The Book of Bright Ideas Read online

  “Auntie will buy you tickets, girls. You wait in line.” Then Aunt Verdella ran off to the little wooden booth where the tickets were sold. She came back with two white rolls of them. She split one in half and handed them to Winnalee and me.

  “I’ll watch,” Freeda said. “I puke on these things.” And Winnalee added, “She does too!” She didn’t have to wait by herself, though, because right then someone shouted, “Freeda!” and we looked to see Mike Thompson coming through the swarm of sweaty people, his little nephew propped on his shoulders, Mike’s twin and his wife and baby tagging behind him. They stood next to Freeda while the rest of us climbed the metal steps to give our tickets to the carny guy.

  Another carny guy, filled with tattoos, held the half-circle cage in place while we got in. After we sat down—Ma and Aunt Verdella on each end, and me and Winnalee in the middle—the carny guy flipped the metal-pole thing we were supposed to hang on to toward our bellies. “Here you go, ladies.” He gave a wink, then rapped on the roof of the cage and went off to help some other ladies get into their seats.

  “Did you see him wink at you, Jewel?” Aunt Verdella ha-ha-ed, and Ma rolled her eyes, but she was grinning.

  When that ride started up, clanking and rumbling as it went over the wavy, wooden ramp, I felt scared. I held my breath as the ride started going faster and our seat started twirling. “Lean!” Aunt Verdella shouted. So that’s what we did. We leaned to whatever side the ride headed in (usually Aunt Verdella’s side) so that we’d twirl faster and faster. I screamed right out loud, just like everybody else, when it spun real fast, but not those real scared kind of screams, just the happy-scared kind. By the time the ride started slowing down to stop, I was yelling, “Again! Again!” just like Winnalee.

  We rode on the rides until our tickets were gone and Winnalee was sick to her stomach. We packed the food cooler back in the truck, rounded up Daddy and Uncle Rudy and Winnalee’s vase, and took our blankets and the cooler with drinks in it down to the riverbank. Mike Thompson came along with us, and I wasn’t sure if Freeda liked that or not. Sure, she smiled at him, and she laughed when he made a funny, but I noticed that when he tried to put his arm around her or take her hand, she moved away from him, though I wasn’t sure why.

  It seemed to take forever for the sky to get dark enough so the fireworks could start, but finally the first big boom came, telling us that it was time.

  Me and Winnalee sat on our knees and watched the fireworks, screaming out when our favorites burst in the sky. Across the whole riverbank you could hear little kids squealing and big people saying “ooooh” and “ahhhhhh,” till each firework hissed its way down, fizzling out just before it landed on the lit-up floats skimming along the water.

  All too soon, though, it was over. From the park, we could hear the twang of guitars through amplifiers. Not playing songs, but tuning up. “Oh, a dance!” Freeda shouted.

  Ma looked worried. “I don’t know if we should stay. The girls—”

  “But we wanna dance too!” Winnalee said. “How come we can’t dance?” Winnalee whined, bouncing a little, like she always did when she begged.

  “How about if they stay for a couple songs, Jewel? Then Rudy and I will take the girls home with us, if the rest of you want to stay.”

  I was real happy when Ma said, “Okay.”

  Freeda kicked off her shoes the minute the music started and headed out to the dance floor. She didn’t seem to care if Mike followed her or not. Verdella hurried behind Freeda, dragging Ma right with her. And Winnalee grabbed my hand and drug me out there too.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes when Ma danced right along with Freeda and Aunt Verdella. And I suppose Ma couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw me dancing right along with Winnalee. “Look at Button!” Winnalee shouted. “She’s really dancing!” And I was too. And so was my ma. So for five whole songs, while the music thumped from black speakers and the rides whirled and blinked on the other side of the park, we danced, bunched up with other people on the cement floor, like no one was watching. All of us rocking our arms, and shaking our butts, and stomping our feet, and tossing our heads, and laughing and laughing.

  I knew the second the singer announced that it was time for a little break that we’d have to leave. Ma gave Aunt Verdella a look, so Aunt Verdella put a hand on each of us to steer us toward the parking lot, when the guy who had been singing told everybody that while they took a break, their good friends Reece Peters and Owen Palmer were going to play a couple numbers. Nothing was gonna make Aunt Verdella leave just then!

  I glanced at Ma quick, and my teeth went right to my cheek all by themselves. Ma was watching Daddy, and she seemed to be thinking hard, but she didn’t say anything.

  While Daddy and Owen put their heads together, talking about what song to do, I suppose, Freeda yelled out, “‘Jailhouse Rock’!” Daddy nodded, and suddenly his voice came bursting out, till it was the loudest thing in that whole park. The crowd hooted and hollered when Daddy started singing the first words, and by the time the music started behind him, the drummer from the band forgot all about his break and leapt up on the stage and started pounding his drumsticks.

  When that Elvis song got over, Daddy sang that song about a lady named Sue who liked to run around a lot. While he sang, I looked out at the people circled around the dance floor and saw how they thought Daddy sang better than anybody in that other band.

  When the song ended, the people yelled, “More! More!” so Owen shouted into the microphone, “Here’s a brand-new one by Roy Orbison, called ‘Only the Lonely,’” and the crowd cheered some more, and so did we, as we danced and danced.

  When that song finished, Daddy sang another Elvis song, the one Aunt Verdella said was her favorite, and he said right into the microphone that he was singing it for his two best girls, his wife, Jewel, and his sister-in-law, Verdella. Aunt Verdella led us to the side of the dance floor so we could see Daddy better, and me and Winnalee leaned our backs against her while he sang. Aunt Verdella had her arms wrapped around us, and I could feel her voice fluttering in her fat part as she sang along with Daddy. Ma stood beside us. She had her lips pressed together in that way people press their lips together when they feel soft tears in their stomachs.

  Freeda was on the dance floor, her arms wrapped around Mike Thompson’s neck, his arms holding her as gently as if she were a baby. I looked up at Ma then, and although she didn’t turn her face down toward me, she smiled, and reached out, and pulled me softly from Aunt Verdella, and put her arms around my shoulders, and together we rocked side to side to the music.

  After Daddy and Owen finished the song, the crowd hooted and hollered and begged for more, but Daddy pretended he didn’t hear that part, as he told them to welcome the other band back.

  Both him and Owen came over by us when they left the stage. Ma smiled up at him, and Daddy smiled back. Owen nodded and said thank you as everyone told Daddy and him how good they’d done, but he stopped when he saw Ma and told her how good she looked. Daddy put his arm around Ma and looked at her, then grinned. “She does, doesn’t she?” And Ma smiled.

  “Goddamn, I miss this, Reece,” Owen said, while looking back at the stage and shaking his head. And Ma said, “So does he.”

  People came up to crowd Daddy and Owen, asking them when they were gonna get back together. I wanted to tell my daddy that I thought he sang real good. Maybe even wrap my arms around his waist like Winnalee was doing, but I felt shy even thinking about doing such a thing.

  “Okay, girls,” Uncle Rudy said. “This old coot’s gotta find his bed.”

  “I’ll keep the girls at my house, then you three can stay as long as you like,” Aunt Verdella said. She added real fast, “Well, if that’s all right with you, Jewel.” And Ma said it was.

  “Verdella, where’s the can?” Freeda said, breaking into the little circle. June Thompson was with her. Aunt Verdella pointed to the brick building under another streetlamp, and Winnalee said she had to pee and couldn�
�t make it till we got home, so all of us girls went. While we were standing against the cool, brick wall, waiting to get into one of the two stalls, I heard June Thompson whisper to Freeda, “I think Mike’s fallin’ for you, Freeda,” and Freeda say back to her, “For his sake, I hope to hell not.”

  Winnalee and I didn’t fall asleep as soon as we got in the car, like Aunt Verdella said we would. “Stop at my house first!” Winnalee said. “I wanna get my jammies, so I don’t ruin my new outfit. And I want to get my pink skirt so you can fix it into two in the morning.” I got excited when Winnalee said this, remembering that we’d soon have real dancing costumes.

  Aunt Verdella waited in the car while me and Winnalee raced inside and up the stairs. Winnalee grabbed her pj’s off the floor, then she pulled our book out from under her pillow. “Let’s each write a bright idea before we go.”

  While Winnalee flipped pages to find where we’d left off, a bright idea came to me. “I got one!” I said, so she handed me the book first, and I wrote, Bright Idea #94: If you always ride on the slow rides that don’t lift far off of the ground, just because you’re afraid of falling, you won’t fall far, that’s true, but you won’t get many thrills either. And you won’t be proud of yourself when the carnival’s over.

  Winnalee took our book and read my idea. “Did you write that about you? Were you scared of the big rides?” I nodded. “Wow, I didn’t know that. You weren’t even biting your face.”

  Winnalee took the pencil then and said, “I got one too.” And she wrote Bright Idea #95: When you sing, sing rowdy like Elvis. And when you dance, dance like you’re at the Marty Graw.

  17

  When Aunt Verdella threw her back out toward the end of July, trying to uproot the Virgin Mary’s bathtub so she could move it to the back of the yard, for Lord knows what reason, Ma was worried about leaving me with her while she went to work. “Two girls to keep an eye on while she’s flat on her back? I don’t know about this, Reece,” Ma said that morning.

  “We’ll be okay, Ma,” I said. “Me and Winnalee are going to be her nurses and take care of her.”

  “They’ll be fine, Jewel,” Daddy said, so Ma ran me over to Aunt Verdella’s like any other morning. Winnalee was waiting for me in the driveway. She was wearing an old lavender dress of Aunt Verdella’s and an apron tied around her tight, to hold it up and in. She had bobby pins holding back the sides of her hair. “I got my dancing dress underneath,” she told me. “You bring yours?”

  “Yep, right here,” I told her, holding out my arm so she could see the bag I carried. Me and Winnalee had worn our dancing costumes practically every day since Aunt Verdella had made them.

  “Good. Then we’ll put on a dance for Aunt Verdella later.”

  We all went inside, and Ma put the sandwiches and stuff she brought in the refrigerator, then we all went into the living room, where Aunt Verdella was stretched out on the couch, her curls matted, and her face all pinched up. “Oh Lord,” she said. “Now I know what Rudy goes through when his back acts up.”

  “Where is Rudy?” Ma asked.

  Aunt Verdella winced as she tried to prop herself on one elbow so she could see us better. “Oh, he’s over at the Smithys’. Tommy came to get him. They had some pipe burst in their basement, and Elroy’s gone. Tommy said the whole basement is flooded.”

  Ma looked nervous. “I don’t feel right about leaving the girls here when you’re laid up and alone, Verdella.”

  “Nonsense,” Aunt Verdella said. “We’ll be fine. And Freeda’s right across the road if we need anything.”

  “She is now, but she ain’t gonna be long,” Winnalee said. “After they wake up—in about a hundred years—Mike and her are gonna go skinny-dippin’ at Crystal Lake. That’s what I heard her tell Mike yesterday, anyway.”

  “Skinny-dipping? Lord!” Aunt Verdella said, then she ha-ha-ed. “Ouch, that hurts,” she said after she laughed. “Well, no matter. Don’t you worry one iota about us, Jewel. The girls are gonna be my nurses, aren’t you, girls? They’ll take good care of me, and we’ll all be just fine.”

  “Yeah,” Winnalee said.

  So Ma left, and Winnalee and I got busy being Aunt Verdella’s nurses. “You go pick her a flower to put on her food tray, and I’ll get her breakfast, okay?” Winnalee said. When I came in with a little clump of pink pansies, Winnalee was at the table, standing over a pile of crushed Shredded Wheat.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  Winnalee grabbed another raisin out of the Sun-Maid box. “I’m trying to make a bunny face on her Shredded Wheat, but they keep bustin’.”

  “You’re crushing them because you’re pushing too hard,” I told her. “I’ll do that, and you make her a piece of toast. She likes toast.”

  I used one point of a fork and jabbed carefully at the cereal that always reminded me of little hay bales, until there was two little holes in it, then I tucked a raisin in each one. “Put the broken ones in first, then the milk and sugar,” Winnalee said. “And then we’ll set the bunny one on top, careful, so his eyes don’t fall out.” We talked quietly as we worked, so Aunt Verdella wouldn’t hear our surprise, which probably wasn’t necessary anyway, since she was yelling out answers to the questions Allen Ludden was asking on Password.

  When we got done, we brought Aunt Verdella her good breakfast on a sick-tray. Aunt Verdella laughed when she saw it. “Oh, you girls!” she said, her eyes tearing, either from our bunny cereal or from the pain of trying to sit up enough to eat.

  After she ate, she fell back against her pillow and asked if I could get her a glass of water so she could take one of the pain pills the doctor gave her. “I wasn’t gonna have one, because they knock me out for hours, but, oh boy, this back is hurtin’ something fierce after I sat up like that.”

  It wasn’t ten minutes after Aunt Verdella took that pill that her eyelids started getting droopy. “If I fall asleep, you girls be good and play inside, you hear?”

  “We will,” I told her as I took her water glass to the kitchen. I was emptying it in the sink when Winnalee came up behind me and whispered in my ear, “Today’s the day!”

  I turned to her. “What do you mean?”

  “To go see the fairies! It’s the perfect day! Your ma’s working, Uncle Rudy’s over at the Smithys’, Freeda’s gonna run off with Mike as soon as they wake up, and Aunt Verdella’s out like a light.”

  I got scared the minute she said it. “Winnalee, we promised we’d stay inside and be good. And, anyway, we didn’t even make a map yet.”

  “Nobody will even know,” Winnalee said, as she stripped off Aunt Verdella’s old clothes and balled them up on the kitchen chair. “Look, I even have shoes on today. I wore them on purpose.” She fluffed the fur at the top of her costume and told me to put mine on too, so that we’d look like fairies and maybe they wouldn’t be so scared of us then.

  My throat felt dry, so I cleared it a couple of times. “But Tommy said the fairies only come out right before dark. It’s still morning!”

  “If they’re there, we’ll be noisy and wake them up. As for the map, we don’t need one. We’ll take the road, like Tommy said. I remember the directions.”

  “We don’t even know if he was telling the truth, Winnalee. I’ve never been down to the end of Peters Road before. How do we know there’s another road on the other side?”

  “We’ll find out, I guess. Come on, Button, don’t chicken out. We’ll go fast and get back before anyone knows we were even gone.” Winnalee picked up her ma. “Come on, Button. This might be our only chance.”

  “I bet Freeda will come over here to check on Aunt Verdella before she leaves for swimming,” I said.

  “Maybe she will, but she ain’t gonna wake up till close to noon. Now, stop wasting our time talking, and let’s get going.”

  There wasn’t a sound anywhere but for the crunching of our shoes on gravel and one squawk of a crow flapping across the hazy sky, as Winnalee and I hurried down Peters Road, me carryin
g our adventure bag and Winnalee carrying her ma, even though I told her that urn would get heavy.

  “What color dresses do you think fairies wear?” Winnalee asked. “I think some will have on blue dresses, icy blue. Or maybe a lavender color.”

  I didn’t say anything, because once again, Winnalee was talking about fairies in a way that made them seem all the more make-believe.

  “We have to start school next month,” I said, just to change the subject. “There’s three different classrooms for the fifth-graders. I hope we get in the same class.”

  “Me too,” Winnalee said. “Then you can help me. I don’t know how to do long division yet. Will we have to do long division?”

  “Yeah, probably. How come you don’t know how to do long division?”

  She ignored my question and added, “I don’t know how to multiply either. Well, except for my twos and fives, but I have to count up still.”

  I blinked at her. “You’re kidding me!”

  “No, I’m not. The school I was at hadn’t started learning that stuff yet, then we moved. At my new school, they were already doing long division when I got there. The teacher made me stay in at recess to learn my tables, and the kids laughed at me ’cause I didn’t know them. I hated that.”

  “Oh,” I said. I felt sorry for her. “I can help you learn your math.”

  “I don’t want to learn it,” Winnalee said. “I’ll just copy off your papers.”

  Just her mentioning cheating made another dose of scared thump down into my belly, to join the scared I was already feeling about sneaking off. I looked behind us to see how far we’d gotten. I couldn’t see the houses or yards anymore. I looked ahead of us, and I couldn’t see the road Tommy told us about either. I bit at the inside of my cheek, just thinking about how we might be lost already.

  We didn’t have to walk long before we were thirsty and Winnalee’s ma got heavy. “Wanna trade?” Winnalee asked. The last thing in this world I wanted to do was to carry Hannah Malone. Even Winnalee asking made me hope hard that Aunt Verdella soon had enough money for that final restin’ place for her. I looked at the urn, and for a second I thought about trading our loads, but only for a second. “Well, I told you not to bring her, but you did anyway, so I guess you can just carry her.”