.
Arty nodded in at the shadowed face. “Do you have what you need?”
The stump man wriggled, surprised, craning his neck, “Arturo, sir?” His eyes showed their whites in the dimness
.
Arty’s scalp was bright in the sunlight. “Are you well treated? Do you need anything?”
“Well, that boy that’s s’posed to help me … not meaning to whine but he’s always gone. Yesterday, I couldn’t help it, I wet myself, and by the time he showed up, damned if I didn’t have diaper rash.”
Arty chuckled, nodding. “Sounds like you need a replacement. What’s that boy’s name?”
“Jason. But he’s a good boy. Just young.”
Arty swiveled in his chair and eyed his entourage. A dozen backs straightened and a dozen faces tried to look bright and eager
.
“Who’ll serve this elevated man?” Arty asked. The hands shot up — all five fingers spread to show their service status
.
“Miss Elizabeth,” Arty nodded. The woman stepped forward, her white dress bunching over her thickening body. Her hair bunned on top of her head. Thirty-five. Something burnt out of her soft face
.
“As you hope to be served?” Arty asked
.
“In my turn,” breathed the fingerful, toeful Miss E
.
“When that Jason boy shows, send him to me.”
Miss E. detached herself from the group, climbed into the front seat of the sedan, and started sorting through a paper bag full of clothes for clean and dirty
.
The elevated man, flat on the back seat, waved his stump arms and strained his neck in the shade of his washed bandages hanging on the windows. “As you are!” shouted the elevated man. Arty nodded and his chair turned and moved on
.
Doing his rounds, he calls this. It’s a recent development, probably triggered by the Doc and her agitating. I followed him from tent to van to pickup trucks with mosquito nets and sleeping bags in back
.
He scolded, sympathized, made peace, moved people from one job to another, from one campsite to a more peaceful spot. He talked to the cooks in the big mess tent to make sure a vegetarian menu was available for those who wanted it. He sent runners from his platoon of disciples to give orders or deliver messages. He spent a good three hours rolling around among the chinless ninnies, the whiners, the leeches, the simps, and the good people in his congregation. He ended up back at his own trailer looking very tired and young. I shoved his chair up the ramp to the deck and opened his door for him
.
“So you have a strike on your hands,” I said. He smiled going in and I followed him. He rolled straight to the desk and started pushing through papers. “I’ve got one rebel on my flippers,” he grinned, “but I always knew she’d turn one day. I’m not all that put out.”
“She’s got you over a barrel if she won’t cut anymore.”
Arty looked at me with a flat smile. “I’m not such a fool as that. I’ve had her training her own replacement for years.”
Iphy braided Elly’s hair so she wouldn’t drool on it. Iphy with hands like angel wings, combing and polishing the long gleaming strands while Elly lay against her. Elly’s head drooping forward on the too long, too thin neck, her face blinking emptily at the sofa cushions.
Iphy would wind the long braids into coiled black shells and pin them over Elly’s ears and then do her own. Then Iphy would turn the blank, soggy face toward her and sponge it carefully, brushing the eyebrows smooth and propping the lower jaw closed with one hand so that, for an instant, it looked like Elly. Until Iphy let go and the face fell down again.
Horst drove us to the meadow and parked the small van in the dust-white grass. Mama helped Iphy out and I handed around the plastic pails.
“You twins always have flying fingers,” Mama was chattering. “Flying fingers, but Oly and I will do our part as best we’re able.”
Horst leaned against the bumper with a stick in case we saw a snake, but he was soon asleep in the sun like one of his cats.
Mama stood against the dust-covered blackberry banks, reaching high into the rasping tangles of the thorns and humming. Iphy’s fingers were not flying. With the arm supporting Elly she held the bucket against their swollen belly and reached out with her other hand, dutifully nipping off the warm, dark berries and ignoring the ragged red lines scratched on her arms and their legs by the thorns. She was careful with Elly, holding her away from the bush, staggering awkwardly, catching their bare ankles in the vines, working slowly. I plodded along, picking and getting scraped.
The sun pounded down and the dust drifted up, and after a while Mama’s thin scat voice was far off. Iphy called to me: “I need to sit down.”
She was hanging on to a thick, drooping stalk of vine when I got to her. I took the bucket and tucked myself under Elly. The lolling blank face rocked against my head as Iphy slowly turned. We made our way out of the brambles.
“On the grass would be fine,” Iphy said. But I steered her around past Horst to the narrow shade beside the van. She sank down and pulled Elly’s head over to lie on her shoulder.
“I’ll just rest a little. Standing up in the sun …”
Horst was wide awake, blinking and tapping his stick in the dust, pretending he’d never been asleep. I went back to find Mama.
Later, at the sink in our van, Mama rinsed the blue stain and the odd spiders, caterpillars, and stems from the bucket.
“Not what we usually start with, but we can go again tomorrow. And this will set up nicely in about six, eight jars.”
The berries were beginning to simmer in the big pot on the back burner. Mama pushed her dark wooden spoon into the foaming berries and circled the wall of the pot slowly.
I leaned my hot arms on the table and said, “Iphy better not go tomorrow. She got tired today.” I was smelling the berries and Mama’s sweat, and watching the flex of the blue veins behind her knees.
“Does them good. The twins always loved picking berries, even more than eating them. Though Elly likes her jam.”
“Elly doesn’t like anything anymore.”
The knees stiffened and I looked up. The spoon was motionless. Mama stared at the pot.
“Mama, Elly isn’t there anymore. Iphy’s changed. Everything’s changed. This whole berry business, cooking big meals that nobody comes for, birthday cakes for Arty. It’s dumb, Mama. Stop pretending. There isn’t any family anymore, Mama.”
Then she cracked me with the big spoon. It smacked wet and hard across my ear, and the purple-black juice sprayed across the table. She stared at me, terrified, her mouth and eyes gaping with fear. I stared gaping at her. I broke and ran.
I went to the generator truck and climbed up to sit by Grandpa. That’s the only time Mama ever hit me and I knew I deserved it. I also knew that Mama was too far gone to understand why I deserved it. She’d swung that spoon in a tigerish reflex at blasphemy. But I believed that Arty had turned his back on us, that the twins were broken, that the Chick was lost, that Papa was weak and scared, that Mama was spinning fog, and that I was an adolescent crone sitting in the ruins, watching the beams crumble, and warming myself in the smoke from the funeral pyre. That was how I felt, and I wanted company. I hated Mama for refusing to see enough to be miserable with me. Maybe, too, enough of my child heart was still with me to think that if she would only open her eyes she could fix it all back up like a busted toy.