The Dreadful Future of Blossom Culp (14 page)

“It’s a rotten shame to waste the day in a place like this,” I said. “Besides, I’ve got to start thinking about getting back you-know-where. Tonight’s the night I’m to report to Old Man Leverette when those boys are going to make a mess of his front porch. I just naturally have to be there to teach—”

“Oh, I don’t think you can get back that quick, Blossom.” He spoke in a rush, like he didn’t want me to go. “But we can cut out of school if you want to. How about checking out the mall? We could always cruise past Radio Shack and have a look at their components.”

It didn’t sound like my kind of place. We made a sharp turn just before the cafeteria and slipped outside through a fire door. A person couldn’t hear herself think in that school.

“Now where?” Jeremy wondered.

“Bluff City.” I spoke firmly. He reminded me of Daisy-Rae and Roderick. It was uphill work to get them into town, too. “There’s got to be something left of the town I knew, and I mean to find it, Jeremy. I know curiosity killed the cat. But satisfaction brought that cat back.”

“It’s a long way,” he said, “and this costume is pretty heavy.”

I thought he might slip back home and change
into his regular clothes. I had no doubt he could pull this off, as his mama was not a noticing kind of woman. Besides, she’d be at her . . . designer sheet luncheon. But he pointed out that since I was going dressed as I was, he’d better stick to his costume.

Away we labored over the curving streets of Bluffleigh Heights on a brisk autumn afternoon seventy years hence.

Jeremy was a good companion, though mostly quiet inside his fogbound bowl. We walked for a quarter of an hour, and still I could see nothing familiar. It’s a sight how homesick a person can get this near home.

What looked like pastureland in Old Man Leverette’s south forty turned out to be something called the Little League field. When we came to where the old streetcar trestle spanned Snake Creek, there was only a wide highway bridge choked with automobiles speeding past a 7-Eleven store at the far end.

A lump was fast forming in my throat. Being a sensitive type, Jeremy noticed. His spectacles were steamed up, and his bowl was blurry; but he didn’t miss much. “Tell me what it was like, Blossom. The olden days, I mean.”

Since he seemed to know no history whatsoever, I told him various true stories.

One of them was how I happened to borrow a chicken from Old Man Leverette. That just naturally brought up the swimming hole in Leverette’s Woods and how I chanced to observe Alexander
Armsworth and his cronies swimming and smoking in the altogether.

I went on to tell him about Mr. Ambrose Lacy, who had both Miss Spaulding and Miss Fuller on the string. I told him about Letty Shambaugh and her club and how Alexander took her to the moving pictures. And that brought up Daisy-Rae and Roderick. I worked in pretty nearly everybody.

I even mentioned how my mama’s occult Powers had warned her of the old abandoned Leverette farmhouse and its eerie Vibrations.

“She was plugging into my malfunctioning electronic impulses,” Jeremy observed. “There are people who can pick up shortwave radio on their hearing aids and false teeth. Your mom is probably a natural transistor.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me a bit,” I said.

All this conversation carried us right into town. There beside a busy street was a sign that read:

WELCOME TO BLUFF CITY
68,002

“Sixty-eight thousand and two what?”

Jeremy blinked. “People.”

“Well, I’ll be a ring-tailed monkey!” I exclaimed.

On we went, deeper into this swollen Bluff City. Then, with minds of their own, my feet swerved away from the sidewalk. We took off across a vacant lot and down an alley.

Jeremy had to struggle along in his Galaxy boots
over ruts and a number of objects labeled
NO DEPOSIT, NO RETURN
. “Where are we heading?” He peered anxiously at the backs of various buildings.

“I’m switched if I know,” I said. “It just feels right.”

It wasn’t a minute more before I saw a familiar sight against the sky. It was the roof and bell tower of Horace Mann School. The bell tower was boarded up, and there were missing shingles on the roof; but my eyes misted over at sight of the old place.

Dragging Jeremy along, I said, “Well, of course. It’s all crystal clear to me now. This route we’ve been following down back alleys was once the streetcar right-of-way. Many’s the time I’ve walked the rails along here.”

Grunting to keep up, Jeremy followed my skipping form into the old schoolyard.

“And here’s where we had our graduation day maypole dance last—”

A sign above the schoolhouse door caught my eye. It was a new one, and it read:

MAE SPAULDING MEMORIAL
MEDIA CENTER

Substance Abuse Counseling Available

I blinked. This was more information than I could . . . program. Instead, I grabbed Jeremy’s puffy sleeve. “And right across the road is Bluff City High—”

But across the paved street was no such thing. My old high school had been leveled. In its place was a large, rude structure topped by a gaudy sign:

INTOWN MOTEL
DAY RATES
WATER BEDS
CABLE TV
ICE MACHINES

My heart sank. They had erased my world.

A
MOMENT PASSED
before I felt Jeremy’s hand patting my arm.

“I’m sorry, Blossom.” He spoke in a small, kindly voice.

“What happened to my world? There’s nothing left. It just as well never have existed.”

“It’s a . . . rotten shame,” he said.

“I’m grossed out, Jeremy,” I whimpered.

But it’s always darkest before the dawn, as I’ve often said. I gathered up my courage, ready to scout out more hopeful landmarks than these.

I said to him.

“That’s a good attitude,” Jeremy remarked.

“It’s
Hamlet.
Act Two.”

On we went where the streetcar tracks had been until we came to a paved yard with rows of little mechanical hitching posts. A sign read:

METERED PARKING

I knew where we were now. Our path was crossing Fairview Avenue, the proud street lined with the all-brick homes of the well-to-do. “Letty Shambaugh lived in that very house.” I pointed to the large and tasteful residence.

But her porch had been hacked off. A shutter or two hung from a single hinge. The houses on either side were gone, like missing teeth. “Must have been a fire,” I remarked.

“Several,” Jeremy said. “This neighborhood hasn’t hit bottom yet, but it’s on the way down.”

Overshadowing the entire street was a tremendous building with blank sides and skylights in the roof. We detoured from our path to read a sign over the entrance:

FULLER MEMORIAL RECREATIONAL FACILITY
JOGGING TRACK
HANDBALL COURTS
SENSIBLE WEIGHT REDUCTION
INTERPRETIVE DANCE