A Season of Gifts by Richard Peck Read Free Book Online Page B

that the hollyhocks were over. If you asked me, she was turning into a Mrs. Dowdel doll herself.
    Mother tried to have little talks with her. “Honey, you’re a good little helper, bless your heart, but try to remember Mrs. Dowdel is old and can get confused in the things she says.”
    “Pshaw,” Ruth Ann would say back, “this whole town is built where two old Indian trails crossed. The Kickapoos goin’ one way, the Illini the other. Hoo-boy, no wonder they’s restless spirits underfoot.” Then she’d poke at the bridge of her nose like she wore spectacles.
    Mother sighed.
    Mrs. Dowdel turned a tidy profit. Her apron got so saggy with loose change that she had to hang a berry pail from an army surplus ammo belt slung around her big middle.
    *  *  *
    Another rumor began to drift through town, lazy like the smoke off the burning leaves. You could probably have traced it back to Mrs. Dowdel herself. It was common knowledge that she didn’t trust banks, especially the Weidenbachs’ bank uptown. Still, she was spotted at the teller’s counter, picking up those papers you roll piles of quarters in. The bank gave them out free.
    She was said to have folding money in stacks too—stacks and stacks. The exact amount grew in the telling. Her front room light burned late as she sat counting it, several said. Rumor reported that she was stashing hertreasure somewhere in her house. A loose floorboard in her grandson’s old bedroom was mentioned. Joey’s room. But witnesses were on the record that she’d been digging out in her melon patch in the darkest part of night. Who knew?
    *  *  *
    Finally Mrs. Dowdel had sold every melon and squash in her patch, every gourd off her vine. And all at top dollar. Her tomato plants were picked clean and ready to be dug under. The pheasant feathers had sold like hot cakes. They’d flown out of those coffee cans.
    She’d feathered her nest for sure. Now you’d think she’d be hunkering down for winter and maybe paying to have her kindling split. But no.
    She turned up at our kitchen door one night. A heavy clump on the porch, a thundering rap on the door, and there she was. From the table we saw the two moons of her specs agleam in the gloom. We jumped.
    Supper was just over, and Phyllis was plotting her escape. Ruth Ann went to open the door, and we followed. Then we saw she wasn’t alone. An eerie face under a mashed hat peered around her. Cross-eyes peered at us and everywhere else, through a veil. It was Mrs. Wilcox of the wash-foot church.
    Mrs. Dowdel leaned toward Mother and muttered, “I couldn’t shake her.” She jerked a thumb to indicate Mrs. Wilcox. “She’s all over me like a rubber girdle in a heatwave.”
    “Oh, but you’re both as welcome as you can be,” Mother said. “Come in and take chairs.”
    But that wasn’t going to happen. They came in, though, single-file. They were paying a call, so they had on their best aprons, with rickrack. Mrs. Wilcox’s eyes and teeth went in every direction. Something bulky hung in the crook of Mrs. Dowdel’s arm. Not her Winchester. It was a box, a little bigger than a shoebox.
    Phyllis held back, trying not to be there. Ruth Ann and I were the only ones who’d seen Mrs. Dowdel this close, and I wasn’t admitting it. But she looked straight over my head like she’d never set eyes on me in her life. Ruth Ann’s apron was just like hers and Mrs. Wilcox’s. Phyllis was drifting farther off.
    “I don’t neighbor,” Mrs. Dowdel announced, though she was handing Mother her last jar of pickled peaches.
    “She don’t,” Mrs. Wilcox piped up.
    “I’m here strictly on church business.”
    “Strictly business,” Mrs. Wilcox echoed. “And no funny business.”
    Mrs. Dowdel turned on Dad, who was fighting his way into his suit coat. “You can’t get a church up and goin’ without a good funeral first,” she told him. “Any fool could tell you that. Without a funeral, you ain’t got a chance