Fly Like a Bird

CHAPTER 5: EAVESDROPPING ISN’T POLITE

Chapter 5EAVESDROPPING ISN’T POLITE

In Iowa, the seasons are distinct and certain. Summer brings a humid, sweet-smelling heat. Fall carries a cool misty breath of frost. Winter blows cold and blustery. Spring grows a windy fresh rebirth. Each season creates its own beauty in its own time. But as soon as one season arrives, the earth yearns for change and a new season emerges.

Ivy grew up with that same intense yearning for change.

The air hung heavy on that hot summer day in 1966. Rivers of sweat left eight-year-old Ivy’s sleeveless white shirt and blue shorts damp and sticky. She couldn’t wait for fall. She parked her bike in the metal rack outside the library. She’d come to see if her best friend, Nick Jerome, was hanging out at his father’s law office on Main Street.

Nick’s mother, Ellen, who was thirty-three years old but looked much older, had suffered from what Grandma told Ivy was a nervous breakdown. She kept mainly to herself while her husband Peter and son Nick took care of her. She refused to talk to anyone else. But she was often seen out walking the streets of Coffey alone, sometimes at night. Ivy and everyone else in town got used to her adventures on foot and began calling them “Ellen’s walkabouts.”

Ivy would often see her walking by 4120 in her layered, mismatched clothes and unkempt hair. She looked extremely lonely sometimes, yet other times she seemed determined and bold like a lone explorer on an important mission. Nick seldom mentioned her except to say he needed to go home to check on her.

She had spoken to Ellen late one summer night when Ivy was in her front yard, catching fireflies in a mason jar. The fogger, a tractor that sprayed huge billows of bug spray throughout the town to get rid of mosquitoes and other insects, headed down Meadowlark Lane.

Ivy watched Ellen stride onto Meadowlark Lane in the path of the oncoming fogger, but what Ellen didn’t see was a huge poisonous timber rattlesnake, coiled up and enjoying the warmth of the road.

To avoid breathing the toxic fumes, Grandma always made Ivy run into the house and shut the windows and doors when the fogger came. But that night, frightened for Ellen, Ivy ignored the fogger and ran toward Nick’s mother, pointing and yelling, “Snake!” The loud fogger was nearly upon them and Ellen didn’t hear.

Ivy grabbed a stick. “Snake!” she yelled again. She hit the snake until it slithered away just as the fogger arrived and Ellen looked up. When the smoke cleared, Nick’s mother was gone but saved from the snake. Ivy could see her continuing her walkabout down the road. Ellen turned and waved her thank you. Ivy waved back. Then Ellen had continued her solitary exploration into the night like a ghostly apparition.

On that hot summer’s day, on her way to find Nick Jerome, Ivy saw the usually homebound Patty Smith shuffle down the sidewalk toward the Hy-Vee grocery store. She stared at her friend, who was wearing a pink nightgown beneath a long stretched-out sweater in the thick summer heat. What was Patty doing out of her house?

Before Ivy could call to her, she heard someone yell. Weston Thrasher, the mayor’s son, was leaning against the dime store wall. “Fatty Patty, her big butt’s sore, ‘cause she can’t get through the bathroom door.”

Ivy flushed with embarrassment for her. The heartbroken Patty turned and glanced at the young taunter for a moment before lumbering on alone. Ivy dashed after her and threw her arms around the women’s soft, sweaty middle. She buried her face in Patty’s old sweater, which smelled faintly of Doritos and her dog Buckshot.

“Weston’s mean and hateful to everyone,” Ivy said.

Patty bent down and cupped Ivy’s freckled face in her hands. “Don’t worry about Weston Thrasher. I don’t care if his father is the mayor. That boy is nothing but a backwoods hooligan.”

Ivy glanced over at the thirteen-year-old boy across the street. “My grandma says Weston’s soul left with his mother when she died.”

“Well, in that case, I’m sure we’ve got an extra soul floating around our place he could use.”

Ivy giggled. “What are you doing in town?”

“Reuben’s in the fields and I was out of Doritos.” She breathed heavily. “Oh my, I’m not used to walking. I need to keep going. Goodbye, dear. Stay away from those Thrashers, if you can.”

Patty tottered on toward the store to buy more chips to fill her cupboards and her empty heart. Alone on the street, Ivy spied on Weston out of the corner of her eye. Patty Smith wasn’t the only person Weston tormented but most people in Coffey overlooked the boy’s cruelty because his father was the mayor and the banker, and because of the tragic circumstances surrounding his mother’s death.

Ivy had overheard the story from Edna Jean the librarian when she was talking to Bertha at the library. One chilly winter day about a week after Ivy’s parents’ car accident, Conrad had reported that his much younger wife, Mildred, was missing after unexplainably being gone for several days. Sheriff Carter and his two deputies formed search parties and volunteers from town combed the woods at Conrad’s farm and nearby Hawks Bluff as well as Reuben and Luther’s fields. But they found no trace of Mildred.

A week later, a few days before Christmas, Conrad found something floating under the old swimmer’s dock in the middle of the placid lake behind his house. It was his beloved wife, drowned but well preserved by the frigid water.

George Kelsey, the county coroner and town doctor, examined the body. He found that Mildred Thrasher had drowned in the lake. Locals speculated that the slight rocking motion of the floating dock kept the ice from forming in that part of the pond, leading to the discovery of her body. Otherwise, they might not have found her until spring. But how exactly she came to be floating in the peaceful lake remained a mystery that was often whispered about out of earshot of the Thrashers.

The Baker Funeral Home held Mildred’s service and when the casket closed, so did Sheriff Carter’s investigation. After asking only a few questions, he left his friend Conrad alone with his grief. Without any witnesses, nothing more could be done.

Conrad raised his son, Weston, without much guidance in the big farmhouse by the lake that took his wife, and Weston soon ran wild.

Today, Ivy wanted to avoid Weston, so, she took the long way. She crossed the street and headed down the alley between the dime store and the bank to see if Nick was at his father’s law office.

Weston followed her, chanting in a sing-song voice. “Here comes Poison Ivy. Don’t let her touch you. She poisoned her parents, and they died.”

Weston scratched imaginary itches all over himself and fell over, clutching his throat. He lay on his back in the alley, writhing desperately as his hands pawed the air.

Ivy kept walking. “Weston, you’re weird. You know that?”

“That’s better than being poison.” He ran ahead of her and blocked her way down the gravel alley. “Poison Ivy.”

Ivy narrowed her dark blue eyes and tried to push past him. “Get out of my way. You’re nothing but a backwoods hooligan.”

Weston grabbed Ivy and pinned her arms behind her back. He kicked her leg and she fell to the ground, scraping her knee on the gravel. “My dad says you’re just like your mother. Worthless.”

Weston triumphantly spat on the ground next to where Ivy was sprawled. Then he darted across Main Street and disappeared around the corner of the Farmer’s Co-op. Ivy got up and tucked her tangled hair behind her ears. She knew where he was going. Behind the Farmer’s Co-op towered the huge grain silos where the corn was stored after it was weighed. Ivy and her friends often played “king of the mountain” in the massive piles of corn, despite the danger of sinking deep in the avalanche of dusty grain. Ivy had learned to climb the shifting hill of corn by stretching her limbs out wide like a spider. This way, she could safely maneuver her way up the golden corn mound.

She knew Weston would hide in the silos, sneaking in through the grain bin door because it wasn’t full of corn since the harvest hadn’t started. She clenched her fists and chased him across the street. When she reached the library, she stopped. Weston disappeared around the corner of the Farmer’s Co-op office. He wasn’t worth the trouble. Besides, her scraped knee hurt.

Ivy brushed away the gravel stuck to her elbow. Her leg hurt where Weston kicked her. She sat down on the bench outside the Coffey Shop and looked at her scraped knee. When she glanced up, she noticed Conrad Thrasher, Weston’s father, standing under the big bank clock on the corner, watching her. He threw down his cigarette and ground it out with his boot. Conrad was the banker in town that approved loans for cars and houses. Without much oversight, he never approved loans for the black people on Mulberry Street to purchase a home beyond the railroad tracks.

Weston had called her mother worthless. How dare he? Luther said she was friends with Weston’s mother.

The door to the Coffey Shop opened, and Nick and his father, Peter Jerome, came out. She limped over to them.

“Hi Ivy. You okay?” Peter asked.

“Just scraped my knee but it’s okay.”

Peter had become a good friend to Ivy’s grandma after he settled some legal matters when Ivy’s Grandpa Sam died. Since then, Peter’s investment advice had allowed Grandma to live in relative comfort.

“Well, you kids have fun,” Peter said as he hurried across the town square and up the steps of his law office.

The county courthouse, the centerpiece of Coffey, was located in the town square. It held the sheriff’s office, the jail, and the county offices. Many of Coffey’s businesses were also located in the square around the courthouse, including the dime store, a vacant beauty shop, the bank, the post office, the library, the Hy-Vee grocery store, the Coffey Shop, and Peter Jerome’s law office.

Ivy and Nick followed Nick’s father to his building.

“What do you want to do today?” Ivy asked.

They leaned against the two-story brick building and threw pebbles onto the Main Street. “Let’s ride out to Hawks Bluff,” Ivy suggested.

The two eight-year-olds climbed up the steep flight of wooden stairs to the law office. The door was open. Before they reached the top of the stairs, they could hear Peter’s secretary, Uncle Walter’s nosey neighbor, Bertha Tuttle, talking on the phone at her desk.

“I wouldn’t tell him to his face, but I hate those ugly things, whatever they are, on his lawn. They bring down the value of the mobile home park—too tacky.” Her tongue clicked the roof of her mouth. “But he’s just as proud as punch of them.” She paused. “I know. Walter lets Tommy and his friends go in and out of that trailer at all hours of the night. I tell you, it just isn’t proper.”

Ivy stopped on the stairs unseen and held up her arm to stop Nick from going any further. She put her finger to her mouth and they backed up against the stairwell. They quickly peered around the corner and watched Bertha through the open door. Her makeup made her look a little like a jack-in-the-box clown. Her bright red lipstick was smeared a little at the corners, her powder ended abruptly at her fleshy chin, and her cheekbones were highlighted with two round, red circles.

Ivy swept her bangs off her sweaty forehead. “Is she talking about Uncle Walter?”

Nick nodded and put his fingers to his lips.

Bertha’s voice boomed down the stairwell. “It’s not gossip, mind you, Edna Jean. I saw it with my own eyes.”

Ivy and Nick sat down on the wooden stairs as Bertha droned on about other offending Coffey social crimes as Ivy wiped the sweat off her neck.

“Why would she want to spy on Uncle Walter?”

“My dad says she’s lonely. She goes to all the funerals in town whether she was friends with the dead people or not.”

Nick ran his hand across his bristly butch haircut. Porcupine hair. The only barber in town had moved away years ago. So, Nick’s father used his clippers to cut Nick’s hair, which left only a little stubble of light brown hair on the top of Nick’s head.

Ivy tenderly touched her scraped knee and then looked at her finger to see if there was any blood. “How does she know who’s dead?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she reads the stories in the paper.”

“I wonder if she went to my mom’s and dad’s funerals?”

“Probably.”

Ivy and Nick stood up and watched Bertha from the top step. Bertha finger-fluffed her hair, which was piled high on top of her head like a beehive. The brassy red color was the result of a bad do-it-yourself dye job. The barber, Edna Jean’s boyfriend, had left town with the local beautician to find a town that would appreciate their skills. Bertha had to make do. So did Edna.

The two kids slipped past Bertha’s desk. She was too busy talking to pay any attention to them. “Tommy’s never been the same since his brother’s crash. No-account woman.” Bertha clicked her tongue and tapped her bright red fingernails on her desk.

Ivy froze and grabbed Nick’s arm. “What did she say? She’s talking about Aunt Hattie.”

Bertha heard her and turned, finally noticing Ivy over the top of her cat-eye glasses. “Eavesdropping isn’t polite.” She shook her finger. “No one likes a snoop.”

Ivy walked over to Bertha’s desk. “Mrs. Tuttle, did you go to my parents’ funerals?”

Bertha cupped her hand on the phone’s mouthpiece. “Edna Jean, I’ll have to get back to you.” She hung up the phone and sniffed. “Well, yes, I did go to your father’s funeral. Lovely spread of food. But as I remember it, your uncles got into a ridiculous squabble over some silly turkey sandwich.”

“It was pastrami.”

Peter appeared at the door of his office, just past Bertha’s desk. He tugged at his white starched cuffs, fiddled with his red bow tie, and cleared his throat.

“So, who was the no-account woman?” asked Ivy curiously.

Bertha adjusted her glasses before leaning forward. Nick’s father took a few steps toward them and tapped Bertha’s desk, interrupting her.

“Bertha, shouldn’t you be getting back to work?”

Bertha, her nose high in the air, clicked her tongue and turned back to the typewriter.

Peter rubbed Nick’s bristly head. “What are you guys going to do today?”

“Can we ride our bikes out to Hawks Bluff Park?” Nick asked.

“Sure. Just be careful.”

They headed out of the office, passing Bertha’s desk again. At the top of the stairs, Ivy turned back. “How’s your nose, Mrs. Tuttle?”

“My nose?” Bertha pushed up her blue cat-eye glasses and rubbed her large round nose. “There’s nothing wrong with my nose.”

“I heard it was stuck to your trailer window.”

“Well, I never!” Bertha blushed the color of the ruby rouge circles on her cheeks. She tapped her brown chunky sensible shoes beneath her desk. Peter quickly stepped back into his office, hiding his smile.

Ivy and Nick scampered down the steps to the street. Ivy’s pink rubber flip flops slapped the heels of her bare feet, making a loud clicking sound. When the heavy door shut behind them, Ivy and Nick burst into uncontrollable laughter.

The robin sitting on the library flagpole watched them, c*****g his head back and forth. Nick leaned against the old brick building, his brown eyes sparkling.

“Ivy Taylor, you’ve got spunk.”

Ivy held her stomach and giggled. “I know. I got it from my grandma. She says us Taylor women are known to be a little surly.”

Ivy knew when the robin told Grandma that one, she would throw back her head and laugh for a long time.

Ivy and Nick got on their bikes. Ivy’s knee still hurt a little, but she soon forgot about it as they raced through town toward Hawks Bluff Park. As they rode, Ivy kept an eye out for the yellow glimmer of the goldfinch. Grandma always said that the goldfinch, the Iowa state bird, brought good luck.