“He’s been filling your head out there in the garden shed with his old sailor tales, hasn’t he. All right, you want the whole story.” No sighing this time, actually a little catch in her voice. “My Fritz was bosun on the Badger Voyager. Washed overboard in the big November storm of ’47.”
I thought so! The same storm and ship that took Herman’s eye! That Witch of November coincidence inundated me in waves of what I knew and didn’t know. Her Fritzie was Herman’s best friend on the doomed ore boat. No problem with that, I could savvy the pair of them as bunkhouse buddies or whatever the living quarters were on a ship. But then how in the world had someone she would not even call by his first name get to be the replacement husband? Someone she thought was so worthless they’d end up in the poorhouse? Where that embattled matchup came from, my imagination could not reach at all.
All this whirling in my head after her news about Fritzie’s sad fate, I miraculously managed to hold my exclamation to a high-pitched “That’s awful!”
“Yes, it’s a tragedy.” She gazed steadily ahead at the road. “But that’s in the past, we have to put up with life in the here and now, don’t we,” she said, as if she didn’t want to any more than I did. As if reminded, she glanced over at me and patted her purse enough to make it jingle again in a sort of warning way. “You did fine in today’s game, honeybunch, but stay on your toes. Next time, the party is at our house and we’ll do as usual and play two out of three.”
14.
Dear Gram,
The dog bus was really something, with all kinds of people like you said. Aunt Kate, as I call her but everybody else says Kitty, and Uncle Herman, who does not go by Dutch anymore, found me in the depot fine and dandy and we went to their house and had what they called a Manitowoc dinner, what we call supper. It takes some getting used to here.
Gram had made me promise, cross my heart and so on, to write to her every week, but doing so when she was in the middle of complications after her operation stayed my hand from so much I really wanted to say, none of it good news as far as I was concerned. Carefully as I could, I was doctoring, so to speak, life with Aunt Kate. If word ever came from that intimidating nun, Sister Carma Jean, that the patient was better, maybe I could somehow sneak a phone call to let Gram know I was being bossed unmercifully, from being kept flat broke to being stuck in the attic. On the other hand, what could she do about it from a hospital bed when Aunt Kate was right here, always looming, seeming as big as the house she dominated top and bottom and in between.
Already she had stuck her head in to make sure I was keeping at it on a space of the card table that didn’t have presidents from Mount Rushmore staring at me with scattered jigsaw eyes. She left me to it but not before singing out, “Don’t forget to tell her the funny story of mistaking me for Kate Smith, chickie,” which wild horses could not drag out of me to put on paper. Instead:
Aunt Kate and I play cards some, not pitch like we did in the cook shack but a different game I’ll tell you about sometime.
Herman wore a broad grin when I told him he and Hoyle had bushwhacked Herta and especially Gerda, to the Kate’s satisfaction. “Did you know they play canasta for money?”
“For two bitses, pthht. Hens play for chickenfeed, notcherly.”
It was laborious to fill the whole page of stationery with anything resembling happy news. Herman’s greenhouse gave me a chance to list vegetable after vegetable growing under glass, which helped, and I recounted the antics of Biggie the budgie as if Aunt Kate and I had simply paid a social visit to old friends of hers. There was so much I had to skip not to worry Gram in her condition—the Green Stamps secret deal with Herta, Herman’s out-of-this-world talent at tasting beer, my impressive broken front tooth from the scuffle with the campers, and most of all, Aunt Kate heedlessly throwing away every cent of my money—it would have filled page upon page of writing paper. But if Reader’s Digest could condense entire books, I supposed I could shrink my shaky start of summer likewise.
The Fourth of July is coming, and Aunt Kate is taking me to the big celebration here where they will shoot off fireworks of all kinds and a famous band whose leader is Lawrence Somebody will play music. It should be fun. I hope you are getting well fast and will be up and around to enjoy the Fourth like I will.
Your loving grandson,
Donny
“Oh, I was going to look it over to check your spelling.” Aunt Kate clouded up when I presented her the sealed and addressed envelope for mailing. The look-it-over part I believed, which is why I’d licked the envelope shut.
“Aw, don’t worry about that. I win all the spelling bees in school,” I said innocently. “Miss Ciardi says I could spell down those Quiz Kids that are on the radio.”
“Well, if she says so,” Aunt Kate granted dubiously. “All righty, I’ll stamp it and you can put it out in the box for the mailman. There now, you can get right back to your puzzle, mm?”