Philip Hall Likes Me, I Reckon Maybe Read online

  The bald head that poked itself out the car window belonged to the bushy-eyed owner of the Busy Bee Bargain Store.

  “ ‘Lo, Mr. Putterham,” I called as he came over to look. “Want to buy some farm-fresh vegetables today?” When he didn’t answer, I added, as a sort of extra attraction, “... At a bargain?”

  Mr. Putterham seemed to take a fancy to one of the ears that was in dead center of Philip’s pyramid. As he gave it a quick yank, it caused the great triangle of corn to level. Philip watched the destruction of his labor with obvious pain, but Mr. Putterham took no more notice of my partner’s pain than he did of the great corn leveling. For one thing, he was too busy sniffing the corn, peeling down the shucks, and sniffing some more. Then he looked down at me just as though he had appointed himself the final judge at Judgment Day. “Thought you said you was selling fresh vegetables?”

  “An hour ago that corn was still growing on its stalk.”

  When Mr. Putterham finally drove off, I was one dollar and ninety-five cents richer and a whole lot happier. Philip and I threw our arms around each other, jumped into the air, and made loud and joyful noises.

  After the celebrating, I told Philip to mind the store while I made a trip back for more vegetables. Not only had Mr. Putterham bought every last ear of our corn, but he also bought the best two of our three watermelons.

  At first I got to figuring that he probably bought that second melon to give a friend, but that was before I got to remembering what it is that folks in these parts say about Mr. Cyrus J. Putterham. “Old Putterham is so cheap he wouldn’t give nobody nothing, not even a kind word.”

  I packed the cart, whose long-time missing wheel Luther had replaced as a going-in-business present to me, with a couple dozen ears of corn and two of our biggest melons. But I couldn’t get over thinking how peculiar it is that some folks would pay out good money for the same vegetables that they could grow themselves.

  As I pulled the rolling produce back along the dusty road, I could see up ahead that a car was parked near our stand. Another customer! I wanted to see him. Wanted to be there when he reached down into his pocket to bring out the money that was going to help pay my way through college.

  Running when a person has to play steam engine to a cargo on wheels ain’t the easiest thing to do. So while I couldn’t exactly run, I did walk just as fast as I could. When I finally reached the highway, the car with a man and woman inside was just driving off.

  I gave Philip Hall a congratulating pat on the back. “Reckon you must have sold them a good amount,” I said, noticing that the last watermelon was now gone.

  He shook his head no.

  “What do you mean no?”

  “What I means to say,” said Philip pretending great patience, “is that they didn’t buy nothing. And they didn’t spend no money. Do you understand now what I mean when I say no?”

  “No,” I said. “ ‘Cause I don’t see the watermelon. Who bought that?”

  His head swirled to look at the place that was now made vacant by the missing melon. “Oh, that one,” he said.

  “Yep, that one. Who bought it?” I asked just at the moment I caught sight of some watermelon rinds (and only the rinds) lying in the gully. I didn’t have to ask another question ‘cause now I understood everything. “You good-for-nothing, low-down polecat of a Philip Hall! Those folks stopped to buy a melon, didn’t they?”

  He looked too surprised to answer so I just went on telling what I knew to be the truth. “But you didn’t have a melon to sell, did you? Cause you already done ate it!”

  Philip called me “crazy” and then he stopped talking. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the cars too seemed to have stopped stopping. A couple of times, they slowed down and I thought for sure they were going to stop, but they didn’t. Don’t know why, unless maybe they caught a look at Philip’s sourer-than-a-lemon-ball face.

  Another thing about this day that wouldn’t stop was the sun. One of the real hot ones. I reckon I could’ve drunk a gallon of ice water. Reckon I could’ve even drunk a gallon of water without the ice.

  Then I heard Philip’s voice actually speaking. “We got us another customer. He pointed across the road to a red tow truck with the words WALNUT RIDGE GULF STATION neatly painted on its door.

  After the baseball-capped garageman paid me for one melon and a half dozen ears of corn, I asked him if he knew my grandmother, Miz Regina Mae Forde. “She lives on Route 67 just north of Walnut Ridge.”

  “No,” but he smiled a dimpled smile. “I’m going to be going right past her house to fetch a battery, so I can take you there and back if you’ve a mind to do some visiting.”

  I thought about the lemonade that Grandma makes with exactly the right number of sugar granules. I thought about the shade trees that circle her little house. And most of all I thought about Grandma.

  I would have gone on thinking, but I was interrupted by my partner’s voice. “Let’s go, Beth. Please?”

  As we walked up Grandma’s now grassless path, I got a sudden thought. If she sees me so unexpectedly at her door, she’ll right away think I’m bringing bad news. Grandma has been a mite worried about us ever since Calvin Cook Senior was released from jail.

  So I stayed hidden in the bushes while friend Philip walked up the front step and knocked hard against the wood door. After a moment’s wait he knocked even harder. And when she didn’t answer that one, I came out of hiding long enough to ask him to walk around back to see if she wasn’t out hanging clothes. Well, he did, but she wasn’t.

  We sat on a piece of shady grass by the side of the road making bets on who would be coming along first: Grandma or the garageman. Just as I said, “Grandma,” as though there wasn’t room enough in this world for one speck of doubt, I saw the garageman’s arm waving at us through the truck’s open window.

  About fifteen minutes later, when we came within viewing distance of our stand, I stabbed at the windshield. “What are those damn fool cows doing bunched around our stand?”

  “They’re our dairy cows,” explained Philip as though that was the most natural explanation in the world. “Being brought back from the west pasture for milking.”

  The garageman hadn’t come to a 100 percent complete stop before I was out of that truck flailing my arms as though they had been set into revolving sockets. “Shew! Shew, you dumb cows! Shew! Would you look what you’ve done to my business!”

  All the cows moved leisurely on except one rust-and-white spotted Jersey, who took the only remaining ear of corn into her mouth without even bothering to see what my displeasure was about.

  “You’re dumb,” I yelled at the Jersey. “Dumb, dumb, dumb!”

  Then just as if to show me how she felt about my name-calling, she backed her perfectly enormous rump into the stand, sending all three melons to the ground. Two of them cracked, but the largest melon miraculously made the fall intact.

  “Dumb!” I screamed, and the cow lifted her head as though to demonstrate her complete contempt at my shockingly bad behavior before sending her front foot through the last surviving melon. “Ohhh ...” I said, feeling violent about the destruction of The Elizabeth Lorraine Lambert & Friend Veg. Stand.

  “Her name’s Eleanor,” said Philip, with what sounded like pride. “She’s one cow that always had a mind of her own.”

  I pointed my finger at him. “You and Eleanor are exactly alike! ‘Cause neither of you got the sense God gave you!”

  At the supper table I told Pa, Ma, Luther, and Anne about how my vegetable stand was destroyed when Philip Hall made me go with him to Walnut Ridge.

  Pa put down his glass of buttermilk. “Show me your scars.”

  “My what?”

  “Your scars,” he said again. “ ‘Cause I never knowed nobody who could make my Beth do what she hadn’t a mind to do, less’n of course, he beat you with a bull whip.” Pa leaned his head back just like he always does when he lets go of a really fat laugh. “So show us your scars.” He wasn’t lau
ghing alone either. They were all laughing their dang fool heads off. All excepting me.

  I jumped up, slapping my hand down upon the oilcloth. “Reckon I should have knowed you folks would rather take sides with Philip Hall than with your own flesh and blood.”

  Ma gave my hand little taps saying, “Now, now, nobody in this world is taking sides against you.”

  Tears were coming on, coming on too strong for stopping. I ran into my room to throw myself across my bed. I cried as quietly as I could, wondering why I hadn’t seen it before. How they all love Philip Hall better’n me. Well, let them! It don’t make me no never mind.

  After a while I had to quit crying ‘cause it was giving me a headache and I was, truth to tell, plumb tired of lying across the bed. So I tiptoed out the front door so quietly that I didn’t have to face a single solitary Lambert.

  I passed Pa’s garden of the good growing weather, admired the corn stalks which seemed to grow taller and prouder with each sunrise. And on each stalk, ears—lots of corn ripened ears, ready for the picking. Plenty there for a heap of selling. And in the next rows was the tomatoes that should be able to win a blue ribbon at anybody’s country fair. But the bluest ribbon should be saved for the watermelon. The reddest, sweetest melons in all of Randolph County.

  The sun was lowering, but there was still light enough on the rutty back road that I followed out to the highway. When I reached what remained of The Elizabeth Lorraine Lambert & Friend Veg. Stand, I surveyed the damage. The corn was muddied and bruised; mashed tomatoes littered the gravel shoulder, and the bursted watermelons had become a feast for ants and flies.

  The boards and the crates were unbroken although the company sign did suffer from a muddy hoofprint directly across the word Friend.

  As I replaced the boards across the crates I began thinking about what really happened. I thought about the God-given good growing weather, about Pa’s extra planting, about Ma making the time to help me weed my garden. I thought about Luther’s repairing the cart, Anne’s encouragement, and, God help me, I even thought about Philip Hall who had always been better at talking than at working. And isn’t that what I really wanted him for? For company?

  Sweet Philip. Did he really force me to go to Walnut Ridge? Although I didn’t come close to smiling, I did come closer to understanding what Pa and the rest of the family found funny.

  I threw the feast-for-flies melons across the road into the gully and swept away the tomatoes with a willow branch. Then with only one mighty swing with a roadside rock, I nailed the company sign back onto the stand.

  As I stepped back to look it all over, I saw only one thing still needed doing. So with my hand I brushed away —carefully brushed away—the mud from the word Friend.

  The Pretty Pennies picket

  July

  I no sooner set the ice-cold pitcher of lemonade on the porch when I saw the Blakes’ green pickup truck stirring up the dust as it traveled down our rutty road. “Ma,” I called through the screen door. “Bring out the cookies! The Pretty Pennies are a-coming.”

  Right away the door opened, but it wasn’t Ma. It was Luther wearing a fresh white dress shirt and the blue pants from his Sunday suit. While Susan, Esther, and Bonnie jumped off the truck’s back platform, Luther didn’t hardly pay no never mind. It wasn’t until Ginny the gorgeous climbed down that Luther, wearing a very pleasant expression, took a couple of giant steps toward her and asked, “How y‘all getting along, Ginny?”

  Ginny didn’t get a chance to answer ‘cause the one girl who folks say was born into this world talking answered my brother’s question. “Fried to a frizzle,” said Bonnie Blake. “And that lemonade yonder looks mighty refreshing.”

  After the lemonade was drunk and the cookies eaten, I performed my duties by rapping on the floor of the porch and saying, “This here meeting of the Pretty Pennies Girls Club is now called to order.”

  “Trouble with this club,” said Bonnie without waiting until we got to new business, “is that we never do nothing but drink lemonade and talk about the boys in the Tiger Hunters’ Club.”

  Heads bobbed up and down in agreement.

  Bonnie smiled as though she was onto something big. “What this club needs is somebody with new ideas about things that are fun doing.”

  Then Ginny did something unusual. She found that one sliver of a moment which Bonnie wasn’t cramming with words and said, “We just go from one meeting to the next meeting without ever doing anything. Reckon we could use a new president.”

  Even before Ginny’s words were being applauded, I knew there was some truth to be found in them. We do just sit around gabbing—which is fun—but it was the same amount of fun before I got the idea that we had to become a club. “Philip Hall and the Tiger Hunters ain’t the only ones can be a club!” And it was also me that told them how it was a known fact that clubs have more fun than friends. Suddenly I felt ashamed of myself for having promised more than I delivered, but mostly I felt angry with the Pretty Pennies, who were fixing to dump their president without as much as a “begging your pardon.”

  I looked up at the porch ceiling, looking for something like a good idea waiting to bore through my brain. Well, I looked, but I didn’t see nothing but ceiling paint. So I closed my eyes and sure enough something came to me. I waved my hands for quiet. “It so happens that I do have a wonderful idea, but I was waiting to tell y‘all about it.”

  Bonnie began, “Is it fun? ‘Cause I got me plenty of chores to do at home so if it’s—”

  I broke right in. “Quiet! Now next month the Old Rugged Cross Church has their yearly picnic, and I’ve been thinking that we oughta challenge the Tiger Hunters to a relay race.”

  “Five of them,” said Bonnie. “Five of us.”

  “Yes siree,” I agreed. “But they is going to be something special about our five ‘cause we’re going to be wearing a special uniform which we ourselves made.”

  Right away I noticed how all the girls came alive when I mentioned the uniform, so I went on to describe it. “With the money we got in our club treasury, we’re going to buy big T-shirts and some different-colored embroidery thread for each Pretty Penny. And then”—my finger traced a crescent across my chest—“we could all embroider the words: THE PRETTY PENNIES GIRLS CLUB OF POCAHON- TAS, ARKANSAS.” I said, really beginning to feel my presidential powers, “And if we were of a mind to, we could also embroider on the names of all the folks we like.”

  “You going to embroider on the name of Mister Phil Hall?” asked Bonnie in that cutesy-pooh voice of hers.

  I laughed just as though I had nary a worry in this world. Oh, sometimes I think that Philip Hall still likes me, but at other times I think he stopped liking me the moment he stopped being the number-one best everything.

  But he wouldn’t do that, would he? Stop liking me just because I’m smarter than him? I can’t help it and, anyway, Miss Johnson herself said that if I’m going to become a veterinarian I’m going to have to become the best student I know how to be.

  On Saturday afternoon all us Pennies went into the Busy Bee Bargain Store for white T-shirts big enough to get lost in. After a lot of discussion, we dropped five T-shirts, fifty skeins of embroidery thread, five embroidery hoops, and five packages of needles onto the wrapping counter in front of Mr. Cyrus J. Putterham.

  After taking our money, he pulled one tan sack from beneath the counter and began shoveling everything into it.

  “Oh, no, sir,” I corrected. “We each need our own bags.”

  His bushy eyebrows made jumpy little elevator rides up and then down. “Don’t you girlies have any feeling? Five sacks cost me five times as much as one.”

  “But we need them,” I explained. “ ‘Cause we’re not even related.”

  He pulled out four more. “Costs me money, each one does. But you wouldn’t care nothing about that. Kids never do!”

  As we Pretty Pennies embroidered our shirts on the following Wednesday evening, we drank Bonnie Blake’s straw
berry Kool-Aid, ate her potato chips, and gabbed on and on about those Tiger Hunters.

  We even sent them a letter saying that they ought to get busy practicing their relay running ‘cause we Pretty Pennies were aiming to beat them to pieces.

  The next meeting was at Ginny’s house, where we all sat in a circle on the linoleum floor and talked about our coming victory over the boys while we munched popcorn from a cast-iron skillet and embroidered away. Then from outside: Bam ... bam ... bam-my ... bam ... bam!

  Our embroidery dropped to our laps as we grabbed onto one another. Bonnie pointed toward the outside while, for the first time in her life, her mouth opened and closed and closed and opened without a single sound coming out.

  Finally, Esther, who almost never had a word to say, said, “Wha—What was that?”

  “Let’s see,” I said, moving cautiously and pulling Esther along with me toward the door. I peeked out just in time to see two figures (both less than man size) race deeper into the halflight before disappearing from sight.

  Bonnie, Ginny, and Susan were still sitting like frozen statues.

  “It’s OK,” I told them. “Whoever they were—and I think I know who they were—have already ran away.”

  Esther followed me out on the porch, where there was a rock the size of a crow’s nest and sticking to this rock was a sheet of wide-lined paper. I pulled off the paper, which had been stuck on with a wad of gum, and read aloud:Dear Pretty Pennies,

  You ain’t pretty!

  You ain’t pennies!

  And you ain’t never going to beat us neither!

  President Philip Hall

  Bravest of all the brave Tiger Hunters