Blinking my way out of one surprise after another, I simply stood planted there, gawking at the two of them, one tall and slope-shouldered, the other nearly as broad as the fat lady in a carnival. Long-faced and with that horsy grin and glasses that made his eyes look larger than human, with an odd glint to them, he was quite a sight in his own right, but it was her I was stupefied by. I could only think Gram hadn’t spelled her out to me to save the surprise. Oh, man! She was in our family, what there was of it? This was like a wish come true, life all of a sudden springing the better kind of trick for a change.
I still almost couldn’t believe it, but the more I looked at this unexpected personage, the more excited I became. I would have known her anywhere, an unmistakable figure in more ways than one, big around as a jukebox, jolly double chins, wide-set doll eyes, hairdo as plump as the rest of her, the complete picture. The exact same face I had seen big as life—well, Life, really, the picture magazine that showed what was what in the world every week—just that same day at the Minneapolis newsstand, and the melodious voice, familiar as if it were coming out of the radio that very moment. My Aunt Kitty was clearly none other than what the magazine cover described with absolute authority as America’s favorite songstress, and unless a person was a complete moron and deaf to boot, recognizable as the treasured vocalist of every song worth singing, Kate Smith.
At last, I had it knocked.
WHERE MANITOU WALKS
June 17–30, 1951
9.
IT MADE PERFECT sense to me. Although the mention went in one ear and out the other at the time, hadn’t Gram herself spoken of her little dickens of a sister—although that description was quite a few sizes too small anymore—as “the great Kate,” in saying the two of them just could not make music together from girlhood on? Well, who could, with a singer whose voice carried her to the very top? Back then, I could not have defined palpitations, but did I ever have them, so excited was I to possess this famous woman for an aunt. Great-aunt, but close enough. I gazed raptly up at her, top-heavy as she was with that mighty chest but as cool and composed there in the hubbub of the bus station as if posing for her picture in a magazine. And wasn’t she smart to condense Smythe, her and Gram’s maiden name that looked to me like one of those trick words in a spelling contest, to good old Smith to sing under? Believe It or Not! disclosed this kind of thing all the time, you could hardly read the Sunday funnies without learning that Patti Page before she reached the hit parade with songs like “Tennessee Waltz” was plain Clara Ann Fowler, a name switcheroo if there ever was one. Besides, as Red Chief myself, I was naturally in favor of sprucing up what you called yourself in any way possible.
So the great Kate Smith, dressed in a peach-colored outfit that made her look like a million dollars, monumental in every way as she peered down at me with a perfectly plucked eyebrow arched, represented rescue, relief, reward, a miraculous upward turn in my circumstances. And I needed whatever I could get, ragged and snaggletoothed as my appearance was. Her expression turned to puckered concern as she tallied my missing buttons, dangling pocket, and the rest of my shirt more or less torn to shreds. “Heavens, child, you look like you’ve been in a dogfight.”
Well, yeah, that pretty close to described scuffling with the pack of campers, and there was a story that went with that, but this did not seem like the time for it. I looked down as if apologizing to my shirt. “It got caught on something, is all.”
“We’ll have to get you changed”—she noted the heavy traffic into the men’s restroom, and frowned—“later.” A new note of worry crept in at my general disarray and the wicker suitcase, which itself was looking the worse for wear, if that was possible. “You did bring something presentable, I hope?”
“Sure thing,” I defended my and Gram’s packing, “I have a clean shirt left. My rodeo one sort of needs washing, though.”
“Road-ee-oh,” came a guttural expression of interest from her silent partner, up to this point. “Not ro-day-oh, hah?”
Paying no attention to that, she seemed to make up her mind to smile at me, the extra chin and the famous chubby dimples involved. She had the bluest eyes, which mine swam in guilelessly. “If you’re ready, honeybunch,” she was saying in that voice so melodious I was surprised she could pass herself off in public as Aunt Kitty at all, “we may as well go.”
I nodded eagerly. Herman—somehow I had trouble applying Uncle to him, without Dutch to go with it—insisted on taking my suitcase.
Out we went, he and I trailing her as she plowed through the depot crowd, drawing second looks every step of the way. At the curb, I was glad to see, an idling bus that was not even a Greyhound was filling with the kids going to camp, the poor saps. If there was any justice, Kurt, Gus, and Mannie were in there watching and eating their weasel hearts out at my royal welcome.
Herman hustled ahead to the car, not the limousine I was looking forward to but a big old roomy four-door DeSoto, I supposed because someone the size of Kate Smith required a lot of room.