Avram Davidson - The Avram Davidson Treasury - a tribute collection

“ Coal? Why, no-o-o…not yet . Looks like a pretty mild winter ahead, wouldn’t you say?”

She pressed her lips together, closed her eyes and shook her head.

“No! Bedder you buy soon coal. Lots coal. Comes very soon bad wedder. Bad!”

My father scratched his head. “Why, you sound pretty certain, Mrs. Grummick, but — uh—”

“I know, mister. If I say id, if I tell you, I know. ”

Then I piped up and asked, “Did you read it in the beans, Mrs. Grummick?”

“Hey!” She looked at me, surprised. “How you know, liddle boy?”

My father said, “You mean you can tell a bad winter is coming from the beans? ”

“Iss true. I know. I read id.”

“ Well, now, that’s very interesting. Where I come from, used to be a man — a weather prophet, they called him— he used to predict the weather by studying skunk stripes. Said his grandfather’d learned it from the Indians. How wide this year, how wide last year. Never failed. So you use beans?”

So I pushed my oar in and I said, “I guess you don’t have the kind of beans that the man gave Jack for the cow and he planted them and they were all different colors. Well, a beanstalk grew way way up and he climbed—”

Father said, “Now don’t bother Mrs. Grummick, sonny,” but she leaned over the fence and picked me up and set me down on her side of it.

“You, liddle boy, come in house and tell me. You, mister: buy coal.”

Mrs. Grummick gave me a glass of milk from the nanny goat who lived in one of the sheds, and a piece of gingerbread, and I told her the story of Jack and the beanstalk. Here’s a funny thing — she believed it. I’m sure she did. It wasn’t even what the kids call Making Believe, it was just a pure and simple belief. Then she told me a story. This happened on the other side, in some backwoods section of Europe where she came from. In this place they used to teach the boys to read, but not the girls. They figured, what did they need it for? So one day there was this little girl, her brothers were all off in school and she was left at home sorting beans. She was supposed to pick out all the bad beans and the worms, and when she thought about it and about everything, she began to cry.

Suddenly the little girl looked up and there was this old woman. She asked the kid how come she was crying. Because all the boys can learn to read, but not me. Is that all? the old lady asked.

Don’t cry, she said. I’ll teach you how to read, only not in books, the old lady said. Let the men read books, books are new things, people could read before there were books. Books tell you what was , but you’ll be able to tell you what’s going to be. And this old lady taught the little girl how to read the beans instead of the books. And I kind of have a notion that Mrs. Grummick said something about how they once used to read bones, but maybe it was just her accent and she meant beans…

And you know, it’s a funny thing, but, now, if you look at dried beans, you’ll notice how each one is maybe a little different shape or maybe the wrinkles are a little different. But I was thinking that, after all, an “A” is an “A” even if it’s big or small or twisted or…

But that was the story Mrs. Grummick told me. So it isn’t remarkable, if she could believe that story, she could easily believe the Jack and the Beanstalk one. But the funny thing was, all that hot weather just vanished one day suddenly, and from October until almost April we had what you might call an ironbound winter. Terrible blizzards one right after another. The rivers were frozen and the canals were frozen and even the railroads weren’t running and the roads were blocked more than they were open. And coal? Why, you just couldn’t get coal. People were freezing to death right and left. But Mrs. Grummick’s little house was always warm and it smelled real nice with all those herbs and dried flowers and stuff hanging around in it.

A few years later my sister got married. And after that, in the summertime, she and her husband Jim used to come back and visit with us. Jim and I used to play ball and we had a fine time — they didn’t have any children, so they made much of me. I’ll always remember those happy summers.

Well, you know, each summer, a few of the churches used to get together and charter a boat and run an excursion. All the young couples used to go, but my sister always made some excuse. See, she was always afraid of the water. This particular summer the same thing happened, but her friends urged her to come. My brother-in-law, he didn’t care one way or the other. And then, with all the joking, someone said, Let’s ask Mrs. Grummick to read it in the beans for us. It had gotten known, you see. Everybody laughed, and more for the fun of it than anything else, I suppose, they went over and spoke to her. She said that Sister and Jim could come inside, but there wasn’t room for anybody else. So we watched through the window.

Mrs. Grummick spread her beans on the table and began to shove them around here and there with her fingers. Some she put to one side and the rest she little by little lined up in rows. Then she took from one row and added to another row and changed some around from one spot to another. And meanwhile, mind you, she was muttering to herself, for all the world like one of these old people who reads by putting his finger on each word and mumbling it. And what was the answer?

“Don’t go by the water.”

And that was all. Well, like I say, my sister was just looking for any excuse at all, and Jim didn’t care. So the day of the excursion they went off on a picnic by car. I’d like to have gone, but I guess they sort of wanted to be by themselves a bit and Jim gave me a quarter and I went to the movies and bought ice-cream and soda.

I came out and the first thing I saw was a boy my own age, by the name of Bill Baumgardner, running down the street crying. His shirt was out and his nose was running and he kept up an awful grinding kind of howl. I called to him but he paid no attention. I still don’t know where he was running from or where to and I guess maybe he didn’t know either. Because he’d been told, by some old fool who should’ve known better, that the excursion boat had caught on fire, with his parents on it. The news swept through town and almost everybody with folks on the boat was soon in as bad a state as poor Billy.

First they said everybody was burned or drowned or trampled. Later on it turned out to be not that bad — but it was bad enough.

Oh, my folks were shook up, sure enough, but it’s easier to be calm when you know it’s not your own flesh and blood. I recall hearing the church clock striking six and my mother saying, “I’ll never laugh at Mrs. Grummick again as long as I live.” Well, she never did.

Almost everyone who had people on the boat went up the river to where it had finally been run ashore, or else they waited by the police station for news. There was a deaf lady on our street, I guess her daughter got tired of its being so dull at home and she’d lied to her mother, told her she was going riding in the country with a friend. So when the policeman came and told her — shouted at her they’d pulled out the girl’s body, she didn’t know what he was talking about. And when she finally understood she began to scream and scream and scream.

The policeman came over toward us and my mother said, “I’d better get over there,” and she started out. He was just a young policeman and his face was pale. He held up his hand and shook his head. Mother stopped and he came over. I could hear how hard he was breathing. Then he mentioned Jim’s name.