“When I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it,” she flared, giving him a dirty look. “A person should be able to dress the way she likes. And if Kate Smith happens to resemble me, that is her good luck, isn’t it?” A sentiment that made her draw herself up as if double-daring him to contradict it. I breathed slightly easier. If they were going to have a fight, at least that might put me on the sideline temporarily.
Not for long. Aunt Kate shifted a haunch as she turned toward me, a movement that tipped me into uncomfortably close range. “Honey bear,” she tried to be nice, the effort showing, “if you’re that intelligent, then you have quite the imagination.”
“Maybe a little bit more than most,” I owned up to.
My modest admission, she rolled over like a bulldozer. “You mustn’t let it run away with you,” her voice not Kate Smith–nice now. “You know why you’re here, because of Dorie’s—your grandmother’s—operation. We can’t have you going around with your head in the clouds while you’re with us, we all just need to get through this summer the best we can.” Another glare in the direction of the kitchen doorway. “Isn’t that so, Brinker?”
Looking almost as caught as I was, Herman protectively hugged the book he was holding. “Donny and I will be straight shooters, bet your boots.”
From the look in her eye, she was making ready to reply to that reply when I pulled the album out from behind my back. “All I wanted was your autograph when I thought you were you-know-who.” I knew to put as much oomph into the next as I could, even though the same enthusiasm wasn’t there. “I still want it, for sure. And Herman’s.”
“I see,” she said, a little less dubiously this time. She certainly helped herself to an eyeful of the memory book as she took it from me, her lips moving surprisingly like Gram’s in silently reading that cover inscription, YE WHO LEND YOUR NAME TO THESE PAGES SHALL LIVE ON UNDIMMED THROUGH THE AGES. “So that’s what this is about,” she said faintly to herself in flipping to one of the entries. I hoped not the Fort Peck sheriff’s about keeping your pecker dry.
On pins and needles, I waited for her reaction as she dipped into the pages until she had evidently seen enough. “I need an aspirin.” She spoke with her eyes clamped shut, pinching the bridge of her nose. “And then we are going to eat dinner with no more interruptions.” That last, I sensed, was spoken as much for Herman’s benefit as mine.
“Sweetie”—once more she made the effort to be nice to me, handing back the autograph book before heaving herself off the davenport and marching to the kitchen—“we’ll be sure to write in it for you, but it can wait. Now then, come to the table, we’ll eat as long as we’re able.” She summoned the other two of us with an obvious lift of mood, improving with every step toward the dinner pot.
No sooner was the tube steak meal ingested if not digested than Aunt Kate declared in a sweetened mood, “Chickie, you look tuckered out from your trip,” which I didn’t think I did, but she topped that off with the message impossible to miss, “Your room is ready for you.”
The night was still a pup compared to the Greyhound’s long gallop through the dark, but if she wanted to settle me in the cozy sewing room with that nice cot, I was ready for that anytime. “It’s best for you to have a room all to yourself,” she said, leading the way into the hall—Wow, I thought, she’s really putting herself out, giving up her sewing room for my sake—“so we have fixed a place for you, haven’t we, Brinker.”
He oddly answered, “Yah, you come to Manito Woc and rough it like a cowboy, Donny. Make you feel at home, hah?”
And whiz, just like that, I was bypassing the cubbyhole sewing room and instead trooping upstairs behind Herman, with him insisting on lugging my suitcase—“You are the guest, you get the best”—while in back of us, Aunt Kate strenuously mounted one tread at a time. And as the stairs kept going, quite a climb by any standard, the suspicion began to seep in on me as to where we were headed, even before Herman shouldered open the squeaky door.
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