The Mutual Admiration Society(39)

“Wake up, little Susie . . .”

This is very bad timing for the missing sadness to spring back up. Hearing that tune and remembering how Daddy would get that cute twinkle in his eye when he’d sing it to Suzie . . . my heart just can’t take it.

I stuff the St. Christopher medal in my shorts pocket, brush off the tears, and clear the ache out of my throat so I can tell my sister, I need to go see Charlie, but she cuts me off at the pass when she says, “Someone’s comin’ out of Phantom Woods.”

And that’s when all the other sounds fade away and I hear what she’s been hearing.

The rustle of fall leaves. Not made by squirrels scurrying around for nuts. It’s the crunch of human footsteps, getting louder by the second as closer . . . closer . . . and closer whoever it is comes stomping toward the Finley sisters, who are standing behind the mausoleum like sitting ducks.

Is it the kidnapping murderer?

Instead of hiding behind the mausoleum the way I thought he might be, could he have been watching and waiting this whole time behind one of those twisted tree trunks in Phantom Woods until the time was right?

I have to let my sister know that we could be in mortal danger, but when I open my mouth to scream, nothing comes out. Something’s gone wrong with my breathing, too much out and not enough in and my eyesight isn’t working too good, either. The cemetery is going fuzzy around the edges and my knees have gone wobbly, and before I can steady myself, I land in a heap on top of the leaf pile my sister was digging through. The leaf pile that could still contain a corpse casserole that very soon Birdie and me could become ingredients in.

FACT: Time can fly faster than Dracula, but it can also stagger like Frankenstein.

PROOF: It seems like I’m waiting for an eternity, paralyzed with fear on top of the leaves, before the owner of those footsteps appears on the edge of the woods.

My eyes are still blurry, but I can tell who it is. He’s a few inches taller than the graves he digs, with a face that reminds me of one of those salt maps we made in geography class, that’s how craggy it is from working so many years in the cemetery in all kinds of weather. His eyes are round and cow brown and his nose runs on the big side, too. If he was a kid, he’d get a nickname like “Elsie” or “Shnoz.” The rest of him looks like a capital T. Drinking straw skinny below the waist, but strong in the shoulders from shoveling and the one hundred push-ups he does every morning after he eats his “breakfast rations.” All in all, if you are looking at him from a distance, sideways, the way I am, I think our good friend Mr. James “Jimmy/Good Egg” McGinty is a fine-looking fellow with a good job and to the best of my knowledge, he is not, I repeat, not a murdering monster.

That’s how come I suggested to Louise that she should go on a date with him before she started canoodling with what’s-his-name. If Birdie and me had to have a new daddy, I thought our godfather would do nicely. But when I suggested to our mother that the two of them go on a picnic and even offered to make the sandwiches so she wouldn’t give him stomach poisoning, she said, “Jimmy McGinty? No, thanks. I already have enough on my plate.”

I think that might’ve been a nasty crack about the plate Mr. McGinty got in his head after he stepped on a land mine in the war, but it was also a huge Louise lie. We aren’t doing that great in the food department around here, so her plate and Birdie’s and mine are never full. She probably just didn’t want to admit the real reason she wouldn’t go on a date with Mr. McGinty is because he’s Scottish.

We got so many different kinds of people in the neighborhood who came to the Land of the Free and the Home of the Braves from their old countries. The Hungarians are big eaters, of course, their name gives that away. Germans drink their beer out of steins and love bratwurst. The Polacks brought their hilarious jokes and the “horizontal polka” along with them on the boat. Micks have the worst tempers, can drink anybody under the table, and love blarney. 100% English people, like Gammy and Boppa, Daddy, and my Charlie, drink tea with stiff upper lips. The wops think they’re the best thing since sliced garlic bread, because all of us are Roman Catholics and Rome is the city where the headquarters of the church is located. And Gracie Carver, who I can’t wait to get back from Mississippi, is the only Negro we know, and she doesn’t actually live around here. For some unknown reason, that’s not allowed, she has to stay with “her own kind,” which is such a pity, because if other colored people are as wonderful as Gracie that would make the neighborhood a lot more fun. She takes the #1 bus up North Ave. five mornings a week from a town called The Core with her best friend, Ethel, who is a helper to an old lady near Mother of Good Hope Church. Gracie is also not a Catholic who likes hymns, she is a Baptist who likes the music of Billie Holiday, keeping the church really clean, and like me, she likes poetry, but not by Dr. Seuss. (That Grinch book of his just slayed me.) Gracie likes some guy name of Langston Hughes, who I told her I will check out some day at the library when I get the chance. She also thinks The Mutual Admiration Society are the only ones around here who got any “snap” to ’em, but she gets a charge out of Kitten Jablonski, too. (Even though Gracie’s not here right now, I mention her because she’s such a good friend of ours that for a long time I was planning on Birdie and me running away to live with her, before she put the kibosh on that idea. “You’d get found right quick, Sugar. You and your sister’d stick out in my neighborhood like two marshmallows in a cup of hot cocoa,” she said with one of her Southern laughs that I really love the sound of, it’s very relaxing.)