The Pyles lived on the corner of Bahia Vista and Pomelo. Even on the sunniest day, you could barely see their one-story house, crouched in the dark shadows of three sprawling oaks hung with Spanish moss. The huge lot on which the house sat was bordered by a chain fence. No one else in town had a fence as long as that one. But everyone in the neighborhood knew why Mrs. Pyle had one.
She was a loon. Not in the late 1930’s, when she moved to Framalopa from Steubenville, Ohio—a benign old lady with a voice so soft and reedy the dogs could barely hear her say “Good morning.” In those days, she had a perpetual smile on her face as she went about planting hibiscus, oleander, and gardenia all over the yard—a plot so spacious you could almost lay a football field inside the confines of its fence.
But Pearl Harbor unhinged her. After the war began, she was suddenly, irrationally convinced the Japs were out to assassinate her—little yellow men sent by Emperor Hirohito to her very doorstep. At night she could see them moving furtively among the neatly sculpted hibiscus bushes that huddled around the house. She could hear them muttering in Japanese just above the sound of the wind in the oak leaves. She was constantly calling the police department, telling them to round up all Orientals in town, demanding 24-hour protection.
Chief Garner would send out a patrol car. The cop would take her statement and say, “Yes Ma’am. Yes, Ma’am.” He’d promise to drive by every half hour; and he’d leave shaking his head, haunted by her mad eyes, gray and shining with an unearthly light. (“Chief, please don’t send me out there again.”)
Unfortunately, my father and I inadvertently exacerbated the situation. We lived around the corner from the Pyles and, after Pearl Harbor, steered clear of her as much as possible. But no matter how you try, you can’t avoid entanglement with the lives of your neighbors, who, however friendly, always belong to another tribe, one that engages in unspeakable acts behind closed doors, bays at the moon, and eats its dead.
On the Fourth of July, Framalopa didn’t officially celebrate the holiday—no community picnic on the village green with deviled eggs and fried chicken; no band playing George M. Cohan songs; no races and tugs of war; and no fireworks displays to close out the evening. Perhaps for this reason, my father brought home a few fireworks every year, and we’d shoot them off in our yard and in the vacant lot across the street.
The Fourth of July of 1943 was no exception. As usual, he bought sparklers, pinwheels, Roman candles, and a huge skyrocket for a finale. We lit the sparklers in the front yard and watched the tiny, twinkling flecks rain down on the grass and then disappear. We tacked the pinwheels to the camphor tree, lit them, and watched the circles of fire whirl round and round. Then we went across the street, lit the Roman candles, and watched as the colored balls of fire puffed into the air. That particular year, we went through half a dozen, until all we had left was the skyrocket.
It was the largest ever, and was guaranteed to soar high above earth and then explode in a shower of stars. My father stuck the shaft into the ground, aiming it almost straight up, then lit the fuse with a match. We both stood back and watched it begin to pop and sputter. For a moment the rocket looked as if it would fizzle out on the ground.
Then suddenly it took off with a great swoosh, shot toward the zenith, made an impossible right-angle turn, trailed flame as it soared parallel to earth, then made a second right-angle turn, and went down Mrs. Pyle’s chimney. An instant later, we could see the inside of her house turned red, green, and blue—a popping, spitting kaleidoscope of flashing stars.
I heard a blood-chilling shriek and started running toward our house as fast as I could. Then I realized someone was running behind me, gaining with every stride. I was terrified it was Mrs. Pyle until I looked back and saw my father, his short, fat legs churning so fast they were blurs. He passed me like a Greyhound bus, hit the front door, and shouted for my mother to turn out the lights. The three of us then hid in the breakfast nook and listened as distant sirens came closer and closer.
After about 15 minutes, we ventured into the living room, peeped through the curtains, and saw two patrol cars and a fire engine parked on Pomelo. Six or eight men with flashlights were stomping around in the yard, peering into the hibiscus bushes, aiming beams of light at the roof, while Mrs. Pyle bellowed at them from the screened side-porch. Halfway around the block, we could hear her shouting obscenities—words I didn’t think grown-ups knew. Eventually the policemen and firefighters piled into their vehicles, formed a cortège down Bahia Vista, turned right on Orange Avenue, then screeched into second gear.
We had gotten away with it, but the world had changed ever so slightly. Never again would anyone attempt to tell Mrs. Pyle she wasn’t under siege, and never again would my father bring home fireworks.
Oswald Whitaker and I were walking down Bahia Vista in late August of 1943, on our way from my house to his. He had one of those wooden paddles with a red rubber ball attached to it by an elastic string. I could never make those things work, but he could paddle away unceasingly. One day I timed him, and he paddled for 16 minutes before he finally missed. With no Guinness Book to contradict him, he claimed a world record.
That day he was paddling furiously, hoping to make it all the way to the next block (another record), when the elastic broke and the red ball arced over Mrs. Pyle’s fence and landed in her yard. The ball nestled in the tall grass maybe three feet inside the fence. We stood in the middle of the road and assessed the situation.
“We can’t climb the fence,” I said, worried that he might want to try.
“I think I can reach it,” Oswald said.
“Maybe, but she might see you and come after both of us.”
We looked over at the house on the other end of the property. Underneath the massive oaks it was an enigma. Viewed from a sunlit street half a block away, the screened porch was opaque. If figures lurked behind it, we couldn’t see them. Mrs. Pyle might be watching our every move through binoculars; or she might be in her bedroom, torturing her cat. It was a flip of the coin.
“I’m going to try it,” Oswald said.
“Don’t.”
He knelt down, worked his arm through the chain fence, and found himself an inch or so short of reaching the ball, but close enough to encourage him. The fence had some give to it, and by pushing against it, he was able to get the tips of his fingers on the ball, which he gradually worked toward him. Just as he grasped it, Mrs. Pyle boomed out from behind the opaque screen.
“What are you doing? You boys come here! Right now!”
My knees buckled. My first impulse was to run home and hide under my bed.
But I’d been taught to obey adults, even the crazy ones. Besides, I didn’t want Oswald to find out I was a coward. After three years in the Army during the Korean War, I came to realize that most soldiers go to their deaths, not out of love for country or a sense of duty, but because they don’t want the other guys to call them chicken.
That walk was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. It ranks right up there with running off the road in my parents’ new Cadillac and turning over twice. Later in life, Oswald was president of a bank or two, so maybe that was worse than rounding the corner and seeing Mrs. Pyle standing on the steps, hands on hips, waiting to confront us.
The closer we got, the scarier she got. Her hair, a mass of wiry curls, was the color of cobwebs. Her eyes were abnormally bright, as if she were running a 103-degree fever; and her skin was pale enough to have been dusted with flour. She made us come up to the wooden steps, so she could peer into our faces with those mad eyes.
On the front porch, I could see Mr. Pyle, hunched in a rattan chair, reading the Framalopa Herald-Tribune and smoking a pipe. With his black hair and prominent nose it occurred to me that he could be Sherlock Holmes. He glanced at us with a half-smile, as if to say, “Don’t expect any help, boys. She scares the hell out of me, too.”
“What were you doing, reaching into my yard?” she asked in a voice trembling on the edge of high indignation.
Oswald held up the red rubber ball.
“My ball bounced into your yard,” he said in a hoarse voice. “I just wanted to get it back.”
She looked at the ball and broke into a yellow smile.
“That’s a Ping-Pong ball.”
“No ma’am,” he said. “It’s made out of rubber. It was attached to this.” He held up the paddle.
“And that’s a Ping-Pong paddle!” she said, barely able to conceal her delight.
“No’m,” Oswald said.
“Oh, yes, she said. “My grandchildren play Ping-Pong. Do you have a Ping-Pong table?
“No’m,” Oswald said.
“Then I’ll give you one,” she said, a note of triumph in her voice.
Oswald shrank back, as if she’d offered him a coiled rattlesnake.
“I’d have to ask my mama,” he said.
“Do it,” she said. “Go home right now.”
Cora Whitaker didn’t know what to do, so she called Big Oswald at the bank. Remembering who Mrs. Pyle was, he was hesitant to say, “Take the table.” On the other hand, what would happen if you refused her generous offer? What would a woman like that do?
“Look,” Big Oswald said, “I’ve got a man here wants to open a checking account with $20,000. Do what you think is right.”
And he hung up.
Cora thought about it and decided it would be impolite to refuse. But she wouldn’t walk around the corner to Mrs. Pyle’s house, while we picked up the Ping-Pong table. She said it wouldn’t be proper. At the time she said it, neither Oswald nor I could figure out what impropriety she was talking about.
If she was too scared to step into Mrs. Pyle’s parlor, she needn’t have been. Mr. and Mrs. Pyle had the table all arranged for us in the yard: The top was a blue-green with a white stripe painted around the edges and a white stripe down the middle. Two sawhorses provided the support. Oswald and I carried the tabletop back to his house and put it in the Whitakers’ empty servants’ quarters. Then we went back for the sawhorses. Mr. and Mrs. Pyle stood at the edge of the lawn; and after we’d said our thank yous, they waved goodbye to us and the table. Had she cackled wildly, grabbed up a broomstick, and soared over the white moon—floating in the blue sky like a giant Ping-Pong ball—neither one of us would have been surprised.
That was the last time we ever saw them, transformed for half an hour into a couple of doting grandparents waving goodbye to their own flesh and blood.
A year or so after the Ping-Pong Incident, we spotted a huge moving van parked on Pomelo in front of the Pyles’ place. The van had a District of Columbia license tag on both bumpers. Two colored men were hauling rattan chairs and tables out of the house and handing them up to a third man, who was packing the van.
“Are they moving?” Oswald asked one of the colored men.
“Already moved,” he said. “Gone to Washington. We just packing up what they left behind.”
By sundown, the word was out all over the neighborhood: The Pyles were indeed in Washington—a big job in the Pentagon. So Mr. Pyle—who had sat so quietly through all the crises his wife had provoked—was a man at least as important as Sherlock Holmes. Like the great English detective, he had been called back for one last bow in time of war.
Or so we thought.
Mac Mcguire was an FBI agent who worked out of the Tampa office but lived in Framalopa. My mother’s second cousin, “Red” Cleveland, was married to him for a while, before he found out she was sleeping with two other gentlemen while he was investigating other people’s transgressions. One day he stopped my mother on Main Street to chat and, in the course of their conversation, told her something that ruined her day.
“By the way, I saw a former neighbor of yours in Washington last week.”
“Oh?”
“Mrs. Pyle. You remember her?”
“Indeed I do. She was crazy—certifiably.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “That’s what everyone in Framalopa said. I reviewed the report when she applied for a job with the Army. Must have been a couple of years ago.”
“Surely they turned her down.”
“Matter of fact, they hired her. Gave her a Top-Secret-Crypto clearance, too. That’s higher than I’ve got. Means she has access to all coded messages and decoding devices. I don’t know what the hell goes on in the room where she works, but it’s pretty hush-hush.”
“Maybe they gave her a job because her husband had one.”
“No. He’s unemployed. Retired school principal. She’s the one they hired.”
“Are you sure that’s our Mrs. Pyle?”
“Absolutely. I checked her records. Besides, I saw her. Curly white hair? Maybe 65 or 70?”
My mother gasped.
“My God! We’re going to lose the war!”
Mac laughed.
“Don’t worry, Betty. Half of Washington is crazier than she is.”
“Well, that’s no consolation.”
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