The Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis (8 page)

THE THREE OF THEM sat on the top step of the porch. Music from a radio drifted through the screen door from inside the house.

The girl poked Popeye in the arm with a skinny elbow and said, “What's your name?”

“Popeye.”

“That's dumb.”

Elvis spewed Yoo-hoo into the air and slapped his knee, laughing.

“What's
your
name?” the girl said to Elvis.

When he told her, she said, “That's dumber.” She tilted her head back and gulped down the last of her Yoo-hoo drink. “
I
am Princess Starletta Rainey.”

“Well, what do you know, Popeye?” Elvis said. “Here we are, sittin' on the porch with a princess.”

“I am
called
Starletta,” the girl said. She flapped both palms out in front of Popeye and Elvis and said, “Give me those.”

The boys finished their drinks and placed the empty cartons into Starletta's hands.

“Did you make them boats in the creek?” Elvis said.

Starletta hopped down the porch steps. “Yep.”

“Show us how to make ‘em.”

“No.” Starletta reached up under the porch and pulled out a plastic milk crate filled with empty Yoohoo cartons. She tossed the three cartons into the crate and said, “Want me to show you how to make a boat?”

Elvis looked at Popeye, twirled a finger around his ear, and whispered, “Cuckoo. Cuckoo.”

Starletta held up one finger. “First,” she said, “you drink the Yoo-hoo.”

Elvis poked Popeye with his elbow again and said, “Duh.”

Starletta shot him a glare.

“Next,” she said, holding up two fingers, “you unfold the top to be the front of the boat.” She demonstrated.

“Then . . .” She held up three fingers. “You cut out part of the side, like this.” She took a pair of rusty scissors out of the crate and cut off part of the Yoo-hoo carton.

“There!” She held the little boat out in the palm of her hand.

Elvis said, “Cool!” and Popeye said, “Wow!”

Then the three of them sat on the porch steps and made Yoo-hoo boats.

Elvis kept asking Starletta about the notes she had put inside the boats. What did “float like a butterfly” mean? How come she wrote all those sevens? Where are the dead dogs?

But Starletta wouldn't answer. She just kept unfolding and cutting and humming like Popeye and Elvis weren't even there.

Popeye could tell that Elvis was irritated as all get-out. But it didn't bother him one little bit that Starletta wouldn't talk about the notes. He wanted to figure them out by himself.

He had already guessed the one about the Indian pipes.

And the very first one was just Starletta making a joke:
Yoo-hoo! Ha! Ha!

Suddenly, Popeye snapped his fingers. “Float like a butterfly!” he said, pointing to Starletta's wings. “ ‘Cause you like butterflies, right?”

Starletta jumped off the steps and bounced around the yard on her toes, punching the air with her fists, the scruffy butterfly wings flapping in the breeze.

Elvis rolled his eyes and made that finger-circling cuckoo motion around his ear again.

But Popeye watched Starletta and thought of a vocabulary word.

mesmerize:
verb
; to hold the attention of someone to the exclusion of all else

Starletta bouncing around the yard in those butterfly wings mesmerized him.

She stopped suddenly, tilted her chin up, and recited into the air, “Float like a butterfly, sting like
a bee. Your hands can't hit what your eyes can't see.” She arched her eyebrows at Popeye and Elvis. “Get it?” she said.

“No,” Elvis snapped.

“Muhammad Ali,” she said. “The greatest boxer of all time.” She punched the air again. “He made up that poem.”

“Boxers don't make up girl poems,” Elvis said.

Starletta stomped off to the vegetable garden, wings flapping. She took her hat off and began picking beans and dropping them into her hat. Then she came back over to the porch and dumped the beans into a metal bowl on the steps.

Popeye was thinking about the notes, trying to remember each one. He'd figured out three of them. How many were left?

Elvis must have been thinking the very same thing at the very same time, because he tossed a Yoohoo boat into the crate and said, “So where are the dead dogs?”

“I
might
tell you,” Starletta said. “And I
might
tell him.” She pointed at Popeye. “But I'm not telling
those
kids.”

“What kids?” Elvis narrowed his eyes at her.

“Those kids in the bushes over yonder.”

Popeye looked over at the bushes just in time to see five curly-haired heads duck down out of sight.

Prissy, Calvin, Walter, Willis, and Shorty.

ELVIS RACED OVER to the bushes and started hollering and flailing and kicking and thumping everyone on the head.

Words were flying.

Sneaky

No-good

Slimy

Dirty

Stinking

Spies

Popeye and Starletta watched as the tangle of kids punched and kicked and tumbled in a heap around
the yard, stirring up swirls of dust and sending the chickens squawking.

Starletta slapped her knee and let out a “Woohoo!”

Finally, Calvin hollered, “Truce!” and everyone stopped, panting and gasping and sniffling.

Elvis got in one last whack at Willis, and then Starletta said, “I guess y'all can't read.”

Prissy and Calvin and Walter and Willis and Shorty stared at Starletta. She jammed her hat back on her head and jabbed her thumb toward the sign at the edge of the woods. “That says ‘Keep Out.' “

Prissy skipped over to the back porch steps and peered inside the milk crate. “Let me make a Yoohoo boat,” she said.

“No!” Elvis hollered, and the two of them started going at it again until Starletta yelled, “Uncle Haywood's in the garden!”

Elvis and Prissy stopped with their hands in midair, and everyone turned to look at the garden.

Boo was digging, his rear end up in the air and his front paws working fast and furious, sending up a spray of dirt and pebbles and pole bean vines.

Popeye raced over and grabbed Boo by the collar. “Dang, Boo,” he said.

He dragged his dog out of the garden and said, “Sorry,” but Starletta seemed to have forgotten all about Boo. She was gathering rocks from the yard and tucking them into her pockets.

“What are you gonna do with those rocks?” Calvin said.

“Throw ‘em at you, probably,” Prissy said, grinning over at Starletta. “Right?” she added.

“Is he a blackbird?” Starletta said.

“No, he's a dodo bird,” Walter said.

Calvin punched him, and there was another brief whirlwind of dust as the boys wrestled.

“When those nasty blackbirds come squawking around our garden again, my daddy's gonna bake them in a pie,” Starletta said.

“A pie?” Prissy picked up a rock and handed it to Starletta.

“A blackbird pie.” Starletta hurled a rock up in the air. It landed on the rusty tin roof of the house with a loud
thwang
. “Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie,” she sang.

The Yoo-hoo note!

Popeye looked over at Elvis, but he was kicking at the dirt and glaring at his brothers.

“Who wants to see my lucky walls?” Starletta said.

“I do!” Prissy called.

“I do!” Calvin hollered.

Walter and Willis and Shorty waved their hands and hopped around, and they all clamored up the back steps after Starletta, who had already disappeared inside.

“Come on,” Elvis said, running after them.

Popeye wasn't about to be the only one who didn't go inside, but it took all his strength to shut out the voice of Velma, yelling inside his head:
Don't you never ever go following any strangers anywhere. You hear me?

But he managed to do it.

Shut the door on Velma's words.

Slam!

Then he bounded up the steps, leaving Boo sitting forlornly in the yard.

Popeye stepped through Starletta's back door and could not get his eyes to look fast enough at all the stuff inside her kitchen. Every inch of counter and
table and floor had something just begging to be looked at.

Prissy and the boys went crazy, running around picking things up and checking things out. Even Elvis quit his scowling and gazed around him in awe and admiration.

A giant pink teddy bear.

A rusty tricycle.

Plastic sunflowers.

A chipped, concrete flamingo.

An inflatable Santa Claus.

Golf clubs.

A birdhouse.

A cowboy hat.

A wagon filled with flashlights.

plethora:
noun
; an excess of something

Starletta's kitchen was filled with a plethora of
stuff
.

All the others were so busy checking out the plethora that they didn't notice the most amazing thing of all. The walls of the little kitchen were covered with about a million number sevens.

Big ones.

Little ones.

Medium ones.

Painted in red.

Painted in black.

Written with pen.

Written with pencil.

On nearly every inch of every wall.

“My lucky walls,” Starletta said.

Popeye grinned.

Another Yoo-hoo note!

 

7 7 7 7 7 7 7

 

The number 7 written seven times.

Starletta grabbed a red marker out of a coffee can on the kitchen counter and wrote a tiny number 7 on the wall next to the stove. “My lucky number.”

Once again, Popeye was mesmerized. Here was a twig of a girl with butterfly wings, writing sevens on the wall.

“Starletta!” someone hollered from a room next to the kitchen.

“What?” Starletta hollered back.

“What're you doing in there?”

“Nothing.”

“Who's in there with you?”

“Nobody.”

A woman appeared in the doorway.

A tired-looking woman in a bathrobe.

“Y'all get on out of here,” she said, throwing her arms wide as if to sweep them all out of the house.

Everyone scrambled.

Prissy jumped up off the floor, tossing a plastic snow globe back into a cardboard box. Calvin pushed Willis out of the way and jumped over stacks of magazines as he scrambled to the door. Walter yanked Shorty out from under the table, and Popeye and Elvis burst through the screen door with Starletta right behind them.

“So, who's that?” Elvis said when they all gathered in the yard. “The Queen?” He grinned at Popeye.

“Yes, she
is
,” Starletta said. “Queen Starletta Rainey.”

The kids giggled.

“And I reckon your dad's the king, right?” Elvis said.

Starletta unscrewed the lid from one of the jars on the porch and poured the dirt out into a little mound on the step. “No, he is
not
,” she said. “He is T-Bone. Charlie the T-Bone Rainey. And he drives a chicken truck.”

While the others were busy laughing about T-Bone and the chicken truck, Popeye was busy thinking about the note in the Yoo-hoo boat.

 

Princess . . . Queen . . . T-Bone

 

Starletta's family.

Princess, Queen, and T-Bone.

Now Popeye had figured out all of the notes but one.

The best one.

 

Dead dogs live here.

 

What in the world could that mean?