Evan Hunter - The Paper Dragon

At home they called her Edna Belle, and they called her brother George Benjamin, always using their full Christian names. In the center of the town, there was an enormous statue of Andrew Jackson, said to have been razed by the Yankees during the War between the States and left there as a grim reminder to the people of the South, never repaired or rebuilt, standing in ruinous splendor. She and George Benjamin would go down to the monument and play at its base with the other children. Once she cut herself falling on a piece of broken glass there she still had a crescent-shaped scar on her thigh as a reminder of the accident. Sometimes she would wander down to the center of town alone, and she would sit and sketch the monument in charcoal, the way the general's broken sword ended abruptly against the sky, with the bell tower of the church beyond, and down the street the white clapboard courthouse. She loved to work in charcoal, smearing the black onto the page with her index and middle fingers, rubbing it, shading it, smoothing it into the paper. It was very hard to draw niggers, even in charcoal.

She found the bird one day at the base of the monument, a sparrow who had broken his leg, probably by flying into the general's broad bronzed back or the shell-torn rim of his campaign hat. The bird lay on his back with his beak open, his throat pulsing, no sound coming from him, but his tongue or whatever it was leaping into his throat, beating there, as though he were mutely begging for assistance. She reached down for the bird, and he tried to regain his feet, the broken leg hanging crookedly and, still dazed, flopped over onto his side. No eyes were showing, his eyes were rolled back into his head, only an opaque white showed. She cradled him in her hands, and then couldn't pick up her sketching pad or her box of charcoals, so she left them at the base of the monument and walked slowly home holding the bird gently in her hands, his throat working. She was terrified lest he try again to fly away and fall from her hands to the pavement — she knew that would kill him. They all said the bird would die, anyway, even George Benjamin said so. But she took care of him until he got better, just as she knew he would, and one day he flew off before she had a chance to take him back to the monument where she had found him. She used to look for him at the monument after that, thinking he would maybe come back, like in picture books, but he never did.

Her father owned the dairy in town, the name of it was Clover Crest Farms, which she had helped him pick. He had wanted to call it Dearborn Farms, but even George Benjamin thought that was pretty corny, and a bit egotistical, naming the thing after yourself. Her father was a very tall man, with blond hair like her own. Her mother had blond hair, too, well everybody in the family did, except George Benjamin. His was a sort of reddish color, like Aunt Serena's and Grandmother Winkler's. Edna Belle looked a lot like her mother, leastwise that's what everybody was always telling her, and she was proud to believe it because her mother was a very beautiful and elegant woman. They had two niggers working for them, Lucy who was the kitchen help, and Aurora who did the cleaning, and who was always pregnant. They both adored Mother, you could just see they thought she was beautiful and very elegant, which she was. But it was surprising the two niggers thought, so, there never was no love lost in that town.

Edna Belle especially loved the way her mother talked, she could sit and listen to her talk all day. She had a voice, well, there was just nothing like it, that was all, deep and warm, and breaking into a marvelous laugh when you least expected it. She always made Edna Belle feel very grown up, because she talked to her about real things and not the usual dopey stuff grownups say to children. Whenever they talked together, Edna Belle felt as though she were talking to an older and much smarter friend who was beautiful and wise and very elegant besides; well, she was a wonderful person, the niggers were right. And her father, he was simply the happiest person she knew, always joking, always making mother and everybody laugh. One time he filled the refrigerator with milk for her, just filled it from top to bottom with milk, and when Mother came home from marketing that afternoon and opened the refrigerator door, why there they were! maybe thirty or forty bottles of milk ! "Oh, that nut!" she said, laughing, she used to laugh a lot, Mother.

George Benjamin was the least talented person she had ever met in her life, he couldn't even draw a straight line. He would always come up to her and say, "Edna Belle, show me how to draw a damn horse," or "Edna Belle, how do you make it look like it's getting smaller in the distance?" but he was just hopeless, no talent at all, she sometimes used to feel sorry for him. He had a chemistry set, and once he burned his hand, and she took care of him the way she had the bird. Well, not exactly the same because it was Aurora who changed his bandages and all, but she made sure there were always fresh-picked flowers in his room, and she would leave little drawings on his pillow for him to find when he woke up in the morning. The hand business only lasted maybe two weeks, but she took very good care of him in those weeks, she really loved him a lot, even though he begrudged Daddy a few laughs at his jokes. He kept one of her pictures, the one she made of the pond on the old Barrow place near the mill. He said he liked that one best because it reminded him of fishing there. She knew, of course, that he fished there when she'd made the drawing, of course, that's why she'd made it in the first place.

Her best friend was a girl named Cissie Butterfoster, whose name broke her up, but who was a nice girl, anyway. Cissie wore pigtails, and Daddy used to kid with her, saying, "Why do you wear your hair like the niggers, Cissie?" and Cissie always would blush. Until much later, when she was in high school, and then one day she just said to Daddy, almost making him blush, "You sure do take a deep concern over my hair, Mr. Dearborn," which was sort of snippy even though she had developed a very good pair of boobs by then, but to imply Daddy was flirting with her or something! But when they were small together, they did have some very good times together, Edna Belle and Cissie, even when they teased about her last name, Butterfoster, what a last name. Edna Belle once said to her father that they ought to start a division of the dairy called Butterfoster Farms, and that broke him up, with George Benjamin sitting there smiling and watching Daddy, and Cissie laughing, too — she was a pretty good sport. She was the first girl in the crowd to start menstruating, and she always bled a fearful lot, and had the most dire cramps. She made Edna Belle cry in pity one day, writhing the way she was on her bed and saying, "Oh, Edna Belle, you don't know how lucky you are! You don't know what it is to be a grown woman," which Edna Belle learned soon enough, and without half as much hysterics. But still and all she had felt genuine pity for Cissie that day, and she had no doubt the cramps were real. Cissie told her Tampax could break your cherry, what a lie. She also said horseback riding could break it, and doing pushups could break it. According to Cissie anything could break it, a girl had to be careful just getting out of bed in the morning, otherwise Goodbye, Charlie. She stopped hanging around with Cissie in their sophomore year at high school because everybody was saying things about her by then, and besides Daddy warned Edna Belle about her reputation in a small town, and about chumming with Cissie who had taken to wearing such tight sweaters. Edna Belle figured if Cissie had them, why not? though she never said this to anyone, least of all Daddy, and anyway her own were so small, like Mother's.