Classique, let me tell you about the picnic with the ghost, and what I saw and did afterwards. I’m so sorry you couldn’t go because the food was wonderful, better than crackers and peanut butter; she brought a tasty treat -- dark greasy meat like on a chicken thigh (I'm not sure that’s what it was though), served on a linen napkin that had lacy patterns. And apple juice. And pound cake, half a slice. I didn’t eat that much, but I still ate enough to make me sleepy.
But let me tell you first how I waited for the ghost.
Of course, she isn’t a ghost. You knew that. Her name is Dell, and she lives in the far-off mesquite cluster, in a small home made of gray and russet-colored stone. I followed her after our picnic, but she didn’t know. At least I don’t think she did.
But before, in her meadow, I sat cross-legged by the cat eyes for at least an hour. The sky was clear, the air breezy. The Johnsongrass murmured from time to time, as if someone was wandering among the sorghum -- but it was only the wind tricking me. And, as you know, I wore lipstick and rouge. My hands were clean (I’d washed up on the porch, using the gallon jug, splashing water into a cupped palm. Then I worked my front teeth under the crest of each fingernail, scraping out the dirt).
And just when I thought Dell had forgotten me, she pushed through the Johnsongrass, saying half my name. "Rose, Rose, Rose-"
She held a wicker picnic basket in one hand, carried a quilt in the other.
From behind the hood she said, "Have you been here long? I should think not, no. You haven’t touched my cat eyes. You haven't ruined a thing. You’ve been here minutes, I suppose.”
That throaty man’s voice, that froggy grumble.
"Hurry, child. We’re burning sunshine and I don’t have all day."
Then she was leaving the way she came, marching off in the sorghum, receding, so I jumped to my feet and went after her, skipping.
Soon I was traveling in new territory, going away from What Rocks and the tracks. And Dell was asking, "Were you born of coyotes? Are you a coyote child? Did you spring from the earth? How’d you come to be?”
But I wasn’t sure what she meant.
"I live in What Rocks,” I told her, "and then L.A., but not now -- I’m in What Rocks.”
"What rocks? A rock baby, I say. You are a rock baby.”
I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not.
"My daddy is there," I continued, "and so is Classique and Fashion Jeans and Cut ’N Style and Magic Curl."
"You’re gibberish,” she said. "You’re uncouth, vulgar, I think. I pity you."
We were walking in a clearing of threshed grain, the white straw dry and stalky underfoot.
"Be careful what you do here,” she said. "You're on my land. I own this, every inch.”
And in that clearing she shook open the quilt, letting the square patterns, all plaid, unfurl and float to the ground. But I couldn’t sit on it. She said so. I had to sit in the chaff, which made my shins itchy.
Do you remember the tea parties, Classique? I’d arrange you and the other heads around the folded paper towel, in the tent near the TV, Then I’d pretend-pour tea into your tiny plastic mugs.
"You’re my guests,” I’d say. "Let me serve you.”
The breeze was mussing the quilt, ruffling it over in spots. When I leaned forward to straighten an edge, Dell said, "Don’t trouble with it." This was her party. She did the smoothing. She had the linen napkins and Dixie cup. I was the guest of honor.
"Smells good,” I said. "I washed my hands too."
She was supposed to tell me how pretty I looked.
"Shush now," she told me. "No more nonsense, that’s right.”
She removed three foil-covered plates and a thermos from the wicker basket, setting each item at a corner of the quilt. Then she put herself at the center, like a fat jinni riding a magic carpet (the mesh was off her face; she’d already drawn circles in the air, cursed the bees, clapped her hands, spit).
And then she served me, pulling back the foil, choosing carefully with her mittened fingers.
"A bit of this.”
A sliver of meat.
"Some of this."
Pound cake.
"Don’t spill a drop, you’ll get nothing else."
Apple juice.
It wasn’t much. But it was good, as I mentioned. A meager feast. Even after finishing my share, I found myself growing fuller while watching Dell. With the napkin on her lap, she ate directly from the plates -- all that meat, three slices of pound cake, the thermos was her cup.
But I wasn’t bothered, Classique. I was content.
I could hear her breathing, a ragged noise, as her jaws bulged. She wouldn’t look at me. And it was like I didn’t exist. As if I was the ghost. She just chewed furiously, a mitten gripping the next chunk of food-and it seemed she was speaking to herself, talking with a mouthful, grunting.
The shaded lens of her glasses, coupled with the mumbling, made her a pirate in my mind. The Johnsongrass waving in the distance became an ocean. And we were on a deserted island, and this meal was the treasure. "Argh,” I could almost imagine her saying. "Aye! Good booty!”
I belched, expelling the meat’s smoky flavor, a pleasant aftertaste. Then I stretched in the chaff and let my eyes close.
Did I fall asleep? I must have. But I awoke to the sound of a quarry boom, noticing that the quilt had vanished. The basket as well. Red ants roamed where the plates had once been, foraging in the grain for leftovers.
And Dell -- there she was, her housedress flapping in the wind, the hood blowing to one side; she bustled with her load toward unknown terrain, the dense mesquite cluster at the faraway rim of the clearing. So I followed, keeping several yards behind. I was a spy, secret agent Jeliza-Rose, trailing Pirate Food Woman. Her name wasn’t discovered until later.
I’m invisible, I thought. You can’t see me. I’m the ghost.
Craggy mesquites sprawled overhead, sheltering a curvy footpath. And I lost sight of Dell, but I heard the happy song she whistled. So I knew she was nearby, further on ahead.
That song. Lift me up to sweet Jesus, and nail me by His crooked cross. My father sometimes sang that song. Oh what a glorious day, to be hung beside my Lord and saved.
And I should’ve told you this then, Classique. And this is what I want to tell you now-
Dell didn’t live in a cave. She wasn’t strangled and drowned in a bog, and the queen mother of all fireflies never existed (had I mentioned that?): the light seen in the trees belonged to her home; even during the day the floodlight shone, yellow and bright, above the front door -- more as a warning, I suspected, than a welcoming.
Her house was hidden among mesquites, like some decrepit witch’s cottage in a fairy tale. But the yard had been tended; there wasn’t a single weed. The dirt was tidy too, apparently combed with a rake. And tomatoes and squash grew in beds on either side of a gravel walkway, girdled by odd-shaped rocks.
But, Classique, I saw in the house. And I was careful, tip- toeing along the porch and peeking through an open window -- except it wasn’t that easy. All the windows were covered. The shades were pulled. It was as if sunlight was the enemy. Still, I managed. One shade was askew, crumpled at the bottom, and -- by tilting my head just so -- I could see inside.
Maybe, I thought, maybe you’re a witch. Or a vampire. Maybe that’s why you need the hood, to keep from melting. That’s why you forgot me in the clearing, you were beginning to dissolve.
But Dell hadn’t dissolved. She was in the dining room, or the living room. I can’t remember which. And she no longer wore the hood. And her hands were busy with her hair, bunching it behind her head. Then she took hairpins from her mouth and tucked them into the ball of hair, saying, "Kill a rabbit yourself because I’m too busy today. Do you think you’re the only person with things to do? I think not. I really don’t think you believe that. I really don’t."
I couldn’t see who she was talking to at first. In fact, other than Dell, I saw little else. The room was dimly lit -- impossible to make out -- but she stood near the window, fixing her hair beside a table lamp. And I recall thinking that it seemed like nighttime in there, that somehow her clocks must run funny. At night, I imagined, the shades were up and the house glowed from within. Everything was different.
"I can’t kill rabbits, Dell, ‘cause I can’t, you know I can’t.”
She was Dell. I said it to myself. Dell.
And the person who spoke her name -- a man or a boy? I wasn’t sure. The voice was sluggish and high, almost girlish.
"You hear me? If I do that to rabbits I feel bad. I don’t do that."
A man. He sounded stupid. He sounded like my father, when he pretended to be retarded -- when he dragged a leg behind himself on the carpet, chasing me around the apartment. He contorted his lips, asking me, "Jeliza-Rose, are you special too? I a special person, Jeliza-Rose. You love me? You be my friend? I think you’re purtty. I your special friend." I hated when he acted like that. I couldn’t stand his expression, all twisted and silly. Or how his speech changed, how it became slurred and heavy and sputtering. It was creepy.
"I put food in my tummy already,” Dell was saying. "Am I a maid? Am I a wife? Do I make the sky turn blue? Feed yourself, see. You know how, that’s right. You’re no child, Dickens. I should say not.”
And then he appeared, holding a red candle under his narrow chin. Dell kept her back to him; his long face hovered at her shoulder, wearing blue-tinted swimming goggles. She’d called him Dickens, and a wide scar parted his bald scalp, as if he had a hairstyle fashioned from flesh.
"My tummy is empty,” he said. "Didn’t leave me a crumb. Did you hear that? Didn’t even leave me a crumb."
I felt sorry for him. His voice had quivered. He seemed sad, as if he was about to cry.
"Your tummy will get dinner,” Dell said. "You’ll have rabbit then, see. But not lunch. No lunch. Right, I’ll fill you at dinner, okay? But Momma needs reading to before I kill for you."
Then she turned, wandering from the room with him in tow, the candle flickering in the space between them. I remained for a while at the window, listening, but they didn’t reappear. And I couldn’t hear them anymore. The place was quiet. So I left and headed home.
And that evening at What Rocks, I lied to you, Classique. I told you Dell and Dickens had invited me inside. I said we danced together and played games with cards and sang songs -- and Nutter Butters were served from a silver tray. All lies. Dell hadn’t fixed the radio, and my father didn’t broadcast a message as the three of us held hands (I wouldn’t tell you what the message was, because I said it was secret). Dell never whispered that I was her best friend. She never did. She didn’t walk me home either. I returned by myself.
But I wasn’t lying about the rabbit-hole. You know that, I suppose. At least I think it was a rabbit-hole, found beneath a mesquite tree, several yards from Dell’s home. I was on the footpath when I spotted it. And the hole was big enough for my head, but I didn’t dare bend over and peer in. Instead I kept a good distance; that way I wouldn’t get sucked through.
"She’s going to kill you," I told the hole, hoping that if a rabbit was down there it’d hear me. "For dinner she’s going to get you, you better hide. They’re going to eat you."
Did I tell you that’s what I said, Classique? That evening, as we rested by my father’s boots, did I mention that I warned the rabbit? Probably not. But I'm letting you know now. And I’m sorry I ever showed you that hole. I really am.
My father kept farting, silent but deadly, filling the entire downstairs of What Rocks. The smell was potent, sulfurous -- so bad that I had to leave the front door open. But I wasn’t worried about the squirrel sneaking in because I knew he’d get a whiff and change his mind. He’d probably pack his squirrel things and head for the hills. And I wouldn’t blame him.
"Stop cuttin’ muffins! Pooh in the yard because that’s where you do it!”
I was in the kitchen, spreading peanut butter on crackers, making lunch for my father, basking in victory: the army ants had finally been defeated; their bodies smushed along the countertop. They’d already dwindled in number-finding less and less to take away-so the decisive battle was easy. And if I hadn’t killed them, the farts would have. It was a massacre of mercy.
Cuttin’ muffins.
That’s what my father called farting.
Or air biscuits.
"In China,” he told me, "they got a whole different understanding of things -- the louder the burp, the better the meal. And a powerful air biscuit delivered with grace will get you a free dessert. It’s almost an art form there."
"That’s gross.”
I didn’t want to live in China.
And sometimes, when the two of us were eating together, he’d let a fart and then say, "Jeliza-Rose, I can’t believe it. You’re cuttin’ muffins at the dining table. Man, that’s nasty.”
But it was never me. It was always him. And when I protested, he’d grin and fart again.
"Stop it!"
"Jesus christ," he’d say, pretending to be annoyed, "put a plug in it. I’m trying to eat.”
And the madder I got, the more amused he’d become.
"Don’t!" I’d scream, verging on tears. "It’s you! You’re doing it!”
"Whoa, what died in here?"
He’d wave a hand in front of his nose, laughing.
But my mother hated his air biscuits. She’d storm from the kitchen and slam the bedroom door. Or she’d throw something at him, like a spoon or the TV remote control. Once, while she ate at the dining table, he ripped a loud one in the living room -- and she hit her fists on the tabletop. She just hit and hit, rattling her fork and frozen dinner and the salt-and-pepper shakers. Then she walked calmly from the room, glaring as she left, not saying a word.
And licking peanut butter off my finger-knife, I was glad my mother wasn’t at What Rocks that day. She would’ve gone crazy for sure, probably yanking his wig and bonnet, slapping him. Then she’d choke him with his ponytail, or bash his skull until it cracked. So it was good she wasn’t there, otherwise I’d be preparing lunch for her too; I’d rather smell muffins forever than do that.
"You’re a real stinker," I told my father, "and don’t say it’s me ‘cause it’s you. And you know it."
His meal waited on the floor -- six crackers with peanut butter, three by the left boot, three by the right boot. But he didn’t look hungry. In fact, he looked stuffed; the tip of his tongue poked between his scarlet lips, his face was bloated, the rouge had faded some on his puffed cheeks.
"What’re you eating? You’re all big. That’s why you’re farting too. And you’re fat -- your belly is poking."
I imagined him rising from the chair in the middle of the night -- his boots creaking on the floorboards -- and going outside to a cache of candy bars and Little Debbie Snack Cakes, his favorites.
"Daddy, you can have crackers tonight," I said, spotting my reflection in his sunglasses. "You don’t have to have them now if you don’t want to. But I made them for you so-”
I cupped a hand across my mouth, horrified:
The Bog Man was on the front porch; his footsteps thudded against the slats, briskly. Peeping around the chair, I glimpsed his tall figure darting by the open doorway, heard his footsteps thumping further along the porch, where they stopped abruptly outside the living room window. And then he was gazing in at me -- I almost saw him from the corner of my eyes -- but I couldn’t look.
Clutching my father’s clammy hand I yelled, "You go away! Go! You go! Leave me alone!”
His high-pitched voice was muffled behind the panes.
"Oh no, I’m sorry, no!”
Dickens. That was his name. It was him.
"She’s isn’t here anymore, I know that,” he said, alarmed. "I’m going. Don’t be mad, please. I’m wrong again. She’s isn’t here anymore.”
I glanced sideways, catching sight of him, shirtless and boney. And he was frightened, I could tell.
He was hugging himself.
"What do you want?'’
With the blue goggles pushed up on his forehead, he was nodding at me and my father while stepping from the win- dow. Then he turned and ran, flashing past the doorway, saying, "I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I thought she was here!" His footsteps pounded the slats, banged the steps, and then crunched quickly through the yard.
And without thinking I tore after him.
Jumping the bottom porch step into the yard, I shouted, "Dickens, don’t be scared! Dell is my friend! We ate a picnic too!"
He was already hurrying toward the cattle trail, glancing back every so often with a spooked expression. He moved like those athletes on TV, those Olympic walkers, the ones my father and I always laughed at -- foot in front of foot, elbows swinging out, head straight. And he couldn’t run very fast because of the flip-flop sandals clomping under his feet.
"Dickens!”
Flip-flops and green swimming trunks, skin as white as a saltine, he wasn’t scary at all.
"I’m Dell’s best friend!"
When I reached the grazing pasture, he was nowhere to be seen. He’d been right in front of me on the winding trail, but now he was gone. And so I stood where the trail ended, searching the pasture ahead, the bus, the weeds beyond.
Scotty beamed you up, I thought.
Then I caught his breathing, all congested and difficult, like his nostrils were filled with snot. He was nearby, crouching in the Johnsongrass. The goggles showed among the sorghum. And I could see his eyes, wide and alert, fixed on me.
"Come out,” I said, parting the grass. "I see you.”
Dickens shook. His knees were at his chin, and he stared down at his flip-flops with embarrassment. He smacked his lips but said nothing.
"I know who you are.”
His head tilted slightly up.
"If I run too fast," he said quietly, out of breath, "I faint like a girl."
He had a small boy’s voice and face, an old man’s body.
"I’m a girl,” I told him, "and I don’t faint like a girl.”
"Oh,” he said, "I guess you’re different.”
"I think so,” I said. "I’m Jeliza-Rose. My daddy wrote a song about me because I’m special."
The sorghum enclosed us as I squatted before him, bringing my knees under my chin. I was on safari in the jungle. And Dickens was an African scout, an albino. Deeper in the Johnsongrass lurked tigers and lions.
He closed an eye, touched the goggles on his forehead. "How come you know my name?”
"That’s ‘cause Dell told me. She’s my best friend."
"She’s my sister," he said. "You’re the vandal. You’re the What Rocks baby, she said that.”
"Tell me about it. And I thought she was the ghost, and I thought you were the Bog l\/Ian. I thought you were him until I saw you.”
"No, I’m not that man. I don’t even know what that man is.”
"He lives in the ground. He’s waiting in Jutland.”
"Oh. Was that your mom?"
"My daddy," I said. "He’s sleeping, I guess. That’s all he does."
"Oh. He’s pretty too.”
"I know. Me and Classique made him pretty.”
Dickens’ head wobbled. His eyes were half-closed as he inhaled.
Then he glanced at me, making a careless pattern in the dirt with his fingers, saying, "The old lady lived there, at What Rocks. That was when I was little. See, the door was open. She could’ve been there too, but I knew she wasn’t but maybe she was. I’m always getting in trouble that way, when I’m wrong.”
His toenails were yellow. The scar on his bald head was pink like a blister.
"What happened to your head?”
"Nothing -- except when I was little they cut inside. Well, I wasn’t that little. But when I was younger they did because I’m epileptic. Couldn’t even mow a lawn. So they cut my brain. Now I have two brains so I’m not epileptic no more, only sometimes."
"What is it?”
"Like this-”
He rolled his eyes into his skull. His body began twitching. His hands rose, trembling. Then he stopped and rubbed at the scar.
"See, only sometimes it happens since this.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I asked, "Do you have a pool?”
"No. Can’t swim. I’ll drown. Can’t splash in pools or drive a car. Can’t bowl either."
"I don’t swim. In the tub I do. But I don’t drive cars or bowl."
"Me either. I get a seizure then I sink in the pool like a penny. I get a seizure and the bowling ball smashes my feet. I drived before but that was bad and if I do it now Dell says I get arrested or worse. So I can’t drive to save my life, not even if I’m bloody or my arm’s chopped off.”
"If you drive you’ll go-"
I rolled my eyes and twitched for a moment.
"Yeah. That’s what’ll happen all right."
Then we both smiled. And in the silence that followed we fidgeted, inarticulate, and dug patterns in the dirt.
The Johnsongrass swayed overhead and around, murmuring.
"Say, I was meaning to say,” Dickens finally said, "I’ve got a submarine. It’s big enough for me. See, then I don’t have to swim anyway."
"Can I play in it?”
At first he said sure, and then he went, "I don’t know, maybe tomorrow you can. I don’t know."
"But I’d like to see it because I like submarines. And maybe you’d play in it with me.”
"I guess. Thing is, you’ve got to hold my hand, okay? Then you can come with me there.”
"Okay.”
"That way we don’t get lost from each other."
"Okay."
He extended a slender hand. So I took it. And his palm was warmer than mine. Then he led the way, trudging through the Johnsongrass, trampling stalks, where hoppers sprang from underfoot like tiny land mines. And as we wandered parallel with the grazing pasture -- the hull of the school bus looming -- I said, "Fireflies visit me in the bus at nighttime.”
Dickens squeezed my hand.
"That’s a bad place," he said, sounding fearful. "It’s wrong there.''
But I didn’t ask why.
You’re a sissy, I thought. That’s how come you talk like that. That’s how come you’re scared all the time.
A hopper clung to my shin; I let it ride on me until we left the sorghum -- then I slapped it dead.
Dickens was saying, "I’ve got a million pennies.”
We were side-by-side, stepping between railroad ties. And I kept looking back in case a train was coming.
"I’ll show you.”
He released my hand and began walking faster, leaving me behind, his flip-flops going clomp clomp clomp. His butt jiggled in the trunks. It was funny. His legs were hairy and skinny. He reminded me of a flamingo, a white flamingo.
"You’re a bird!"
"Not really," he said, bending on the tracks, pointing at a rail. "A bird doesn't have pennies, but I’ve got lots."
And he did have lots. They were on the rail, pressed into flat blobs of copper; hundreds of them -- fused, overlapping -- stretching for yards.
"You’re rich.”
"I will be. Because someday they’ll get squished together and make a big penny. The world’s biggest penny. Do you know how much that’ll be?"
"A million dollars."
"At least. And I’ll buy a boat then. Or a real submarine-”
A real submarine? He reached for my hand.
"-that’s much better than the one I got."
But he didn’t have a submarine to show me. It was a wigwam built from mesquite branches and weeds, in the embankment beside the tracks. And it was packed with junk -- a mangled bicycle, smashed cans, three shredded tires. There wasn’t room to play or sit. There wasn’t even a periscope.
"She’s Lisa," he told me, pulling the goggles to his eyes. "Vessels underwater have girl names. Boats on top do too. Well, some of them do.”
I asked about the bicycle, with its twisted frame and crushed spokes.
"Shark attack."
And the tires. And the cans.
"Monster shark."
Then he explained.
The junk was bait. He was a great shark hunter, exploring the South Pacific in his submarine. Mostly he used pennies for bait, but sometimes he found bigger lure for his prey. Then he hid in the wigwam and waited. And soon the monster shark came gliding along the tracks, jaws thrashing, mashing anything in its path -- a bicycle, beer cans, old tires, helpless pennies. Nothing escaped.
"The only way to kill that shark is to blow it up,” he said. "Rocks and spears don’t work, believe me. I’m lucky I’m alive."
His voice suddenly sounded deep, not sissy. He cocked an eyebrow. And I thought he seemed brave, and older -- like a captain. But when the cowbell clanked in the distance, he became Dickens again.
"Uh-oh,” he said. "I need to be home. You too. You can’t be in here without me. It’s my submarine."
He grabbed my hand and we ducked out of the wigwam.
The cowbell continued clanking and clanking.
And Dell was somewhere shouting: "Dickens! Home! Dickens! Home! Dickens-"
"We can play tomorrow,” he said, letting go of my hand. "Don’t get in my submarine without meI”
Then he scurried away -- foot in front of foot, elbows swinging, head straight, clomp clomp.
"Bye, friend!” I called after him, waving. "Don’t drown!”
But he didn’t turn and wave. He didn’t say anything as he went.
"Come visit me tomorrow! ”
And I knew Dell had pound cake for him. And apple juice. She probably had the picnic basket all ready. My stomach grumbled.
After that I returned to What Rocks -- ”Stinky Fart Rocks,” I said to myself -- where my father’s lunch had been stolen, carted past the open door by a robber. Cracker crumbs were scattered across the living room floor, rnorsels for the ants to claim. And the squirrel rampaged on the roof, chattering and creating a racket -- his teeth, I imagined, smeared with peanut butter.
Dickens didn’t come for me the next day.
I ate saltines on the porch steps and waited, listening to the noisy cicadas, hoping that a quarry boom would suddenly erupt and silence them for a while. Then I played Shark Attack with Classique. She was a goldfish on my fingertip, swimming in front of me while I chomped at her.
"Don’t eat me! Don’t eat me!"
"Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-!”
And when I put her in my mouth she tasted worse than cough syrup. Some strands of her hair got under my tongue, and I had to spit them out. Then I kept spitting until I couldn’t taste her anymore.
"You’re gross,” I told her. "You’re dirty."
"You love Dickens," she said.
"No, I don’t! How do you know?"
"You love him because he’s a shark hunter. You want to kiss the cut on his head and hold hands.”
"And he has a submarine too.'’
"Except it’s fake.”
"But he’s going to be rich and buy a real one. He has more pennies than you. But I won’t show you if you don’t shut up that I love him, Classique, because I don’t really.”
Dickens was a flamingo. He walked funny. But he hunted the monster shark. And he was my friend.
"He’s a sissy."
"Sometimes he’s a captain too.”
In Lisa he roamed the South Pacific. Perhaps he appeared on TV -- that’s where I always saw boats and oceans and submarines and sharks. I might’ve seen him on PBS -- his submersible exploring the remains of the Titanic -- and didn't even know it was Dickens at the helm.
"He’s sailing under the seas."
"So he’s not coming."
"But maybe he will."
"Maybe he forgot where What Rocks is-"
"And he’s searching."
"Because we’re in danger.”
What Rocks was sinking fast; it’d just hit an iceberg. Soon I'd be swallowing saltwater. So would Classique. We had to stay afloat until Dickens rescued us. He was our only hope.
"Come on,” I said. "Don’t give up. We have to swim for dry land.”
"But I can’t swim."
"Dog paddle," I said. "Dog paddle like the wind!"
We drifted from the steps -- my arms parting the waves - and let the tide carry us away. Then we were underwater, gliding past the seaweed-sorghum. I held my breath for as long as possible. But it was hard. So I transformed into an octopus, my fingers fluttering like tentacles. Classique became a seahorse. And in the grazing pasture, we swam around the upturned Titanic, where minnow-hoppers darted in and out of the busted windows.
"It sank to the bottom of the sea," I told Classique, gazing into the murky interior of the wreck.
"No one survived," she said. "It’s spooky."
"Let’s go.”
We floated over the rise to see if Dell was in her meadow. But she wasn’t. So we swam off -- eventually surfacing by the tracks, panting for air near Dickens’ wigwam. We’d almost drowned.
"The monster shark could be anywhere," I told Classique, stooping. "We better be on the lookout.”
The squashed pennies stretched along the rail like misshapen drops from a candle. And I tried peeling one up, but it wouldn’t budge. The shark had crushed it good and proper.
"It’s dangerous here. We’re safer in the submarine,"
I imagined the shark racing forward, teeth snapping as it sailed after us. ·
"Shark attack!” I yelled.
And Classique and I scrambled across the tracks, down the embankment, and into Lisa. But Dickens wasn’t waiting inside. He wasn’t at the helm, goggles in place, searching the ocean floor for What Rocks and me. And the wigwam didn’t seem any more like a submarine than it had the day before.
"Shark attack”
Lisa was falling to pieces, and Classique hated her. She thought the wigwam smelled worse than What Rocks. With all the junk and the dirt, she thought Lisa was more of a wreck than the bus; part of the shotgun roof had caved in overnight, several long mesquite branches lay crosswise on the crunched bicycle, other branches covered the shredded tires, others stood vertical -- stabbing the ground and jutting out the gap in the roof. The collapse sliced the wigwam in half, making the already confined interior more cramped.
Lisa’s been sunk, I thought. Dickens can’t swim. He isn’t even an octopus or a seahorse.
"The pirate did it,” Classique said. "She boarded the submarine and took him prisoner. The captain will walk the plank for sure. She’ll drown him because she’s a pig. She left you in the field. She’s trouble.”
And Dell came to mind -- pound cake in one hand, her lips wet with apple juice, her dark lens glinting in the afternoon sunlight. She was out there somewhere, waving a sword above her head -- "Aye! Aye!" -- or pressing the tip of the sword against Dickens’ spine as his flip-flops clomped toward the end of a plank.
"Save him! Save the captain-"
"--or he’s shark food!"
But we didn’t have to save Dickens after all. He was fine, mumbling to himself and smiling, raking the front yard of his and Dell’s home. And he wasn’t in flip-flops or a swimming suit. The goggles weren’t on his forehead. He had on a red baseball cap and a T-shirt. He wore jeans and cowboy boots. He looked like a farmer.
"He’s not a captain or a prisoner-”
"-or anything.”
Classique and I were cloistered among mesquites, spying behind a juniper bush, watching as Dickens went in circles. He kept going around and around, raking his bootprints, mumbling and smiling, mumbling and smiling. He couldn’t get it right. Soon as a patch was raked, he’d turn and step backwards into it. His bootprints were everywhere.
And Dell was there too, wearing her hood and mittens, picking tomatoes and squash in her garden, setting the vegetables into a plastic bag, tossing some aside. And she was whistling to herself. But every now and then she’d pause, telling Dickens, "No, no, see -- you’ve forgotten a spot, of course. Pay attention."
She’d point, jabbing a finger.
"Not there -- there."
And Dickens would scan the dirt, searching for what he’d missed. He’d step backwards, creating new bootprints.
"Right there. Yes, right there.”
Then he’d rake nervously at the bootprints before him, mumbling and smiling, mumbling and smiling.
"No, no, see -- now there’s more. You’re messing it all up as you go. Pay attention, right?"
It could’ve continued for hours -- Dell pointing, Dickens raking and making fresh bootprints -- except Patrick the Bagger Boy arrived in his Nissan. The horn honked twice as the pickup truck came bouncing over the bumpy driveway, sunlight reflecting off the windshield.
The honks startled Dickens; he let the rake fall. Then, biting his bottom lip, he glanced at Dell and hugged himself.
"Uh-oh,” he said.
She stood upright on the gravel walkway and told him, "Go in. Stay in your room until l call you out.”
"Okay, Dell, okay.”
Off he went, running like crazy, still hugging himself. His boots pounded the ground, leaving more prints in the dirt. He jumped onto the porch, and, once inside the house, he slammed the front door.
"They’ll stay far.”
Dell drew a ring in the air. Then she clapped her hands. Then she removed the hood and helmet, placing them on the walkway, and spit into the yard.
"They’ll mess elsewhere.”
The Nissan had already pulled in alongside the house -- the driver’s door standing wide open. And Patrick, straining, was busy lifting two heavy paper sacks from the bed. Then he cradled them, one in each arm, and walked around to the yard, where Dell was wiping her mittens across her apron.
"After-noon, M-m-m-iss Munro,” Patrick said.
"Hello, Patrick,” Dell said. "ls it afternoon? My how the day flies, you know."
She was grinning. Her voice had a friendly tone. She seemed like someone else, someone younger.
"Yes, m-m-m-am, sure does!”
Dell aimed a finger at the porch.
"You can put your load there, by the door. I can bring the sacks in myself. You remembered Land O Lakes -- sweet and unsalted, yes? And the buffalo jerky?”
He nodded. He was grinning too.
"Of course, you remembered, yes, yes.”
She watched as he set the sacks on the porch, lightly touching her hair, the yellow bun.
"l appreciate all you do for me, Patrick. You’re such a , kind young man.”
Then he was going to her on the walkway, smirking from one side of his mouth. She reached for his hand, took it, and held it against her chest.
He stammered, "I-I-I-I-”
"I know,” she said, "you already paid for everything?
He nodded.
"Right, yes, of course. Thank you, thank you."
"W-w-w-will you?" he asked.
"Yes, Patrick, I will. But not here, not in the yard, not by the tomatoes.”
What happened next I didn’t understand. Neither did Classique. It didn’t make any sense.
Dell led Patrick to the side of the house, where she had him stretch out on the ground. Then she knelt down beside him. He rested a hand on her yellow bun as she unzipped his pants. And his eyes shut, his lips parted. She found his boy-thingy and held it -- ugly thingy, swollen and purple. And she kissed it, put it in her mouth for a bit. He was moving her head with his hand -- back and forth, back and forth -- gripping her bun. It was like Dell was eating something big, her cheeks were puffed. She was hungry.
Back and forth.
Patrick was breathing hard, moaning a little bit.
She’s hurting him, I thought. She’s sucking his blood.
Then Dell suddenly quit. She stood and straddled him, lifting her dress, bunching the hem in her mittens. And she squatted, pretending she was a rider and Patrick was a horse. She moved her hips around, but didn’t say anything. She wasn’t laughing or smiling, just riding along quietly. But Patrick’s fingers were scratching at the dirt. His sneakers twisted, and his lips trembled like he wanted to yell, like he just couldn’t get the words out-”H-h-h-h-h-help!" But he never screamed, only groaned and thrust upward some. His face was flushed as he uttered, "Oh, sh-sh-shit, oh-!”
And that was it. Dell was done playing. She climbed from him, letting her hem fall around her boots. But Patrick remained on the ground, exhausted, his thingy still sticking from his pants.
She’s a vampire, Classique thought. You’re next.
And I didn’t want Dell doing that to me, draining my blood, putting her mouth between my legs, or riding me.
"It’s gross,” I whispered.
So we began sneaking away, but a juniper twig snagged my dress. When I yanked free, the bush rustled. Then we ran. We flew past the mesquites. And I worried that Dell had heard me, that she and Patrick might be chasing after me.
Eventually, I stopped behind a tree and looked. But no one was coming. Her house was in the distance. Just then Patrick’s Nissan honked twice. He was leaving. And I figured they hadn’t spotted me running away.
I took a deep breath.
That rabbit-hole is nearby, Classique was thinking. Why don’t you show me it. You’re safe from them, I think.
If I do, you’ll have to listen for her. She could trap us.
No, she won’t. She didn’t hear you. You escaped.
"Okay,” I said. "All right.”
Then I wandered to the footpath, glancing around every so often for Dell. The rabbit-hole was easy to find, a cavernous opening beneath the mesquite tree. And I showed it to Classique, my arm extended. I held her over the brink. The hole was black, much larger than I remembered. I could maybe squeeze my shoulders past the rim.
Closer, Jeliza-Rose. Let me go in.
But the rabbit is there.
Closer, please.
"This is Alice’s hole,” I said.
And just then Classique slipped. In she went. Spinning, spinning, spinning into blackness, beyond my reach. Lost. She was falling through the earth, to where the people walked with their heads downwards.
My stomach sank like Lisa. "Classique!”
And I wanted to cry. And I would’ve too -- but she sent a message: "It’s okay, dear. I’m falling very slowly. The sides of the hole are filled with cupboards and book-shelves. I wonder how many miles I’ve fallen by this time?”
I couldn’t go home. Not yet. So I stayed there until dusk, in the golden light, wondering how to rescue her. I sat under the mesquite tree with my legs crossed. I tossed pebbles into the creepy hole. Then the train whistle blew. And I knew the Bog Man would soon be stirring in his grave.
"Classique, don’t worry,” I said.
But no message came.
She’s sleeping, I told myself. She’s sleeping, flying down down down, dreaming of me and What Rocks and her bodiless friends.
And wandering home that evening, I was angry at myself for finding the rabbit-hole in the first place. And mad at Classique too. She wanted me to take her closer. It was her fault anyway -- now I was alone again.
"You’re so stupid," I said. "Sometirnes you’re the dumbest."
Classique was the first head I discovered in the thrift shop bin. I held her in my palm and showed my mother.
"She’s so beautiful,” I said.
My mother shrugged. She wasn’t looking at me. She was gazing at a shelf lined with painted china plates, all mounted on wire stands, each depicting a different image-a waterfall, John Wayne, kittens, Jesus on the cross, The Beatles.
"Can I have her, please?"
And to my surprise, my mother said yes. She dug two dollars from her purse.
"If it’s more than that,” she said, "put it back.”
She hadn’t read the cardboard sign above the bin: All Doll Parts, Mix & Match, 5 for $1.
"Thank you, thank you," I said.
Then -- carefully holding Classique in a hand -- I rummaged through the box of arms and torsos and legs and heads. I found Magic Curl next. Then Fashion Jeans. Then Cut ’N Style. But none of them were as good or as beautiful as Classique. She was the best. And she knew it.
"Dear, I picked you,” she told me later. "And you picked the others.”
If her voice had a flavor it would’ve been honey, sweet and ingratiating.
But after falling into the hole, it became harder to hear her. Her voice was fainter, a distant transmission almost impossible to make out, and sometimes she had to scream.
"CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?! CAN YOU--?!”
While I slept on my father’s mattress, she appeared; her red hair billowed as she sailed past cupboards and bookcases, her tight lips somewhere between a grimace and a smile.
"This is it, dear. I’m done for. You’ve abandoned me, I suppose.”
No, you’ll be okay. I need you.
"Too late. Too late. But at least you have the others for company.”
The others; they were on the floor when I awoke the next morning, waiting anxiously like beauty queens at the conclusion of a pageant. Three heads wondering which among them would replace Classique and receive the crown of Jeliza-Rose’s friendship.
"She’s not dead yet,” I told them. "You’re just sharks! You’re happy she’s falling through the earth!”
Then I forbade them to speak for a million years.
"You’re just heads! You don’t have hearts! You’re traitors!"
I attacked on hands and knees, tucking my index finger behind my thumb -- and then I flicked the traitors around the room.
"Take that-!”
Flick.
Magic Curl spun across the floor like a top.
"And you-!”
Flick.
Fashion Jeans shot up into the air.
"And you too-!"
But I couldn’t flick Cut ’N Style.
My finger hesitated in front of her damaged face and blackened eyeballs. If anyone had a right to hate Classique it was Cut ’N Style -- so I tipped her over, gently, and whispered in her ear, "You’re better than those other two. I’m sorry Classique was so mean to you."
Then I considered bringing her with me to the rabbit- hole, where I could put her on Grandmother’s boa and lower her inside. And because Cut ’N Style was blind, maybe she’d be good at sensing Classique there in the darkness. Maybe she could somehow rescue Classique and they’d be best friends for life.
I want to save her, Cut ’N Style was thinking. Let me come.
"No, you better stay,” I concluded, reluctantly. "You might fall in -- then I’d be trapped with Fashion Jeans and Magic Curl. They’re just as bad as ants. They’re worse than squirrels.”
And I was glad Cut ’N Style didn’t accempany me after all. She wouldn’t have been much help. The boa was pointless as well, too light and fluffy for a lifeline; I couldn’t tell if it was reaching anything in the hole or not.
"Dumb big feathers!"
I ended up slinging the boa around my neck -- while Classique screamed from the void -- and went searching for semething else, something long and sturdy.
CAN YOU HEAR ME?!
Yes. Loud and clear.
IT’S COLD! I’VE HIT BOTTOM, I’M PRETTY SURE! OR I’M ON A LEDGE PERHAPS!
Don’t worry. I’m here. I’m getting a stick.
IT’S SO VERY COLD AND I’M SO TIRED-!
"I’m corning," I said. "Don’t go to sleep. Stay awake.”
Mesquite branches were everywhere, on the greund, beside the footpath, all gangly and brittle; none was long enough though. I had to break a dead branch from a tree, had to tug on one end of it until the slender limb splintered loose in my fist. Then I dragged it on the footpath.
Branch longer than my leg, I thought. Lenger than P-P- Patrick’s creepy boy-thingy.
And I felt like whistling as the branch scratched against the dirt. I pursed my lips, blowing. But only breath and some saliva burbled from me. It was hopeless.
So I invented a happy song instead.
I sang, "Dragging the branch, dragging the branch -- better watch out for Mr. Dragon Branch -- he’ll bite your head, he’ll bite your head -- dragging the branch -- Mr. Dragon Branch - dragging the branch-”
It was such a great song that I leaned over the hole, smiling, and began singing for Classique, the words echoing in the blackness. I pretended that all the nearby mesquites were an audience of old men and old women. They were applauding; their craggy twig-fingers wore diamond rings and gold bands.
I finished with, "Thank you, everyone, everyone everywhere," and stroked the boa like it was a cat sitting on my shoulders.
And when the applause finally died in my mind, I listened for Classique’s faint message. She was supposed to say, "Fantastic! You’re wonderful! Mr. Dragon Branch is the bestest song ever!”
But she didn’t say anything.
"Classique,” I said, "are you still there?”
No message arrived.
I waited.
"Classique-?"
Nothing.
I stuck the branch into the hole. Down down down. Three feet, at least. My hand and wrist slid past the rim. And suddenly the branch stabbed the bottorn -- crunching against soil, perhaps poking clods and pebbles -- and broke apart. Then it was as if the earth caved in, the hole became deeper.
"Uh-oh,” I said, sounding like Dickens.
I couldn’t poke the bottom anymore, just space. So I opened my hand, letting what remained of the branch drop.
"He’s coming!" I warned Classique.
l\/Ir. Dragon Branch was falling toward her now. He’ll bite her head, he’ll bite her head.
Then I sat with my legs crossed and contemplated the hole. Classique hadn’t tumbled as far as I thought. If I had grown-up arms, I could reach in there and probably touch her with my fingertips. And I wouldn’t be afraid of the darkness inside -- the hole wouldn’t look so huge.
"Uh-oh," I said again.
I imagined Dickens hugging himself with those skinny arms, his hands almost meeting at his spine. He could rescue her in a heartbeat. His arms were like broom handles. He didn’t need a rake, he could comb the yard with his fingers. He wouldn’t even have to bend much.
"Classique, I’ll be back.”
I had an idea.
"Don’t go anywhere.”
Dickens didn’t need the rake. But I did. And the rake wouldn’t crumble; its claws could go into the hole -- snagging Classique and bits of the branch and clods and pebbles -- and come out again in one piece.
The Rake of Life, I thought -- wandering along the footpath, sneakers stepping over stones. Making my way to the edge of Dell’s front yard, I glanced around cautiously. Dell might be hiding nearby, lurking behind a grizzled trunk; she’d suck my blood if I wasn’t careful.
"You’ll stay far," I said.
I turned and spit.
"You’ll mess elsewhere."
Crouching at the juniper bush, I scanned the yard, the walkway, the porch. The yellow light glowed above the front door. But the Rake of Life was gone. And everything was silent. No whistling, no mumbling. The house seemed deserted -- shades pulled, dim -- like Dell and Dickens had packed their bags and went on vacation. Or they were napping. Or exploring the ocean in Lisa.
I left the bush and crossed the yard, leaving prints where Dickens had raked. And I crept alongside the house, going to the backyard -- my ears listening for anything, a whisper, a voice, floorboards creaking.
It was another world, the backyard; it wasn’t tidy like the front. Weeds and foxtails grew high. A blue Ford pickup was parked near the house, a crack zigzagging across the windshield. Further off stood a storage shed without windows -- all corrugated iron, even the walls and door -- and beside it, netted with chicken wire, were two wooden hutches.
But where was the Rake of Life? There was nothing else on my mind.
As I headed for the shed, a blast erupted somewhere in the mesquites -- in the distance -- breaking the silence, startling me for a second. A second blast. A third. Not the same booms as from the quarry. Different, less thunderous. These blasts weren’t as scary.
I followed a beaten trail -- the weeds no doubt matted by Dell’s boots -- and peered into the brambles, squinting, looking for the rake. But the overgrowth was too dense. I couldn’t see the ground.
Where’d they put you? Maybe in here, maybe-
I rattled the padlock on the shed door, but it was fastened. A strong odor lingered about the place, distinctive, turpentine or nail polish remover. My eyes burned some. And I couldn’t tell if the rake was inside. I tried peeking through a thin gap between the door and its frame. Impossible. The shed was as dark as the hole.
The search had been a complete failure, so I uttered my father’s favorite curse: "Shit fuck fire!”
I kicked the shed door.
Things and people kept disappearing. Classique. The bottom of the hole. Dell and Dickens. The rake. Even the hutches were bare, except for stained newspaper and chunks of white fur and pellet-sized turds.
"Shit fuck fire!”
There was no escaping it; I had_ to return to the hole empty-handed. And that’s what I did, with pouting lips, swinging my arms limply, punting stones from the footpath - the vision of defeat.
What’s worse, I couldn’t remember my song. I slumped in front of the hole and tried singing it.
"Dragon Branch coming -- Mr. Dragon Branch -- he’ll bite her head-”
But the words weren't correct, neither was the rhythm.
"-Mr. Dragon Branch coming -- coming coming-"
It was useless, so I quit trying and slapped my forehead. And that’s when I heard the boy say, "-hell, I don’t know, Luke. You were there first."
And another boy said, "I know, I know.”
They were half-laughing, talking loud, getting closer. Then I saw them. They strolled right by me and the mesquite tree and the hole, going leisurely on the footpath toward Dell’s house. But they didn’t notice me. They were too busy chatting and staring forward. One had black jeans, one had blue jeans. Both carried bolt-action rifles. And they seemed like wild boys, twins or brothers -- baseball caps pulled low, tanned necks, pants tucked into muddy boots -- tank tops hanging loosely, showing whiter than white skin beneath the neckline.
Black Jeans’ rifle barrel was propped on a shoulder. Two dead rabbits hung from his belt; their hind paws bound with wire. And Blue Jeans was chewing something, gum maybe, or tobacco; he held his rifle at his hip, the barrel pointing downward.
"Hey, you sure we ain’t lost, Luke?” Blue Jeans was saying.
"Positive. This’ll take us to the road. I’rn positive.”
I went to the footpath and watched them go. The backsides of their britches were green with grass stains. Black Jeans tugged at his rear as if his butt itched, as if his underwear had bunched in his crack. Then I pursued them for a while -- a glamorous spy with a boa, keeping a safe distance, eventually concealing myself among trees. They were nearing Dell’s house, chattering like squirrels, making a racket.
Better be quiet, I thought. You’ll get your blood sucked.
And no sooner had it crossed my mind when Dell appeared.
"Vandals,” she screamed. "Yes, yes, stay put!"
She sprang from the woods, scrambling onto the footpath -- her housedress flapping, the hood and helmet askew. And both boys started. And if Dell wasn’t holding a smoothbore shotgun -- aiming the lengthy barrel, swinging it back and forth, from one boy to the other -- they might’ve bolted. But they didn’t. They didn’t move an inch.
"Criminals and filth," she shrieked. "Do you know where you are, trespassers?”
"No, no, we was going to the road, to Keeler’s place," Black Jeans began suddenly. "We was takin’ a shortcut.”
"Liar!” Dell yelled. "What kin are you of Willy Keeler? None, I think!"
She thrust the barrel like it was a pitchfork, piercing the air between herself and the boys.
"He’s my uncle," Blue Jeans began, "I swear it," and his voice wavered. .
"Mine too,” Black Jeans said.
"Mine too, mine too!” Dell mocked. "I swear it, I swear it!"
"We’re visiting, honestly," Blue Jeans explained. "We didn’t know we was trespassing.”
"There wasn’t no sign or a fence or anything,” said Black Jeans.
Dell continued jabbing the shotgun at them.
"Of course, right, and this shortcut is your shortcut? This is where you go? I think not. I own this land. It’s mine. All of it. And those are mine!”
She was pushing the mouth of the sleek barrel at Black Jeans, shoving it at the rabbits hanging on his belt.
"Those there, mine! Understand? They belong to me!”
Black Jeans’ voice seemed about to crack. "We’re sorry,” he murmured. "We didn’t know.”
Dell sneered.
"Yes, I should say so,” she said. "The pair of you are sorry. I’ve seen everything, right? I’ve been watching you, filthy, filthy. Peeing on my land, blowing your noses on your shirts. Hunting here!”
And afterwards -- when everything was finished -- I spoke into the hole, hoping Classique could hear me, telling her that the boys were lucky Dell didn’t murder them.
"You cross my path again," she’d said, "you’ll regret it for certain. I’m worse than death.”
That’s what I told Classique: "They got lucky -- Dell’s meaner than death.”
I lay on my stomach beside the hole -- hands folded under my chin, the boa sandwiched in my palrns -- and related the entire episode. I mentioned that Dell had the boys unload their rifles, that she took their bullets and_their rabbits. And the boys were shaking and nervous the whole time. But Dell didn’t suck them. She just warned them with her froggy voice.
"You cross my path again-"
Then she let them go; they rushed from the footpath, bounding through the woods like deer, boots crackling on twigs, vanishing.
"And I’m probably invisible,” I said. "Dell didn’t see me, Classique, ‘cause I’m almost a ghost. I really think I am, don’t you?”
I stared into the hole, waiting for an answer that never came.
So I closed my eyes and sent psychic messages: You there? Can you hear me? Am I loud and clear?
Nothing except static, a far-off hiss.
I needed the radio. I could use the dial to find Classique, to tune her in. Then maybe I could remember my song. And she'd enjoy hearing me sing, a special broadcast just for her. She’d stay awake and listen. And she wouldn’t feel so lonely - my song would keep her warm in the hole.
Dickens came for me with a pocketful of bullets, and I thought he was the squirrel at first. I was upstairs and heard him stomping around below. And because I’d opened the front door that afternoon -- letting in fresh air, clearing out some of my father’s stink -- I was sure it was the squirrel in the living room, rummaging about, searching for crackers and peanut butter.
But when going downstairs to investigate, I found Dickens -- shirtless, in jeans and flip-flops -- standing in front of my father, gazing with the blue goggles on.
"Hi," I said, stepping up behind the leather chair.
He glanced at me, flinching. And I expected him to start hugging himself. But he didn”t.
"I’m sorry,” he began. "I better go -- I didn’t knock and that’s rude -- and it’s getting late already -- so I’ll go, okay?"
His fists tightened. He seemed like the squirrel, jittery and ready to dash for the door.
"You don’t have to go,” I told him.
"Oh," he said, nodding, "that’s good -- ’cause I was thinking you should play with me today, okay?”
"Okay,” I said.
And just then I wanted to ask if he’d rescue Classique. I was about to say that his skinny arms could stretch deep inside any hole in the world. But before I had the chance, he said, "Your daddy sleeps a lot. My momma does too. That’s all she ever does these days."
I tried imagining Dickens' mom, but Dell filled my mind instead; she was sleeping somewhere in that dim house, or sitting still in a chair, the hood and helmet resting on her lap.
Where was his mother?
"Is she a ghost?"
He shook his head.
"Not anymore, not really -- she’s just a dozer. She’s isn’t as pretty as your daddy. Her hair isn’t nice like his is.”
"It’s only fake,” I said. "Look-”
I reached over the chair and tugged on the bonnet and blond wig, lifting them a bit.
"That’s funny,” he said, flatly. "You fooled me ‘cause I didn’t know.”
"Not supposed to be funny," I replied, straightening the wig, smoothing the coils. "It was Classique’s idea anyway, it wasn’t my idea. And now she’s in the hole and I can’t get her.”
Dickens pinched his nostrils, fanned the air with a hand.
"He’s spoiled,” he said, his voice sounding nasally. "He must’ve been sleeping forever."
"He’s cuttin’ muffins is all."
"Oh. I guess that’s what it is, I guess. Whatever it is-"
Then he dug in a pocket, removing six bullets. He held them in his palm for me to see.
"I can feed the shark these," he said. "If you want, you can help me too. We can’t catch the shark with these but we can lure it. "
He let me hold one; -- gold-colored, rounded at the tip, longer than my fingers. I rubbed the bottom of the shell, remembering how Dell made the hunters unload their rifles. I figured she’d given the bullets to Dickens -- or maybe he stole them when she wasn’t looking.
"All right,” I said, "I'll help you, but you have to help me later. You have to rescue my friend.”
"I don’t know,” he said. "I probably can’t do it."
"It won’t be hard, I promise. She’s in trouble. She’ll get l hurt bad if you can’t save her.”
"Maybe she’s hurt already."
"Or she’s dying. She’s farther than the ocean, I think.”
"Uh-oh,” he said. "That’s farther than the moon."
"And you’re better than a stick or a rake -- you’re the captain!”
"Yeah, I am. I’ve got my own submarine."
"I know."
"Her name is Lisa."
"I know. Will you help me?"
"Can we feed the shark? I’d like to do that. I’d like to play with you too."
"Then you’ll rescue my friend."
Dickens shrugged.
"If you’ll show me what to do," he said, "in case I don’t understand everything about it. "
"Yes."
He popped his knuckles and sucked his lip and tilted his head and sighed.
"Okay,” he finally said, moving toward me. "Okay,” putting his slender hand in my hand.
And off we went -- through the front door, along the porch -- escaping the flatulence of What Rocks. Across the yard. Into the sorghum. Swishing among the grass. Climbing to the tracks. Moving into the tideland, going underwater. Dickens couldn’t have known this -- I was an octopus, he was swimming like a dolphin. If I told him, he might’ve panicked. Then he’d drown for certain and Classique would never be saved. So I didn’t mention that we were beneath the sea, or that there were men miles above us fishing.
Dickens said, "You get three."
Three bullets, clanking in my palm.
We crouched on the tracks, downwind from Lisa and the flattened pennies.
"Put them here this way-”
He carefully set each of his bullets on the rail, crosswise, spacing them apart by a foot or so. Then he watched as I did the same on the opposite rail.
"What’ll happen?” I asked.
Dickens puffed his cheeks. He made an erupting noise and clapped his hands together.
"The end of the world,” he said.
"The monster shark will die?"
"No. The shark never dies. It eats bullets like candy, I think."
I thought of bullets shooting in the shark’s mouth, exploding, a snack.
"If we had a gun we could kill it,” I said.
"No way,” he said. "l can’t use guns. I can’t or I’ll get walloped.”
Walloped?
"What’s that?"
"Like this-”
Dickens slapped his chin, twice, striking himself so hard the second time that he nearly lost his balance. Then his skin turned bright pink, burning with the imprint of his fingers, and he rubbed his chin, frowning.
"I got walloped plenty, ” I told him. "At least a thousand.”
"Me too,” he said. "It’s big business, my sister says. She only does it when I'm wrong -- which is a lot, I guess."
Dell hit Dickens. She was a walloper, like my mother.
"You miserable creep," I heard her telling him. "What good are you? Explain that to me. I never liked you, I never did, you know.”
And there was Dickens -- hugging himself, cowering in a corner of their house -- talking in his spooked voice, "I’m sorry, I’m sorry, don’t-"
He took my hand.
"We better go. Monster shark catches us here and we’re doomed. We better hide.”
Off we went again; Dickens leading the way, me wondering if he massaged Dell’s legs at night. All I could think of was flesh being grabbed and pressed-and an arm raised, ready to swing, poised for the slightest of transgressions.
"Bad dog!"
That’s what my mother often said, what she’d call me; sometimes she was joking, mostly she was serious.
"Bad dog! Bad dog!”
What had I done now? Massaged too hard? Massaged too soft? Massaged in one place too long?
Resting in bed, she’d shove her fat legs in my direction. I knew when she was about to start kicking; she always snorted, then exhaled an angry breath. And I could easily dodge her feet. I was fast. Her legs operated in slow motion. But her hands were another story.
"You’re a bad dog,” I admonished Dickens, who’d just returned from using the bathroom in the Johnsongrass. "You watered all the fish and seaweeds."
"No,” he said, shaking his head, "you’re the bad dog!”
We were sitting inside Lisa.
Or Lisa II, as Dickens now referred to the repaired wigwam; he’d patched the fallen roof, removed the tires and bicycle. On her maiden voyage, we explored the ocean floor together, hoping for an encounter with the shark -- but, as evening approached, we grew tired of the search and surfaced.
‘'What can we play?”
"I’ll think."
Late afternoon light streamed through the cracks in the submarine, shining on us, illuminating the scant hairs sprouting from Dickens’ nipples. He patted his narrow rib cage, his chest, smooth and fallow, almost appeared translucent.
"Let’s go to the bus,” I said. "It’s the best place for watching light bugs. They visit me there.”
"Can’t do that.”
"How come? We can play.”
"Can't go there.”
Dickens paused. He looked at his belly button.
"Take the bus for shark bait and drive it on the tracks and it tips over and burns up -- then you get in trouble. Then you can’t ever go there again, ever.”
He glanced at me, gravely. His toes fidgeted in the flip- flops.
"And I’m not supposed to drive anyway, you know. Or steal buses, or steal anything anymore. That’s what gets me in all the trouble -- even if it was a million years ago. Lucky they didn’t send me away forever, all right? Lucky I didn’t burn and die too. And Sheriff Waller said you have to have a license -- and even then you can’t take a bus -- ’cause it isn’t the same as Daddy’s tractor either. You can’t drive a bus on the tracks or it tips and burns, you should know that. That’ll get you sent away, Dickens, so I can’t go there with you."
"Oh,” I said, confused.
Captain, you’re acting silly, I thought. You’re crazy.
He mumbled, "Sometimes you just worry about it too much -- just pretend it never happened, okay?”
"Okay," I replied, uncertain if he was talking to me or himself.
Then he was standing, saying, "I better go home now and eat, I think. We shouldn’t play no more today."
It didn’t matter. I was bored with playing. My stomach ached for crackers and bread.
"But you have to save my friend, you said you’d do that.”
"I don’t know how,” he said. "I make mistakes if I try some things.”
"‘I’ll show you," I told him. "You promised.”
And then it was me taking his hand; I wasn’t planning on releasing my grip -- not until he squatted at the hole, not until he used his hand to rescue Classique.
"But-"
"No, you have to," I said, tugging at his arm.
Soon I walked alongside the embankment with Dickens in tow. Already my head swam, my stomach burbled, a mixture of anticipation and hunger. We passed by Dell’s meadow of bluebonnets and rocks. Then we wandered across the clearing of threshed grain -- clomping on white stalks that had turned golden in the evening rays -- and headed for the shaded footpath, where rnesquite branches crisscrossed overhead. Behind me Dickens’ feet flip-flopped.
And when we arrived at the hole, I loosened my hold on his hand and explained that Classique had fallen from my finger: "But she’s pretty close. Butmy arms aren’t like yours and I can’t get her, but you can. She’s really close. It isn’t very far, it just looks far in there.”
Dickens knelt. He stared at the hole, pondering the darkness within.
"What is your friend?” he asked.
"A head. A Barbie head."
"Does she bite?”
"No. Her mouth is like this-”
I pressed my lips together for a moment.
"She doesn’t have teeth.”
"All right,” he said, nodding.
Then his arm sank inside the hole, slowly, all the way to his shoulder. He brought out both parts of the broken branch and tossed them aside -- he slid his arm in again. Then out.
A handful of dirt and pebbles.
In again.
And his face strained as he felt around. My heart began racing.
"Don’t know," he said. ‘just can’t find nothing.”
I was on my knees, beside him, watching.
"Wait. I got her. It has to be her. It has to be-”
Out.
An oblong stone, bigger than Classique, sat in Dickens’ palm.
"She’s weird,” he said. "Not a head at all, not like you said."
I was suddenly tired and dizzy. I lifted the stone and let it drop to the ground.
"No,” I said. "No, no-"
"That’s all that’s down there,'’ he told me. "Nothing else, okay? Nothing but dirt and more dirt.”
"She’s dead," I said.
In the distance, the train whistle blew. Dickens glanced in the direction of the tracks.
"Uh-oh, the monster shark -- it’s coming."
Then he made the erupting noise with his mouth.
But everything was spinning, so I shut my eyes. My body became heavy. And I slumped forward. And I don’t recall much after that -- except sensing my fall. I was entering the hole, tumbling straight into blackness, disappearing. The earth had swallowed me up.
What Rocks had drowned.
I stirred on my father’s bed -- reversed in position, my head resting at the foot of the mattress -- disoriented, lightheaded, and parched; everything around me was tinted in ultramarine, blurry. The ceiling. The lamp glowing at the center of the night table. My dress, my legs, my sneakers. The backpack and small pile of dirty clothes and the Peach Schnapps bottle, all clumped at my feet. Blue and slightly out of focus.
At the bottom of the sea, I thought.
My fingertips touched my face, feeling for wetness. And I opened my mouth wide, expecting a gush of water, but found myself swallowing air instead. Then I realized the goggles were covering my eyes, the frayed elastic band pressed against my ears.
"And then you fly," Dickens said.
Turning my head sideways, I saw him. He sat on the throw rug, playing with Magic Curl and Fashion Jeans and Cut ’N Style. The heads lounged in his level palm, a flying carpet sailing back and forth above his lap -- and he was underwater, breathing as effortlessly as a goldfish.
'‘We sunk,” I rasped.
Dickens glanced at me, his palm stopping in midair.
"No," he said softly, "Dell says you nap until she’s done with him. Or she says you stay here and eat something if you wake, all right? You’re lucky she’s strong and held you -- lucky she rescued you or I’d have fainted too.”
Dell rescued me.
"Did she suck my blood?"
"She doesn”t do that. That’s wrong.”
"Oh."
My belly groaned.
"I’m hungry," I told him.
"'I`hat’s what she said,” he muttered, returning his attention to the heads. "She already said that."
His palm landed; he lifted each head, one at a time, setting them upright on the rug.
"A safe crater trip -- everyone had a safe trip visiting the moon."
Then he climbed from the floor and crossed to the night table. And I propped myself up -- pushing the goggles off my eyes, onto my forehead -- so I could see what he was doing.
"I’m pretty thirsty.”
I squinted; without the goggles, the room seemed unbearably bright.
"Buff-low jerky," he was saying. "Yum. Sometimes I get jerky too -- if I’m smart and don’t be stupid.”
"Dickens, did I fall far?”
"On the ground is all. Plop."
'"Oh, I didn’t go in the hole.”
"No, don’t think so. I think I’d remember that, I think.”
He came toward me carrying a paper plate and a Dixie cup.
"There’s more later,” he said, handing me the cup, putting the plate down on the mattress.
"Thank you," I said, bringing the cup to my lips, "thank you-”
Warm apple juice -- pouring over my tongue, sweet in my throat -- I drank it in two big gulps. And the jerky, four round pieces, brown shriveled chunks, tough as a toenail; I ripped the dried meat between my teeth, milling with my jaw, chewing like a fiend.
"See, if you chomp fast you’ll choke.”
Dickens made a gagging noise.
"That happens sometimes and you can’t breathe.”
He stood nearby, watching while I ate, following the jerky as it went from the plate to my teeth.
"Tastes good, I bet,” he said. "Smells awfully good.”
I would’ve offered him some, but there wasn’t enough. Besides, I was starving; my stomach had become a deflated balloon.
"It’s buff-low,” he was telling me. "They kill them and they create circles so you can keep them in your pocket-”
"Dickens!”
Dell hollered from downstairs.
"Dickens!” she shouted.
Her voice recalled my father’s baritone grumble, and my lips parted with amazement, my jaw froze. I stared at Dickens, who, upon hearing her, studied the floor as if it were made of glass.
"She needs me."
His gape met mine. He frowned.
"I’d like my glasses again, please -- ’cause I was only trading when I played with your toys, okay? But I’m not playing anymore, so I don’t have to be fair now."
"I don’t care,” I said, talking with a mouthful of jerky.
I removed the goggles and dangled the elastic band from my fingers.
"Okay," he said, taking the goggles, "you stay here, all right? She says you should. She’s in a mood, I think."
I shrugged.
"Dickens! Dickens!"
"Uh-oh.” _
He jumped, swung about-face, and flip-flopped away. I listened as he thudded down the stairs.
"I’m sorry,” he mumbled, "I’m sorry-"
Then silence. I couldn’t hear anything else.
And suddenly What Rocks existed somewhere on the moon, enveloped by a crater, lost. The darkness outside confirmed this notion. So I finished eating, pondering the fate of the farmhouse-spaceship. Dell and Dickens and my father were in the living room and plotting our survival. And I was lucky to be alive, lucky that Dell could help me, thankful for buff-low jerky and apple juice.
But Classique-
"Poor Classique."
Perhaps she’d fallen so far and so fast that her head incandesced like a meteor. With a brave face, I explained her sad fate to the other heads. But only Cut ’N Style was upset -- she cried gallons of tears, until a pool formed beneath her, soaking the throw rug and seeping into the hem of my dress.
"She just disappeared," I told Cut ’N Style, "so don’t cry. She didn’t feel any pain, I’m sure.”
But my words weren’t helpful; Cut ’N Style was inconsolable. I held her to a cheek, trembling, while Magic Curl and Fashion Jeans gloated.
"You’ll get walloped,” I warned them. "If Classique was here, she’d destroy you both.”
And I wished Classique had been there that night, accompanying me as I tiptoed from the bedroom. I wish she’d floated downstairs, going where my father’s stink lingered with the persistent aroma of disinfectant. She might’ve understood what I spied when gazing into the living room -- all the furniture moved against the wall, the entire floor blanketed by an orange plastic tarp; my father stretched naked there, on his back, with discolored patches, black and purple, showing everywhere -- abdomen, chest, thighs -- and blisters spread across his legs and feet, like welts, making a spiral pattern on his bloated tummy. His jeans and boots and boxers and socks and shirt -- his sunglasses and the wig and the bonnet -- were heaped in the leather chair. His ponytail was loosened, his mane of hair flowed out on the tarp, as if the wind had just swept over him. And the lipstick and rouge -- gone; his cheeks now swabbed clean and completely white. In fact -- aside from the blisters and discolored patches -- he was pale, drained; a gash smiled under his chin, crossing his neck -- a fresh slit, pink and thin and tender, grinning while he slept; his features relaxed, his eyelids shut.
But what was in the buckets?
Eight large containers, placed around the body. The one nearest his head, full and murky; my father’s rotten blood, thick as molasses and sanguine, almost reaching the rim - some on the tarp, drops spattered here and there.
And why the bail of wire? The tacks? The brushes? The saw and claw-hammer? The scissors? The scalpel? The paring knife? And all that cotton batting? And the assorted needles? The ball of twine? The box of borx and the paper towels and the cans of Lysol and the rubber gloves -- and the dozen or so odd-shaped canisters and bottles?
Was anything forgotten?
"Wrong, child, who welcomed you down here?"
"Not me, Dell, l didn’t-”
The living room wasn’t the living room; it’d become an operating theater. And Dell was surgeon. And Dickens the nurse.
And my father-
"So much damage already. But I’ll save what’s left, right? He’ll never be the same, poor man.”
There I stood beside the wood-burning stove, uncomprehending, a rag doll unable to speak.
"Yes, Rose, wigs and blush won’t cut it, child. You’re a baby, yes, yes. And now you’ve stumbled upon my calling, of course. So stay put and watch if you must -- but know this -- be quiet or else. I can only do so much, right? Audiences and peeping toms make me a nervous nelly. This isn’t fun, sad man -- sad sad man." .
Her calling required dishwashing gloves and the scalpel, but not the hood and helmet. She’d gathered her hair into a bun, had donned fishing waders that were mostly concealed underneath her housedress. And how familiar she was with my father, straddling him, shaking her head, saying, "To meet once more -- and like this -- what an unfortunate shame. I won’t let you go this time, I won’t.”
She knew him. She knew his name.
"Sad Noah -- into my arms again. The Rose child is yours, I suppose. You never told me, no, no.” She continued speaking to my father all the while, touching him here and there as she worked, muttering, "There’s never been another, Noah. No, no, no, never another, you’ve known that. I’ve waited for you these years, so now you’re staying put. I'm keeping you -- you won’t be leaving me anymore. I'm protecting you, right? And the Rose child, she’s family now, see? She’ll be fine, darling one. But she’ll stay here with you, because this is where you belong. And I’m so close, right? I’rn just across the tracks. And this way, of course, you won’t be going anywhere. Not somewhere else, or in the ground. Strangers won’t take you away. You’ll stay put for a long while. No more running away.” Then she kissed him on the lips. She kissed my father, saying, "I love you so much, dear sweet man -- so much-”
And how intimate she was while making an incision along the middle of his belly, cutting up to the center of his breast bone. How handy she was with that razor-sharp scalpel -- slicing each of his palms, continuing a little ways along the back of the wrists -- then piercing his soles; the scalpel traveling onward, steadily, over the ankles.
"Sinister apples,” she uttered when an incision was completed. "Sinister sinister apples.”
But those weren’t the words Dickens repeated; mumbling as he went outside, gripping the bucket of my father’s blood: "I’m tired tired tired-"
And so was I, perhaps. Or possibly shock -- not sleep -- overtook me during that long night, bowing my head, bringin my body to the floor, drawing my knees in toward my ribs. And if Classique had been there, she could’ve told me what transpired while I lay unconscious.
Or perhaps I was awake and observed it all -- how the tools were used, how the skin was peeled, how the intestines were held. The gristle and tissue cleaned from the nose. The brain spoon made by hammering and shaping a wire tip. The eyeballs snipped from the sockets. The removal of tendons. My father’s meat scraped and sheared, dumped into buckets. The fat trimmed from the underside of his skin. The bones sprinkled with powdered borax -- and the heavy wire fashioned into strips, bunched into balls. Each bucket now filled and hurried outside. Dickens in the yard-surrounded by buckets, digging the earth with a spade -- as sunlight began filtering through the Johnsongrass.
Imagination or memory?
"Sinister apples.”
Dell the butcher, rolling my father this way and that on the tarp, sewing him together. Then the smell of varnish, like nail polish, obliterating his stink.
And did I dream? W.as it the mystery train rattling at dawn, shaking me where I slept?
"Rise, Rose-”
Dell was nudging me with a wader.
"Rise and behold Noah."
Rise and behold my father, arms at his side, legs straight; glistening, coated with varnish, mended and stitched -- except for a rabbit-hole where his navel once budded, strands of wire lurking within. A hole bigger than my fist, cavernous, waiting to be searned.
"Is he better?" I asked.
"Of course,” Dell replied, "of course.”
But he didn’t look anything like my father. She’d given him a haircut, cropping his hair close to his scalp. His eyelids were sewn shut, bits of twine appearing as overgrown eyelashes. And his skin was lumpy in places, deformed. Still, he didn’t seem miserable. The varnish gave him life. He glowed.
"You’ll offer him a gift, yes?”
Dell pointed at the hole.
"Something that’s dear to you, Rose. Something he can keep by his heart.”
"Like what?” ·
"No, no, you decide. You pick the treasure for the chest.”
But what could I offer?
"Wait, I know."
Two heads, the traitors -- Magic Curl and Fashion Jeans, both screaming and weeping as I lowered them into the hole.
"Not me! Not me!”
"Please, please, please-”
"Goodbye,” I said, letting them drop. "Have a safe trip."
And they wouldn’t stop blubbering, even after Dell had sewed up the hole and applied the final coat of varnish. I could hear them, echoing inside my father.
"Help us! Help us!”
"There’s no light and we can’t breathe!”
Then a funny thing happened, I started crying. Tears surged, splashing from my lashes, streaming along my cheeks. Sobs caught in my throat.
"It’s the fumes, of course,” Dell said.
She reached out, resting a gloved hand on my shoulder. And when I moved to embrace her, she stepped back, withdrawing her arm.
"It’s unhealthy for your lungs, these fumes. Go to the porch and draw in. Go, I say -- draw in."
So I trudged outside -- brushing dry the tears, stifling the sobs -- and breathed on the porch. Only a hint of Lysol and varnish persisted, sneaking through the open door and raised windows. Otherwise, the morning air smelled fresh and cool, like spring water. And at last the sun was ending the dark hours; a reddish hue burned beyond the sorghum, bleeding under the starry sky.
In the yard, Dickens scooped dirt with the spade, wearily replenishing the pit he’d created. The buckets littered the ground, empty and upturned among the weeds. During the night he’d acted as Dell’s helper, fetching what tools she asked for, taking what was already used -- or wasn't needed -- and placing them into one of the four duffel bags on the porch. But now he was spent, pausing between scoops, adjusting his goggles and wiping his brow.
"When he’s done, we’ll be going.”
Dell brought me jerky, three pieces.
"Tonight I'll return,” she said. "But l’m tired as sin and my work is accomplished."
I began devouring the jerky while she slipped off the gloves, gnawing and smacking as she tossed the gloves on top of a duffel bag. Then she lifted her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. And I caught a glimpse of her pirate-eye, the milk-white pupil and iris. A dead peeper-that’s what my father called a baked trout’s eyeball; that’s why I didn’t eat his trout. I hated those eyes.
Dell lowered the glasses and found me with her good peeper. She jiggled a thumb at the duffel bags.
"They’ll remain for the time being. Don’t mess with the contents, please.”
I nodded, chewing.
"Tonight we’ll put your house in order. An untidy home means an untidy person. This is where you belong, this is your place. So you get rest. And leave Noah be -- he must dry, understand?"
I imagined my father withered like a chunk of jerky, his skin tightening and growing brown.
"He’s a bog man,” I said.
"Nonsense, such dribble," Dell replied, and her ferociousness simmered below the surface; her good eye glared and her lips tapered. "Rose, that man is no bogeyman! What a terrible thing to say, horrible!”
She turned -- her housedress swishing against my knees - and marched away, shielding her face, protecting herself from a bee attack. I watched as she pounded down the front steps in her waders. And just then I heard the squirrel overhead, scampering on the steel awning. Dell heard him too. She twisted around in the yard, peering between fingers, glowering at the roof. Her hands parted briefly and she spit.
"Nasty-!" she cursed the squirrel.
And the squirrel chattered and ran. He tore over the awning, no doubt heading for his knothole.
Then Dell ambled toward Dickens, who had finished scooping dirt and was stomping on the pit with his flip-flops. And I tried not to think about what had slid from the buckets, what was now buried there in the yard. I wanted to eat and not think about anything.
But my brain wouldrft quit.
World full of holes, I thought. Holes everywhere, full of people and things. Squirrels and doll heads and bog men. Things go inside holes and sometimes never come out again for a thousand years. Some houses are like holes too, like tombs.
I ripped at the jerky, picturing this mummy that was once on TV. He was in Egypt. He was a king. Several of the men who discovered him died mysteriously. One choked on his vomit, another was smashed by a slab of marble. The TV voice said murnrnies had strange powers.
Dell and Dickens wandered toward the cattle trail, disappearing among the high grass. And I swallowed, wondering if my father had any powers, if it would take all day for him to dry.
Like an airship descending -- the picnic basket landed beside the wood-burning stove, the silverware clanked, and Dell said, pulling back the top, removing a foil-covered plate from within, as if she were proffering a cargo of rare jewels, "For the Rose child of dear Noah-"
Beer-Braised Rabbit, she explained, with carrots and onions and potatoes. A thermos of apple juice. Pound cake for desert, one slice.
"A very special treat.”
She’d returned after nightfall, hoodless and without Dickens, in unusually cheerful spirits, bringing the basket and the plaid quilt.
"We’ve chores ahead," she told me, "so eat. Stuff yourself."
It was an indoor picnic, and I was the guest of honor- swigging from the thermos, alternating bites of rabbit with bites of cake -- watching as Dell wrapped my father in the tarp, bundling him like a mummy. Then she rolled him up in the quilt until only his head was exposed, and used safety pins to join the fabric and bind the untucked corners.
"Looks like a burrito,” I said.
"Ridiculous. Don’t speak with food in your mouth, you’ll choke.”
When I was done eating, we straightened the furniture in the living room, and folded my father’s clothes, stacking them neatly on the leather chair. Then Dell asked about the map dropping from the wall.
"It’s JutIand,” I said, "Or Denmark, I’m not sure.”
"And why does it exist here?”
I shrugged.
"We’re supposed to be in Jutland instead of Texas. It’s his favorite place to live. But I guess we got lost or something, I guess."
"Rose, I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
She yanked the map from the wall, squinted her good eye, and studied Denmark closely.
"What a strange secret,” she finally said, looking at my father, addressing him. "I knew you so well and you never told me. No, this isn’t right, no."
A frown crossed her face as she crimped the map into a compact square, creasing the edges. Then Denmark vanished in a pocket of her housedress. She patted the pocket twice, glancing at me.
"Enough of that nonsense,” she said. "Your house must be ordered. There’s too much filth, of course. We must clean clean clean.”
And that’s what we did.
In a duffel bag on the porch, there was a feather duster and a no-wax cleaning spray and plastic trash sacks and a sponge. Grandmother had a broom and dustpan in the kitchen. So my job was sweeping. Dell dusted. We started downstairs, in the living room, and worked our way upstairs, sweeping and dusting, collecting grime, making gray and fuzzy piles as we went. She whistled, blowing her pretty song, dancing the feather duster across windowsills, across the dining room table and the oak sideboard. I listened to her song, humming it to myself, while gathering dead june bugs and dirt balls, while dustpanning cracker crumbs and army ant bodies. And soon the air became rich with particles. My nostrils tingled, and both Dell and I sneezed from time to time.
"Mold gets in your head, makes you sick.”
We were in the kitchen. Dell dropped the remaining slices of Wonder Bread into a trash sack.
"Crackers are stale, no good, probably sampled by mice."
Into the trash sack.
"But you won’t want for food,” she said. "Dickens will bring your supper.”
Then she wiped down the counter and sink. She cleaned peanut butter off the peanut butter jar, dumped water from the gallon water jugs.
"Bad water is poison."
"What can I drink then?”
She set the jugs on the floor.
"I’ll fill them at home and have Dickens bring them ‘round tomorrow. See, Rose, we’ll care for you, right? We share Noah now. He's ours and you’re his. You brought him back to me, I think. You understand, correct? You’re part of the family now -- and this is where you belong, right? So we can’t have strangers, of course. If they come, they’ll take your father from both of us. It’s very simple -- strangers always create messes, and messes mean problems. But I fix things, child. I stop Death from proceeding, and I keep troublesome strangers away -- that’s my calling. How do I say this so you’ll understand everything? When it comes to the things we treasure, child, nothing has to die or go into the ground. When you love something, everything can almost stay the same, correct? Then I don’t have to be alone, neither do you. Am I making sense? So this is what I do -- I keep strangers and Death away so nothing has to change -- not Mother, not dear Noah, not this house, or my house, or even you or me or Dickens. I tidy problems as I hold up a hand to Death and shoo him off like a filthy fly -- that’s what a caretaker for silent souls does. Am I making myself clear?"
"I think so," I said. "You don’t want him to be in Denmark.”
"Nonsense," she replied. "I don’t know what you’re talking about. What does Denmark have to do with anything. Don’t be silly, silly child. You haven’t been listening to a word I’ve said. Pay attention next time.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I just stood there gripping the broom handle, looking at Dell’s black lens.
"Don’t gawk,” she said. "We’re burning moonlight. There’s more to do, there’s always more to do.”
Upstairs -- sweeping and dusting, swabbing the toilet and the bathtub, clearing spiderwebs from the ceiling. In my father’s bedroom, folding his dirty clothes and zipping them inside his backpack, dumping the Peach Schnapps’ bottle and plastic baggy in a trash sack.
"What’s happening?" Cut ’N Style wondered as I lifted her from the throw rug, placing her on the night table.
"We’re getting clean clean clean," I told her.
In my bedroom -- humming Dell’s song -- taking the doll arms and the legs and the torso from the mattress, putting them in my suitcase.
And my mother’s satin nightgown-
"Good lord, child, what’s this?”
Dell held the gown up by its arms.
"It’s my pajamas,” I said.
"No, no,” she said, "it’s too large for you. I think so. I think you’ll have to wait until you’re a woman -- and a big one at that.”
Then, grinning as if she’d just found a great bargain, Dell took the gown downstairs -- where I spied it later in the picnic basket, packed beside the thermos and silverware and crumpled foil and greasy plate.
"Hard workers deserve gifts,” she said.
So she got the gown, I got another piece of pound cake - and at dawn, once our work was completed, once all the trash and cleaning material had been crammed into the duffel bags, we moved my father upstairs. Or Dell did. She dragged him across the floor, bumped him up the stairs, and then carried him to my bedroom -- not his -- resting him on my mattress.
"The sleep of the just," she said. And she kissed his varnished forehead. And I did too.
We sat on the edge of the mattress -- Dell by my father’s head, me by his wrapped feet -- saying nothing for a while. She sighed deeply, whistled for a moment, and then asked if I knew my grandmother.
"No. She died when I wasn’t even born yet."
"I see," she said. "Well, you missed a saint. She tended my sorry body after that bee nearly killed me dead. I owe her my life."
"Oh," I said.
That’s why you’re scared of bees, I thought. That’s why you have the hood.
"How come you don’t wear the hood anymore?"
And she explained that bees swarmed by day, slept at night.
"Busy beasts,” she said. "Buzzy beee-stssss!” she hissed.
She removed her glasses, showing me her pirate-eye. I leaned forward, spotting my reflection on the milky pupil.
"Stung in my own garden,” she said. "Blinded by a filthy bee. Revenge, I say, for destroying Father’s hives. Poured gas on them all, set them ablaze at midnight?
"Why’d you do that?"
"Ah, well, Father loved his bees, you know. And his bees loved him, I’m sure. Jealous creatures though. Hated Mother. Attacked her in the kitchen. Swarmed through the window. Made her a pin cushion, poor dear. Little stingers dotting her head. Did you know a bee tried crawling up her nose? Pure evil. So Mother’s heart stopped and she never finished the dishes. I found her there in the kitchen. Pumped her chest and got her going again. But she wasn’t the same, no, no. Couldn’t leave her bed. And Father went away -- guilt and misery, I tell myself -- forever disowning me and Dickens and Mother -- and his hives. So I set them ablaze, Rose, in the middle of the night. And now there isn’t a bee alive who wouldn’t want me murdered. And this-"
She shut her good eye, leaving the bad one open.
"-this is revenge.”
"A dead peeper," I said.
She nodded.
"Dreadful, isn’t it? But I see more than most -- even with eyes closed. Do you know this? Birds and rabbits -- they’re in my dreams -- and children hiding behind bushes, everything you can imagine. Of course, children behind bushes sometimes see more than they should. It’s best minding one’s own business, right? Otherwise, Rose, bad bad things might happen under the sun."
She'd seen me and Classique. She knew we saw her sucking Patrick’s blood. My face turned bright red. I put my head down. For a second, I considered running, but I didn’t know where to go.
"Horrible,” Dell was saying, sniffing. "Awful. You reek of the devil, Rose. Come with me."
I followed her to the porch, where she dug a can of Lysol from a duffel bag and had me stand on the steps.
"Seal your mouth and eyes,” she said. "Extend your arms and hold your breath.”
She sprayed my dress and legs, my arms and hair, my sneakers and back. The Lysol felt sticky on my skin. And when I opened my mouth and inhaled, the disinfectant made me gag and cough.
"Do your panties," she instructed, handing me the can.
And as I raised my dress with one hand, spraying my panties with the other, Dell went to the duffel bags. She wound the drawstrings around her fingers, two bags in her left hand, two bags in her right hand. Then she squatted, preparing to lift -- but the squirrel caught her attention. He chattered on the roof, creating a racket.
"Monster!” she shouted. "Nasty thing!”
She upheaved, rising with the bags. The veins in her neck bulged as she trudged toward me.
"I’m going home,” she said, straining, "while the bees are still napping. Dickens will fetch the basket tonight. He’ll bring you water and food. Tomorrow I’ll come for that nasty creature, that diseased brute.”
She staggered past me, grunting as she ambled through the yard.
"Bye,” I said, waving the Lysol can. "I’ll guard your spray. And I really like your cake too."
And the next day, I watched from an upstairs window as Dell readied her ambush. It was like something in a cartoon -- twine tied to a stick in the yard, a stick set vertical -- propped between the ground and an upturned crate -- and the twine ceiling away, stretching into the Johnsongrass, where she now waited to spring her trap. And there on a plate, beneath the half-cocked crate, a carrot or an onion or a chunk of wood? I couldn’t tell. Then scampering over the roof, along the awning, down into the yard--how long did it take? Longer than a cartoon, I suppose, shorter than Romper Room. The squirrel was careful, not too fast, approaching the crate in furtive darts and sudden stops, sniffing as he crept toward the plate.
"Watch out," I said.
The twine tightened. The stick collapsed. And like a shark engulfing a minnow, the crate swallowed the squirrel in one chomp. But the squirrel fought; he struggled about, almost tipping the crate, resisting so violently that Dell had to run from the Johnsongrass and sit on her trap. She clutched an empty duffel bag, which, eventually, she worked underneath the crate, consuming the trap and the squirrel and the plate. Then she pulled the drawstrings and hoisted her load-the squirrel clawing inside the bag-and hiked to the cattle trail, whistling.
Beer-Braised Squirrel, I thought. That’s what she’ll cook me. That’s what I’ll get.
"Poor squirrel,” I told my father. "He’s doomed. He never had a chance."
The hospital was inside my father’s belly, a shadowy and grim place smelling of varnish.
"A full recovery is expected," someone said. And dressed in green johnnies, my mother and Classique lay beside one another on gurneys. Three surgeon Barbies, breathing hard behind white masks, crowded around them with scalpels.
"Fabulous,” said Classique-except she wasn’t quite Classique. She had a human body, long legs, a blond beehive. "Fantastic, darling, wonderful!"
"Yes, sweety,” my mother concurred, "wonderful!”
My mother looked like Dell. She wore a cowboy hat and smoked a cigar.
And I was there too, somewhere.
Just then a Barbie nurse appeared. Magic Curl? Or Fashion Jeans? I can’t say for sure. She carried an oversize brain, the size of a turkey, on a silver platter.
"Your dinner is served,” said the nurse. "Set the table.”
But what I understood her to mean was: "The brain is ready. Bring the patient.”
And Classique was suddenly whisked away, blowing kisses as she went, telling me or my mother, "This is it! I’ve never been so happy! I’m alive!”
"Yes,” my mother said, sitting up and exhaling smoke, "yes, yes!” Her johnny burst into flames.
I awoke, sweating. It was afternoon, and sunlight blazed through my bedroom window, spilling over the mattress, warming me and my father. The varnish glistened like perspiration across his forehead. And I was stretched alongside him, pressed against the quilt, yawning.
"Rise and shine," Cut ’N Style said.
I’d fallen asleep with her on my finger. Now she hovered in front of my face.
"Classique is alive," I told her. "She’s okay and happy.”
"Just a dream,” she replied. "Trust me, I know. I was there, dear."
Cut ’N Style sounded different, more like Classique.
She said, "I know everything."
"Stop it," I said. "Don’t pretend you’re her.”
"That’s silly. I have no idea what you’re talking about-"
I flicked her from my finger, sent her sailing. She flew to the floor, bounced and rolled, and finally slid to the edge of the stairs. She was knocked out before she could start crying.
"It’s not just a dream,” I said. "You’re pretty stupid if you can’t see that -- even if you’re blind too!”
Then I put an ear to the quilt, listening at my father’s rib cage, hoping that the operation was well underway, and that the surgeons’ voices could be caught. But I heard nothing.
"Magic Curl,” I said softly, "Fashion Jeans -- it’s me, Jeliza- Rose. What’s happening in there? You’ll tell me, all right?”
I listened some more, hearing only silence.
Everyone’s sleeping, I thought. They’re still in the dream.
So I tried making myself fall asleep again. I rested my head on the quilt, shut my eyes and began snoring. But it didn’t work. I was wide awake.
"It’s not fair!”
In frustration, I climbed from the mattress and rushed after Cut ’N Style. She was unconscious, probably at the hospital with Classique and my mother. I kicked her down the stairs, saying, "That’s what you get, you’re a bad dog!"
And later, when Dickens arrived with food, I told him, "Cut ’N Style ruined my great dream. She woke me up and now I’ll never know."
I was at the dining room table, and he was removing my meal from a paper sack, arranging each item -- thermos, foil-covered plate, slice of pound cake in a sandwich bag, fork and knife -- neatly before me.
"She’s your friend?" he asked. "She fell in the hole and disappeared forever and I can’t find her."
"That’s Classique,” I said, "not Cut ’N Style. Cut ’N Style is on the floor over there -- but Classique is in the hospital -- I dreamt her -- and I saw her with Mom and Mom was burning."
Dickens frowned and shrugged. He didn’t understand, so I explained that Classique was no longer a head. She had a woman’s body. And she was getting a real brain.
"Bet it costs a million dollars," he said. "I’d like a new brain sometimes -- I think a new one is shiny."
"Yeah -- and it was a big brain. She was excited and I guess she wasn’t a doll anymore.”
Dickens pulled the foil off the plate -- "She must be pretty" then unscrewed the thermos cap.
"She is. She’s beautiful."
He pushed the plate toward me -- greasy meat, two legs, a thigh or a breast.
"Dell says eat what you can and hide the leftovers in this-”
He handed me the foil, which I smoothed in my lap as if it were a napkin. Then I sniffed at the meat, "Is it the squirrel?"
"No,” he said, shaking his head. "No squirrel. Dell hates those. She won’t cook those -- she just won’t."
"Oh," I said, reaching for the fork, "that’s good. I don’t think I like squirrel either.”
And while eating, I thought about Classique’s operation. How was the brain put in? Did it hurt? Did she bleed? Is she different?
Why did she need a brain anyway?
Because it’s fabulous, dear. It’s fantastic, darling.
"Fabulous," I said, picking at the meat. "Wonderful."
Dickens glanced at me. He was in the living room, holding my father’s wig, his fingers combing the coils. Then I watched as he planted the wig on his bald head; the coils sank past his ears and forehead, adorning his shoulders. And -- wearing his goggles and swimming trunks and flip- flops, the wig askew -- he looked like a crazy woman, half- naked and loathsome.
"I'm pretty pretty,” he said.
"You’re funny,” I told him. "You’re weird.”
"No, no,” he whined, "because I don’t want to be weird, okay? I’d like the red lips and then I’ll be beautiful."
He needed more than red lips. He needed rouge, maybe mascara.
"All right," I said, "I’ll fix your face."
He clapped.
"Yes, if you fix my face I’ll be happy.”
"I will,” I said. "Except I better eat Dell’s cake first, better drink all my apple juice.”
"And hide the leftovers."
"I know that already.”
But there wasn’t going to be any leftovers. I ate every piece of meat, chugged the apple juice, consumed the pound cake in three bites. Then I fetched Grandmother’s cosmetic bag -- my tummy feeling bloated and satiated, my meal swishing around inside, as I sprinted up and back down the stairs.
"Sit still or else you’ll make me do it wrong,” I told Dickens, who fidgeted while I unzipped the bag. He was cross-legged on the living room floor, spine straight, hands squeezing his knees.
"Won’t move a muscle," he said. "Don’t have muscles anyway, so I won’t move them.”
I shushed him, and then emptied the cosmetic bag between us, shaking out the lipsticks and mascara and compacts and tweezers and cotton balls. I arranged the six lipsticks into a row.
"Now, which one?"
Scarlet Surrender or Pink Tango or Hyacinth or Sweet Vermilion or Chinese Red or Rose Blush.
"That one,” he said, pointing at Pink Tango.
"This is best," I said, taking Scarlet Surrender. "Puff your lips."
He puckered.
"Get ready-"
It was difficult applying the scarlet evenly. Stay in the lines, I told myself -- but my hand moved too fast when doing his bottom lip, and I smeared lipstick across his chin. His upper lip went smoother; I only overshot once, reddening the end of his nose. But that was his fault. He sniffled and my hand jerked.
"You’re Rudolph," I said.
‘'You are,” he replied.
Then I dabbed on the rouge, brightening his cheeks, creating rosy circles.
"Almost finished," I said, shutting the compact.
He was gazing at me, his eyes magnified behind the goggles.
Bug eyes, I thought. Creepy bug eyes.
"I think you’re nice,” he said.
And as I leaned forward, straightening the wig, he kissed my lips -- a nervous peck, which tickled and made me giggle.
"That’s silly," I said, wiping my lips. "You got red on me, silly kisser.”
'He glanced at his swimming trunks, embarrassed, and folded his hands over his crotch.
"The old lady was a silly kisser too," he said. "She kissed me, but that’s when I was little and she was really old. Sometimes she did this in my mouth-”
He stuck out his tongue and wiggled it.
"--and that was fun. It was a snake, I think, or a goldfish dancing. She was awfully sweet too. Sometimes I’d be here all day just kissing with her. She’s a nice lady, except she’s dead.”
I was both delighted and curious to hear him speak of Grandmother.
"She’s Daddy’s mom," I said. "She never kissed me because I didn’t get born yet.” `
"I think I knew that. I think maybe someone told that to me.”
"Dickens, she was your girlfriend -- you were her boyfriend."
He took his hands from his crotch and assumed an expression of sorrow.
"No, I was her cutie. Her little cutie. Never been a boyfriend. Don’t know what that is, except if I got older I’d be her boyfriend, I suppose. If she didn’t die, you know. If she didn’t fall down the steps. Think she was coming to kiss me when she falled ‘cause I was there in the yard pulling weeds. And I ran away when she did that. But I didn’t know what to do. I was just little, you know. I was scared, I guess. She was nice."
"She was old,” I told him, envisioning the chest in the attic, the junk stored within. "How old are you?”
A worried, confused look settled on Dickens’ face.
"I don’t know. I’m not an old man though. Dell says I’m a boy. She says l’m a baby. She says I’ll always be a baby ‘cause my brain got wired wrong.”
You’ll buy a new brain, I thought. When you have the world’s biggest penny, you’ll get the operation.
"You’re a little cutie,” I said.
He smiled.
"You’re a little cutie too.”
So I kissed him.
Then he kissed me.
And we were laughing, our lips and teeth red with scarlet.
"Silly kissers.”
I was about to kiss him again when the quarry suddenly boomed, rattling the windows.
"Uh-oh.”
Dickens creased his brow. He stared at the ceiling for a moment, the blond coils slipping from his shoulders.
"They’re expleding the gr0und,” he said. "They dynamite everything so there’s no more left. I seen them do it. I go there and see them. It’s bigger than firecrackers and bullets.”
"I like firecrackers.”
"l\/Ie too. I really do. So if you want to see the boom hole, you’ll see the ocean to, if you want."
I nodded.
"I’ll show you, okay?"
He reached for my hand.
"Okay," I said.
Then we kissed.
The captain was my boyfriend, my cutie. And I was his l\/Irs. Captain, his special one. When he kissed me, my stomach did somersaults. When I kissed him, I wanted to stand on my head and sing. I wanted to spin in circles. Even while we gathered our expeditionary crew -- a Barbie arm as his first lieutenant, Cut ’N Style as my second Mrs. Captain -- I couldn’t stop thinking about those scarlet lips, so strange and exciting, making my belly tingle. Did he feel the same? Were my lips tingling someplace within him?
"Onward,” he said, assuming his brave captain’s voice. "That ocean boom hole is at least four hundred miles from here."
Four hundred miles in less than an hour. More like two miles, if that. But how far it seemed, how inhospitable. A desert of bulldozer tracks and chalky silt. No brush. No grass or bluebonnets, just dirt and sand.
Soon my dress was dusty. I tasted grit. And Dickens’ wig had gone white. Limestone flour powdered the scarlet on his lips, the rouge on his cheeks. He wiped dust from the goggles.
"If the wind blows bad and we don’t hold hands," he said, "then we’ll be lost and go blind and then we’ll fall in the hole alone or worse. So watch for the wind, okay? It’s a tornado sometimes or a dust devil. So we better be careful. You drop in this hole and you’re a goner for sure. You can’t fly, I don’t think. I can’t. I tried but I can’t. And I can’t swim either."
We’d journeyed to the end of the world -- having traveled through Johnsongrass and tall weeds and across dirt roads and under barbwire, ignoring DANGER and NO TRESPASSING signs -- going where the cream-colored earth sheered and staggered downward; mammoth ledges hewed from the quarried terrain, large enough for a giant to ascend.
And there we lay, at the edge of a high rock cliff, gazing over the rim and into the quarry -- or into the boom hole, as Dickens labeled it -- pondering the murky water that spread out below us.
"If you fell you’d clrop a hundred years until you splashed in the ocean.”
"How far is that?"
"Almost a thousand miles, I think.”
The Hundred Year Ocean lined the very depths of this cliffbound gorge, still and dark beneath the surface.
"But it’s a lake,” I said. "The ocean goes forever."
"No,” Dickens replied, "no, no. ‘Cause it’s deeper than any lake, so don’t pretend you know, all right?”
Then he explained that old cars and old trucks and all kinds of junk lurked somewhere underneath the water. And freshwater jellyfish, about the size of a penny and transparent. Years ago, he told me, three scuba divers drowned before they could find their way back to the surface.
"‘Cause it don’t have a bottom,” he said. "Never did. These people go in sometimes and can’t get out. That’s why I got a submarine. That way I don’t drown at all.”
How often had he explored the bottomless ocean in Lisa? A zillion million times, maybe. And what did he find? A battered bicycle, some tires, beer cans -- pennies? Hidden treasure?
"Just outta space, blue and red stars too. But you can’t breath in space and Lisa is only a submarine, you know. She can’t be a rocketship and a submarine. But if you sink deep deep deep then you’ll reach the moon and much deeper is Mars and deeper than that is God and the baby Jesus, I think.”
"But what about the booms? You’re lucky Lisa didn’t get exploded!"
"They don”t boom this anymore,” he said.
Then using the Barbie arm as an indicator, Dickens pointed across the quarry toward its farthest cliff -- where a solitary cluster of mesquites stretched alongside the brink.
"Past them trees, these men do it there now. They dynamite that new boom hole but it doesn’t even have an ocean or any jellyfish."
No sooner had he spoken when a boom erupted, reverberating like a sonorous thunderclap, quaking our perch, jiggling my insides. Dickens shielded his face in the nook of an arm -- and I covered my ears, gaping at the far-off mesquites, expecting fiery billows and chunks of debris to be blazing upward beyond the cluster. Instead -- as if the mesquites had suddenly splintered apart -- I saw a swarm of black birds shoot from the trees, rising into the sky, shrieking; they sailed around like an angry cloud, sweeping in unison, this way and that, eventually returning to their roosts when the boom had died.
I took my hands from my ears, slowly, listening as the birds squalled.
"They’re mad,” I told Dickens, who was lifting his head.
"They were sleeping, I guess. The booms will kill them if they don’t leave soon.”
And I remembered my father’s story, how as a boy he murdered starlings. So did his cousins. So did Grandmother. Everyone in their town murdered starlings.
"Because they shit on everything,” my father said, "and they made so much noise. And it was fun as well, I suppose. We got a dime for each bird we caught and killed. Earned nearly five dollars once, and that bought a feast of gum and hardtack back in those days."
The Annual Clatter Pot Round Up it was called.
Men and women and children -- fanning out, walking from one end of town to the other -- banging spoons against pots and pans and trashcan lids, frightening the starlings. That racket kept the birds in flight, kept them swooping frantically overhead, searching for a quiet place to land, flying until they couldn’t fly anymore -- then, exhausted, they began plunging. Starlings came tumbling toward the earth, crashing into streets and sidewalks, in yards and on rooftops. And rny father and his cousins and Grandmother and everyone else would start using their spoons like hammers.
"The ones that were breathing and trying to fly again,” my father said, "we beat the heads flat. Sometimes we just crushed them with our boots, and sometimes the wings were flapping long after the skulls popped."
My mother hated that story. I did too.
"Dickens, my daddy murdered birds. It’s mean doing that.”
But he wasn’t paying attention.
"That was close,” he said.
Then he studied the Barbie arm for a while, pressing a thumb into the plastic flesh.
"I got a secret,” he finally said.
"What is it?"
"If I say you can’t tell, okay? If Dell knows she’ll wallop me good and then I’m in trouble forever.”
"I got a secret too.”
He looked at me.
"Give me your secret and I’ll give you mine, okay?”
"Okay.”
We both sat up on the cliff, crossing our legs like Indian chiefs. Then I shut Cut ’N Style in a fist so she couldn’t hear. And I whispered my secret, saying that he was my boyfriend, that I was Mrs. Captain -- and that I liked silly kissing his lips.
"Oh,” he said, "mine is different -- mine is that I got dynamite in my room and that’s bad news for me.”
Dynamite. Two sticks. He found them at the new boom hole, he said.
"I forget everything," he said, "and stealing is what gets me in trouble. That’s what happens, that’s why it’s a secret.”
"I’d like to see,” I said.
He sighed, drawing his mouth into a tight circle.
"I don’t know, maybe tomorrow when Dell drives to town. I don’t know. When she drives to town I’m in charge, so I can take care of myself if I want.”
"If you show me I’ll believe you," I said. "If you show me, you can keep the arm as my birthday present.”
He was supposed to smile, but his face revealed nothing. He glanced at the arm.
"WIhat’s its name?"
"Army," I said.
"Is it a boy or a girl? A girl is nice, I think."
"It’s a boy.”
"How can you tell?”
I took the arm and held it between my legs, aiming the diminutive appendage outward as if it were a boy thingy.
"That doesn’t mean it’s a boy," he said.
"Yes it does. It’s a thingy. You got a thingy, I know."
"No.”
"I can see it after we peck. I can see it bigger."
"No you can’t. That’s wrong. I don’t have that.”
He rocked forward, folding his forearms over the front of his trunks. A soft breeze pushed around us, stirring the dust in the wig, powdering us with rock flour.
I set the arm on his left knee.
"Dickens, I’d like to see your dynamite.”
"Maybe tomorrow,” he said, "when Dell goes to town. I don’t know.”
"But you’re my boyfriend," I said.
"I don’t understand that,” he replied, removing the wig, dumping it in my lap. "I better get home, I think."
I love you, I thought. You are my dear sweet captain.
And on the cliff high above the Hundred Year Ocean we kissed for a moment in the late afternoon, then we wandered away, silently, listening as we went, hoping for another boom that never came.
Cut ’N Style wouldn’t shut up.
"Dickens has a girlfriend,” she teased. "He’s your boyfriend."
"He’s my husband,” I told her. "I’m his wife."
"He’s a dreamboat. He’s a sunny cloud.”
It was morning, hours before noon. And even though Dickens always brought my meal after lunchtime, I waited on the porch steps for his arrival.
"Kiss me,” Cut ’N Style said.
"That’s gross. You’re a girl."
"Please. Kiss me and I’ll be a boy."
"Girls don’t kiss girls that way.”
"Please-"
I kissed her, but it wasn”t the same as kissing Dickens; there wasn’t any tingling in my belly. Then I consumed her with my mouth, sucking her from my finger, pretending that she was a trout and I was a whale. Her skin tasted like soap, her hair like licorice. She made me gag. So I spit her into my palm.
"You’re disgusting,” I said.
And she was supposed to cry or complain. Instead she started laughing.
"That was fun,” she said. "That was great."
You’re nuts, I thought. You're crazier than the wind.
Then we were both laughing.
"You’re my best friend,” I told her.
"And you’re mine too.”
"And I love Dickens.”
"He’s the sweet prince. He’s the great king.”
"He’s apple juice and jerky.”
"We’re a happy family."
"That’s what we are.”
And Dell would take care of us all. Soon she’d watch our babies while we explored the Hundred Year Ocean. She’d marry my father and become my mother. Then she and Dickens and Cut ’N Style and I would build a castle from mesquite branches and flattened pennies. We’d eat meat and pound cake at every meal. We’d drink juice from gold-plated Dixie cups.
"It’s a dream come true,” I said.
"It’s Christmas,” Cut ’N Style said.
My belly tingled. I poked my stomach, imagining a baby squirming within, a Barbie baby with real rooted eyelashes and blue goggles and a real brain. I saw it on TV -- if a boyfriend silly kissed a girlfriend enough times, something was bound to happen.
"Tell Dickens,” Cut ’N Style was saying. "Tell him about the castle and the babies. And then you’ll see his dynamite. Maybe Dell is driving to town already and he’s there alone thinking he’d like you to visit and see his dynamite."
"But maybe she’s still there-"
"And she’ll invite us for a tea party or picnic because she loves Daddy and she’s our friend too. That’s why she won’t drink our blood. Anyway, she doesn’t do that anymore, Dickens said so."
My stomach grumbled; the baby was kicking around. That’s why my belly always tingled while Dickens and I squished our lips together -- every peck caused the baby to grow a little more. I should have known.
"Better tell Dickens," I said. "I think a baby is in me from kissing. I think it’s Classique, I think. She"s coming back."
"Let’s go tell,” Cut ’N Style said. "Let’s touch the dynamite.”
And as we drifted from the steps, a shiver shot through me, beginning at the base of my neck and rippling down my spine. I pictured Dell and Dickens' dark house -- the windows locked, the shades shutting out the daylight -- their bee-stung mother dozing somewhere inside.
A castle is safer than a home or a farmhouse, I thought. A castle keeps bees and ants from attacking everyone.
When we arrived, their house seemed as unknowable and forsaken as ever. On either side of the gravel walkway, the beds that once fostered tomatoes and squash were now barren, just upturned soil and withering vines. The dirt yard was littered with bootprints and twigs. And moving onto the porch, I noticed that the yellow floodlight no longer glowed above the front door; the imagined queen mother of all fireflies was defunct.
I knocked -- quietly at first, three soft raps with my knuckles.
"Hello," I said, addressing the door. "It’s me."
I paused, expecting Dell or Dickens to answer. But neither came.
"It’s Jeliza-Rose.”
I knocked harder -- knock knock knock -- then paused again.
"It’s really a nice day for a tea party so me and Cut ’N Style are here in case you’re not too busy."
I put an ear against the door, held my breath, and listened; nothing -- not a creak or a bump or the clomp of flip-flops
"Maybe they’re sleeping," I told Cut ’N Style. "Maybe they're in town.”
Maybe they’re hiding, she thought. Maybe they’re at What Rocks looking for us.
"Maybe.”
After that, we tramped from the porch and went alongside the house. And ignoring the sudden pangs in my stomach, I skipped toward the backyard, heading where the weeds and foxtails thrived, where the Ford pickup with the cracked windshield sat. But the Ford was gone.
Stopping near the house, I stood between the curvy ruts left by the pickup’s tires, and spotted Dickens -- out of his captain’s uniform, dressed like a farmer -- unlocking the padlock on the storage shed door.
Tell him, Cut 'N Style was thinking. Tell him you’ve got a baby and he’ll show you his secret. He said he would.
Dickens pushed the door open and entered the shed. So I hurried across the backyard, running over the beaten trail, hoping to surprise him. I wanted to tell him that I loved him so much and that Classique was coming back as my Barbie baby. I planned on surprising him with -- Sweet prince, Classique is on her way; and those words would’ve sailed past the shed doorway had I not seen the squirrel -- if I hadn’t hesitated before the shady doorway, gazing to my right at a wooden hutch, puzzled by the tufts of gray fur bulging through the chicken wire, the puffy tail curling in on itself.
Was he dead? No. Asleep? No. Wide awake -- lying still with his paws on his muzzle, breathing deeply, watching me with black eyes. See what she's done to me, Jeliza-Rose. See what happens when you’re small and hungry all the time. You get trapped and stuck in a cage. I’m a prisoner. I'm doomed.
I felt sad for him. He wasn’t a monster or a nasty thing, only a squirrel, and now he didn’t seem so mean. But I didn't dare stick my fingers in the hutch to pet him; if I did, he might bite me. He might confuse me for Dell and chomp my fingers off.
Know what she’ll do to me? Go in the shed and you’ll understand. Look for yourself Thats right, go on-
And what did I find when stepping beyond the doorway? A long folding table and wide shelves, each surface crammed with Dell’s handiwork, novelties and what-nots, some finished, some in progress. On and around the table - lamps with deer antlers for a base, an antler hat rack, foot stools (the legs formed by two pairs of antlers), deer foot lamps, a dozen or so deer foot thermometers. But it was the shelves that held my attention -- a fierce-looking tabby cat ready to pounce on a coiled rattlesnake, squirrels clutching acorns, three rabbits huddled together, a raccoon with a trout in its paws, another tabby biting into the head of a bat, an upside-down armadillo, a convincing jackalope sitting upright; all glassy-eyed creatures, inanimate and posed, mounted like trophies on varnished flat cuts of wood. This was where Dell kept Death at bay, where she saved silent souls from going into the ground. But I didn’t want to end up like those creatures-frozen and on a shelf; I didn’t want to be stuck like that forever. Might as well go into the ground, I thought. If you can’t run around and yell and cut muffins, you might as well be dead.
And there was Dickens, in a corner, his backside to me, unloading a duffel bag, removing paper towels and rubber gloves.
"It’s a zoo room,” I said.
Upon hearing my voice, his body rigored and he shrieked -- dropping the paper towels and gloves, turning sharply with a hand clamped to his mouth; the shrill continued, passing his fingers, filling the shed. So terrifying and startling was his scream that I began yelling too. And for a moment the two of us faced one another, bellowing as if we were being murdered, until the air escaped our lungs.
Then he slumped down on the duffel bag, breathless and hugging himself. My hands trembled. Cut ’N Style quivered on my finger. Outside the squirrel was chattering in the hutch, no doubt aroused by our screams.
"Not fair,” Dickens was saying, "not fair."
"You scared me good," I said.
"No, you did that to me, you did. That’s not fair.”
He was rocking, staring at his boots, mumbling something.
"But it was an accident,” I told him. "I just saw this zoo and I was coming to tell you the news but the zoo made me forget everything and I was wondering if they’re dead - they’re froze and napping, I guess. I guess that’s why we got scared because they’re pretty spooky like that."
Dickens head came up, his eyes glaring, as he exclaimed, "That’s not right ‘cause Dell makes them alive again. That’s what she does. And people are so happy they bring old dead dogs and old dead kitties and she’s Jesus how she makes them alive. And she does those-" He thrust out a hand, pointing at the lamps and foot stools and thermometers on the table. "And that’s what she sells in town when she goes to town. She’s an artist -- she says so -- and a healer.” He nodded at the shelved animals. "And they’re not spooky, they’re friends -- and you scared me and that’s not fair. I think I fainted.”
"I’m sorry," I said, crossing to where he sat.
"Don’t do that again or I’ll die, okay?”
''Okay.”
I hugged him, wrapping my arms about his shoulders, patting his neck with Cut ’N Style.
"I think I’rn sorry too,” he said. "I think so.”
Tell him, Cut ’N Style thought. Tell him.
And with my lips near his ear, I mentioned the baby. I said that he was my husband now, and that Classique would appear soon; she’d be our Barbie baby.
"We can build a castle, and Dell can marry my daddy. But you have to show me your dynamite first.”
He went rigid.
"I don’t know. That baby sounds like a strange thing -- and I can’t build a castle. I don’t know how, I don’t know.”
So I whispered, "If you show me your secret, I’ll love you forever."
He leaned his head against mine. Our cheeks brushed.
"I’ll show you," he said. "Just once only. Except not yet ‘cause I need to unpack this bag before Dell gets in. Then I’ll show you my room in Momma’s house, okay? But if I can’t unpack this bag I won’t eat tonight. So you wait, okay? But don’t touch nothing. You’re not supposed to be in here. This place is Dell’s place.”
"All right,” I said, withdrawing myself, "I’ll wait for my cutie. You’re my kisser."
Then I watched him slowly rise, turn, and bend over the bag. His movements were sluggish and clumsy, his awkwardness suggesting a lack of coordination, his boot heels veering outward from the tips. And after a while I got bored and snuck outside, creeping below Dell’s creatures on my way, mindful of the rattlesnake poised to strike.
Going from the shed, the sunlight blinded me; I squinted before the hutches, putting a hand above my eyes.
I'm a prisoner.
The squirrel was chattering. He paced nervously, regarding me with surreptitious looks.
"Dell will freeze you alive,” I said. "You could eat a bat or a fish.”
But she’ll have to kill me -- then she' ll freeze me alive. I'm not old dead dogs and old dead kitties. I'm a hungry squirrel.
"We’ll help you,” Cut ’N Style said.
His hutch had a little gate which was kept closed by a hook latch.
"You do it,” I told her. "I don’t want to get in trouble.”
But Cut ’N Style wasn’t worried. She flicked the hook without thinking twice.
"You’re free.”
I might have opened the little gate for him and pointed above the weeds and foxtails to the mesquites. It was there, among the trees, that he could flee. I wanted to help him more, but I didn’t. Unlatching the gate was enough.
Then I peeked into the shed, making certain Dickens hadn’t seen what we’d done. But -- with his butt aimed toward the doorway, his hands digging inside the duffel bag -- I knew he was unaware. And glancing at the hutch, I saw that the gate now hung open; the prisoner had already slipped away. He was quick, that squirrel. He understood what to do, where to go, how to hide. He wouldn’t be tricked or trapped again - and, as the sun warmed my shoulders and arms, I was glad.
That day, Dickens and I became ghosts.
As we tiptoed up the back steps, he said, "Can’t wake Momma so we can’t talk like this ‘less it’s in my room." His voice dropped to a whisper, "We talk like this first.”
"We’re quiet ghosts,” I said. "Your house is the witch’s cave, and we’re disappearing and we won’t get caught.”
He grinned.
"Yes, I think that’s right. I think that’s a good idea. ‘Cause Dell will wallop me for having company."
Then we entered the cave-house -- coming into the kitchen, not saying a word, holding hands, the sunlight vanishing with the push and turn of a knob. I felt nearly as blind as Cut ’N Style, but Dickens led the way, tugging gently at my arm. And we floated through darkness, two ghosts, inhaling the familiar mixture of varnish and Lysol, gliding over slippery floorboards, proceeding down a hallway lit only by a cat- shaped night-light.
What’s it like? Cut ’N Style wondered.
Halloween, I thought. Black enough for bog men, black enough to fool bees that it’s bedtime.
Each door we passed was shut -- except one, beyond which I glimpsed the shadowy outline of a mounted game head, an elk perhaps, hanging above a sofa, its massive antlers like branches, bifurcating upward and almost touching the ceiling.
Dickens pulled me further along, around a corner, away from the night-light. Another hallway? A doorway?
What’s it like now?
Don’t know. Can’t tell.
He let go of my hand. And suddenly I heard a click and an overhead lightbulb flickered on -- so bright, so unexpected, stunning my sight for a moment.
"My room," he announced, closing the door.
His room -- cramped, untidy, befitting a pack rat. Stacked along a wall were National Geographic magazines, hundreds of them, in five or six precarious piles. The floor was a clutter of T-shirts and socks, underwear and jeans, his flip-flops and swimming suit, Coke cans and plates with dried food, spoons and forks -- more National Geographics, the pages spread, a chance collage of deserts, starry skies, constellations, killer whales, ocean sunsets and schooners and coral reefs.
"Sometimes it’s messy," he said. "Sometimes things stick to your feet, so you better get on my bed so you don’t crush nothing important, okay?"
''Okay.”
Tacked over his bed was a map, not Denmark, but some- where else, somewhere with wide ranges and long valleys, indistinct, very blue and strange. And the bed -- where he asked me to sit -- just a drooping cot, the sheets a green sleeping bag, the pillow a bunched ski jacket.
"I got treasure,” he was saying, on his knees, reaching beneath the cot. "I’m rich sometimes. I discover fortunes.”
Then he hauled out a tackle box, setting it in my lap. I watched as he knelt between my legs, unfastening the clasps and lifting the top, revealing his prized booty, mostly small things. A gold cuff link, his blue goggles, Army the arm, a bulging Christmas stocking.
And pennies -- maybe a thousand, or a zillion?
"Fifty-four. That's almost a hundred, I think. Look at these, I found these sornewhere.”
A pair of false teeth; I held them, pretending the teeth were biting Cut ’N Style’s head.
"Chomp chomp,” I said. "Chomp chomp chomp.”
Dickens frowned.
"Don’t do that,” he said. "That’s wrong.”
Then he took the teeth, exchanging them for the bulky Christmas stocking.
My stomach grumbled.
"Is there candy in it?”
"No, the secret," he told me, shaking the stocking, letting the contents drop to the cot.
"Dynamites," I whispered.
Dynamite, he explained, with time fuses and blasting caps; both sticks weren’t really sticks at all -- not even red like in cartoons -- but slender tan tubes, fashioned from wood pulp or paperboard. In my hands, they felt lighter than rocks.
"How do you boom them?”
"Like firecrackers, I think,” he said, his voice rising with excitement. "Like a war bomb!” Then his cheeks puffed and deflated, and he made an exploding noise.
"Kaboom!” I said, tapping a tube with Cut ’N Style’s chin.
His palms slid up my legs, scooting under my dress, stopping on my thighs.
"Like the end of the world. But if you use them you can’t use them ever again. Then they’re worthless junk, just blown to bits. So I’ll keep them ‘til I’m an old man and then I’ll kill that shark with Lisa and be a hero, I'm pretty sure.”
"I’ll help you. That way we can be on TV.”
"‘Cause you love me.”
"I’m your wife forever."
He laid me back on the cot, where I clutched the dynamite -- a tube in each hand -- and gazed up at the odd map. And as he pressed an ear to my stomach, his fingers touched my panties.
"That baby’s sleeping,” he said. "It’s snoring."
"She’s growing," I told him. "She’s coming tonight or tomorrow."
"I bet it’s pretty. I bet it’s pretty like you.”
He was over me now, looking down at my face. But my attention was on the map, on its aquamarine details, the jagged ridges and broad basins.
"Where’s that place?" I asked.
"The whole bottom of the sea,” he told me.
The whole bottom? I couldn’t comprehend it.
He mentioned that the deepest part of the ocean plunged further below the surface than the highest mountain stretched above it. And undiscovered countries existed in the depths, entire cities with people and dogs. There were castles and farms beneath the seas. There were husbands and wives and babies and ghosts.
"And silly kissers too. Kissers that do this-"
He stuck his tongue out and wiggled it at me.
"Yuck.”
Then I wiggled my tongue. We’d never kissed like that, but the idea made the tingles begin. Dickens’ mouth hovered near my mouth. I raised my head, shutting my eyes, forgetting the map and the dynamite in my fists.
Yuck, Cut ’N Style thought. Yuck.
He thrust against me, gripping my wrists, causing the cot to bump bump bump the wall. And as soon as our tongues met, something crashed on the other side of the wall, seemingly rattled loose by the cot’s repeated thumping; I heard it hit the floor and bounce.
My eyes shot open. Dickens’ head jerked sideways.
"Uh-oh," he said, his body tensing. "It’s Momma, I think."
Then he climbed from the cot, crossing to the door, listening for sounds in the hallway.
"Is she awake?” I asked him.
He turned around, facing me, and the overhead bulb reflected off his scarred scalp. He started to hug himself, but stopped.
"Don’t know," he said. "‘Cause that never happens but maybe it happens -- so you stay here, okay? If Momma quit dozing I’ll go see if she needs soup.”
But he didn’t move; he just remained at the door, fidgeting, sticking his hands in and out of his pockets.
All of a sudden my heart raced.
"I’m scared," I told him.
"Me too," he said.
I imagined him going and not returning, leaving me trapped alone in the witch’s cave.
"If we go together we’re safe.”
He nodded, saying, "All right, but don’t tell Dell you saw Momma. If you promise then you can go.”
"I promise.”
And before slinking into the hallway like quiet ghosts, I helped Dickens put his treasure away. We hid the dynamite in the stocking. He placed the secret inside the tackle box on top of the false teeth, then shoved the box under the cot and covered it with clothing.
"It's our treasure,” I said.
"It’s bad news,” he said, taking my hand.
After that, we wandered into the hallway, traveling a short distance, entering the adjacent bedroom -- where candles flickered on a dressing table, dripping red and white and purple wax onto an enameled plate, casting the room in a muted glow. Dickens wasn’t holding my hand anymore. He had left me at the table, had gone forward, vanishing. Then a lamp came on -- and there he was, standing by a four-poster bed, peering at the dozer who lay on the sheets.
Momma.
"Dell says someday Momma will wake,” Dickens whispered. "She says someday there’ll be a pill or a story or something that all you have to do is give it or say it and she’ll open her eyes again. Except it will be a long time, so until then Momma stays like this. It’s better that way. Because if she gets buried or anything then she’s gone for good. So I hope that pill or story gets made pretty soon."
Aside from being smaller, she appeared the same as my father, wrapped in a wool blanket like a mummy, reeking of varnish, her silver hair cropped. I couldn’t quite make out her face -- not from where I stood -- and that was fine; the bees had used her for a pin cushion -- they’d stung her cheeks and nose and eyelids. But now she was sleeping. She hadn’t stirred, hadn’t heard or created the crash.
Dickens glanced at me and shrugged.
What had fallen? What hit and bounced, keeping my husband’s tongue from my mouth? What gleamed when I searched the pitchy floorboards? A baseball. I went for it and picked it up, noticing a pallet alongside the bed, fashioned from quilts -- and my mother’s nightgown, folded into a square, sitting on a pillow.
Dell’s napping spot,I thought. She guards Momma from bees.
"That’s not your toy," Dickens whispered.
He was beside me, lifting the baseball from my hand.
"You can’t play with it."
Then he turned and stepped to the dressing table. I followed, watching as he carefully set the baseball behind the plate. And what the candles obscured, Momma’s bedside lamp illuminated, if only faintly -- the dressing table was a shrine, an altar of photographs and keepsakes. Among the candles were necklaces, a briar pipe, marbles, a crystal fish, my father’s map of Denmark, a Prince Albert tobacco tin, a silver tray with lipsticks and powders and brushes.
And there, below the mirror, the dead radio.
"That’s my gift.”
"No, that’s Dell’s,” he said, "that’s hers.”
I was too busy studying the shrine to argue.
Lining the mirror were black-and-white snapshots, family portraits, abstracted faces from the past -- a man and a woman reclining in a porch swing with babies on their knees, a boy hoisting a kite, a girl wearing a hula; those images mixed with pictures of John F. Kennedy and Chekov from Star Trek and Davy Jones from The Monkees and a life-like Jesus carrying his cross -- and my father in his heyday, his guitar slung behind a shoulder, a finger pointing at the camera.
In fact, my father was everywhere. Driving a convertible. Eating a hot dog. Signing autographs. Swigging beer in a white T-shirt. Playing pinball. And who was that with him? That girl with her arm around his leather jacket, or kissing his cheek, or mussing his hair. That girl, in every shot, with blond hair and thick lips. Her mouth to his mouth, her fingers in his jacket or under his T-shirt.
Even without sight Cut ’N Style knew.
It’s Dell, she thought. She was beautiful once, not fat or a pirate. She loved your daddy. She had two good eyes.
Then Dickens and I were all whispers.
"They were kissers,” I said.
"I think so,” he replied. "That was forever ago, I guess. But Dell is pretty. That was her boyfriend, that was her special friend. He took care of her for a long time."
"It’s my daddy."
"No, I’m not sure. No. Your daddy doesn’t look like that boy. I think I’d remember that.”
"But it’s him and that’s Dell -- and they kiss. They do it like we do it."
Just then I wanted to be kissed. I wanted his tongue wiggling in me. And I told him so.
"I do too,” he said.
My belly tingled.
He took a lipstick from the silver tray and led me to the pallet -- where we sat facing one another, our heads ducked so we couldn’t see Momma, so she wouldn’t see us if she miraculously awoke. And we put lipstick on each other, making our lips red and sloppy. Then we kissed, squishing tongues with closed eyes. His fingers found my panties, and he was tickling me down there. But I didn’t care -- because I was Dell and he was my father -- and we were married and our baby was coming. When we kissed I felt warm and safe, everything inside me crackled like a sparkler; that feeling would continue from now on, I was certain. It would never end.
But it did end, fizzling abruptly with, "Filthy filth! Evil!”
There was Dell, glowering at us with a menacing scowl, grasping her hooded helmet. Before either of us had a chance to start or speak, she nudged Dickens with a boot, pushing him away from me. And what happened next stifled my breath; she pounded the helmet with a fist, a muffled whapping, which sent Dickens scrambling backwards across the floor, against a wall.
"No, Dell, no, no-"
"Rotten! Rotten!"
She threw the helmet down -- and it spun from the hood, rolling like a tire on its brim toward Dickens, bumping the wall near his right knee, missing him. Then the helmet yo- yoed back across the floorboards, wheeling past Dell’s boots, colliding with a dressing table leg. But it might as well have wounded Dickens: he fell on his side, shielding his face, drawing himself into a ball. His chest heaved and a pitiful moan, punctuated with sobs, trembled out of him.
"Rotten!”
I covered my ears, gazing at Dell’s mesh hood -- which had dropped before me, had landed in a clump by the pallet -- but I still heard everything.
"Doing that here!" she was yelling at him. "Bringing nasty nastiness into our home!” She turned, her housedress sweeping above her boots, and crouched in front of me: "This is my home! My home, betrayer! Like father like daughter, I’d say. That's right, of course!”
And I was a spy, she said so. I always went where I wasn’t invited, bringing my little friends, my little spies.
‘'Watching in bushes, vile nasty child! You’ll starve, right? No more food for you, not a thing, nothing! ”
"I didn’t do anything!" I said, and began crying. "I didn’t do anything! ”
"Liar!”
"I didn’t-”
She grabbed my wrist and stared at Cut 'N Style, mocking me, saying, "I didn’t do anything, I didn’t do anything!”
"I didn’t-”
Messing where I don’t belong. Me and my friends.
"I’ve seen you do it, spying everywhere!”
On her land and in her home and being filthy with Dickens in Momma’s room.
"You're not welcome here, wicked one!”
Now I'd starve. I’d wither and die. No more me. That’s what she said.
"And no more of these--"
Then she shook my wrist, making Cut ’N Style wobble and fall from my finger.
"No more spies-”
She stood upright, crossing to the dressing table, where she opened a drawer and rifled about inside of it.
"Child, you’re not the only one who lurks-"
Then she returned to me with something planted on a mittened index finger, something sprouting red hair; it was, I was horrified to discover, Classique.
"This is a troublesome creature,” Dell told me, twitching Classique in front of my face so I could see her. "This is you-!"
"That’s mine," I sobbed.
"No,” Dell said, "I think not.”
My guts twisted, my stomach roared with pain, as if Classique had been ripped from me.
"She’s mine and I hate you!" I screamed. "I hate you, hate you-!”
I hate you!
And hearing my words., Dell’s ferociousness crumbled into a stunned silence; she was taken aback, and -- with Classique curling into a fist -- she lowered her hand.
"What an awful thing to say,” she said, sounding truly hurt. "What an awful, terrible thing to utter at someone."
With tears welling, snot dripping, I glared at her vexed, confused expression. just then Dickens’ heels banged the floorboards, his arms flailed. He wasn’t moaning anymore, and, when I looked, he was on his back, convulsing wildly; spit bubbled between his clenched teeth, and his face strained as spasms jolted his body, as he hissed saliva and gagged.
"Look what you’ve done," Dell said, rushing to him. "Look what you’ve done!”
She pried his mouth open, forcing two fingers into his throat -- Classique stuck on one of them, disappearing from sight again, lost in another hole. And I didn’t understand why she was doing that, why she blamed me and was choking him with my doll head. All I knew was that I had to escape or next she’d be using those fingers on me, slipping them past my lips. So I sprang forward, grabbing the hood.
Without this you’re dead, I thought. Without this bees will kill you good.
"Evil! Evil!”
And I was fast, much faster than Dell. I was a ghost, sailing around her outstretched arms, her clawing mittens.
"Monster child!"
I don’t remember running from the witch’s cave, or tearing along the footpath, passing the hole where Classique had fallen. I can’t recall Dell’s hood slipping from my hand, drifting to the ground behind me. Or scrambling across the tracks. Or locking the front door of What Rocks. Or crying as I told my father what happened.
But I did cry, weeping for what seemed hours, wetting my father’s quilt with tears. And finally exhausted, I shivered beside him -- the lipstick smeared across my chin, my stomach aching, my legs sore from running-hugging his rigid form, hoping he’d protect me from Dell.
"I didn’t do anything," I said, again and again. "I didn’t. Just kissed Dickens, that’s all. I didn’t do anything.”
My poor husband, I thought. Poor Classique, poor blind Cut ’N Style. She got you all. I’m next. She hates me. When she knows the squirrel is gone, she’ll destroy me for sure. She’ll probably hang my head in her living room, or stick me on a shelf in the shed.
But there was nowhere to go. At night, bog men stirred in the attic and in the sorghum with Queen Gunhild. At night, Dell would wander outside, I knew. So how long did I have? How long until nightfall and the bees went to bed? That’s when she’d come for me. Now she was in her cave, perhaps stuffing Dickens with wire, waiting for night. Then she'd arrive with her tools and buckets. She’d crash through the front door, yelling, "Filthy filthy!”
And lying with my father, I prayed for food and some- where safe to hide. I imagined those cities at the bottom of the ocean, those castles and families -- that’s where I belonged. Classique would probably meet me there, so would Dickens and Cut ’N Style. l\/Iy father was already dreaming himself there, I felt certain. And if I could only dream myself there too. If I could shut my eyes and try hard enough, I might find myself waking inside his dream.
If I tried hard enough, if I closed my eyes and held my breath -- if I tried hard enough-
I never heard the breath leave my body. Before sleep, the last sound to fill my ears was the beating of my heart, and I knew I was slipping past the tideland, going beneath the ocean and sinking away from What Rocks. The afternoon light had faded above; maybe the waves had curled high enough to extinguish the sun. And in that far-flung region of my imagination, I tried understanding the exact circumstances that brought me to Texas instead of Denmark, but nothing presented itself. I knew only that I’d been on my own since that first night in the back country, and that I’d fled Los Angeles after my mother turned blue. Then I saw myself swimming through a vast underwater wilderness, going deeper and deeper, like a penny tossed into the Hundred Year Ocean -- or Alice falling very slowly in the rabbit-hole, looking about, wondering what was going to happen next.
The end of the world was purple, appearing as an iris or a rose in my dream, blooming with an ear-piercing eruption, the petals suddenly bursting away from the bud like a fire- work. Or was I already half-awake -- having just stirred beside my father -- when the explosions shook What Rocks so abruptly, so violently, that the table lamp beside my bed fell to the floor; the window near the staircase collapsed in pieces, and all the windows downstairs -- I soon discovered -- shattered inward, throwing glass over the floorboards.
Then with astonishing speed, the ruinous aftermath of the blasts unfolded beyond the farmhouse, cacophonous and jarring-the whine of iron wheels sparking on the tracks, passenger cars tipping this way and that, metal striking metal, the ground quaking-then everything was quiet, enveloped in a brown and white dust which rose into the evening sky like smoke.
No, it isn’t really the end of the world, I thought, only the end of the monster shark. But I wasn’t certain, not there in my bedroom or downstairs or out on the porch. I wasn’t certain until reaching the grazing pasture, where the derailment became apparent -- the bus had been smashed beneath a toppled passenger car, another car rested in Dell’s meadow. Waning sunlight cut through the dust cloud, reflecting off the silver-tinted wreckage -- and it seemed the entire train had turned edgeways, spilling cars on either side and across the rails, up and down the tracks, as far as the eye could see.
Then, in the stillness following the crash, I understood that Dickens killed the shark, that somehow he escaped Dell and her fingers. Now he was diving in Lisa, and if I sat and waited he would find me. He would emerge from the dust in his goggles and flip-flops, his lips puckered and ready for a kiss. And as the silence gave way to alarmed voices calling back and forth from within the passenger cars -- as stunned men and women and children began climbing from the wreckage -- I looked for him, searching the faces of those who staggered toward me.
At first just a few came, settling down in the pasture, speechless and seemingly uninjured, sitting upright with dazed expressions. But eventually the crowd grew in number, bringing both the wounded and the shocked -- a young woman, pressing a bloody handkerchief over her mouth, held an infant to her breast; in front of her stood an elderly man, staring at the flattened, upturned bus, shaking his head in confusion as his left arm dangled limply. Others begged for water or help, some complained about the dust. Every so often I heard weeping, at times screaming. And the chaos swarming around and on the tracks -- all those people running along the embankment, clamoring among the high weeds and foxtails -- showed no signs of ending.
"Little girl -- are you hurt anywhere?" said a woman. She was sitting nearby, cradling her purse in one arm. "Are you okay?"
Aside from a scratch on her cheek and disheveled hair, she appeared to have survived without serious injury. But her eyes were watery, her voice trembled when she spoke, and I noticed how she absently yanked bluebonnets, one after another, crushing the flowers firmly before dropping them.
"I’m just hungry is all,” I told her. "I was sleeping."
And she flinched, as if my words had agitated her.
"Here, I have sornething." She opened her purse and pulled out an orange, asking, "Are you traveling alone or with someone?"
I shrugged.
"Don’t know,” I replied, my stomach grumbling while she peeled the fruit. "I guess Dickens will come get me, I’m pretty sure he will.”
I watched as she rotated the orange, using her fingernails to scrape away the rind. Then she offered me the orange with a shaky hand, and instantaneously my teeth were on it.
"Your parents weren’t on the train?"
I shook my head, chewing.
The woman’s face twitched. I couldn’t tell if she was smiling or frowning. She scooted closer, wrapping an arm across my shoulders, hugging me against her.
"It happened so fast," she said, nodding at the toppled passenger cars. "We’re two of the lucky ones, thank God. We’re very, very lucky.”
But I didn’t feel lucky; I was starving. And eating the orange, I continued looking for Dickens in the crowd, scanning the grim newcomers to the pasture. I kept imagining what it would be like to see him again, to find that he was all right.
Hello, Captain. You killed the shark. I love you.
All at once my eyes found a woman who, like the elderly man, seemed to he standing in a stupor. She was wearing a blue bathrobe, and her hair was covered with a clear-plastic shower cap. When she turned -- glancing about frantically -- I saw her face in the dusty evening light, and fear seized me.
"Dell," I mumbled, thoughtlessly biting into the orange.
She was shouting for Dickens, searching the crowd. And she was frightened, I could tell. Her fingers gripped the bathrobe, her fuzzy slippers trampled bluebonnets. She was so close that if I ran she’d surely spot me.
You’ll stay far, I thought. You’ll mess elsewhere.
And if my mouth wasn’t full, I would’ve turned my head and spit.
But in the brief instant that I considered fleeing, Dell hurried off, moving toward the tracks, pushing through the throng of people. Then she vanished, disappearing somewhere among the wreckage.
"It’s all right,” the woman was saying. "We’re safe now. We'll take care of each other, how’s that? I’ll make sure you get where you’re going.”
I wanted to say that there was nowhere else for me to go. I would’ve told her too, except the fireflies arrived. Dozens of tiny flashes materialized at once, swimming overhead -here, then gone, then there, gone -- flashing in the thick dust, blink blink blinking in the pasture.
"They’re so beautiful,” I said. "They’re my friends, you know. They have names.”
And for a moment I forgot why I’d come to the pasture. I’d almost forgotten everything. I brought my head to the woman’s breast, snuggling myself into her, and finished the orange -- licking my lips after the last bite, aware of the lingering sweetness on my tongue and the stickiness on my chin -- content as the fireflies welcomed the night.