The Maybe Tree

By Mary Beth Craft

In June of 1930, when Maybe Rose Tucker is five years old, her mother is murdered, her father is a suspect, and if looks as if the murderer is after Maybe.  Much of Maybe's time is spent on a swing hanging from a limb in the old pecan tree in the front yard of the Tucker mansion in Blue Valley, Mississippi.  Maybe struggles to fit into the nightmare world she occupies.  She daydreams, worries and eavesdrops and all the while is a little girl eager to please the adults in her life while in a situation she cannot possibly understand.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wings ePress, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9781597050968

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Dedication

For my fine family, with special thanks to Susan and John for their help.

One

June 1930, Blue Valley, Mississippi

Maybe is my name. Maybe Rose Tucker. Why Maybe? Why not Mary Rose? Why not any name except Maybe? I’ve been told all my life that Maybe isn’t even a name. Well, yes, it is. It’s my name and I’m proud of it. When I hear folks call out the name Maybe, I know they mean me, and fifteen other people don’t answer. Was it a family name before me? No. But now it is. Someone told me that when my Momma was pregnant and she was asked if she thought the baby was a girl or a boy, she would always say Maybe it’s a girl or perhaps it’s a boy. So when I was born, she said, So it’s ‘Maybe’? And my Poppa agreed, Yes. It’s ‘Maybe Rose Tucker’. I wonder if they would have named a boy Perhaps!

During the summer of nineteen-thirty, when I was five years old, I ran away from home regularly at least once a week. I didn’t run far since I had a big enough yard to run away in, but I did pack my suitcase and lug it and my favorite doll Daisy and her own suitcase out the front door and to the corner of our front yard. Since the yard covered a block with the big old house sitting importantly in the middle of the area, the half-a-block walk seemed a long distance to me. At the corner of the intersection of Blue Avenue and Grimes Lane, I always leaned my suitcase up against the big old pecan tree that spread its shade (and in the fall its generous supply of fat nuts) over the intersection of the brick walkway that ran all around the block, putting a frame around Tucker House.

I would daydream away the morning to the place that I was thinking about that day. But first I opened my suitcase and pulled out whatever play outfit suited the place I was visiting on my Run-Away. One of my favorites was Birmingham over in Alabama, not too far from my town, Blue Valley, which sits in the middle of North Mississippi. For Birmingham, Daisy and I wore our dress-up clothes, mine an old black silk crepe over-blouse trimmed with many shiny sequins and black bugle beads and Daisy’s a purple taffeta long dress my Momma had made for her.

Going to Birmingham in real life was a treat for me since my Momma and Poppa went over there once a month and sometimes let me go with them. Poppa always told me things about the city and let me pick out a postcard each trip that showed the many nice features of the city in the cup of those big old mountains.

He and I would walk across the street from the doctor’s office where Momma spent an hour each time to a drugstore where I would choose my postcard and we would eat ice cream with long spoons from tall, skinny glasses; Poppa always chose vanilla and I had either chocolate or strawberry depending on what kind of mood I was in. If Momma had been happy and talked a lot that day, I took strawberry, and if she had been sad and hadn’t talked a lot, I had chocolate. I never did tell anybody that her mood had anything to do with my own mood. Of course, I always thought how she felt depended on whether I had been a good girl or a bad girl the days before the trips. Seems like she always felt better when Lizzie the maid didn’t feel the need to yell at me. The days Lizzie came to work in a yelling mood were some of the days I ran away to my daydreaming tree.

Old George the yardman had made me a board swing and tied its ropes to one of my tree’s lower limbs and some days I would let myself move slowly back and forth in the swing with Daisy clutched under an arm. I was actually a bit afraid of that tree (that’s another secret I didn’t tell anybody) because once when I was just four, I had climbed up into the tree, fallen out and broken my collarbone so the last part of that summer I was hot and sticky under a shoulder-to-waist cast and I hurt. But the cast and the pain were nothing compared to the terror I had felt when Poppa drove me to Dr. Sherman’s office after I fell and Dr. Sherman took me into a pitch black room and put me behind a little screen that lit up so he could stand on the other side of the room and look at my bones on that screen. I didn’t dare cry because Dr. Sherman expected me to be a big girl and, since I was depending on him to heal Momma, I had to be good. And anyway, Dr. Sherman was my friend. He told me one time us redheads had to stick together even though his eyes were blue and mine were brown like Poppa’s. But in that black room inside my mind, I was screaming and from that day on I never wanted to climb another tree or get above the ground at all if I could help it.

But back to Old George. There was a Young George who was Lizzie’s daughter since Old George was Lizzie’s father and some days Young George came to work with Lizzie and we played-but not Run-Away since I didn’t share my daydreaming with anybody, although Old George could hear me when he was working in the yard close to my tree. Young George was a year younger than me and not nearly so grown-up as I was; after all, I was starting first grade that fall, so she and I always played in the fenced back yard where I had a sandbox and there was a gazebo that made a good playhouse.

Why was Young George called Young George when she was a girl? Because Lizzie said she was having only the one child but wanted to name a baby after her daddy since he was a good man. Not like that rascal of a fellow husband of hers, who was Young George’s daddy and left before Young George was even born. So since they lived at Old George’s house, they needed to call them Old George and Young George so they’d know who Lizzie was yelling at when she wanted one of them to do something. Since Lizzie was the oldest of Old George’s six children, there was usually somebody around their house to watch Young George but some days everybody but Mrs. Old George was gone and she was just too plumb wore out to watch after one more baby now that her own baby was ten years old. Lizzie was thirty years old that summer, so I guess Mrs. Old George was really wore out. Some days, though, when she was rested up, she came to work and did things like wash and iron and once in a while she would take Young George and me for long walks. Her real name was Emma but I always called her Mrs. Old George out of respect for her old age; she must have been at least fifty years old in nineteen-thirty and walked sort of shuffly because of her arthritis. However, she was more fun to go walking with than Lizzie because she walked slowly and never yelled at me and Young George to hurry up and quit dawdling to look at things like Lizzie did when she took me someplace like to get Momma’s medicine from the drugstore. Momma would call Dr. Sherman on our telephone hanging on the wall in the downstairs hall and let him know when she ran out of her pills so he could call the drugstore and let them know to let Lizzie have some more in a little white box. It was about five blocks to the drugstore, so we walked there. If Momma needed something from downtown, she would give Lizzie some nickels for us to catch the city bus that ran up and down Blue Avenue from downtown out to the University on the edge of town on past Tucker House.

There was usually some interesting traffic on the avenue, which was paved, while Grimes Lane had gravel on it and was dusty. One Thursday morning in early June, that year while I was Running-Away to Birmingham, I saw three city buses, a wagon being oonched slowly along by a lazy old horse, and Joe’s ice truck not moving any faster because of all the stops he had to make to deliver blocks of ice to the houses on his route. He turned off Blue Avenue and kicked up a lot of dust going down Grimes to our back gate on Turnage Avenue. Even though we had a big electric icebox, we also had a smaller one to hold ice for things like making homemade ice cream and other stuff. It was tempting to cut my trip short and race to the back gate as I did on most days. Not only was it fun to watch Joe chip off two square blocks from the huge larger blocks sitting in the covered back of his truck, but it was a great treat to eat the snowballs Joe shaved off a big hunk of ice until he had a hand full of crushed ice which he shaped into a ball with his big hands. Other children in the neighborhood always ran out to get their snowballs and then wandered back to their houses biting the cold treats and sucking on the slivers of ice tasting of the smells of the wooden inside of the truck and the pungent odor of Joe’s strong hands. I always followed Joe to the back steps and sat there slurping my snowball to the very last bit of ice while he hauled our two squares of ice to the big icebox on our screened back porch. I always remembered to thank Joe for my snowball, and he always answered, Welcome, Miss Maybe.

But today I just waved at Joe as he drove past me onto Grimes Lane and I stayed at my daydreaming spot in case something exciting happened to Daisy and me in my dream. Good thing I did, too, since the Model T delivery truck from Mr. Jones’ grocery store/service station two blocks down Blue Avenue came rattling up the avenue about then with my best friend Buddy Jay on board with his Uncle Bob, who delivered groceries for Buddy Jay’s grandpa Jones. We always waved big at each other and shouted Hey as the truck went by. Actually my Poppa owned the building and service station part of Jones Corner Store since that’s how Poppa made our money-he owned lots of small businesses that he rented out to people. Especially service stations and repair shops. Years ago, Poppa saw that the automobile business would be big some day and he had jumped on that bandwagon in a hurry (that’s what Momma always said Poppa did). The Tuckers were also the owners of the only livery stable in town from day one of Blue Valley and now Poppa owned Ross Tucker Motor Company also, so we had most of the transportation business in town. And now Ross Tucker was the last of the Tuckers around, what with Granpaw and Granmaw Tucker ending up both dying last year leaving only their one son, my Poppa. Momma didn’t have any sisters or brothers either and only one old aunt left in her kinfolks. And that aunt lived a long way off from Blue Valley. I learned all this about my family one day while Lizzie was cooking dinner and Mrs. Old George was ironing on the ironing board set up close to the huge wood stove so she could keep her flatirons hot while Lizzie cooked. There was also an oil stove in the kitchen and there was natural gas in the house for things like the furnace and hot water heaters, but Momma liked food cooked on old fashioned wood stoves. I had been on the floor of the back porch cutting out paper dolls from a new book Poppa brought me back from Birmingham the day before when he went there for a meeting of car dealers. Lizzie and Mrs. Old George must not have realized I was where I could hear them that day, but I could and I listened. But soon they changed topics to Momma and how she had been so sick ever since she had her baby. I gathered up my paper dolls and put them on a table near the icebox and slipped out the back door so I wouldn’t hear about that.

So there Daisy and I were Running-Away to Birmingham. We sat in the swing and sang Sunday School songs. I liked to sing and sang lots of songs on my real rides, but always not out loud but in my mind, because it made both Poppa and Momma nervous for me to make too much noise, Momma because she nearly always slept most of the way to Birmingham, and if I did wake her up, she got all fidgety and Poppa because he was scared I’d wake her up. But here under my tree, I could sing as loud as I wanted to and have long conversations with Daisy about what was going on that day on our Run-Away. I had to talk to Daisy else she wouldn’t know what was going on.

We’re going through Tupelo today, Daisy, I informed her, because it’s longer that way and also because there’s a little cafe that Poppa always stops at for us to get a sandwich when we go that way. I’m having pimento cheese because that’s what I order when we eat out here in Blue Valley downtown at the little train car eating place since they do them just right with lots of mayonnaise and a slice of tomato and a little lettuce with a whole bunch of pimento cheese on toasted light bread. Um, um, this really tastes good after a long ride, dudn’t it, Daisy?

Daisy didn’t have time to answer since just then Dr. Sherman’s car raced up to in front of our house and Dr. Sherman leaped out and ran to the house and up the front steps carrying his black bag. Lizzie was waiting at the door for him and stood aside so he could get in. The door shut behind them and I clutched Daisy tighter and pumped the swing higher. I explained to Daisy that Momma must be having one of her bad spells when she had to have a shot from a little bottle in Dr. Sherman’s black bag and he would sit on her bed beside her and hold both her hands in his and tell her everything was going to be all right and just to go to sleep and not worry about things any more.

Daisy and I decided we didn’t really want to go to Birmingham after all and took off our dress-up clothes and folded them up carefully and put them back in our suitcases. I was getting sort of hot anyway and felt better not wearing that heavy black blouse over my pink sunsuit. Daisy was wearing her pink skirt and white blouse and felt better without her long dress on also. We sat back down in the swing and I started singing Sunday School songs as loud as I could and kept that up until I saw the front door open and Lizzie walk out onto the front porch with Dr. Sherman. He told her good-bye and walked slowly back down the front walk toward his car.

I jumped out of the swing and left it twisting and turning back and forth while Daisy and I ran down to meet Dr. Sherman by his car. He set down his black bag and kneeled down beside me and Daisy and hugged us close to his chest. There were tears in his eyes but I made sure I didn’t cry because I didn’t want to mess up his seersucker jacket with my own tears.

She’ll be all right, Maybe, he whispered in my ear. She’ll be all right one day.

Dr. Sherman stood up and got into his car. We stood there waving while he turned around in a driveway across the street and left, steering with one hand and smoothing down his unruly red hair with the other. I reached up and patted down my curly hair and then Daisy and I went back to the corner to get our suitcases. I dragged them back to the house, this time going across Old George’s neat grass which was a no-no most of the time. The suitcases made a clattering noise as I pulled them up the front steps. This brought Lizzie at a run to keep me quiet. She picked up the suitcases and hastily carried them upstairs to my room, whispering for me to go to the kitchen so she could give me my dinner. I dawdled down the long center hall to the back porch of the house, thinking about Momma as I went.

This summer was the sickest Momma had been in a long time. That past spring she had seemed to be much better and had spent lots of time in her sewing room pedaling away at her sewing machine to make my school clothes before the weather got too hot for her to sew. Since the sewing room was a corner room with lots of windows and a ceiling fan that was always turning and moving the breeze from the big old shady oak tree just outside so that she didn’t get too hot, it was fun to get out my paper dolls that stayed up there and play with them and watch her cutting out the bright prints that she sewed into pretty little dresses (lots of them with matching panties) for me to wear come fall at the big old elementary school within walking distance of Tucker House. Momma had driven the two of us in her pretty little car to town to buy the material for my school clothes. She also let me go with her in her car to Dr. Sherman’s clinic about every week when she went for her appointment with him. I’d usually stay out in the clinic yard and play since I didn’t like to go in where that black room was, but most of the time when she needed to go somewhere, she rode the city bus or let Old George drive her there and back to pick her up when she was ready to come home. She never did like to drive even when she felt good. Anyway, that spring she laughed a lot and cut her doctor visits in Birmingham down to once a month from the more times a month she went. And some nights she and Poppa would dance around the music room while the big phonograph played happy records. I would practice my tap dancing for dancing school over in a corner out of the way and those were fun nights and sometimes Poppa would scoop me up in his arms and twirl around while Momma sat down and rested and laughed with us.

Anyway, Momma made me at least ten new dresses while the weather was still cool and now they were hanging in my chifferobe where Lizzie had put them after she washed, starched and ironed them. There was a beautiful new coat for when the weather got cold and some sweaters to wear over the dresses on in-between days, not to mention two new pairs of school shoes and a new pair of Sunday shoes to wear with my old pretty Sunday dresses that still fit me because Momma bought them ready-made for me and always a little bigger than I needed, to make them last longer since I didn’t wear them all that often. One of them was a pretty blue silk dress with three balloons-one yellow, one pink and one green-embroidered on the front of the blouse that was my favorite of all my clothes.

Even though most of the children in Blue Valley started school when they were six, Momma thought I was ready to start first grade in September because at five I was mature for my age was what she told Poppa and, since my birthday came in February, I would be bored by the time I was six and September came around again. I guess so, although I can’t ever remember being bored at any age. My Poppa told me one time that there is too much to do in the world for a person to get bored, and I agree with that.

I went into the little bathroom off the big laundry room on the other side of the back porch from the kitchen which left only the one back side of the porch screened. I sat in there for a while, then I washed my hands with lots of soap and went across the back porch where the big table in the center was loaded with cut flowers Old George must have brought in earlier. The busy ceiling fan was ruffling the blossoms and scattering a few petals onto the floor. I picked up some and put them back on the table and went into the kitchen and crawled up on a stool at the kitchen counter where my dinner was waiting.

Lizzie soon followed me in and poured some milk into my glass. I wasn’t really hungry, but I didn’t dare tell Lizzie that after she had made me a tomato sandwich (my favorite) and sliced an apple for me. Lizzie always knew how to make me feel better about things even though she did yell at me sometimes.

Is Momma asleep? I asked, taking a big bite of sandwich and trying to chew with my mouth closed.

Lizzie sat on a stool across from me and took a big swallow from her iced tea glass.

Uh-huh, she answered. I peeked in at her while I was upstairs and she was sleeping good. That’s why we have to be extra quiet this afternoon.

Oh, I’m going to be very quiet. I certainly don’t want Dr. Sherman to have to come back over here today.

Naw, me neither, said Lizzie. She carried her now empty glass over to the sink, set it down with a few other dirty dishes and began washing them.

Is Poppa coming home for dinner today? I asked. Did you call him to tell him about Momma’s spell?

I did, she said, but he said since she seems to be better now, he’d go on to his club meeting dinner. That’s all right because they ain’t nothing he could do anyways.

Excepting hold her hand and tell her things will be all right.

Well, yes, I guess he could, but Dr. Sherman, he already done that. She took down the cookie jar from the high shelf where it lived and put two tea cakes on the saucer beside my apple slices.

I hated it when Lizzie felt sorry for me, but it did help me feel like eating. Did Momma feel like eating her dinner? I asked her.

Naw, but she ate her breakfast real good about eight this morning so I don’t think she’s very hungry right now.

What do you think made her feel so bad she got sicker, Lizzie? I asked, actually just to say something because I knew Lizzie didn’t know any more about what was going on than I did.

As I’ve said, in the spring Momma felt good and was like she was last Christmas when she had such fun with the tree and on Christmas Day watching me find what Santa Claus had left me under it. But the last week in May, Poppa and Momma had a really big discussion with both of them talking loud and sounding like they were crying. This happened at night after I had gone to bed but I was still awake and could hear their sounds but not their actual words. I was really scared and took my big sleep teddy bear and my pillow and crawled under my bed which sits high enough up off the floor that there’s plenty of room for me and Sleep Teddy under it. Since I hadn’t told Lizzie what had happened, and I knew neither Poppa or Momma had told her, she didn’t know as much as I did about that night. I had gotten back into my bed after I heard the words stop and the door to their bedroom slam and Poppa’s footsteps storming down the front stairs. Momma wasn’t the same after that night. And neither was Poppa.

Oh, Maybe Rose, Lizzie said shaking her head and leaning back against the sink, Miss Rose is just not a well woman. Never has been for five years.

I really didn’t want to get into that topic since it always left me feeling something I did getting born had caused my Momma to be not a well woman. I did tell Poppa one day that I didn’t mean to hurt her when I was born and he picked me up and sat down in a big chair in the front parlor and looked me in the eyes and assured me that it wasn’t my fault, that it was his if anybody’s. And he intended to see that he never put her in a position to be hurt like that again.

I crawled down off the kitchen stool and went over to lean my head on Lizzie’s leg. Can I go up to my bathroom and brush my teeth, Lizzie, I asked, if I be real quiet?

I reckon so, Maybe. Just be sure you don’t slam any doors or start singing.

I was expert at moving quietly around the house. Often I’d play like I was somebody sent to a big haunted house to hunt for ghosts and I would move from hiding place to hiding place all over Tucker House, crouching in closets or chifferobes or behind settees or under beds to listen for strange noises that ghosts might make if there was such a thing as ghosts. One day in Sunday School, my teacher was talking about the Holy Ghost and I asked her if the Holy Ghost haunts houses and she got mad as a wet hen at me for being disrespectful of Holy things. And she never did answer my question, so I guess the answer was no and I make sure I don’t ask questions about Holy things any more. Not at Sunday School anyway.

So I slipped off my sandals at the bottom of the back staircase and ran barefoot upstairs and into my bathroom. Climbing up onto my little stepstool, I looked at my face in the mirror over my lavatory. I still looked the same as I did early that morning when I was trying to brush my hair. Not that brushing did very much good since my hair was so curly that it looked like a red mop, Lizzie said when she brushed it. The only person who could brush it without hurting was Poppa when he was helping me get ready for church on the Sundays Momma stayed home to rest while he and I-and sometimes Daisy-went to St. Anna’s Episcopal for Sunday School and church. Sometimes when he saw Momma trying to pull the brush through my curls, he’d say, Here, Rose, let me do that. You’re too rough with that brush. He’d laugh but I think he meant what he said and to keep Momma from getting her feelings hurt, I’d say, Never mind, Poppa. She’s not hurting me. And Momma would say, See, I’m not hurting her. You know I’d never hurt my baby. And give me a hug, but neither one of them could really know how it felt to have a mop of red curls since they both had wavy dark hair.

I finally got around to brushing my teeth. And even used toothpaste and then washed off my toothbrush in some water in my tin cup and sucked on the brush a little to get most of the water off it and then swished my mouth out with the water and spit twice before setting the little tin cup back in its place by my toothbrush holder on the back of the lavatory. Thinking about my hair reminded me of the day back in the spring when things changed around Tucker House and now that I was through brushing my teeth, I went into my room and sat on the window seat to remember that day.

At supper, Poppa had looked over at me and told Momma, This kid needs a haircut, Rose.

I can see that, Ross, Honey. I thought I’d wait till closer to time for school to start to have it cut. She smiled at him and then at me. But if you want it cut now and again just before school starts, I can do that.

I’d appreciate that, Sweetie, he said and helped himself to some more of Lizzie’s good mashed potatoes. By the way, he went on, who in your family had red hair?

Momma put her fork on the edge of her plate and wiped her mouth on her napkin before she answered. I thought we’d been over that before. You know good and well my grandmother on my father’s side was redheaded. And remember you had an aunt with auburn hair... curly auburn hair?

Not wanting to be left out of a conversation that concerned me, I said, Dr. Sherman has hair a lot like mine. Could I be kin to him?

Of course not, Maybe Rose, both Momma and Poppa said at the same time.

And that closed the conversation about my hair. I felt like I had said something awfully wrong since neither one of them said anything else. I thought it was a good suggestion that I might be related to the person outside Momma and Poppa who was nicest to me even if he did scare me nearly to death with his black room and little machine which was really part of a much larger monstrous sort of machine that was in that same room.

An extra bowl of the fruit salad served as our dessert that night, and when I had eaten mine, I asked politely if I could be excused to run outside and catch a few lightning bugs before it got pitch dark. Both of them nodded. I got down and pushed my chair back up to the table and went out to the back porch where I kept my glass fruit jar I used to keep the lightning bugs I caught so I could watch them light up their bodies, and with the jar firmly under my right arm I slid out the screen door and sat on the back steps to wait for the lightning bugs to start sparkling up my night.

I remembered that I saw Buddy Jay standing at the back gate, come to see me. As usual he had his big black dog Pickles with him. I waved and motioned for them to come on in, and they ran up the back walkway. Buddy Jay sat down beside me on the steps while Pickles stood in front of me so I could pat his head and rub his long silky ears.

I want to ask you something, Maybe, he said pulling a bandana out of his overalls pocket and rubbing it across his face. Buddy Jay’s nose ran a lot since he often had a summer cold even in winter, though I suppose it was a winter cold in the winter. Are you really starting school this fall? Uncle Bob told me today that Lizzie told him in the store that your Momma was getting you ready to go to school. But I know you are five. I’m already six since March, so I know I’m ready to start, but how can you go when you’re just five?

I figured to myself that I was just as smart as he was and almost told him so. "Buddy Jones McGee, you know I’m smart