That same afternoon a man I’d never seen before came to our house. He had a mustache and wore jeans and cowboy boots. My sister and I were sitting on the stoop, and Mom talked with him for ten minutes, and then he gave her some money, and in return she gave him the key to our car. He got in, but she waved at him to wait, then ran into the workshop and came back with the monkey wrenches and drill. He turned the drill over in his hands. I couldn’t hear everything they said, but he gave her back the drill and drove off in our car toward the hills. Mom put the tools back in the workshop, and as she passed between me and my sister, I asked whether the car was getting repairs, but she didn’t answer.
My sister spent some time every day showing me how to read and how to write my name and Mom and Dad and Sis. I learned to read slowly; the opaque forms of words intrigued me because I could tell there were meanings inside them hiding from me. I allowed them the right to represent something other than themselves, and came to see written things with an additional, third face. I found out there were these invisible pockets I’d reach into each time I read something to myself or out loud. I began reading aloud everything I could: the labels on spices, advertisements, death notices, the ingredients on shampoo and detergents, license plates, and subtitles (at least the ones that stayed long enough on the TV screen). I’d interrupt the painful silence dominating the household by spelling: “s-o-d-a, soda,” “c-o-f-f-e-e, coffee,” “l-y-e, lye.” Sometimes I’d even take a book off the shelf. What it was about didn’t matter, I wanted to see what sort of words were written in it and if could I reach for them. I loved this new world, and now I looked differently at things that featured words—labels, books, stores, or tanker trucks—as if in their invisible pockets there were explanations and instructions, as if meaning and truth were waiting for me. I knew I would be able to hide in those pockets that were hanging from everything, and somehow I guessed I’d be able to fill them myself with promises. I could picture paradise as a vast expanse of reading corners in a perfectly white space with happy readers going into them to seek new memories and friendships, as people who are kind of lonely do, something I knew even though I was still small.
As for me, I longed for friendship, and maybe that’s how I opened a pocket where it could be inscribed. I made two truly odd acquaintances, the kind that shape one’s life. The first time I saw them was on one of those winter evenings that sometimes appear in late autumn, when things can no longer be clearly seen. I was watching Granny shoo the chickens into their coop for the night, like I always did. She was hunched and moving slowly, but she shooed the chickens into their coop with big, noisy energy. She called, “Bacawk-cawk! Chickichee-chee! In you go! Bacawk! Chickichee! Consarn it, where’re ya off to!” and clapped her gnarled, wrinkled hands. That evening I finally saw what the chickens were running from so skittishly. As soon as Granny called “Bacawk!” out leaped a shadowy figure from the gloom between the pigsty and the barn: it wasn’t much bigger than a dog, and it waddled on two feet, pushing itself along with one fist in the dirt. With the other arm it kept tugging at its oversized coat, the sleeve flopping over its hand and dragging across the ground. It swept the dirt along as it moved. Around its feet, instead of boots, it had tied two of Granny’s white dishtowels embroidered with sayings: Cooking the dinner was a breeze—hubby says it’s the bee’s knees and Cook, bite your tongue so the dinner doesn’t burn. On its head it wore an old-fashioned cap like the one Dejan’s granddad wore, and its face, as far as I could see, resembled a good-natured hog. Its tiny eyes kept winking, first one, then the other, and its runny nostrils opened and closed. The exterior of its snout reminded me strangely of how I’d always pictured the interiors of the noses of normal living beings.
As soon as it came prancing out of the dark, it loped after the chickens and started kicking at them with its feet and flailing its arms, and they scuttled off toward the coop. Another shadowy figure took off after the ones darting in the opposite direction; this one had emerged from the gloom between the corn crib and an old horse cart when Granny called “Chickichee!” It was a little shorter and pudgier than the one she’d called Bacawk, and it was wearing a chestnut-colored cape with a hood over its head that rose to a tall point. Its head looked a little top-heavy with two huge greenish webbed eyes, like the eyes on a horsefly, and it was barefoot. One foot was nearly twice the size of the other, and they were angled in opposite directions. But that didn’t seem to be much of a problem, because it padded cheerfully along after each chicken that was eluding the coop. The two of them speedily stowed all the chickens away, and Granny shut the coop gate. I laughed and clapped loudly, and the two characters hugged each other and bowed low like country fiddlers. The louder I clapped, the lower they bowed, until their foreheads met the mud. They exchanged looks, and Chickichee farted. I had to grab hold of my wiener to stop from peeing my pants from laughter. Granny paid no attention to them or to me, she just turned to go back to the house, muttering, “Consarn them chickens.” As soon as they heard that, Bacawk and Chickichee vanished, each into his own gloom. Granny added: “Come on in, let’s fix us some cocoa.”
I followed her, happy because I knew I’d see those two clowns again. That night I stayed at Granny’s and could hardly wait till morning. When I got up, I gobbled a slice of bread with butter, salt, and an egg sunny-side up, and raced out of the house into the foggy farmyard. I went over to the fenced-in part and whispered, “Bacawk, Chickichee,” but nothing happened. “Bacawk! Chickichee!” I said a little louder. I stepped into the farmyard through the gate in the chicken-wire fence, stood among the chickens, and crouched down to see where the two of them had jumped out from. From the gloom peered two squinty hog eyes and two horsefly eyes.
“Don’t be frightened now, out you come!”
And the two of them stepped slowly and timidly out into the light. Chickichee wiggled his huge foot and stared down into the mud, and Bacawk tried without success to keep his balance and straighten the sleeves of his oversize coat.
“Why so shy now? Last night you two were madder than wet hens,” I said, and Chickichee clapped and hopped onto Bacawk’s back, and Bacawk set off running furiously in a circle. The chickens clucked in alarm and flapped into a frenzy with a cloud of feathers. Bacawk ran two or three rounds and then fell into the mud, and Chickichee tumbled after him. I laughed and clapped. Glancing around, Chickichee said: “Nobody but your granny calls us out, and she only does it while she’s cooping up the chickens.”
“Glad to be of help to her,” added Bacawk, “but mostly we keep to the gloom.” The way they talked was different from the way the people talked in the village, drawling out the short words and cutting off the longer ones. They rolled their r’s with tongue and throat, and yawned lazily through their a’s and o’s. They pronounced nose like naoose, and home like haooom. But I could follow them fine because they made the effort to be understandable. I could already see us putting together a whole fleet of boats and me teaching them to read.