Days of Uncle Ernest - Chesapeake City and the World – Lizzie, Chapter 3

Days of Uncle Ernest -

Chesapeake City and the World – Lizzie, Chapter 3

“You know, Moose,” Uncle Ernest continued, “I was ready for an adventure that day in the park so many years ago. I ran home for some supplies—mainly a couple jugs of Ole Granddad—set up that balloon, climbed inside the basket, hit the inflation button, and rose gracefully above the busy streets of Wilmington on that splendid summer evening.

“Yes indeed, Moose, the wind was out of the west so I sailed east—over the Christina River, the Delaware River, and out above the beautiful Atlantic Ocean. When darkness fell I was still gliding east, so I just went to sleep. After all, the balloon was magical and I trusted completely the drunken guy who turned out to be a wizard or a genie or something. But I never could have imagined the power that was to come from that amazing flying basket.

“I awoke to the sound of cascading surf surging into the shore, and as I looked out at the sparkling whitecaps of the Atlantic, I realized that my basket was not moving but was hovering just above the shoreline, a gently-swaying cradle in the breeze. It was as if it had been waiting for me to wake before proceeding. And when I turned around, inland, I saw why.

“Extending as far as I could see—left or right or above—were pure-white chalk boulders. Moose, you wouldn’t believe the view as the balloon ascended: cliffs of chalk on one side and the blue Atlantic on the other. The balloon kept ascending high above the white cliffs and ocean for my birds-eye view—incredible!

“Then, abruptly, my basket drifted inward, over thatch-roofed cottages and small patchwork farms, some of which were being worked by farmers with large draft horses pulling odd-looking plows. Then my basket descended and started gliding above a river with sailboats of all sizes making their way in different directions. As I was swept along I could see a castle and a tower off to the right, and on the river, on the right, fairly close to the shore, was a wooded island.

“Well, that balloon sailed above the island, hovered above an opening in the trees, and descended softly next to a small cottage. When I climbed out I looked around and discovered that it was a perfect little park, a sort of miniature Longwood Gardens. I was about to take a stroll through the orchids when a young woman, dressed in a purple bathrobe, came out of the cottage wagging her finger at me.”

“Good grief, Unk! Who in the world was that?”

“Moose, I don’t know exactly,” he said, toasting me with his glass of bare ice cubes, “but when I get back I’ll tell you all about her; she was an amazing young lady for sure.”

When Uncle Ernest rose from the white-slatted chair with an audible effort of fatigue, I jumped off and skipped to the roots of our old maple tree. Springing up, I caught with both hands the lowest branch, did a chin-up, threw my leg over, and lay back, legs dangling and head resting on the crusted bark.

With the thoughts of Uncle Ernest’s eerie story in my head, I remembered the old Stubble’s house—the haunted house back in the woods. At the time, a fat, jolly colored man, Dave, lived in the house, and he said that sometimes at night, when he relaxed in his easy chair, he could hear footsteps on the stairs leading to the bedrooms.

He said, chuckling, that he would always sit at dusk and gaze at the wild animals meandering about in the clearing near his well (deer, raccoons, possums, and rabbits were plentiful back there in the middle of the woods). He said that when he went up to bed the chair would be facing the clearing, but when he came down in the morning the chair would be facing the stairs; the spirit of the house liked a different view. When I asked—wide-eyed at the weirdness—if the ghosts frightened him, he grinned as his eyes twinkled in that moon-round, shiny-brown face and told me, “No sahw, Sonny; da doan bodder me an ah doan bodder dem.”

Yes, indeed, Nina, I had and was to have a lot of fun with Dave-the-Colored-Man. I started thinking some other things about him, but just then I looked down and saw Uncle Ernest smiling up at me in his favorite white tank shirt and baggy pants, with his left hand on his hip and his right hand clutching the fresh drink. I turned, dropped, hung for a second or two from the limb, and plopped to the ground, anxious to hear what happened next.  [To be continued Tuesday, 7/31/2012]