The Grub-And-Stakers Move a Mountain (22 page)

“Damn right we do,” bellowed Roger Munson, of all people, and an a capella chorus from all over the hall assured the speaker that Roger was damn well damn right they damn well did, too.

Samantha took another sip of tea.

“Ever since I announced my candidacy last week, there have been attempts at harassment. Some were minor, like taking down my campaign posters. There was that episode of the goat let loose at the bake sale, which many of you witnessed. Late Saturday night a scene was staged up at Lookout Point that was obviously meant to suggest that the park we’re trying to create would become a haven for rowdyism. Thanks to the truly heroic efforts of certain persons and one very brave dog, the vandals were caught in the act and chased away, but not before they had left a good deal of telltale evidence. This evidence was examined, photographed, tested and impounded by Sergeant Mac Vicar, who was at the scene of the crime only a few minutes after it happened, and I think we should all be proud and glad that we have such a vigilant officer heading our police force. And now I’d like to ask Sergeant Mac Vicar to come up here and tell you what these trash barrels full of broken beer bottles are all about because I’m really afraid I’m about to-“

As Samantha collapsed, so did Sam Wallaby’s chances of getting elected. Dittany didn’t wait to see him booed off the stage, as Zilla Trott later reported. Sergeant Mac Vicar was just advancing to the front of the auditorium when she helped Ben, Osbert, and Arethusa Monk, who had fallen temporarily into the role of Florence Nightingale, carry the still supine Samantha out of the hall and back to her own house.

By the time she got home, Samantha had revived enough to get her clothes off and have a bath and shampoo under Dittany’s supervision while Arethusa heated up some of the leftovers from the party for which Samantha said her heart had been lusting during the lucid periods of her incarceration. While she was sitting up in bed getting her hair fixed by Dittany and eating from the dainty tray Arethusa had prepared, Joshua phoned. He asked how she was. She told him she’d spent almost the entire period of his absence bound and gagged in Mr. Architrave’s coal cellar.

Her husband laughed at this merry flight of fancy, told her several things she didn’t particularly want to know about the conference, wished her luck on election day, said he’d be back in time to vote for her if he had to get out and push the plane all the way, and hung up. Samantha smiled fondly, finished the last bite on her tray, made dainty use of her serviette, lay down, and went to sleep.

Tuesday morning when the polls opened, those of the Grub and-Stakers who had positioned themselves nearby with signs urging people to write in votes for Samantha Burberry were almost trampled underfoot by townsfolk champing at the bit to get into the polling booths and do just that. By noon, unofficial surveys indicated that Wallaby had been pounded to a gory pulp. Even before all the votes were counted, the verdict was so official it was ridiculous.

Andy McNasty was not going to get his Astroturf lawn with the pink plastic flamingo up on Lookout Point. God was in His heaven, all was right with Lobelia Falls, and everybody immediately concerned was over at Dittany Henbit’s, naturally, getting sloshed. Sergeant Mac Vicar, accompanied on the melodeon by Mrs. MacVicar, was singing “Hail to the Chief” in the original Gaelic. Joshua Burberry, having reached home in the nick of time to cast his unneeded vote and absorb the realization that his wife had in truth been kidnapped and kept prisoner in the late John Architrave’s coal cellar, was clutching Samantha rather ferociously to his side and thinking it might be a far, far better thing if Sergeant Mac Vicar would quit singing and go catch the kidnapper. Being a philosopher by profession, however, Joshua realized that it would do no good to say so because to all things there is a time and a season and any effort to hurry a Scot who had already announced his intention of rendering “Annie Laurie”

as an encore would be futile.

Even Ethel was celebrating. The Binkles had brought her a beef bone to chew on. All and sundry were scratching her neck and thumping her backside and telling her what a great old mutt she was. However nobody, not even the Binkles, was inviting her to fetch her teddy bear and jammies and spend a night or two.

Dittany had begun to realize she’d acquired herself a dog.

She was beginning to realize something else, too, and so were a good many of her guests. Ben Frankland was behaving toward her in a manner that could only be termed proprietary. To the trained observer it was clear that Hazel Munson was already thinking in terms of petits fours with pink and white icing for the linen shower and wondering if Dittany and Ben could get on with it in time for a June wedding because then Ben would be able to occupy his spare time during the summer painting the house, a task one could reasonably expect from a husband but not a paltry fianc‚ and goodness knew something had to be done about those peeling clapboards before another winter or the place would go to rack and ruin.

Dittany fully appreciated the convenience of having somebody around to fix the drinks and bring out the extra chairs, but she did wish he wouldn’t be so free with remarks like “We ought to keep more ice in the fridge” and “We’ve been talking about remodeling the kitchen.” Osbert Monk was glowering from behind the coal stove and hitching angrily at his trousers, which were still being held up by a tastefully knotted bit of clothesline. No doubt it seemed to him as it did to her that Ben was taking one heck of a lot for granted on the strength of a mutual enthusiasm for Fig Newtons.

Just to show everybody she was no pushover, Dittany went over and began chatting with Osbert about the distinction between an Apache and a Comanche. He was not altogether clear on the subject though he did confess that he’d always been secretly on their side even when the exigencies of his trade led him in a contrary direction. That got them on to the technicalities of writing, about which Dittany knew a great deal because Arethusa knew so little. She thought it would be only decent to show him how she’d organized her office and that this might be a good time because everybody else was clustered around Dot Coskoff’s husband, who was doing his imitation of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald to the usual tumultuous applause. She’d had enough tumult already to last her awhile, and Osbert was rather a cozy sort of person to talk to when there was nobody around for him to glower at.

All at once she said, “Osbert, if you were to buy this house, what would you do about it?”

“Do about it?”

“You know, fix it up. Remodel the kitchen and that sort of thing.”

“But why should I want to? I mean,” he blushed furiously, “I guess I could buy it if you needed some money or anything because if you write enough westerns you make quite a lot and I never seem to be able to think of anything to spend it on except that I’ve got to buy myself a new belt pretty soon because this clothesline is getting sort of frayed. I mean, if you happened to care to consider-well, maybe not an outright sale but a-well, I suppose you could call it a-that is, for instance if you and I-but what I mean is, why remodel the kitchen? What’s wrong with the way it is?”

“You wouldn’t be interested in tearing out the pantry, for instance?”

“Good gosh, no! If you haven’t got a pantry, how can you keep one of those big old stone crocks in it full of molasses cookies about the size of dinner plates with sugar sprinkled on top?”

“Not hermits?”

“Hermits” Osbert pondered the question. “You mean big, fat, spicy ones with lots of raisins in them”

“Those were what I had in mind.”

“Gee, I never thought of hermits. I mean, I was sort of hung up on molasses cookies the size of dinner plates with little gritty pieces of sugar sprinkled on top so they’d kind of crunch when you chewed them.”

“And crinkly edges?”

“Well, naturally crinkly edges. So you could bite off the crinkles one by one before you really got to work on the cookie. On the other hand, though, there’s a lot to be said for hermits. Dittany, I tell you what I’d do with this house if it were mine.” Osbert’s attractive hazel eyes shone with sudden inspiration. “What I’d do is, I’d get two of those big stone crocks, one for molasses cookies and one for hermits. Only I-well, you see, the problem is I don’t know how to cook anything but bacon and eggs and I can’t even do that without breaking the yolks more often than not. So that means I’d need somebody to-“

“Hey, Dittany! What are you doing in here, for Pete’s sake?

Can’t you find something better to do? And we need more ice.”

Ben Frankland was looking extremely put out.

“Then somebody will have to go someplace and get some,”

said Dittany, feeling more than a bit miffed herself. “We’ve already bummed from the Binkles, the Munsons, the Burberrys, the MacVicars, and Minerva Oakes. What about your Aunt Arethusa, Osbert?”

“Yeah,” said Frankland, “what about your Aunt Arethusa, Monk? Why don’t you go see if you can scare up some ice?

Take your time.”

“I’ll be as quick as I can,” said Osbert, and left.

“He needn’t hurry on my account,” said Ben. “I don’t see why you had to hole up in here with a guy like him anyway. Now with a guy like me-“

“I’d better see what’s happening in the kitchen,” Dittany interrupted.

“Is there anything left to eat?”

“Mrs. Binkle ran home and got some stuff, and the last I saw of Mrs. Munson she was putting together some kind of concoction with baked beans and chutney. Come to think of it, I was supposed to ask if you have any curry powder. Sounds God awful, eh?”

“Hazel couldn’t possibly make anything that wasn’t delicious.

She cooks the way Arethusa Monk writes. You think it’s going to be ghastly and everyone goes crazy about it.”

“Jeez, I’ll be glad when that creep nephew heads for the wide open spaces again,” said Ben with feeling. “How much longer does he plan to stick around?”

“He hasn’t said. I don’t know why he should leave at all, if it comes to that. His aunt has an enormous house to herself, and two can write as cheaply as one, I expect. Personally, I’m hoping he stays. Maybe he’ll throw a little business my way.”

“Looks to me as if he’s already throwing a little business your way,” Frankland grunted. “What was that line he handed you about the cookie jars in the pantry?”

“You mean to tell me you’ve been eavesdropping again?”

gasped Dittany.

“Now don’t get up on your high horse, eh? I just happened to overhear a few words as I came looking for you about the curry powder.”

“I thought it was about the ice.”

“Well, it was, only I meant to mention the curry powder too.

Now look, Dittany, you’re just about the sweetest little kid I’ve ever run into, but when it comes to business you sure need somebody to give you a hand. For one thing, those writers are nothing but out-and-out moochers. The aunt comes sponging on you all the time and now the other one’s started in at the same game.

And furthermore you don’t seem to realize that you’re sitting on a valuable piece of residential property here. I’ll admit this house is pretty much of a wreck now, but with a little cheap paint and wallpaper and maybe some nice green aluminum siding on the outside we could fix it up to look darn desirable. Only you’ve got to do something about a decent kitchen because that’s what the women always fall for. Say we take out a little mortgage to finance the renovations, we’d raise the market value by maybe two, three hundred per cent and sell out for-“

“Excuse me, Ben, I must look after my other guests.”

Dittany was, after all, a Henbit and a Henbit did not breach the code of hospitality by laying out a guest under her own roof with an iron frying pan even when he used words like “sell out.”

And she hoped he’d noticed her use of the singular pronoun.

As was only to be expected in Lobelia Falls, Dittany found when she circulated through the throng with Hazel’s dip (which was, of course, superb) that the conversation had got around to archery.

Now that Andy McNasty’s hash was well settled and Sam Wallaby given his comeuppance, attention could be focused on more important matters like the Grand Free-for-All.

The interesting thing about the Free-for-All was that everybody competed against everybody else regardless of age, sex, or which branch of the Methodist Church they belonged to. The results always had the charm of unexpectedness. One year the gold ribbon had been won by Grandfer Coskoff, aged ninety-six at the time and since remarried; once by Zilla Trott shortly after she’d discovered wheat germ; once by a brigadier general in the Salvation Army; once by Hazel Munson’s brother Euonymus Busch when a mere twig of ten and a quarter. Sam Wallaby had won twice although it was now being bruited about that he must have finagled his scores and needn’t think he could get away with it again, eh.

“Well, I guess you’ll have to include me out of that match,”

said Ben Frankland, who was still being the perfect host regardless of Dittany’s rebuff. “I don’t even know which end of a bow is up.”

“Nor does anybody else,” Sergeant MacVicar informed him with all gravity. “By the very nature of its symmetry a bow does not have its ups and downs like us frail creatures here below but will function well in almost any position, vertical or horizontal.

The longbow is a far more versatile weapon than many people think. In essence, you see, it works on the same principle as the catapult, an ancient weapon much favored by the Greeks and Romans for the firing of burning arrows and other projectiles such as large stones over fortifications otherwise impenetrable. In the form of a slingshot the catapult is still employed by naughty little boys and sometimes, I fear, by naughty little girls.”

He smiled benignly at Minerva Oakes. She was a cracker jack with a rubber band and a prune pit, as many a bluejay trying to swipe bird seed from a flock of feeding juncos and redpolls had learned to the detriment of its tail feathers. Osbert Monk, who had completed his ice-procurement mission on the double so that he could get back to exchanging glowers with Ben Frankland, nodded and made a note on his shirt cuff with an indelible pen.