Duckling Ugly

body.

'Don't you touch Marisol,' he said. 'You ain't got a right to touch her. Or me. Or anybody.'

I tried to get away, but he pushed me back against the stone again. 'Where you going, piggy girl? Don't you want to spy on us some more? Maybe I'll get you a camera. Hey, will it break if you're the one snapping the picture, too?'

Then something swung out of nowhere and slammed against Marshall's ear. He stumbled back.

Suddenly there, in the half-light of day's end, was a woman who had to be at least ninety years old, brandishing the blunt end of a pitchfork.

I knew who it was right away. Most folks just called her 'the crazy woman of Vista View' and left it at that, but I knew her name: Miss Leticia Radcliffe. She was the one who lived in the house. The one who didn't leave when the place became a ceme­tery.

'Hey!' yelled Marshall, holding his ear. 'What are you, nuts?!'

'You stay back or I'll swing it again. And next time I'll use the business end.'

And, just to make her point, she swung the blunt end one more time. It didn't come anywhere near him. In fact, she wasn't even facing him directly when she swung it, and I wondered why.

'Marshall, let's just go,' begged Marisol. 'That witch'll kill you soon as look at you.'

But Marshall was not the kind of guy to back down from a fight, especially with a feeble old woman. He stepped forward, sticking his chest out.

'You get outta here,' he said to Miss Leticia. 'Go on back to your house. This ain't none of your business.'

'This used to be my land,' she said, 'so I make everything that happens here my business. You leave this girl alone, and get out the way you came.'

'And if we don't?'

Then Miss Leticia Radcliffe did the most wonderful, wicked, unbelievable thing I'd ever seen. She took that old pitchfork and jammed it right through the tip of Marshall's left Nike!

Marshall wailed in pain. 'Ahhh, my toe!'

Then the old woman leaned close to him and whispered, 'Next time . . . it'll be your heart.'

She pulled out the pitchfork, and the fight blew out of Mar­shall like he was a balloon that had been popped. He took off with Marisol, limping and moaning all the way.

When they were gone, Miss Leticia turned to me?and now I could see why she hadn't looked right at Marshall when she had swung that pitchfork. Miss Leticia had cataracts as gray as an April storm. She could see enough to tell night from day, I guessed, but not a whole lot more. She must have known Vista View like the back of her hand, and she didn't need to see much to know what was going on when she got there.

She looked toward me, but not quite at me. 'Now I'm just guessing, mind you?but from what that boy called you, I would say that you're the DeFido girl.'

'Cara,' I told her. 'So you heard about the nickname.'

'Oh, believe me, I've been called a whole lot worse than that.' She let loose a long, hearty laugh. 'The Flock's Rest Monster' ain't all that bad, considering. It sounds legendary. Dignified.'

She planted the pitchfork firmly on a grave and took my hand. 'You come on in. I'll make us some tea.'

3 The sweet and the rancid

Although I didn't actually know her before that day, Miss Leti­cia had always been of interest to me. Maybe it was because she was an outcast in town, rumored to have killed her husband when he sold this land, which had been in her family for genera­tions. That was long before I was born, but the rumors still hung like sheets on a clothesline, twisting more and more the longer they stayed in the wind.

Her whole life now was spent in her cottage, and the huge greenhouse behind it that had once been the centerpiece of the botanical garden. It was a grand Victorian greenhouse, with a high crystalline dome, and smaller wings on either side.

She didn't take me to the cottage?instead she took me right to the greenhouse, which was even more spectacular inside than out. Strange black orchids grew from the dark soil, and up above hung carnivorous pitcher plants so big they could drown a rat. I took a deep whiff. Every inch of the place was alive with aromas. Turn your head and the scent would change to something else.

'Being as I can't quite see the things I grow anymore,' she told me, 'I cultivate things that appeal to the other senses.' The green­house was full of flowers that not only smelled sweet, but were soft to touch as well. Some of the plants grew exotic berries that danced on your tongue when you tasted them. I could see Miss Leticia more clearly in the greenhouse lights now. She was a heavy woman, but she wore her weight well. She had skin like dark chocolate, and her hair was a mess of steel wool pulled into a bun.

She led me to a little cast-iron table and chairs surrounded by staghorn ferns and lilies, but she walked a little too close and banged her shin against one of the chairs with a nasty clang. I gri­ maced, practically feeling it myself.

'You all right?' I asked.

'Yep. It wasn't me anyway?it was this thing.' She lifted her skirt a bit to reveal steel braces that ran up either side of her shin, practically up to her knee. She had them on both legs. 'Metal on metal?that's why it sounded so loud. I got steel rods in my back, too?and a pacemaker. Got a grandson calls me Nana Cyborg, on accounta all that metal.' She laughed so conta­giously, I had to laugh, too. 'Then, after all that, I got these cataracts in my eyes, and I said, 'No more!' There'll be no more doctors touching this here body less'n it's to pretty it up for my wake.' She laughed again. It seemed strange that she could joke so easily about dying, but then, when you're as old as Miss Leti­cia, death stops being the enemy.

'Now you just sit yourself down, and I'll go get that tea,' she said. She went off into her cottage and returned a few minutes later with a tray.

'It's good to have a guest,' she told me. 'No one comes around but my son and that horrible wife of his. And all they want to talk about is putting me in a home. But I tell them I got a home.'

I breathed in the steam of her tea, then took a gentle sip. Al­though her cloudy gray eyes had been disturbing at first, after I'd been sitting and drinking with her for just a few minutes, any sense of discomfort faded away. 'Now you tell me your trou­bles,' she said, 'because my guess is you got no one else worth tellin' em to.'

'I just had a bad day, is all.' I didn't say anything more, hop­ing I wouldn't have to get into it?but Miss Leticia wasn't going to let me off the hook.

'Hmm,' she said when she realized I wasn't talking. Then she rapped her knuckles against one of her leg braces. 'These braces here give me support. I don't mind, on account of I know my legs need it?otherwise they hurt something awful. I know you're hurting as well. Ain't no shame in needing a little sup­port.' She took a long, slow sip of her tea. 'Now, why don't you tell me what happened that's got you so upset?

'Clammed up, are ya? Hmm. Must be a lot going on in that head of yours.'

Then she smiled a little too mischievously for a woman of her age. 'What could it hurt to let some steam out of that pressure cooker?'

I sighed. 'Well, I was in this spelling bee, and?'

'Ah,' she interrupted, 'I knew you were the type for casting spells!'

'No, not casting spells,' I told her. 'It's about spelling words.'

'Spells, spelling; it's all the same,' she said. 'Puttin' letters in order is no different than puttin' words in order. There's a magic to both of them, true enough.'

Though I knew the notion was crazy, it was exciting to think that something as ordinary as spelling could have a kind of power. Maybe there was more to me than offends the eye!

When I told her about the words I'd been forced to spell, she pursed her lips and said, 'My, my, my, what a