Dragonfly Secret Read online

  “Git out of here, you mangy critter! Go piss on your own porch!”

  Mrs. Pruitt was standing on her front step, talking to somebody who looked to me like she was selling lipstick or something. They stared at us, and Mrs. Pruitt looked angry as her dish-mop of a cat came running and jumped into her arms.

  Mother’s face flushed red. “Go change your clothes and help Dad unload the car, Nathan,” she told me as I climbed out.

  “I ain’t helpless, Kate,” Gramps growled. “I can take care of the car by myself.”

  Mother looked at me and I nodded without a word. It wasn’t that Gramps couldn’t do it himself. It was just the polite thing for me to help him, even if he didn’t act as if he wanted me to.

  “He always acts like this on his birthday,” Mother said when we were in the house and out of earshot of Gramps. “He doesn’t like to be reminded that he’s getting old.”

  I thought of what I’d heard Aunt Louise say that afternoon. I wouldn’t want to be reminded of that, either. I’m still a kid, so I have to do what grown-ups tell me to do, but I don’t have to like it. I thought it would be twice as bad to be a grown-up and have people make decisions for you, as if you couldn’t think straight anymore.

  “I’ll go help him right away,” I said, and hurried to my room to change out of the good clothes I had put on for our visit to Aunt Louise.

  We have an old house, with scruffy wood siding that needs paint and a roof that leaks a little over the living room, but it’s big enough so we can each have our own room. My room has a window right by the driveway, so I could hear

  Gramps bang open the hood to check the oil and radiator the way he always does before he puts the car away.

  He started swearing the way he had at Aunt Louise’s lawn mower, and it took me a minute to figure out that the car needed oil. It was quiet while he went into the storage shed to get it, and then he started in again, yelling that some so-and-so had stolen the can opener off its hook by the door. I hurried.

  Mother shook her head as I went back through the kitchen. “Maybe Louise is right. He’s not happy here.”

  I skidded to a stop. “You know that’s not true. He cusses the way some people whistle. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  Mother smiled. “For a twelve-year-old, you’re pretty smart.”

  The angry muttering from the driveway paused, and I heard the sound of running water. “He’s going to wash the bugs off the windshield. I can help with that.” I ran out the back door, closing the screen behind me.

  I could see Gramps standing in front of the car, with the hose in one hand. He wasn’t washing the car, though. The water was running down the driveway. He had stopped swearing, and I heard a funny sound. I got almost up to him before I figured out what it was. He was moaning, the way people do when they get real bad news, like they have some horrible disease, or somebody they know died. When I got to where I could see his face, there were tears streaming down his cheeks.

  “Gramps! What’s the matter?” All I could think of was what Aunt Louise had said to Mother. I didn’t think she could make Gramps move away, but maybe she could. Maybe Gramps knew it was going to happen.

  He turned toward me, still holding the hose in one hand, not even noticing that he was squirting water all over me. I ducked out of the way behind the car. Mrs. Pruitt and the strange lady were still standing next door. They probably thought he did it on purpose.

  “I killed her,” Gramps said, moaning again. “If I hadn’t been going so fast she might have gotten away, but she couldn’t fly that fast. I killed her.”

  I glanced next door. Thank goodness they were too far away to make out what he was saying. Mrs. Pruitt would have told half the neighborhood Gramps was a murderer if she had heard that.

  “Don’t be silly, Gramps,” I said, turning off the water. “You didn’t kill anybody.” I’d never seen him like this before. He never apologized, even when everyone else figured he was in the wrong, which was part of why he had so few friends. Now he was acting like the sorriest person on earth. “What are you talking about?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he held out his hand, and I caught a glimpse of crumpled crystal wings and a dark head. A dragonfly, I thought. All this over a stupid bug.

  “It’s all right, Gramps,” I told him, wondering why he thought it mattered so much. “You couldn’t have known. It wasn’t your fault.”

  He dropped the hose and cupped his other hand close over the bent wings. “She’s dead,” he cried, with such anguish that I suddenly wondered if Aunt Louise was right after all.

  Then I got a glimpse of what he was holding in his hand. It wasn’t a dragonfly at all. The wings were dragonfly wings, dark-veined and clear as window glass. The head was wrong, though. The huge eyes that bulge out and cover most of a dragonfly’s head looked more like intricate coils of tiny braids. The front feet, much bigger than those of any insect I’d ever seen, clutched something close to the body.

  And the body—

  “It looks human!” I blurted.

  Gramps nodded, then shook his head. “Not exactly human, Nathan.”

  I bent over his hands, peering down at the creature. It was certainly no ordinary bug. The body was almost the size of one of Gramps’s bony fingers, but it—she—was definitely shaped like a person.

  Gramps started to tremble. “I killed her. If only . . .”

  I didn’t interrupt him this time. I knew how he felt. It was awful to find something so strange and wonderful only because it was crushed on your car. It made me feel as sad as he sounded.

  “What did you find, Gramps?” I had been so involved with the strange thing that I hadn’t noticed Jessie coming up behind us. I tried to block her so she wouldn’t see it, but she pushed between us and peered into his hands. “A fairy!”

  Gramps shook his head and opened his mouth to say something, but I never found out what it was, because right then the tiny creature twitched and tried to sit up.

  Chapter Four

  “Mother! Come see what we found!” Jessie called.

  Mother appeared at the back door, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “What’s up?”

  “We found . . .” Jessie started.

  “Better just come see, Kate,” Gramps interrupted.

  She started toward us but stopped as the lady who had been talking to Mrs. Pruitt walked across the yard toward us. “Oh, no. Not now,” Mom muttered.

  The lady wore a brown skirt and jacket with a red blouse. It wasn’t a suit, exactly, but it looked businesslike, somehow, and she had a clipboard with papers on it in one hand.

  “Gol-durned salesmen,” Gramps grumbled. “Can’t never leave a body a minute’s peace.”

  Mom turned to me. “Nathan, have you been playing with the hose again? Put it away, please.”

  I stared at her. I opened my mouth to say that Gramps had been using it to wash off the car, but she knew that. She looked worried, and I wondered why. It was just somebody trying to sell her perfume and stuff. Why didn’t she just say she wasn’t interested the way she usually does?

  I closed my mouth and put the hose away while she went out to meet the lady. They talked a minute and then went in the house.

  Jessie was still standing beside Gramps, who had his hands cupped nearly closed one over the other. “We’d best take this critter somewhere less public,” he said in a low voice. “I’d hate to see her treated like some sideshow freak for everybody to gawk at.”

  Jessie nodded, her eyes wide. “How about my room? She can live in my dollhouse.”

  Gramps’s face softened with the look that usually meant he was about to ruffle your hair with his fingers, but his hands were busy with their fragile captive. “I don’t think so, honey. This is a wild thing. It’s not used to houses. And it’s hurt. We need to put it somewhere it can’t move around too much.”

  “How about my lizard cage?” I suggested. “It’s clean and dry and about the right size.”

  “Ugh!” Jessie wr
inkled her nose. “How would you like to wake up in a lizard cage?”

  “It’s clean! She won’t even know I had lizards in it.”

  “Sounds like the best we can do for now,” Gramps said, putting an end to our argument. “We can make other arrangements later.” I thought he was going to say, “If the danged thing lives,” but he didn’t. He started for the back door.

  “Nathan, you go in first, kind of clear the way.”

  I walked into the kitchen. It was empty. The way our house is built, the bedrooms open off the hall. You can get to the hall from the front room or from the laundry, which opens off the kitchen. I walked on through to the laundry.

  I could hear voices from the front of the house. “. . . so I can get to know all of you . . .” the lady was saying.

  I went back out and held the door open for Gramps. “The coast is clear,” I said softly. He nodded and led the way, followed by Jessie and me. I made sure the door closed without slamming.

  We shut the door of my room behind us and I got the lizard cage down from the top shelf in my closet. I had two chameleons in it last year, the quick, skinny lizards that change from brown to green to hide themselves. They got loose a couple of times, and finally Mother made me give them away.

  The cage was about a foot wide and two feet long, made of glass, with a screen top that came off. I set it on my desk. “Lizards need sand and water and a branch to climb,” I said. “What do we put in for a fairy?”

  “About what you’d put for a dragonfly, I reckon,” Gramps said. “Water to drink. Maybe some moss and a branch to climb or hide behind.”

  “I know!” Jessie ran off down the hall to her room. She was back a minute later with some things from her dollhouse: a bathtub full of water, some tiny dishes that were still huge compared to the fairy, and a miniature bed.

  “She’ll like this,” Jessie said confidently as she arranged the tiny blankets on the bed. “The flowers Mother embroidered on the blankets will remind the fairy of the wildflowers at the farm.” I guess it was natural for her to think the fairy came from the spring, where we had seen the dragonflies.

  “What will she eat?” Jessie worried.

  “No need to saddle the mule before you’ve got somewheres to go,” Gramps told her. He settled the unconscious little creature gently on the bed. “Right now she needs to rest and stretch out that wing.”

  I squeezed closer for a better look. The fairy had stopped moving, and her eyes were closed. Her body was a golden brown, covered with fine down that looked like velvet. Her upper body, where a person would wear a shirt or sweater, was shiny like a leather jacket. I couldn’t tell if it was clothes she was wearing or her natural skin like a dog’s fur or a lizard’s scales. She was still clutching something tightly between her arms.

  “I wonder what she’s hanging on to.”

  “If she thinks like Jessie, maybe it’s something to eat,” Gramps scoffed.

  “Or a doll,” Jessie said softly. “I bet she’s scared.”

  “It doesn’t look like a doll, Jessie,” I objected. “It looks more like a beetle, only smooth, with no legs that I can see.”

  “Dolls can look different,” Jessie said, pouting. “Teddy bears don’t look much like people. How do you know what a fairy teddy bear would look like?”

  “I guess you’re right,” I admitted.

  I reached in and gently smoothed the crumpled wing between two fingers, being careful not to break or tear it. The main vein across the top edge was broken. “Will it heal?” I asked.

  “Don’t know,” Gramps allowed. “Never had to doctor a fairy before. Best just let her rest.”

  We heard the sound of the front door closing. “Now we can tell Mother!” Jessie cried, running out of the room.

  I put the cover on the lizard cage and followed her and Gramps into the front room. Jessie was bouncing with excitement, but Mother didn’t seem to notice.

  “Sit down, all of you. We have to have a talk.”

  We looked at each other and sat down, Jessie and I on the sofa, Gramps in his old stuffed recliner with the worn spot on the arm. Mother paced back and forth three or four times. Then she pulled a chair out from the table and sat facing us, her eyebrows pinched together into a wrinkly line over her nose.

  “This isn’t easy for me to say, so please don’t interrupt. You know Louise has been worried about whether Dad is all right living here with us. She thinks he’d be better off where there are doctors on call all the time and a nutritionist planning the meals and lots of other people his own age.”

  Gramps said a word he usually reserves for flat tires and stepping in the mess a neighbor’s dog leaves in our yard.

  “Now, Dad,” Mother said, turning to him. “You know as well as I do that she’s got reason to wonder. She only sees, you once or twice a year and you seem to go out of your way to irritate her. She probably thinks you’re getting senile.”

  “Well, I ain’t.” His words were emphatic.

  “I know that. And the kids know it, too. The problem is, Louise has her mind made up, and she’s sure a professional would agree with her.”

  “Ain’t none of her dad-blamed business.”

  “Of course it is. She’s your daughter, the same as I am. She wants what’s best for you.”

  “What’s best for me is for her to leave me alone!” His voice rose in an angry shout.

  Mother sighed. “I happen to agree with you, Dad, but that’s not the point. The point is, she’s talked to a lawyer about being named as your legal guardian. If she manages that . . .”

  “She wants to see if she can get me committed!” Gramps exploded.

  Mother blinked back tears, and stared at her hands, which were twisting a handkerchief in her lap as if they wanted to strangle it. “It isn’t that simple. She can’t have you committed, even if she is your guardian. But she would control all your finances. She could make all sorts of decisions for you. And you pay a share of the cost of the house. If you didn’t . . .”

  If he didn’t, we wouldn’t be able to afford a house big enough for all four of us. I jumped up. “We can’t let her do this! Gramps belongs here with us!”

  Mother looked over at me. “Yes, he does. But we can’t afford to hire an expensive attorney to fight Louise. Our best chance is to go along with her until we can prove she’s wrong about Gramps being able to handle his own affairs.”

  Jessie jumped up and stood beside Gramps.

  “Nobody would believe her. Gramps doesn’t need anybody to take care of him.”

  Mom smiled, but she shook her head. “It isn’t that simple, either, honey. Louise isn’t trying to be mean. She really believes she’s doing what’s right. She asked the lawyer to have a psychologist do an evaluation. We’re going to have to go through it together, and somehow convince Miss Ryderson that Louise is wrong.”

  “Miss Ryderson? Is that the lady who was here?” Jessie asked.

  Mother nodded. “She does evaluations in the home, instead of taking the” —she stumbled over the word— “the subject into a clinic. Louise wanted me to take you in for testing, Dad. She knew I wouldn’t do it, though. She already arranged this before she said anything about it.”

  Gramps said another of his words, sounding as if he was spitting on the ground.

  “That won’t help,” Mother said firmly. “In fact, that’s one of the things Louise is complaining about. She thinks your swearing is a sign that you’re unhappy and that you’re rejecting reality.”

  “If they believed that, they’d lock up most of the baseball players in the big leagues,” Gramps snorted.

  “That’s only one of the things she mentioned. She thinks you’re hurting the kids, too.”

  I could see the shock on Gramps’s face. I probably turned as pale as he had. Hurting us! Who could believe that? But then I thought of the bandage on my arm, and my black eye. The psychologist had seen that. What would she think?

  “Miss Ryderson is the one we have to convince,” Mo
m said, breaking the silence. “She was assigned to the case last week, and she’s been talking to the neighbors. That’s why she was here today, to talk to Mrs. Pruitt. Apparently, they don’t think I’d tell them if you were doing things like that.”

  He sat there, staring at the floor, with his mouth so tight on his pipe I was afraid he’d break it.

  “Miss Ryderson just stopped over to make an appointment. She’s coming out tomorrow to talk to us. Please, Dad, try to be pleasant to her. We need her on our side.”

  He stood up and headed toward his room. “I’ll be on my best behavior.” Then, in a low grumble as if he didn’t want us to hear, he added, “Like a durned trained seal.”

  I looked at Mother and went after him. Jessie trailed along behind. Gramps went into my room instead of his. With his hands in the pockets of his old slacks, he gazed down at the broken-winged wonder in the lizard cage. He turned as we came in.

  “This ain’t the best of times to tell your mother I’ve been seeing fairies.”

  Jessie and I nodded. It would be hard enough for Mother to get through the next few days without having to worry about accidentally saying something like, “I’ve got to go and check on the fairy who lives in Nathan’s room.” If she did that, we might all be sent away. A psychologist wouldn’t understand, not without seeing the fairy.

  “Maybe we should tell Mother and Miss Ryderson both about what we found,” I said. “If we show them, they’ll have to believe us.”

  Gramps held the bowl of his old pipe in his hand and pointed at me with the stem, the way you might shake a finger at someone. “We do that and they’ll have the critter in a cage permanent, same’s they’re trying to do with me. Ain’t right, a wild thing like that locked up. No, we got to keep still about this.”

  I knew he was right. The fewer people who found out about her the better. Otherwise, she could end up in a zoo, or worse, in some laboratory cage like a white rat. If she lived, she deserved to be free, back in the fresh green meadows where she’d started.

  “Don’t worry, Gramps. It’ll be our secret. We’ll all have to be careful the next few days.” I hoped he could remember that, too, and not do something to upset Miss Ryderson.