Chocolate-Covered Baloney Page 3

  No one said anything for a moment, but from the look on my parents’ faces, I would not want to be Myra Sue Reilly after our guests went home. Well, to be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t want to be Myra Sue Reilly ever.

  “My mother would have swatted my bottom,” Grandma declared. “She never put up with any sass or nonsense.”

  “Myra Sue needs a good tonic,” Temple said. “I have just the thing back home, and I’ll brew some up for her.”

  Isabel gave Temple the Big Eye—which are the big staring eyes that do not blink at all—but Mama just said, “Temple, you’re always so thoughtful. Thank you for your concern.”

  Now, I knew good and well that Temple Freebird was gonna bring some awful-looking, gross-smelling, nasty-tasting stuff, and I’ll tell you here and now, I wanted to be there when my sister had to drink it.

  Eli stirred and squirmed again in my arms, but he didn’t wake up. I gave him a soft kiss on his tiny forehead.

  While I sat there cradling my baby brother, I got to thinking about that business with Myra’s secret again—a secret so secret she’d run around in the icy cold to take care of it.

  I wondered if Temple had a tonic that would cure that.

  Howling Wind, Frozen Thunder: Are We Having Fun, or What?

  The three men all trooped out of the house and into the cold, going to take care of the evening milking. Temple had brought some kind of tea for Mr. Brett’s creeping crud and insisted on walking to his house, although Grandma, Mama, and finally Isabel offered to drive her there.

  She waved them off, laughing.

  “He just lives around the corner. A little bit of cold and ice won’t hurt me, friends!” she declared. And off she went with her tea, cheerful and bright as a day in May. She did not smell like a day in May, though. That’s because she and Forest apparently saw no reason to bathe more than once a month or thereabouts

  Right as Temple headed out, Mama opened the kitchen window the teeniest little bit. The air was cold, cutting right into that warm kitchen, but it was fresh and clean, and we all took a deep breath. Not a single one of us said a cotton-pickin’ word about why we were sucking in fresh air.

  Eli sneezed.

  “Scat!” said Grandma. She often says “Scat!” when someone sneezes. I reckon it’s her version of “God bless you” or “Gesundheit.” “Let me have that little bundle,” she said. “I’ll take him to the front room and out of the draft.”

  I handed him over, real careful, and after she nuzzled him a few times, Grandma went right out of the room with that baby.

  “I’ll be in there in a minute, Grace, as soon as I finish my coffee,” Isabel called after her. “And you better relinquish that child to me when I do.”

  Grandma laughed.

  “All right, if you insist. For a few minutes,” she replied from the other room.

  “And I better get her a fresh diaper and some baby wipes. I think she might need them,” Mama said with a chuckle as she left.

  Isabel and I were alone in the kitchen. The teapot started whistling, so I got up and turned down the flame so that steam didn’t sound like Coach Frizzel’s whistle when he gets mad at us during PE relay races.

  And thinking of that, I asked, “You looking forward to your first day of teaching tomorrow? ’Cause I’ll tell you the truth, I’m pretty much looking forward to not having ole Coach Frizzel as my gym teacher for a whole semester. He scares the daylights out of me, with his big, red face and the way he hollers and yells and blows that stupid whistle.”

  Isabel raised one eyebrow. Although she would be teaching drama at the high school two days a week, one day a week she would be teaching dance at the junior high, and they were calling it PE.

  “You don’t plan to yell and scream and blow whistles at us, do you, Isabel?” I added, sitting back down and leaning toward her earnestly.

  “Of course not,” she sniffed.

  “Good. ’Cause you won’t need to do that, I’m thinking. I remember you had a good, strong voice when you were directing our Christmas play last month. I think everyone will be able to hear you just fine.”

  “I’m sure they will.” She blinked a bunch of times, then sipped her coffee. She seemed a little nervous all of a sudden.

  “April Grace,” she said, putting down her cup. “I’ve never been a teacher, and I’ve had very little experience with young people. Do you think . . . that is, will those children cooperate with me?”

  She looked right into my eyes, just like I was a grown-up having a grown-up conversation with her.

  “Isabel,” I said with all the maturity I could muster, “knowing you, I don’t think you will give them a choice.”

  I watched her think about that, then she seemed to shed that nervousness as she drew herself up all straight and prim.

  “Thank you, my dear. I intend to be a teacher, not a doormat.”

  I doubted she’d ever been a doormat for anyone or anything.

  “Good for you, Isabel, ’cause I gotta say, those kids in junior high are not the easiest kids you will ever meet in your life.”

  She blinked about twenty times.

  “Oh?”

  “No.”

  She twitched. “Well. We’ll see about that.”

  I smiled inside myself, ’cause I knew Isabel was gonna clean those kids’ clocks if they got out of line in her classes. She might put Coach Frizzel to shame. I was afraid of Coach, but I knew Isabel, and I understood her. When you understand someone, you have no reason to be afraid of them.

  “Isabel?” I asked.

  She was drinking her coffee, all proper and dainty, but when she heard the tone of my voice, she put down the cup and looked at me.

  “Yes?”

  “Isabel, did Myra Sue come to your house earlier today?”

  She frowned. “No. What makes you ask that?”

  Okay, so Myra had not gone running to the St. Jameses’ after all. Since that was the case, then where had she gone? I sincerely doubted she went to the Freebirds’, even if they didn’t live much farther down Rough Creek Road than Ian and Isabel. And there was no one who lived between us and the St. Jameses.

  Hmm.

  “April Grace?” Isabel said, interrupting my ponderings.

  “Yes’m?”

  “Why did you think Myra Sue came to our house this afternoon?”

  Oh boy. What was I supposed to say? I knew, sure as the world, if I told Isabel my sister was acting peculiar, she’d tell Mama and Grandma, and they’d tell Daddy, and Ian would overhear, and maybe the Freebirds, too, if they were anywhere near, and then there’d be a whole lot of drama and carrying-on over something that was probably nothing, and then Myra would be so ticked off at me she’d probably blab about my chocolates and my coat and that stupid, dumb math test, which I never should have told her about in the first place because she has a big mouth sometimes.

  Maybe Myra was back to doing all that awful mess of exercises she did last summer. She’d ended up being sick because she’d starved herself and exercised herself until she was the size of a skeleton because Isabel and her own thinness had not had a positive influence. But if Myra was doing that and she’d told Isabel, I’m pretty sure Isabel would’ve told Mama and Daddy. She doesn’t want Myra getting all sick again.

  “She’s been all mopey, and I thought she might’ve gone there to pour out her heart and cry on your shoulder ’cause you’re her role model.”

  Isabel shook her head.

  “Myra hasn’t been coming around much lately, but it’s completely understandable, what with darling little Eli here in the house.” She drank the last of her coffee. “I miss her, of course, but if I were her, I certainly wouldn’t be hanging around with old folks when I had a baby brother to play with. And speaking of that . . .” She stood up and smiled. “It’s my turn with that sweet baby. Grace, prepare to relinquish your hold,” she said as she walked out of the room.

  So that was that. Until I had some kind of solid proof that my sister was bein
g a sneak, I figured I’d just keep things to myself.

  That evening, as soon as the men came back from the barn and Temple returned from Mr. Brett’s, all us women had a hot supper on the table for everybody. We had hamburgers and fried potatoes and brown-bean and ham soup with corn bread, and for the sake of Forest and Temple and Isabel, who have peculiar eating habits, there were also baked sweet potatoes and plenty of garden vegetables that had been frozen or home-canned during the harvest season. Ian had learned to eat normal, like the rest of us.

  Right smack-dab in the middle of that meal, the telephone rang, and Daddy got up to answer it.

  “Stay there,” he said to my sister.

  Now, you would’ve thought Myra Sue would have leaped outta her chair like a toad on a hot stove. She twitched and moaned and had the most severely pained expression you can possibly imagine.

  “It’s probably Jennifer or Jessica wondering why I haven’t called them all day!” she said, nearly wringing her hands.

  “Then I’ll tell them you’ll talk to them at school,” Daddy said as he walked out of the room.

  Myra looked so mad, I thought her head was gonna explode right there at the supper table. But I reckon for once in her life she had enough sense not to do something dumb, like scream or kick something. That lower lip like to have sprained itself by sticking out so far.

  Daddy came back to the table, shaking his head.

  “No one there.”

  “They hung up?” Grandma asked.

  “Guess so.”

  “I told you someone called and hung up,” Myra Sue said, all snippy. “And I got punished for it!”

  I guess her brief lapse into good sense was over.

  “Myra Sue,” Mama said, coming into the dining room after putting Eli into his bed, “we believed you when you said someone hung up. You’re being punished for screaming at the telephone and for screaming at us.”

  “You getting prank calls?” Forest asked.

  “Maybe you should call the sheriff, Mike,” Ian urged.

  “Well, we’ll see how it goes,” Daddy told him, casually. “Like I said, could be someone just called the wrong number or changed his mind.”

  “I have something that will ward off all negative energy,” Temple said, bright and happy. “It works wonderfully well. You just pour it around the house and over the threshold and across your driveway . . . I’ll mix some up for you as soon as I get home.”

  If she brought us some of it and if Daddy or Mama let her pour it around, I sure hoped it didn’t stink to high heaven, or look like something one of the cows might’ve regurgitated.

  “That’s kind of you, Temple,” Daddy said, with a nice, friendly smile, “but that won’t be necessary.”

  A silence fell over us just long enough to hear the wind howl like a wounded ghost.

  “Mercy!” Grandma said, shivering. “Listen to that!”

  She didn’t have to tell us. We couldn’t help it. And it was creepy, let me tell you.

  Ian said, “I think we’d better get home before the weather gets worse.”

  Right then the biggest old thunder-boomer you ever heard shook the whole entire house. The telephone rang one short ring, and then every single light went out.

  Just as suddenly as they went out, they came back on.

  “Gracious!” Grandma said. “I hope we don’t lose power completely.”

  The telephone rang again, and I thought ole Myra might come right out of her skin, but she didn’t. I started to hop up and run for it, but Daddy said, “I’ll get it.”

  Well, ever’ last one of us sat still and listened when he picked up that phone out in the hallway.

  “Hello?” He didn’t say anything for a couple of seconds, then, “Hello? Is anyone there?”

  A moment later, he came back into the dining room.

  “I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “The storm might be causing problems with the phone line.”

  Thunder shook the house again, the phone pinged twice— Ping! Ping!—short and sharp just like that, and Daddy frowned. He went right back into the hallway. “Is anyone there?” he said into the phone.

  “I think the storm has knocked out the telephone,” he announced as he came back. “It’s dead as a doornail.”

  “Oh noooo!” Myra Sue moaned like she’d just been informed soap operas had become illegal.

  “Well, there you go, then,” Forest said. “Ice building up on the lines most of the day most likely caused your phone problems, not some prankster.”

  Boy, oh boy, you can’t believe how relieved I was that some robber probably wasn’t planning to carry off our VCR and all my books and stuff.

  “No phone at all?” Myra whined. “But if Jessica or Jenni—”

  “Myra Sue Reilly,” Mama said, “if I hear one more word about you and the telephone, you won’t be using it for a month of Sundays. Do you understand?”

  Boy, oh boy, Myra’s eyes got bigger than two blue dinner plates. I reckon she figured out that she’d finally got on Mama’s last nerve, ’cause she gulped and nodded and said, “Yes’m.” She hushed, and I was exceedingly glad to hear nothing coming from her mouth.

  One thing was for certain: with all that ice coming down outside, there’d be no school tomorrow. But sooner or later, Isabel’s class would begin, and I was gonna be there when it happened.

  Isabel’s Class Gets off to a Rousing Start

  After that ice from that awful ice storm melted, school started up again on Tuesday. On my way to Isabel’s first class, I reminded myself over and over that at least Coach Frizell would not be there.

  The entire sixth-grade class, all fifty-seven of us, filed into that old gym and settled onto the bleachers. We all sat like wriggling worms on fishhooks, waiting for Isabel to show up. Let me tell you, if everybody had not been chattering like a bunch of monkeys in the jungle, we’d probably have heard her before we saw her, because she came marching across the polished oak gym floor in those tall, skinny high heels.

  “Why is she dressed like that?” Melissa said as we watched the woman approach.

  “I dunno. She always dresses that way.”

  “April Grace, she looks scary.”

  Now, I will admit, Isabel is scary-looking, what with her slicked-back hair, long, thin nose, and bony body. But she is not actually a scary person.

  “You were there while she directed the Christmas program,” I said hurriedly, because by then Isabel was standing in front of the class. “She didn’t bite then, and she doesn’t bite now.”

  Isabel stood there, straight and narrow as a crowbar, her lips pulled in tightly, her eyes traveling over the entire group.

  Now, my own personal self, I could see plain as day that she was nervous, but I don’t think anyone else could tell. They did not know her like I did, and nerves on Isabel St. James do not show up like they do on normal people. In fact, if goose bumps were people, they’d have Isabels on their skin when they got spooked.

  Here’s the thing: Isabel was gonna have to teach dancing to a bunch of rowdy kids who didn’t know a dance step from a soccer kick. All this dance stuff was new to us.

  “May I have your attention?” she said more politely than you might have expected. But she didn’t say it real loud, and most of the kids just kept yakking.

  I could see a coach’s whistle in her hand and figured she’d blow it to kingdom come when she realized what a good attention-getter it was. I should’ve known better, ’cause I remembered how she took over directing our church play. Instead of tooting that whistle, she pulled herself even stiffer and taller.

  “People!” she said, not so politely. Her voice seemed to come from all corners of that gym.

  Wow! She sure knew her business about voice projection. All that yakety-yak dried up like a snow cone in the desert, and everyone gawked at her. In a second, some of the boys snickered, and she pinned her killer gaze right smack-dab on them.

  They shut their traps.

  “All ri
ght, people,” she said, and she didn’t even have to holler. “I have handouts.” She pointed to two girls in the front row. “These young women will pass them out. You absolutely must put these handouts in a binder and must not lose them. There will be tests.”

  She stopped speaking and let this sink in. We’d never had tests in PE before. She continued with her lecture.

  “We will be discussing dance history and theory before you learn any actual dance.” She paused to rake that cold gaze over everyone again. “You will not be learning clodhopping, line dancing, break dancing, disco, the moonwalk, or any other so-called dance that is nothing more than the undignified gyrations of hicks and other lowlifes.”

  I squirmed, wanting to gallop down off the bleachers to the place where she stood and clamp my hand over her mouth. I could only pray she’d remember some of the talks we’d had about her saying things like this.

  Mutterings ran through the class like hot wind. Some of the kids glared at me, just because they knew that I knew Isabel personally.

  “Quiet!” Isabel said. “You will be learning the basics of ballet, ballroom, and some of the Latin steps. Just because we live in Arkansas, that’s no reason you should wallow in ignorance and gracelessness.”

  “Oh, Isabel, stop talking!” I screamed in my head. She had just taken one huge, gigantic, enormous step backward.

  One thing’s for sure, I would never in a hundred million years tell any of my classmates that this whole situation of her being our teacher had been my suggestion last summer. Boy, oh boy, sometimes I just needed to keep my brilliant ideas to myself.

  By the way, those handouts must’ve weighed three hundred pounds, and Isabel, as she launched into the very first section that morning, did not so much as glance at her notes. She knew her stuff, and from all appearances, she was gonna make sure we knew all of it before the end of the semester.