"Are you Baptist?" asked Step.
"Well, my daddy was a Pentecostal minister, and he was a real dunker, he put 'em all the way under and held 'em down till the sins were all drownded and so were the ones who found Jesus, I'll tell you. Why, some of
'em came up with a mouthful of mud, he pushed 'em down so far!" DeAnne and Step joined in Bappy's laughter, but Step was thinking, I don't like making light of baptism, not today, not in front of the kids.
"Well," said Step, "anyway I'm sorry we weren't here. Have you waited long?"
"Oh, I didn't wait at all," said Bappy. "I figured, I know I oughta ask 'em first, but here I am and there's the tent flies in the back yard and I gotta do something about 'em, and it's not like I'm gonna make a mess that I don't clean right up."
"Is that what those cobwebby things on the trees are?" asked DeAnne. "Tent flies?"
"Them eggs hatch and the worms can eat every leaf right off the tree," said Bappy. "So I bag 'em up and prune 'em off. Got my truck mostly filled now, and you won't have any more of them wormy things dropping off on your kids under the trees."
"Yay!" shouted Robbie. "Those are really icky!" He charged around back, Betsy hard on his heels.
"Well I got 'em all," said Bappy. "Or almost. I will have 'em all by the time the day's over."
Step wasn't comfortable having Bappy doing yardwork on the Sabbath. But he knew that it really wasn't his business. Bappy wasn't his employee, he was the landlord's father, and if he chose to do yardwork on Sundays, well, it wasn't Step's job to control it.
"Step, would you go round the kids up out of the back yard?" DeAnne asked.
Step headed into the back yard and found Robbie and Betsy circling the tree like the tigers in Little Black Sambo, though they would never know the reference because somewhere between Step's childhood and his children's, that story had been discovered to be a monstrously poisonous thing that would turn otherwise innocent children into bigots. I guess there's no hope for me, thought Step. I see kids running around in circles, I think of tiger butter.
Bravely Step stuck a hand into the circle of children and emerged with a child attached to it; then the other hand, and the other child. "Come on into the house," he said, "if you want supper."
"He got the webs!" shouted Robbie.
It was true. The tree had been pruned back, and now was missing all but two of the branches that had been covered with a mass of white web; even those were now wrapped in large plastic garbage bags, waiting to be cut off and disposed of. It wasn't hard to imagine Bappy's wiry body climbing around in the trees. He's in better shape than I am, thought Step. But then, he doesn't have to work around the corner from a candy machine.
When Step got the kids into the kitchen and DeAnne had sent them off to change out of their Sunday clothes, she asked him, "Where's Stevie?"
"He wasn't in the back yard," said Step. "I thought he came in with you."
"I thought he took off when the other kids did."
"He's in here somewhere."
"No he's not, Step. I unlocked the back door, and he'd have to come in past me, and I know for a fact that he didn't. So he's still outside, and I don't like it that you didn't see him with the other kids."
She had good reason to be worried. This morning's paper had told of another kid who had turned up missing last night at a Weavers baseball game. It was a minor league team, of course, but there were a lot of loyal fans in Steuben and so the games were crowded. Kid just disappeared. Scary times. He'd be on a milk carton soon, no doubt. Or turn up at a neighbor's house. Or dead. Where was Stevie?
Step went out into the back yard again. Bappy was up in the tree, sawing away at one of the limbs wrapped in plastic. He waved, and Step waved back. "You seen my oldest boy?" asked Step.
"No sir!" shouted Bappy. "You lost him?"
"Oh, he's around here somewhere," said Step.
"Keep your eyes on your kids, young man!" shouted Bappy. "It ain't safe these days. The devil is loose in the world!"
"Oh, I have no doubt of it!" Step called back.
Stevie was around in the front of the house, sitting on the doorstep.
"Stevie, we've been looking for you," said Step. "Your mom and I were worried, we didn't know where you were."
"Sorry," said Stevie. He got up.
"You can't go running off without saying anything."
Stevie frowned. "I was right here, Dad."
"You weren't in the house, and you weren't where we could see you, and so we were scared. That's just the way it is with parents, and you have to humor us and make sure we know where you are all the time or we'll end up putting you on a leash or locking you in the house or something, and you won't be very happy with that."
"Sorry," said Stevie again.
This wasn't how it should be on the day a kid was baptized. Off by himself, and then having to apologize for it. "What were you doing here in the front yard, anyway?" What were you thinking about? What was going through your mind?
"Sitting," said Stevie.
Step knew when he was defeated. "Well, come on in, it's time for supper."
Dutifully, Stevie followed him inside.
The next morning should have been the first weekday of summer. Stevie out of school, a chance for DeAnne to get a little more sleep in the morning, get things moving a little later. But DeAnne woke up before her alarm anyway, and not just because the baby was pressing so hard on her bladder that it held about a half an ounce these days. She lay there for a moment and then knew why her stomach felt like it was tied in a knot. She was taking Stevie to Dr. Weeks at ten.
DeAnne and Step had decided not to tell Stevie about the psychiatrist until the morning of his appointment.
Why have him worry unnecessarily for days in advance? Why spoil his birthday and his baptism?
Stevie wasn't so young that they could play the "this is just a different kind of doctor" game that might have worked with Robbie. Stevie knew that there were crazy people in the world, and doctors who treated them, and places where they were shut away from everybody else. It was the child's version of mental illnessall the old prejudices about madness survived in the subculture of children, passed from nine- year-olds to eight-year-olds, year after year. The loony bin. The nuthouse. Shameful, terrifying. Somehow Step and DeAnne had to make Stevie understand that that was not what was happening here. It would be especially difficult because DeAnne was afraid, deep inside, that that was exactly what was going to happen somewhere down the road.
DeAnne showered. Step had installed a handheld showerhead, which was a lifesaver when she was pregnant-not so much bending and reaching while standing on a slick, wet surface. It felt good to be clean.
There were times, late in her pregnancies, when she felt like she was permanently ugly and vile; her hair seemed to get oily faster during pregnancy and it matted to her head, and she felt awkward and bumptious and her back hurt, and her legs, and she got charley horses and she was tired all the time, too tired to want to clean herself up, and there was always this belly between herself and anything she was trying to do, and there were times when she just didn't want to go through the bother of getting out of bed. Yet if she just stripped off her clothes-a lot of trouble right there, of course-and washed herself, letting the water beat on her body, scour her all over, then she felt better, invigorated. She felt like maybe it was worth dragging herself around for another day.
Step staggered out of bed and into the shower as soon as she got out of the bathroom. Twenty minutes before his usual gettingup time. He had remembered, too. She watched him as he stripped off his nightclothes and pitched them into the plastic laundry basket in the closet. His body was definitely going to seed at this job.
His old regimen of bike-riding back in Vigor, along with some serious attention to what he ate, had kept him trim for the past few years, but the belly was coming back again, the thickness in the buttocks, the softness in the face. He had been pasty and overweight when she fell in love with him, of course; she hadn't really minded, but he minded so much that she knew he wasn't happy with his body that way. So when he got himself under control a few years back and shed the weight and built up his strength in a way he had never done in high school or college, she loved it mostly because he was so much happier, so much more confident. Looking at him now, she thought: Eight Bits Inc. has been destroying him in every way it could.