Uncle Paulie was looking at the ground and pointing at something. Troo bent down and handed it to him, and then he ran around her and put his hands over her eyes. I could see his mouth moving. I knew he was saying “Peek-a-boo.” Troo pushed his fingers off her face and ran.
“Did you hear what I said, Miss Sally?”
“Pardon me?” I had to use manners around Ethel or she would get after me.
Ethel sighed, and when she did her bosoms went up and down just like Artie Latour’s Adam’s apple. “I said you and Miss Troo should come over to see the puppy that Officer Rasmussen got. I know how Troo is still missin’ that Butchy dog of hers.” She had probably told him about how we had to leave Butchy out on the farm. Rasmussen probably bought that puppy to trick me into trusting him. It was common knowledge that me and Troo had a fondness for animals of all kinds.
“What happened to Officer Rasmussen’s wife?” I asked before I had even figured out I was gonna do that.
Ethel turned quickly back toward me. “Dave Rasmussen don’t have a wife. He’s a bachelor man.”
“Why do you think he doesn’t have a wife?” I was swinging my feet back and forth up in that tree. I was getting nervous now, talking about Rasmussen, because I already knew why he didn’t have a wife. Rasmussen didn’t like wives. Rasmussen liked little girls. From up in the tree crook, I could see what everybody was doin’. Troo had found Willie. They were holding hands, walking toward the gully that led down to the Honey Creek.
Ethel said, “Come down here, Miss Sally. This twistin’ and turnin’ is givin’ me a pain in my neck and Lord knows, I don’t need another one of them.”
I always did what Ethel told me to do so I hopped out of the tree and landed on the grass next to her. She ran her hand down my hair and told me it reminded her of a bag of just picked cotton.
“You know, my mama, she died young,” Ethel said quietly. “It’s a sad thing when a woman gets sick and dies ’fore she’s done doin’ her mothering. It just ain’t right and not in the order of things. So you say a lot of prayers that your mama gets better, okay?”
I nodded and then Ray Buck came over and said, “Time to take a stroll over,” and pointed toward the zoo. They were going over to see Sampson because that was what everybody liked to do over there. Admire the King of the Jungle.
“I’ll see ya later, Miss Sally. Maybe at them fireworks.” Ethel stood, pulled her lemon dress down and smiled at Ray Buck when he offered her his arm. “You give my best to Miss Troo and tell her that Mr. Gary brought along his old maid cards and he’s a-rarin’ to go.”
“You say hello to Mr. Gary for us and you can count on us this week to help you with Mrs. Galecki. I have a new book from the library with some beautiful pictures I think she’ll like. It’s called Black Beauty.”
Ethel grinned and said, “Why didn’t nobody tell me that somebody done wrote a book about me?”
Ray Buck started laughing so hard he had to clear his throat and spit.
I didn’t get the joke until the two of them were walking on the path over toward Sampson, and then thought I better get down to the creek and get Troo because they just announced that the sack races would begin in five minutes. I’d tell Ethel later that was a good one.
Mary Lane, who I think musta been on her third or fourth Eskimo Pie, because she had four of those sticks lined up in front of her, called me over and said, “Take these and give ’em to your uncle Paulie so I can put that in my charitable works story.”
Everybody in the neighborhood knew about Uncle Paulie and his Popsicle sticks. Just like everybody knew that Mrs. Goldman wouldn’t ever wear the color gray and Ethel wouldn’t drink Coca-Cola unless she could drop peanuts in it and that Mrs. Latour was not going to have any more kids because she’d gone into the hospital and had an operation where they took all her insides out and threw them away.
“Yeah… okay,” I said, picking up the sticks. Mary Lane didn’t want to give the sticks to him herself because Uncle Paulie was so odd. The way he always walked with his head down like he was searching for something. And the way he talked, which was real slow and sometimes didn’t make sense. And he also smiled too much, particularly at stuff nobody else smiled at. Like at that dead bird I found in Granny’s backyard. Before he had the accident and got his brain damaged, he hardly ever smiled. Granny used to warn me to steer clear of him, to not get on Uncle Paulie’s bad side because “That boy can get his Irish up.” The way she said it, I could tell she was afraid of her own son.
I stuck Mary Lane’s sticks in my pocket and felt like a bad Catholic for sometimes not liking my own uncle, so I made up my mind to go look for him. But first I wanted to cool down with Troo and make sure she wasn’t throwing anything at Greasy Al.
“Three minutes… three minutes, everybody, until the sack races… find a partner,” came over the loudspeaker.
Everybody was laughing and eating and sweating and the sun felt so scorchy, like if we stayed out in it long enough we’d all melt like ice cream and there’d be nothin’ left of us to see but people puddles.
I ran into Nell on my way to the creek. She seemed a little drunk because she was acting way more nice than Nell usually acted in the morning, or anytime really. She even hugged me, which was not something Nell generally did. But then she cried a little. When Eddie brought her over a cup of root beer, she started laughing again real quick. Clearly, Nell was going crazy. (Well, she certainly had the hair for it.)
I stood on top of the hill and looked down at the creek. Kids were hopping across the rocks and sometimes falling in and laughing and then getting right back up, and then I saw Troo. She and Willie were sitting next to the little waterfall and even though it was so hot she had on her prize-winning coonskin cap. I yelled to her, “The sack races are getting ready to start.”
She yelled back up, “Hold your horses.”
When I turned to walk back to the race area, I ran smack dab into Reese Latour and his flat-as-a-frying-pan face. He was staring down at Troo, grinning and rubbing the front of his pants. Reese was always doing that. Fast Susie Fazio said that Reese’d told her he had a magic genie in there and he was making a wish.
“What were you talkin’ to those two niggers about?” he slobbered out. Reese’d been drinking something that I thought might set my hair on fire, that’s how strong he smelled.
Before I had a chance to tell him to mind his own beeswax, Artie came running up next to me and said, “Hi, Sally.”
Without a word, Reese reached behind me and shoved his brother down on the ground. The bike-decorating prize Artie’d picked out, a silver bike bell, flew through the air and landed at my feet, making a noise like the ones at the beginning of a boxing match. “Can’t you see that her and me are talkin’?” Reese groused. “Aren’t you supposed to be watchin’ the idiot?”
Reese was Nell’s age, almost grown up, and shouldn’t be shoving around someone younger than himself. I helped Artie up and handed him back his bell after Reese started singing, “Harelip, harelip, harelip,” loud enough for people to start looking at us. Then he took another swallow out of whatever was in that brown paper bag and got up close to me and said, “Why don’t you just marry a nigger if you love ’em so much,” and walked off.
“Two minutes… two minutes, everyone. Get your partners and pick your sack.”
“You wanna be my partner, Sally?” Artie acted like Reese pushin’ him down was no big deal because it happened every day, and then I realized it probably did and felt so sorry for him.