Tomorrow Is Another Day by Stuart M. Kaminsky

Author:Stuart M. Kaminsky
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781453232859
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road

Chapter 10

I had a headache. Mrs. Plaut fixed a bag of her Aunt Ginger’s Yellow Indian Poultice, which she instructed me to apply to the cut on my forehead. Mrs. Plaut also gave me a Boxie Scotch Bromide, yellow crystals dissolved in water, which I was instructed to “drink down without pause or risk dyspepsia.”

The price I had to pay for poultice and bromide, which had not yet kicked in, was to read another chapter of Mrs. P’s never-ending history of her family.

It all began when Mrs. Plaut first rented a room to me, a little over two years ago. For reasons still unclear to me, which Gunther suggested I not explore, Mrs. Plaut believed I was either an exterminator or a book editor, possibly both. So far she hadn’t asked me to get rid of the ants, crickets, or funny-looking green things with wings that sometimes got in the house. These she disposed of with her own remedies and frequent applications. No, she turned to me for help with the history of the family Plaut.

I had read more than a thousand pages, written in Mrs. Plaut’s neat block letters on lined sheets. The new batch, which she handed me with the poultice and the bromide concoction and more information on changes in the ration-book regulations, was mercifully short.

I couldn’t complain. Mrs. Plaut had agreed to let me hold a meeting in the all-day-and-early-evening room, a big fire-placed room with a faded Navajo rug which was reserved for “quiet” moments and “music listening” time for the roomers. The room was seldom used by anyone but Mr. Hill the mailman, who sometimes paused to take off his shoes and rest his feet before pulling himself up the stairs. Mr. Hill, in full gray uniform, was known to doze off snoring, clutching his empty leather mailbag to his chest. Once in a while, Mrs. Plaut would come in serious or beaming to wind the Victrola and play such favorites as “Hindustan,” “Indian Love Call,” “Juntos en El Rincon,” and “After You’ve Gone.” Most of the records were so old they were recorded on one side only. Most were by Isham Jones and his band, though there were a few Ted Lewis and King Olivers in the scratchy pile.

My headache, the yellow poultice, and I lay on the mattress on the floor going through the pages Mrs. Plaut had handed me. I read:

My brother Bill and his friends Murryhill and Weston were to have charged up San Juan Hill astride their horses right behind Teddy Roosevelt himself. Weston later claimed that Blackjack Pershing was also among their elite company, but Brother was certain that Pershing’s brother was back at camp tending the backup horses.

Well, anyway, Brother, Murryhill, and Weston assembled on horseback and followed a contingent they thought was the first wave of cavalry. It turned out, as you may have surmised from small hints I have given you, that they were incorrect. Brother Bill always contended, to the day he died in Mineola, that Colonel Roosevelt had not been entirely clear on time or location of assembly.

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