Propriety

Propriety and her three children were out on the porch. Eti, Gracie, and Manny sat lined
up in a row on the first step when Barb came whisking by on her lime green bicycle with a
banana seat, obviously chasing the ice cream truck that had just p assed by a few seconds ago.
The pleading children do when they are denied is what landed the three on the step, and now
they watched in torment as Barb, bare footed and in her bathing suit, risked life and limb for a
Moo-Cow Double-Decker Delight.
It was July and it was hot; hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk. Eti, Gracie, and
Manny first heard the tinkling sounds of the ice cream truck as it headed down Remnant Lane,
one street over. As it rounded the corner the and made its way down their own street, Straight
Avenue, the children left their game of hopscotch and ran to the white picket fence.
Manny asked first, “Pippy, can we please have some ice cream? Pleeease?”
“Pleeease, Pippy,” joined Gracie.
Eti just clasped her hands together in prayer.
Propriety, or Pippy, as everyone called her, sat in her rocking chair crocheting a set of six
off-white doilies for Mrs. Harding. Pippy was in charge of the welcome committee at church
and a set of doilies was the standard hospitality gift for new members. The tradition had been
kept up for years, and Pippy was working furiously to have the doilies finished by Sunday, as if
no good Christian home should have lemonade sitting on naked tables.
Pippy had heard the truck, but never looked up from her lap. She just listened, not so
much to the tinkling sounds, but to her children. When the children began to beg the words came
to her.
“Come away from that fence, and stop salivating like a pack of starving dogs,” she
hissed. The children didn’t say another word.
“Come sit on this step, and thank the Lord we don’t have to give in to every little
whimsy,” she pointed.
The girls obeyed, but Manny leaned farther over the fence, the pickets poking holes in his
button-down shirt. He saw that Barb had managed to catch the truck four houses down. She
paid in change.
Pippy yelled, “Young man, don’t make me come out there and get you. I’ll bring a
willow branch if I do.”
Eti turned back, lifted her brother a bit, and he was able to hop down.
He spoke under his breath, “I hate you. Someday I will shoot you with my gun.” His
hand clenched the Wild West pistol that was attached to his pants in a brown plastic holster. Eti
looked down. His face was as red as a ripe tomato and his eyes glistened.
“Oh, Manny, you don’t mean that.”
He was silent, and the two processed to the step, shadows trailing and then disappearing
in the shade of the porch. The silence continued as the three waited out their exile. Pippy said
nothing, yet commanded them with force.
About the time she decided to let them resume their play, Barb passed by again, much
slower this time and covered in chocolate ice-cream. The bicycle swerved in the road as she
attempted to eat her pleasure and steer at the same time. Pippy watched in disgust. Nothing
offended Pippy more than Barb Freeman.
 Barb did have her ways; like the way she never wore shoes, or how she would show up at
a neighborhood potluck dressed up like a pirate, mermaid, or civil war nurse, or how she liked to
talk to grown-ups when grown-ups were busy talking to other grown-ups, or how she wore her
bathing suit all around town from May until late August.
Mr. and Mrs. Freeman, Barb’s parents, ran the local movie theatre. Barb had seen all the
movies she fancied, and Pippy claimed that this alone had most contributed to her delinquency.
Eti, Gracie, and Manny loved Barb, but were only allowed to play with her in their own front
yard. She was not permitted in the house. Once Pippy let her use the potty, and then scolded the
children at the dinner table, “It better not happen again. Her dirty, urchin feet left smudge all
over the bathroom floor. Next time, send her home.”
Barb played cowboys and Indians, hide-n-seek, and cops and robbers. However, she was
famous in the neighborhood for her dirt cities. It seemed Barb could do anything with dirt.
Today’s drama was no different than most days, Barb seeming wonderful to the children
and shamefully disgraceful to Pippy.
As Barb swerved to miss Mr. Steel’s Buick that was parked on the curb, the last scoop of
ice-cream fell off her Moo-Cow Double-Decker Delight and landed in the middle of the street.
Barb stopped and let her bike rest against the Buick. She walked back over to the ice-cream and
began dipping her fingers into the melting mound and licked. The children watched the whole
scene like a Saturday morning cartoon. Pippy looked up from her doilies to see barb squatted
down eating off the ground. Her usual sigh of disgust was the only sound that penetrated the
back and forth rock of her chair. She shook her head and then returned to her lap. From across
the street Mrs. White watched as she watered her petunias, it seemed somebody was always
watching Barb.
In the distance, the faint sound of the trash truck could be heard making its weekly
rounds. Straight Avenue was its next stop. Gracie was the first to spot it as it turned onto their
street. As it progressed with its stop and go ritual, the children were certain that Barb would
abandon her pile and return to her bicycle. Barb did not move. Her back was to the approaching
garbage truck, and not even the sound of the diesel engine could tear her away from the summer
buffet.
It all happened so fast, the situation spinning, creating a magnetic trance. Nobody said
anything. No one. Not even a “look out” or a “Hey Barb”. In a flash she was rolled up under
the trash truck, her body divided asunder, spread like butter on a piece of burnt toast. Eti, Gracie,
and Manny witnessed the horror, but only Manny ran to the fence. He lifted himself up, this time
the pickets pierced his tummy as he leaned and blood seeped through onto his button-down shirt.
Eti and Gracie covered their eyes and began to scream.
Pippy had missed the whole thing. She raised her head to see Manny off the porch and
back at the fence. “Young man, I did not say you could leave this porch.”
Manny did not hear her; he paid no attention, and this roused Pippy to leave her doilies.
As she began to make her way off the porch and down the sidewalk, stopping only to break a
willow switch off a low branch of the tree, she noticed the scene in the street. Mrs. White was
standing near the curb, her water hose running like a snake on hot pavement, watching the trash
man crawl under the truck. He peered out from under the side rails and said, “Call the police.”
Mrs. White dropped the water hose and rushed for her house. She never came out again, and the
next morning the water hose was still running.
 Pippy hurried her steps, and when she reached Manny she lifted him up above the pickets
and sat him down on their side of the fence. Pippy spoke first, “See, son, that’s what you get
when you’re raised in a barn. I guess nobody ever told her not to play in the street.”
Many looked up at his Mama. He grabbed the toy gun from his holster and pointed it
right between her eyes. Pippy ignored him. “Come on,” she insisted, “let’s get in the house and
change your shirt.”
As she turned to walk back up the sidewalk Manny pulled the trigger and shot her in the
back. “I heard that Manny Stonewall.”
Eti and Gracie were still beside themselves as Pippy passed by.
“Girls get a handle on it and get up. We have to take the Freeman’s the chicken casserole
I made for our dinner.”