A Northern Light(82)

Table six's head popped out of the ferns. His eyeglasses were hanging from his left ear. Fran looked at him and burst into laughter. Ada and I did, too. He got to his knees, stood up, and looked with disbelief at his brown palms. Hamlet's handiwork was smeared across them. It was everywhere else, too—on his tie, and all down the front of his white suit jacket.

Fran's laughter turned into helpless, rolling peals. "Now you look just as dirty as you are!" she hooted at him.

His eyes widened. "Why, you ... you little bitch!" he sputtered. "You did this on purpose! I'll have your job! I'll have all your jobs!"

Fran wasn't cowed. "You'll keep your mouth shut and your pizzle in your pants, mister, or I'll tell my pa what you've been up to and you'll get even worse!" she said. She wouldn't do any such thing, but table six didn't know it.

She turned and ran off toward the lake and Ada and I ran after her, laughing and crowing the whole way. I glanced back over my shoulder once and saw table six stumbling back to camp. I wished I could see his arrival. Mrs. Morrison would never let him inside the Glenmore like that. She'd tell him to go jump in the lake first. Literally.

When she got to the shore, Fran whipped her head scarf off and tossed it on the sand. She shook out her blazing red curls, then dove into the lake and came up a few seconds later, still laughing. She sucked in a mouthful of water and spouted it out like a fountain. Ada and I did the same, and then we all swam out as far as we dared and treaded water in a circle, reliving our victory. Ada and I kept saying how brave Fran was, and Fran kept saying how she never would have dared to do any of it if it wasn't for us and that we were clever as foxes for hiding the rope so well and pulling on it at just the right time.

We swam some more, and splashed each other, and played like otters. I lifted my face to the sun. I knew I shouldn't—Mamma had told me a million times that sunning myself would only make my freckles worse—but I didn't care. I felt happy and more than happy. I felt triumphant. We'd fixed table six.

We floated on our backs for a bit, letting the lake cool us, before we got out to dry off. The water weighed our swimming costumes down and made them baggier than ever. The crotch on Fran's was hanging so low when she got out of the water that she looked like a penguin. We told her so and she started waddling around with her feet jutting out, which made us laugh some more. We finally collapsed in a heap in the sand, shook our hair out and spread it over our shoulders to dry. We were all quiet for a while, listening to the locusts singing in the trees. The scent of the balsams was so strong in the heat, it made us drowsy. We watched as a family of ducks came to see whether we had something for them to eat—but still, no one spoke.

I was the one who finally broke the silence. "We better think about heading back," I said. "Cook will skin us if we're late to supper."

"Oh, Matt, I don't want to go back," Ada said. "It's so nice and peaceful here. So calm."

"It's the calm before the storm," Fran said. "Cook told me we've got a hundred and five coming for dinner. And ninety for supper."

Ada and I groaned.

Fran gave us a wicked smile. "Who's going to wait on table six today?" she asked. "Me!" I said.

"No, I want to!" Ada said.

"Let's race for it," Fran said. "First one to the back steps!"

Ada won the race, but she didn't get to serve table six. After we'd changed and come back downstairs, Cook told us that one of the guests, a Mr. Maxwell, had had some sort of mishap in the woods and was so upset by it that he'd retired to his room for the evening with a hot-water bottle and a rum toddy. She said Mrs. Morrison would be seating a family of four at his table—table six.

It was all I could do to hold the giggles in as she told us. Ada, too. I glanced at her and saw that she was biting her lip.

Not Fran, though. She was as cool as a cucumber. "He must've been quite upset, Mrs. Hennessey," she said.

"Yes, he was," Cook said. "I asked him would he at least come down for dinner—I thought he should eat something—but he wouldn't hear of it. I just don't understand it. I've got fried chicken on the menu and he's very partial to it. Why, I even fixed his favorite dessert, but when I told him I had, he went all green around the gills."

"Really? What is it?" Fran asked.

"Chocolate pudding. I made it with extra eggs and nice fresh milk and ... and ... Fran? Frances Hill, you stop that right now! What the devil's got into you? Ada, you should be ashamed! Braying like a mule, you are! And you, Mattie Gokey ... would you like to tell me what could possibly be so funny?"





do ? lor


Our happy state of mind persisted for two whole days, then disappeared instantly, as birds will right before it rains, when my father came into the Glenmore at the end of the dinner service on a beautiful afternoon to tell us that Weaver's mamma's house had burned down.

Weaver raced out of the hotel right then and there. Cook made the rest of us—myself, Ada, Fran, and Mike—wait until dinner was over and the dining room readied for supper, and then John Denio drove us down in his buckboard.

During the ride, I thought about my words and their meanings, as I do when I'm anxious or scared, as a way of taking my mind off things. My word of the day was doughnut, a silly word at the best of times. I decided dolor, a word I'd seen as I'd paged back from doughnut, would be a better choice, given what had happened. It means grief, distress, or anguish. There was a piece of it in doleful and condolence, too.