So I told my friends—Agnes and Rosemarie and Maria
Regina—to stop using the bathroom and piddle on the
playground. Protesting, you know, just like all those
goofy people in the sixties and seventies who didn’t
know half the time what they were protesting against.
Or for. Silly, if you ask me, burning brassieres and
smoking funny stuff. What kind of a revolution was
that?”
As she often did, Gertrude seemed to be getting derailed. “What about the bathroom protest?”
The old lady looked blank. “What bathroom? What
protest?”
“At St. Walburga’s,” Judith said patiently.
“Oh.” Gertrude gave a nod. “Well, we all got into
trouble, and the principal, Sister Ursula, sent for our
parents. We were suspended for two days, but by the
time we got back, those toilets were flushed, believe
me. In fact, the school’s water bill went up so much
they had to raise tuition three dollars a month.”
“You were ashamed to talk about this?” Judith
asked.
184
Mary Daheim
“That’s right,” Gertrude said. “Nice little girls didn’t
piddle in public. In those days, nice little girls didn’t
even admit they piddled at all. But I feel good about it
now. We won a victory for hygiene.”
“You did indeed,” Judith declared, patting her
mother’s arm. “That was very brave.”
“I hope that writer fella will like it,” Gertrude said,
preening a bit. “He told me he could use a good script
about now. I guess he’s in some kind of a pickle.”
“Like what?” Judith asked.
Gertrude frowned. “I don’t rightly know, except it
had something to do with an ax.”
“An ax?” Judith looked puzzled. “Or . . . acts?”
Gertrude waved a hand. “No, it was an ax. A
hatchet—that’s what he said. Some kind of a job he
was supposed to do with a hatchet. Maybe he’s got a
part-time job as a logger. What kind of money do
scriptwriters get? I’d like to charge him at least fifty
dollars for my story.”
“At least,” Judith said vaguely. “Did Dade say anything else about this hatchet job?”
Gertrude shook her head. “Not that I remember. He
seemed kind of off his feed, though.”
There was no point in pressing her mother for details. If Gertrude remembered something later, fine.
Besides, Dade Costello’s moodiness seemed to be an
integral part of his personality.
Or so Judith was thinking when she smelled smoke.
“Mother,” she said, sniffing the air, “did you put
something on your hot plate?”
“Like what?” Gertrude retorted. “You think I could
roast a turkey on that thing? I can hardly boil an egg on
it.”
SILVER SCREAM
185
Nor did Gertrude ever try, preferring to have her
daughter wait on her. Still, Judith went out to the tiny
kitchen, with its sink, small fridge, microwave oven, and
hot plate. Nothing looked amiss, nor could Judith smell
anything burning. She went back into the living room.
“It must be coming from outside,” she remarked,
and headed for the door.
Gertrude didn’t respond or look up. She was writing
again, her white head bent over the card table.
The smell got stronger as Judith stepped outside and
closed the toolshed door behind her. The rain had
stopped, but fog was settling in over the rooftops. She
could barely make out either of Hillside Manor’s chimneys. Perhaps Joe had started a fire to ward off the increasingly gloomy October afternoon.
Then she noticed the barbecue. It sat as it had all
summer on the small patio by the statue of St. Francis
and the birds. Like the kitchen cupboard door, the barbecue had been another source of Judith’s prodding.
Joe should have taken it into the garage at least two
weeks earlier when the weather had made a definite
transition into autumn.
Instead, it remained, and smoke was coming out
from under the lid. Judith went to the patio and opened
the barbecue. A sudden burst of smoke and flame made
her step back and cough.
Reaching out with a long wood-and-steel meat fork
that was lying nearby, she stirred whatever was burning. Peering with smoke-stung eyes, she saw that it
was mostly paper. Quite a bit of paper, and attached to
a plastic binding, most of which had melted.
Judith was no expert, but she thought that what was
left might be a movie script.
TWELVE
JOE HADN’T YET detached the garden hoses or covered the faucets for the winter. Judith turned on the
hose by the back porch and gently aimed it at the
barbecue. The stack of paper hissed and sizzled, but
didn’t go out. When she increased the pressure, the
smoke finally died down and the heat faded away.
Standing over the barbecue, Judith stirred the ashes
with a meat fork.
“I don’t think I’ll ask what you’re doing,” Renie
called from the back porch, “but I thought you’d ordered food from a caterer.”
Startled, Judith turned toward her cousin. “Somebody burned something in here. I’m trying to figure
out what it was.”
“Wienie Wizards?” Renie inquired, coming down
the walk to the patio.
“Nothing so edible,” Judith said. “It looks like a
script.”
“It does for a fact,” Renie agreed, picking up a
pair of steel tongs. “It’s pretty well fried.” She
flipped through the ashes until she got to the last
few pages, which were only charred. “If I touch
them, they may burst into flame again, but it looks
SILVER SCREAM
187
like a script all right. See—it’s mostly dialogue on this
top page with some directions in between.”
“Can you see what any of it says?” Judith asked,
shivering slightly as the fog began to drift among the
trees and shrubs.
“Not really,” Renie admitted, after putting on her
much marred and thoroughly smudged reading
glasses. Judith could never figure out how her cousin
could see anything through the abused lenses. “Wait—
here are a couple of lines I can make out: Benjamin:
You have never had cause to be . . . I think the last
word is afraid. The next line is dialogue by someone
named Tz’u-hsi, who replies, It is not strange to be a
concubine, though I am called wife. Yet I am more than
a stranger, I am a . . . The rest of the page is too burned
to read.”
“A Chinese name,” Judith murmured. “Ellie’s role
in the script written by her mother, All the Way to
Utah?”
“Maybe,” Renie allowed. “So who’d burn the
script? And why?”
Judith started to stir the ashes again, thought better
of it, and replaced the lid to the barbecue. Heading
back into the house, she paused with her hand on the
doorknob. “It was in Dirk and Ben’s room,” she said.
“Room Four. The script was all marked up. There were
even some obscenities, as if whoever was reading it
didn’t like it much.”
“But which of the two actors?” Renie asked. “Ben
or Dirk?”
“Ben, of course,” Judith said. “He’s supposed to
costar, remember? Besides,” she added, “I read a clipping, also in Room Four, about how Dirk had lost the