One evening in March, when the weather was turning warmer, Suzanne decided to have a party at her house. A bunch of us from Warm Springs piled into a couple of cars.
A few able-bodied men loaded wheelchairs and crutches into the back of a truck and off we went. Even Ed Frogge went along!
As much as I loved being at the foundation, it felt great to go someplace else. Of course Sam started in on a history lesson as soon as we were off the grounds. “This town didn’t used to be called Warm Springs,” he said. “It was Bullochville before Roosevelt came here.”
While Sam went on about the improvements FDR brought to Georgia, I thought how amazing it was that a place so tiny could become so famous and so important. All because of one man. And polio. And healing water bubbling up out of the ground.
Suzanne lived in a white house with a big yard full of trees. She took me to her room. I just couldn’t get over it. For one thing, it was painted strawberry red. And for another, she had a shiny wood bed with pineapples carved into the four posts. And lots of scrapbooks in the room. “See,” she said, “I’m a scrapbook fiend.”
She showed me the Life magazine with her picture in it. Sam was right—she was mostly behind a big white column, but it showed just enough of her face that you could tell who it was. Out in front of her was the colored man playing the accordion for Franklin Roosevelt with tears running down his cheeks.
“It was a day you could never forget,” said Suzanne. And just looking at that picture I could feel the sadness of that day all over again.
Soon we went out to the screened-in porch with everyone else and drank lemonade and ate cookies made by Suzanne’s mother. We sat in a circle and played games and told stories about people getting into mischief at Warm Springs—about people shooting peas into the light fixtures with their forks. And having wheelchair races.
Suzanne asked her mother to bring sugar for Ed Frogge because he likes his lemonade extra sweet. But secretly she told her momma to put salt in the sugar bowl. So when Ed took a big swallow, you should’ve heard him growl. Then he started wheezing and coughing, and I thought for a second he was going to choke to death. But that was just Ed’s way of getting Suzanne back. He was fine, really. Every last one of us laughed till the tears was running out of our eyes.
When we finally settled down, someone told a ghost story, and that was the beginning of a whole bunch of spooky tales. It was fun scaring ourselves.
Gavin said there is a place in Florida called Spook Hill where cars actually roll uphill. He told an Indian legend about some chief killing an alligator that was raiding his village. “So now,” said Gavin, “the ghost of the alligator haunts the place. Trust me, it’s real spooky sitting in a car that rolls uphill.”
“Maybe you don’t know this,” said Sam, “but Georgia has Magic Hill, right over in Manchester. Of course it’s not real.”
“It’s real all right!” said Olivia. “One of the attendants told me about that place. Betty said she was at Magic Hill one night with her soldier boyfriend and they parked for a while. When they were ready to leave, their car wouldn’t start.”
Sam rolled his eyes and took over the story. “So they went to find help. And when they got back, their car was sitting about a hundred yards uphill! But it didn’t happen to Betty,” he said. “I read it in the newspaper. A local woman claimed it happened to her.”
Well, you should’ve heard the racket on Suzanne’s porch then. There was a big discussion about all the different people who claimed this strange thing had happened to them.
Someone said Magic Hill was just a legend.
“Actually,” said Sam, “it’s an optical illusion. I’ve read about those things. There’s more of them in other places around the world.”
Olivia said, “Why don’t we just get in the car and go to Magic Hill?”
Well, we all loved that idea. So we said our goodbyes and thank-yous to Suzanne’s family. Her mother said Suzanne could ride along for the fun. The drivers helped us into our cars, and off we went.
Somehow I ended up sitting beside Gavin. It’s hard to say if my goose bumps came from going to Magic Hill or from the company I was keeping.
Manchester was just a hop and a skip from Warm Springs. Soon we saw a sign ahead:
SWITCH OFF MOTOR
RELEASE BRAKES
So the fellow who was driving said, “Here goes. Are you ready?”
He turned off the engine. And it got real quiet then, as if every single one of us had quit breathing. Except Ed Frogge in the front seat. You could hear him wheezing, of course. And that just added to the spookiness. Everyone in the back seat grabbed each other’s hands and waited.
Maybe that car did roll uphill. Maybe not. It was hard for me to know what was real and what wasn’t. My mind was on Gavin holding my hand. And thinking he had give it a little squeeze.
But then again, maybe not.
I’m pretty sure the car didn’t move an inch. But Ed and Olivia both declared it rolled a good ten feet. And the polios in the other car started hooting and hollering so loud I figured maybe they did get a spooky ride.
When it was all said and done, it didn’t matter one way or the other what happened. People believed what they wanted to about ghosts and Magic Hill. I decided I didn’t trust any of it.
Except the part about having a good time in a car with my friends and one of them being a boy. Who just happened to be holding my hand.
That was magic enough for me.