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THE REAL PUZZLE, of course, was how I was going to endure a summer of thousand-piece jigsaws, old National Geographics, and canasta without being bored loco or something worse. Especially seeing as once I’d paid off the bribe to Herta by slipping her my Green Stamps, I was going to be no match for the merciless sharpies in not one canasta game but two, and it took no great power of prediction to guess Aunt Kate’s reaction to that. The Witch of November in a muumuu was on that horizon.
So the next couple of days after writing Gram how fine and dandy everything was in Manitowoc, I hung around with Herman in the greenhouse as much as possible to keep my morale up. He was good company, better and better in fact, as he read up some more from Karl May and other books in his corner stash and gabbed with me about cayuses and coyotes—relying on me to straighten him out on which were horses and which were canines—and the wonders of Winnetou as a warrior and the spirit of Manitou living on and on and making itself felt in mysterious ways. “Here you go, Donny, Indians believed Manitou lived in stones, even, and could come out into a person if treated right, if you will imagine.” With the fervor of an eleven-year-old carrying an obsidian arrowhead in his pocket, I certainly did turn my imagination loose on that, seeing myself riding the dog bus west sooner than later to a healthy and restored Gram, her with a job cooking on some ranch where the rancher was no Sparrowhead, me back at things I was good at like hunting magpies and following the ways of cowboys, poorfarm and orphanage out of our picture. In other words, in more luck than I was used to lately.
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IT IS SAID a blessing sometimes comes in disguise, but if what happened in the middle of that week was meant to be any kind of turn of luck, it made itself ugly beyond all recognition when it came.
At first I thought it was only the household’s usual ruckus at breakfast while I was parked on the living room couch as usual, reading a National Geographic, this time about “Ancient Rome Brought to Life,” where according to the paintings shown, people sometimes went around even more naked than in Bali. I was pondering an illustration of a roomful of women mostly that way and the caption with some ditty from back then, “Known unto All Are the Mysteries, Where, Roused by Music and Wine, the Women Shake Their Hair and Cry Aloud,” those mysteries unfortunately unknown to me except for that smackeroo kiss Letty and I exchanged, and I did not notice her shaking her hair and crying aloud from it.
Just then, though, I heard a woman definitely roused, but not that way.
“Have you lost half your brain as well as that eye?” Aunt Kate was shouting in the close confines of the kitchen.
“Does not take any much brain to know you are talking crazy,” came Herman’s raised voice in return.
“Oh, I’m the one, am I. I’ve told you before, don’t be filling his head with useless things. When I was out seeing what flowers I could cut for our next little party, I heard you telling him more of that Manitou nonsense.”
“Is not nonsense. You think you are more smart than Longfellow? Not one chance in a million.” Herman went on the attack now. “You are the one filling him up with canasta nonsense and putting him on spot in your hen parties. Let the boy be boy, I am telling you.”
In a kind of stupor as I realized the knock-down, drag-out fight was about me, I crept to the hallway where I could peek toward the kitchen. They were up on their feet, going at it across the table. I’d heard them having battles before, but this sounded like war. More so than I could have imagined, because as I watched in horror, Aunt Kate leaned across the table almost within touching distance of Herman and shrieked one of the worst things I had heard in my life.
“Don’t get any ideas about who’s in charge of our little bus passenger for the summer! You’re not wearing a Kraut helmet anymore, so don’t think you’re the big boss around here!”
Herman’s face darkened, and for a few frightening seconds, I wondered whether he was going to hit her. Or she him, just as likely, given the way her fists were clenched.
Then Herman said in a voice barely under control, “What I am, you did not care when you wanted your bed keeped warm after Fritz.” With that, he turned his back on her, heading out to the refuge of the greenhouse. Aunt Kate followed him far enough to get in a few more digs before he slammed the door and was gone.
Shocked nearly senseless as I was, by instinct I scooted for the stairs and scuttled up to the attic while she still was storming around the kitchen. I would have retreated farther than that if I could, after what I had heard. Before long, Aunt Kate’s voice was raised again, this time in my direction and straining to sound melodious.