and had all those boys from his neighborhood club lined up and ready for his signal. “When you hear the shots, you gotta fall out and be dead,” he had whispered, and then she waited. She waited until the whole yard was silent, bracing herself for the jump. “I'm getting tired,” she finally called. “Go on and shoot, okay?” No answer. “Danny!” She had screamed his name until her face felt hot. The yard was silent, and when she finally got free, Danny and the Indian Scouts were nowhere in sight. It was against all the rules to tattle so that night she asked Danny why he had tricked her. He said it wasn't a
trick, it was a test. It was the first test, being still and being quiet, and she had passed.

The relatives had gotten out of the car and stood around nodding exactly like those spring-neck dogs that the man who owned the meat market had in the back window of his car. “I ain't having nothing to do with these relatives,” Danny had said last night when he crept into her room and knelt by the bed. He said the word “relatives” the same way he spit out “love,” so quick it didn't linger in his mouth. “I'm pretending they ain't even here and you better do the same, Caroline.” He pronounced her name with two syllables,
Care-line.
She could see by the yellow glow of the night-light as he knelt there how his jaw clenched as he reeled off the rules. “You gotta ask Uncle Tim how much he weighs. Ask Patricia how come she looks and smells so much like her dogs. Don't talk to the girl with the baby at all.”

“C
AROLINE
.” H
ER MOTHER
was smiling but Caroline knew from the tone in her voice that she was getting impatient. “And where did Danny run off to?”

Caroline gripped the banister and stepped slowly onto the second step. This was test number two and she knew that Danny was somewhere watching, at the corner of the house or up the pine tree where he kept his secret information. But
even worse than that was the fact that Mrs. Hopper was watching, her big slick magazines hiding her bare stomach as she waved.

“What have you done to your shirt?” Caroline's mother smoothed the wrinkled collar. “And where are your shoes? Where is your brother?” Caroline shook her head, shrugged. Danny was watching, and if she messed up, he'd never let her be the maiden scout; she'd have to represent the posse of white men for the rest of her life. Mrs. Hopper had her eyes closed now but that didn't mean anything. She could cast a hex any old time.

“My, my, grown like a weed,” Uncle Tim said and shook his head. “You're a cute little boy now aren't you?” They all laughed and Caroline stared at him, reached down to her hip where very soon she'd have her own tomahawk.

“Don't tease her. She's a pretty thing. Got hair like us, Jimmy.” Aunt Patricia patted Caroline's father on the arm and then she stepped closer, her arms swooping like a great white hawk as she caught Caroline in a cloud of highsmelling flea powder. Caroline pulled and twisted away before the Great White Hawk could begin to slobber.

“Caroline, can't you say something?” her mother asked and she nodded and again touched the place her weapon would hang at her side.

“You remember Cousin Randy.”

The tall one, long legs like a posse rider and hair hanging to his shoulders, stepped forward. He wore his hair long and beads around his neck to trick the real Indian Scouts. He had round black eyes.

“And this is his girlfriend, Sarah.”

Another trick. Her hair was in braids, her feet in leather strapped shoes. She wore Indian jewelry and carried a Frisbee.

“And this is Cousin Sue and little Paul Jr.”

Sue looked like the Thin White Hawk and Paul Jr. was a poor excuse of a papoose.

“Come meet little Paul.”

“How much do you weigh?” she asked loudly and pointed at Uncle Tim.

“Caroline?” Her mother's arms were around her now and steering her up onto the porch. “I'm sorry, Tim, who knows what gets into them.”

“The devil, I guess,” her father said and shook his head. He glanced over at Mrs. Hopper when he said that, a sure sign that he knew something about what went on in her basement. She had the straps of her suit undone and they swung forward as she bent to rub lotion on her legs. There was a moment when she was looking right at Caroline, a
moment when their eyes locked.
It only takes a minute for her to put the devil in you. It can happen so fast nobody knows until it's too late.

N
OW, IN THE
black dark, Caroline was crouched down in the pine straw trying not to make a sound. She was looking for the devil, looking for a snipe. She felt something brush against her bare legs, leaves or snipe feathers or snakes or mosquitoes.

“Our mosquitoes are so big,” her daddy was famous for saying, “they roll up your pants legs to bite you.”

She swatted with her hand and moved her feet away from whatever was down there. She thought of Mrs. Hopper sitting up in a tree, a long black cape blowing around her and wild-eyed cats sitting on the limbs, and her leg jerked.

“Will you stop?” Danny whispered, his voice still deep. “How are we gonna catch a snipe with you making all this noise?”

“You talked,” she whispered. “I wasn't talking.”

“You were moving. Moved your feet and moved your hand.”

She knew the expression on his face as if they were standing in broad daylight, his blue eyes glaring, the sharp bone of his jaw clenched so that the pale purple vein in his cheek
could be traced as easily as if it had been put there with a ballpoint pen.

“You let your hand off the bag and messed up the hole. Snipe ain't coming unless it sees a big dark hole.”

“Y
ES SIR
,” U
NCLE
T
IM
with the fat red face had said. “I myself bagged five big snipe one night. Nobody else ever bagged five.” Instead of standing behind their uncle and making faces, Danny had sat on the floor right by his feet, laughing and slapping his leg. Caroline wasn't sure if Danny was pulling a trick or really liking Uncle Tim, and he wouldn't even give her a sign to let her know. He said that he didn't think he ought to have to eat at any children's table with her; he wanted to do what the men were doing.