Ghost Girl (19 page)

I didn't feel much like joining in. For the past week Aunt Birdy had been taking at least an hour longer to climb out of bed in the mornings, and I had noticed her biting her lip whenever she pushed herself up from her chair. “My joints are just a little stiff with the cold weather coming on, that's all,” she told me. “You go on to the fair now and have a good time.”

Mrs. Jessup and Little Elton had come over that morning to keep an eye on Aunt Birdy while I was gone. I knew Mrs. Jessup would probably wear her out with all her gossip and prying ways. But by the time we hit the open stretch of highway down in the valley, I started to feel the knots in my stomach work loose.

“Hey!” Vernon Woodard yelled. “Do this! It feels like you're flying!” He was kneeling in the hay facing the wind with his eyes closed, his head flung back, and his arms spread wide. At first I ignored him, but when the other kids started flapping and hollering, I couldn't help myself. I stretched out my arms, and the cool rush of wind lifted my jacket and whipped back my hair. It
did
feel like flying, like I was flying far away from long afternoons filled with worrying and chores and too much quiet.

Then Dewey and Alvin and the Woodard brothers started shouting hello to folks we passed on the roadside. We waved at everybody—an old woman pushing a wheelbarrow full of potatoes, a little boy with a fishing pole, even cows grazing in a bean field and a sad-eyed coon dog that watched us from a rickety porch.

At the entrance to the fairgrounds, a sheriff stood directing people where to park in an open field. We hooted and waved at him, too, and I turned just in time to catch Miss Vest staring at me through the back window of the truck. She was smiling, but she looked surprised.

I knew I wasn't acting like myself, but I couldn't help it. I was free. I jumped down from the truck with hay still in my hair and pushed and skipped with the other kids toward the tinkly music and rows of tents. Already there were crowds of people at the fair—men wearing flashy ties and women in dresses and Sunday hats.

“We'll start at the carousel,” Miss Vest called out as she led us along. “Let's stand over here while Wit buys our tickets.”

The carousel was a sight to behold, with its pointed roof decorated in jewels and mirrors, and bucking horses charging round and round. Once Wit had passed out the tickets, the boys ran for the black stallions with wild manes, while the girls raced around trying to find the mares with the fanciest saddles or the prettiest eyes. Even Mr. Jessup took a ticket for the carousel. “You think it's a sin to ride that thing?” I heard him ask Miss Vest.

“No, I think it's good, clean, wholesome fun,” she said. In the next minute, Mr. Jessup was sitting on a stallion next to me, staring up at the greasy gears and axles that cranked the horses up and down.

After the carousel, we moved on to the tents full of prize-winning jams and pies and quilts. There were huge blue-ribbon hogs and rows of dairy cows and roosters with gaudy feathers. Then Wit and Sergeant Jordan led us over to a dusty corral, where cowboys in big-brim hats and pointy boots were showing off rope-slinging tricks.

It wasn't until the late afternoon, after we had worked our way through the dart-throwing and ringtoss games and a fried-chicken plate lunch and Cracker Jacks, that I remembered the medicine I wanted to buy for Aunt Birdy. I still had money left over from one of Daddy's envelopes, and Mrs. Jessup had told me that at the fair they sold the best cure for rheumatism you could find. So while everyone else played another round of games, I hurried off to find Dr. Minthorne's Miracle Liniment.

After spending most of the day at the fair, I was sure I knew my way up and down the dusty rows of booths. But with dusk falling and the twinkling lights strung between the tents coming on, things looked different.

I stopped at a stall where a man was selling brooms. “Excuse me,” I said. “Do you know where I can find Dr. Minthorne's Miracle Liniment?”

The man shook his head. “Never heard of it. But they're selling some other remedies down the way.” He jerked his thumb toward a dark line of walnut trees at the edge of the fairgrounds.

I was starting to feel jittery about getting lost and leaving Aunt Birdy for so long, but I wanted to bring her something. I couldn't come home with nothing but a red balloon and a pack of chewing gum to show for my day down in the valley, so I headed in the direction the broom man had pointed.

As soon as I reached the shadowy place under the walnut trees, I knew I had come too far. Some shifty-eyed older boys were standing in a circle, passing around a bottle in a paper bag, and the old woman who was selling home remedies from the back of a wagon didn't even look up when I stopped to inspect her grubby jars full of roots and salves. She just kept grumbling to herself, pawing through an old burlap sack for something she had lost.

I was ready to head back toward Miss Vest and the other kids when one of the boys broke away from the circle and came strolling in my direction. Even though he was about half a foot taller than when I had seen him last, I recognized him right off. It was Poke McClure.

“Hey, ain't that ghost girl?” he called. “Remember me, ghost girl? It's old Poke. Remember? The one who broke your arm?” He stopped, looking me up and down, then let out a chuckle. “Well, would you look at that? I almost wouldn'ta knowed you. Least you got some meat on your bones now. Don't look half bad.”

He took a step closer—close enough so I could smell his hair tonic and the liquor on his breath. I glanced around. The old woman was still rooting through her bag, and Poke's friends were starting to wander over.

“What you doin' way down here in the valley? I thought you'd be up on the mountain, setting under that old dead chestnut tree.” He glanced around and saw his friends coming. Then he snickered again and started talking louder so they could hear. “Ya learn to read yet, ghost girl?”

I didn't answer. I turned and ran. I could hear Poke bust out laughing behind me.

“Aw, look at that,” one of his friends yelled. “You scared her so bad, she let loose of her balloon.”

I ducked down a dark pathway between two tents, then scooted along a shed and a row of parked farm tractors. Maybe I was imagining things, but I kept hearing laughing—a low, mocking laugh drifting out from the dark corners behind me. I ran faster, expecting Poke to step out from the shadows at any second, and knowing that every step was taking me farther away from Miss Vest. But then I spotted a crowd of folks up ahead and I almost shouted with relief.

I hurried toward them and squeezed in, trying to put a few bodies between me and the shadows behind me. It wasn't until I had caught my breath that I looked up and realized what everyone was staring at. There was a man standing on the tailgate of a truck, shouting at the crowd. With his wind-burned skin and his thick, knobby hands, he looked like a simple farmer—not the type who was used to giving speeches, but he was so burning mad, the veins in his neck bulged and he was hammering his fist against his leg.

“Do we plan on letting them get away with it?” he yelled. “Letting them take away our land just so some citified tourists can come spread out a picnic where our homeplace used to sit?”

“No, sir!” a woman next to me hollered back.

“And what about Herbert Hoover?” the man went on. “He comes up here, fishing in our creeks, bringing all them marines and building his houses and roads anywhere he damn well pleases. I heard him myself, couple years back, on these same fairgrounds claiming he cared about the people of Madison County. You heard him, too, didn't you?”

People all around me were nodding. I felt my heart start to thump again, like I had never stopped running.

The man was settling into his speech now, feeling more sure of himself. He hitched up his trousers and smiled around at the folks gazing up at him. “Well, it's kind of convenient, don't you think?” he said, leaving his thumbs hooked in his belt loops. “Old Hoover gets to have his fishing camp up on the Rapidan while he sets back and watches us get shoved off our land. And I don't know if you all heard yet or not, but it turns out the living ain't the only ones gonna be evicted to make room for this here park. They're gonna empty out the dead folks, too!”

Everybody fell quiet. “You heard me right,” he went on. “Just the other day I find out they're gonna be moving all our graveyards down to the lowlands. My poor daddy buried up at Thornton Gap, and his daddy, they're all gonna be dug up.”

For a minute I forgot where I was. I turned to the woman beside me. “That's not right!” I cried, forgetting to keep my voice down. “My brother's buried up near Big Meadows and I know the Hoovers. They'd never let that happen. Mrs. Hoover says they're gonna make sure—”

I stopped. The woman was eyeing me like I was addled.

Then she turned away to listen to the man on the truck. He was shouting again. “Well, now's our chance to let old Hoover know what we think about how he's been treating us,” he cried. “We'll just show him next month in the voting booth!”

I couldn't listen anymore. As I turned and worked my way back through the circle of people, I could feel tears brimming up behind my eyes. There was no denying it. The park was coming. But if President Hoover lost the election, who would take care of us then? Franklin Roosevelt probably wouldn't care one bit about the school and all the families living around it. What would happen to Aunt Birdy and to me if the Hoovers went away and the park came in?

Dewey was standing at the edge of the crowd. I shoved past him, heading in the direction that seemed to make the most sense.

“Hey, wait a minute,” he yelled as he tagged along after me. “Wait!”

When I didn't stop, he grabbed my elbow. I whipped around just in time to catch him smirking at me with that know-it-all smile of his.

“What do you want?” I snapped. “Fine, I'll say it. You were right about the park all along. You were right!”

Dewey looked confused. “What are you talking about?” he asked. “I was just gonna tell you that you're going the wrong way. Miss Vest sent me out to find you. She says we're heading home soon.”

“Oh.”

“The rest of the kids are clear over at the outdoor stage,” Dewey told me. “Come on.”

I followed him past a cotton candy and a fried doughnut stall, not saying a word. The fair had lost its magic for me now. My stomach pitched at the thick smell of frying lard, and the games and booths that had looked so colorful and lively an hour ago now looked rickety and cheap. Plus I still hadn't found the liniment for Aunt Birdy.

But Dewey wouldn't let me keep quiet for long. “What were you carrying on about back there?” he asked. “About the park.”

I shrugged, all of a sudden feeling tired to the bone. “That man up on the truck—he says they're gonna do it,” I told Dewey. “They're gonna move us out first chance they get.”

Dewey slowed down. He scratched his hand through his thick black hair. “Did he say where we're supposed to go once they move us out?” he asked.

“Nope. I don't think he knows. I don't think anybody knows.”

Dewey cussed under his breath.

“Why are you acting so surprised?” I asked. “I thought you knew all about it.”

“Guess I didn't rightly believe it myself till now.”

He shuffled on ahead of me, and soon we came to the wide plank stage. I could see all the kids from school squeezed into the front two rows of seats, gawking up at three fiddlers who were tuning their instruments getting ready to play. Their faces glowed in the bright yellow light from the stage.

“Where's Miss Vest?” I asked.

“She's over there,” Dewey said, jerking his head toward the carousel. “Still setting with Wit.”

I stood on my tiptoes trying to see around the people passing by. Wit and Miss Vest were the only ones on the carousel, tucked into one of the high-backed painted benches between the horses.

I made a sour face. “What are they doing? The carousel's not even moving.”

Dewey nodded. “Yeah. Gears locked up. The fella who runs it, he's trying to fix it. But the thing ain't budged an inch for the last hour or so . . . and Miss Vest and Wit, they ain't budged, neither.”

He leaned toward me like somebody else might be listening. “They're fixing to get married, you know.”

Just like that, Dewey blurted it out, just like it was nothing. He might as well have been telling me about the weather or a rock in his shoe.

“Yeah,” he went on. “Daddy heard 'em talking one night when he was in the coatroom before his lesson. He heard 'em talking about where they're gonna live after they get married. But don't tell nobody. They think it's a secret. You won't tell nobody, will you?”

I shook my head no. The fiddle music had started. It cut through the air so sharp and sudden, I could barely hear Dewey saying, “You all right, April? You all right?”