Mark Dunn - American Decameron

“Enchanted and enchained!” repeated Hiram in grinning agreement with his sister, who had never married and whose womb had remained fallow.

So Miss Odell went back to her storeroom and came out with three glistening tiaras, a perfect fit for our little seven-year-old heads, and we could not have been more pleased with the way they made us look as we crowded around the mirror in the powder room. But as we were gathering to get a good look at ourselves, Piddy’s tiara came loose from her hair and landed in the sink and snapped in two. After an attempt to glue the pieces back together failed (“I told you that Elmer’s was only for paper and cardboard products, Hiram!”), there followed some debate as to whether or not we should wait a week to reveal our new look so that Piddy could get herself a new tiara. But Piddy, who was going through an insistent phase, would have none of this. So she and Maryanne and I ended up dancing with our new tiaras on our heads, and Piddy kept both of her hands fixed to her own head to hold the disjoined tiara in place. I know that we lost points with the judges because of Piddy’s stiff and limited arm movement. But in the end, we were happy that we didn’t have to wait a full week to enchant and enchain Mr. Jones and Miss Lighthouse.

As Mrs. Taliaferro got the signal to bring our number to a close, we noticed that Johnny Humphries and the movie palace custodian Avis had finally rescued Carthy McCharlie. It was a sad sight, though, because the dummy was broken up into so many different pieces. Even his head had come off. Miss Lighthouse went to Johnny and whispered something to him. She was asking him in her gentle, motherly way if he might like to wait until next week to perform the rest of his ventriloquist routine after Carthy had been put back together again. But Johnny, like Piddy, seemed determined to go on and bring his act to a proper finish.

We were supposed to all troop down and sit with the rest of the audience when our number was over, but I wanted to see what was going to happen with Johnny and Carthy from a backstage perspective; so I planted myself just offstage next to Mr. Jones, who heaved a heavy sigh and then turned to me and said in a doleful voice, “Just look at that poor dummy — he’s only a shadow of his former self.”

Johnny sat in the chair and held Carthy’s head and all of his detached body parts in his lap, and then, as if stricken with sudden genius, began to pretend to the listeners throughout Yazoo County that Carthy wasn’t in several pieces at all, but fully restored to his old self (this being radio and the listening audience being none the wiser). This ploy upset the in-theatre audience of nine-, ten-, and eleven-year-olds who began to boo and hiss. One boy yelled, “You big bamboozler! You flimflam merchant!” (which the boy had probably heard his father say more than once about President Harry S. Truman). Johnny responded by throwing Carthy’s head at the boy as if it were an angry football. Then he fled the stage in tears.

They gave third prize (a pity prize, I’m sure) to Johnny. Third prize was a coupon for a free bag of popcorn. And first place — a month’s worth of free tickets to the kiddie matinee — went to a boy who had never competed before named Mitch, who talked his way through the story of “Old Shep,” but was so shy that he never looked up from his shoes, as if he were telling the story to his feet. And believe it or not, we Tiara Girls came in second place! It was all because Piddy had shown courage in the face of adversity by going on with the show wearing her broken tiara, and Mr. Jones, as he was awarding us our coupons for a free Coca-Cola and a free box of Jujubes at the concession stand, said that we were an inspiration to all the young people of America because we had shown the kind of grit and determination that had made this country great! And then he interrupted himself to scold two boys in the audience who were playing catch with poor Carthy McCharlie’s disconnected head.

1949 was a long time ago and I’m an old woman now and quite amazed that I can recall it all in such detail. But they always say it’s the earliest memories that get retained the longest and maintain the greatest clarity. I’ve lost touch with nearly everyone I knew in those days — with Maryanne and Piddy and Sue Ann and Geneva. The town where we all grew up, having fallen on hard times, is now, to borrow from Mr. Jones, only a shadow of its former self.

In some ways the world has become a much more sensible place; today we would never accept the isolated sound of little tapping feet on the radio as any conceivable form of entertainment. Yet what has been lost that was with us back then, I think, even with a world war only four years past and the atomic bomb casting its ominous shadow all about, is that longing for childlike simplicity and innocence. We didn’t have it then — not really. But still we yearned for it.

Today we don’t even seem to yearn anymore.

“For a steel town, Weirton’s got her charm.” Mr. House was standing at the window next to Russell, his daughter’s latest “gentleman friend,” whom she brought home for Thanksgiving weekend. The two men were watching the flakes start to fall. “Has Trudy taken you around?”

“I’m supposed to get the grand tour tomorrow.”

Mrs. House stepped out of the kitchen. She wore an apron with a big cartoon turkey on it. “Don’t be so sure about that, Russ. Can I call you Russ? We’re supposed to get a half-foot of snow by tomorrow.”

“I hope they don’t have to cancel the Ohio-Michigan game on Saturday,” said a suddenly worried Mr. House.

“Not of snowball’s chance of that happening, Dad,” offered Trudy’s brother, Bud, looking up from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette . “Even a blizzard ain’t gonna stop that game.”

“ Isn’t , not ain’t ,” Mrs. House corrected her college freshman son as she pushed through the swinging door back into the kitchen.

“Say, Russell — or can we call you Rusty? — who are you putting your money on — Michigan or Ohio State? Or do you care? Trudy says you’re from Pennsylvania.”

Russell turned from the window to face his teenage inquisitor. “I’d rather see Ohio State go to the Rose Bowl, but they played pretty lousy against Illinois last week. Moving Janowicz to quarterback was a good move, but Fesler’s probably on his way out the door and you just gotta wonder if his heart’s really in it. The Wolverines are looking good. I’d go with Michigan.”

“How long will you and Trudy be staying with us?” asked Mr. House, patting his pockets for his tobacco pouch.

“The plan was to finish up the trip in Erie to see my mother,” said Russell, “and then turn around and get back to Cleveland before Monday.”

“ If the weather cooperates,” appended Mr. House.

“A little snow doesn’t bother me,” said Russell.

It snowed all through the Thanksgiving feast. The Fergusons — Arnold and Bet — who broke bread with the House family every postal holiday, got nervous, and even though they lived only a few miles west of Weirton in Steubenville, they didn’t wait around for pumpkin pie. “Arnold doesn’t like to drive in the snow,” explained Bet through buckled, apologetic lips.

“And Bet doesn’t drive at all ,” added Arnold as he inserted his wife into her coat.

The Houses grilled Trudy about her new “man,” and Trudy, agreeably accommodating, said everything about him that she adored and nothing about him that she didn’t, for there was, in truth, very little that she didn’t like about Russell. He had a good job as an aeronautical engineer at the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory. The two had met at a party and hit it off immediately. Now, without a formal engagement but clearly headed in the direction of marriage, Trudy was bringing Russell “home to meet the folks.”