The Late Child (27 page)

“It's pretty suspicious that Rosie got in the Dumpster to change clothes,” Pat remarked.

“She's homeless,” Eddie said. “She could have changed clothes in our hotel room, but she didn't know us then. There's nothing wrong with changing clothes in a Dumpster if you're homeless.”

“Well, he's made another point,” Laurie said. “Maybe we better go over and help mediate this quarrel.”

“I'm old enough to know better than to stick my hand in a dogfight,” Neddie said.

“They're not fighting now anyway,” Pat said. “Sheba just locked him in a Dumpster.”

Sheba then took a sizable padlock out of her purse and padlocked the Dumpster.

“Why did she do that?” Eddie asked. “Now Otis can't get out. I asked him to go see the Statue of Liberty with us. I don't want to go without him—it might make him sad.”

“That's a nice thought, Eddie,” Harmony said.

“I always have nice thoughts,” Eddie said. “The only times I don't is when Eli steals my lunch.”

“It's going to be a pretty crowded cab ride, over to the ferry,” Laurie said.

“No cab, we talked to cousin who owns school bus,” Omar said. “He can take us all, very modest fee.”

“I better go talk to Sheba,” Eddie said. “She'll listen to me. I have to explain to her that she has to let Otis out so he can go to the Statue of Liberty with us.”

“I would say you're just the man for the job, Eddie,” Laurie said.

Harmony saw that Laurie was sad—it showed in her eyes. She had a big mouth and a nice smile but above the smile were two sad brown eyes.

Eddie ran across the parking lot again, traveling at his usual fleet pace.

“I never met anyone quite like Eddie,” Laurie said. “What did you do before you had him?”

“I can't remember very well,” Harmony said. “It seems like I've always had Eddie.”

“You're not supposed to give kids too much responsibility too young,” Neddie said. “It messes them up.”

“Yeah, they might not get to enjoy their childhood to the full,” Pat said.

“They don't think I'm a good mother,” Harmony explained. “They think I give Eddie too much responsibility.”

“I don't think it's a question of
giving
Eddie responsibility,” Laurie said. “He just seems to take it and run with it. Not many kids that age would realize that it hurts people to be left out.”

She said it with a sad note in her voice. Harmony could imagine that being gay might have caused Laurie to be left out, particularly if she had discovered that she was gay in high school, when almost any behavior that was a little unusual could cause a person to be left out.

“Eddie's like the man of the house, and he's only five,” Pat said. “Somehow that don't seem right.”

“Pat, it
isn't
right—why do you have to pick on me in front of Laurie?” Harmony said. “If I could find some grown man to be head of our house don't you think I'd let him? I just don't happen to have a boyfriend right now. That's the only reason it seems like Eddie's the head of the house. But there isn't a house, and there wouldn't be anything to put in it if there was one.”

“All her stuff fell into a canyon and we left it,” Neddie explained.

“It fell into the Canyon de Chelly,” Harmony said. “That's in Arizona.”

“I know, I've been there,” Laurie said. “My uncle's a park ranger. He worked there for a while.”

Down by the Dumpster, Eddie could be seen remonstrating with Sheba. Once in a while Eddie put his ear to the Dumpster, indicating that Otis was being allowed to participate in the conversation too—at least with Eddie.

Then Sheba unlocked the padlock and attempted to raise the lid of the Dumpster; she had been strong enough to push it over from the rear, but she wasn't strong enough to raise it. Several times she gave it a push and it went up a little way, before clanging back down.

“Hope Otis don't stick his head up,” Laurie said. “He'd be Dumpstered for sure.”

There was no sign of Otis, however.

“I think we better go help now,” Laurie said. “I don't know how good Eddie is at taking orders. He might try to climb in, and get Dumpstered himself.”

She started across the parking lot, slowly.

“I like her but she sure is sad,” Neddie said.

“Well, she lost the same person I lost,” Harmony said.

“Very beautiful girl, Abdul should marry her,” Salah said. “Girl with gentle manner—make a good wife for Abdul.”

“I don't want to marry—I want to go to Atlantic City, get rich,” Abdul said.

“She's not interested in men, Salah,” Pat pointed out.

Harmony started walking too. She didn't feel like listening to her sisters explain to Omar and Salah that Laurie was gay. Since leaving Las Vegas she had felt a growing need to stay close to everybody: to her sisters, to Eddie, to old friends and new friends. Of course, it was no longer possible to stay close in the physical sense to Gary and Jessie and Myrtle. But she could stay close to her sisters and to Eddie, and now there was also Laurie, not to mention Omar and Salah and Abdul—Sheba and maybe
even Otis. The thing that was happening that might become a little bit of a problem was that she only seemed to feel like adding people; she didn't want to subtract anyone in her immediate circle, not just at that time. The reason that could be a problem was that there were only so many people who could be fitted into a taxi or a motel room. Very likely there were only so many people who could be fitted into a life, too. For most of her years in Las Vegas she had depended on only a few people, not counting other showgirls, who sort of had a tendency to come and go, particularly after the casino scene improved in Reno and Tahoe.

Now, though, she had the feeling that she didn't want to let a single person go. She wanted to keep adding, for a while. Maybe Omar's cousin with the school bus would rent it to her for a small fee, while she added people to her life. None of the people, nor all of them together, could be expected to fill the gap left by Pepper; but having a lot of them, surrounding her life with their lives, made her feel a little safer—if nothing else she could distract herself with their problems, their foibles, their little sorrows and little dramas. It was better than just thinking always of what had been lost, or of what might have been.

“Don't you think there is a limit?” she asked Laurie, when she caught up with her.

“A limit to what?” Laurie asked, turning.

“A limit to how many people I can collect so I won't be without company?” Harmony said. “We only got here last night and I already have five or six new people that I know.”

Laurie stopped and looked at her.

“I guess you can collect as many as you can find,” she said. “The main problem with sort of letting it grow is transportation. Maybe the guy who is supposed to bring the bus is our solution for the moment. If he actually shows up to take us to the ferry, then I guess a busload is probably your limit.”

Harmony walked on and Laurie linked her arm in hers.

“Do you mind?” she asked.

“No, Laurie,” Harmony said. “I don't mind.”

“I guess I have the opposite way of dealing with it,” Laurie said. “I've been mostly alone since Pepper died. I find even talking to people very wearying. Some friend will come by and I'll think I'm glad to see her at first and then within a few minutes I'm so tired I can hardly talk. It just wears me out to be with even my best friends now.”

“Laurie, you really don't have to go to the Statue of Liberty,” Harmony said. “Not if it's that bad.” There was a weariness in Laurie's face that made her feel that she should make helpful suggestions, if she could.

“Oh, no, I don't mean you guys,” Laurie said. “I love being with you guys. It's like the young give me energy or something. I mean, just being around Eddie for a few minutes charges me up. Sometimes I volunteer at a day care and it works the same way. When I'm with the kids I'm hardly depressed at all. Energy just sort of flows off them, or something.

“I don't know why I'm telling
you
that, though,” Laurie added. “You live with Eddie.”

“He's up on the motor scooter and he doesn't want to get off,” Harmony said. “Sheba had to grab him. He must have really liked Otis.”

Indeed, Eddie and Sheba were faced off in the parking lot, and the lid of the Dumpster was still closed. Harmony and Laurie strolled over. Eddie did not appear to be angry, but he did appear to be sad. The look he wore was the look he only got when his sensibilities had been bruised.

“Bright, don't you cry on me,” Sheba said. “I didn't mean to hurt your feelings.”

“But you did—you made me sad,” Eddie said. “I want Otis to be my friend.”

“I didn't say he can't be your friend,” Sheba said, squatting down so as to bring her face closer to Eddie's. “I just said I ain't ready to let him out of the Dumpster yet.”

“You called him a creep and you said he had bat teeth,”
Eddie said. “Those words aren't very nice. If he's my friend you shouldn't say such words about him.”

Sheba looked at Harmony.

Eddie's lip trembled. His eyes had tears in them.

“What do you do with him when he gets like this?” Sheba asked.

“She's my mom, she doesn't make me sad,” Eddie said. “Only other people make me sad.”

Harmony picked up her son. “Eddie, I do too make you sad, sometimes,” she said. “Remember when I made you leave Las Vegas without saying goodbye to your friends?”

Eddie didn't speak; his lip still trembled and his eyes were filled with tears.

“That made you sad,” Harmony said, again.

“It still makes me sad,” Eddie admitted. “It made me sad because it was rude.”

“He's right,” Harmony said. “It
was
rude. We should have waited till morning to leave. I guess I was just too upset to wait.”

“I miss Eli very much,” Eddie said. “I really miss Eli.”

“Aw,” Laurie said.

“I miss Otis, too,” Eddie said, tears on his cheeks. “I wish you'd let him out of the Dumpster now.”

Sheba was so horrified by Eddie's tears that she looked as if she might cry herself.

“You got it, Bright, he's coming out,” Sheba said. “Somebody want to help me get the lid up?”

“Sure, I'll help you,” Laurie said.

Neddie and Pat helped too, and soon the lid was up. Eddie wiped his wet cheeks with the back of his hand and a smile immediately came back to his face.

“That's nice,” he said. “I'll just dry my tears and we'll go help Otis out.”

“He don't need no help,” Sheba said. “He's in and out of that Dumpster all day and all night.”

“But you made him a prisoner, he might be scared,” Eddie said. He climbed back up on the yellow motor scooter and peered into the Dumpster.

“Hi,” he said, to Otis. “Do you want to come out and meet my mother?”

A very small black man, with a soft face, hair that was combed straight up, and a wispy Fu Manchu mustache, peeked cautiously over the edge of the Dumpster.

“Hi, white folks,” he said.

“Ain't you gonna say hi to me?” Sheba asked immediately. “I'm here, but I ain't white folks.”

“No, because you call me too many names,” Otis said. “I ain't as bad as you say I am.”

“You worse,” Sheba said.

But she walked over to the Dumpster and helped her husband out.

“Baby, I didn't mean to make you so mad,” Otis said, looking at Sheba anxiously. His front teeth
were
rather pointed. Harmony decided it was probably that his family couldn't afford an orthodontist.

“I always making her mad,” he said to the group, with a little smile. “Don't know how it happens.”

“It happens because you don't never think of nobody but yourself, you little jerk,” Sheba said.

“Jerk isn't a very nice word to call Otis,” Eddie said. “I want everybody to say nice words, just for one day.”

“That's a good idea, Ed,” Otis said. “Sheba always be saying these ugly things to me. It kinda gets me down, you know.”

She turned her back and walked off, into the center of the parking lot. The boy whose job it was to gather up the grocery carts was just coming through the lot with an even longer conga line of carts. He was pushing hard, and the carts were undulating like a long shiny snake. On impulse, as the carts were passing, Sheba jumped on top of them.

The boy pushing the carts was not pleased.

“Get off, girl,” he said. “You making me wobble.”

The parking lot was slanted slightly. When Sheba jumped on the carts, the whole long line of grocery carts began to veer downhill, toward an exit onto a busy street.

“Uh-oh, Sheba's gone wild again, she's headed right for the exit,” Otis said.

He began to race across the parking lot, angling so he would be able to intersect the line of carts before they shot into the street. Just then the line of carts broke in two. The boy pushing the carts was left with about twenty, and Sheba sailed along on the rest. She managed to get to her feet, and did a little dance as she sped past the pay phones. The pimps at the bank of phones looked around in amazement.

“She's like Lillian Gish on the ice floe,” Laurie said.

Then she started running herself, to help Otis. The two of them fell in beside the carts and began to slow them down. They turned them just enough to make them miss the exit to the street, and coasted them to a halt behind the Dumpster.

“That's fun,” Eddie said. “I wish Sheba had taken me with her.”

“Yeah, and if she had, and if those carts had gone into the street, you'd have been squashed like a bug,” Pat said.