There’s a knock on the door. “Lunch is ready, folks! Come and get it!”
“Should start laying the foundations in a couple of weeks,” he says, rising, “and be ready to begin the actual construction of the temple itself by the end of summer.”
The others look at each other with raised eyebrows, faint smiles. The end of summer! “It’s like a dream come true!” says Mrs. Edwards.
III.3 Sunday 31 May — Monday 1 May
The municipal pool has opened this Memorial Day weekend and the kids are nagging at her to take them, but Dot’s pooped after the exhausting trip to the camp and back. Sunday dinners are a lot of work. Extra cots were brought in out there for last month’s big weekend and they were probably just going to be dumped somewhere and left to rust, so they did them the favor of carting a few of them back here to Chestnut Hills. She has fallen out on one of them. God has blessed them with these small gifts.
“Come on, Mom,” says Luke. “This is the last day it’s free.”
There’s that to consider. Not much is free these days. That pork roast may be their last. It was overcooked like everything else they serve out of that kitchen and she let them know that, not for the first time; she could teach them a thing or two, but they’re set in their southern ways. The rhubarb pie was sour, too, and begging for hot custard. You just don’t serve rhubarb pie without it. What’s wrong with these people? Then old man Suggs had the nerve to tell her that the meals and other privileges of the camp were for the workers only. If they are not there by 7:30 a.m. each day to begin work, they will not be able to share in the camp meals or other facilities. Is he kidding? How is she going to get Isaiah off the can at that ridiculous hour? Whatever happened to give to him who asketh you and the righteous showeth mercy to the needs of the saints? Is this a church, or what? Even finding all her kids in the morning, much less getting them washed and dressed, can take half the day. That old man should have a few to see what it’s like, he’d be making fewer stupid rules.
“They got a big slide. Davey told me.”
“Just let me get my wind, Luke.” Somebody should wipe the kid’s nose. Snot worming out of both her nostrils. Dot would make the effort but she has nothing to use except her skirt, which may not get laundered again soon. “Go get up a game of apocalypse in the back yard.”
“Come on, Mom,” her oldest says. “You’re not tired, you just ate too much.”
“I know, Mattie, but I figured if we weren’t going to be invited back, I’d better store up enough for the rest of the week, and now I can’t move.” It was a good thing she was already well tucked in when Suggs dropped the edict. She managed to make it back for thirds and a half before they took everything away, and she was able to share a whole pie with little Johnny, fortunately not his favorite delicacy, he being still mostly on the bottle. Custard, though, he would have loved.
“Is that how it works? Storing it up?”
“I don’t know. Probably not.” She feels a good healthy snore coming on, Isaiah already at it in the back room of this little prefab — their fourth house since coming here, having used up the first three — but the kids won’t let her drop off. They keep poking and wheedling. “All right, all right,” she says finally, sitting up with a heavy grunt, and they jump up and down and let off squealing and whoopeeing sounds. Let them have their chlorinated dip — they’re all in need of baths anyway, and the pool should sterilize them for a few days, save her time in the long run. Maybe they could somehow make it out to the camp at least one day a week in time to earn their lunches and bring home a few bags full of leftovers to get them through some of the other days.
How does a body survive in such a mean world? It’s not easy, especially with this gang of Blaurock ragamuffins. But Isaiah is a hard worker and strong and fearless, and he’s resourceful at picking up odd jobs, like taking dents out of fenders, lopping off dead tree limbs, pointing chimneys, caulking windows, getting squirrels out of attics and rats out of basements and on one occasion last week a cat out of a tree, though he did that one for free. He has a very Christian attitude toward dogs and cats and does not like to see them suffer, though in hard times past they have also sometimes eaten them. Isaiah’s not inclined to say much, he just wanders the neighborhoods locating problems, points and gives his price. And he comes cheap, so they always invite him back. He brings the money home, she buys food with it. When they run out, they visit a restaurant out on the highway somewhere, walking out without paying, her kids, well-trained, asking loudly just before if they can go out and play. She keeps a list of places and ticks them off as they use them up. These people make such huge profits, it’s a way of helping them tithe. Once, they made the mistake of going back to the same place twice, and on that occasion they had to check off not only the restaurant, but also the state. Which has been a nuisance ever since, it being one of those states in the middle that they always have to drive around to get somewhere else. Wandering one day through what the local Baxter people call Dagotown, Isaiah spotted an old Ford pickup on blocks, and after looking it over he offered to trade their Dodge for it, the old heap still running even if on its last legs, plus enough money to buy used wheels for the truck, part of which he earned by cleaning their gutters and unplugging their downspouts and getting rid of a tree whose roots were threatening the house foundations and sawing it up for firewood. A week or so later they had a vehicle twice as good, and one they could haul things in, though Isaiah had to make a few pieces out of scrap harvested from the truck bed, and visit some church parking lots to borrow the odd doobob or two he couldn’t manufacture himself. Not much room inside for the kids, but riding shotgun at the back of the truck is a big adventure for them. Isaiah’s next project is to build a camper unit for it. They can park it out at the camp somewhere. Meanwhile, they’ve been rotating through various Chestnut Hills properties, living among the cockroaches and mice, who seem to enjoy a comfortable life in this neighborhood, moving to a new house when the old one gets overtaken by filth and disrepair, trundling out to the camp for laundry, telephone, meals, prayers, and the occasional family shower. That will be harder now, though not impossible, she assumes. People having a way of letting her do what she wants if she’s insistent enough. But it’s no big deal anyway — anything that takes a coin Isaiah can make operate without. He can make slugs out of tin cans and roof lead and work magic with a bobby pin. Stuff they borrowed from the camp that they no longer need they have offered up in garage and yard sales, picking up pizza money. They also scrounge through other people’s rubbish, occasionally coming up with a usable or saleable item, though it’s a poor town and not much gets thrown away. They have better luck dumpster diving out at the shopping center; security’s not perfect out there, meaning they usually come away with a few small store samples as well, which they feel they deserve by virtue of the abstemious Christian lives they live.
At the pool, they draw a lot of attention. Stares and giggles. Pointed fingers. The brat at the entrance who does the check-in and hands out the baskets for their clothes comes out now and tells them they can’t swim in their underwear, they have to have swimming suits. Dot tells her those are swimming suits, the latest models, and a good sight more modest than what some of these other little heathens out here are wearing, so lay off. Of course, it would have helped had they been clean, but kids are kids, right? The girl looks for help from the lifeguard perched over there on his high chair at the deep end of the pool, but he is surrounded by fawning young things who keep falling into the water and squealing that they can’t swim — save me, Tommy! The lifeguard’s a pretty boy, tall and good-looking, and doesn’t seem to care about little kids swimming in their underwear, and why should he, for pete’s sake?