Four Octobers Read online

  But Miss Henry had him—“by the short and curlies,” as Uncle Pete used to say. All it would take was one little phone call, and he’d be hung out to dry. No Halloween for him. Crazy lady or not, he knew his parents would side with Miss Henry over him any day. It was a simple fact of life that Andy accepted without question. When it came down to who to believe, adults always sided with other adults over the word of a kid.

  Lost in thought, Andy snapped back to reality when his mother walked over to the table and slid the plate in front of him. Gray threads of steam rose from the eggs and bacon. A tiny stream of jelly juice ran from his piece of toast onto his plate, staining the edges of the eggs.

  “Thanks, Mom,” Andy said mechanically as he held his fork in his fist and, bending down, started to dig in.

  “How many times do I have to tell you? Don’t eat like a peasant,” his mother said sharply. “You’re holding your fork like a hammer.”

  “Sorry,” Andy mumbled as he shifted his grip on the fork and sat up a bit straighter in his chair.

  His mother was always correcting him on things like this, but he could never understand what was so bad about the way he held his fork. As long as he got his food into his mouth and didn’t spill any onto his lap, he figured he was doing all right. His mother said it had something to do with “polite society,” whatever the heck that was.

  But Andy had bigger problems today.

  It wouldn’t be all that hard to get away from the house. He’d raked the front yard yesterday, and the rest of his chores were done except for finishing stacking the firewood, which he planned to do on Monday after school, so he could get away from the house this morning, no problem.

  But what was he going to tell Jimmy?

  How was he going to explain why they couldn’t hang out like they’d planned without telling him what he had to do today?

  The only thing Andy could think of was to make plans to meet at the quarry at the same time he was going to go to Miss Henry’s and then not show up. That would buy him some time because Jimmy would no doubt wait around for a while before finally giving up. Maybe some other of their friends would show up, and Jimmy would forget all about him, at least for today. Andy could always fudge an excuse later. He would have to because there was one thing he knew was deadly serious—if he didn’t show up at Miss Henry’s this morning, she would call his parents. Then he would be in a lot more trouble.

  Andy tossed all of this about in his mind as he ate his breakfast with his mother standing nearby, glancing at him every now and then as she washed the morning dishes. His fork clinked on the plate as he pushed the last few shreds of egg onto his fork with his thumb.

  “Use your toast for that,” his mother said. The suddenness of her voice caught him by surprise.

  “What do I do if I finish my toast first?”

  “You don’t finish your toast first,” his mother said. “A gentleman never touches his food with his fingers.”

  “Even if it’s corn on the cob?”

  His mother sighed with exasperation and, half-smiling, rolled her eyes ceiling-ward as she shook her head. “There are always exceptions,” she said softly, “but you must know the rules before you break them.”

  “I know. I know,” Andy said. He was hoping that joking with her would lighten his mood.

  But it didn’t.

  He felt like he was under a sentence of execution as he got up from the table with his empty plate and juice glass in hand, and carried them to the sink.

  “Thanks, Mom. That was great,” he said as he slipped the plate into the soapy water. His mother’s arms were cuffed with suds that looked like tattered lace halfway to her elbows. He wheeled around to leave, thinking that he’d use the phone in the hallway to call Jimmy, but his mother’s voice brought him up short.

  “Oh. Make sure you’re home in time for lunch,” she said.

  A hard lump suddenly formed in Andy’s throat, and it wouldn’t go down, no matter how hard he swallowed.

  “What for?” he finally dared to ask, hearing how unnaturally high his voice sounded.

  His mother shook her head and shrugged.

  “Your father left early this morning, but he said to make sure you were home this afternoon. That’s all I know.”

  She turned away and started washing his plate. The dishrag made a squeaky noise that hit his ears like hot pinpricks. Andy was thankful that his mother wasn’t looking at him because he knew she would have seen his panic in the sudden flush on his face.

  “All he said was to make sure you were here around noon.”

  ****

  “You call this first thing in the morning?”

  Miss Henry stood just inside her screen door while Andy, shivering from the morning chill at the foot of the steps, looked up at her looming silhouette. Her shoulders were hunched, and she looked rather frail, but the strength of her voice belied the apparent softness of her silhouette. It was as if the static charge of a miniature thunderstorm was gathering around her. Andy bounced nervously up and down on the toes of his sneakers, thinking it might be easier to turn and run away from her, and face the consequences of that telephone call home.

  “I—uh, I had some chores to do at home first,” he said, unable to ignore the cracking sound his voice made.

  “Oh, I’ll bet… I’ll just bet,” Miss Henry said, clicking her tongue as she shook her head.

  Andy couldn’t miss the sarcasm. He looked down at the ground, not sure what he should do next. If Miss Henry expected him to come inside her house, he wasn’t going to presume by opening the door. He was willing to wait out here until she invited him in. This was probably one of those times when he needed to watch his manners, like his mother was always telling him.

  “Well don’t just stand there with your face hanging out,” Miss Henry snapped. “Get on in here.”

  She stepped to one side and pushed the screen door open. The twanging sound the rusty spring made as it stretched to its limit made Andy’s teeth ache. After casting a wary glance over his shoulder—and finding he couldn’t stop thinking this was some kind of trap, and the crazy old lady was going to kill him as soon as he was inside—he placed his foot on the lowest step. The paint was peeling off in large, cream-colored flakes, and the board sagged with a spongy groan as he put his full weight onto it.

  Feeling as though the entire town were watching him from behind, he mounted the steps slowly, like a man walking to the gallows. When he was close to the door, he couldn’t help but inhale, almost choking on the mixture of smells that wafted from the house on the light morning breeze. It was a curious blend of aromas. Andy caught hints of boiled cabbage, old rope, turpentine, traces of flowery perfume, and other, less definable smells. It wasn’t unpleasant, really, but he was so nervous his stomach did a quick flip-flop anyway.

  Bracing the door open with his right hand, Andy eased past Miss Henry. Her body radiated heat the way a cow or horse in a stall does. He found himself in a small, dimly-lit entryway with another door at the opposite end leading to the backyard. The screens on both doors were bagged out and clotted with spider webs, dust, and dead leaves. Leaning against the outer wall of exposed two-by-fours was an array of rusted garden tools along with a pair of muddy hip boots, a coil of faded, lime-green garden hose, and an assortment of shopping bags overflowing with empty cans, food wrappers, and milk cartons. House flies buzzed in tight spirals above the trash, but Andy pretended not to notice as he followed Miss Henry through another door and into the kitchen.

  Here, the smells were much stronger, and Andy wrinkled his nose when he caught a whiff of burned meat. Once again, he was filled with the irrational thought that this crazy old woman was planning to kill him… kill him and cook him and eat him! A small part of him wished he had told someone, either his mother or Jimmy, where he would be today, just so the police would know where to look if he, in fact, disappeared.

  Everything in the kitchen was coated with a yellow film of age and dust. The refrigerator, st
ove, and cupboards were chipped and splattered with dirt and grease. Several of the linoleum floor tiles were curled up and thick with age-blackened wax. Even with sunlight pouring through the curtained window above the sink, the room was dark and musty. It seemed almost like a memory of a kitchen than a real place.

  “So where d’you wanna start?” Miss Henry asked after a moment of silence.

  Andy looked at her and shrugged. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to speak, but he licked his lips and said, “What do you want me to do?”

  He was trying hard not to gawk at her, but he couldn’t believe that he was actually standing face to face with Old Lady Henry. He sucked in a shallow breath, afraid to breathe the air too deeply, taking a moment to study her.

  Up close, she didn’t appear anywhere near as old as he had imagined. Until now, he had never caught a good look at her. She had never been more than a vague silhouette in the window. Now, he was surprised to realize how short she was, and that she didn’t appear to be much—if any—older than his mother. Her thick, graying hair was tied up in a loose bun on the back of her head. Her skin was pale, but not the tangle of wrinkles and hairy warts he had imagined. Her thin lips were so bloodless they appeared almost gray. When she smiled, he caught a glimpse of her wide, surprisingly white teeth.

  All the better to eat you with, my dear.

  The words popped into his mind before he could stop them, but he quickly dismissed them. Up close, Old Lady Henry didn’t seem anywhere near as dangerous or scary as he and his friends had made her out to be. In fact, she appeared quite harmless, and there was a distant look in her eyes—not a twinkle, really, but a deeply buried warmth—that put Andy at ease, at least a little bit.

  “Lawn needs some attention, I suppose,” Miss Henry said, “and I’d like you to clean out the gutters. This time of year, with the leaves falling, it doesn’t take long for them to clog up. There’s a ladder out in the shed you can use.”

  “Is that all?” Andy asked, surprising himself by his sudden boldness.

  As nervous as he was, he realized that he had entered a new level of interaction with the adult world. He was talking with an adult and standing up for himself without either of his parents around.

  “I’ll decide when you’ll be done,” Miss Henry snapped, “but for now, why don’t you get the lawn mower out of the shed and get to work?”

  She started for the back door. Keeping a safe distance, Andy followed her out to the backyard. At the far end of the yard, beside an overgrown garden, stood an old work shed with sun-bleached siding and a worn-out tarpaper roof. A rusted lock hung from the door hasp, but Miss Henry took a small key from the pocket of her faded house dress, slipped it into the slot, and turned it. The door swung open with a chattering creak, and she stepped to one side to allow Andy to enter first.

  His heart sank when he saw the lawn mower. It was one of those old-fashioned push kinds, not a power mower. The blades were rusty and as dull as butter knives. They were clogged with a tangle of cobwebs and dried grass, and Andy thought he’d be lucky if they cut even the thinnest grass, much less the weed-choked mess that was her yard.

  “Here,” Miss Henry said, pushing past him and trying to wrestle the mower over to the door. It was obviously too much for her, and after a moment, she stepped back to let Andy do it.

  “Start out front,” she said, squinting in the morning sunlight as Andy muscled the mower around and rolled it down the short ramp to the ground. The blades turned, making a rapid click-click sound. Andy nodded without another word, but inside he was wishing desperately that he could disappear. Word would spread fast if any of his friends saw him working in Miss Henry’s yard. Some of them might even gather and make fun of him. Once again he wondered if it wouldn’t just be easier to suffer the consequences of bailing out on her.

  But Halloween was tonight, and Andy wasn’t going to risk missing it. More importantly, he’d given his word that he would work for her, and a man never went back on his word. If he said he was going to do something, he did it. After kneeling down and brushing as much of the debris as he could out of the blades and wheels, Andy pushed the mower around to the front yard and got to work.

  It was a chilly morning, but the sun and the work quickly warmed on him as he paced back and forth, pushing the unyielding mower. It wasn’t long before the click-click sound set his teeth on edge. He started mowing down by the road, hoping to be done with it as quickly as possible so he could get around to the backyard where his friends would be less likely to see him if they happened by.

  No matter how much he hurried, though, his progress wasn’t as fast as he would have liked. The rusty mower blades kept getting clogged with grass and dead leaves or jammed on their own. He muttered curses under his breath as he yanked the mower back and then rammed it forward at least a dozen times on each pass across the small front yard.

  As he worked, Andy couldn’t stop wondering what Jimmy was up to.

  Was he waiting out at Nickerson’s, or had he given up and left by now?

  It was too cold to go swimming today, but maybe he was still hoping Andy would show up so they could shoot their BB guns or see if anyone wanted to play football. He considered asking Miss Henry if she had some oil or grease so he could lubricate the mower’s wheels and blades, but he decided just to keep at it and get the job done. Besides, he had to be home by noon to find out what his father wanted.

  That was something else he didn’t want to think about for very long.

  As he trudged back and forth with the mower, Andy kept staring at the ground and wishing he could escape from the crazy old lady. A few times he sensed her presence in the living room window, watching him as he worked out front, and his resentment for the way she was manipulating him grew all the stronger. Every now and then he would sneak a glance up at the window and catch sight of her dark silhouette behind the curtain, but he was never sure if it really was her or just an illusion behind—or inside—the glass.

  Try as he might to dislike Old Lady Henry and continue to regard her as nothing more than the crazy old woman who harangued kids from her window, Andy didn’t think she was all that bad. He felt even a touch of sympathy for her. She certainly wasn’t the demon all the kids made her out to be, and Andy realized that she was just a lonely, old woman. She had probably lived her entire life in the same house, taking out her anger and frustration on the world or, at least, on any kids who happened by.

  That didn’t make her dangerous.

  She deserved pity, not fear.

  The longer he worked, the more Andy threw himself into helping Miss Henry. He genuinely felt good about what he was doing. She was, after all, giving him a big break by not telling his folks about what he had done. This was the least he could do. Besides, she had said something about paying him for his work, so in the end, he might come out ahead.

  It took Andy a little more than an hour to finish the front and side lawn. By the time he wheeled the cranky old lawn mower out to the backyard, he was dripping with sweat. The backyard—there wasn’t enough grass left for it to be called an actual lawn—angled down about fifty feet and stopped at a fringe of woods. The overgrown garden took up a fair portion of the yard. Dying stalks of witchgrass and golden rod waved in the breeze. Andy didn’t think it would take nearly as long out back as it had out front unless Miss Henry expected him to cut all the weeds and grass that choked the garden. If he kept at it, he was confident he could be finished by noon unless she insisted that he clean out the gutters today, too, like she’d mentioned.

  As he completed the first pass along the perimeter of the backyard, Miss Henry appeared on the back steps.

  “Care to take a short break?” she called out.

  Her voice was soft and airy, almost friendly sounding. Andy wondered if it had lost its threatening tone simply because she was outside. In the bright light of day, she looked so much smaller, hardly any threat at all. He wondered if, in some strange way, she had actually started to like him.


  “I made some lemonade for you,” she said as Andy left the mower where it was and walked over to her. The tufts of long grass and clumps of dead leaves crunched under his sneakers, making him wonder why she even bothered with the backyard. Why not just leave it like this until next spring? He might even offer to come back then and work for her.

  “Umm. I mean—yes, ma’am. That’d be nice,” Andy said, then quickly added, “Thank you,” before walking up the short flight of steps to the small landing and back door. He was careful to wipe his feet on the worn straw doormat before following her into the musty coolness of her house.

  The instant he was out of the direct sunlight, a shiver skittered up his back like unseen fingers. His eyes took a moment to adjust to the dim lighting. He hesitated, unsure what to say or do as Miss Henry took a chipped wooden spatula from a cabinet drawer and gave the jug of lemonade a quick stir. She smiled at him as she filled a tall glass. Ice cubes clicked like tumbling dice as she poured.

  “Aren’t you having any?” Andy asked, smiling at her as she handed him the glass. Moisture beaded on the sides, making his grip slippery.

  “I’m all set for now,” Miss Henry replied.

  When Andy raised the glass to his mouth, he wondered momentarily if maybe—just maybe—she might be trying to poison him. He hesitated with the glass almost to his lips, but only for a moment before he tipped his head back and took several long, noisy gulps. The sour, lemony taste exploded on his tongue before it gushed down his throat. The coldness made him shiver, but it felt good.

  “My, my, such manners,” Miss Henry said.

  Andy caught the glint in her eyes as she watched him. Still, he started taking smaller sips, resisting the urge to wipe his lips with the back of his hand when he was done.

  “You’re doing a good job out there,” Miss Henry said, nodding.

  As she spoke, she walked slowly over to the kitchen table, pulled out a chair, and sat down. Andy could tell that this was her usual seat because the red and white checkered pattern of the oilcloth tablecloth was worn and faded where she habitually rested her elbows. In the center of the table was an assortment of small, brown bottles. Each of them had a small, typed label from Tuck’s Pharmacy and contained an assortment of different sized and colored pills.