

### Dear Aunt Myrna

### Kit Duncan

~~~

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2007 by Kit Duncan

All rights reserved.

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part by any means without express permission from its author.

For additional information:

Kit Duncan

kitduncan56@yahoo.com

Cover photo by Kenny Brown

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Other Books by Kit Duncan

Corban

Dandelions in Paradise

Tea With Mrs Saunders

Life's Road Trip

to

### my aunt

### Ruby Arlene Fisher

1926 - 1996

Some dreams come true.

### Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

About the Author

#  CHAPTER 1

In the summer of 1962 Jackie Robinson became the first black man inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, my favorite song on the radio was _Soldier Boy_ by the Shirelles, and my passionate ambition was to beat Danny Watson in our daily bike races up to the corner of Thistlewood Drive and Birchwood Avenue. Danny was eight years old, and I was six, and we both rode second hand bicycles. Danny always won, and I always adamantly vowed to win, and he always laughed good-naturedly as he sped away.

I had just finished first grade at St Leonard's and felt certain I had learned all the really important things I needed to know in order to succeed in life. My mother was at the kitchen sink chopping carrots and potatoes for dinner when I announced the end of my academic career to her on the closing day of school that June. She laughed without looking at me and said, "Yes, Sweetie. Now change out of your good clothes and go play outside until I call you for dinner."

The turquoise phone hanging on the kitchen wall rang, as if often did at our house, and Mama reached for it. I raced down the hall to my room, and perhaps thirty seconds later, clothes appropriately changed, I sprinted past my mother's phone conversation, out the back door that emptied onto a second story deck, hopped quickly down the steps, and went searching for Danny. I found him just inside the woods that grew thick behind the vacant lots next to my house.

"You pass?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"Me, too. I've got Mrs Carlson next year. I hear she's tough."

"I've got Sister Martha Louise. But I ain't going. I'm done with school."

"Oh?" he didn't look over at me, just kept idly scratching in the dirt and dried leaves with a stick.

"That's right," I said proudly. "I'm all through with school. Jeannie's sister Terry just finished up second grade, and she says Sister Martha Louise is mean. I'm not having any of that business!"

"Uh huh," Danny said absently.

It wasn't that I didn't enjoy school. Quite the opposite. One's teachers have has a great impact on how one experiences school I adored my first grade teacher. Sister Mary Frances was the only nun I ever knew who would jump rope, hoola hoop, and play hop scotch and jacks with us girls. She once had a bicycle race with four of the boys in our class and came in second. She was the hero of every kid in my first grade class.

Sister Mary Frances' only character flaw was her pathologically rigid intolerance for any of her young charges holding their jumbo sized light blue mechanical pencils in an unauthorized fashion. She'd rap the offender's knuckles, and thought the rapping would help correct our young erring fingers.

My fingers got rapped frequently.

To this day I still have penmanship that could easily be recruited by the CIA for top secret code. It is deplorable and verges on the illegible, and I cannot look at my handwriting without disturbing memories of Sister Mary Frances and her ruler. But these memories are quickly pushed aside to allow images of a young nun spinning her hips around and around, trying to keep a pink and blue striped circle of plastic rotating in the air while a group of short people clap and squeal in delight.

"What are you writing?" I asked Danny.

"Nothing," he answered. "Just scribbling."

Danny was a Baptist, and he and his younger brother Timmy, who was five months younger than I was, went to a public school. I didn't know where it was. I only knew that in the morning they took a left from their front porch and walked past my house and I took a right from my front porch and walked past their house, and after we had each walked about half a mile we were at our respective schools. Danny didn't know much about nuns and I didn't know much about lady teachers.

By virtue of his advanced age Danny was the unofficial leader of our neighborhood. Fortunately, he was a fair minded ruler, a kind hearted boy. Danny was the oldest of the four Watson children. He and Timmy comprised my main social group when we weren't at school. Their sister Janey was only four, and PJ was not quite three yet. The two of them were too boring and dull for me to associate with unless circumstances demanded it.

Our neatly trimmed neighborhood of brick ranch style houses was mostly occupied by middle aged or older couples. A boy, about my age, and his younger sister had lived across the street until the previous fall, but they had moved away. Steve Maynard lived on the opposite end of the block, just before you got to Birchwood. Safe from the little kids, I once overheard my mother tell my dad. He was ten or eleven years old, I don't think any of us knew for sure. "Bad seed," Mama had warned me, and she told me firmly I was not to play with him. Fortunately, Steve Maynard seldom found his way to our part of the neighborhood.

There was no end to adventures in my world which, in the summer, spanned from the corner of Birchwood and Thistlewood, dipped down a low graded crest, and stretched down past our houses, over the three vacant lots next to us, and finally ended at the old barn. We could play on foot as far as Riedling, which intersected Thistlewood just before you got to Birchwood. But we could ride our bikes as far as Birchwood; we just couldn't get off our bikes until we came back to this side of Riedling. If we ever saw Steve Maynard outside, both sets of our parents told us, we were not to ride pass Riedling.

The southwest end of Thistlewood Drive ran into a small road, more like a path barely wide enough for a single car to drive through. The old unpainted barn was across the path, out of range to us. It was a stately structure. It leaned slightly and was missing a a few of its oak planks, but not so many that you could get a good look in it from our vantage point. The front of it was gaped wide where a door, long gone, once hung.

In all the years I lived on Thistlewood, I never went past the point at which my street met that little road and the old barn. From my boundary, and through the heavy trees that sheltered them, I could see a few small clapboard houses, most of them painted in vibrant hues of blues and yellows, pinks and greens. The houses were exotically different from the brick ranches that lined Thistlewood.

We called it the Rainbow Forrest. Our parents called it the Colored Neighborhood. For reasons I was too young to understand, for reasons that now, over forty years later, I am still too young to understand, I was restricted from entering this forbidden area.

We kids seldom ventured too near the end of our world anyway; usually the furthest we got was the second vacant lot from my house. But each morning during the school year Danny and Timmy walked down that narrow little road, disappeared into its shadows, and re-emerged a few hours later. They never said what was there, and I never learned to ask.

It was a mystery to me why Mr and Mrs Watson allowed their two sons to walk through the Rainbow Forrest on their way to school but forbid them from playing there afterwards. The only spanking I remember Danny Watson ever got from his dad was the day Timmy came home from school alone; Danny had remained behind to play pitch and catch with a couple of his friends. Danny's friends, Timmy explained to me while we listened to the paddling in the bushes under their bedroom window, were the wrong color.

In a hushed whisper I asked, "What's the right color?" But Timmy just shrugged and said he didn't know.

There was a large hill behind our houses. It was nearly as long as Thistlewood, bordering Reidling on the northeast side and tapering off where it met the woods to the southeast. At the top of the hill were several new apartment buildings, and every now and then we'd meet a new kid who moved into one of them. They usually didn't stay very long.

The hill was the most wonderful playground we could ask for. In the wintertime we sledded down into the dried up creek bed at the bottom. In the summer time we slid down the hill on old discarded corrugated boxes. We destroyed the grass with our boxes, and finally someone cornered off a ten foot section to the side, where the hill met the woods.

We could slide in that corridor only. At first I was disgruntled and aggravated about having my freedom curtailed. Timmy mirrored my sulk and pouted with me. But Danny told us at least we still had an area to slide, so why whine about it. I was reluctant to listen to reason, but Timmy saw his older brother's wisdom immediately and his face brightened up.

It's difficult to pout alone. So, though I did not entirely espouse Danny's rationale, for social convenience I abandoned my disdain, and the three of us spent the afternoon christening our new speedway.

My dad sold cars at a new Ford dealership. It wasn't a job for him, it was his reason for being, his raison d'être, I had once overheard my mother tell her older sister on the phone. For many years I thought _raison d'être_ was Latin. For many years I thought any language that wasn't English was Latin.

Whatever language one used, my dad was passionate about selling Fords. He left for work just before I left for school, and he didn't return home until supper time, and sometimes he'd leave again right after supper. But he never missed eating our evening meal together, no matter what was happening at the lot. He worked nearly every Saturday morning, but Saturday afternoons and all day Sunday he was with us.

I was the only kid on our block who called my dad Papa. I don't know exactly how it came to that, except he always referred to his own father that way.

I never met Grandpa Wilhelm. He died of pneumonia four months after I was born. Papa's family had been pioneers in Nebraska, and his dad was the son of German immigrants who had settled in Furnas County in the 1870's. I had never met any of my Nebraska family, though different ones of them called my parents on the phone from time to time, and at Christmas time there were always many cards with Nebraska postmarks.

We were two weeks into summer vacation. My mother had spent the afternoon cooking fried chicken and mashed potatoes, and my father got home just as the old cuckoo clock in the living room was striking six.

"Cutting it kind of thin, aren't you?" my mother asked him as he pecked her cheek and sat down at the table. I could tell her admonition was biteless; her lips curled into a flirt, and my dad's eyes twinkled at her.

We said grace and began passing food around the table. In my heart I wondered why God would want us taking up time to talk with him while our food was getting cold, and thought it was a cosmic tease that I had to focus on Him when all my senses compelled me to eat. It was hard to say "Thanks for the chow, God," when the aroma of Mama's cooking was wafting up my nostrils. I imagined God wouldn't mind waiting to be thanked until dessert. But my parents disagreed.

At first the conversation at the table focused on my dad's work. He had closed two deals, and he had another one brewing; he was meeting the prospective customer for a drink later that evening. His face lit up when he talked about cars and selling, and my mother, who didn't care much for the selling of cars but adored her husband, listened attentively and waited patiently until he had given the highlights of his abundant day at least twice.

When he finally took time to take more than two bites of chicken before gushing additional details, my mother said, "We got a call from Nebraska this afternoon, Walter."

"Oh?" Papa mumbled with a drumstick in his mouth.

"Myrna."

"Really!" he swallowed a piece of chicken that likely should have been chewed several more seconds, coughed, and grabbed his glass of lemonade. When he had regained his air, he asked, "So how's my big sister these days?" Before my mother could answer, he said, "It's been, what, a couple years since we heard from her? What's she been up to?"

"She didn't say, really," my mother said. "But," she paused and looked into my father's face to catch the first hint of expression. "She's coming over." Papa stopped eating, stopped drinking, and looked at my mother, checked her features to assure himself she wasn't teasing him.

"You're not kidding," he concluded. "She's really, finally coming?"

My mother nodded a smile.

"Oh mein Gott! I can't believe she's finally coming to Kentucky!"

My dad, who had a thick German brogue, grew up hearing German, spoke broken German much of his childhood. After he joined the Army near the end of the Second World War Papa seldom spoke German, and by his report, had forgotten most of it. But when he got very excited he lapsed into it with a primordial passion that amused all of us.

Of course, I also thought the German Papa spoke was Latin, and I was certain that his command of it was proof of his great devotion to Catholicism. Papa had not been brought up Catholic. His family was Lutheran, and they had been quite disappointed when he converted to his bride's faith. In truth, he wasn't much of a Catholic, but as promised before their marriage, he attended Mass with us faithfully, and he supported my mother's ardent commitment for me to be brought up in a strong Catholic community.

"When is she coming?" Papa asked, wiping his hands on his napkins. Mama always gave him two napkins at dinner because he was meticulous in his dress and manner. He detested his fingers being sticky.

My mother giggled a little at his boyish enthusiasm and said, "Next week. Monday or Tuesday, she wasn't exactly sure."

"Well," Papa boomed. "I'll take off work and meet her at Standiford Field!"

"Oh," my mother said, resuming her dinner nonchalantly. "She's not flying." She ignored the significance behind my dad's planned absenteeism from work. My dad did not miss work for anything unless it was of colossal importance.

"Then how is she...?"

"Driving."

"Driving?" Papa repeated. "Driving what? Does she still have Papa's old truck?"

"I didn't ask. She just said she was driving, and was planning on getting as far as Columbia the first day, and then would come on through St Louis and on over to Louisville the second day, unless, well, unless she was delayed. She's leaving Sunday morning, so that puts her here by Monday night. Unless...."

"Unless she's still driving that beat up old truck," Papa said with a concerned growl. "I'm going to get her into a Ford if it's the last thing I do."

My mother laughed long. "That I want to see, Walter! You getting Myrna into anything she doesn't want to get into. I'm lining up for tickets!"

"Well," Papa huffed with a chuckle in his deep voice. "Nevertheless, Laura, if she's bullheaded enough to drive a thousand miles she may as well be driving something reliable. You just don't get that in a Chevrolet, especially one that old. My God, I think Hoover was still in office when Papa got that old can, and it was used when he bought it."

"You're exaggerating again," Mama said. "Roosevelt maybe. And you think any car over five years old is ancient."

"Well," my dad said monosyllabically, defending his position like a Spartan. He wasn't opinionated about many things, but he prided himself on being a connoisseur of vehicles. And a good solid Ford, he repeated often, was the best ride money could buy.

Working at the dealership, and selling more Fords than nearly any other salesman in the showroom, earned my dad a new demo each September. He didn't like Mama being home without a car, so in addition to his demo he bought a new car at least every other year. Our family car that summer was a 1962 Falcon, four doors, white. My mother loved all things white.

Papa drove a 1962 burgundy Galaxy 500, white hardtop, two doors. Papa loved color, and he thought the two doors gave it a sporty look. Mama said it wasn't very practical, but my dad was a dreamer, and that car carried some precious, hidden dreams that he never shared with us. But I could see them in his eyes when he drove that car.

"Besides," my mother added, "Even if the truck's old, it's not that old. And your father took wonderful care of everything he owned. His farm was the cleanest I've ever seen. And Myrna's the same way. She treats that house and farm like a shrine to your dad. I'm sure she'll be fine if she drives the pickup over." She patted my dad's hand to emphasize her reassurance, and he smiled weakly.

"Just the same, I..."

"I know, Dear, I know. Myrna will be fine. Myrna is always fine. I swannee, I don't know where she gets her strength, though. Leaving that first husband of hers, and that was way before it was fashionable to leave one's husband. And that terrible business with the...." She caught herself abruptly, glanced at me to evaluate how closely I was following their dialogue. I was playing with my mashed potatoes. Mama quickly added, "Then losing your parents, and then Paul. And she lives out on that farm all alone, not a neighbor for half a mile. I don't know how she manages, but, Walter, she always does. You know that."

My ears had pricked up at Mama's self interruption. She seldom found the need to correct herself. But I hadn't been paying close enough attention, and I soon lost interest in their conversation again and built a tiny teepee in my potatoes.

"I know," Papa conceded. "She's a tower of strength, that woman is. Always was. Always has been. Tough as nails, though, that's a fact."

"And a heart that bounds to the four corners of the earth," my mother said.

"Not so's you can see it half the time, though," my dad chuckled a little. "She's got a pretty tough hide on her."

"Guess she had to with what she put up with that first louse of a husband, and then, well, everything else."

"Yes," my dad agreed. He looked at me with a sad smile that said he was hiding some great secret from me, something I was not old enough to understand. I flattened my potato teepee with my spoon.

"Losses can define a person, that's a certainty," Papa added quickly. He sat quietly a minute or so and then told Mama, "But, no, you're right, you couldn't ask for a more compassionate woman. She's not soft, not gentle even. But she's got more heart than anyone," he smiled at my mother apologetically and corrected himself, "well, almost anyone I know." My mother smiled back and nodded.

"How long will she be able to stay?" Papa asked.

"She didn't say, and I didn't ask," Mama replied. "I was just so thrilled to hear she was coming. I know how you've always adored her."

"She took care of us after Mama died," Papa said. "Myrna was, what, maybe fifteen or sixteen at the time. Lonnie and I were only four. Even after she married that scoundrel she always came over every day, was always there when we got in from school, always fixed our dinner, and stayed at the house until after Papa came in." Papa's eyes fixed on a past long faded, smiled a dry smile, and he and my mother sat silently for awhile.

I tired of my invisibility about this time and started squirming and made an impatient, attention-seeking noise with my feet dangling and clapping together under the table. My dad looked at me, and my mother looked at me, and they looked at each other.

"So, anyway," Papa smiled softly at my mother, "How was your day?'

"Oh, the usual," Mama looked back at him, reflecting his smile. "A little cleaning, a little laundry. Emily and I sunbathed a while this afternoon while the kids played." She glanced playfully at me, then continued talking to my dad. "Her parents are going to Florida in the fall."

"Moving or visiting?" my dad shot a twinkle at me, then looked very seriously at my mother as if whether or not Emily Watson's parents were staying in Florida was of vital importance.

"Oh, I think just a vacation," she answered. And he nodded approvingly.

I squirmed harder, I cleared my throat conspicuously, and I kicked my feet so hard I knocked my toe against one of the table legs.

"Ouch!" I yelled. "That hurt!" If subtlety does not succeed in securing appropriate parental attention one should dispense with subtlety.

"Stop squirming, young lady!" my dad ordered with mock sternness, and then, unable to restrain himself any longer, he laughed, looked into my frowning face, and said, "So, what have you been up to, Shorty-Pants."

I needed little coaxing to give a full account of my day. There were many very important things to report. Timmy and I had found an old magazine in the hollowed out log in the woods and we were very concerned somebody had discovered our hideout. But Danny reassured us that nobody but us would want it. It was crawling with tiny insects and it smelled funny, and it was very damp. In my recitation to my parents, though, I left out the part about the insects and the smell and the dampness; those were log qualities that my mother would find unsuitable for her daughter. And Danny's dad was getting him a new bike, and could I get one, too? Maybe next year, Papa suggested, and I continued the narrative of my day.

Mrs England's flowers were blooming and she offered us each a quarter if we'd weed the bed, so we did that, and then Mama let me go with the Watson boys to Whirley's for candy.

Whirley's was on the far side of the earth. It was two blocks out of my boundary, and I was permitted to go only if I stayed very, very close to Danny and promised to hold his hand when we crossed Birchwood. Normally holding a boy's hand was anathema to me but it was a small price to pay for a trip to Whirley's.

"And after that?" my dad asked.

"We played King Arthur and the Round Table," I informed him. "Danny was King Arthur, naturally, and he wanted me to be Queen Guinevere, but I said what's the fun in that. She sits around smiling pretty while everyone else gets to go to battle. I may be able to smile pretty but there's more to living than smiling or being pretty!"

"How'd that get resolved?" my mother asked, and she winked at my dad.

"Well," I said with a defiant triumph, "I told him I'd be Lancelot or, what's the other fellow's name, starts with a G?"

"Sir Galahad?" one of my parents suggested.

"Well," I snorted, "I don't know what he had, but anyhow, Timmy wanted to be him, so that left me with Lancelot, so that was that!"

"Who'd you fight?" my dad wondered, and I believed he was suddenly more interested in my conquest of the day than any car on his lot.

"Oh, all sorts of tyrants and dragons!" I exclaimed, fully animated. "There is no shortage of enemies when you're part of the Round Table, you know. Well, anyhow, that's what Danny says."

"And were all opponents summarily defeated?" Mama asked.

"Summarily and decisively!" I announced with great pride.

"Then it was a productive day!" my dad said as he scooted his chair back from the table. My mother joined his scoot and stood up, reaching for what was left of the chicken.

"And now, Sir Lancelot," Mama smiled at me, "perhaps you will take off your armor long enough to help your dear old mother with the dishes."

#  CHAPTER 2

I was fairly certain I did not want to meet my dad's older sister. Judging from my parents' enthusiasm at her pending arrival, it was clear I was going to be forced to share their attention with this stranger. I lay in bed that night hoping she would change her mind, hoping my grandfather's old truck would break down in Columbia or thereabouts. I wasn't particular where it happened just so long as it happened. What, I wondered, could an old woman offer to enhance my world? I had everything I needed, and what I didn't need was anyone else in my home diverting my parents from me.

By the next morning I had forgotten all about Aunt Myrna and the truck, and I wasn't even bothered about the possibility that a potential squatter might be looming in the dark shades of the woods waiting to take possession of my cherished hollow log. Life was waiting for me at the foot of the back deck steps, and I lunged at it with full, unbridled, and, to my mother's dismay, unkempt force.

For a long time, from the time I could leave the house and return without my mother's piercing hawk eyes that shadowed my every move, I thought my name was either "Mess" or "Something Else." "You're a Mess!" she'd scold me while gently removing my grass stained clothes. Or, "My goodness, you are "Something Else," she'd say, laughing in exasperation while she bathed me for perhaps the third or forth time of the day.

"What is this, sap?"

"Bubble gum. Timmy..."

"Never mind," she sighed.

Mama finally wearied of her crusade to keep me tidy, sterile, and "ladylike." As long as I was reasonably clean at bedtime and for Sunday Mass, she was content. Or at least quiet.

"It's hopeless, Walter!" I overheard her despair late on night after I had been put to bed. "She gets into everything!"

My dad chuckled softly. "Yeah, you're right, Laura. That little girl is just a Mess!"

"Yes," Mama giggled, "She's Something Else alright!"

"The little Imp," my dad said, and I went to sleep wondering if an imp was a good thing or a bad thing.

And so, having dismissed her from my mind for a week, it was quite a surprise to me on a Tuesday morning, around eleven or so, when Aunt Myrna pulled into our driveway.

Danny and Timmy and I were playing in the creek bed. Mrs Watson had procured three bags of plastic toys for us early that morning, an assortment of multicolored cowboys and Indians who came apart at the waist and rode black, brown, white, and gray ponies. My favorite was the gray ponies, and Timmy accused me of hogging them until, under Danny's instruction, I acquiesced and traded him for one of his black ones.

It didn't take me long to match cowboy tops with Indian bottoms, and vice verse. Timmy scoffed at me, saying it wasn't natural, and Danny scolded him and said I could be interracial if I liked. Timmy started to argue and Danny hushed him.

Timmy and I built a little Indian camp among the larger rocks in the creek bed, and Danny secured enough twigs from the giant oak tree that was the bed's lush canopy to build a fairly respectable fort for his cowboys five feet from our camp.

"But what about this guy?" Timmy complained, pointing at a little Indian wearing a cowboy hat and holding up a pistol. "He don't belong here!"

"Doesn't," Danny corrected. "Just pretend, will you?"

"Yeah," Timmy said with a sharp edge. "I'll pretend you're not my brother."

"Fine with me."

Their squabble did not concern me, so long as I was able to keep my little man the way I designed him. Life was about getting my way, I had my way, so where was the problem? Besides, what was all the fuss about a guy having both Indian and cowboy features? Timmy, I said to myself, was just being narrow minded.

One of Timmy's Indians had just engaged in friendly fire and killed my cowboy Indian, and I had grabbed his shirt, cocked back my fist, and was just about to throw him a punch when we heard it.

"What the hell is that!" Danny never cussed unless he was very excited. Cussing is very unmanly, his father had counseled him, the mark of someone too ignorant to find appropriate words. Danny revered his father, and took most of what he said to heart. Except when he got really excited.

"Sounds like a damned tornado!" Timmy blurted out, and Danny shushed him.

"Quit talking dirty!"

"You started it!"

"And I'm finishing it!"

"Yeah," I interrupted, "but what the hell is that damned noise anyhow?"

Whatever it was, the roar grew louder. We all jumped up at the same time when a small explosion erupted from the tail pipe.

"Backfire," Danny assured us with authority. "Probably a hole in the muffler, by the sounds of it.

Must be going fifty miles an hour, I'm guessing."

We were all standing up now, straining to see what horrific monster could make such a racket. We didn't have to wait long.

The truck came into view as it careened passed the corner of the Watson's house, and we heard the shrill of brakes having their hearts stomped on. The truck disappeared in front of our house, and finally skidded to a stop. We heard a crunching sound as gears shifted, and then, the monster tamed, the truck slowly pulled into our driveway and came to a docile stop.

"Lands sakes!" Danny said. "Who is that?"

My mother's head popped out the back door and she yelled, "Katie Arlene Morganstern! Come on in now!" She was wiping her hands with a dish cloth and when she saw she had my attention, she added, "Go in through the basement and wash up, and put on those clean clothes I laid out for you there." She added, "Good morning, boys!"

"'morning, Mrs Morganstern!"

Mama waved and closed the back door hurriedly.

I left my camp and my dead man and my gray ponies to Danny and Timmy's keeping and moped round shouldered to the basement door. At no time in my childhood can I ever recall my mother's use of my full name being associated with a happy event.

I was sure that meeting Aunt Myrna would not be a happy event.

"And don't forget to brush the tangles out of your hair!" my mother yelled from the top of the basement steps. I heard her quick footsteps waltz across the hardwood floors into the dining room and living room, and she went out the front door.

I scrubbed my face until the white was flaking off. Well, not that hard, perhaps, but pretty hard nonetheless. I changed my clothes reluctantly, replacing my comfortable jeans that, in my mother's words, could stand by themselves, and with great trepidation and aggravation, put on the pink Swiss polka dotted dress with the lace collar and the itchy full slip underneath. I replaced my Keds with a pair of white patent Mary Janes. All I needed was my chapel veil and I was all set for Mass, I scowled to myself.

I climbed up on the footstool in front of the sink and looked in the mirror. My hair didn't look that bad. I combed my fingers through each side of my head twice.

Normally I would not have remembered to deposit my dirty clothes by the washing machine. But this morning I was looking for opportunities to delay the inevitable meeting with an old, unwelcome woman.

I carried the clothes through the black tiled room and pushed back the green plastic curtains where the Maytag washer and dryer sat. I folded my jeans as neatly as I knew how, which in retrospect wasn't really very neatly. I fumbled a little with the red tee shirt, then gave up and tossed it on top of the jeans. I wasn't sure what to do with my socks, roll them in a ball or just place them on top of the shirt. I had little experience being neat.

I heard the front screen door slam and two sets of feet entering the house. The sound of women laughing and chattering filtered down through the beams, and I realized I could no longer postpone my fate. I threw the socks on the wadded up tee shirt and didn't bother to pick up the one that slipped to the concrete floor. I climbed with heavy feet up the stairs, walked through the kitchen, and peeked hesitantly around the corner of the dining room.

They were sitting on the sofa. Two large pieces of luggage and a small overnight bag sat idly on the floor just inside the door.

"Oh, Myrna," my mother clapped her hands. It looked very awkward to me; my mother was not typically big on clapping her hands. "This is our little Katie Arlene! Come here, Sweetie," and she reached toward me.

I obeyed my mother's open arms, but without much enthusiasm or speed. When finally I arrived by her side, she brushed my hair with her fingers and muttered under her voice, "I thought I told you to...."

"I did!" I swatted her hands away, not so much with disrespect as to make a statement of sorts.

Mama kissed my cheek and swung me around to face the woman sitting next to her. "This is your Aunt Myrna, Katie!" She got one last sweep of her hand to the back of my head.

Aunt Myrna looked as unenthusiastic about meeting me as I was her. Not actually unhappy, I guess, more like uncomfortable, the way people are who must get through uncertain moments. She said nothing, and I said nothing, and so my mother kept talking. I have no idea what she was saying, and I think Aunt Myrna wasn't paying much attention, either. We were sizing each other up.

She wasn't really a fat woman, just very bulky. Her clothes were drab, shades and layers of browns and tans and off whites. I wondered why she was wearing so many clothes in July. They were cotton, light weight, but there just seemed to be so many of them. Every part of her from her thick neck down, except for her hands, was covered with clothing. She was wearing pants, baggy and wrinkled. What they lacked in fashion they seemed to make up for in comfort and wearability.

I did not often see women wearing pants, and I admired her immediately, though I was still resolved to not like her. I reasoned that I could respect her wardrobe without actually liking her. The problem with being ladylike, I had realized several years earlier, was that one was always preoccupied with shielding one's underpants from public view. I had too many important things on my mind to be bothered with whether or not anyone else could see "my business." Pants, in my view, were practical.

So I could see, whatever character flaws this large person sitting on my couch possessed, Aunt Myrna must be a practical woman. I could match my dad's fantasies dream for dream, but I could be as practical as my mother as well.

Still, it would take much more than her ability to shield the eyes of the world from her undergarments to impress me.

There were two questions that every child in the 1960's dreaded when they met a new adult. The first was, "How old are you, Dear?" The second was, "And what do you want to be when you grow up?"

Even with a good imagination, I could not, without drawing the stern ire of my parents, come up with a snappy response to the first question. There are only so many ways to say, "I'm six years old" without sounding like the ever smirking Eddie Haskell. My parents gave me a wide berth in many areas, but they did not tolerate blatant disrespect.

However, the second question gave me no end of entertaining responses that kept my parents baffled and myself amused until I was nine years old when the world seemed to lose interest in my potential occupations. I want to be a diplomat to the United Nations. I want to be a Safari guide in Kenya. I want to be a fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force. I want to be a biostatistician. I want to be a Zen monk in the Himalayans, or Los Angeles. I want to be an astronaut. (I only used this once; I discovered nearly every child in the early sixties at one time or another wanted to escape to the moon. I did not want to be ordinary.)

Whatever occupation I thought might sound the most outrageous, that's what I answered that I wanted to be.

To her credit, or perhaps she just didn't think about it, Aunt Myrna never asked me either question. Perhaps she forgot to ask. Perhaps she just didn't care about my age and ambitions. Anyhow, she never asked, but I answered both questions in due time.

The answer to her first unasked question came only half an hour after we met.

"Katie, Honey, why don't we show your Aunt Myrna to her room?" Mama stood up, and Aunt Myrna stood up.

My God, she was HUGE! Her thick frame towered over my mother; she was nearly as tall as my dad. She could squash me with one slip and there'd be nothing left of me but a stain on the floor.

"You'll catch flies, you leave your mouth open like that," Aunt Myrna said with no emotion, merely a statement of fact, and I snapped my mouth shut.

"Here," Mama said as she lifted one of the large brown Samsonite cases off the floor. The weight nearly jerked her to her knees.

"Good Lord, Myrna, did you bring bricks with you?"

"Oh," Aunt Myrna apologized, "Here, I'll get that one." And without so much as an oomph, she was holding the bag effortlessly and looking around for direction. "Where to?"

Mama took the other bag with a little less struggle, but not much, and headed toward the hallway. She turned right at the first bedroom, and Aunt Myrna followed her.

I stood alone in the living room weighing whether or not I wanted to be proactive and appear welcoming or if I would prefer to be passive aggressive. The latter was more appealing to me, at least on the surface, but instead, I picked up the overnight case and followed my mother and aunt into the guest room.

"Well," my mother was saying as she deposited the suitcase on the floor by the bed. "We'll let you freshen up a bit." And without waiting for a response, she went into the kitchen, and I could hear the jingling of her fine bone China cups and saucers and spoons, and the sound of the teapot being placed on the stove.

I put the tiny case on the floor next to the one my mother had left behind and took one step back, then stared at the big woman. She ignored me at first, then picked up one of the suitcases, shook it a little, set it back down, and picked up the heavier one and set it on the bed. She glanced back at me. She wasn't smiling, but she wasn't frowning. I didn't feel I was in any imminent danger, so I held my position and watched suspiciously.

Aunt Myrna opened her suitcase gently, carefully, as if there were a great treasure trove within. All I saw were books. She sat down on the bed; the springs moaned in anguish but she seemed to not notice. Picking up one of the books she opened it, put her nose right next to the seam, and sniffed a long, drawn out sniff. Her eyes closed as if she were intoxicated.

"Now that's a classic!" she said, and for the first time I saw the twinkle in her eyes. "Care for a whiff?" She offered a sample of her elixir to me but I shook my head no.

"As you say," she grinned, set the book on the bed, and reached for a second book, and did the same thing. After she had inhaled the rich perfume of the old pages, she offered the book to me, and I reclined a second time. She smiled, closed the book, and placed it carefully on the bed next to the first one. She picked up a third book.

"Ah," she smiled coyly. "Now this one you will not be able to refuse." She opened the covers of the book as if caressing a lover, smelled its pages, and looked at me, but did not offer the book.

Perhaps I was tiring of her game. Perhaps I wanted to see what all the fuss was in smelling old books. Perhaps I just wanted to do something that I was not invited to do.

I walked quickly to her and stuck my nose into the book so quickly I almost lost my balance. She laughed, but it was not a condescending laughter.

"Yes," she said, "some books really can sweep you smack off your feet."

I had just enough time to take a quick smell of the musty book before I steadied myself. It was faint, but it was aromatic. I had never smelled anything so beauitful, a darkness mingled with light, a freshness transposed on oldness. It was delicious.

Aunt Myrna closed the book gently and handed it to me. " _Lost Horizon_ by James Hilton. Always remember the authors of the books you read. Here," she handed me the book. "Read this, and we can talk about it sometime."

"Read it!" I countered with indignation. "I'm six years old! The biggest word I can read is 'something!'"

"Yes, yes," Aunt Myrna waved her hand, swatting away my objection. "And now you can read something else! Trust me on this. You will love it!"

My eyes narrowed and my voice lowered. I wanted to make sure my mother couldn't hear me, and I wanted my aunt to know that I was a contender to be taken seriously.

"I do not like being told what to do," I growled.

I expected a retaliation as soon as the words left my lips. Instead she frowned, but her frown was at herself, not me.

"Yes, yes," my aunt said. "Yes, and rightly so. I was insensitive."

My glare softened; I was caught off guard by her verbal Aikido.

"Well," I stammered. "I don't want to be rude," and she smiled a wide grin exposing perfect top teeth that could only have been created in a dental lab. I reached for the book with both hands. "If it'll make you happy," and I took Hilton's book from her.

"Oh, it would tickle me to no end," she said, and her voice, while lacking wild intonation, seemed to be sincere.

I looked down at the book in my hands, and opened its pages again. I was getting ready to read fonts smaller than 14 point. I must be growing up.

"Is it mine to keep?" I asked.

"To keep?" a faint question mark etched across my aunt's face.

"You know," I clarified. "To keep. Are you giving it to me to keep?"

"Oh, Katie," she said. She spoke as a poet reads a sonnet. "One never gives or keeps a book. Books have their own lives, they are not be slaves to be owned. No. You take the book, and it's yours to care for as long as you want it, and someday maybe you'll return it to me, or maybe you'll pass it on to someone else, or maybe it'll just live on your book shelf all its life. But, Katie, you never own a book. You are entrusted with its care, and in turn, it shares its treasures and secrets..."

"...and smells..." I interjected.

"...and smells." She chuckled and paused, then added, "You have a dictionary?"

" _Webster's Student_."

"Well, that ought to work out okay. But if not, let me know. You'll want an Oxford before long."

I thought Oxfords were saddle shoes, and I had two pairs, one white and brown pair and another white and black pair. But there were many things I thought I knew that were soon to be challenged.

The challenging became my life.

#  CHAPTER 3

Having made a reasonably acceptable first impression on my aunt, Mama suggested I change into more casual clothes while she and Aunt Myrna drank their tea. I headed toward the basement and she stopped me and said, "No, Sweetie, I think those clothes are ready for the wash. Go put on something from your closet. Something without stains, if you please," and she smiled.

I took the Hilton book to my room and laid it carelessly on my dresser while I changed clothes. It was refreshing, liberating, getting out of the stiff dress and slip. I was sure God could not possibly be a woman or else he would never have allowed anyone to invent such itchy, uncomfortable clothing. I wondered how different the world might be if men had to wear Swiss polka dot dresses, thick slips that rustled with every move, and dainty little shiny shoes that squeaked incessantly. The only men I knew well were Papa, Father Emerson, and Mr Watson, and the thought of them dressed in such a fashion was so terrifying and disconcerting I shook the images fiercely from my head.

I sat quietly near Mama while she and Aunt Myrna sipped tea in the living room, but I was soon bored. Mama was accustomed to my restlessness but it seemed to make Aunt Myrna uncomfortable.

Still, how do you ask a small child to go away when its doting mother is sitting right next to you?

"Do you have another place you'd prefer to be?" Aunt Myrna finally asked, unable to hold back any longer. My mother was difficult to offend, and she immediately invited me to go play.

"But only in the basement," she qualified. "No need to get dirty again before supper. Papa's coming home early today."

Our basement had three main areas, and a full bath. We called the room with white tile the White Room. Not much imagination in the name, but it was descriptive. It boasted a black and white television. We were the first family on the block to own two televisions, but two years later Mr and Mrs Beasely bought the first color set on Thistlewood Drive.

We also had a hi fi record player in the White Room. Over the last twenty years my parents had accumulated a very respectable collection of LP's. Their taste in music was eclectic. They had jazz, big band, some classical, and a progressively large number of contemporary rock and roll. My mother was weak at the knees over Elvis Presley, and we had all of his records. And Andy Williams, Bobby Vee, Kitty Wells. We had everything.

A navy blue second hand couch, worn but very sturdy, was in the middle of the room. Matching end tables and lamps bordered each end of the couch. I guess that's why they called them "end tables." An overstuffed red and gold plaid colored chair, not quite as old as the couch, sat catty cornered to the couch. One wall had two long bookshelves, about five feet high each, and on top of them was a collection of fancy bottles filled with different colors of food coloring.

The books were mostly heavy, thick books. A set of Collier's encyclopedias with several yearbooks updating them. A whole row of text books from the year my dad had attended college when they lived in Chicago, years before I was born. My mother's 1943 high school dictionary. Some Red Cross booklets, Several books by Dale Carnagie, and a copy of John F Kennedy's _Profiles in Courage_.

There were two rows of books near the bottom: ten volumes of Collier's _Children's Classics_ , several _Cat in the Hat_ books, and a large red book of fairy tales called _The Children's Hour_.

There were six or seven books by Laura Ingalls Wilder Mama had been reading them to me since before I could remember.

A small wet bar, with a locked cabinet, sat by itself against another wall. I never saw it open, but sometimes when Papa had guests from work over to the house he would take them to the basement and they'd stay several hours.

Mama and Papa didn't drink much. I'm not sure Mama ever drank alcohol. But Papa had convinced her that there were times when it was important to his business. And so she tolerated it, and he respected her tolerance.

A large set of double glass doors, sliders, opened from the White Room onto the patio under the deck.

The room with the black tile? That was, of course, the Black Room. I preferred to play outside if at all possible but when Mama determined the weather was inclement, she insisted I play in the Black Room.

Inclement weather, to my mother, meant nearly any amount of precipitation or temperatures below 40, unless it was snowing. Snow brought the little girl out in Mama, and she would bundle up with me and we'd build snowmen and make angels on the ground, and then she'd allow me a few rides down the hill if Danny and Tommy were sledding.

I loved rain, and I loved storms. The windier the better. Mama was terrified of any wind over thirty miles per hour. Winds easing toward forty miles sent her to the basement threatening to board up the windows. So I was strictly forbidden to go outside in wet, windy weather. Windy weather under thirty miles an hour, as long as the skies were relatively clear, were okay, but add a couple of dark clouds and I was relegated to the Black Room.

It wasn't a bad room. Its only flaw was that it was inside, which, of course, being a room it could not help. So I made the best of Black Room days.

My dad had built me a large coffin-sized toy box that easily housed all manner of stuffed animals and small toys. Mama never complained if I left them lying around throughout the day, so long as I kept a narrow path between the door to the White Room and the green plastic curtain. And, of course, at the end of each day it was imperative that every toy find its respective way back to the toy box.

The rough concrete walls of the Black Room were papered with posters of the solar system and presidents, maps, the periodic table of elements, and cutouts from promotional brochures of nearly every model of Fords dating back to 1948. They meant little to me, but they did hide the ugly walls.

I've already told you about the little area behind the green plastic curtain, the Laundry Room, though it was more a corner than an actual room. To help set it off a little, Papa had tiled the floor in that corner with a lime green tile.

Predictably, we called the bathroom off the White Room the Bathroom.

My most loyal of companions was a stuffed long dog named Blackie. My choice in naming things in those days was limited to pragmatic, concrete descriptions. The dog was black. Of course, the dog's name was Blackie. His body was as long as mine until halfway through my fifth year. I kept growing; he did not. His hair became thinner, and his left ear was slightly ripped from a vigorous bout of playing fetch. I found it rather frustrating to play fetch with an inert stuffed dog but I imagined he enjoyed being tossed across the room and then retrieved. He never indicated otherwise, and he took his ripped ear in stride.

I occupied myself with quiet and sullen contemplation in the Black Room most of the rest of the afternoon. I was sitting on the floor, holding Blackie in my arms, and stroking his scarred ear with less than tender child sized fingers. With an uninterested gaze I looked blandly at the planets and the sun hanging on the wall. It wasn't very exciting but it was more colorful than the elements, and a hundred times less dull than the presidents.

"Nice room."

I jumped and whirled around, and Blackie slipped off my lap. Aunt Myrna was standing at the doorway.

"Didn't mean to startle you, Kate," she apologized, and then invited herself in.

For reasons I never really grasped, my parents had named me Katie, so I wasn't sure why my aunt called me Kate. Whether it was a mistake on her part or she just didn't feel compelled to add an unnecessary syllable, from the day she met me she nearly always called me Kate.

"I wasn't startled!" I protested. "I was just... surprised." I wasn't sure if there was an appreciable difference between being startled or being surprised, but I wanted to disagree with her. I didn't feel hateful toward her, but I was not completely won over yet.

Not that she was trying to win me over. Far from it. She had not come to the basement seeking me out to comfort me in my exile. She was just being nosey.

"I love seeing new places, don't you?" she asked. There was an old upholstered rocking chair with a swivel base near my toy box and she walked toward it to sit down. I almost warned her that it had a broken gear somewhere in its innards and might tip over if she sat on it, but thankfully I caught myself.

She nearly rolled on the floor with a quick scream.

"Oh," I said with fake concern. "Did you get startled?"

She reclaimed her balance, stood up, brushed off her knees, and sat on the floor next to me. "I did not get startled," she said with a hint of huff. "I got dumped!"

Aunt Myrna did not frown, but she wasn't smiling either. She was a tough read, I was quickly learning. Still, what did it matter what she thought. She was a big old lady who was going to stay a little while and leave, and then I'd never be bothered by her again.

"How long you staying?"

"I'm staying until I'm done staying, and then I'm leaving."

"Not much of an answer, is it?" I said with a snarl.

"Wasn't much of a question. Sounded a little saucy to me," she said, her voice void of emotion.

"I just wanted to know, that's all," I pouted.

"What, you're planning on renting out the guest room?"

"Maybe."

"Uh huh."

I pouted in silence for a good five minutes. Papa had told me one of the secrets of being a good salesman, in anything, lay in the axiom, "The first one who speaks loses."

"Not really 'loses,'" he had clarified. "Not if it's a good product that will benefit the customer. More like, once your sale pitch is out there, shut up and allow your customer to sell himself."

I must have taken his lesson to heart, because I kept my mouth shut. Well, in all honesty, between you and me, I was on the verge of snapping a quick one-liner at the old lady when she finally spoke up.

"Did you know I was seven years old when your Uncle Clayton was born?" she asked.

"No," I said. I had met Uncle Clay only a few times. He lived in Indiana and we visited him one Thanksgiving, and last July 4th he and his wife had come to Louisville for a three day weekend.

"And after Clay was born here comes James a couple of years later, and then, let's see," she tapped her index finger against her temple to calculate the math. "Yes," she finally said, "it was about six years after that the twins were born. Your dad and Lonnie."

"And you were the only girl?" I asked, immediately regretting my question for fear she would interpret it as me being interested.

"Worse than that," Aunt Myrna replied. "For seven years I was the only child. Do you know how aggravating it was when all those little brats started crowding in on my turf?" She caught herself then and corrected her choice of nouns. "Not brats, no, they really weren't brats. I have to admit that. But I was seven years old and they were...."

"Unwelcome?"

"Well, yes," she laughed a little, then added quickly. "Oh, my folks wanted them alright."

"But not you?" I asked without realizing I was becoming interested in our conversation.

"No, not at first."

"How come?"

"Well, I was never really that close to my mother but I adored my dad. Even after the boys got older, he and I always enjoyed a very special rapport."

"Reaper?" I tried to repeat the word, with little success.

"Rapport," she repeated. "We got along very well. But each time there was a new baby, and especially with the twins, he made a great fuss over them. And you know, Kate, it's hard to make a great fuss over more than one person at the same time. And it can make a person pretty jealous. Whether it's over a little brother or a big aunt."

She smiled at me, but not the way a lot of adults smile down to a kid. More like the way one person smiles at another person.

"Well," she rolled forward a little in the chair, "let's see if the getting up is as easy as the getting down." It wasn't. She heaved a couple of times, and at one point I thought if I pushed against her rather voluminous bottom that might help, but I decided against it.

Finally she was upright again. "Think I'll go back upstairs and wait for your papa. Your mom says he'll be home any minute now." And she disappeared into the White Room and up the steps. I slowly picked up my toys and then held Blackie closely against my chest. I kissed his ear and placed him on the top of the pile of toys, let the lid of the toy box slam shut and raced up the stairs.

I had never seen Papa so elated as when he came home that afternoon, not even the time he sold four new Fords on the same day. The front door flew wide open and in a flurry he was laughing and hugging his sister, and marveling at how good she looked. I didn't think she looked all that grand, and while she did seem harmless enough I was stupefied why he carried on over her so much.

After supper Mama excused me from drying the dishes and I charged out the kitchen door, scanned the neighborhood from the deck, and spotted the two boys in a small thicket near the top of the hillside. Yelling "Charge!" at the top of my lungs, I hurled myself toward them. Danny and Timmy ran in opposite directions laughing in an untrue panic, and I had to decide which one to catch first. I knew Danny could outrun me so I took the road of least resistance. Moments later Timmy and I were wrestling at the bottom of the hill, near the creek bed, and Danny was standing over us daring me to come after him.

We played until the bats came out to chase moths, just as twilight was edging the color out of the day. Mr Watson came out his back door and whistled a long, strong heavy-lunged whistle, and the boys rallied toward their house immediately.

My parents' rule was that once the Watson boys were called in for the night I was to return to my yard. I could sit on the patio under the kitchen deck if I wanted, but I had to be very, very close to one of the doors.

I walked sluggishly toward the house, defeated in my ambitions by a setting sun. The yellow porch light over the patio was on and a large figure was sitting on one of the Adirondacks. The dull light cast a shadow across her face but I could see it was my aunt.

At first, I felt Aunt was an intrusion on my evening. But then, without really thinking of it, I found myself glad to see her. Not overjoyed, mind you. But glad, in a quiet way that I was yet to understand.

I sat down in the chair opposite Aunt Myrna but said nothing. Her eyes were closed and her body was limp, relaxed. I thought she might be asleep. I wondered if she was just ignoring me. I wriggled in my chair just enough to make some noise, and watched her face for signs of life. I didn't see any, so I wriggled some more.

"You move an awful lot, Kate," she said, with her eyes still closed and her face mask-like.

I wasn't sure if such an observation demanded a response or not. Not knowing what to do, I did nothing, and we sat next to each other a little while longer, she motionless with her eyes closed and me looking at her in the still, yellow light.

"It's impolite to stare, you know."

"How do you know what I'm doing?" I asked indignantly. "All I'm doing is sitting here. There's no law against that, is there? Besides, it's my house, I can do anything I want."

I realized I was inching my toe toward the line of impropriety, and it suddenly occurred to me that if she told my parents how I was speaking to her they would be unhappy. Their unhappiness, I knew, would have unhappy consequences for me. I suddenly felt very vulnerable to the power I had given this strange, big woman.

She opened her eyes and sat up in her chair a little, and looked at me blankly, contemplating her next move. She seemed to be weighing possible responses to my insolence. I imagined the worse.

" _Get out of here, you rotten little brat_!"

" _Why don't you go play in traffic_!?!"

" _If you don't leave me alone, I'll snatch you bald headed_!"

My imagination for my aunt's potential tirades against me was limited, though. And, as it turned out, empty. She simply said nothing, and closed her eyes again.

Well, this was getting tiresome, I thought to myself. She's old, she's fat, she sniffs books, she won't fight with me, and she's staying forever.

The screen door sliders from the White Room in the basement slid open abruptly and my parents came outside, each carrying two glasses of lemonade. I lurched forward and wondered with horror how long they had been standing there. Their smiles reassured me they had not overheard my aunt and me talking, and I signed in relief and leaned back into my chair.

"Thought you gals might be thirsty!" Mama said, handing me one of her lemonades. Papa handed his spare drink to Aunt Myrna and pulled two folding lawn chairs away from the wall. After he and Mama were settled, he asked, "So, how are you two getting along?"

"' _Say 'fine,' you old bat_!" I screamed in my head. Fear contorted my face. One true answer from Aunt Myrna and I'd be going to bed early for a week.

Danny and I had debated the merits and the categories of lies many times. He was one hundred percent, across the board, absolutely and irrevocably opposed to any kind of lie. No such thing as a white lie, his father had taught him. You tell the truth and take whatever comes of the truth. For me, I countered, a small, inconsequential "protective" lie could shield you from any number of minor indiscretions without interrupting your day with pesky punishments. But Danny never budged from his purist position.

I found few opportunities to lie in my day to day life, though in theory I espoused the benefits of telling lies if untidy circumstances presented themselves. But I was armed and ready, and if a dire occasion arose, I knew I could heartily, and convincingly, devise an untruthful tale.

Aunt Myrna sat up in her chair slowly, sipped her lemonade, and set it down beside her. She looked at me, no change of expression in her face. But as she spoke her face softened up incrementally, and by the time she finished her sentence she had a wry little grin creeping up the left corner of her mouth.

"Oh," she told my parents casually, "Kate and I were just discussing jurisprudence, residential ownership, and personal freedom."

My parents looked at one another, baffled. I had no idea what juries or prudence had to do with anything, but I understood immediately that Aunt Myrna had given me a reprieve from my sins.

She continued, "I was just about to tell Kate how much I was enjoying myself here, and how," she searched for the next word, found it, and continued, "how pleased I've been at her warm welcome, what with me being a stranger to her. I expect it must be a little uncomfortable getting used to a new person being around." My parents nodded and smiled at Aunt Myrna's report and empathy, and Aunt Myrna winked a twinkle of her eye at me. "Isn't that right, Kate?"

I was cornered by her affable demeanor. The only move I had left was to smile back, albeit weakly, and to mumble a barely audible, "Yes, Ma'am," though I wasn't at all sure what I was agreeing with.

I never, in the years that followed, knew Aunt Myrna to lie. But, as she demonstrated so elegantly that first night, she had a great talent for telling the truth in ways that gave the best spin possible to any situation.

Mama came into my bedroom later that night carrying our well worn copy of _Little House on the Prairie_. She read me a chapter each night, and sometimes two. We had already gone through the entire series several times.

I was in bed when Mama came in, though the lights were on and I was nowhere near ready to go to sleep.

"Let's say our prayers first, Honey," Mama said, and I leaped out of the bed. We kneeled together by the side of the bed, made the _Sign of the Cross_ , recited a series of _Hail Mary's,_ a few _Our Father's_ , and a couple of _Glory Be's_ for good measure. We made the _Sign of the Cross_ again, and I hopped back into bed and pulled the covers to my chin.

She opened the book to chapter ten and had just started to read when I interrupted her.

"Mama."

"Yes, Sweetie?"

"How come Aunt Myrna doesn't like me?"

Mama closed the book in her lap and cocked her head as she studied my face. "Why in the world would you think such a thing?" she asked.

"I don't know," I said, and wished I hadn't broached the subject.

Mama thought for a minute and answered, "I think your Aunt Myrna likes you just fine, Honey."

"She doesn't talk to me like most adults. Papa's customers who come over to the house, Sister Mary Frances, Uncle Bill and Aunt Pauline, none of them."

Mama chuckled a little and said, "Well, that is true."

"So what's wrong with her?"

"Sweetie, just because she's different doesn't mean something's wrong with her."

"But she doesn't seem...."

"Katie dear," Mama stroked my forehead, "she's just not used to being around little girls, that's all."

"But Papa says she practically raised him and all his brothers."

"Girls are different."

"How?"

"Well," Mama's voice suddenly seemed very tense. "Perhaps we'll save that discussion for another day. It's a little complicated." She paused a moment, then reverted to my original question. "I think your Aunt Myrna is just a little, oh, I don't know, maybe uncomfortable around you, that's all."

"What's to be uncomfortable about?" I demanded. "I'm adorable!"

Mama laughed. "Yes, little Katie, that much is true. But you can be a handful, you know!" she laughed again, and when she quit laughing her face slowly took on a shadow of sadness. She was weighing whether or not to give me additional information.

"What?" I asked.

Mama looked down at the book and then decided, "When you're just a little older I think you'll come to understand."

"Understand what?" I said, and I knew my voice was starting to sound perilously close to insistent.

"Honey," she carelessly pushed the hair out of my eyes. "Sometimes when people get hurt, when they lose something very precious to them, it's hard to be around others who have what they've lost."

"Who lost what?" I asked.

Mama looked at me silently, thinking, and then, picking up the book, she opened it, and smiled my question away. "Let's see what little Laura and Mary and Baby Carrie are up to tonight, shall we?" And she began reading.

Laura and Mary Ingalls were the kind of kids I'd love to play with, if I had been born a few generations earlier. Baby Carrie was dull and aggravating, but thankfully, she didn't figure too prominently in most of the stories.

Mama closed the book at the end of the chapter and kissed my cheek. She stood up and was reaching to turn out the light by my bed when she noticed the old book on the dresser. She picked it up, thumbed through it, and asked, "Where in the world did you get this, Katie?"

"Aunt Myrna told me I have to read it."

"Did she, now?" Mama thumbed through the pages.

"Well, not exactly that I have to read it," I begrudgingly corrected my account.

Mama closed the book and set it gingerly back on the dresser. "You're going to love it! But you'll need to have your _Webster's_ handy, I think," she said. She switched off the light, and closed the door behind her.

Every night, before they went to bed, my parents would crack my bedroom door a few inches and peek at me. Sometimes I was asleep, sometimes I was still daydreaming my way to a night of imagination and private adventures. But I always knew they were there.

Tonight, I figured, they would stay up later than usual. I could hear their voices up the hallway, sitting with my aunt in the living room. The words were muffled, but their tones were cheerful, the kind of sounds people make with one another when they've loved each other a long time.

I slid out of the bed and took my covers and shoved them against the base of the door. I had learned some time ago that light slips through the bottom of doors, and my parents were not fond of my turning the light on after they'd tucked me in.

I went to my dresser and reached up for Hilton's book, flipped on the small light, and sat on the floor, leaning my back against my bed. I discovered, with relief, that the first sentence of _Lost Horizon_ contained only three words with more than two syllables. Following Sister Mary Frances' habitual advice to "sound it out, Katie Arlene, sound it out !" I was able, with just a little effort, to read all the words in the sentence but one.

"Disillusionment" stumped me, and I finally glazed over it. I got the gist of the sentence. Old friends getting together and discovering that they weren't as close as they once were. Idiots, I thought.

Danny and I would never be so careless. But adults, I had learned, were often careless with things of value, and then looked shocked when those things came up missing. I read on.

It took me half an hour to quietly sound out the first paragraph. The people who wrote about Dick and Jane and Sally and Spot were not burdened by packing so many sentences into a single paragraph.

I thought someone should write a letter to Mr James Hilton and suggest he read about Dick and Jane and Jane and Spot.

There were several more words, and one abbreviation, that I had to skim past, just to stay on track. I wasn't sure where my dictionary was but it wasn't in my bedroom, so, for tonight at least, I would have to plow ahead on my own.

I wondered what "the Embassy" was and why it required more than one secretary. There was only one secretary at the dealership where Papa worked. Papa had commented to Mama one evening at supper what a dear Miss Pendleton was and Mama had flashed a hard look at him, and he never mentioned her again.

I figured out that an Englishman must be a man who lived in England, but I didn't know what they had to celebrate about. I read the phrase three more times before I realized they weren't celebrating at all; they were merely celibate. Oh, I thought with fake knowledge. Is that all?

I never did figure out what an M.V.O. was. I studied this for a few minutes, and wondered, without much interest, if it was similar to a "Most Valuable Player." But that's about as far as I went with it.

"Precocious," I sounded the word out slowly until it sounded familiar. Yes, this was a word I knew. Mama had met with Sister Mary Frances one day after school and that night I had heard Mama say the word to Papa and then they had both laughed. "Precocious" must be a good word if it made them laugh.

My eyes were tiring. Satisfied that I had made a respectable dent in my new book, I set it back on the corner of the dresser, turned out the light, and tip toed to the door to retrieve my covers. Moments later I was on the eagle's nest of a nineteenth century clipper yelling "Land A'hoy!" I fell asleep before my crew and I reached the shores of Atlantis.

#  CHAPTER 4

Sister Mary Frances had encouraged us to use the new words and phrases we learned to help us remember them.

"When I grow up I'm going to be a celibate Englishman!" I announced over breakfast the following morning. "But I won't be priggish about it."

Papa had just taken a long swig of coffee and Mama was chewing a piece of bacon.

They both choked and coughed, and Papa used both his napkins to wipe off his tie. He had to change it before he left for work.

Aunt Myrna only smiled at me across the table and swallowed a bite of toast.

As an afterthought I added, "What's priggish, anyhow?"

In unison, the three adults chanted, "Look it up!"

My dad added, "And look up celi...." But my mother put her hand on top of his to restrain him, and said, "Perhaps that one can wait a little while, Dear."

After Papa had left for work my mother gathered up a small armload of throw rugs. Handing them to me, she said, "Katie Honey, take these out on the deck and give them a good shake, then you can go find Danny and Timmy if you like.

A good shake, by my estimation, meant two or three snaps against the air. A little dust escaped with each snap. I tossed them in the chair on the deck and ran down the steps yelling, "Danny! Timmy! Where you at!?!"

Papa came home for lunch, a rare treat. He had another man with him. I recognized Leon from the shop at the dealership. I admired him because he was always greasy and he had a fake bottom tooth that he took out once and showed me.

The five of us ate lunch, tomato soup and sandwiches. While Mama and I did the dishes, Papa and Leon and Aunt Myrna spoke in the living room. Papa and Leon left soon afterwards, and as Aunt Myrna returned to the kitchen we heard the roar of Grandpa Wilhelm's old truck being turned over. It was almost out of ear shot before it backfired.

"Needs a new tailpipe," Aunt Myrna said as she sat at the table. "Walter says they can have it back in three days, maybe less."

"Well," Mama answered, rinsing off a glass, "Leon can fix just about anything. Little old tailpipe shouldn't be much of a problem."

"Walter wants me to go over to the dealership tomorrow afternoon," Aunt Myrna said, then, with a knowing smile she asked, "Think I ought to go?"

"Go if you like," Mama said. "But leave your pocketbook at home. He's got designs!"

"I thought as much," Aunt Myrna laughed. She winked at me. "Kate, your papa is incorrigible. Just like his daughter!"

I wasn't exactly sure what incorrigible was, but I figured if it was related to precocious, I shouldn't be unduly concerned.

"Yes," my mother turned around, wiping her hands with a tea towel. "Katie's a regular chip off the old block! Here," she reached for my towel, "I'll finish that up for you. Don't you have some dragons to slay or a treasure chest to discover?"

"Oh, Mama!" I protested. "Danny and I killed the last dragon last week, and that map was a fraud. Only thing we ever found was a rusty hubcap and a couple of broken bottles. Anyhow, we're building a spaceship today. I'll bet we'll be able to fly it even! Timmy wants to go to Mars, but Danny says we ought to set our sights more realistically. I expect we'll just get as far as the moon for now."

"Well, be home in time for supper," and she swatted me playfully as I ran past her and out the back door.

Throughout the next few days I was able to avoid Aunt Myrna, except at dinnertime and the occasional verbal skirmish when Mama and Papa were preoccupied with other matters. Well, no, skirmish isn't quite the accurate term for it, I suppose. A skirmish implies two opponents. No matter how much I baited her, though I don't know why I baited her, Aunt Myrna refused to fight with me.

Papa was planning on taking off the whole day on Saturday. Aunt Myrna had told him and Mama she would love to go to Bardstown and see My Old Kentucky Home before she left. I shrank from the thought of being trapped with her all day.

The night before the trip, after Aunty Myrna had retired to the guest room, my parents discussed it in hushed breaths. Their room was right across the hall from mine. I was already in bed and could barely hear them, but when I heard my name I was compelled to quietly, very carefully open my bedroom door an inch or so.

"No, Laura," Papa said. "I think Katie ought to come with us."

"But, Walter," Mama countered, "not if it makes her uncomfortable. Emily said she'd keep an eye on her while we go to Bardstown."

"What's to be uncomfortable about, for God's sake?" my dad asked, and he sounded exasperated.

"She's just a little girl. She can't help how she feels."

"Myrna's my sister!"

"And Katie's your daughter. What's your point?"

I was a little frightened. Both my parents were fairly lenient with me, but my dad more so. When limits were set, it was usually my mother who initiated them. I wasn't accustomed to hearing her defend my behavior to Papa.

My dad wasn't sure what his point was. While he was trying to figure it out my mother added quickly, "Walter, just because you adore them both doesn't mean they have to adore one another!"

"Well, Myrna adores Katie!"

"She does?" my mother asked. "She tell you that?"

"Yes," but his tone wasn't very steady.

"Hmm." Mama wasn't convinced, I could tell from her voice. Papa must have heard her doubt as well.

"No, really," he conceded. "I asked her straight out if she thought our little Katie was a princess and she said, 'Yes, Walter, she's a royal pain.'"

There was a pause in the air and I heard them both giggle. I frowned.

Papa continued, "But really, Laura, Myrna had that Morgenstern twinkle in her eye when she said it. And you have to admit, Katie can get on people's nerves."

"That's true," Mama admitted. "I thought poor Sister Mary Frances was going to blow her habit half a dozen times this past year."

"Still," Papa said, "when you get used to her, she's a real charmer."

"Myrna or Katie?" Mama asked, and they both giggled a little more.

"Hmmm," I heard Papa purr. "You know, you're right. I hadn't really thought about it before, but they really are a lot alike, aren't they?"

"Two peas in a proverbial pod," Mama agreed. "But you give them a little space they may come to appreciate one another."

"Might even learn to love each other," Papa mused.

"Come back to earth, Dreamer-Boy!" Mama laughed at his optimism.

"Well, it could happen!" he snorted with fake indignation.

"That's true," Mama agreed. "Anything's possible, I guess. Who would have believed we'd have a Catholic in the White House in our lifetime?"

I slipped on my elbow and the door bumped against the frame.

"Katie Arlene! Are you out of bed?"

I shut the door quickly and scampered across the bed, dived head first, and didn't even notice the springs screaming under me. I yanked the covers over my head and lay very, very still. The door opened slowly and I felt my parents' eyes on me. They stood there for half an eternity, then chuckled quietly as the door closed.

The three of them left the next morning just after breakfast, and Danny, Timmy, and I watched cartoons on the Watson's living room floor until noon. Janey kept running in and out of the room, the way small children do. I found it very annoying, and frowned a couple of times.

"She'll get tired in a little while," Danny whispered, and sure enough, by 10:30 she had disappeared into her room.

"Dolls," Timmy said, pointing with his head toward the hall.

"Sissy!" I hissed.

"I know," Timmy agreed. "She's such a girl!"

"What's wrong with girls?" I objected.

"Nothing," he answered. "So long as they keep out of the way!"

"But I'm a...."

"Hush!" Danny admonished us sternly. "Commercial's over!"

Cartoons were about the only things that could keep me inside when the sun was shining. Danny liked _Quick Draw McDraw_ best, and Timmy laughed uproariously through every episode of the _Road Runner_. But, as I told them both, there was no greater hero on television than _Mighty Mouse_. He had a strong moral fiber, he had a great respect for fair play, and I loved his tights and cape.

Danny conceded that my first two arguments were valid, but how in the sweet name of Jesus and all that is holy, he asked, could tights and a cape be evidence of a great hero.

"Superman wears tights and a cape, too," Timmy argued in my defense. "Plus he's faster than a sleeping bullet!"

"Speeding bullet," his older brother scoffed. "Still, Superman's, well, man enough to be able to wear tights. But a measly old mouse? Now that's just silly!"

"Well," I said with heavy conviction, "It's not so silly as a stupid horse wearing a sheriff's badge and talking like he's got a mouth full of sawdust!"

Mrs Watson interrupted our debate with a plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies, warm and moist. We forgot all about our differences, which is easy to do while eating chocolate chip cookies.

We watched _Sky King_ , and then, inspired with visions of flight, went outside to evaluate the progress of our space ship.

"It don't look so good, Danny," Timmy said sadly.

"Doesn't look so good," Danny corrected him.

"That's what I just said!"

We decided to ditch space flight and Mr Watson helped us dismantle part of our ship. With just a little re-engineering and four tires from one of the older lawn mowers behind their house, we made a go-cart. It took Mr Watson an additional half an hour to install a front rotating axial. The go-cart didn't have any power, of course, so we nailed a length of rope across the front to pull it. A second rope looped through holes in the frame and attached to each of the front wheels, and the driver of the cart could navigate direction by pulling either end.

The spaceship-turned-into-go-cart finally complete, Danny and I pulled Timmy in it up to the crest of the hill at Birchwood. Mr and Mrs Watson sat on their front porch swing and waved as we set off with our cart for Birchwood. Mrs Watson was holding PJ and Janey started crying, begging to go with us. Her father called her to him and held her. I heard him say, "Now, you stay here and keep us company. You're still just a little too small." Her crying faded to a whimper. I dreaded the time, and I knew it was coming, when Janey would quit being "too small."

Saturday nights were the worst time of the week. Mama would call me into the house early, long before the sun had set, and, with great focus, great purpose, she would engage in the time-honored ritual I detested worst than white milk.

She called it Getting Ready For Mass. I called it Unnecessary Pain. Every Saturday evening I looked plaintively at my dad for a last minute reprieve, but he shrugged and said, "Can't help you, Princess. I voted for a boy."

"Hush, Walter!" Mama would scold. "You'll give her a complex!"

Papa would just shrug and grin, and turn his attention back to the television.

The extra tub time was bad, but not terrible. The occasional trying on of a new dress, while not pleasant, was tolerable. Even going to bed a little bit earlier, while inconvenient, was manageable. What was, under no circumstances, acceptable treatment of a helpless minor was the fixing of the hair.

Mama's special instruments of torture were bobby pins. The process was simple and inflexible. You take a little strand of thin, innocent six year old hair, you pinch it into a real tight ringlet until the roots are nearly yanked from the scalp, and then you jam two bobby pins into a cross shape. That finished, you exuberantly exclaim, "There!" with inflated satisfaction, and then grab another little clump of thin, innocent six year old hair and start all over. Repeat this about five hundred times, make your precious little angel sleep all night with little metal prongs jabbing her delicate little skin, and in the morning congratulate yourself on what a darling child you've brought into the world.

So when the sun was nearly down that Saturday evening I felt a very special relief. Surely, I reasoned, Mama and Papa and Aunt Myrna would get home from Bardstown too late me to Get Ready For Mass. I was giddy with anticipation at the image of me kneeling between my parents the following morning, limp-headed and comfortable.

Mr Watson had made us park the go-cart long before it got dark, but he let us play in our two adjoining front yards while he sat on the front porch. Janey ran with us while we played tag, whined like a little girl every time she was It, and screamed at decimals no human ear should ever be exposed to when anyone tagged her. Danny, Timmy, and I soon quit chasing her. That made her cry even louder.

"Ya'll let her play now, hear!" Mr Watson chastised us, and the cycle continued.

Headlights were coming down the little crest as the car turned left onto Thistlewood. I looked into the sky and saw at least ten stars. No, I assured myself, there was no way we were going to have time to Get Ready For Mass. I smiled in my great fortune.

Mr Watson stood up and whistled for his children. He could just as easily have called for them, but he liked to whistle. Danny and Timmy ran toward the house with promises to see me tomorrow, and Janey, yelling, "Wait for me, wait for me!" scurried behind them, the way nasty little rodents do. Mr Watson waited until the burgundy Galaxy 500 had pulled into the drive before waving hello to my parents and Aunt Myrna, goodbye to me, and going into his house.

"Thanks a heap, Fred!" Papa called just as the Watson screen door was slamming, and I heard Mr Watson call back, "No problem, Walter. Glad to do it!"

I was in such a good mood at the prospect of missing my Saturday night torture that I said hello to Aunt Myrna with such a dance of glee in my voice that she stared at me in bewilderment. I grabbed my mother's hand in anticipated gratitude of being spared the shanks of hell.

Mama smiled down at me as we walked toward the front door. "Well, Sugar," she said, "We'd better hurry up and Get Ready For Mass before it gets too late."

#  CHAPTER 5

We had finished breakfast half an hour earlier. Sunday was the only morning Mama let the dishes soak. She had carefully scrutinized me after I dressed and checked to make sure I didn't have any eggs between my teeth after I brushed them. Satisfied, she brushed my tight little ringlets into a circular cushion that bounced half way around the back of my neck. I fidgeted, frowned, and scratched my head, and Mama scolded me to hold still.

"Laura, does this tie go?" Papa called from across the hall.

"There!" she patted me on my shoulder as she stood up. "I think you're all set. Go sit in the living room until we're ready. Don't forget your chapel veil."

"Which one?" I asked.

"The white one." She turned around and told Papa, "No. I think the paisley will be better," and the two of them walked together down the hall toward their room.

I opened the second drawer of the dresser and retrieved the little round veil folded neatly in a clear plastic case. I put it on, then took it off and clutched it in my white gloved hand. Why do people wear gloves in the summertime, I wondered. But I wasn't very interested in the answer, and I walked down the hall.

Aunt Myrna was sitting in the white Morris chair reading the Sunday paper. She was wearing thin spectacles, reading glasses, Mama had called them.

"You're not ready," I said flatly. "You can't go to Mass wearing pants."

Aunt Myrna glanced at me casually as she turned the page. "I'm not going."

"Not going?" I was incredulous.

"Not going," she repeated.

"How can you not go?"

"Easy," she answered, and she did not even glance at me this time. "I just sit here on my big, fat butt."

"Don't you believe in God and the Holy Virgin Mother?" I shrieked. For a split of a second I envisioned my aunt's large body roasting like a spit-roast pig in an eternal furnace as the devil, smiling hideously, slowly turned the rotisserie. Aunt Myrna lowered the paper and cocked her head a little at an angle, peering at me over the top edges of her glasses. She let the paper slide into her lap and took off the glasses. I could tell she didn't know what to say.

"Come on, Walter, we'll be late if we don't get a move on!" Mama was rustling up the hall, and Papa was soon in step behind her. Mama grabbed my white gloved hand, invited Aunt Myrna to help herself to anything she wanted, and Papa shut the door behind us.

St Leonard's School was attached to St Leonard's Church. It was only half a mile from our house. I walked it nearly every day of the school year. If there was nothing interesting happening along the way, which was seldom the case, I could be from my front door to my classroom in twenty minutes. I never understood why it was, then, that on Sundays we always drove one of our cars to Mass.

Vatican II was just around the corner. While I loved the ritual of high Mass, with the nuns in the balcony chanting back and forth with Father Emerson, and the great pipe organ playing through Communion, I generally preferred the brevity of low Mass. Quick, to the point, and back home, lickity split.

Noon Mass was always high. "Why can't we go at 8:00 or 10:30? I had once asked Mama. Because, she had answered, they're low. So? So, she had explained, high Mass is more spiritually refreshing.

Papa had leaned down when she left the room and whispered in my ear, "Plus, you get to sleep in longer."

I worried about Aunt Myrna's eternal damnation all through Mass and was relieved, when we returned home, to find that God had not struck her dead. She was just finishing the paper.

"Have a nice time?" she asked as we came through the front door.

"You don't have a nice time at Mass!" I retorted.

"I see," she nodded her head. Her lack of religious insight baffled me, and I shook my head sadly as I walked down the hall to my room.

Moments later, Aunt Myrna's spiritual welfare firmly shoved from my mind, I ran back up the hallway in my jeans and tee shirt and Keds, and out the front door. I came back inside five minutes later and found Mama and Papa looking through the newspaper on the couch. Aunt Myrna had disappeared.

"What's wrong, Sweetie," Mama asked.

"Watsons aren't home," I complained. "Their car's gone and no one answered the door."

"Oh, that's right," Mama said. "They're having, what do they call it, Walter?"

"Fellowship." He was reading the sports page and did not look up.

"Fellowship," Mama repeated. "And then they're going to Emily's parents until evening services.

They'll be gone all day, Honey. I'm sorry, I thought I told you."

"You didn't," I said with a pout.

"I'm sorry, Sweetie," Mama said. But I still hadn't completely forgiven her for the pin curls, and I expected to hold a grudge against her at least until supper.

"Besides," Mama added as she turned a page. "It's clouding up. I think it's probably going to rain anyway. You think so, Dear?"

Papa grunted in agreement. "See?" Mama said to me. "It's going to rain. I'm afraid you may have to stay inside today."

It was turning into a miserable day all right. My scalp was still itching, Danny and Timmy were gone, and now I was going to be cooped up inside all afternoon. I didn't think life could get any worse.

Since the day was already shot, I didn't figure there was much I could do to make it any worse. I went to my bedroom and sat heavily on my bed and looked around.

My bedroom was not a playroom. That's what the Black Room was for, Mama had mandated. The bedroom's function was to sleep and change clothes, and not much more than that. So, except for a few minor stuffed toys, there wasn't much in that room to hold my attention. And the stuffed toys were more for show, I think. Pillows, really. My room was beautiful. But it wasn't much fun. I sighed a deep, pathetic sigh, but no one could hear me.

_Lost Horizon_ sat on the dresser. What the heck, I thought. The day's shot anyhow. Reading couldn't ruin a day if the day was already ruined. I grabbed the book and opened to the second paragraph. The first sentence was short, succinct, and clear. The second sentence had four words I did not know. I had frowned many times today, and I frowned again. Dangling the book with one hand I walked up the hallway to the living room. My parents were still reading the paper.

"Where's my Webster?" I asked Mama.

"I put it on the bookshelf in the White Room, right next to the encyclopedias," Mama looked up at me and smiled. She wanted forgiveness but she didn't beg for it. Besides, she knew that time would heal both my tender scalp as well as my aggravated heart.

"Thank you," I said politely. There's nothing so annoying to folks who adore you as being polite to them. Politeness sharpens the edge on the softness that is intimacy.

"You're welcome, Honey," she said, and she returned to her paper.

I went to the basement, found the Webster's, and, both books in hand, climbed up on the couch. I tossed the dictionary on the couch next to me and picked up Hilton. I figured since the dictionary was handy I may as well look up the words I didn't know from the first paragraph before starting the second.

Some of the words just didn't sound interesting enough for me to learn their meaning. And "Tempelhof," like the ever mysterious "M.V.O.," has never generated enough enthusiasm for me to research. They lie dormant in my mind, and I am satisfied in my not knowing.

Other words, though, captivated me by their very sounds. They were strong, promising words. "Disillusionment," "equanimity," "diminished," "patronized," and of course, "priggish" \- now these were enticing, exciting words that merited my study. I forgot "celibacy."

I became quite engrossed in my intellectual development, rotating between the two books, and suddenly feeling Very Smart. I heard a commode flush in the distance, but I had been brought up hearing the flushing of toilets, so I didn't pay much attention.

Seconds later I bolted straight up when I heard Aunt Myrna say hello to me.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Kate," she said, but she didn't sound as sorry as she did amused. "I didn't startle you, did I?" She came around the couch and was facing me. She held a book in one hand. Her reading glasses dangled from her other hand.

"Actually," I said with a good deal of indignation in my voice, "You did!"

"Oh," and the air shifted out of her sails. She sat heavily into the plaid chair. "Sorry," she muttered.

"That's okay," I growled.

Aunt Myrna put on her glasses and opened her book. I returned to my dictionary. I didn't want to sit with her, but I didn't want to retreat, either. I was hoping that my presence was annoying her, but if it was she gave no indication. Trapped in my obstinance, I continued reading and looking up words.

I finished looking up the words in the first paragraph and then re-read the whole paragraph. Satisfied, I began the second paragraph. I surmised, judging from Hilton's frequent use of capital letters, that many of the words I did not recognize in his second paragraph were the names of people or places. I didn't bother looking them up. I was sure they weren't that important anyway. With them safely accounted for, I only had to look up four or five words.

Sister Mary Frances had been right. If I sounded the words out I really could figure out how to say most of them. Unfortunately, I had not yet mastered the great skill of sounding out words quietly. I had to say them out loud, and if I had to say them out loud, Aunt Myrna, by virtue of her close proximity, had to hear them out loud. She fidgeted in her chair a few times, and she turned the pages with more strength than it takes to turn a page. She sighed deeply, but kept reading.

At least an hour passed in this fashion, both of us too stubborn to relinquish our positions, and both of us absorbed in the worlds of our books. It was toward the middle of the third paragraph that I finally got stumped on a word. I couldn't figure out how to pronounce it. Nothing sounded right, and the more I repeated it, the more frustrated I got. The more frustrated I became the louder I spoke the syllables.

"Hi Ate Us. Hi Hate Us. I Hate Us!"

"Everything all right down there?" Papa called from upstairs.

Aunt Myrna yelled up, "We're fine! Just reading!"

The refrigerator door slammed shut and I heard Papa's footsteps above us walk through the dining room and back into the living room.

I looked over at my aunt, and she was smiling at me.

"Let's take a look, shall we?" Aunt Myrna moved next to me on the couch and arched her neck over the book. "Where is the little varmint?"

I sheepishly pointed at the venomous word on the page. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to be angry or grateful at her intrusion. But the afternoon was wearing on, and I was getting tired of being in a bad mood. Even my aggravation at Mama was starting to dissipate.

"Ah, yes," Aunt Myrna adjusted her glasses and leaned away from me a little. "That IS a nasty little teaser, isn't it?" I nodded but said nothing.

"Well, first let's spell it out. H-I-A-T-U-S. Hi-a-tus. You had it right the first time, Kate. That's exactly how it's pronounced. Hiatus."

"Hi Ate Us?" I repeated. "That doesn't make any sense at all."

"Well, let's look it up and see."

I flipped the pages of the dictionary to the H's and ran my finger down the columns of words until I found the demon. My finger quit moving and I studied the entry.

"What's it say?" Aunt Myrna asked.

I read the definition out loud slowly, then looked up at her.

"Well, what's it mean?" she asked.

I started to read the definition again. She's old, I thought, maybe she didn't hear me the first time.

"No, Kate," Aunt Myrna interrupted me. "I know what it says. You already read it. What I want to know now is what you think it means."

I looked puzzled. She smiled at me, her eyes twinkling. "Do you know what it means to paraphrase?" she asked.

"Paraphrase?" I repeated. "I guess it's a pair of phrases."

She chuckled, but I knew she wasn't laughing at me. Then she stopped, cocked her head a little, and said, "Well, actually, you're right, in a way. A paraphrase is when you take an idea and reword it, sort of make it your own."

"So you wind up with a pair of phrases."

"Yes," she said, still smiling. "You do. You wind up with a pair of phrases. So," her eyes pointed to the dictionary in my lap. "Can you give me a paraphrase of the meaning of 'hiatus?'"

I read the definition again, then cleared my throat as if I were preparing to deliver the most important speech in the world. "A hiatus is a pause in time, or maybe space, or maybe both. A hiatus is a gap between one point and another. It's kind of like when something takes a vacation." I stopped suddenly and looked up at her. "You're on a hiatus right now!" I exclaimed.

Aunt Myrna tossed her head back and laughed, "Yes, I suppose I am, Kate!" she agreed.

My father's voice was at the top of the stairs again. "Are you two sure you're okay?"

"We're fine!" Aunt Myrna and I yelled in a chorus. And then we laughed together for the first of what would become many times.

#  CHAPTER 6

We read together awhile longer, quietly, each drinking in the words. We didn't speak with one another and I quickly lost myself in the story in my lap. I was so taken with my book that I didn't notice when Aunt Myrna had left. After awhile I, too, set my book aside and went upstairs.

Papa had moved some furniture away from one of the walls in the living room and he had his camera, backdrop, and lights set up. He loved photography, and on special occasions he turned this wall into his private studio.

Today, I guess, was a special occasion.

"Here, Myrna," he pointed to the bald wall, "You stand there. Let me see if I can get a good shot of you."

We had all learned that when Papa wanted to be a photographer we were to humor him. Aunt Myrna, who had known Papa longer than any of us, had learned this very well and she obediently took her place against the wall.

"You know how I hate having my picture taken, Walter," she scolded, but there was a chuckle in her voice.

"And you know how I love to take your picture, Myrna," Papa replied, and they both laughed together.

Papa made a great production of taking pictures. He peered through the camera on the tripod, adjusted the lights, peered some more, rotated the focus dial back and forth a bit, moved the tripod to the right, then back to the left, peered again, and after a little while the lights flashed, blinding everyone in the room for twenty seconds. Then he did it all over again.

Aunt Myrna stood patiently while Papa fawned over his equipment. Once she looked in my direction and winked, and without thinking I winked back, then felt mortified that I had betrayed myself by being friendly.

After Papa had taken a couple hundred pictures of Aunt Myrna he excused her and she sat down wearily in the Morris chair.

"Come here, little Squirt," Papa reached toward me, and, happy for the attention, I ran to him. Three pictures later, I was tired of the attention and began squirming.

"Just one more shot," Papa said, and then he turned around. "Myrna, you come get in this one."

Aunt Myrna heaved herself heavily out of the chair and stood next to me, but the disparity in our heights caused Papa to frown. He pulled the tripod away from us, looked into the camera, and pulled the tripod further back. His frown deepened into a full-blown furrow.

"What if Myrna sits down, Walter?" Mama suggested, and she waited for Papa to nod before handing one of the dining room chairs to Myrna.

Myrna sat down, and I stood next to her, and without thinking about it I draped my arm lazily across her shoulder. She reached around me and held me close at the waist, and I heard Papa mumble as he smiled, and then we were all blind for twenty seconds.

Aunt Myrna was leaving the next morning, and Mama said I could stay up late if I wanted. Few things pleased me more than bending rules. The four of us sat around the small kitchen booth until late into the night. Papa and Aunt Myrna reminisced about lazy Nebraskan days long gone by while Mama and I listened quietly.

Silence is not something that generally comes naturally to me, but in the presence of good story telling I am struck mute with admiration. Papa and Aunt Myrna both knew how to spin a good yarn, and watching them that night was better than the Ed Sullivan show. I was so enthralled with their enchanting tales that whatever lingering irritation I had for Aunt Myrna quietly slipped into away.

When I woke up the next morning Aunt Myrna was gone and Papa had already left for work. I ate corn flakes and was sullen, and Mama didn't try to cheer me up. After breakfast, just before I went to find Danny and Timmy, Mama reached into the pocket of her shirtwaist dress and pulled out an envelope. "Aunt Myrna asked me to give you this, Honey."

I opened the envelope and unfolded the letter. The printed handwriting was a little stilted and I could tell Aunt Myrna had taken pains to not write in cursive. Even as I glanced at the letter, I saw a handful of words I did not recognize.

"I can't read this," I told Mama. "She used too many big words. You read it to me," and I handed it to my mother.

Mama took the envelope from me and read it. "Hmm," she frowned.

"What's the matter?" I asked, mirroring her frown. "You can't read it, either?"

"It's not addressed to me. See?" she pointed to the envelope. "Right here. 'Kate Arlene

Morgenstern.' It's written to you. Looks like you'll have to read it yourself." Her face shifted into a slight grin.

I went to the basement and pulled out the dictionary, climbed up onto the old couch and began reading.

Dear Kate,

I had hoped to say goodbye to you in person, but I needed to get an early start. I want to cross the Mississippi Bridge in St Louis before it gets late. I detest bridges, and I detest St Louis, and I'm anxious to get both of them behind me as quickly as possible.

I'd enjoy corresponding with you if you're inclined.. I'll post you a letter in a few weeks and I'd appreciate you writing me back if you like.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about Lost Horizon, and I want to know how you and Sister Martha Louise make out this fall. That is, if you decide to return to school, and I hope you will. For one thing, they start teaching cursive in second grade, and I hate printing, so please, go to second grade and learn how to read and write in cursive.

My hand is starting to cramp so I will close for now and get on back to Hendley. Have a good summer, and I'll write soon.

Aunt Myrna

I folded the letter and shoved it back into the envelope, and crammed the envelope into the back pocket of my jeans before I ran out the sliding doors to play. A few days later my mother found the letter while she was doing the laundry and placed it carefully in the second drawer of my dresser, right next to my chapel veils.

The summer blazed away too quickly, as summers so often do. Danny got his new bike and Timmy got Danny's old bike, and I begged Papa for a new bike, but he said we'd wait for now. Danny and Timmy and I had several more outings to Whirlies, and we had to take Janey with us once. Mr and Mrs Gray, four doors up from the Watsons, got a new refrigerator and donated the cardboard box to us, and we wore the our little section of the hillside bald.

And for a little while I forgot about Aunt Myrna and Grandpa Wilhelm's old pickup truck and _Lost Horizon_.

#  CHAPTER 7

A week before school started some of the adults in the neighborhood decided to have a block party. At first I was pretty excited because parties were all about having fun, and having fun was the best thing in life. However, Mama decided I should look pretty for the party, and in my experience looking pretty had nothing to do with having fun.

I was fairly glum but not despondent when we arrived. Several tables had been set up with paper plates and pitchers of tea and lemonade and water, and there were bowls scattered about with various kinds of nuts and chips. Two grills were stationed near each end of the row of tables. Mr Watson was cooking hamburgers on one grill, and Mrs English's son-in-law Jerry was cooking hot dogs on the other one. A long extension cord had been rolled out, and we had donated our hi fi. Two piles of LP's and 45's were nearby, and someone had put on an Elvis album just before we arrived.

Mama smiled at the song, and Papa smiled at Mama smiling, and I just frowned.

I was standing a little away from Mama and Papa when Danny approached me. For as long as I had lived next to him I had succeeded in making sure that Danny Watson had never seen me wearing Mary Janes or Swiss polka dots. It wasn't difficult. I seldom got dressed up except for Mass. His family usually went to services on Sunday before we left for Mass, and they didn't usually get home until the afternoon.

"My word, Katie!" Danny said as he walked up to me. "You're mighty pretty!" He sounded more surprised than complimentary.

"Of course, I am," I said disappointed in Danny stating the obvious.

Mama overheard me and a little while later, when no one was paying attention, she scolded me gently. "A lady," she said, "accepts a compliment with a gracious, 'Thank you very much.'"

I countered that I didn't care to be a lady and besides, why would I thank someone for telling me the truth? Mama shook her head, looked at me with resignation, and was soon engrossed in a conversation with Mrs Watson.

It had been dark about an hour when the party began to dissipate. I helped Mama carry some chips and paper plates home, and Papa took the hi fi to the basement. Mama and I were still in the kitchen when Papa came upstairs in an exasperated rush. His face was severe, and never having seen such an expression on him before, I was alarmed and confused, and a little frightened. He sank down at the booth with a great heaviness, and Mama sat next to him, anxiously waiting for him to speak. I stood motionless like a granite statue by the sink.

"We've been robbed," Papa said, his voice so low I could barely hear him.

"Walter, no!" I didn't have any trouble hearing Mama's voice.

Papa didn't say anything else for awhile, just stared ahead trance like. Finally he added, "Only the liquor cabinet. Nothing else. TV's still there, the books, everything. Except the alcohol." He looked up suddenly and asked, "What about up here?"

He and Mama rushed through the house and met back in the living room. I inched just outside the kitchen and nervously watched them from the dining room.

"Anything?" Papa asked.

"Not that I can see," Mama said.

The phone rang, and Mama put her hand on my shoulder gently as she passed me.

"Hello? Oh, hi, Emily. Your window was broken? Anything missing? Really! Nothing? Yes. The liquor cabinet in the basement. I know, I know. I told Walter the same thing when he brought it home but he said.... What's that? Oh, good!" She covered the phone with her hand and called out, "Walter, Fred's already called the police! They're on their way!" She returned to the phone and after a few minutes she hung up and rejoined Papa in the living room.

I inched nearer to them. I wasn't sure what all the commotion was about but I knew that whatever was the matter I wanted to be near my parents. Mama hugged me when I got in range, and Papa smiled a worried smile at me and said, "Everything's fine, Pumpkin."

I heard sirens a few minutes later, and blue strobe lights ricocheted off the living room walls.

"Laura, why don't you tuck Katie in?" Papa said. I heard the front door shut behind him.

Mama took my hand and walked me down the hallway. I wanted to stay and see what was happening but my best instincts warned me to give no resistance tonight Mama was kind but very businesslike. We knelt by the side of my bed and we quickly, half-heartedly recited three Hail Mary's and an Our Father. She stood up and leaned over to kiss me goodnight.

"Is that it?" I asked. "Don't you think we need to say a few more prayers?" I wasn't nearly as interested in being devout as I was in not being left alone.

"I think God will understand tonight," she said.

"What about the Little House? Aren't we going to read about Laura and Mary tonight?"

"I think they might understand tonight, too," she said, turning off the light by the bed.

As she shut my door I scowled, "Well, Maybe God understands and maybe Laura Ingalls understands but I sure don't understand!"

After many fitful moments I succumbed to the exhaustion of the day.

The next morning Danny and Timmy met me at the bottom of the deck steps. Their parents had sent them to bed early, too, but they had slipped down the hallway very quietly and heard most of the conversation between the police and their parents. They were very happy to report everything they had learned to me.

"Mrs England lost three cases of Old Granddad!" Timmy said.

"Mrs England drinks?" I asked, wide eyed.

"Like a fish," Timmy said, but Danny stopped him abruptly and said that was just speculation.

"Well, why else would she have all that bourbon?" Timmy asked.

"It's none of our business," Danny said.

"Well, she does sleep in late most days," I said, and Timmy nodded.

"She's an old woman," Danny countered. "She's just tired."

"Or hung over," Timmy suggested.

"What would you know about hang overs?" Danny asked.

"Aunt Lena says Uncle Roy gets hung over every Saturday night," Timmy said, and Danny hushed him and told him to quit airing dirty laundry.

Danny took the focus off his family and put it back onto the neighborhood. "And Mr Stephenson, you know the guy who lives up near Birchwood, he had a whole mess of Falstaff in his basement. They took every lick of it. Except one bottle. They left one bottle behind."

"Wonder why they did that?" I asked.

"Dunno," Danny said, "But they did. One single bottle of beer left on the kitchen counter."

In all, the thieves had broken into eight houses on our block, and all they took was alcohol.

"They have any idea who it was?" I asked.

"Nig...." Timmy started to say.

"You hush that trap in your face!" Danny yelled at his brother. "You don't never use that kind of language around me or I swear I'll make you bleed!"

I had never seen Danny so enraged, and I had never seen Timmy so frightened. We all sat very still for a few minutes, and then I spoke.

"So they think it was colored folks?" I asked very, very tentatively. There are people you meet in your life you desperately hope will never get angry at you. Danny was such a person.

Danny sighed deeply and looked to the ground. "Well," he said, "That's what I heard. Someone saw a couple of black teenage boys walking around the vacant lots earlier yesterday afternoon."

"Well, then they must have done it!" Timmy exclaimed. "Must have been casing the neighborhood, I expect, just waiting for everyone to go to the party. That's what I figure."

"But they haven't actually caught anyone?" I asked.

"No," said Danny.

"Think they will?" I asked Danny.

He shook his head and said, very low, "I don't know, Katie."

"Well," Timmy said, "You watch. I bet they do, and I bet when they catch 'em they'll be black!"

Danny swatted his brother sharply on the head, and Timmy ran away, and the three of us didn't play together the rest of the day.

#  CHAPTER 8

Papa replaced the broken lock on the sliders and he did not restock the liquor cabinet. Mama wanted him to get rid of the cabinet altogether but he said it was solid birch and we could use it for something else. Mama argued that it was a chilling reminder of the robbery and a few days later Leon and another man came to the house in a pickup truck and hauled the cabinet away.

School started two weeks later. Second grade wasn't nearly as aggravating as I had expected it to be. My summer of worrying about it had come to nothing. Jeanie's sister's report notwithstanding, Sister Martha Louise was not the ogre I expected. She was stern and she was demanding, but these qualities, I learned, do not necessarily comprise a beast.

Sister Martha Louise was fair. If our behavior warranted her sternness, she was stern. And what she demanded of us was nothing less than what we were each capable of. She abhorred mediocrity, and insisted that none of us be average.

"Anyone can be average," she scolded us one day. Over half the class had earned a C on our spelling test that week. Three students had made D's, two had failed. One student had an A, and one student a B.

"I will not have a roomful of average students!" Sister Martha Louise slammed her ruler on her desk. "Now. Take out a piece of paper, and we will take the test again!" On the second test there were four grades above average, and two below average. This was still unacceptable to the nun. She dispensed with her lesson plan for the rest of the day and drilled us on our spelling. Forty-five minutes before school let out we took another spelling test. No one failed, no one got a D, and seven of us made an A or B.

"That's better," she said without feeling. "Not much, but some. And some better is better than no better at all."

That fall Mr Watson began driving Danny and Timmy to school on his way to work every morning, and Mrs Watson borrowed our Falcon every afternoon to pick them up. I asked Mama why they didn't walk to school anymore and she said it was none of our affair.

Mama was pinning up the hem in my Halloween costume. I was going trick or treating as a ghost, and Mama didn't want me tripping over the sheet.

"Hold still, Honey!"

"I am holding still!" I whined.

"If you were holding still I wouldn't be telling you to hold still, now, would I?"

After a few more minutes of me wiggling about and Mama repositioning me, she announced, "There! Now, let's have a look!" She stood up and walked backwards away from me.

"Yes, you look just like a little Casper!"

"But am I spooky?" I asked.

"Well, you scare the very Dickens out of your dad and me sometimes," she laughed.

"That'll do!" I said.

"Oh, I nearly forgot!" Mama left the room and returned carrying an envelope. She pulled the sheet off of me and folded it over the chair. "This came for you in the mail this morning."

I grabbed the envelope from her hands and charged down the basement steps, and climbed up on the couch.

Dear Kate,

Hope this letter finds you well and happy. I'm curious how Lost Horizon is coming along. And have you made peace with Sister Martha Louise yet?

The last wheat is just about ready for harvest. It's gotten so dry here the past few years but we're expecting a profitable yield.

Your mama wrote me and said you were going trick or treating as a ghost this year. I'm sure you will scare everyone half to death!

If you don't write back I may be inclined to write you every week until you do. And I assure you, left to my own devices I can be very, very boring.

As always,

Aunt Myrna

It was an empty threat, receiving a weekly letter from Aunt Myrna was not particularly menacing. I could always toss them away unread if they were too dull. I didn't give Aunt Myrna nor her letters another thought for over a week.

It rained the following Saturday. I watched cartoons all morning. Mama began fixing supper just after lunch and I complained that there was nothing to do. I whined and stammered and belly ached as only a six year old knows how to do. I paced back and forth between the kitchen and my bedroom, and back to the kitchen again several times. Sitting on my bed staring out my window at the insidious rain, I heard Mama go down the basement steps. I was too bored to get up for many minutes, and then I was too bored to keep looking out the window. I heard the basement door shut again and after a little while I moped back into the kitchen and recited my languid litany.

Mama suggested I go sit at the dining room table awhile.

She had set out a little pile of lined paper, two pencils, an eraser, a stamped envelope, and my dictionary. Next to the dictionary were Aunt Myrna's two letters.

I was not at all enthusiastic about spending my afternoon writing to Aunt Myrna but Mama coaxed me gently, saying if someone takes time to write me it would be rude to ignore them. I didn't care about being rude but I could see Mama was invested in winning this battle. I slumped into a chair with an impatient resignation. Mama returned to the kitchen.

I stared out the dining room window, watching the rain whip against the panes. I idly thumbed through the dictionary, then set it back down. I touched one of the letters. I watched the rain some more.

Minutes went by.

"You almost done in there, Honey?" Mama called. The stove door slammed shut and I heard the faucet turn on.

"Almost finished!" I exclaimed. I picked up a pencil, thumped it lazily against the table a few times, then snatched a piece of paper and scribbled as quickly as I could.

Dear Aunt Myrna,

Thank you for your letters. I hope you are doing well. I am fine.

Your niece,

Katie Arlene Morgenstern

For reasons that to this day I do not know, I put down the pencil, pushed the chair away from the table, grabbed my dictionary, went to my room. I sat on the bed the rest of that afternoon reading _Lost Horizons_. By supper I had finished reading over half of the first chapter, and I had looked up many words. Even after I read the definitions I still wasn't sure what everything in the chapter meant, but I was surprised to realize that what I understood I liked.

As the days grew shorter and colder, I stayed inside more and more. Danny and Timmy and I played a little after school, but we usually didn't see one another after supper.

As winter pressed toward us I found myself reading my book more and more. Every few weeks I would come home from school to find a letter from Aunt Myrna. She usually told me some little story about what was happening in town, or how the farm was doing, and she always wanted to hear about what was going on with me. With a little nudging from Mama, I dutifully replied each time I received a letter from Nebraska.

Dear Aunt Myrna,

Thank you for your letter. I hope you are doing well. I am fine.

Your niece,

Katie Arlene Morgenstern

Just before Thanksgiving I decided to show off my new cursive skills. I wrote, in my finest hand, the following letter:

Dear Aunt Myrna,

Thank you for your letter. I hope you are doing well. I am fine.

Your niece,

Katie Arlene Morgenstern

Aunt Myrna wrote back immediately.

Dear Kate,

Perhaps you could refrain from cursive for a little while longer.

With affection,

Aunt Myrna

A more sensitive child might have been discouraged from writing altogether. Instead, I wrote seven letters in a row, one each day. I wrote all seven letters in cursive, and they each said exactly the same thing.

Dear Aunt Myrna,

Sister Martha Louise has instructed us to practice our cursive writing as much as possible.

If you don't write back I may be inclined to write you (in cursive) every day until you do. And I assure you, left to my own devices I can be very, very boring.

Most sincerely, your niece,

Katie Arlene Morgenstern

One letter included this post script:

PS: Here is my school picture for second grade. Mama finally let me get my hair cut in a pixie. There's nothing left to pin curl!

#  CHAPTER 9

Two days before school let out for the Christmas holidays I cried all the way home. I cried so hard the tears froze into little solid crystals half way down my cheeks.

Mama was in the basement ironing when I got home. I stomped into my bedroom and sat on the edge of my bed, and I cried some more. When she didn't immediately come upstairs, I cried louder, hoping she could hear me through the floor boards. Still no response. I began to wail.

In twenty seconds Mama flew up the steps, was in my room, holding me, rocking me, and telling me everything was going to be fine. I sobbed a little more, then quit crying.

"Now, Honey," Mama brushed my hair and my tears out of my eyes. "What's got you so upset?"

"Sam Young told me I couldn't be in the Christmas play because I killed Baby Jesus!" I blurted out, and then I cried some more, and Mama hugged me some more.

When I was almost done crying, Mama looked at me and asked, "Why would Sam say a thing like that?"

"He said my last name is Morgenstern, and that's a Jewish name, and the Jews killed Baby Jesus, and now I'm going to hell!" I could nearly feel the scorching flames of eternal damnation licking my toes, and I started wailing again.

Mama held me close and rocked me for a long, long time. She smoothed my tangled hair with her hand, and she began humming an old Irish lullaby. After awhile she pulled away a little, holding me gently by my shoulders.

"I'm sure Sam didn't mean to be unkind," she said.

"I don't care if he meant to or not!" I said. "Anyhow, he's a liar. I'm not Jewish!" I squinted with uncertainty and added, "Am I?"

"No," Mama smiled. "But it would be okay if you were. Jewish people did not kill Jesus. People killed Jesus, and some of them were Jewish, and some of them were Romans. Mobs aren't religious, they just hide behind religion sometimes. Don't you ever let anyone tell you that Jews are bad people, Sweetie."

"Then why would Sam say so?"

Mama thought a few seconds before she answered. "I expect he just got a little confused is all," she said.

"And what's wrong with being a Morgenstern?" I asked.

"Nothing in the world," Mama said. "It's a fine name."

"Why would Sam think it's a Jewish name?"

"Well," Mama explained, "there are a lot of Jewish people who came to America from Germany, like your Papa's grandpa. Some people just assume that anyone with a German name must be Jewish."

"Well, that's just stupid!" I huffed.

"I know," Mama agreed.

I thought a few minutes and asked, "Do people ever accuse Papa of being Jewish?"

"Not accuse, Sweetheart," Mama corrected me gently. "Remember, there is no shame in being Jewish. But yes, sometimes people mistake him for a Jew."

"What's wrong with being a Jew?"

Mama paused quite a while, and I could tell this was one of those times she was contemplating whether or not to tell me something now or tell me to wait until I was a little older.

"Some people," she spoke tentatively, weighing her words carefully, "just don't know any better. Some people think certain groups of people are less valuable because of their religion, or their skin color, or, oh, any number of things. If a person is different from them, they think the person just isn't as good as them."

"What happens to Papa when people think he's a Jew?" I asked Mama.

"Every now and then," she paused a minute, then looked me squarely in the eyes, "not too often, but just every once in a while, a person will refuse to buy a car from Papa because they believe he's Jewish."

"But doesn't he tell them he's not? Doesn't he tell them he's Catholic?"

"No."

"But why not, Mama?" I asked. "Why does he let people think something that's not true? If he told them the truth maybe they'd buy a car from him after all?"

Mama smiled. "Your dad doesn't want that kind of money, Sweetie. He says he'd rather be a poor man than capitalize on prejudice. Anyway, he says most people in Louisville aren't prejudiced against Jews, so there's no fear we'll be moving to the poorhouse anytime soon."

After supper that night, while I was drying dishes with Mama, I said, "So I guess that means I can play down by the barn from now on?"

Mama put her dish rag into the sudsy water and looked at me. "Whatever makes you think that, Honey?"

"If it's wrong to be prejudiced, then there's nothing wrong with me playing with the colored kids, is there?"

Mama said nothing, and a sober look masked her face. I thought it best to not ask anything else right away. She emptied the sink and went into the living room, and I finished drying the dishes in the strainer. After I had put away the last of the glasses I went to the dining room table and began drawing a Christmas tree and snowman to send with my next letter to Aunt Myrna. Mama and Papa were suddenly sitting down at the table, one on each side of me.

"Hi, little Squirt," Papa smiled at me, and Mama smiled. I set my crayon on the table.

Papa cleared his throat. "I heard you had a little run into with Sam today."

"Yes," I said. "But I'm all done with that. Mama explained everything to me."

"Well, yes, I suppose she did," Papa glanced at Mama, and she looked back at him, and I noticed they both seemed a little nervous.

"About the barn, Honey," Papa said.

"What about it?" I asked.

"Well, it's not that there's anything wrong with colored people."

"I know," I said.

He continued, "It's just that we'd rather you not play with them."

"Why not?" I asked. "Mama said it's wrong to think others aren't as good as us just because they're different."

"I know, I know, Honey," Papa said. "And Mama's right."

"I know," I said.

"It's just that, well," Papa coughed anxiously, like a man trapped. "Well, for now, we'd just rather you stay up on Thistlewood."

"But I don't understand," I said. "Wouldn't that be like someone not buying a car from you because he thought you were Jewish?"

Papa looked back at Mama, and she looked at him, then they both looked helplessly back at me. They were encased in a culture that I was too young to know about, and they knew they were trapped, and they did not know how to get free.

"For now, Sweetheart, let's just not go to the barn or past the barn, or anywhere near the barn. For now let's just stay up on Thistlewood."

"I don't understand, Papa," I said.

"I don't understand, either, Honey," Papa whispered, and he hugged me very, very tight.

#  CHAPTER 10

"What do you think Aunt Myrna would like for Christmas?" Mama asked me as we were eating supper, after Papa had told us about his day.

"Won't Santa Claus take care of that?" I asked.

Papa clarified Santa Claus' role, and I listened to him, mesmerized. Apparently, according to his account, Papa had had a private meeting with Santa a few years earlier. They had met at a downtown restaurant just before Christmas.

Papa told the story of his meeting with Santa much better than I can write it, and I can't remember everything he said. The thing I most remember, though, was that Santa told him that it was up to people to give one another presents and they were to wrap the presents in Christmas paper and place them under the Christmas tree. Santa's job was not to bring gifts. Santa's job was to sprinkle a little Santa dust on them, and then the gifts became Christmas gifts.

Santa said only a gift given with love could be a Christmas gift. And he told Papa that packages under a tree were just things until Santa sprinkled them. A Christmas present, Papa summed up, was a gift of love and magic.

Papa chuckled as he finished his story and added that there was an old custom of putting out milk and cookies for Santa but Santa told Papa he preferred tequila. Mama frowned at Papa sternly and told him to quit telling me things like that, and he laughed again and said, "She doesn't understand anyway, Laura."

"Well," Mama scolded him, "there's no need to help her understand some things!"

Papa hung his head a little but his eyes were still twinkling when he winked at me.

Mama forgave him his brief lapse in judgment, and there followed a flurry of discussion about what to get Aunt Myrna. Papa thought I might get her a book because she liked to read so much, and Mama suggested I give her something personal, something that was especially from me.

After school the next day Mama took me to a book store and we bought Aunt Myrna a copy of _Little House on the Prairie_. Inside the cover I wrote,

Christmas 1962

Dear Aunt Myrna,

Papa says you live in a little house on a prairie, and so I thought you might like to read this book. It is one of my favorites.

I hope you have a merry Christmas.

With affection, your niece,

Katie Arlene Morgenstern

PS - Do not forget to set out snacks for Santa. I understand he gets very cross if people forget. Papa says Santa likes tequila more than milk. I don't like milk, either, and I may ask Mama to buy some tequila for me, too. I'm not sure what tequila is. I looked it up in the dictionary but I couldn't find it. Anyhow, if it's good enough for Santa, I expect I will like it, too.

Two days later a package arrived for me from Hendley Nebraska. I ripped off the brown paper, and underneath was brightly colored Christmas wrapping paper. I started to rip it off, but Mama reminded me about what Santa had told Papa. A present wasn't a Christmas gift until it was placed under the tree and sprinkled with Santa dust. I reluctantly placed the gift under the tree, and then sat on the floor staring at it until Mama called me for dinner.

It was our family tradition to open Christmas gifts right after we got home from midnight Mass. For over a week I had shaken, rattled, and squeezed every package under the tree many, many times, but I had no clue what they contained.

Just before we left for Mass Mama put some chocolate chip cookies that she had made that afternoon on the end table by the Christmas tree. She poured a little chocolate milk in a glass with a snowman on it and set it next to the cookies.

"But Papa says...." I started to argue.

"Never mind!" Mama said as she took me by the hand and walked toward the front door. I looked back up at Papa following behind us and he winked at me.

It began snowing during Mass and we drove home very slowly. I can't remember a single house we passed that did not have holiday lights on. The whole world sparkled like the snow globe it had become.

The funny thing about Christmas gifts, when you get a lot of them, is that a week later you're having to struggle to recount each one, and not long after that you can only remember a few of them, and by the time a few years go by you're lucky if you can recollect a single gift you received in any specific year.

I remember only one Christmas gift I received in 1962. It was a rather fancy set of stationary with lavender flowers across the top, and a single purplish flower on the bottom. Matching envelopes, with tiny flowers on the back, were also in the box. The paper was fairly thin, and in the back of the box was a plain piece of paper, the same size as the stationary, with extra bold lines. Mama said if I put that sheet right behind the sheet I was writing on it would keep my writing in fairly neat lines across the page.

There was familiar handwriting on the first sheet of the stationary.

Dear Kate,

Happy today, and merry always!

Love from your

Aunt Myrna

#  CHAPTER 11

There are several disadvantages to being born on New Year's Day. One seldom gets a party on the actual birthday because, it being a holiday, many people prefer staying home. Your parents might be tired most of the day from the New Year's Eve party they attended the night before. The weather is very unpredictable the first of the year.

The worst thing about having your birthday on the first of January is that many people simply give you one gift at Christmas and at the bottom of the card they scrawl, "Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday!"

The only advantage to being a New Year's baby is that for the rest of your life you can always tell exactly how old you are without having to do much math.

It was many years later that I also realized that New Year's babies are conceived on or around April Fools' Day.

Throughout my childhood Mama and Papa gave me a birthday party every year. Some years our parties were very simple, just the three of us, and every now and then they would invite a few others.

On January 1, 1963, when I turned seven, Mama and Papa invited the Watson family, Jeannie and her sister Terry, and Mr and Mrs England over for cake and ice cream in the White Room. Everyone brought gifts. Janey wanted to play with my gifts and Papa made me share, which was not among my greater skills.

Just before I succumbed into a good long pout, Papa reached into his pocket and pulled out a final gift. It was wrapped in beautiful paper, not the bright bold wrapping paper used for a child's birthday gift. It was elegant, silver embossed designs against a white background. I thought it was the prettiest wrapping paper I had ever seen.

It was the first gift of my life that I did not tear into. Instead, I carefully separated it at the taped seams and opened it gently, as one does a treasure. Under the beautiful paper was a narrow burgundy leather box. Inside the box was an exquisite mechanical pencil and pen set, and they were each engraved with the words "Kate Arlene Morgenstern."

I touched them, but I didn't take them out of their case. I just stared at them in awe.

Timmy, who was standing next to me, craned his head to see them, then said, "Well, what's the fun in those?" Disinterested, he slouched away. Danny didn't say anything. He smiled politely and joined his brother. Mrs England oohed a little, and Jeannie and Terry glanced at them dispassionately. Even Janey wasn't interested in playing with the pen and pencil.

"Who are they from?" I asked Papa.

"Well, I'm not sure," Papa teased me. Then, pulling out a small envelope from another pocket, he handed it to me and said, "Maybe this will help. It came with the box."

I opened the envelope and read.

Dearest Kate,

Have a warm, joy-filled birthday!

Much love from your

Aunt Myrna

#  CHAPTER 12

The first thing I wrote with my new pen was a letter to Aunt Myrna thanking her for her Christmas and birthday gifts. Mama told me it was very important to always express appreciation for gifts. I also wrote Aunt Myrna an update on how I was coming along with _Lost Horizon_.

I was on chapter six. I had developed a great distaste for Miss Brinklow, but at the time I couldn't quite figure out what it was about her that I found so disdainful. I just didn't like her. I told Aunt Myrna in my letter that one particular sentence kept playing over and over in my head, but I didn't tell her which sentence it was. Two weeks after I sent her the letter she wrote back and asked what sentence I was talking about. It took me three days to compose my return letter.

Dear Aunt Myrna,

It's that statement that Chang makes about jewels and religion. He says, "The jewel has many facets and it is possible that many religions are moderately true."

We are back in school again. No one has failed a single spelling test since before Christmas. Sister Martha Louise even smiled yesterday, but I can't remember how come.

Why are there so many religions? Why can't everyone just be Catholics?

Affectionately, your niece,

Katie Arlene Morgenstern

Aunt Myrna's next letter only had two words written.

Or Lutherans?

I thought about Aunt Myrna's short response over and over. I showed her letter to Mama and asked her what she thought, and she, not having read my previous letter, seemed confused. I showed Mama the passage in chapter six in Hilton's book. She read the whole paragraph silently as I watched her, and then she smiled.

"I think Chang is speaking about tolerance," Mama put the book down. "There are those who think one religion is better than another. Chang is just saying that all religions may have merit, that's all."

"Like what we talked about at Christmas, about being a Jew?"

"That's right, Sweetheart."

"Is being a Catholic better than being a Lutheran?" I asked.

Mama didn't answer right away. I decided to clarify my question. "Or a Baptist?"

Apparently my attempts at clarification failed. "We'll ask your dad what he thinks tonight," she said.

Papa sold two new cars that day and Mama and I could scarcely get a word in edgewise all through supper. as he told us every detail about both sales. After Mama and I finished the dishes, we joined him in the living room, and Mama posed my question to him. He thought a long time before he answered.

"I've been Lutheran, and I've been Catholic, and I can't say which is better," he said.

"That's it?" Mama asked him. She wasn't aggravated with him but she was hoping for something a little more substantial.

"That's it," Papa said. "Sorry."

"Well, Honey," Mama looked at me. "I don't know any more than that." Papa picked up the newspaper to indicate he had said all he was going to about religion.

Some time after I had gone to bed I got back up and walked quietly down the hall to the bathroom to get a drink of water. I'm not sure where Papa was, but I could hear Mama in the kitchen talking on the phone. I only caught a few bits of her side of the conversation.

"Yes, Myrna, I know that. Well, of course, I know. It's just that at her age.... No, I'm not saying that. I'm only thinking that.... What? No." She laughed. "No, of course not. Some Catholics believe that, but we've never.... Well, yes, you're right. What?" Mama laughed again. "Oh, absolutely not! She'd be lost without your letters. No. No, I don't want you to restrain yourself. Oh, Myrna Arlene, you know I adore you! No, I'm not worried at all. I just wanted to let you know she's asking.... Oh, yes, I agree one hundred percent. It is a sign of a good mind to question things. Sometimes I just don't have the answers. How's that again? Oh, I know I don't have to. But her questions can be so...."

Mama's voice faded and I leaned my head out into the living room, sure to keep my feet firmly at the edge of hall. I was just about to lose my balance when a deep voice from behind me whispered,

"Boo!"

I lost my balance, nearly fell over, but Papa caught me and carried me back to bed, chuckling all the way. As he was tucking me back into my bed he chastised me, "Not polite to eavesdrop, Squirt."

"I wasn't eavesdropping," I countered. "I was just listening, that's all."

He smiled, and I smiled back. He tapped me on the top of my head and said, "You've got a lot of questions jamming up your airwaves, Pumpkin."

"Not so many," I argued. "A few.

"So many," he insisted.

"Papa," I asked. "Why did Mama call Aunt Myrna 'Myrna Arlene?'"

"Arlene?"

"That's her middle name, Honey." And he added, "I guess we never told you, did we? We named you after your Aunt Myrna." Papa kissed my forehead. "You sleep tight, now. And no more traveling!"

He was at the door, and just before he pulled it shut he said, "You know, Katie, most folks believe what they have a mind to believe. When you get older you'll follow your own mind wherever that takes you. So keep asking your questions, and then you make up your own mind about what is so. You'll be just fine. Night-night, now, Sweetpea."

"Night-night, Papa," I said, but he had already closed the door.

#  CHAPTER 13

Midway through February Sister Martha Louise had us make Valentines for our parents. I finished my heart made of red construction paper and white paper dollies pretty quickly and bored, I began offering to help others with their cards. This aggravated Sister Martha Louise, and after several failed efforts to dissuade me from assisting my classmates, she suggested I make another Valentine.

"If there's anyone besides your parents who like you enough to get a Valentine's card from you," she scowled as she walked back to the closet. I didn't actually hear her say that, but Linda Mason, who sat two seats behind me, told me she heard.

I made Aunt Myrna a Valentine. It was almost identical to the one I made for Mama and Papa. On the back, I wrote, "Love, Katie." That sounded too sappy, though, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to tell Aunt Myrna I loved her just yet. I took a thick black crayon and scratched out "love" and wrote, "With affection," but that didn't look right, either.

I crossed out "with affection" with the black crayon and rewrote "love, Katie." It was Valentine's Day, after all. Everyone writes "love" on Valentine's Day.

Besides, it was just a word.

February was a dark, cold month, and March wasn't much better that year. I hardly ever saw Danny and Timmy, and even Blackie's company could not cheer me up. I hated being cooped up in the house. I listened to a few records from time to time, but mostly, when I thought about it, I read _Lost Horizon._

By the beginning of April, just a few weeks before Easter, I had begun chapter ten. It was about this time that I discovered what I didn't like about Hilton's Miss Brinklow. It was as if she was allergic to having fun, that nothing was valuable unless it was unpleasant. Her religion, inseparable from who she was, required that any hint of enjoyment be squeezed like water from a sponge.

More than that, Miss Brinklow wanted to make the people of Shangra-La think like her, believe as she believed; she had no tolerance for anything less.

I wondered what the people in the valley thought about Miss Brinklow. But I knew Conway and Barnard agreed with me, and I liked them because they did. I worried suddenly that if I liked them because they thought as I did, and I didn't like Miss Brinklow because she didn't, how was I any different from Miss Brinklow? I found this very disturbing, and I set the book aside for several days.

My curiosity bested me in the end, though, as curiosity so often does, and I finished the chapter without further moral distraction. A vague, tired uneasiness remained, faint but present, in the back of my mind. I wrote to Aunt Myrna about my agitation. She wrote back right away. In her letter she said, "It is good that you have enough insight to recognize your own discrepancies. Wrestle through them, and you will emerge a better person."

I had to look "discrepancies" up in my dictionary.

I had very ambivalent feelings about Easter. On the one hand, I was all for celebrating the resurrection of Christ, and I loved the lilies that saturated the sanctuary. I was quite fond of the Easter Bunny, and there were few things better than coming home from Mass and finding a rainbow colored basket overflowing with things that would keep my dentist in business for a year.

On the other hand, there was the Saturday night Getting Ready For Mass ritual that was worse the night before Easter than any other time of the year. Even without enough hair to pin curl, there was a great deal of scrubbing, trying on new clothes and shoes, and having to stay absolutely clean from eight o'clock Saturday night until Mass the following morning. It was torturous.

To this day, I refuse to go out on Easter. I wear my oldest, most worn out jeans and sweat shirt. If at all possible, I work on my yard and I get as dirty as I possibly can. It is my private retaliation to a childhood of Easter Sundays, new white patent leather Mary Janes that were not yet broken in, new crisp pastel-colored dresses that made too much noise when I walked and scratched when I stood still.

The spring of 1963 was like having two Easter Sundays. Two weeks after Easter Sister Martha Louis' second grade celebrated our First Communion.

After years of having to sit still while Mama and Papa went up to the front rail to receive the Body of Christ I relished the idea of finally getting to walk with them. Forty-five minutes was a terribly long time for me to sit, kneel, and stand, but not walk.

Of course, I had some appreciation for receiving the Sacraments. But I was quite disturbed to learn that there were two hurdles to jump to get to the actual ingestion of Christ's body. The first, of course, was that, once again, I had to dress up, this time as a miniature bride. I took this cross in moderately good humor, however, having accrued a good deal of experience in the rituals surrounding Getting Ready For Mass.

What was more daunting, however, was giving my first confession to Father Emerson.

The week before our First Communion our class went to the church's sanctuary and Father Emerson gave us our final instructions for how to make a good confession. Then he genuflected in front of the altar, and disappeared into the middle of three closets toward the rear of the sanctuary and my classmates and I formed lines on each side of the two outer closets. One by one we each disappeared into a closet, and emerged a few moments later, our tiny souls basking in forgiveness.

My turn finally came to enter the small closet to the right of Father Emerson's. I knelt down, made the _Sign of the Cross_ , and recited, "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. This is my first confession."

Father Emerson asked me the nature of my sins, and I suddenly forgot everything he and Sister Martha Louis had been telling us for the last five months about how to say confession. I told Father Emerson every transgression I had ever made that I could remember, and the more sins I described, the louder and more animated I became. I told him about putting the three worms down Janey's back last summer. I told him about sneaking out of bed at night, but I told him I had no idea how many times I had done that and I hoped that would not be a problem. I told him about deliberately sliding off the edge of the see-saw when Ricky was high up on the other end just to see how fast he'd fall. I was halfway through the middle of my transgression about hiding Sister Martha Louise' ruler just before Thanksgiving when Father Emerson interrupted me.

"Katie Arlene!" he said sternly.

"Yes, sir?" I asked, then added, "I thought you couldn't see me through that screen, Father Emerson."

"I recognize you by your deeds, Child," Father Emerson signed wearily. "For your penance just say one Rosary, and we'll call it even."

"A whole Rosary!" I shouted.

Father Emerson whispered through clenched teeth, "We'll compromise. How's twenty

_Hail Mary's_ , three _Our Father's,_ and an _Act of Contrition_ sound?"

"What about we knock off the _Act of Contrition_ and I add an extra _Our Father_?"

"Katie?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Confession is not a negotiation."

"But you started it!"

There was a long silence in both our booths, and then I said, "So that's twenty _Hail Mary's_ , three _Our Father's_ , and an _Act of Contrition_?"

"Sounds fine," Father Emerson said wearily. And he began whispering in Latin. I assumed he was saying a very holy prayer, and I suddenly felt very holy.

The days grew longer, the air a little warmer, and dandelions shot up all over the neighborhood. Some of Mrs England's flowers bloomed, others, she told us, would bloom later in the season. I saw more and more of Danny and Timmy, but in the evenings, after Mr Watson had whistled the boys home, I read _Lost Horizon_ , and I was nearly done with chapter eleven by the time summer came.

The last day of school I ran most of the way home with my report card. My grades were okay. Nothing spectacular, nothing horrible. But I couldn't wait to show Mama the note Sister Martha Louise had written at the bottom.

Dear Mr and Mrs Morgenstern,

It has been a unique experience having Katie Arlene in my class this year. I'm only sorry Sister George Anne will be denied the pleasure of her company in the third grade.

My friend Jeannie was visiting me at my house a few days later.

"Why isn't Sister George Anne teaching third grade next year?" I asked Jeannie.

"She's retiring," Jeannie said. She was mindlessly patting Blackie's torn ear.

"Do you think she'll keep living with the nuns?"

"No, she's moving to a convent in Covington, a special home for older nuns."

"Well, I expect Sister Martha Louise will miss her quite a bit," I said.

Jeannie gently set Blackie aside and said, "I don't know why she would. They despise one another!"

#  CHAPTER 14

Just after school let out for the summer a new boy moved into the house two doors up from the Watson family. He had a little sister about a year younger than Janey and thankfully they played together for hours on end, leaving us older kids alone.

Harry was younger than me and older than Timmy. He was a small boy, not quite as tall as Timmy, and he spoke very, very softly. He was friendly without being overbearing, and I liked him immediately.

One morning I woke up with a start to the thunderous roar of machinery just outside my bedroom. I raced to my window and looked out. A large yellow tankish looking vehicle with a wide shovel on the front and treads instead of tires was backing up, then moving forward, scooping up huge chunks of the vacant lot. I ran to the kitchen.

Mama was sitting at the table drinking a cup of coffee with Mrs Watson. They stopped talking while I breathlessly announced that we were being invaded by Cubans.

"It's just a new house is all, Sweetie," Mama assured me. "They've sold the two lots, and they're building new houses. I met the couple who bought the one next door to us this morning. Mr and Mrs Dodson. Nice retired couple."

"But where are we supposed to play?" I whined.

Mama didn't answer me, but stood and opened a cabinet door. She asked me what kind of cereal I'd like for breakfast. Mrs Watson said she had to go do another load of laundry and left. I was aghast at their shared nonchalance.

Danny, Timmy, Harry, and I sat on the hillside all day and watched the bulldozer load up the dump trucks. Timmy and I griped and lamented throughout most of the day, but Danny didn't say much, and Harry didn't either.

When Papa got home for supper that evening I complained to him about the new houses. He listened until I had no words left, and when he could get a word in edgewise he said, "It's called progress, Squirt-handle."

"I thought progress was supposed to be a good thing!" I protested.

"Depends on how you see it, I guess," Papa shrugged. "For you, it's destruction. For Mr and Mrs Dodson, I expect it's progress. And building new houses on the vacant lots will increase the property value for the whole neighborhood."

"Well," I snorted. "I don't value it and neither do the boys."

"Folks look at things differently, that's all," Papa said.

I wrote about my disappointment and outrage to Aunt Myrna that evening.

Dear Aunt Myrna,

Well, I suppose you've heard that they're destroying our lot next door. Idiots! There must be thousands of other places in the world for Mr and Mrs Dodson to build their house. Idiots!

Papa says it's progress. Do you think he's right?

Are you coming to visit us again this summer?

Love from your niece,

Katie Arlene Morgenstern

PS: I'm almost finished with Hilton's book. I hope Conway does not leave with Mallinson and Lo-Tsen. I will be very disappointed in him if he does.

The next week Aunt Myrna wrote back.

Dear Kate,

We each define progress by what we hold dear. I am sorry that you are losing something you hold dear. Perhaps you will enjoy Mr and Mrs Dodson's company, if not their lot.

Yes. I will be in Kentucky near the end of the summer. I am stopping by Indiana to visit your Uncle Clay and his family first, and will drive down to Louisville afterwards.

I love you, Kate.

Aunt Myrna

PS: As for Conway leaving Shangri-La - sometimes our heroes do disappoint us. It's okay if they chose paths separate from our own. It's okay to be angry with our heroes. Be sure to not throw the baby out with the bath water.

"What do babies and heroes and bath tubs have to do with one another?" I asked Mama, holding Aunt Myrna's letter in my hand.

She was sewing on a small patch on the back pocket of a pair of my blue jeans. She set the jeans aside and took the letter from me and began reading. When she finished the letter she looked at me and said, "It means you can still learn from Conway even if he winds up going back home, Sweetheart."

"But why would he leave some place that's so wonderful?"

"I don't know, Honey," Mama answered, her words slow and thoughtful. "People leave wonderful things trying to find better things all the time. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't."

"So does Conway leave, or does he stay?" I asked.

Mama smiled at me. "Read it for yourself," she instructed me. She handed the letter back to me and returned to her sewing.

Thankfully, it rained the next day. Otherwise I would not have found the time to finish reading the last chapter and the epilogue of _Lost Horizon_.

"He left after all!" I announced with a great huff at the supper table, even before Papa had a chance to tell us about his day.

"Who left?" Papa asked.

"Conway," Mama whispered to him.

"Who's Conway? Where'd he go?" Papa asked, but Mama and I both ignored him.

#  CHAPTER 15

One Saturday morning Papa wasn't wearing a suit. He always wore a suit at breakfast, except on Sundays. This morning he was dressed casually. Not like he was going to mow the yard, but definitely not like he was going to the dealership.

"Aren't you going to work this morning?" I asked him.

"Nope."

"Why not?

He flashed a grin at Mama and said, "Don't feel like it."

"Why not?"

"Got an important appointment."

"With who?"

"You're a nosey little stinker," he chided me with a smile.

"Eat your cereal, Honey," Mama said.

I took a couple of bites to appease Mama, then asked Papa, "But what's more important than work?"

Papa winked at Mama, and she smiled back at him. Papa answered, "Buying my little girl a new bicycle!"

I didn't eat the rest of my breakfast, and Mama let the dishes soak in the sink.

Three hours later I was riding my new turquoise Schwinn up and down Thistlewood, and after I had passed the Watson house a couple of time yelling at the top of my lungs Danny and Timmy joined me on their bikes. Not long after that Harry came out with his bike, and we all raced to the crest of the hill at the corner of Thistlewood and Birchwood. Danny won, but I didn't care.

We rode our bikes all afternoon, and that evening, after I had parked it carefully in the Black Room, I sat down in the old swivel chair and admired my new bicycle for a long, long time.

It was nearly a week later before I found enough time to sit still and write Aunt Myrna the good news.

Dear Aunt Myrna,

I got my bike! It's blue-green and it's the most beautiful bicycle in the whole world!

I can't wait for you to see it! Did they have bikes when you were a little girl?

Love, your niece,

Katie Arlene Morgenstern

PS: I read the epilogue three times but I can't tell. Did Conway ever return to Shangra-La? I hope so, because I've been very cross at Hilton since Conway left Rutherford.

Aunt Myrna wrote back right away.

Dear Kate,

Congratulations! There's little more exciting than your first new vehicle. This may be the beginning of a life of great travels for you!

Yes, they had bikes in the Dark Ages.

Love, your very ancient

Aunt Myrna

PS: One of the nice things about ambiguity and mystery is that you get to use your imagination to fill in the blanks. I believe Conway did get back to Shangra-la, because it pleases me to believe he did.

Danny and Timmy had gone to visit their cousins for the day, and Harry had a doctor's appointment at two in the afternoon. He was a frail little guy, and seemed to go to the doctor quite often.

It's important, Papa told me, to learn to entertain yourself. I didn't go looking for opportunities to be alone, but more and more I found myself amenable to solitude.

"It's an acquired taste," Aunt Myrna wrote in one of her letters. "You must come to appreciate your own company, and only then can you truly appreciate the company of others."

I enjoyed pedaling up to the corner, then coasting back down. It hadn't taken me very long to learn how to coast without holding onto the handle bars, though I was very careful not to let Mama ever see me do it. That was the very sort of skill Mama would not approve of.

So, over and over that afternoon, I pedaled up the crest to Birchwood, coasted back down it with my arms spread wide apart, and just as I passed Harry's house I'd grab the handle bars. The crest was subtle, hardly noticeable, but gravity took me all the way to the bottom of Thistlewood.

The ride back up the hill became more and more difficult after ten or twelve trips, and I found myself puffing as I got near the top. I turned my bike around and was catching my breath before starting my descent when I heard a screen door slam.

I looked to my right. Steve Maynard walked to the edge of his porch and leaned against a black wrought iron post, his arms folded, and a menacing smirk on his face. He stared at me, his smirk never flinching. I stared back, but I'm sure I flinched. Finally, he stepped off the porch and started walking toward me.

I barreled down Thistlewood, a proverbial bat out of the bowels of hell. I did not let go of the handlebars, and I did not slow down. I pedaled as fast as I could. I had not yet learned much about planning for the future, either long term or short term, and too late I realized I was going too fast to stop at the end of Thistlewood.

It was the first time I ever touched the barn, and when I touched it I embraced it wholeheartedly with every part of my body.

I limped home, pushing my bike slowly. Incredibly, the only damage the bicycle incurred was a thin scratch down the main bar, just under the Schwinn emblem. My right elbow had a little bruise on it the next morning, and my right shin was scraped up a bit. I was wearing shorts, though, so at least I didn't tear my clothes.

When I got home I put my bike in the basement as quietly as I could, went to the laundry room and found a pair of clean blue jeans folded neatly on top of the Maytag. I replaced my shorts with the jeans and went to find Blackie to comfort me.

Mama didn't notice I had changed clothes when she called me for supper a short time later. Papa had had a good day at work, and his conversation with Mama was very animated.

After supper I wrote to Aunt Myrna.

Dear Aunt Myrna,

I had a bike wreck today. It was Steve Maynard's fault. I wonder why he's so mean. I only scratched my bike a little, and I decided not to worry Mama and Papa. I feel better writing to you, though, and hope you will keep my secret.

Love, your niece,

Katie Arlene Morgenstern

The phone rang a few evenings later and Mama answered it. I heard her say hello to Aunt Myrna, and then she called out to Papa, and he went into the kitchen.

"Hi, Myrna!" he sang into the phone. Before I could listen to very much more, though, Mama came and escorted me to my room to help me get ready for bed. We had already said our prayers and Mama was just about to read to me when Papa appeared at my bedroom door and asked Mama to come to their bedroom with him. He turned off my bedroom light and shut the door as Mama walked out of my room, and I heard the door to their room shut, too.

I reviewed my sins of the day and wondered how they could have found out about any of them. I was still thinking about this when my bedroom door opened again, and Mama and Papa came back in. Papa turned on the light by my bed and pulled up a chair, and Mama sat on the edge of my bed.

At first they said nothing. I was not so naïve as to think nothing was wrong, but not so insightful as to know what was wrong. I remembered Papa's maxim. "The first one who speaks loses." I remained very, very still and silent.

Papa lost.

"Katie Arlene," he began, and I knew things were not well. His voice was not stern and he didn't seem angry with me, but he was more serious than I was accustomed to seeing him, and this made me very nervous.

Papa continued. "Aunt Myrna told us about Steve. She didn't have a lot of details, but she had enough to know she should tell us."

"But I told her not to tell!" I wailed.

Mama held my hand and said, "Your Aunt Myrna loves you very much. It's because she loves you that she told us. It was improper for you to ask her to hide such a secret from us, Sweetheart."

"Can you tell us what happened, Squirt?" Papa asked, and I begrudgingly told him about Steve coming out on the porch, about how he stood with his arms crossed, and the frightening look on his face, and how he started walking to me.

I left out the part about hitting the barn on my bicycle.

Mama and Papa said a few things more to me, but I can't remember what. I was too busy being angry with Aunt Myrna for betraying my confidence. I vowed I would never write to her again as long as I lived.

After awhile Mama and Papa each kissed me, turned off my light, and left the room. A short time later I heard the front door shut. I stayed awake until I heard the living room door shut again, perhaps half an hour later. He and Mama spoke softly to one another, and then I heard them standing outside my room. I squeezed my eyes shut as tightly as I could. The door squeaked a little when they opened it, and then it squeaked a little when they closed it again.

#  CHAPTER 16

I got a letter from Hendley Nebraska a few days later but I let it sit on my dresser for three days before I opened it.

Dear Kate,

I know you asked me not to tell your parents about Steve and your bike. Perhaps when you are a little older you will understand why I had to.

The day after I received your letter I had a little accident with your Grandpa Wilhelm's pickup. I was driving down to throw some hay out for the beef down near the draw and I hit a little gully the wrong way. I think I've knocked the tail pipe out of whack. The old truck drives great but it doesn't sound so good.

It will be great seeing you and your folks again. I miss you all very much.

Love,

Aunt Myrna

I was determined to stay good and mad at Aunt Myrna forever, but as each day went by I found myself less and less angry, and after a little while it really didn't matter to me that she had told Papa about Steve Maynard.

Dear Aunt Myrna,

Mama finally got around to sewing on a new ear for Blackie. It's not exactly like his other ear, but he hasn't complained about it.

Papa sold seven cars last week, and boy, was he excited. He got a new demo not too long ago, another convertible. This one's blue, though. I liked the red one better.

They traded the Falcon in, too, for another white Falcon. Mama sure does like white cars.

Harry's dad bought a new car, too, but it's two years old. Harry's dad says it's silly buying a brand new car, and Harry and I had words about this. I nearly punched him but Danny stopped me, and Harry started using his inhaler all of a sudden. Harry goes to the doctor about once a week. Anyhow, I like Harry pretty good, but his dad is an idiot, don't you think?

July 4th was pretty good. Mr Watson and Papa set off some firecrackers, and they gave us all a bunch of sparklers. I love the sparklers. Did you have sparklers when you were a little girl?

Love,

Katie Arlene Morgenstern

And Myrna wrote right back.

Dear Kate,

I'm glad Blackie's surgery went well. I'm sure he feels much better.

Wheat's doing pretty well this summer, but we could always use a little more rain.

Just because someone else has a different opinion doesn't mean they're stupid. Of course, I haven't met Harry's dad and he might be stupid.

No. We did not have sparklers when I was a little girl.

Much love from you very ancient

Aunt Myrna

The summer, as summers so often do, passed by too quickly. The boys and I made the most of each day, though. Most mornings we sat on the hillside and watched Mr and Mrs Dodson's house go up, and they had begun clearing the lot for the second house, too. I loved the smell of fresh lumber, but the noise of the hammering and machinery aggravated me. Danny said I was just too sensitive and I told him he was just too insensitive. My argument made sense to neither of us.

After lunch we usually played in the woods or in the clump of trees on the top of the hill. Sometimes we played in the dried out creek bed, and sometimes we rode our bikes, but I didn't ride all the way up to Birchwood alone anymore.

We walked down to Whirlies at least once or twice a week, but now we nearly always had to take Janey and Harry's little sister with us, and they had to hold their brothers' hands. Mama told me I didn't have to hold Danny's hand anymore when we crossed Birchwood, and I had mixed feelings about being released.

Mrs England got a new stove in the middle of August, and she donated the cardboard box it came in to us. We had had to rely on very small pieces of cardboard for sliding down the hill all summer, and getting the stove box was a great treasure.

We took turns, two of us at a time, sledding down the hill, squealing like little pigs, and climbing back up the hill. When we were about half way through sliding on the box Janey and Harry's sister joined us. Timmy said not to let them play, but Danny and Harry said we'd better. I scowled a little but said nothing. The two little girls were annoying, but they weren't horrible.

The stove box was in shambles by the end of the afternoon, and the six of us were at the top of the hill debating who would make the last run.

At first it was faint, like the rumble of a distant thunder. It grew louder and louder, and then it backfired.

"Aunt Myrna's here! Aunt Myrna's here!" I tore down the hillside. I ran up the deck's steps and through the kitchen. I found Mama in the living room, looking out the front door. She laughed when she saw me, and we both walked out on the porch together.

The old pickup skidded past the front of our house and came to an abrupt stop in front of the Dodson's nearly finished house. The gears crunched, and Aunt Myrna backed up and pulled Grandpa Wilhelm's old truck into our drive behind the Falcon. She waved to Mama and me before she got out of the truck, and I ran to her and hugged her with all the strength I had. She laughed long and hard, and when she looked down at me her eyes were twinkling.

#  CHAPTER 17

I helped Aunt Myrna bring in her luggage, the same two huge brown Samsonite cases and the smaller overnight bag she had brought with her last summer. With considerable effort, I dragged the smaller of the two big cases to the guest room and was breathing hard when Aunt Myrna heaved the larger of the two cases on top of the bed. Mama followed behind us with the little case, then smiled at us and said she'd get some water on the stove for some tea.

Aunt Myrna's appearance hadn't changed much over the last year except that the white in her disheveled hair seemed a little brighter and more ample. She still wore the same neutral colored layers of clothing and old brown sandals.

Without saying a word, Aunt Myrna opened the largest suitcase on the bed and reached in, picked up a book, opened it, and with her nose to the seam, inhaled deeply. When she had finished she looked at me with a grin, and without being invited, I climbed up on the bed on the other side of the suitcase, grabbed another book, opened it, and smelled it.

We smelled at least six or seven books each until Aunt Myrna finally spoke. "Now, I wonder which of these jewels you'll want to keep here this year?" she asked.

I looked through the books carefully, but had never heard of most of them. " _Little Women_ ," I read the title. "How's this one?"

"Good choice. Four sisters. You'll really like Jo."

"Sisters, huh?" I set the book back down. "And this one?" I asked. I held up another book.

Aunt Myrna put on her bifocals and took the book I was holding. "Hmmm," she said thoughtfully. "Jack London. He's okay. Not one of my favorite authors, but pretty interesting, especially if you like dogs and wolves and such as that. Ever been to Alaska?"

"Is that outside Kentucky?" I asked.

"Oh, a bit."

"I've never been past Indiana."

"Well, then, you've probably never been to Alaska."

I set _White Fang_ aside, and we both kept digging through the books.

"This one looks interesting," I said, and to show I was serious about it I smelled its pages.

"Let me see," Aunt Myrna said, taking the book from me. "No. I don't think you're quite ready for Hemingway. But you'll probably enjoy him in a few years. Laura will pin my hide to the wall if I leave that one here. I'm afraid this one was written when he was still pretty influenced by Lawrence. Hemingway was never quite as bold, some say vulgar, as Lawrence, but he could be a little bit racy."

"When will I be old enough to read Lawrence?" I asked.

"Perhaps after I'm old enough to read him," Aunt Myrna said.

"When will that be?"

"Probably never. Not his novels anyway. Maybe his critique on some American authors. He's not a bad read there. But now, if you think you might like Hemingway, you'd probably enjoy _The Old Man and the Sea_. Let's see if I have a copy in here. I thought I did. No, doesn't look like it. Well, I'll see that you get a copy."

I picked up am extremely fat book, opened to the first page, and read out loud "'Call me Ishmael.' That's a peculiar name, isn't it?"

" _Moby Dick_. Very good book. A little long-winded. Pretty thick context. You might lose interest. You might get a kick out of it. Want it?"

I held onto the book a minute, smelled it, then set it aside. "What else you got?"

"Spoken like a budding connoisseur!" Aunt Myrna beamed. I looked puzzled. "Well, just this once," Aunt Myrna said. "It means, well, it's like being an expert, or someone who fancies something with a passion and becomes quite knowledgeable about that thing. The main thing about being a connoisseur is that you are discriminatory, you weigh and evaluate differences, you consider the various samples of a group before you make your selection, like blends of coffees or teas, of, oh, any number of things. You...."

"Aunt Myrna?"

"Yes, Kate?"

"What other books did you bring?"

I finally selected Grahame's _The Wind in the Willows_. Mama had been reading Winnie the Pooh books to me since before I could remember, and the same fellow who illustrated Milne's book also illustrated Grahame's.

"Ernest H Shepard," I read aloud, and I flipped through the pages. "What's the 'H' stand for?"

"Howard, I believe," Aunt Myrna said.

I shook my head with gravity, as if knowing Ernest H Shepard's middle name made me a great scholar. To reinforce the moment, I repeated his full name slowly. "Ernest Howard Shepard." Then I smelled the pages, smiled, and said, "Yes, I think this one will do."

Papa came home from work as soon as Mama called him to tell him that Aunt Myrna had arrived. They embraced and laughed, and Papa got so excited he said "Mein Gott!" After supper he and Aunt Myrna disappeared on a long walk up past Birchwood, and I didn't see them again until it was nearly dark.

"Papa sure does like Aunt Myrna," I told Mama as we were putting away the last of the dishes.

"He's man to have her," Mama said. "And she him. She's been through a lot."

"Mama," I said when we were sitting on the front porch a short time later. "What's Aunt Myrna been through?"

"Oh," Mama said, "I spoke out of school. It's not for me to tell another's misfortunes. But now, listen here, Katie, I don't want you...."

"Katie!" Danny ran around the corner of my house, very much winded. "Come see! Dad's got an engine to put on the go-cart! Come on, quick!"

I tossed a obligatory wave to Mama and rounded the corner behind Danny.

#  CHAPTER 18

Aunt Myrna was staying with us for a week. There were a hundred marvels I wanted to show her, and things I wanted to talk with her about, and I was sure a single week would simply not be big enough a bag to cram everything into.

The day after she arrived Leon and another man showed up at the house with Papa just before lunch. After we had eaten, Aunt Myrna went to her room and brought back the keys to Grandpa Wilhelm's truck, and Leon and the other man drove it away, sputtering and firing all the way up Thistlewood.

"Myrna," Papa scolded my aunt playfully as he put his sport coat on. "You have got to let me get you into a new...."

"Walter," Aunt Myrna interrupted him with a tiny peck on his cheek. "If you want to sell cars, go somewhere else. I'm not in the market." She smiled at Papa, and he shrugged his shoulders in defeat.

"Well, all I'm saying is...."

"Papa's truck is fine. A new tail pipe, and it'll be good as new."

"It's going to take more than a new tail pipe for that beat up old...."

"Walter."

"Yes, Myrna?"

"You're just about to get insulting."

"Yes, Myrna."

"Now, you go play with your new little cars and be a good boy."

"Yes, Myrna." Papa kissed his sister, kissed Mama, and kissed me, and when he was done kissing everyone he left the house and went back to work.

Danny, Timmy, and I spent the afternoon painting the go-cart bright red. We were careful not to get our brushes too near the engine. Harry couldn't help because he had another doctor's appointment.

"What's wrong with Harry, anyhow?" I asked Danny.

"What d'ya mean?"

"He goes to the doctor all the time."

"You're exaggerating, Katie," Danny said. "Timmy, don't let it run down the side like that." Timmy slapped more paint on the errant drip and smeared it around, and it ran worse than before.

"Well, he goes a lot, anyhow," I said.

"Mom says he has asthma," Danny said.

"Oh," I nodded my head slowly as if that explained everything. "Asthma," I repeated.

We waited excitedly for Mr Watson to get home. He had left strict instructions that we were not to drive the go-cart unless he was home. When finally the old woodie pulled into the driveway, we met Mr Watson with incessant screams and pleas. He laughed at us as he pulled the go-cart to the front of the house.

Harry joined us after his doctor's appointment, and the four of us took turns racing back and forth between the Dodson's nearly completed house and the intersection of Reidling and Thistlewood.

Janey and Harry's little sister whined because Mr Watson wouldn't let them drive the go-cart, and they went into the back yard and played with their silly dolls until Harry's mother called her two children in to eat.

Supper at the Morgenstern and Watson homes was late that evening.

Papa helped Mama with the dishes, and Aunt Myrna and I sat on the Adirondacks on the patio under the deck. She was reading a Steinbeck novel, and I was on the fourth page of _The Wind in the Willows_. I had my dictionary on the table next to me.

"Aunt Myrna," I said, "What have you been through?"

She finished reading her paragraph before she asked, without looking up, "What's that?"

"Mama said you've been through things. What have you been through?"

She read another paragraph, turned the page, read some more.

"Aunt Myrna?"

"Yes, Kate," she kept reading.

"Are you listening?"

"No. I'm reading."

I read another paragraph of my book, and I only had to look up three or four words.

"He's as bad as Hilton," I mumbled.

"Who?" Aunt Myrna looked at me.

"Grahame and his long paragraphs," I complained.

"Don't read it, then," Aunt Myrna said, then returned to Steinbeck.

"Well, I can't help it now. I'm all interested in the silly old thing."

Aunt Myrna closed her book. "What's so interesting about it?"

"Mole. He leaves his spring cleaning and starts out on an adventure, and now I want to know what adventures he's going to have." I paused, and added, "I want to know what sort of things he's going to go through. I want to know what he's been through." I looked intensely at my book as if I had lost all interest in Aunt Myrna. I could feel her looking at me, and I read more slowly, consulted my dictionary, and kept reading.

"Kate," Aunt Myrna interrupted me, and I looked over at her. "When a person has lived over half a century they've been through many things."

"What have you been through?"

"You're a little bit nosey," she smiled.

"I'm a whole lot curious," I said. "Like Conway."

Aunt Myrna sighed. "Well, being curious is one thing, but it's not polite to pry, you know."

"I'm not prying," I argued. "I'm just interested, that's all."

"Well, it's not all that interesting," Aunt Myrna said under her breath, and she started to read again.

"But it's about you," I objected. "Doesn't that make it interesting?"

"Kate."

"Yes?"

"Just read."

I read, and Aunt Myrna read, and after a little time it was getting too dark to read, and we put our books on the little table between us. We watched the fireflies come out, and we watched the bats dart across the purple glow of sky.

"I had a little girl once," Aunt Myrna said without looking at me. "Or nearly so."

"How does someone nearly have a kid?" I asked.

Aunt Myrna didn't answer me right away. When she did her voice cracked a little. "She died right before she was born, three weeks before she was due."

I didn't say anything. I only looked at my aunt looking out across the back yard, across the dry creek bed, and up the hill.

"It's not polite to stare, Kate," she said without looking at me.

"I'm not staring. I'm only looking."

"You're staring, Kate."

"Sorry, Aunt Myrna." I turned my head way over to my right and looked at the dirt mounds in what was soon to become the Dodson's back yard. I looked through the growing darkness into the woods, and told myself I needed to go check on my dead log soon to make sure no one had taken it over. My neck was beginning to get stiff, and then I heard Aunt Myrna stand up. Before I had time to turn around she was bending over me, and she wrapped her big arms around my tiny shoulders. She held me for a long time, then grabbed her book and snapped opened the sliding glass door. I heard her heavy feet climb the basement steps.

Papa came down to the patio a few minutes later and sat where Aunt Myrna had been sitting. He didn't say anything for awhile, and I didn't, either.

"Squirt-handle," he finally said.

"Yes, Papa?"

We looked at one another for a long, long time.

"Nothing," he said, and he reached over and held my hand, and looked into the darkness. I squeezed his hand.

"Well, it's getting late, Katie-doo," he said, and he stood up. I stood up with him, and we walked upstairs together.

#  CHAPTER 19

Leon drove Papa Wilhelm's pickup truck back to our house a couple of days later. The truck was so quiet we hardly heard Leon pull into the driveway.

That afternoon Aunt Myrna asked me if I wanted to go on a little trip with her the next day.

"Where to?" I asked, my voice very excited.

"I thought we might go down to Larue County and see where Lincoln was born. You ever been there?"

"Not that I can remember," I said. "How far is it?"

"Your mom says it'll take us maybe an hour or so to get there. Think you can stand an hour in the truck?"

"We're taking the truck?" I squealed with delight.

"Or we could walk, but I think we'll make better time in the truck." She paused, thought a second, and added, "Yes, I'm pretty certain we'll get there quicker if we take the truck."

It was barely getting light the next morning when we left the house. Mama woke me up so early I heard the Sealtest milk truck idling in the street. I had always hated milk, and I was sure I would hate the milkman if I ever saw him. I peeked through the living room drapes when I heard the truck just in time to see a man walking back toward the truck with the two empty bottles Mama had put in the little silver box on the front porch the night before. I could barely see him under the street light.

"He doesn't look evil," I said, and Mama asked who I was talking about. "The milkman," I told her. "He's just a little bitty ol' fellow. I guess it's the milkman, anyhow. If not, someone is stealing our milk bottles."

"Come eat your breakfast, Honey," Mama said.

Mama packed us a bag lunch and gave me a quarter for a soda. That was a treat in itself. By the time I was seventeen years old I had not drank more than five sodas my whole life. This would be my second one.

I had never been in Grandpa Wilhelm's old truck. I liked it immediately. The new cars Papa got every year always smelled new, and I loved the factory fresh smells. But this truck, this old, old truck, had its own fragrance, and I sniffed deeply over and over for the first ten minutes of our journey.

"Are you getting a cold?" Aunt Myrna finally asked.

"No. Why?"

"You're sniffing."

"I'm not sniffing. I'm smelling."

"Well, I took a shower this morning," Aunt Myrna laughed.

"Oh, I'm not smelling you," I told her. "I'm smelling the truck. It doesn't smell like Papa's cars."

Aunt Myrna laughed again. "I should hope not! Your dad would have a conniption!"

I sniffed a few more times, and Aunt Myrna sniffed a couple of times, too. "Ahhh," she sighed. "You're right. It does smell good."

"What is that smell, Aunt Myrna?" I asked.

Aunt Myrna inhaled another long, deep breath, smiled, and said, "It's quite a mix, I think."

"Of what?"

"Well, let's see. Dust from the farm, dust from a thousand miles between the farm and here, a little oil, some cattle feed, a whole lot of age, and I think, if I pay real close attention," she smelled again, "Yes, I'm sure of it. Just the faintest whiff of your grandpa's after shave." She smiled and her eyes seemed more moist than usual.

"What was Grandpa Wilhelm like?" I asked.

"Oh, he was a funny, funny fellow," Aunt Myrna said. "Not the kind of guy who meant to be funny, but there was just something very comical about him. He was inventive and creative, extremely clever and smart, but I'm afraid he was a little bit careless sometimes." She started chuckling.

"What's so funny?"

"I was thinking about that time when your grandpa was checking the fuel in his tractor. He had one of the first gas run tractors in Furnas County, you know."

"Oh?"

"Yes. He got it a few years before I was born. It didn't have a gauge on it like tractors do now, and one night after he'd finished work he wanted to know how much gas he had left in the tank. Well, he crawled up on top of the hood, took the cap off, and peered inside, but it was so dark he couldn't see a thing. So he lit a match and held it near the hole. The match ignited the fumes from the gas tank and caught his upper lip on fire!" Aunt Myrna was laughing, and I laughed, too, but not as hard as Aunt Myrna.

"And from that day on, until he died," Aunt Myrna said, "he always wore a mustache."

"How come?

"The fire scared his lip!" She giggled a little and said under her breath, "What a character!"

"I guess he never messed with fire after that," I said after awhile.

Aunt Myrna laughed again. "Oh, heavens, he was always going head to head with fire. He was a part-time blacksmith, you know. Let's see, oh yes. There was the time he took a break from the billow to smoke his pipe and he was sitting next to the petroleum tank. He didn't know there was a leak, and his overalls caught fire. He shot right out of them out of them and barreled outside, jumped into the stock tank in his under drawers!

"But it wasn't just fire he had problems with," Aunt Myrna said. "Had a little problem with guns, too."

"He had guns?"

"Oh, he had quite a few of them. He was an avid hunter. Made guns, repaired them, modified them. He accidentally shot himself no less than four times, usually in the arm or the leg. Well, one day he was eating nuts while he was in the shop making bullets. He accidentally put a bullet in his mouth thinking it was a nut and when he clamped down on it with his teeth the bullet exploded. He couldn't talk for a week!

"But my favorite story about Papa," she continued, "was the day your dad and his twin brother Lonnie were born. Dr Steiner walked out on the porch to tell Papa he had two more sons, and when he was finished giving Papa the good news he added, 'God has certainly smiled on you, Wilhelm.' Papa replied, "Methinks He laughed right out loud!"

We drove silently for a little ways, and then I looked up at Aunt Myrna and said, "So is that how he died, then? He got shot? Or burned up maybe?"

"No," Aunt Myrna said. "Pneumonia."

#  CHAPTER 20

"Why do you have to leave so soon?" I whined to Aunt Myrna a few nights later.

"Kate, I've been here two days longer than I planned already. I've got to get home. The third wheat's ready for harvest, and I have beef to get to market. Miller's been very patient coming over and helping out, and I don't want to take advantage of him. I've got to leave in the morning."

"But you're going to miss the block party on Friday," I protested.

"We'll write, and I'll be back next summer. Maybe you'd even like to come out to Nebraska for a visit sometime?"

"Really?" I shouted.

"Of course," Aunt Myrna laughed. "If your parents don't mind."

I raced up the basement steps yelling for Mama and Papa, and I could hear Aunt Myrna still laughing on the patio through the open slider.

Mama and Papa let me stay up an hour later than bedtime that night. I told them I could stay awake all night if they'd let me, but they said no, I needed my beauty rest. I told them I was beautiful enough, but they just laughed. Aunt Myrna promised to wake me up in the morning before she left, so I gave up the fight and slumped off to bed.

It took me a long time to fall asleep, but finally I did. It was still dark outside when I woke up to strange, loud voices outside. I opened my bedroom door. One dim lamp was on in the living room but the house was very still. I eased as quietly down the hall as I could. Both the other bedroom doors were open, and there was no one in the beds. I walked to the end of the hall and peered tentatively around the corner. The front door was open.

The voices grew louder. I looked through the screen door, then opened it slowly, stepped onto the porch, then hid in the shadow of the junipers.

A large group of people were gathered in the street between the Watson's house and Harry's house. Mama, Aunt Myrna, and Mrs Watson were standing at the corner of our driveway. I couldn't see Papa, but I recognized Mr Watson's voice.

"Let's just be calm about this," he pleaded. "We don't even know for sure."

A heavy voice, swaying with alcohol, boomed over the crowd. "Five houses broken into the same night, that's all we need to know! Fred, you're got to get your head out of your...!"

"Now, Mr Maynard," Papa said, "there's no need for that kind of language. Besides, Fred's right. We don't know for sure."

"Well, I know everything I need to know, and I'm tired of them thinking they can just come up here and take whatever they please! It's time we taught them a lesson!" Several voices in the crowd cheered in agreement, and their approval egged Mr Maynard on.

"They think they're so high and mighty! Well, I say let's just go down there and clean the color right out of this neighborhood!" The crowd cheered even louder.

"You don't know what you're talking about!" Mr Watson's voice was angrier than I had ever heard. "You didn't even see their faces!"

"I saw one of them bucks run past the barn and into the trees!" Mr Maynard shouted. A shotgun blast suddenly erupted the night air and every person in earshot jumped.

"Mr Maynard!" Papa yelled, "You put that infernal thing away before someone gets hurt!

"Oh, someone's getting hurt tonight, and I'm going to be the one doing the hurting!" He fired the shotgun a second time.

The crowd yelled louder and some of the people applauded, and I saw Mama, Aunt Myrna, and Ms Watson take a couple steps backwards toward our porch.

Suddenly a black and white car with blue strobe lights and a blaring siren drove up the little road at the bottom of Thistlewood and turned right at the barn. The crowd went silent, the siren turned off, and the car stopped in front of the Dodson's new house. Two policemen got out and the crowd slowly encircled the car. One of the policemen raised his arms and the crowd hushed.

"We believe we've caught your robbers, folks!" he yelled. "We just need to get a few statements!"

The two policemen mingled through the crowd, pens and pads in hand, and spoke with several people. Mr Maynard tossed his gun in the hedges next to the Watson's driveway, and ran to the police car. He glanced through the window on the passenger side, then turned to the crowd and yelled, "I told you so! I told you they were black!"

A few other people approached the window and looked at the angry, scowling face peering back at them. I saw Papa edge his way through and he looked into the window, and then he turned around slowing toward the people standing nearby.

"Yes, this fellow does seem to be a Negro," he said. "But I wonder who the guy sitting next to him is?"

Papa backed away from the car window so others could see in. Aunt Myrna had moved closer to the crowd and was standing fairly near the car. I looked around and didn't see Mama or Mrs Watson, and when I thought the coast was clear, I bee-lined toward Aunt Myrna. I stood as near to her rear as I could without actually touching her.

Aunt Myrna leaned down toward the window, looked in for a long time, then stood back up. I heard her growl, and I had no idea what that meant. I had never heard a woman growl before. I peeked around her and looked into the car window.

Beside the black man in the back seat was another young man. He was sitting behind the driver's seat of the squad car. His face was turned away and I couldn't see him very well. His hands were behind him, like the young black man sitting next to him. After a minute, the two men looked at one another, both sneering. They began talking, but the windows were rolled up and I couldn't hear what they were saying.

From the dim street light in front of our house, I could barely make out the second man's face. His hair was dark blond, or maybe light brown, it was hard to see. He had a thin mustache, and an even thinner stubbly beard. His face was very, very pale.

Aunt Myrna growled again, and then she turned her head to her left. I followed her gaze. At the end of the street, in front of the old barn, another crowd had gathered. They were not loud. They stood silently, mostly women, a few men, a handful of children.

Aunt Myrna began walking toward them, slowly but deliberately. I stepped as quietly behind her as I could until she stopped in front of one of the women.

The woman was old and she was crying. A younger woman had her arm around the old woman's shoulders and I heard her say, "It's gonna be a'right, Mama. He'll be a'right. This is just a bad patch, is all. Ain't the end of the world, Mama. Just a bad patch." The old woman sobbed a little more loudly, and blew her nose into a dark handkerchief.

Aunt Myrna looked into the old woman's eyes, and the old woman looked up at her, still crying. A couple of people standing near her moved a little closer, unsure of this large white woman. Aunt Myrna ignored the people, and she ignored the young woman's arm around her mother's shoulders. She embraced the old woman with both her arms. The old woman looked confused at first, then put her arms around Aunt Myrna's wide girth, squeezed, and she sobbed even more. Her daughter stepped back, and the other people stepped back, and Aunt Myrna and the old woman held one another for a long, long time.

When they were finished with their hug, Aunt Myrna step away from the old woman just a little, and a few of the other people came a little closer. Aunt Myrna introduced herself, and the old woman introduced herself and her daughter, and several of the other people introduced themselves. I reached up and took her hand, and she looked down at me and smiled.

"And this," she told the old woman, "is my niece Katie Morgenstern. Say hello to Mrs Washington, Kate."

I mumbled very low, and Aunt Myrna asked me if a cat had my tongue, and several people standing about us laughed a little. I cleared my throat and said, much more loudly, "Hello, Mrs Washington!"

Everyone laughed again.

"Well," Aunt Myrna said after the adults had made a bit of small talk. "I expect it's about time for little girls to get back into bed." She embraced Mrs Washington again, and we started back up Thistlewood. The squad car turned on its sirens and pulled away just as we got to the edge of the Dodson property.

#  CHAPTER 21

We had a large breakfast the next morning, and Papa called the dealership and told them he would be coming in late today. I helped Aunt Myrna lug her suitcases to the truck, and I stood by and watched as she hugged Mama and Papa. She looked down at me, and I looked up at her. I didn't like crying in front of people and I hoped she would leave before the tears came, but I didn't want her to leave at all, and I felt very aggravated and sad.

"Well, Kate," Aunt Myrna said. She squatted down on her thick knees, and I heard one of them pop, and she groaned a little. I rushed into her arms, and she held me so tight I thought the wind would disappear from my lungs.

The lump in my throat blocked any words from coming out, and all I could do was squeeze my aunt's neck as hard as I could. She whispered in my ear, "I love you, Kate," and then in an instant she shot back up, waved goodbye to us, and jumped into the old pickup. She roared up Thistlewood, and Grandpa Wilhelm's truck barely slowed down as it turned right onto Birchwood. And she was gone.

I received a letter from Aunt Myrna a few days later.

Dear Kate,

Well, the old truck got me home safely. I got stuck on that bridge going over the Mississippi River in St Louis. Some kind of traffic jam. I was not very happy about that, but the rest of the trip was pretty uneventful.

I guess you'll know who will be replacing Sister George Anne soon. I look forward to hearing all about the third grade.

How's Moley and Ratty coming along? Are you enjoying them? My favorite character is Badger. Do you like him? Or have you gotten that far in Grahame's book yet?

We've planted the fourth wheat. Still mighty dry around here, but the well's holding its own.

Must close here. Miller and his wife are coming over to help load up the beef and we're heading for Lincoln. It's a long drive, but there's a better market there than in Grand Prairie.

I enjoyed visiting with you again, Kate.

Love, much love from your

Aunt Myrna

PS: Here's the copy of The Old Man and the Sea I told you about.

The end of summer and the beginning of the new school year were busy. I had to have a new uniform, and new Oxfords, new school supplies. Mostly, I had to get in as much playtime with Danny, Timmy, and Harry as I could before the days started getting shorter. It was several weeks before I answered Aunt Myrna's letter.

Dear Aunt Myrna,

I like Badger's house better than any of the other houses. It doesn't bother me so much that he has no windows, like it does Rat, who's used to windows on the River

Bank. I mostly like his study, and I think when I grow up I will have a room just like his study, and fill it with as many books as it will hold. I have decided to become a writer, and I will fill my study with my own books.

Harry is on new medicine, and he only has to go to the doctor once a month now.

Mr Watson is letting Danny and Timmy ride their bikes to school now. Harry's mother drives him most days because he still gets clogged up sometimes.

Our new nun is nearly as young as Sister Mary Frances, and I like her very much.

Jeannie says she plays the guitar but I haven't heard her yet.

I have to go in a minute because Mr Watson is getting the go-cart out for us.

Love, your niece,

Katie

PS: I forgot to tell you! Papa and Mr Watson and Danny went down into the

Rainbow Forrest the day after you left and invited Mrs Washington and some of her family and neighbors to the block party. Not as many people from Thistlewood were there as usually come, but we all had a great time. Missie (Mrs Washington's granddaughter) was there, and we played all afternoon. She's coming over after school tomorrow. She loaned me her copy of The Diary of Anne Frank. I haven't started reading it yet. I let her have Lost Horizon.

It rained all afternoon the day of the block party, and we moved the tables and record player into the old barn, which hardly leaks at all. Papa says it's got a good solid frame, even if it does lean a little, and next Saturday he's taking off work and he and Mr Watson and Mr Dodson and some of Mrs Washington's neighbors are going to paint it.

I wonder what color it'll be.

#  About the Author

Kit Duncan is a licensed clinical social worker with over thirty years of experience working with families, children, couples, groups, and individuals. She holds the Master of Science in Social Work degree from the University of Texas at Arlington, and has done postgraduate work at the University of South Carolina at Columbia. She has been the Clinical Director of Human Services Consultation since 1987.

Kit lives in central Kentucky. She is the author of several novels, including _Corban, Dandelions in Paradise_ , and _Tea With Mrs Saunders_.
