The Beans of Egypt, Maine Read online

  The tall woman sees the Lincoln and sighs reedily in her long neck. She hangs up diapers and her own huge socks. She is barefoot. Her long, silvery toes pry at the dry earth. She racks her tallness to a further tallness to reach the clothes-line that is up out of anybody else’s reach, screwed to the back of Beans’ Variety Store, as taut and important as a power-company cable. Her hard fingers march along this rope.

  The Lincoln comes to a halt at the edge of her grass. She turns her head. Around her head and shoulders, the big socks and gauzy diapers suspend without motion. She holds three clothespins in her teeth. She is so eerily thin, a Tinkertoy woman, eyes in shadow, bare feet and long, long fingers, with a knowing beyond genius, beyond any man’s wish to fathom her. The Lincoln’s automatic window whispers down. The tall woman pulls the clothespins from her mouth and goes to the edge of her grass.

  “Miss Bean,” the voice within the car says.

  She nods, steps closer.

  “How are you tonight?” the voice asks.

  She squares her narrow shoulders. “Fine.”

  “I have something here I picked up . . .” The hands put into her hands a box of glazed donuts. “. . . for your kids. I thought they might like them.”

  She looks down at them.

  The man chuckles.

  She says, “Thank you.”

  The dark smell of the Lincoln’s interior embraces her.

  “You’re entirely welcome,” says the voice. “It’s something I’ve wanted to do . . . for your kids, your young ones.”

  His arm stretched along the top of the door shows a light sleeve. He fingers the flawless paint. She squints at his cuff links shaped like little eagles. He has a wedding band and another ring, a school ring she believes is a ruby. His hands look brand-new, never used.

  Every night after that, the Lincoln stops at the edge of the tall woman’s yard. Sometimes, she sends out one of her two oldest children, but usually she goes out there herself to get the gift of donuts, turnovers, or fig squares. The man has his arm out the window on warm nights, now and then his jacket is off, on the seat, the sleeves of his damp light-color shirt rolled to the elbow. His face looking up at her is silvery, eyes that never flicker, watchful, fishlike. Sometimes, if there is a wind down off the mountain, the tall woman’s housedress bends around her body. And the man in the Lincoln watches this eerie thing happen.

  But nothing changes after this.

  Every night is the same. The donuts are carried into the wee blue house, and the forest-green Lincoln swings away.

  6

  IT IS NOON and she sets the metal tub out in the yard because it has just sprung a leak. She fills it with teakettles of hot water and the steam heaves up, climbs among the branches of a poplar and its new coin-shaped leaves. It is the first really hot day of the year. The hens make a frenzy in the sand. One of the tall woman’s two older children sits on the back step in cut-off jeans, turning a red felt cowboy hat in his fingers. His chest is narrow, and the dark nipples are as close together on his body as his eyes are on his face. The tall woman steps around this child and drags a trash bag of laundry from the house.

  “Ain’t nuthin’ ta do,” mutters the child.

  “It’s a hot one,” says Roberta Bean.

  She squirts pink dish soap into the tub and washes her two housedresses. What she has on today she got at a SALE. It used to belong to a much thicker woman. It is pink paisley with buttons shaped like little hearts. The breeze kicks up and the new pink dress twists and turns like nothing is in it.

  The babies are in the house with the TV. You can hear strains of As the World Turns through the open door, but the babies are quiet babies.

  When the logging truck parks on the shoulder of the road, the tall woman doesn’t stop what she’s doing. She squeezes the water from a dress and drops it in a cardboard box. She pulls a crib sheet from the trash bag.

  Beal Bean comes around the corner of the tacky blue house with his dark blue workshirt tied around his waist. His T-shirt is messy. He steams like the laundry tub steams. Sun is on one half of his body, shade the other. Deer flies swing near his head.

  He carries a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. A Thermos. He stands by the steps, unwrapping his sandwich. He watches the tall woman. She ignores him. She bears down upon the sheet, water heaving out of the tub onto her feet.

  Beal sits on the top step with the child and eats his sandwich, hunkering over it with his body as if somebody might try for the sandwich. After he is finished, the child with the close-together nipples and close-together eyes gets up and brings Beal Bean a honey-dipped donut on the palm of his hand. Beal’s beard comes to a point now and is thickening. The diesel smell of the idling truck moves around the corner of the house.

  Beal eats the donut. Sips coffee. He and the child watch the tall woman wash clothes. Beal’s eyes strike the tall woman’s back like rocks pitched hard.

  After he is done with the donut, the child goes back in and gets him another. And then after that another—each one more glistening, more sticky, more golden, more plump.

  Moon on Cole Deveau

  THE GAME warden, Cole Deveau, parks his new gray truck on the shoulder of Seavy Road and gets out. He is wearing mirror cop glasses, although there’s no sun. His pistol lays on his thigh. It is a cold, hard, damp day, the hardwoods iron color, still leafless. But the logging road is soupy. Mud splats the pants of the warden’s uniform as he hobbles along among the ruts, headed toward the sound of Rubie Bean’s logging truck loading up.

  A red squirrel rustles the leaves, then scolds the warden explosively.

  The warden’s neck is as big as a chopping block. Black and gray hairs stick out along this neck like the businesslike whiskers of a cat. He’s broad-shouldered, big-bellied. His weight makes sucking in the mud.

  When Cole Deveau reaches the landing, Rubie Bean’s oldest boy is in the cage of a ratty mud-splattered skidder, drinking an Old Milwaukee. The boy is just as mud-splattered as the skidder. He sees the warden coming and his cold blue eyes grow wide.

  Over the warden’s mirror sunglasses reflections of overhead limbs slide like protracting claws.

  He walks straight to the open door of Rubie’s truck and jumps aboard. The enormous growl of the loader on the back is like a wall, and so Rubie has no idea the warden has come, so he keeps working, his fox-color eyes on the jaws of the boom.

  Cole Deveau pulls Rubie’s rifle out from under the seat and stands on the running board with his legs apart, looking into the loading gate.

  The boy tosses the Old Milwaukee empty into the bushes, pounces from the skidder, moves toward the warden. Another Bean boy, limbing a log over at the far edge of where they are yarding, works in a T-shirt, his neck red and vaporous. He has not seen the warden. Rubie still works the boom, the log sliding through air, making a hawklike shadow.

  On the floor and dash and seat of Rubie’s truck are the uncountable ready cartridges. The warden rolls them in the fingers of his hairy hand. Then he jacks those inside the rifle out onto the ground.

  As Steve Bean approaches, the warden jumps down from the cab and shoves past him, strides to the back of the truck. Rubie’s eyes widen. Cole Deveau squares his shoulders, points at Rubie.

  Rubie’s ruddy face drains white.

  The other boy turns, sees the warden, stands with his saw idling. The boys, like Rubie, are broad, bow-legged, and dark, tall as the warden, perhaps taller. All around is the sound of sucking mud as they raise their feet.

  “Move!!” Rubie bellows. The muscles in his neck twist. The suspended log creaks, slips from the boom, and rolls thunderously toward the warden’s feet. Deveau jumps back, his face coloring.

  Rubie pushes his felt hat back on his head. He is grinning broadly with many twisted teeth, the black mustache hanging heavy as a pelt. “Sor-ree!” he sings out. Then stands. He climbs the high half-load tigerishly slow, pauses to light a cigarette, then jumps clear of the cab ladder with the cigarette in his teeth. The warden sta
nds with the butt of Rubie’s rifle between his feet, the barrel up into his cupped hand.

  Rubie comes near, eyeing the gun.

  The boy in the T-shirt cuts the saw off and stands in the middle distance with open mouth, fox-color eyes pressed on the warden’s neck and flabby ears.

  The warden lights a cigarette. Cole Deveau and Rubie Bean, not looking into each other’s face, stand side by side smoking within the idling whine of the hydraulic.

  Rubie says, “Shit,” softly.

  The warden squares his shoulders in his splendid grayish-green uniform, grunts, “For chrissakes, Bean, why can’t you control yourself?”

  Rubie chuckles, smokes.

  The warden says, “It ain’t what’s hangin’ in your shed, Rubie. That isn’t why I’m here. It’s what’s strewed all over the power line, drawin’ flies.”

  Rubie smokes. His hand shakes.

  The warden smokes.

  Rubie’s boys watch. They stand suspended in mud, their arms raised somewhat away from their bodies as if the mud were a tide rising.

  Cole Deveau sighs. “I can understand bein’ a glutton for meat, Rubie, but what you left on the power line isn’t meat . . . it’s a friggin’ holocaust. Haven’t you got a sprig o’ conscience?”

  Rubie smokes without hands, the cigarette fluttering on his bottom lip, hands on the hips of his wool pants. “I ain’t been nowheres but here . . . right here, Cole,” Rubie says.

  The warden nods. Turns the rifle on its butt like an augur in the mud. Rubie narrows his eyes.

  Cole says, “I wouldn’t bother a man at his work if all I had was a hunch. Sorry, Rubie, but I got my case squared away.” He is looking into Rubie’s eyes, but Rubie can’t tell because of the mirror sunglasses. Rubie brings his hands together—fingers and stumps of fingers—and cracks his knuckles.

  The warden turns the rifle. Rubie squints. The warden puts his foot up on a mossy rock. Rubie watches the warden’s foot.

  “Ayuh,” says Rubie. “Son of a whore.”

  The warden smiles, big square teeth. “Some people call it a waste of deer meat. Others would go to pieces to see those bleatin’ motherless fawns. But when I came upon that puking scene, I says to myself, Cole, you’ve shot good dogs for less . . . and there’s that Rubie Bean out there still at large. Go round him up, Cole. This is what I said to myself. And that’s what I’m doing.”

  Rubie smiles with twisted teeth, but the bottom lip trembles.

  The warden smiles his church smile, the born-again kind . . . strained glee. Rubie eyes the rifle.

  “I’ll treat you fair ’cause we’re old friends. I’ll recite you your rights while you’re walkin’ back with me to my truck. I won’t handcuff you.” He raises the rifle to caress the faded bluing . . . several caresses . . . endearment . . . aroused.

  Rubie snorts, then spits into a skidder rut. He turns, strides tigerishly slow to the logging truck, his dark wool clothes almost blurring into the trees. He cuts off the hydraulic and the motor. He tugs out a red bandanna and wipes his face and heavy black mustache. The warden watches him hard. The boys watch, their big shoulders stooped.

  Rubie spreads one hand on the dented fender of his old truck, fumbles with his wool pants, and pisses onto one of the tires.

  The warden keeps caressing the rifle. The perfect full buckhorn sight truly speaks to his fingers. Rubie turns. He trots back to the warden, his eyes on the rifle. “Gimme my gun,” he pants.

  “It’s not your gun anymore, Rubie. It’s the state of Maine’s gun. Pretty little thing, ain’t she? Don’t see many of these old Model Ninety-fours anymore. Real nice.”

  Rubie’s eyes blink crazily, almost like a child holding back tears. “You know Pip gimme that gun,” he says deep in his throat. “ ’Twas his father’s.”

  The warden turns the gun with one hand, runs his finger in the barrel with the other. “You don’t see one of these octagon barrels every day, either. Amazin’. Lever’s good ’n’ tight. Hardly a scratch.” He caresses, caresses. He caresses. He caresses. “Might need a little bluing. Jesus Christ almighty, ten shots . . . You gotta respect a thing like that.” He gives the gun a big warm kiss.

  Rubie’s eyebrows go up. The mutilated fingers of his right hand scramble spiderlike. “You ain’t convicted me yet . . . Give ’er ovuh.”

  “Now you know better than that,” says Cole Deveau, smile gone. “Let’s head down.” He starts walking, swinging that pretty rifle.

  Rubie makes a horse whinny. He dives, his palm connecting with his rifle. The warden pivots with his arms out. Rubie has the rifle.

  With both hands he swings the unloaded gun like an axe, making a blump blump blump with the muddy butt against the warden’s face bones, his ribs, the bones of his fingers. From the warden comes an unearthly bellow. He flips onto his back, his great belly up, his face black with mud.

  Rubie’s boys don’t move, their faces studious.

  Rubie rolls the warden over and over, a large soft round mound of gray-green . . . smashing and spearing at the softest parts with the rifle butt. The warden tries to cover his face with his uncrushed hand. Rubie finds his mouth with the gunstock and drives it home. The crying mouth fills with blood, fills with broken teeth. Rubie snatches Deveau’s pistol from the tangle of bloody muddy uniform and pitches it among the skidder cables. Then Rubie, crying too—not with pain but with a ghoulish rage—aims the empty rifle at the warden’s neck, big as a chopping block, and dry-fires over and over and over until Steve, the blue-eyed Bean, comes up behind, saying softly, “Come on, Dad . . . Dad come on . . . Let’s go!”

  2

  A SHAKY MOON lifts out of the hills. Its pink light seeks out Cole Deveau. He lies on his side, his rib cage rising and falling, rising and falling. Through gummy eyes he can almost not see the fairy light. He cannot distinguish himself from the pinespills and mud he is bleeding into. He feels as though his lungs and twisting, turning bowels are gorged with mud. His mouth is immovable. But a voice clear in his head says, “I’m dead, I guess.” He knows that somewhere right now on some power line, some meadow or orchard, a deer is also lying, on his side, the great rib cage rising and falling, broken to bits by one of Rubie’s meteors of lead, this queer cold pinkish moonlight trespassing the hide.

  3

  COLE DEVEAU’S BRIDE loves a straight-back chair. Her knitting lies black on her knee like a sleeping cat. She wears a flowered apron, the kind that goes over the head. It is dark out now but she doesn’t need a light to knit by. She is just a pair of pale hands and number-three needles, a gray face in moonlight. She sits by the window where she can look out, waiting. Her eyes look straight into the yard, somewhat turned in on themselves like the eyes of the dead. Her lips move, counting stitches. But otherwise she is like a big doll, unrelenting perfect posture. But no one comes. The moon lifts clear of Cole’s caved-in barn . . . feeble, shaky.

  4

  EARLENE POMERLEAU stands in the picture window, brushing her long pale hair, and putting it up with pins. Hot day. Even though there are no leaves yet. Fluky weather. You can never count on weather. It is not a friend. “Daddy! Look! Cops! Millions of cops!”

  Lee Pomerleau is on the couch most of the time since his back surgery. An afghan of variegated golds covers his legs. He lies with his face to the wall, his arm over his head. He is rapping his fingers against the wall. “Millions?” he says dully.

  “Practically,” Earlene says. “It’s like on TV when the cops come, you know.”

  The air this day is thick, almost yellowish, like dog’s breath. Through it moves the warden, Cole Deveau. He carries his fat belly differently than usual, with a stiff straight-legged gait. Another warden stands beside him, shouting into his walkie-talkie and looking over the hood of his Land Rover up at the paved road.

  There are other cars and trucks, deputies, a uniformed sheriff standing beside a brown sheriff’s cruiser . . . and now another warden just arriving in a mud-splattered car. They stand around on the Beans’ “lawn,�
�� and two big Bean women and large Bean babies are watching from the open mobile-home door. The women have their hands on their hips. They have fox-color eyes.

  Earlene says, “Daddy, you gotta see this. Get up!”

  Earlene’s father moans.

  Earlene can see through the Beans’ open windows, the plastic curtains rising and falling.

  Cole Deveau wears a short-sleeved gray-green uniform, which is blackened with sweat at the ribs. One of his hairy hands is in a cast. His face is no face, just a lot of purple, and on this purple crouch the mirror cop glasses so you can’t see his eyes.

  Earlene’s voice is high and cheerful like Minnie Mouse’s. “Daddy! Mr. Deveau’s been in some kinda accident. You oughta see his face.” She lays her hairbrush on the TV.

  “None of them cops are turnin’ around in my driveway, are they?” Lee says darkly.

  “Not yet,” says Earlene.

  “You’d think my driveway was Grand Central Station sometimes,” says Lee Pomerleau.

  “They ain’t. They’re all just standin’ there, lookin’ up the road,” says Earlene.

  Along the frame of the mobile home are the blue Christmas lights the Beans leave up all year; every night after dark for several years, some Bean hand flips the switch that sets them to twinkling. Around the dooryard are plastic toys of Bean babies and the oil drums and car parts of Bean men and a chicken-wire pen of five or six silent, statuesque, blue-eyed black dogs.

  “Look what’s comin’ down the right-of-way now, Daddy!” Earlene folds her hands. “State police.”

  The walkie-talkie squawks. Cole Deveau doesn’t look interested in talking.

  Earlene squeals, “Somethin’ happened to Mr. Deveau’s teeth, Daddy. He looks like an old man.”

  “Did he have ’em out?” Lee asks, still facing the wall.

  “They’re gone, Daddy.”

  “Well, it ain’t my business,” Lee mutters.

  “Daddy! How’s he gonna sing Sunday . . . without no teeth?”