Mrs. Benny Benini was proud of her new trashcans. They were the old kind, the sturdy metal kind, the kind that couldn’t easily be picked up by one of the newfangled sanitation services but instead had handles, for someone like Mr. Dayfuss, of Dayfuss’s Dumping Service, to grab and lift. It had taken Mrs. Benny Benini months to find the “vintage” cans, as they were called, after a prolonged search through many types of catalogues. It had only taken two days for the vintage cans to be delivered. Now they were poised on Mrs. Benny Benini’s curb. Even though they were empty, she had paid Rachel Wiley and her friend Thinky one dollar each to carry the cans down to the spot on the curb. Mrs. Benny Benini planned to watch Mr. Dayfuss’s reaction later in the morning when he arrived to get her trash. She wondered whether he would understand her message. She was proud that she had acted on the memory of something that she hoped Mr. Dayfuss would also remember.
But she was even prouder of the robin chick that had just flown into her screenless bathroom window.
“What a clever one you are!” Mrs. Benny Benini cooed.
Benny was not Mrs. Benny Benini’s first name. It had been her husband’s name. People just called her Mrs. Benny Benini because they wanted to show her respect. An eighty-three year-old woman deserved respect. An eighty-three year-old woman who was married to the founding editor of the Bobbing Apple News, a woman who herself was the long-time seventh grade teacher of the Bobbing Apple Elementary School, a woman who because of her husband’s inside stories and her in-class experience knew more history about people in Bobbing Apple than anyone else – such a woman deserved extra respect.
“Hogwash,” Mrs. Benny Benini would mutter to herself when she would open mail addressed to Mrs. Benny Benini. The neighbors all thought she was talking to herself when she gathered her mail each day from her crimson mailbox. No. Mrs. Benny Benini was talking to the people who kept addressing her as Mrs. Benny Benini. “My name is Beatrice, you fools.”
Sadly, no one called her Beatrice. The mailman, the postmaster, the people at the supermarket, even the nice young woman who helped clean her house called her Mrs. Benny Benini. And if they didn’t call her Mrs. Benny Benini, they called her Mrs. Benini. Didn’t anyone alive know that she preferred Beatrice? Wasn’t there a soul left on the planet who could see that she was and had always been Beatrice? Benny had called her Beatrice. Why wouldn’t anyone else do so now that he was no longer here? She wanted to hear her name. She wanted to hear her name from somebody either than herself.
The robin chick chirped as if it understood. In fact, it chirped in such a way that Mrs. Benini thought she heard ‘Beatrice”. What? Had the chick actually chirped “Beatrice”? She listened carefully, tilting her head to one side just like the chick. There was another chirp. There was another peep of something that could have been Beatrice. The sound made her smile at the chick. It made her forget – temporarily – that a dog named Bumpers had just launched the tiny creature from its nest. Mrs. Benini squatted down on her knees and brought her face close to the little flutter of fortune. She reached out to the chick and watched it skip right into her palm. Mesmorised, she felt the pulse of the chick’s heartbeat and forgot all about everything, all about Bumpers, all about her new trashcans, all about how much she missed Mr. Benny Benini. She became so lost in the wonder of the robin chick chirping in her hand that she did not even hear the assault on her trashcans from Mrs. James’s bumper. What she heard was not “bam, screech, smash, and barrump” but patter, patter, patter, and patter. The touch of the chick’s heartbeat was so amazing that Mrs. Benini thought that she could hear it, with her ears, rather than feel it, with the curled palm of her hand.
That was a good thing. Because Mrs. Benini’s trashcans had just been dented and smashed. They were lying on their sides. The trashcan lids, sturdy metal ones, had popped off their snug fittings and landed who knows where. Because the cans had been empty, no trash had spilled onto the ground. Had Mrs. Benini not been charmed by the brilliance of unfettered life, she would have fretted that Mrs. James had muffed the chance for Mr. Dayfuss to see the shiny cans from yesteryear in their freshly unspoiled splendor. Later in the morning, when he made his rounds, Mr. Dayfuss would miss the message intended by Mrs. Benini, a message delivered to him across decades of time, because all he would see when he drove his dilapidated trash truck down Camelot Court were dented and smashed up cans lying on Mrs. Benini’s lawn rather than shiny new ones that contained not even one scrap of refuse.
Fortune favored Mrs. Benini once more. Because this morning, the morning of Rachel and Jeremy’s thirteenth birthday, the first Saturday morning of summer, Mr. Dayfuss altered his rock solid schedule of eleven-sixteen service to Camelot Court and rambled his rumbling heap on wheels around the corner of Arthur Avenue and Camelot Court precisely seven seconds after Mrs. James did. Mr. Dayfuss saw Mrs. James turn into Camelot Court instead of Lancelot Lane. He saw Jeremy and the balloon pass overhead. He saw Bumpers take flight, Rachel and Thinky give chase, and Mrs. James receive the full impact of Mrs. Benini’s new trashcans on the front bumper of her Chevrolet Caprice. Most importantly, Mr. Dayfuss saw Mrs. Benini’s new trashcans before Mrs. James’s did.
The impact on Mr. Dayfuss was profound. A fifty-three year-old man, a man unaccustomed to the finer things that life brought on the west side of Bobbing Apple, a man not unhappy with the more used and tattered things that life brought on the east side of Bobbing Apple, Mr. Dayfuss had seen many things. He had seen hardship. He had seen heartbreak. He had, however, never seen a message from the past delivered so clearly to the present.
The hot air balloon, the flying dog, the acrobatic aerobatics between Mr. McGillivibe and the boy whose father worked with Mr. Dayfuss’s nephew – those were not to be ignored. The sight of Mrs. Benini’s shiny new trashcans, gleaming in the early morning light, those were not to be forgotten, no matter how many times Mrs. James ran into and over them.
Mr. Dayfuss stopped his truck at the entrance to the Camelot Court cul-de-sac. He ignored the mess that Mrs. James was making of the cans in her desperate attempt to turn her Chevrolet Caprice around. He watched without looking while two girls and an older man tried to calm Mrs. James down. He took off his conductor’s cap and scratched the top of his head for what seemed like the longest of times. Then he smiled. And then he laughed. And then he stepped out of the truck, slapped his knees, threw his cap into the air, and let go a whoop and a “heeyaaaa!” that got everyone’s attention on Camelot Court who wasn’t either asleep, engrossed in yoga, or just plain deaf.
The toss of the cap got Rachel and Thinky’s attention; they stopped and stared at a man who had never done anything more in Bobbing Apple then nod his head and wave with the end of his fingers.
The whoop got Mrs. James’s and Mr. Matterson’s attention; Mrs. James stopped reversing over one trashcan long enough for Mr. Matterson to reach into the Chevrolet through the open window, turn off its ignition, and then pivot to make sure that the crazy truck driver did not still want what remained of Mrs. B’s trash.
The “heeyaaaa!” got Mrs. Benini’s attention; she stood up, saw Mrs. James’s car positioned atop her new trash cans, watched Mr. Dayfuss’s cap bounce like a ball into the air, and hurried down the steps of her house, across the entrance foyer, and out onto her front lawn.
Mr. Dayfuss did not repeat his whoop or his heeyaaa. He did, however, repeat the toss of his cap. Up the cap went, down it came. Mr. Dayfuss missed it the first three times. On the fourth toss, he caught the cap, then noticed Mrs. Benini standing on the driveway of her home, a robin chick perched in her palm. He held the cap in his fingers and nodded at Mrs. Benini.
“Thank you, Ms. Beatrice,” Mr. Dayfuss said.
The name Beatrice acted like a communal alarm clock. It set off another chain of action and reaction.
Ms. Beatrice beamed. When she did, the robin chick gave her a whistle and took off. “You are welcome, Derek,” Ms. Beatrice said.
Mr. Matterson watched the robin chick take off from the palm of Ms. Beatrice’s hand and walked away from the stalled Chevrolet Caprice, his eyes darting back and forth between Ms. Beatrice and the little robin that had disappeared into the oak tree.
Mrs. James scrambled from the car after Mr. Matterson, anxious to retrieve either her keys or to locate some assistance in keeping pace with the hot air balloon and her family.
Rachel ran toward Ms. Beatrice and asked her if she had seen which way Bumpers went.
Thinky ran toward Mr. Dayfuss and asked him if he knew how to follow a hot air balloon.
Of all the actions or reactions, Thinky’s might seem like the least logical. A robin has flown out of a woman’s hand, a car has flattened a new set of trashcans, a dump truck driver is tossing his cap like a child, and a girl who has already turned thirteen, a girl who is older than Rachel and Jeremy by a whole two months, approaches the dump truck driver and asks if he knows how to follow a hot air balloon. Fortunately, logic is not what Bobbing Apple discovered on the morning of Rachel and Jeremy’s thirteenth birthday.
“Yes,” Mr. Dayfuss said. “I know how to follow a hot air balloon.”
“You do?” Mrs. James shrieked. “Can you do it now?”
“I’d like to come,” Ms. Beatrice announced, moving like a jogger in slow motion.
“Me too,” Mr. Matterson declared, helping Ms. Beatrice cross the circle.
“He’s my dog,” Rachel signaled, with evident bias.
“It was my idea,” Thinky retorted, with equal prejudice.
And that was how Mrs. James, Mr. Matterson, and Ms. Beatrice ended up in the front seat of Mr. Dayfuss’s dump truck. It was how Rachel Wiley and Thinky Flannery ended up standing on the dump truck running boards. It was how Mr. Dayfuss ended up driving after a run-away hot air balloon with what the Bobbing Apple Buzz later dubbed the knights of Sir Bumpers’ Court.