Dandelion Wine

Elmira Brown’s husband, Sam, is a mail carrier. He stops by the house in the middle of the day and tells Elmira that he just delivered a book to Clara Goodwater. He peeked at a few pages and discovered that it is a book on magic and witchcraft. Elmira is outraged. She marches outside, where she finds Tom and commands him to follow her. They head over to Clara’s house. Elmira accuses Clara of practicing witchcraft to win the election and become the president of the Honeysuckle Ladies Lodge. Clara denies it, but Elmira disbelieves her. The conversation kicks off a bit of a feud between the two ladies; Clara says that Elmira loses the vote to be president every single year. Elmira retorts that, every year, injuries or illness prevent her from campaigning for the position; she blames her mishaps on Clara’s alleged witchcraft, while Clara blames Elmira’s own clumsiness and threatens to put a hex on her.

Vowing to fight Clara for the presidency at the next Lodge meeting, Elmira goes to the library and checks out a book on magic potions. She stirs together various chemicals into a greenish goo and drinks it just before the lodge meeting. Clara calls the meeting to order, then invites Elmira to say a few words. Elmira stands, tipping over her chair, and whispers to Clara that she has ingested a concoction that makes her immune to evil. Elmira tells the group that Clara is a witch, and rails against her. When the vote is called, every other woman in the room votes for Clara. Stunned at the result, Elmira stares at Clara, who pulls from her purse a wax doll stabbed with thumbtacks. Elmira, her stomach churning, runs for the restroom, takes a wrong turn, and tumbles down a staircase, vomiting up the concoction on the way down. Miraculously, Elmira is bruised but otherwise unhurt. Clara holds Elmira’s head in her lap and, crying, promises never again to use magic against her. Clara even insists that the Lodge hold a second vote and make Elmira the new president. At this, the other ladies, gathered on the steps, burst into tears. Everyone walks happily back up to the main hall. Having witnessed the whole event, Tom makes his escape and describes the entire episode in detail to Douglas, who squints and says simply, “Witches…”

Colonel Freeleigh dreams that he is the last apple to fall from the orchard. He wakes up, startled, and dials his friend Jorge in Mexico City, who obligingly holds the phone up to an open window. The colonel listens once again to the sounds of a city he remembers from when he was 25. Lately, he’s been dialing old friends all over Latin America. The cost is high but worth it. His nurse enters and scolds him for using the phone and exciting himself; she forbids him from entertaining the young boys and risking heart trouble and warns him that his son may order the phone removed. She puts him into bed and removes the wheelchair. Freeleigh protests that it’s better to die of aliveness than live without it. She calls Jorge and tells him to accept no further calls from the colonel.

The nurse departs for the store. Freeleigh quickly rises, stumbles across the room, re-dials Jorge, and begs to hear, one last time, the sounds of the faraway city. Reluctantly, Jorge obliges him, and he listens to an organ grinder, and boys “crying loteria nacional para hoy!” as they vend lottery tickets (176). Minutes later, Douglas and Charlie sneak into the house—they promised the colonel they’d visit when the nurse was away—and open the door to his room. They find him seated on the floor, with the phone’s receiver gripped in his cold, dead hand. Douglas lifts the receiver to his ear and hears the sound of a window being closed. The next day, while playing around the big cannon on the courthouse lawn, Douglas tells Tom that a whole lot of lives died along with Colonel Freeleigh—Abe Lincoln, General Lee, General Grant, Ching Ling Soo, the bison—and already Douglas regrets not fully appreciating them when the colonel described them. Tom suggests that his brother write down those stories in his journal, lest he forget them. Douglas decides to do so.

Douglas and Grandpa finish bottling the wine made from the July harvest of dandelions, 31 bottles in all. They all look the same except for the dates; these remind Douglas of the things that happened to him on those days. He wonders where all the light and sound of those days went to and surmises that maybe the wine contains it all. However, he notes that the bottle for the day that John left and the one for the day Colonel Freeleigh died look no darker than the others. Douglas worries aloud that the August crop won’t contain any good memories, but Grandpa gently scolds him for being morose. Bill Forrester takes Douglas downtown to the soda fountain for some lime-vanilla ice cream. At the counter, they catch the eye of 95-year-old Helen Loomis, who compliments Bill on his brave choice of flavors. She invites them to sit with her, and Bill admits that he once was in love with her. She says, “Now that’s the way I like a conversation to open” (185) and adds that Bill reminds her of a gentleman she dated 70 years ago. She invites Bill to meet her at her home the following afternoon for tea, and he agrees. The next day, they talk for hours as Helen regales him with stories of Cairo. When finally she finishes, he leans back and squints at her, then tells her he can see the echo of the young woman she used to be.

For the next two weeks, they meet almost daily. Helen talks of her visit to Paris in 1885, and once again he imagines himself at her side. It’s the same when she speaks of Stockholm and Venice: “The things she had done alone, they were now doing together” (194). She asks what he meant about having been in love with her. He explains that he clipped out a news picture of her, taken when she was 20 and was about to search for her at an upcoming charity ball when someone explained to him about the antique photo and warned him off. She thanks him for wanting to find her. In return, she describes her first and only beau, a wild-haired, intense man who rode fast horses, quit jobs impetuously, and gave up on her when he realized that she was wilder than he. She wonders now if Bill, who’s so similar, is the reincarnated soul of her first love. One day, late in August, Bill finds her in the garden writing a letter to him. She puts it in a blue envelope and says, “When you receive this in the mail, you’ll know I’m dead” (198). She explains that she’ll die in a few days. She has loved their friendship, a “meeting of the minds” that transcends the flesh, and hopes that, in some other lifetime, they might meet again when both are young (199-200). She asks that he not live to be too old and hopes that they will meet again as two young people in an ice cream shop. Two days later, at work, Douglas delivers the blue envelope to Bill. They go to the drugstore fountain, where he pulls out the letter. It reads: “A dish of lime-vanilla ice” (204).