Chapter 3
1166 Words
Billy goes up the passthrough to his house to get cleaned up. Granny and Willa finish preparing supper. I set the table.
We"re just getting ready to pass the food when headlights flash through the kitchen window, and a horn blares.
Ahooga.
AhoogaBilly guffaws.
Willa says, "Uncle Abe?"
Granny snorts, "That troublesome old man again."
What the crackers is going on?
What the crackers is going on?"Might as well set out another plate, Deidra Ann," Granny tells me.
I"m setting out silverware when there"s a knock at the kitchen door.
Billy opens it and in walks the strangest-looking little man that I"d ever seen. He tootles into the kitchen on skinny, bowed legs. His chest is as round as a barrel and partially hidden by a long gray beard.
"Good to see ya again, Uncle Abe," Billy tells him.
"Likewise, Billy."
"Might as well take a seat at the table, seeing your timing about a home-cooked meal hasn"t changed," Granny says, pointing to the empty chair.
"Don"t mind if I do, seeing what"s on this here table is throwing off a powerful good aroma."
He pulls in a deep nose full of air, pulls out the chair, and then spies me.
"Well, don"t it beat all. You must be Rachel"s Sprout. What they call you?"
"Deidra Ann."
He sweeps the flat cap off his head and gives a little bow. "I be Abbott Macron Bastien. You can call me Uncle Abe, most everyone does." He squints and looks me over. "Don"t much take after your ma, I see. Suspect you favor—"
Granny interrupts. "Sit yourself down, Abe, "fore the stew gets cold."
She aims her eyeballs at me. "And close your mouth, Deidra Ann. If"n it was summer, you"d be catching flies."
My brain is pinging all around, and I can barely breathe. Did Uncle Abe almost say my daddy"s name? That must mean he knows who my father is.
I have green eyes and curly red hair that frizzes up when I get excited. It"s different than the dark hair and blue eyes like the rest of my kin. Are those the parts I got from my daddy? Ping, Ping, go my thoughts like the silver ball in the pinball machine down at the hardware store.
Ping, PingWhile Uncle Abe eats—slurps, actually—I sneak glances at him. He"s shorter than me and under the cap with its thin brim is a bald head. He has to hold back his bushy beard when he lifts the soup spoon so as not to get drips in it.
Suspenders hold up his pants. A flannel shirt worn to near transparency at the elbows covers his round chest. He is old, maybe older than Granny, but his eyes are bright. They sparkle with some amusement it seems only he knows.
After dinner is done, Willa brings out the pie she made from the orchard apples we gathered and dried last fall.
He hoots. "Now, this be a treat," Uncle Abe says when Willa sets the pie and plates on the table.
"What brings you here?" Granny asks Abe when, at last, we push back from the table.
"Got a message bad news was coming to these here parts."
It had been just this afternoon when the doom cloud weighed me down, and Uncle Billy told us the sawmill had been sold. Uncle Abe appeared soon after. He must live nearby, but why have I never met him?
"You live "round here?" I ask.
"I was in Fiji."
I puzzle on that for a while.
"Uncle Billy only learned the mill was sold today. Where"s Fiji?"
"It be islands across the sea from New Zealand."
How did he…? This is getting weirder and weirder.
How did he…? This is getting weirder and weirder."Dolphin messenger," he answers like I had asked out loud. "That"s the best way to get news out there, although those rascals like making it difficult to get it outta them."
My head is spinning. I look around at the others thinking this is some big joke, but they look all serious-like.
"It was coming on for a while, then?" Billy asks.
"It was. Say, fork me up another slice of that pie, will ya."
Granny gives him the squint eye, but she scoops up a wedge and drops it onto Uncle Abe"s plate.
He goes right on talking. "Gotta say, the weather was a dang sight warmer there on the island. Especially around that volcano that we had to hush."
He looks around at everyone sitting at the table and then focuses on me.
"Wouldn"t do to have that mountain start spewing lava all over the village."
Any minute now, Granny, Uncle Billy, and Aunt Willa are gonna start laughing, me being the butt-end of some joke.
No one does. No one even grins, and that includes Billy, who always gets too pent up to keep a secret off his face.
"Well, now. I suppose we"d better get after it," Uncle Abe declares after he finishes his pie.
We make quick work of the dishes. Abe and Billy are talking in the living room parlor, and Abe has lit a pipe. The scent of burning tobacco drifts toward us, not an unpleasant smell.
"Heard you got a taste of them mysteries in the woods last summer," Abe tells me after we"re all settled around the warmth of the fireplace.
"A schoolmate got lost," I tell him.
"Not a friend?"
More like a bully who enjoyed rousting me, but how does he know that?
"Tell me what you got up to in there."
I look at Granny, seeing this is not something we talk about outside of the family. She nods for me to go ahead. I tell Uncle Abe about looking for Jenny and finding Ruff, the forest guardian dog. I describe the mermaid people in the springs and the invisible bridge over the canyon that we crossed. I even tell him about snake man, only stuttering a little when I tell this part.
"Hmmm," he says when I"ve finished. He sucks on the pipe and blows out smoke rings that rise to the ceiling. "That Bernardo still up to mischief then," he says to no one in particular.
"Bernardo?" I squeak.
"That dang shape-shifting reptile. He"s always been slimy, sneaking around, scaring folks and all. I"m not surprised he"s still up to it." He goes on. "Bernardo is mostly harmless unless you"re gullible enough to fall under his charms."
I thought back to the last time I saw the snake man. By then, I was angry and frustrated with him always lurking around. I had told him to leave Jenny and me alone, and he had. At the time, I didn"t think much about it, but Uncle Abe had put it in a different light.
"You came because of the sawmill, then," Billy asks.
"That and this one," he said, pointing the pipe at me.
- Writer
