Turtle in Paradise (7 page)

“They stole the answer sheet for a test from Miss Sugarapple’s desk,” Kermit says.

“We didn’t steal it!” Pork Chop says. “We
borrowed
it!”

“They had to stay after school every day for the last month and write
I will not steal
on the chalkboard two hundred times,” Kermit says.

“Guess you won’t steal next time,” I say.

Beans sneers. “Next time we won’t get caught.”

After we finish swimming, we have a cut-up. A cut-up is something these Conch kids do every chance they get. Each kid brings whatever they can find lying around or hanging on a tree—sugar apple, banana, mango, pineapple, alligator pear, guava, cooked potatoes, and even raw onions. They take a big bowl, cut it all up, and season it with Old Sour, which is made from key lime juice, salt, and hot peppers. Then they pass it around with a fork and everyone takes a bite. It’s the strangest fruit salad I’ve ever had, but it’s tasty.

“Listen, fellas,” Ira says, spearing a piece of potato. “I been thinking.”

“About how to get us a new wagon?” Beans asks.

Ira shakes his head. “I met this kid named Lester in Miami and he told me about tick-tocking.”

“What’s that?” Pork Chop asks.

“All you need is a rock and string,” Ira says,
lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “It goes like this.”

Ira explains that you take a rock and tie it to a long length of string—long enough to reach across a roof. Then stake out a house and wait until everyone’s asleep. You throw the rock over the house so that it lands on the opposite side near a window. When you tug on the string, it scrapes the window and makes a scary sound, as if a bony hand is trying to get into the house. The folks inside are scared so bad, they scream their heads off, and you take off running.

“And the best part?” Ira finishes. “No one knows who did it! What do you think, fellas?”

“I like it!” Pork Chop says. “Who should we tick-tock first?”

An evil glint appears in Beans’s eyes.

“Miss Sugarapple,” he says.

It’s late, and I’m lying in bed, listening to mosquitoes buzz. The night air is thick with the sweet scent of frangipani. Smokey’s curled into my side, her paws twitching in her sleep, like she’s dreaming of chasing mice. Archie told me once that what he really sells is dreams.

“Nobody
needs
fancy face cream. A lady buys it
because she wants to feel young or find a husband or feel prettier than her neighbor,” he told me. “All I do is sell her that dream, bottled up nice and tidy in a cream, or maybe a new hat, or some brushes.”

“But what if she doesn’t have a dream?” I asked him.

“Princess,” he said, laughing, “everybody’s got a dream.”

I’ve almost fallen asleep when a scream shatters the quiet, and I know that the Diaper Gang has struck.

The Conch Telegraph kicks in the next morning.

When I go outside, the Diaper Gang boys are sitting on the porch, talking excitedly.

“That was hilarious, pal!” Pork Chop chortles. “She screamed so loud, they heard her in Cuba!”

Jelly comes walking down the lane. “You kids hear about the ghost at Miss Sugarapple’s place?”

Beans feigns ignorance. “What’s that, Jelly?”

“Miss Sugarapple says a ghost was trying to get into her house.”

“A ghost?” Beans asks.

“Scared her nearly to death, she said.”

“Gee whiz,” Beans says. “I sure do hope Miss Sugarapple’s okay. She’s our favorite teacher.”

Jelly walks into his tiny house and Beans grins.

“This is the bee’s knees, fellas!” he says.

Pork Chop starts laughing and says in a low, menacing voice, “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Diaper Gang knows!”

Pudding starts crying, and I sniff.

“I don’t know about the hearts of men, but I’d bet there’s something evil lurking in that diaper,” I say.

Over the next few days, the Diaper Gang tick-tocks the houses of various folks who they think have wronged them, including a preacher, a store clerk who never gave out free gumballs, some man who yelled at them for picking his Spanish limes, and a girl named Lucy who sat in front of Beans in school and wouldn’t let him cheat off her test.

But I guess spending all night scaring folks is starting to take its toll, because when I go down to breakfast on the third day, Beans and Kermit are practically asleep at the table.

“Late night,
Shadow?”
I ask, and Beans glares at me.

There’s a knock on the door and Ira comes tromping in. He’s got dark circles under his eyes, too.

“We got babies,” he says, and Beans stands up
and walks out after him, Kermit and me trailing behind.

By early afternoon, everyone’s drooping and not one of the boys has any patience left for the crying babies. It’s just me and Beans and Ira. Kermit was only too happy to go home when Aunt Minnie hollered for him that it was time for his nap.

“I wish I had rheumatic fever so I could take a nap,” Ira says.

Pudding is crying in the wagon.

Beans snaps at me. “Oh, just pick him up, why don’t you?”

“I’m not in the Diaper Gang,” I say.

“Who cares?” Ira says with a yawn. “We’re beat.”

I pick up Pudding. He nuzzles his sweaty head into the bare skin of my neck and closes his eyes, his little fist tugging on my hair. I guess this is why they warn you about picking up babies. If he stayed quiet like this, I wouldn’t ever want to put him down.

Pork Chop comes limping down the lane. When he gets closer, I see that his knee’s all torn up and raw-looking.

“What happened to you?” I ask him.

He spits out the words. “Too Bad.”

“Too Bad followed us when we went tick-tocking last night,” Ira says. “Pork Chop tripped over him.”

“How could you trip over him?” I ask.

“I didn’t see him! It was dark!” Pork Chop says. “I hate that kid.”

“Well, you didn’t have to cry so loud,” Ira says, looking annoyed. “The Shadow’s supposed to be mysterious! You almost got us caught!”

“You see my leg? It hurt!” Pork Chop says.

The next afternoon we’re sitting around having a cut-up when Kermit comes hurtling down the lane, waving a newspaper.

“Fellas!” he exclaims. “We made the paper!”

The headline shouts
Key West Cursed by Weeping Ghost?

“Weeping ghost?” Pork Chop says. “What are they talking about?”

“Read it,” Beans orders, and Ira obliges.

“‘Is a mysterious ghost haunting the lanes of our fair town? Residents have reported strange goings-on of late. Mrs. Josephine Higgs of Peacon Lane is the most recent recipient of a ghostly visitation. “I heard her knocking at the window,” Mrs. Higgs said. “I think she was trying to communicate with me.” ’”

“I wasn’t trying to communicate with you,” Pork Chop says in an outraged voice. “I was trying to scare you!”

“Who is she, anyway?” I ask.

“My first-grade teacher,” he says with a scowl.

“Boy, you sure do hold a grudge,” I say.

“Keep reading,” Beans says.

Ira continues: “‘Mrs. Higgs believes the spirit may be the widow of a sailor who died at sea. “I never heard such a sad sound as her weeping. She was just crying her heart out. The poor thing,” Mrs. Higgs said.’”

Ira finishes and looks up. Everyone is quiet. Pork Chop has turned beet red.

“Maybe you’ll get your own radio show,” I say to Pork Chop. “Just like
The Shadow.”

“Really?” he asks.

“Sure,” I say. “You can call it
The Crybaby.”

They say that when the stock market crashed, men were so upset at losing their fortunes that they threw themselves off buildings. I can’t imagine killing myself over something like that, but then again I’ve never had a fortune to lose.

Pudding is dozing in the wagon under the hot sun, and Termite is chasing Smokey around the porch. Whenever Termite gets too close, my cat swipes the dog with her sharp claws. Termite howls and howls.

“Why’d you name that dog Termite?” I ask Beans.

“He followed me home one day. Ma told me to get rid of him, but no matter what I did, he always came back.”

“Can’t get rid of termites!” Pork Chop says.

The postman walks up. Being a postman is just about the best job a person can have. The hours are good and then, of course, there’s the job security: there’s no end of bad news to deliver in hard times.

“Letter for you, Miss Turtle,” he says, handing me an envelope.

“Thanks,” I say, and tear it open.

I sigh. This is why I worry about Mama. She’s always getting zany ideas. I don’t know what she’d do without me to figure things out.

“What’s it say?” Kermit asks me.

“Mama’s head is so high in the clouds, I’m surprised she doesn’t bump into Amelia Earhart.”

“How can your mama’s head be up in the clouds?” Buddy asks. “Ain’t it attached to her neck?”

“Look! It’s Killie the Horse!” Beans says suddenly, an edge of excitement in his voice.

An old man riding a horse-drawn wagon is coming down the lane. The horse looks like it’s going to drop dead any minute. I’ve never seen a sorrier-looking animal. And the man doesn’t look much better. He’s wearing filthy old clothes and has a wild, whiskery beard. The wagon is piled high with all sorts of trash.

“Murderer,” Pork Chop whispers.

“What?” I ask.

“He killed a horse. Whipped it to death!” Ira says.

The man doesn’t look like he could kill a fly, let alone a horse.

“Says who?” I ask.

“Says everybody!” Pork Chop says.

The boys grow quiet as the wagon passes. The next thing I know, all the boys are chasing after the wagon, taunting the old man.

Their mocking cries fill the lane: “Killie the Horse! Killie the Horse!”

They jump onto the back of the wagon.

“Leave me be!” the old man cries, but he loses his balance and goes tumbling onto the dusty lane.

The boys erupt into peals of laughter.

A lady steps out of her house and shouts, “You boys stop that right now! You hear me?”

The boys mouth a few halfhearted “Yes, ma’am”s and come sauntering back, snickering under their breath.

“You see the look in his eyes when we jumped on the wagon?” Pork Chop says. “That was swell!”

“You said it, pal!” Beans says.

Killie the Horse stands up and climbs gingerly back onto the wagon, gives a whistle, and starts off.

“What should we do now?” Ira asks.

“Maybe you should go drown some kittens,” I suggest.

“Ain’t no fun in drowning kittens,” Beans says.

“Yeah,” Pork Chop says. “You gotta light their tails on fire and watch ’em run around!”

A tall man carrying a sack over his shoulder turns onto Curry Lane and Beans inhales sharply.

“Poppy,” he says, his throat thick.

Then he leaps up and runs down the lane. Beans throws himself headlong into the arms of his father, who drops his sack and hoists Beans up easily, hugging him hard. Kermit and Buddy go racing down the lane, too, shouting “Poppy’s home!” Even Termite waddles to greet his master, yipping happily.

My uncle’s face is tan as old shoe leather. He looks hot and tired, and has a pale patch of skin on his chin where a beard must’ve been.

Aunt Minnie opens the door and steps out onto the porch. She doesn’t fling herself into his arms and kiss him like Mama when she sees Archie. She just wipes her hands on her apron and says, “You shaved, Vernon.”

“Stopped at the barbershop on my way home,” he says, rubbing his chin. He looks at me and back at Aunt Minnie, a question in his eyes. “Something you want to tell me?”

Aunt Minnie rolls her eyes. “She’s Sadiebelle’s girl. Just showed up.”

“Got the family resemblance, all right.”

“Poppy!” Buddy says, tugging on his father’s hand. “Will you play marbles with me?”

Pudding, thoroughly disturbed by all the shouting, starts crying.

“That one ours, too?” Uncle Vernon asks with a jerk of his head.

“You haven’t been gone
that
long,” Aunt Minnie says, and everyone laughs.

Whenever Archie comes back from a sales trip, it’s like Christmas. He buys perfume for Mama—Je Reviens in a tall blue glass bottle that looks like a skyscraper—and pretty things for me, like mother-of-pearl comb-and-brush sets.

Then he takes us all out for a fancy meal—chicken à la king and peach melba ice cream—and Mama dancing after.

Uncle Vernon doesn’t buy treats like Archie, but things are different with him in the house. Beans is a little nicer, and Buddy has fewer accidents, and Aunt Minnie doesn’t seem so tired. Uncle Vernon’s got a quiet way about him. He doesn’t say much at all. But I like him.

Aunt Minnie makes beef soup for dinner to celebrate Uncle Vernon being home. It’s delicious. I eat three bowls.

After the dishes are done, the boys play outside in the lanes and Aunt Minnie delivers clean laundry.

It’s just Uncle Vernon and me. He pulls a sewing box down off a shelf and takes it into the parlor, where he sits by a lamp. He threads a needle, picks up a shirt from a basket of clothes needing mending, and starts sewing a tear on the elbow. His stitches are small and perfect.

“Gee, I never met a man who could sew,” I say.

“My daddy taught me. He was an old Conch sailor. He always said you should know how to mend your own sail.” He cocks his head. “You know how to sew?”

“Sure,” I say. “Housekeeper does the mending.”

Uncle Vernon hands me a needle and thread and a pair of Buddy’s pants. There’s a tear in the bottom.