The Old House (2 page)

A police car went by, siren screaming, as she was trying to say her prayers. The neon lights of a bar across the street blinked off and on, making reflections on the metallic door handle. A stray cat meowed piteously, setting off a fresh gush of tears.
I understand how you feel, kitty,
she told it silently.
Nowhere to go, not knowing where your next meal is coming from.

About that time Buddy realized that she had to stop feeling sorry for herself. She could almost hear Mama's voice. “Having a little pity-party, are we, Buddy?”

Defensively, she thought,
Well, who's more entitled to one?
But that made her feel guilty. She
did
know where her next meal was coming from. They still had some groceries left, in a box in the trunk. They could eat tuna, and pork and beans, and peaches right out of the cans. For a few days yet. Dad would surely be
back by then. And Bart wasn't whining and feeling sorry for himself.

In the backseat her brother shifted position, trying to arrange his tall frame on the too-short seat.

“Bart?” Buddy murmured. “What are we going to do if Dad doesn't come back really soon?”

“I don't know,” Bart said. “Don't worry about it, Buddy. I'll think of something.”

She finally fell asleep, wondering if her back and neck would be broken before morning.

It must have been several hours later when she woke in a panic. Someone was trying to open the door on the sidewalk side of the car.

Buddy reared up, gasping in alarm, and saw the face pressed against the window. A man with a big nose stared in at her, his bad skin tinted by the light from the neon sign across the street. She struggled to a sitting position, drawing as far away from him as she could get.

Behind her, Bart reared up also and rapped sharply on his own window. “Get out of here! Leave us alone!” he commanded, and the face retreated. “It'
s just a drunk,” he said. “The doors are locked. He can't get in.”

Buddy watched the man wander away, unable to walk steadily. He had frightened Buddy badly, and she resented his peering in at them. But a part of her recognized that he, too, was without a home. “We can't keep parking here,” she said, her voice shaking.

“No,” Bart agreed, leaning back into his pillow. He twisted around and held his watch up so he could read it in the reddish light. “It's only an hour or so until daylight. Go back to sleep, Buddy. We're safe enough as long as we don't unlock the doors.”

She didn't feel safe. She wouldn't feel safe again until Dad came back, and they were living in a house again.

As soon as it was light, they went into the bus station. They didn't need to get dressed, because they'd slept in their clothes, but they had to use the rest rooms. Nobody paid any attention or seemed to care if they washed their faces there and brushed their teeth.

Back in the car, Buddy was too depressed to ask her brother any questions. He waited until they'd
eaten a crackers and peanut butter breakfast, washed down with canned juice, before he told her what he'd decided.

“While we were in the station I asked about the price of a ticket to Haysville.” When she opened her mouth to protest, he put his hand over it. “No, don't argue, Buddy. I thought about it all night long, and we don't have any choice. I can't keep you out of school, and I can't let you live in a car, not even for another night. I called Aunt Cassie. She said of course they'd take you in, so I'm putting you on a bus today. There's one that leaves early this morning.”

She shoved his hand aside in indignation. “And what about you, then? Aren't you coming, too?”

“I can't,” Bart said, and his tone sobered her. “It's been too long, Buddy. Dad thought he'd be back by now. He'd have come home if he could have. And if he could have called, he would have. Something's happened to him, and I have to go find out what.”

She swallowed, her fighting spirit wilting. “What could have happened?” she whispered. “You don't think he's . . .
hurt or something, do you?”
Or dead?
she was wondering.

Bart inhaled deeply and then let the breath all out. “Maybe. It had to be something serious, or he'd have kept his promise to get in touch. I have to go, Buddy. Don't make it any harder by refusing to cooperate. You have to go to Aunt Cassie's.”

The recollection of that drunken man peering into the car while he tried the door handle sent a shudder through her, and she knew Bart was right. But she made one last feeble try to avoid being sent to an aunt who had, it had always seemed, not liked their mother. “Why can't I come with you, then, wherever you have to go?”

“Because you're eleven years old, not seventeen, and we'd still have to be living in the car until I either find Dad or get a job to earn enough to support us. I don't want us to be apart, either, kid, so don't make it any harder than it has to be.”

Her shoulders sagged, and she held back the prickle of tears. “Okay,” she said softly. “What time's the bus?”

It rained all the way to Haysville. The drops on the bus window beside her seemed like the tears Buddy didn't want to show to the other passengers.

A middle-aged lady boarded at the last stop before Buddy's destination. She looked over the other people who nearly filled the bus and dropped into the seat beside Buddy with a smile Buddy had trouble returning. As the bus crossed the state line, clueing her in that she didn't have too much longer to ride, the woman opened a paper bag and started taking out her lunch.

To Buddy's embarrassment, her stomach growled. The lady looked at Buddy, and her smile widened. “My daughter fixed me far more than I'm going to be able to eat. Would you like to share?”
She opened a plastic bag and held it up to sniff at it. “This sandwich is tuna. There's also a . . . ham and cheese, I think. I'm sort of partial to tuna salad. How about you eating this one? Unless you don't like ham and cheese, of course.”

Buddy suspected the woman was offering the one she thought Buddy would prefer, and her stomach was too empty to refuse. “Thank you,” Buddy said, and accepted the sandwich.

It was a really good one. Mama used to say that being half-starved makes all food taste better, and Buddy believed it.

“Going home, are you?” the woman asked in a friendly manner.

There was no way Buddy was going to try to explain. “Visiting my relatives in Haysville,” she managed.

“Oh, that's good. My goodness! Sharon packed a candy bar in here. I hardly ever eat chocolate. Ah, there are some peppermints. I like those better. Here, you take the chocolate.”

She didn't refuse that, either. Bart had given her a few dollars for an emergency, but she hadn't wanted to spend any of it on food
when they made a rest stop. Buddy let the chocolate melt slowly on her tongue, savoring every bit of it.

If I'd wanted to take this trip, I'd probably have enjoyed the scenery,
she thought. The leaves were turning color, all different shades of yellow and deep gold, and an occasional splash of brilliant red. Mama had always said that fall was the nicest time of year, especially in Montana. It was hard to get excited about fall color when you didn't have a home that belonged to you, though.

The rain stopped just as they approached Haysville.
POPULATION 3,023
, the sign said. Buddy had enjoyed coming here when they were a whole family, but that hadn't happened often, and never since before her mother died. She took a close look as the bus began to slow.

The highway was the main street of town, and the businesses were scattered out along about six or eight blocks, with houses on side streets. The first thing she noticed was how many of the stores were closed. She spotted the Ostrom Appliance and Hardware store, and it, too, was locked up and empty. Buddy
wondered if Grandpa Harry Ostrom had died since she'd been here. If so, no one had told them.

Grass growing in the cracks of the sidewalk, and debris lay against the walls of the buildings. Hardly anybody was walking on the street, so it was easy to spot Aunt Cassie when the bus pulled over to the curb. There wasn't even a bus station, just a little sign that signified the bus would stop there.

Buddy was the only one getting out, except for the driver, who had to unload her suitcase from underneath the bus. Aunt Cassie looked pretty much as Buddy remembered her, maybe a little heavier. She was wearing a print housedress and a red sweater, and she came forward with a smile. “Buddy! How nice to see you after all this time!” She gave Buddy a hug. She smelled nice, like fresh-baked bread. “I hope you had a good trip.”

It wasn't exactly a question, and Buddy didn't feel the need to answer. How could it be a good trip under these circumstances?

“It's only a couple of blocks to walk,” Cassie said, and reached for the suitcase. “I'll carry
this until I get tired, and then you can take a turn.”

They went up one of the side streets, which were wide and lined with shrubs and trees. Most of the houses were separated by good-sized lawns, now turning dry after a hot summer, and Buddy recognized the Ostrom house as they approached it. Mama and her sisters had grown up there, and it was in the background of a lot of the early snapshots. It seemed strange to think of Mama having lived all her life in this one house before her marriage. Buddy's own family had lived in at least a half a dozen houses that she could remember.

It was a big old two-story house with a covered veranda on three sides of it. There was a porch swing, and wicker chairs with faded flowered cushions.

“Everybody here is just fine,” Aunt Cassie said as they turned in, just as if Buddy had asked about them.

A curtain twitched in one of the windows, and Buddy quickly glanced that way, but it immediately fell back into place, and she couldn't tell who'd
been looking out. Mr. Beaman had said the thing to do was go to their relatives, but it didn't feel right. It didn't feel as if she were joining family, but strangers whose pictures she'd only seen in snapshots.

After all, they'd stopped writing after Mama died, before she'd died, actually. There had been some kind of misunderstanding, some reason why Aunt Addie, especially, hadn't been friendly with Mama. It was, Buddy thought, a reason that had kept them from frequent visits to Mama's hometown. “Since Mother died, they don't exactly make me feel welcome,” Mama had said before that last visit, “but I want some of my things that are still stored there, so I'm going.”

And, after that, none of them had ever visited again. Buddy tried not to think about it. She wasn't sure she was really welcome, either.

They went in the front door, and Aunt Cassie set the suitcase down at the foot of the stairs in the front hallway. Then she led the way through a dining room with old-fashioned furniture into a big kitchen that smelled of the fresh-baked bread set out on a counter and of
soup simmering on an old black woodstove. There was an electric stove, too, right beside the black one, which seemed peculiar.

“She's here!” Aunt Cassie sang out. “Come and say hello!”

Aunt Addie appeared from a pantry, wiping her hands on a towel. “Welcome, Amy Kate,” she said.

Hardly anybody ever called her by her real name. Aunt Cassie laughed. “Oh, she's Buddy, don't you remember that?”

From the look on Addie's face, it was clear she thought Buddy was a stupid name for a girl, though she didn't say so. “I thought maybe your brother would come with you,” she noted.

Buddy's throat was dry. “No. He . . . he had to look for Daddy.”

Addie's expression sharpened. “Something happen to Dan, did it?”

“We don't know for sure, but when he took the new job he said he'd be back in a week, and we haven't heard from him,” Buddy said.

Addie got a pinched look around her mouth, as if Buddy had said something unpleasant.

At the same time, Cassie said, “Don't you remember? I
told you that. Grandpa, come and meet Buddy. Do you remember her? EllaBelle's girl?”

The old man who emerged from a bedroom off the kitchen was still tall and thin, but no longer elegant. He leaned heavily on a cane and looked at the newcomer with faded blue eyes. “EllaBelle?”

“Sure. You remember her. Our little sister.”

“Sister,” the old man echoed. “Hello, Sister.”

Cassie smiled and patted him on the arm. “Always called all of us ‘Sister,' didn't you, Grandpa? Couldn't remember our names, even when we were little girls, so we were all ‘Sister.' I'll bet everybody's ready for lunch, aren't they?” She raised her voice. “Max! Lunchtime!”

Who was Max? Buddy didn't remember anyone named Max.

“Did I have lunch yet?” Grandpa asked uncertainly.

“No, dear, we're all going to eat in just a moment,” Cassie assured him. “We waited for Buddy. Max! Don't hold us up!”

The boy who came from a rear hallway was carrying a kitten, which he lowered to the floor. “You
told me to bring in some firewood, remember? Look what I found. Can I keep him?”

Buddy guessed Max to be somewhere near her own age, though he was a head taller.

Addie spoke sharply. “You know Gus doesn't like cats.” That was the clue. Buddy remembered that Cassie was married to Uncle Gus. There were no pictures of him in the photo album. Buddy hadn't known he had a son. Max couldn't be Cassie's son, because she and Gus had only married just before Mama died. Cassie's stepson, then.

“I could give him some milk,” Max said, and went to the cupboard for a small bowl.

“Actually,” Addie said, “too much milk is not all that good for a cat.”

“He hasn't had too much of anything,” Max stated. “You can feel his ribs sticking out.”

“Say hello to your cousin Buddy,” Cassie said, putting dishes on the big, round table.