Willie Bea and the Time the Martians Landed Read online

  “We know Big don’t mean harm,” Gramp had said, “but there’s a great danger in allowing him that bow and arra.” Gramp had looked sternly, with finality, at Uncle Jimmy.

  Jimmy Wing had been silent. At last, he’d said, “I’ll take care of it.”

  He and Aunt Lu had prepared to leave. But they had stayed awhile, chatting with Aunt Mattie Belle and Uncle Donald. All had tried to smooth over ruffled feelings.

  That was when Willie Bea’s family also prepared to leave.

  Marva and Mattie Belle and Lu had done the dishes with Grand, cleaned up the kitchen. It was so nice in that good, warm kitchen again. No one would have guessed such a big dinner had been cooked in there, except for one pie left. One apple pie, left on the counter. It gave away the fact that a big Sunday dinner had been made this day. Everybody but Aunt Leah took some of Aunt Lu’s turkey home.

  The men had moved off into the living room, turned on the radio again. Aunt Leah was left by herself at the dining-room table. Willie Bea sat with her. And although Aunt Leah smiled at her from time to time, she didn’t seem to want to talk. She looked lonesome, smoking one cigarette after another. Then Willie Bea and her family had said their goodbyes.

  Her mama gave Leah a peck on the cheek. “See you,” she had said.

  “See you soon, sister,” had come the girlish reply from Aunt Leah.

  Her papa gave Aunt Leah a brotherly kiss on the cheek. “See you, Leah,” he had said.

  She had smiled at him. Her lips formed “Bye,” but she didn’t say it. Willie Bea could tell that she had her mind on things other than her family.

  Aunt Leah had looked all around the room and then said, to no one in particular, “There’s something about this day.” She rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “There will be a chill on the night, I can feel it already.” Then she had quickly gathered her things together and left the house in a flurry of hugs and giddy kissing of Grand and Gramp. She was gone. They heard her car going swiftly away.

  By way of saying goodbye, uncle Jimmy and her papa had nodded at one another. That was all. Aunt Lu and her mama had smiled and pretended nothing was wrong between them. There wasn’t really, not between them. They were both mothers, both loved their children beyond words. In silence, they understood one another.

  Willie Bea lay stretched out on the bed, thinking so hard about what had transpired over home. She was right in the middle of the big bed so neither Bay Brother nor Bay Sister could come hog it from her. Her brother and sister ran in and out, chasing one another. They pretended not to notice Willie Bea, but she knew they were growing more impatient and excited. It was getting late. But still she lay quite still with her eyes closed, to show Bay Sister and Bay Brother that patience was the best. And that good things came to those who waited.

  Nothing to do downstairs, Willie Bea knew. Her papa would be reading the Sunday papers. Her mama would be sitting there with him, listening to the radio. They called being together like that in the living room their Sunday time. Was that all there was to do when you were grown—just sit and read, sit and listen? If it was, Willie Bea knew she never wanted to grow up.

  Bet Aunt Leah’s not sitting down somewhere. No, sir, not her, she thought. She imagined Aunt Leah getting dressed for a Halloween ball. Oh, Aunt Leah would look beautiful in a long dress like Cinderella’s! And a gent in a tuxedo!

  She wished that this one time Aunt Leah had taken her home.

  Oh, take me home with you forever. Then I won’t care about begging or making costumes for brats!

  Willie Bea made an ugly face and turned over on her stomach. Hid her head under the pillow. She knew that, all over town, children were thinking about getting ready for the Halloween begging time. She supposed all the children in the whole state and country were doing just about the same thing. Kind of slowly preparing themselves for a long, scary night outside. Going up to people’s doors. Knocking. Yelling, “Trick or treat! Trick or treat!” And if a person at a door shook his head and closed the door, or if he would not come to the door and you knew there was someone home, well, then you smashed their pumpkins, or spread ugly faces on their windows with lye soap. Goodness! Begging was the most fun of anything. And if folks were really witch mean and haunted-ghost mean and you knew they would never give a child anything, then you got a bunch of chaps and threw great logs on their wood verandas. And, oh, what a roar a falling log could make, hitting a porch! You would run for your lives into the dark, dark night. And try to find one another in the pitch black. And grab a tree trunk by mistake. With dread, hear that tree trunk seem to breathe. And scream your head off as a chap jumped back in shock and fear and ran out from behind the tree.

  Usually, folks preferred to give treats. Willie Bea always came home with a sack full of popcorn and apples. So did Bay Sister. Maybe an orange. Would they get enough this year, with Bay Brother going out treating with them for the first time? Hard-tack candy, homemade. Once in a while Willie Bea would discover some of the best chocolates with cream centers at the bottom of her sack. And not remember who had given them. How could she be sure to return to that house next Halloween?

  And candy corn. They got lots and lots of that, out begging. Oh, it was the grandest old time!

  What did I do with the money! Willie Bea held on to her pillow. For a moment she had thought she’d lost the money Aunt Leah had given to her. But now she remembered she had placed her half-dollar in her bureau drawer. She’d put her brother’s and her sister’s half-dollars in their bureau drawers.

  She could hear the radio downstairs. It sounded like some gangster was emptying his derringer in the uncertain direction of The Shadow. She could hear The Shadow’s weird, scary laugh and she knew that, again, he had not been hit. Willie Bea knew, like everybody else, The Shadow would never be hit because the bad men couldn’t see him. She also knew by that awful scary yet good laugh that the show was about over. It was almost six o’clock.

  I bet if that Shadow gent ever came near here, I’d sure see him, she thought dreamily. I bet he would look just like smoke … or a Halloween ghost.

  She must have dozed, for the next thing she felt was pressure on either side of her. The pressure was familiar. She was awake and knew she must have dozed, because it had to be the kids climbing on her. She hadn’t heard them run into the room and climb onto the bed. They must’ve been listening to the last half of “The Shadow.” Most days Willie Bea wouldn’t have missed the show. But this wasn’t most days. There was something about this day, just as Aunt Leah had said. Willie Bea was sure of it, too. She could feel the strangeness inside her. Maybe she was a prophet, too, like her aunt. As if she were waiting for something.

  To happen? To do? she wondered.

  Why else would she have gone up to her room rather than be together with her folks, quiet in the living room? And by just listening, let The Shadow come inside her house and grip her deep in herself.

  Wide awake, Willie Bea pretended to be asleep. The kids wouldn’t stand for that.

  “Willie Bea,” whispered Bay Sister, not wanting to wake Willie Bea all of a sudden.

  “Yeah?” Willie Bea said, loud.

  Bay Sister jerked in surprise. “You scared me!” she said.

  “Heh, heh, heh,” went Willie Bea, “‘Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?’”

  “Ohhh!” squealed Bay Brother, and scrunched down into a tight ball.

  “‘The Shadow knows!’ Heh, heh, heh, heh!”

  “Willie Bea, you do that soooo good,” said Bay Sister. “It sounds just like The Shadow.”

  “Do Jack ’strong,” said Bay Brother through his fingers. He was still scrunched down. He loved for Willie Bea to mimic the radio, but not the scary shows.

  “You mean, Jack Armstrong, Bay,” Willie Bea told him.

  “Do it,” said Bay Sister.

  So she did. Oh, she wasn’t as good as the chorus that always sang the “Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy” theme song. But she knew a good part of it sol
o and a cappella. And she sang it perfectly, and in tune:

  “Have you tried Wheaties?

  They’re whole wheat with all of the bran.

  Won’t you try Wheaties?

  For wheat is the best food of man!

  They’re crispy and crunchy the whole year through.

  Jack Armstrong never tires of them

  And neither will you.

  So just buy Wheaties,

  The best breakfast food in the land!”

  “That was good!” said Bay Sister, clapping. Bay Brother clapped his little hands. And felt it safe to stretch out on his stomach on his side of Willie Bea.

  Willie Bea loved Bay Brother’s big, round eyes, so sweet and innocent. She took his head and kissed his cheek. Couldn’t help herself and giggled when he made a face and wiped off the kiss. Then he made it all right by looking up at her adoringly.

  She did as many show themes as she knew for them. She did “Hi-yo, Silver! Away!” And hummed the de-de-dump de-de-dump, de-de-dump dump dump music. She couldn’t do the “Green Hornet” music, though. That “Flight of the Bumble Bee” was too fast and hard for her. But she mimicked the next-best part. That low-purring, awful-fast roadster that was the Green Hornet’s fabulous automobile. And she exaggerated what happened to a bad man at the green whiff of the Green Hornet’s gas gun.

  Then she did as much of the “Little Orphan Annie” sketch as she could. First came the drone of an airplane, like the “Captain Midnight” sound. Then came a train whistle and the hoot, hoot of a steam engine. The “Annie” theme was played on an organ. Willie Bea made as much of the sounds as she could, singing what she could remember of the “Annie” song: “Who’s that little chatterbox, with her little auburn locks—it’s orphan Annie.” Willie Bea didn’t often listen to “Annie.” She much preferred the poem by James Whitcomb Riley. But her mama was known to go about her work, singing, “Who’s that little chatterbox?” just to entertain Bay Brother when he was underfoot.

  For an hour Willie Bea performed for Bay Brother and Bay Sister, just to relax them. It would be good and dark by six-thirty or seven o’clock, EST. That was Eastern Standard Time. Willie Bea would take the kids out at about eight. Bring them back about eight-thirty. And stay out herself until nine-thirty. Soon, now, they would start to get ready.

  When Willie Bea had done all she could think of—Baby Snooks talking to her Daddy; the Mad Russian from the Eddie Cantor show; scatterbrained Gracie Allen—she did one her papa could do to perfection. A bandleader named Ben Bernie, called the Old Maestro. Willie Bea didn’t know all of Ben Bernie’s signing-off song, but she knew it was famous. And not knowing all the words didn’t stop her for a minute: “Au revoir. Pleasant dreams.… Until the next time when … Possibly you may all tune in again, Keep the Old Maestro always … in your schemes. Yowsah, yowsah, yowsah …”

  She ended with Jack Benny’s Rochester and then, stingy with money, Mr. Benny himself. It was a skit Willie Bea hadn’t heard on the radio, but she had heard about it. Everyone knew it either firsthand or by word of mouth.

  “The robber says,” she began, “says, ‘Mr. Benny, your money or your life.’

  “Dead silence from Mr. Benny.

  “‘I says,’ says the robber, ‘your money or your life!’

  “Still no answer from Jack Benny. He waits a long, long time and says nothin’,” said Willie Bea.

  “Then the robber, he says, ‘Well?’ like that,” said Willie Bea.

  “And Jack Benny says, all peevish—” Willie Bea paused a long moment.

  “What’d he say!” Bay Sister nearly screamed.

  “Yeah!” Bay Brother said.

  “‘I’m thinkin’ it over,’ says Jack Benny,” Willie Bea said. “‘I’m thinkin’ it over.’”

  Oh, how the kids did laugh at that one!

  Then, suddenly, it was time to get the kids dressed. Herself, too. Willie Bea smiled at how well they had passed the time without the kids getting sick to the stomach with excitement. All little chaps got sick when you dressed them up and prepared to take them out in the dark.

  Not if you know how to handle them, Willie Bea thought, satisfied with herself.

  She got up and went to the hall, where her mama’s cedar chest stood against the wall. On top of all the treasures her mama kept in the chest—ironed sheets, blue, and yellow chenille bedspreads that were wedding presents and still in fine condition, Indian blankets—were some old white sheets that Willie Bea could use for costumes.

  She took out two sheets and felt her brother and sister on her heels.

  “Don’t stand so close,” she told them, “it’s hot up here.” The upstairs was still rather warm from the morning heat. The ceilings were low. Heat got trapped in the attic. In the wintertime, cold got trapped up there and fine snow would seep through the old, worn-out shingles.

  Willie Bea thought fleetingly of the coming winter and the awful cold as she studied and folded the sheets this way and that, trying to find the best way to make them into ghost costumes. They weren’t double-bed sheets, but sheets for day beds, and so a better fit for her brother and sister.

  “Me see,” she murmured. But somehow the cold of winter had got in her head. She remembered how stiff and icy the bedsheets would get on the bed in Bay Sister’s and her room. Their bedroom was on the west side of the house. All the winter wind and snow came from the westward horizon. Sometimes angling west from the cold, cold north of Canada. You could freeze trying to keep warm.

  Oh, so much streams of air coming in under the window frames! Willie Bea remembered. We stuff Bay’s socks in the cracks.

  And if she left a glass of water standing on the bureau overnight!

  She shivered at the thought.

  By morning the water would be frozen solid.

  Willie Bea shook her head to get the cold out of her mind.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Bay Sister asked her.

  “Yeah, wha’s a wrong, Will’ Bea?” said Bay Brother.

  “Copy cat,” she told him, but she was smiling at him. She loved the way he couldn’t quite say words properly yet. He couldn’t say Little’s name right, or any word that started with L. He called Little “Nittle.” And if Willie Bea told him to say “I love you,” he would say, “I nove you.”

  “I nove you, I nove you,” she said, teasing him. She giggled.

  “’Top it, Will’ Bea,” he said.

  And Willie Bea giggled some more as she led them into her mother and father’s bedroom.

  Her folks’ bedroom was the smallest of the three bedrooms upstairs. The reason the bedroom facing north was empty, across the hall from Willie Bea’s, was that Bay Brother didn’t like being there by himself. He’d rather be crowded in Willie Bea and Bay Sister’s room, freezing. Bay Sister wouldn’t dare sleep alone, either. But Willie Bea suspected that when Bay was older, he would want the room.

  Her folks’ room had its bed facing the windows, while Willie Bea’s was to the side of two small windows. Her mom and dad’s bedroom always smelled so nice. A mixture of scents, man and woman. Perfume and shaving soap. There were pretty bottles on the maplewood dresser. Her mama’s dresses hung in the closet next to her papa’s business clothes. Her papa wore dark pants and white shirts always, for going to the restaurant. One gray suit and one brown suit for funerals, weddings and Christmastime at church. The suits were good, with no mendings. They were very well made, even if Willie Bea had seen her papa wear them for as long as she could remember. All of her papa’s farmwork clothes—Penney’s overalls, old dark pants ironed until they were shiny, work shirts—hung from hooks on the back of the bedroom door. They were not full of hog smell, like the muddy-work clothes that hung outside in the barn.

  “Now be careful,” she told Bay and Bay Sis. “Don’t touch anything. You know what Mama will say if we mess up things.”

  “Don’t climb on the bed, Bay!” she warned. The bed looked inviting to Bay and he wanted to lay his head between the pillows. But he li
stened to Willie Bea and backed away from temptation.

  “Me see,” Willie Bea said. “Maybe first we’ll put on the sheets. Mama’s safety pins are in the sewing basket.” She found the little basket in the top right drawer of the chiffonier. Carefully, she lifted out the lovely basket. The basket was made of thin strips of wood criss-crossed in a weave and painted gold. The lid was shellacked wood on hinges and covered with wine velvet. It was the prettiest box Willie Bea had ever seen. She ran her hand lightly over the velvet. Her mama said not to do that too often, else she’d rub the velvet clean away. The box was her mama’s treasure. It had been given to her by Grand, and Grand would never say where she got it.

  Why? Willie Bea wondered suddenly, when, before, she had just accepted the fact that Grand would never say.

  And why not? she thought about Grand. And had a queer feeling, a feeling that things were changing.

  It’s the day, she thought. A strange, funny kind of Aunt Leah day, that’s all there is to it.

  Willie Bea checked her brother and sister’s hands before she let them each run one finger over the velvet.

  “It feels like …” Bay Sister began, but she could not find words for the velvet.

  “Feel soft,” said Bay Brother.

  “You’re right about that,” Willie Bea told him.

  “There. Now that’s enough,” she told them after a moment. “You chaps will rub the velvet clean away.” Said just like her mama would say it. Willie Bea knew that “chaps” meant boys, just as her mama did. But still, they would say chaps. Willie Bea would whenever she thought to.

  She searched through the threads and needles and found six safety pins. She pinned them to her dress and put the basket back in its place in the chiffonier.

  “Now,” she said. After that, there wasn’t much talking. She found things she needed from her own room. Old pants, a torn sweater for Bay. Knee stockings for Bay Sister. Another old sweater made from angora yarn that had once been her own which Bay Sister could wear tonight over her dress. The angora sweater had somehow got into the washing tub full of hot water. Now it was half its proper size and was matted, ugly.