Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley (29 page)

“I'll finish up the grass, and then I'll weed the hedges.”

“EightathemtheybustedupSeymourHoller.”

“Can you pay me up front for the hedges? You'll be gone to lunch by the time I get back.”

A skull smacked under Cal's feet and the Prague Symphony faded, now the son massaging Silas's chest, Silas rubberized, his limbs gangling out of the chair, and the head-smacking doubled, while Theodore Munney poked two fingers into the onion ring box and came up with a scrap of breading. Red splotches swam across Calvin's eyes while the Arts Channel began its three-minute-long plea for donations. Calvin clenched his butt cheeks, a fort around the wallet. One hand gripped the couch arm and the other a pillow embroidered with
AS FOR ME AND MY HOUSE, WE SHALL SERVE THE LORD
. But up from his mind sediment reeled an image of the son, in the striped shirt, black pants, and mask of a cat burglar, crawling through a window belonging to the wealthiest lawyer in town, the one with the penile implant, and behind the window image, a dimmer one, but distinct: the aged boy, his flood-face bisected by a pistol in his hand. A deer head nodded.

Calvin Bergdoll shifted his hip. He turned away and hunched over the wallet, drawing the Serve the Lord pillow closer to serve as shield, too.
None of any of their businesses
, not the son's, not Theodore's, not Silas's, not the possums with the knots on their heads. Two ones. Three twenties. He thumbed through again. No tens. No fives.

Pulling out the twenty was as painful as extracting a tooth. Calvin laid it on the couch beside him. The son departed, taking the bill but leaving the onion ring box.

Cal slumped back. He lifted his face to Biggest Rack, then First Buck. Both avoided his gaze. Silas squirmed out of his chair, stretched, padded to Calvin, and pushed his front paws, head, and sixty pounds' worth of his body into Cal's lap.

“Any of those onion rings left, Theodore?”

“Takebackthecounty,” said Theodore Munney. “We'retakingerback.”

BEFORE THEY REACHED
the BP station, Calvin pulled Blackie over into the Baptist Church parking lot. He parted his lips to begin his talk with Theodore Munney, then prudently closed them against the pot of words boiling over in his throat. He noticed a potentially comforting Little Chug of chocolate milk resting in Blackie's cup holder. He tasted it.
Keeps better in winter
.

“Theodore, I'm losing my patience with you.” Blackie shed another of the several hundred staples that held his headliner in place and a new sag drooped onto Cal's cap.

“If you work for me, you have to finish your job.” Still the Stern Father, whom Calvin knew would fail with Theodore in this mood, but the appropriate personality would not present.

Theodore Munney feigned fascination with a pair of elderly women, their dress marking them as out-of-staters as distinctly as if they'd been in tribal costume, forging fearlessly into traffic towards a yard sale. Calvin Bergdoll's children were very busy. They didn't often come home. When they were growing up, he'd had a whole stable of yard tenders, Calvin had taught them the value of work. That accounted for why they were so successful now.

Theodore made a muffled noise about a flue fire.

“I pay you four dollars an hour and buy you breakfasts.” Theodore Munney opened the glove box, toppling out a roll of toilet paper and a Baggie containing a half-eaten peanut butter sandwich.

“Now, Theodore. Does that sandwich belong to you?”

Theodore shoved the sandwich back into the glove and slammed it shut. Then he straightened at the waist, stretching his legs as far as they could go, and dug into his pocket. He wrenched out his fist. Calvin peered without turning his head. Theodore spread his fingers.

The two musket balls Justin Ripper had given him.

Theodore Munney snapped his palm over them, dropped out of Blackie's door, and pulleted to the BP without looking back.

Within Calvin's brain sludge rose a spiraling funnel cloud, the musket balls dancing on top it like plastic popcorn in a lottery bubble machine. Cal jiggled his head, then cocked it to one side and thumped it as though he were clearing water from an ear.
Happy thoughts
.
Happy thoughts
. He gripped the steering wheel and narrowed his eyes.

Friday
.
This is Friday
. Calvin reset his cap, shoved some headliner fabric into a slit, and left the lot.

Because the Senior Center didn't serve lunches on Friday—
and whose idea was that, and was it laziness or stinge
?—Calvin usually visited his stroke victim friend to see what his helper had fixed. From the street where he parked, Cal could see Petie and his wife and the helper all sitting in the carport around the hood of Petie's Cavalier taking in the fresh May air. Petie's little terrier dog, Picky, sprung from lap to lap, darting his tongue at lips, and when he spied Calvin, he raced to him as well, scrabbling at his pants cuffs. The wife and the helper hailed Cal's approach with less enthusiasm.

“Oh. How are you, Cal?”
Well, it's not them I'm here to see
.

He stood behind Petie's wheelchair and placed a hand on Petie's shoulder. Petie smelled like baby powder. He did not turn around. The ladies continued their conversation, ignoring Calvin, although he noticed that the helper was carrying on her half of the dialogue as she backed towards the kitchen inside the sliding glass door. Cal
patted Petie, a scraping motion across the top of his back. Petie didn't respond. In Lions Club, he and Petie had shot napkin spitwads at each other during speakers, catapulted butter pats off forks like the other Lions with healthy senses of humor. All that had ended with the finality of . . . yes, with the finality of a stroke, at the arrival of Helen Smithster.

“Here you go, Cal.” Petie's helper placed a plastic picnic plate before him on the hood. Calvin squinted. A tuna sandwich.
And why hasn't she prepared something hot?
The Petulant Cousin from the City.
What pleasure does Petie have besides food anymore, and why does she think she's drawing a paycheck?
The helper, Peggy used-to-be Powell—Calvin couldn't recall who she was married to this time—had graduated from high school with Cal but now seemed a good bit younger than himself.
Well
.
Hasn't gone through half of what I have
. Now a female neighbor dog on the loose was sniffing with gusto the shrunken privates of the neutered Picky. Peggy looked at her kindly. “Honey,” she told her, “he can't have no intersection.”

I'd like to introduce that young lady to Mr
.
Silas
.

“I think Helen has a real good chance,” Nonie was saying.

Calvin's ears iced over. “Of what?”

Nonie looked a little surprised. “Getting Knight of Olde Berker.”

Calvin's plastic plate collided with the fender.

“Oh, I don't even know who the nominees are,” said Peggy formerly Powell.

“I didn't tell you? Lloyd Hines, and Maribel Summers, and Randolph McDouglas, Helen, of course,” Nonie ticked them off on her fingers, “and . . . let's see, I'm forgetting someone . . . But I think Helen has the best chance of winning, everything she's done for this community. Especially after the Lions Club highway cleanup, all the organization and work that took.” Nonie wagged an awestruck head. “They say almost every child in the county participated in that.”

Peggy nodded. “Yes, she's made a real contribution. She certainly has. Why, Bygone Days itself might not even happen if she wasn't on the steering committee. Are you gonna get to the knighting this evening?”

Nonie shook her head, tipping her eyes towards Petie. “No, but we're gonna try to make the parade this afternoon.”

From a great distance, Calvin Bergdoll sensed his legs unfolding. His joints as stiff as crusted sugar, his hands the temperature of freezer trays. His plastic plate slid to the carport floor with a spin and a ring. Picky vaulted from Nonie's lap to snuffle up bread crumbs and tuna seepage while Calvin's feet floundered off concrete and onto a softer green substance, Blackie now looming larger and larger before him.

“Leaving Cal?” Peggy called after him.

Helen Smithster, Knight of Olde Berker? Helen Smithster, Knight of Olde Berker? Helen Smithster, Knight of Olde Berker
.
Helen Smithster, Knight of Olde Berker
. How could they, how could anyone, how could—her not over sixty years old and having moved to Berker County only thirty years ago when his genes had been here for generations and his body for sixty-eight years, Helen Smithster, who talked like her tongue lived in her nose, how could someone with an accent be Knight of Olde Berker?
A Frozen Child
. . . what was that phrase in the published diary of local Civil War hero Lt. Samuel White regarding an enemy he'd encountered during a watch? “A Frozen Child of the North,” yes, that was it exactly, A Frozen Child of the North and a Republican as Knight of Olde Berker, Calvin Bergdoll visioned the surface of Indian Bluff cemetery ripple like an earthquake and his late mother and departed father each thrust an arm through their respective coffins and clasp hands in grief.

Now Blackie was cruising the streets of Berker at a pointed fifteen miles an hour, Calvin reveling in the frustration of the tailgaters,
gunning the engine and spurting ahead when one tried to pass him on Bluebonnet Lane.
Helen Smithster, Knight of Olde Berker? Helen Smithster, Knight of Olde Berker?
He aimed Blackie's right front tire at an errant balloon and its explosion startled a family of four back to the curb like a covey of quail. He crept onto Main Street, its banners and its craft booths, its overpriced food stalls, nothing for him, stray reenactors comparing rifles and facial hair, and there was the spitting image of Floodie parked at the Moose, but that could not be, not this early in the day and with grass to be cut and hedges to be weeded.
Helen Smithster, Knight of Olde Berker
.
Helen Smithster, Knight of Olde Berker
. Blackie leaked a few more staples, and more fabric swagged down on Cal's Almost Heaven cap; he swiped it away, it drooped back, he swiped it away. He was an old man, it was true, with less energy now for civic contributions, yet he still cared for Theodore Munney and other county less fortunates, he still visited shut-ins, he was just coming from one now.
Fifty-five years old
.
I bet she's not yet fifty-five years old
. Gawkers choked the sidewalks, and this a Friday afternoon, where did out-of-staters get their money and time anyway, was West Virginia the only state that had to work?

He found himself steering towards the community building where his wife tended the Fine Arts Room instead of him. He would slip in and surprise her, reap a little relief from picking at her, just a bit, her anger and resentment better than nothing. Actually, better than a whole lot of things, plus they sometimes had little eats at such exhibits. But now he saw that the community building parking lot had been converted into a full-blown food court, every space occupied with some prohibitively expensive delectable, kettle corn, apple dumplings, Italian sausage sandwiches. A car that had been stalled behind Blackie roared past on Calvin's right, trying to teach him a lesson with his muffler, but Calvin did not care because he'd taught his lesson first.

And then Blackie must have taken the helm because before Calvin could plan it, they swung into the library's small parking lot where Calvin took the single spot left, handicapped, well, he'd earned it. He reeled through the automatic doors and into the reference section where, to his bewilderment and then his fury, he discovered an interloping antique exhibit a-crawl with even more gawkers, this, this, what Berker was coming to, not even the library a place of peace, and he charged on, ignoring the two or three antique fans who greeted him, and into the empty preschoolers' section. There in a darkish back corner Calvin Bergdoll collapsed across three beanbag chairs.

HE WAS AWAKENED
by the whispers of children.

“Is he dead?”

Under his lowered Almost Heaven bill, Calvin raised his eyelids just enough that he could see through his lashes but no one could see through them.

“I don't know. Is his chest moving?”

A head dropped down towards Cal's plaid torso, the hair in a peculiar patches. Shingles. The boy he'd seen only a few hours ago at single-mother apartments.

“I don't think so,” he whispered.

The other child waved in front of Calvin's face a damp palm creased with black, the tiny nails on the back of that palm a chipped purple. When she stepped back, Calvin saw that she was even younger than the shingle-headed boy.

“Let's see what's in his pockets!”

The boy, beyond Calvin's view, mumbled, “Uhhh. I don't . . .”

“C'mon, Aiven! Funnel cakes!”

Calvin held his breath, commanded every muscle still.
This
was the future of Berker County,
this
the fallout of a Frozen Child of the North
as Knight of Olde Berker—child pickpockets in public libraries, along with dollar-twenty-nine sausage biscuits and nobody capable of cutting grass, and limp across his beanbags Calvin played long-suffering possum, sacrificing himself for the confirmation of ruin.