The Late Child (43 page)

“Pat, please sit down, it's not that important, it was just a comment,” Harmony said.

“See, your big mouth's got you in trouble again,” the man's wife said. She looked up and smiled at Pat, from underneath her Orioles baseball cap.

“Why, I just asked about the puppy,” the old man said. “It's not every day I meet somebody who's been on the Letterman show.”

“It's not every day I have to sit in front of an old fart who doesn't know how to mind his own business, either,” Pat said. “Maybe I wouldn't be so aggravated if I wasn't on my way to a state I hate.”

Then she sat down.

“What's wrong with Texas?” the old man asked, in a quieter tone. He seemed to be addressing the question to his wife, but Pat heard it and twisted around in her seat, in order to answer.

“What's wrong with it is that it's filled with nosy old turds like you,” Pat said.

“I told you your big mouth would get you in trouble,” his wife said, still reading.

The old man winked at Eddie—he didn't seem very abashed.

“We're on this plane with a lot of tough women, ain't we, sonny?” he said.

Eddie ignored him and sat down.

“What about
Alligators All Around?
” he asked, turning to Laurie.

“You know
Alligators All Around
backwards and forwards,” Laurie informed him. “You've known it backwards and forwards for years.”

“Well, I still want you to read it to me,” Eddie said. “It's just a tiny book.”

While Laurie was reading to Eddie, Harmony dozed off. She had a dream in which she was giving a birthday party for Pepper, and Ross remembered to come. The odd part about the dream was that Eddie and Laurie were at the birthday party too. Pepper and Eddie blew out the candles together. The dream was still flickering, like a TV that somebody had forgotten to turn off, when the plane landed in Dallas. Eddie was sound asleep, Laurie had to carry him, but he woke up while they were traveling around the big airport on a little train that was supposed to take them to the rent car place. It was late at night—the airport looked eerie because of the white lights everywhere.

“Mom, did we land on the moon?” Eddie asked, when he was
awake enough to notice that they were on a train at night, in an eerie place.

“No, but it would be more fun if we were on the moon, honey,” Pat said.

“At least we're only fifty miles from Oklahoma,” Neddie reminded them. “The air will be smelling sweeter, pretty soon.”

“I never thought I'd be in Texas,” Laurie said. She was a little nervous.

“Well, I don't think we are in Texas,” Eddie said. “I think we're on the moon. I hope we see some moon people pretty soon.”

Iggy began to race up and down the aisles of the little train, yipping his loudest.

“He doesn't like the moon,” Eddie observed. “He wants to return to earth because there is
no
dog food on the moon. Can you blame him?”

“I can blame him for making that noise, I got a hangover,” Pat said. “There must have been something wrong with that vodka—I don't usually get this hung over on six or eight drinks.”

Harmony felt like she had jumped out of the plane, just like in her fantasy, only instead of landing on a peaceful country road somewhere she had landed at a weird place that
was
a little like a place on another planet. The train seemed to be taking them along an endless track, under the bright white lights. The only other people who had been on the train at all were two or three Asians who gave Iggy strange looks.

“I think those Asians wanted to eat Iggy,” Eddie remarked, after they got out.

“Airline food probably got to them, if they flew all the way from China,” Pat said. “Even a rat terrier might look good if you'd been on a plane that long.”

The train finally stopped, Neddie's Visa card was not maxed out, and soon they were all piled into a blue Cadillac—since it was a late hour Neddie decided to splurge—and racing up a freeway toward Oklahoma. Eddie, wide awake, suddenly remembered
that his Aunt Pat had called Iggy a rat terrier. He demanded to know why.

“Because he's the kind of dog you keep around the house to kill rats,” Pat said.

“That's not very nice,” Eddie said. “Iggy doesn't kill rats.”

“Just because he hasn't yet doesn't mean he wouldn't if he got the chance,” Pat said.

“He wouldn't, because he would want it to be his friend,” Eddie said.

“Just don't mention the Discovery Channel to me right now, Eddie,” Pat said. “If you do I'm going to scream and jump out of this car.”

“Discovery Channel, Discovery Channel, Discovery Channel,” Eddie said, grinning.

“Oh, Eddie, why do you have to call my bluff when I'm hung over?” Pat said. “Couldn't you let your old auntie win, just once?”

“Discovery Channel, Discovery Channel,” Eddie said.

When Harmony opened her eyes her father was looking at her through the window of the rent car. The window was down—she could smell the prairie breeze that Neddie was so fond of. Her father was bending a little, his elbows on the door of the car. He was looking at her over the frame of his old spectacles, with his kind eyes. He had on a blue, short-sleeved work shirt; his arms were deeply freckled from the sun. When he looked at her Harmony remembered that no one's eyes were as kind as her father's.

“How are you, darling?” her father asked—behind him stood her parents' house. Part of the lawn had been mown, and part was shaggy. The freshly mown grass smelled sweet.

“Oh, Daddy, Daddy,” Harmony said—a flood of tears came out. She tried to reach through the window and hug her father, he tried to reach through the window, but it didn't work, the window was too small. Finally she got out of the car and let her father squeeze her in his thin arms. He was so skinny she could feel his ribs when he squeezed.

“Dad, you're skinny, do you eat well?” Harmony asked, when she stepped back a little, to look at him. She thought she smelled a whiff of whiskey on his breath.

“You aren't drinking, are you?” she asked, before he could speak.

“I just drink when I'm mowing the lawn—boredom,” her father said. “If I have to follow a dern lawn mower around and around, I'd rather be drunk when I'm doing it.”

“Daddy, what if the mower cut your foot off?” Harmony asked—she was having paranoid fantasies.

“Oh well, that would be the end of me if I cut my foot off,” her father said. “Ethel would just let me die. She can't remember nine-one-one anymore, you know.”

“She can't?” Harmony asked.

“Nope,” her father said. “We had a grease fire in the kitchen
yesterday and I yelled at her to call nine-one-one. She dialed her sister in Altus and talked for twenty minutes. If the fire truck hadn't been passing by on the way back from a grass fire there wouldn't be no house for you to come back to, sweetheart.”

“Oh, Aunt Etta?” Harmony asked. “What did she talk to Aunt Etta about?”

“Menopause,” her father said. “Smoke pouring out the windows and she took the Portaphone and went to the bathroom and talked about menopause.”

“Momma's in her eighties,” Harmony said. “What's so interesting about menopause?”

“The way she sees it, she ain't never paused,” her father said. “I paused, but she didn't. That's been one of her main topics of conversation for the last forty years.”

“What about Aunt Etta—did she pause?” Harmony asked.

“Etta's crazy as a bedbug, always has been,” her father said. “I have no idea what her feelings are on the subject of menopause.”

“How about Uncle Mo?” Harmony asked—it was amazing how good the green grass smelled. Mowing part of it seemed to have released more smell into the air.

“Oh, Mo's dead—died back in 'seventy-four, I think it was. I remember the year because he died not long after Billy got arrested for the first time. I remember your mother stopped by the jail and left Billy some bacon before we drove over to Altus for Mo's funeral.”

Harmony felt a twinge of guilt—Aunt Etta had made her cookies and let her stay up late, long ago in her girlhood. Now Uncle Mo, who took the screen off the bedroom window in their farmhouse so he could spit tobacco out it, had been dead for nearly twenty years and she herself had not been aware of it. She wondered what Aunt Etta would think if she sent her a sympathy card twenty years late—maybe it would be a case of “Better late than later,” a saying that was a favorite of Gary's. In Gary's case it was a useful saying because he was always late. But Aunt Etta was not Gary—she might take offense that Harmony had waited twenty years to acknowledge the passing of her husband.
It was one more example of Harmony not being too good at keeping up family ties.

“Sty, get in here, what are you two doing standing down there and what business does Neddie think she has renting a Cadillac?” her mother yelled, from just outside the back door of the house. Harmony waved at her mother—she seemed tinier, but she was wearing lipstick. Eddie had come outside with his grandmother. He suddenly spotted a small box turtle, making its way through the new-mown grass—he ran right over to it. Iggy ran with him and began to yip at the turtle, employing his fiercest yip.

“Mom, can I pick it up?” Eddie yelled. “I want it to be my pet—it's very small.”

Before Harmony could answer, Eddie picked the turtle up and held it off the ground as high as he could, which wasn't very high. Iggy continued to yip, between jumps at the turtle.

“Mom, Iggy's jealous, what do I do?” Eddie yelled.

“Put that filthy thing down, don't you know old turtles tinkle on little boys, where was you raised, anyway?” Ethel said.

Eddie glanced at her as if she might be a troll he had happened to meet—actually, his grandmother was not much larger than a troll—and brought the turtle to his mother.

“It hasn't peed yet,” he said. “Hi, Grandpa.”

“Get up here, I ain't coming there,” Ethel yelled. “My shoes will get wet in that wet grass and the toes will curl up.”

“Ethel, the grass isn't wet,” Sty informed her. “We're in a drought—that's why there was a grass fire yesterday, over at the Hilburn place.”

“Oh hush, my shoes would curl up,” Ethel said. “Tell Eddie to put that filthy turtle down.”

“It is not filthy, it's my pet,” Eddie yelled at his grandmother. He employed almost as much force as he had used on the airplane, when he was trying to get his aunts to stop bickering.

“Even if it was filthy we could wash it with the hose,” Sty said, winking at Eddie. “I wonder why womenfolks want everything to be so clean.”

“Well, I don't know why,” Eddie said, pleasantly. “Maybe we
should wash my turtle off with the hose anyway, Grandpa. Maybe he's a little filthy, inside his shell.”

“Okay, let's do it,” Sty said, with a wink at his daughter. “Then let's have a big breakfast and then let's go fishing, how's that strike you?”

“Well, it doesn't strike me but it interests me,” Eddie said. “Will we scuba dive and look at the fish before we catch one, Grandpa?”

“No, we'll just drop a hook in the water and hope for the best,” his grandfather said.

“Get that boy out of that wet grass, he'll have chiggers up to his neck,” Ethel yelled, still standing on the back step.

“She can't get it through her head that it's a dry year,” Sty said. “A chigger would starve in weather like this.”

Then he looked at Eddie.

“Scuba diving wouldn't work because the water's too brown,” he said. “A fish could be two inches from your nose and you wouldn't see it—water's too brown.”

“Well, you can't see through brown and besides we have no scuba equipment,” Eddie said. He went off with his grandfather to hose down the turtle. Iggy had worn himself out, from leaping and yipping. He tagged along behind Eddie and Sty, looking like a tired little dog.

“Now where are they going?” Ethel asked. “Neddie's about got the pancakes ready.”

“Momma, they've gone to wash the turtle,” Harmony said. Despite what her father said, the new-mown grass was a little wet. Probably the moisture was dew. She remembered that in her girlhood the grass had been very dewy in the mornings. She could look out her bedroom window and see the sunshine sparkling on the dew, almost every morning. On the way to the school bus she would carry her socks and shoes in her hands, until she got to the road. Even in those early years her mother had been worried that even a little bit of moisture would make shoes curl up.

“Your hair's a mess, want me to make you an appointment
with Barbara?” her mother asked, just before they hugged. Harmony had to bend over to make the hug work—her mother had always been short but now she seemed even shorter. Why is it always my hair? she thought, trying to remember a homecoming that had not begun with her mother making a comment about her hair—usually a negative comment, too. Even in the days when she had had really beautiful hair it had never been beautiful enough for her mother, or, at least, it had never been done the way her mother thought it ought to be done. The first words out of her mother's mouth were always an offer to get her a quick appointment at the beauty parlor in Tarwater.

“Who's Barbara?” Harmony asked, just to have something to say.

“Well, she does me and Neddie,” her mother said. “Pat's stuck-up, she goes to some fancy place in Tulsa where they charge forty-eight dollars just to ruin her looks.”

“Mom, can't we eat first, we drove all the way from Dallas,” Harmony said.

“Suit yourself, but Barbara's hard to get, she ain't the best hairdresser in Tarwater for nothing,” Ethel said, in an annoyed tone. She had never liked to have her suggestions disregarded.