At the Far End of Nowhere Read online

  “Daddy, why do you say you’re clairvoyant? I can read your mind sometimes. I want to learn to be clairvoyant, too.”

  The night shadows are starting to come down on us. I close my eyes, and in my head, try to see two blocks over to where Mr. Ludwig is closing up his drugstore. Next door to him, the shoemaker, Mr. Gambini, calls to me, “Good night, Lissima, bellisima,” and shuts down the mechanical man who works all day in his shop window. Over and over, the little shoemaker is taking a nail from between his pinched lips, jerking his head to one side, hammering the nail, and fastening a Cat’s Paw heel onto the bottom of a tiny shoe held upside down on what my daddy calls a shoemaker’s last. “Goodnight, little shoemaker,” I whisper. Natty Boh’s one eye blinks on above the bar down at the corner. In the mornings, me and my brother treasure-hunt there for coins dropped in the dirt outside the door. The streetcar barn is three blocks away, but I think I can hear the pigeons there rustling in the rafters, settling in for the night.

  My daddy takes me inside, and I sit on his lap in his big gray chair. He only shaves once a week, and I like to scratch his whiskers when they start to grow out. They tickle under my fingernails and make me laugh.

  My daddy looks me very deep in the eyes for a while. Finally, he says, “So you want to be clairvoyant, do you?” I nod and tickle his whiskers.

  “Well, my little Lissa, you need to be careful what you wish for. I found out I was clairvoyant when I was just a little tacker, not much older than you.

  “My mother was Roman Catholic, very devout, and she wanted me to become a priest. To please her, I started out as an altar boy. I was such a serious boy—high-strung, and maybe wound a little too tight.

  “One Sunday during Mass at St. Ignatius, after genuflecting and approaching the altar, and after taking Father Martin’s biretta from him and putting it aside, I felt the sanctuary suddenly grow very warm, then cold, then warm again. But I kept up with the Order of Mass. I knelt beside Father Martin and made the sign of the cross, just the way the priest did. I bowed with Father Martin when he said the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity. I bowed toward him and recited the Misereatur tui omnipotens Deus…. I bowed down and recited the Confiteor. I struck my breast three times and recited mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa—and then I passed out.

  “When I came to, some of the ladies at St. Ignatius were fanning me. One church lady said it was the scent of the hyacinths on the windowsills that had made me faint.

  “Later, when I walked home from church, a gust of strong, hot wind swirled around me; a dust devil circled around my feet. It was carrying a ring of dirt and loose brush, and it whirled like some kind of entranced dervish. It rose, fierce as a demon, to engulf my whole person. It stung my eyes, twisted my hair, and made my head spin.

  “Then the most curious vibration rose up my spine and exploded out the top of my head. It was then I heard a woman’s voice calling, ‘Urchie’s dead.’ Then, as quickly as it had risen, the wind subsided and left me in a space of profound stillness.

  “I walked the rest of the way home, and it was like walking in a dream. When I got to the house, I found my mother weeping in the kitchen, wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron. She had just gotten news that her sister’s youngest and only remaining son, Urchie—he lived over the ridge, about eight miles to the south—had succumbed to swamp fever that very morning.

  “When my mother said, ‘Your cousin Urchie’s dead,’ it was like an echo of what I already knew. I had tapped into another realm, and I could see clearly. That’s what it means to be clairvoyant.”

  “I want to be clairvoyant, Daddy, just like you.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  COLORING LEFT-HANDED, MOUSE AND CANNON, COMPLETELY BLUE KITE

  ONE day I am sitting on the floor, coloring in my coloring book. My daddy takes the crayon out of my hand and puts it in my other hand.

  “Lissa, use your right hand.”

  I try to color with this other hand, but it makes me want to rub my teeth together. It makes me nervous, like when a little boy I know at school scratches his fingers across the blackboard. My right hand doesn’t work right. The lines won’t go where I want them to go. Every time I start coloring, my left hand wants to pick up the crayon.

  “Lissa, just try using your right hand. It will take just a little practice.”

  Daddy pulls me away from my coloring, holds me on his lap, and tells me, “We live in a right-handed world, Lissa. Machines and tools are made for right-handed people. Using your left hand will make you clumsy. And when you get older, when you try to write with a fountain pen, you will smear the ink across the pages and make a mess. No one will be able to read what you write. In this part of the world, we read from left to right. We write from left to right. You got your left-handedness from your mother. As she can tell you, when she was a young girl in school, her teacher made her use her right hand. And she’s the better for it. So now you, too, must learn to write with your right hand. If you learn to write with your right hand, Lissa, I’ll buy you an ice cream cone.”

  I want to make my daddy happy. And I do like ice cream. “Okay, I will try.” Over and over, I try to print LISSA with my right hand. But it just doesn’t want to do it. The letters are all crooked, and my teeth want to scrape at each other.

  One day, my left hand takes over, and I print the words of a story on the lines of my kindergarten notebook. I call it “The Mouse and the Cannon.”

  A little gray mouse lives under the stairs. He has a very big cannon in the basement. He pushes the cannon all the way to the top of the stairs. BOOM. He shoots off the cannon at his worst enemy, a big man at the top of the stairs who sets mousetraps. The End.

  My kindergarten teacher, Miss Wareheimer, reads us a story today about a magical blue kite. Now we are drawing a picture of that kite. I sit at a round table with three other children. Each of us has a big piece of brown drawing paper and a fat blue crayon. The girl across from me is making many tiny blue kites. The boy next to me is using a ruler to draw the outside lines of his kite; he fills it in with a few zig-zag lines. I draw a big kite that takes up most of my paper, and then I try to make it completely blue. I try and try to cover all the brown patches of paper with the blue from my crayon, but I can’t get all the brown not to show. I try and try.

  All the other children at my table are finished, but I keep trying to make my kite completely blue. The teacher comes to me and says, “It’s nap time. Time to stop coloring.”

  All the other children in the class are unrolling their mats on the floor. But I keep coloring. I want to get my kite completely, perfectly blue—or something bad will happen.

  Finally, my teacher takes my crayon away from my left hand, and I try to take a nap. I try not to let anybody hear me crying.

  That night, I can’t eat my supper. My mother feels my head and takes my temperature. She says my temperature is normal. I tell her I don’t want to go to school tomorrow. She says, “But honey, you’ve always loved school.”

  I tell my daddy I don’t want to go to school tomorrow. He tells me I don’t have to if I don’t want to. He tucks me in and tells me a story.

  “You know, Lissa, when I was your age, most all the children in our neck of the woods went to a single-story, board and batten, one-room schoolhouse presided over by Schoolmaster Olan Langsford. At that time, children of all ages shared the same classroom. We learned by rote—as best we could, and at our own pace—how to read and write and count and do arithmetic.

  “One unseasonably hot May afternoon, Master Langsford, parched from lecturing to us children, went over to get a drink from the oak water bucket he kept in a corner near his desk. He took the tin dipper down off its peg on the wall and wielded it like God Almighty parting the Red Sea. But the dipper scraped bottom and emerged with barely a swallow’s worth of water.

  “‘Stouten!’ he intoned, pointing at me—that would be the little freckle-faced, redheaded boy sitting in the front row. ‘Go down to the spring and f
etch me a fresh bucket of water.’

  “I leaped up from my desk, grabbed the empty bucket from the formidable schoolmaster, and ran—swift-footed as a young Achilles—down the hill to the spring.

  “The sun’s light flashed like a dagger on the cool, fresh water. Just as I was about to dip the oaken bucket, a movement in the grass on the opposite side of the spring caught my eye. A frog! Green and shiny, it hopped along the bank. As I watched, an urge came over me, an urge I couldn’t resist.

  “Compelled, I chased after that little green fellow, trying to pocket myself a pet frog. But the frog was too quick for me, and hopped into the spring. Pursuing my little-boy instincts, I got down on my belly, dipped my hand into the water, and tried to grasp that elusive amphibian. Try as I might—swirling and splashing spring water in all directions—I could not catch that nimble little critter.

  “All of a sudden, I remembered my teacher’s command!

  “I abandoned my quest for the frog, dipped the wooden bucket in the spring, and raced back to the schoolhouse.

  “Solemnly, and with as much dignity as a small boy could muster, I carried the filled bucket up the middle aisle—past all the rows of desks, and all the other pupils’ staring eyes—as Master Langsford watched my approach. He sat with unquestionable authority behind a massive desk on an elevated platform at the front of the classroom. I placed the bucket full of water before him, like an offering to the Lord, and high-tailed it back to my seat. Master Langsford descended from his throne, filled the dipper, raised it to his parched lips, and took a full draught of water…. He stopped mid-swallow, his face registering the look of someone performing a difficult cipher in his head.

  “The class sat, mesmerized, silently watching a most unusual performance by their venerable schoolmaster. Master Langsford emitted a series of coughing, sputtering, and gagging noises. As a grand finale, he emitted a tremendous groan, paused as if for a drumroll, then spat out the water all over the front row of pupils, including me.

  “I could feel my jaw drop like a lead weight. Some of the bolder pupils tittered.

  “‘Stouten! I can’t drink this water. It’s full of mud!’

  “I hung my head in shame. I could feel the blood creep up my neck and all over my face. I was terrified that Master would take off his belt and flog me.

  “When the teacher’s ruler came down with a hearty crack on my fingertips, I was actually relieved. Master Langsford often quoted Samuel Butler’s line, ‘spare the rod and spoil the child,’ seeming to take those words to heart and at face value. And so did I, at the time. Much later, come to find out, most probably that line of verse was written to poke fun and not to be taken so seriously.”

  I hug my daddy. “I’m sorry he hurt you, Daddy.”

  “Well, you know, Lissa, school wasn’t all bad. Sometimes, good things happened at that schoolhouse.

  “I remember one day in early spring; the sun was very clear and bright, and the last of the snow was melting. A man from the county seat—it was still over at Port Tobacco at the time—came by and administered what he called intelligence testing. He got all the boys and girls to answer a series of questions and do some ciphering. He claimed our scores on these tests would tell him how smart we were.

  “Well, at the end of that day’s testing, the man pulled me aside and told me I was the most intelligent boy he had ever tested. Imagine that, Lissa!”

  “Do you think I’m smart, Daddy?”

  “Yes, Lissa. Sharp as a briar. Just like your daddy.”

  My daddy tucks me in. I kiss him on the cheek and say, “Goodnight.”

  I do go to school the next day. I know it’s what I’m supposed to do.

  Today, we go to Gwynn Oak Park. It’s one of my favorite places. I wear a minty-green puckery dress with white stripes. Jimmie calls it my seersucker dress. Spence wears matching shorts. Jimmie makes most of our play clothes, and she likes us to match, so we pretend, sometimes, that we are twins.

  Gwynn Oak is full of rides and noises and people and smells—merry-go-round music, the big wooden roller coaster going clackety-clack, kids screaming, a fat lady laughing at the funhouse, and pretty pink cotton candy getting spun on cardboard sticks.

  First, Jimmie takes me on the caterpillar ride. It’s scary when the cover goes over us. Then my daddy takes Spence and me over to the goat cart rides. Spence goes first, then me. The goats are supposed to run around a track that has a fence around it. Spence’s goat stops at the first turn in the track to nibble at the grass. Spence uses his reins, but his goat won’t budge. Then it’s my turn, and the man lets my goat go. My goat goes fast-fast and runs right past Spence’s cart. I get to the finish line, and then watch with my daddy while Spence keeps trying to get his goat to move. Finally, the man goes and swats Spence’s goat to get it going.

  After that, I watch with my daddy while Spence rides the sail plane. It goes up and flies in a circle with the other planes. Spence can steer his plane and make it dip left or right.

  I say, “I’m going to get bigger and bigger for that.” And my daddy laughs and holds me up so I can see better over the fence.

  “Don’t get too big,” Daddy says. “You won’t be able to sit on my lap anymore.”

  Next, Jimmie takes Spence on the roller coaster. I’m afraid of the roller coaster, but Jimmie and Spence are not afraid to go on any of the rides. Jimmie gets sick to her stomach, and we have to leave early.

  The park is crowded now and we have a long walk back to the Oldsmobile. It’s getting dark by the time we get to the car. The rides are lighting up like it’s Christmas all over the park.

  My daddy can’t see very well at night, so Jimmie has to drive us home—even though she’s sick.

  When it’s very hot, me and Spence beg my daddy to take us to Pasadena Beach on a Sunday afternoon. Jimmie packs a picnic hamper and a thermos bottle and a cold watermelon. My daddy blows up our inner tubes. Mine is a red-and-white ring with blue clowns on it; Spence has a big yellow duck with a head that quacks when you squeeze it.

  Me and Spence put on our bathing suits in the back seat of the car. We have lunch at a green picnic table, and then we have to wait an hour before we are allowed to go in the water so we won’t get cramps and drown. Spence and me crawl on top of an overturned rowboat, and Jimmie snaps our picture with a camera that folds out in front like a tiny accordion.

  My daddy holds my hand while I wade out into the water. Spence goes splashing on ahead of us. Later, we take turns going down a big sliding board into the water. I would be scared, except my daddy is waiting at the bottom, holding up my inner tube so I can slide right into it—safe—at the bottom of the slide.

  Sometimes we go to another park on the other side of the water. We take the streetcar downtown and wait on a wooden platform—my daddy calls it a pier—for a steamboat named Bay Belle to come and take us across the water. My daddy says we are crossing the Chesapeake Bay. The air is wet and cold, and wind hits us in the face and blows our hair around. The seagulls screech at us. I hold my daddy’s hand. We are on an adventure together.

  Then we are at a magical place called Tolchester that has gondola swings and pony rides and a child-sized steam train and little boats you can ride on. I fall asleep on the way home. Then I wake up just enough to feel my daddy carrying me up to bed and tucking me in.

  One day, my daddy comes back from downtown with presents—a pair of matching kids’ fishing rods—one for me, one for Spence. The next afternoon, he packs up our rods, along with his own fishing pole. My daddy tells us he had it specially made for himself from a very fine wood, which I think he calls my hog’s knee. He keeps his pole in a fancy case, in the big trunk in the back of the Oldsmobile. We ride over to a little river near Gwynns Falls. Daddy shows us how to put worms on our hooks, and we stand on the bank and fish all afternoon until it starts to get dark. I catch two fish. Spence doesn’t catch any.

  As we walk back to the car, Daddy brags, “Look at what a good fisher your little sister
is, Spence!”

  Spence hangs his head and kicks a big stone at the car’s tire.

  There is a playground just a few blocks from our house with seesaws, baby swings, big-kid swings. Jimmie walks there with me and Spence on sunny afternoons while my daddy stays at home working on watches.

  One day, a little boy with chocolate skin knocks me over—on accident—when I am standing too close behind the big-kid swings. I start to cry, and his daddy runs over and apologizes to Jimmie. Then the daddy takes off his belt and whips his little boy hard, and the boy screams and screams. Jimmie says he doesn’t need to do that, but he does it anyway. The daddy looks scared of us and really angry at his little boy. He keeps apologizing to Jimmie and beating on his son. I wish he wouldn’t do that.

  Me and Spence are not baptized. My daddy thinks we should decide for ourselves what church to join when we are older. For now, Jimmie takes us to Sunday school at Emmanuel Lutheran Church, just a few blocks past the playground. In the summer, we go to Bible school there.

  Jimmie takes me up to meet my Sunday school teacher. I hide behind Jimmie’s skirt when the teacher tries to hug me and make a fuss over me.

  She says, “I’m a real mother hen.” She is short and puffy, but she’s not like the little small red hen in my storybook.

  “What’s the matter, Lissa? Cat got your tongue?” she asks me, and tries to smooth my hair.

  “She’s fine,” Jimmie says. “She’ll talk a blue streak soon as she gets home.”

  My daddy teaches me to say my prayers every day. At home, before every meal, I sit on my daddy’s lap or stand up next to his chair at the head of the table and say grace: “Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive, from Thy bounty, through Christ, our Lord. Amen.”