Odds Are Good (16 page)

Jan blinked, then nodded. He tightened his grip on his father's hand. “I forgive you,” he whispered.

Then he dropped his head against his father's knees and wept, until the knot of his anger had turned to water as salty as the sea and flowed its way out of his heart.

“Now go,” whispered his father at last. “Go out into the world. The ship is yours. It will take you anywhere you want to go. But one thing I beg of you, Jan. When you find what you love . . . stop looking.”

 

An hour later Jan and Samos stood on the beach where they had landed. Jan took the golden coin from his pocket and flung it into the air. It spun high in a glittering arc. As it passed the peak, began to move away from the sky and back toward the sea, it changed into a ship, tiny but growing.

“Where shall we go?” asked Samos, as they climbed aboard.

Jan started to answer, but the words caught in his throat. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, tried again. “Where shall we go? Anywhere we want! After all . . . I'm a free man.”

The Golden Sail caught the wind. The sea air was fresh and sweet in their nostrils. A gull cawed and wheeled above them. Beyond the gull they saw a single bright star, the first star of evening.

A mermaid sang in the distance.

And the ship sailed on.

I am haunted by biscuits—Elvira Thistledown's biscuits, to be more precise. But I don't have any regrets. If I had it to do over again, I would still eat one, if only to free that poor woman from her curse. I'd do it even knowing how it was going to affect the rest of my life.

 

I was ten when it happened. We had just moved into a new house. Well, new to us; it was really a very old one—the fifth we had been in that I could remember. That was how my parents made their living: buying old houses, fixing them up, then selling them for a bundle of money. It was sort of neat, except it meant we never stayed in any one place very long, the places we moved into were always sort of crummy, and just when they got good, we had to move on.

Anyway, on our third night in the house, I heard a clatter in the kitchen. Now all old houses have their noises, their own personal creaks and groans, and I was still getting used to the sounds of this house. But something about this particular noise didn't sound right to me. So I grabbed my baseball bat and headed for the stairs.

I grabbed the bat instead of waking my parents because I had been through this before. I was tired of embarrassing myself, so I generally investigated night noises on my own. But I always carried my trusty Louisville Slugger when I did. Just in case, you know?

The floor was cold against my feet.

My door squeaked as I opened it.

Trying not to wake my parents, I tiptoed along the hall, past the peeling wallpaper (roses the size of cabbages floating against gray stripes—truly ugly), past the bathroom with its leaky faucets (I had already gotten used to
that
noise), on to the head of the stairs.

I paused and listened.

Something was definitely moving in the kitchen. I could hear scrapes and thumps, soft and gentle, but no less real for all that. I was about to go wake my parents after all when I heard something else—something totally unexpected.

I heard a woman singing.

I leaned forward and closed my eyes (I don't know what good that was supposed to do, but you know how it is), straining to hear. The voice was soft, sweet and sad—almost like someone singing a hymn. I had to go halfway down the steps to make out the words:

 

“
Biscuits, biscuits of glory
,

This is my story
,

Biscuits of glory . . .”

 

By now the hair was standing up on the back of my neck. Yet somehow I didn't think anyone who sounded so sad and sweet could hurt me.

Clutching my Louisville Slugger, I tiptoed down the rest of the steps and stopped outside the kitchen door.

“Biscuits, biscuits of glory,” sang the voice, sounding so sad I almost started to cry myself.

Pushing lightly on the kitchen door, I swung it open just a crack. When I peeked through, I let out a little squeak of fright. There was no one in sight, not a person to be seen.

What I did see was a bag of flour, which wouldn't have been that unusual, except for the fact that this bag was
floating
through the air.

“Biscuits of glory,” sang the voice, as the bag of flour opened, seemingly by itself. “Lighter than lovin', floatin' to heaven, straight from my oven . . .”

A measuring cup drifted into the air, then dipped into the flour bag. As the cup came out of the bag, a little thrill ran down my spine. Suddenly I could see the hand that was holding it! That was because the hand was now covered with flour.

The hand repeated the action. It was an eerie sight: a floating hand, seemingly unattached to anything else, dumping flour into a big ceramic bowl.

Next came the baking powder.
Lots
of baking powder.

“Biscuits, biscuits of glory . . . ,” sang the ghost. Her voice caught as she choked back a sob.

I couldn't help myself. Stepping through the door into the kitchen I asked, “What is it? What's wrong?”

The flour-covered hand jerked sideways, knocking over the container of baking powder. “Who are you?” asked the ghost in a soft voice, almost as if
she
was frightened of
me.

“I'm Benjie Perkins. I live here. Who are you?”

“Elvira Thistledown,” whispered the voice, so lightly it was as if the words were floating. “I died here.”

I shivered. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“Making biscuits,” she replied, setting the baking powder upright once more. “I make biscuits every Saturday night. Saturday at midnight. It's my curse.”

“Sort of a strange curse.”

“It was a strange death,” whispered the ghost of Elvira Thistledown, as her one visible hand picked up a fork and began to stir the flour.

“Care to talk about it?” I asked.

My mother always said I was a good listener.

“I can talk while I work,” she said.

Taking that to be a yes, I pulled up a stool and sat next to the counter. Soon I was so involved in her story, I stopped paying much attention to what she was doing. Oh, how I wish now that I had watched more carefully!

“I always loved to make biscuits,” said Elvira Thistledown. “My mother taught me when I was only seven years old, and soon my daddy was saying that he thought I was the best biscuit maker in the county.”

“You must have liked that.”

“I did,” she said, sounding happy for the first time since we had begun to talk.

“I hate to interrupt,” I said, “but is it possible for you to become visible? I might feel less nervous if you did.”

“Well, it's not easy. But you seem like a nice boy. Just a minute and I'll see what I can do.”

Soon a milky light began to glow in front of me. It started out kind of blobby, almost like a cloud that had floated into the kitchen, but after a minute or two it condensed into the form of a woman. She was younger and prettier than I had expected, with a turned-up nose and a long neck. I don't know what color her hair or eyes were; she had no color. She wore old-fashioned clothes.

“Better?”

“I think so.”

She returned to her work. “It was vanity did me in,” she said, measuring baking powder into the mix. “I was so proud of my biscuits that I just couldn't stand it when that awful Dan McCarty moved into town and started bragging that
he
made the best biscuits in the state. ‘Why, my biscuits are lighter than dandelion fluff,' he used to say. ‘Apt to float away on the first stiff breeze.' After a while his proud talk got to me, and I challenged him to a contest.”

“What kind of a contest?”

“A biscuit bake-off,” she said, dumping milk into the bowl. I realized with a start that I had no idea where she was getting her ingredients from. “Both of us to make biscuits, results to be judged by Reverend Zephyr of the Baptist Church.”

“Did you win?”

She was busy working on her biscuits, so she didn't answer right away. She had turned the dough out onto the counter and was kneading it lightly. After a few minutes she began to pat it out to an even thickness. When it was about half an inch thick, she turned to me and said in a bitter voice, “I lost. I lost, and that was the beginning of my downfall. I became obsessed with biscuits. I swore I would make a better biscuit than Dan McCarty or die trying.”

Using the top of the baking powder can, she began to cut the dough into rounds, flipping them off the counter and onto a baking sheet as she spoke.

“We began to have a weekly contest, Dan and I. Every Sunday morning we'd take our biscuits to church, and after the service Reverend Zephyr would try them out. He'd measure them. He'd weigh them. Finally he'd taste them, first plain, then with butter, then with honey. And every Sunday he'd turn to me and say, ‘I'm sorry, Elvira, but Dan's biscuits are just lighter and fluffier than yours.'”

She popped the tray into the oven. “I was like a madwoman. I worked day and night, night and day, trying every combination I could think of to make my biscuits lighter, fluffier, more wonderful than any that had ever been made. I wanted biscuits that would float out of the oven and melt in your mouth. I wanted biscuits that would make a kiss seem heavy. I wanted biscuits that would make the angels weep with envy. I tried adding whipped egg whites, baking soda and vinegar, even yeast. But do too much of that and you don't really have a biscuit anymore. No, the key is in the baking powder.”

Her eyes were getting wild now, and I was beginning to be frightened again. I wondered if she really was crazy—and if she was, just what a crazy ghost might do.

“One Sunday I was sure I had it; I came to church with a basket of biscuits that were like a stack of tiny featherbeds. But after the judging, Reverend Zephyr shook his head sadly and said, ‘I'm sorry, Elvira, but Dan's biscuits are just lighter and fluffier than yours.'

“By the next Saturday night I was wild, desperate, half insane. In a fit of desperation, I dumped an entire can of baking powder into my dough.”

“What happened?” I asked breathlessly.

“The oven door blew off and killed me on the spot. And ever since, I've been doomed to bake a batch of biscuits every Saturday at midnight, as punishment for my pride. What's worse, I finally know the secret. Learned it on the other side. These biscuits are the lightest, fluffiest ever made, Benjie. Just plain heavenly. But no one has ever tasted them, and I can't rest until someone does.”

“How come no one has ever tasted them?”

“How can they? My biscuits of glory are so light and fluffy they float right out of the oven and disappear through the ceiling. If I could leave them on the counter overnight, someone might have tried them by now. But they're always gone before anyone gets a chance.”

She sounded like she was going to cry. “I'm so weary of biscuits,” she sighed, “so everlastingly weary of baking biscuits . . .”

“These biscuits of yours—they wouldn't hurt someone who ate them, would they?”

“Of course not!” she cried, and I could tell that I had offended her. “These are biscuits of glory. One bite and you'll never be the same.”

“What if I grabbed one as it came out of the oven?”

“You'd burn your hand.”

“Wait here!” I said.

Scooting out of the kitchen, I scurried up the stairs and rummaged through my room until I found what I was looking for—not easy when you've just moved. Finally I located it. I went down the stairs two at a time, hoping to make it to the kitchen before Elvira's biscuits came out of the oven.

She was standing by the big old oven as I slipped through the swinging door.

“What's that?” she asked as I came in.

“My catcher's mitt. Are the biscuits ready?”

“They can't wait any longer,” she replied. “They're done to perfection.”

As she spoke, she opened the oven door. Out floated a dozen of the most perfect biscuits I had ever seen—light, golden brown, high and fluffy, crusty around the edges. They escaped in sets of three, rising like the hot-air balloons at the state fair.

Reaching out with the mitt, I snagged a biscuit from the third set.

“Careful,” said Elvira. “They're hot!”

Ignoring her warning, I took the biscuit from the glove. “Ow!” I cried as it slipped through my fingers and headed for the ceiling.

The last row of biscuits had already left the oven. I scrambled onto the counter and snagged one just as it was heading out of reach. I was more careful this time, cupping the glove over it and holding it tenderly while it cooled. I could feel the heat, but the leather protected me.

Finally I thought it was safe to try a bite. Elvira Thistledown watched with wide eyes as I took her work from my glove and lifted it to my lips.

It was astonishing, the most incredible biscuit I have ever tasted.

Suddenly I realized something even more astonishing:
I
was floating! I had lifted right off the counter and was hovering in midair. I worried about getting down, but as I chewed and swallowed, I drifted gently to the floor.

“What an amazing biscuit,” I cried. “I feel like I've died and gone to heaven!”

“So do I!” said Elvira Thistledown. Only the last word was dragged out into an
eyeeeeeeee
. . . , as if she were being snatched into the sky.

 

That was the last I ever saw of Elvira Thistledown.

Her biscuits, however, haunt me still. It's not just the memory of their taste, though I have never again tasted anything so fine. It's the effect of the darned things. See, whenever I get too happy, or too excited, or begin thinking about those biscuits too much, I start to float. If I dream of them—and I often do—I may wake to find myself drifting a foot or two above the bed.