The Thank You Note

One fine summer afternoon while Nana was making a cream sauce for the haddock filets that had mysteriously appeared on the back porch that morning, there was a knock on the screen door.

“It's open!” she called distractedly.

“Afternoon, Miz Watson,” Jacob Sullivan said as he pushed the door open just enough to peek inside, “I was jist wonderin', ma'am, if you knew that Willie's on your roof.”

“Willie?” Nana demanded, “Roof? What in heaven's name you talkin' 'bout, Jacob Sullivan?”

“Well, I only mention it, ma'am, on account of he ain't what you'd call decent.” Jacob was blushing scalp to Adam's apple. “I'd be glad to fetch him down if'n you want but I was thinkin' if you was to have a towel or a tablecloth, it'd be a help.”

“Have you been drinkin', Jacob?” Nana asked suspiciously.

“No, ma'am!” the fisherman protested immediately and indignantly, “I surely ain't!”

My grandmother put aside her cream sauce, rinsed her hands in the kitchen sink and dried her hands on her apron.

“Jacob,” she said warningly as she followed him outside, “If this be somebody's idea of a joke.....”

“Oh, no, ma'am,” he assured her, “You kin see for your own self.”

Watching from behind the screen door, I saw her make her way across the warm grass to the gravel driveway. Jacob shaded his eyes and pointed and even from a distance, I could see her mouth drop open and her eyes widen. Much to my surprise, she let out a small scream and covered her face with her apron but being an eminently practical woman, recovered rapidly.

“Fetch me a bedsheet, child” she hollered at me, “One off the twin beds will do! Jacob, don't just stand there, bring the ladder from the woodshed and be quick about it! Willie! What the blue blazes do you think yer doin'! Don't move! You mind me, Willie! Don't move!”

Willie, I soon saw, was indeed placidly sitting on our roof, Indian style, with - fortuitiously - a basket of rocks in his lap. His private parts were shielded but his newly dyed green hair, sticking out at all angles like an electrified starfish, shone brightly in the afternoon sun. As Jacob started up the ladder with the bed sheet slung over his shoulder, Willie waved cheerfully. He surrendered his basket of rocks willingly and offered no resistance when Jacob wrapped him in the bedsheet and knotted it securely over his scrawny shoulders then slung him into a fireman's carry and began a careful, rung by rung descent. Once on the ground, Willie skedaddled, bedsheet and all, cackling and dancing madly down the front path toward the ditch. The next morning, Nana discovered the neatly folded bedsheet in a basket in the woodbox along with several intact and polished scallop shells, an empty pack of Export A's, and a ragged bouquet of weeds and wilted wildflowers held together with brightly colored string.

“It's a thank you note from Willie,” she told me with a smile, “Remember this, child, crazy don't mean you can't be polite.”