The Beans of Egypt, Maine Read online

  “Mrs. Bean . . . please stop.”

  She pries her hands between her thighs.

  He scratches the back of his neck.

  She whispers, “Mr. Junkman . . . why don’t you ever let me see your hands?”

  He looks at his gloves, says, “I just got a habit, I guess. You know . . . like Linus has a blanket.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with your hands, then,” she whispers.

  “Nah!” His cowlike lips smile. He slides the gloves off one at a time.

  Marie leans forward, squinting.

  He spreads a hand on each of his thighs. “See?”

  As with old hardwood trees the roots break up, through, make a coy leap, then plunge, so it is with the colorless veins of Buzzy Atkinson’s hands, the knuckles softly swelled. Cakey, curry-color nails. No large pores, no spots, no scars. But a wedding ring the width of a yellow hair.

  Marie looks away, draws herself back against the tree. “Your hands . . .” Her eyes sting.

  He looks at his hands, blinks.

  Inside her throat comes the feeling of a blade. “What are your ten kids like?” she asks.

  He squares his shoulders. Smiles. “Well . . . I dunno.”

  She goes up on her knees, walks on her knees, puts her hands on his shoulders. He draws back.

  The hardness in her throat doubles in size.

  He keeps himself from tipping backwards by flattening his bare hands on the matted gray grass behind him. Marie whispers, “If you kiss me once, I’ll never bother, never never bother you again.”

  Her face in his green eyes, one face to each eye, is two swans afloat, baring their throats, adjusting their wings across their backs, shaking down the dough of chest feathers, trumpeting, the water ruffling for miles.

  “I can’t,” he says, lowering his eyes.

  “Am I horrible?” she asks, her voice squeaking.

  He shakes his head. His right hand retrieves his paper plate, shakes the crumbs off. He seems shy, even of his plate. He closes his eyes as his lips touch the plate, making a tiny rodentlike sound. He passes her the plate. “Now you do it,” he says. She kisses the plate.

  He pulls his wallet from his pants. Counts out bills with his bare hands. He writes on the backs of a handful of receipts. He says, “I took the serials from the motahs for you. Most of these rigs”—he glances at the fenderless Ford on the hauler—“we’re gonna part out an’ crush . . . All I need is your signature on these . . . where I put them X’s.” He hands her a grimy ball-point pen. She signs her name on all eight slips, her hands steady, her eyes unblinking, bitter blue.

  “Thank you,” he says, averting his eyes. He stands up, knees creaking. Scratches his chest. Steps over the rocks, winding his way to his truck, sliding the yellow pad into his rear pocket, then tugging the dirty orange gloves back on. Pulls himself up onto the seat.

  Marie squares her back against the maple, the paper plate between the vise of her knees.

  The car hauler rolls down the grade. Buzzy Atkinson pops the clutch, and the engine makes a dragonlike snarl. The gloved hand hangs from the window.

  Tall Woman Love

  BEAL COMES here in the night. “Auntie!” he says softly with his lips against the glass. The door is latched. Just a thin latch, not meant to keep out something big. Beal taps the glass with his knuckles. “Auntie! It’s me!” Among the hairs of a young boy’s beard, pimple scars have been carved, concave as cellar holes. He’s wearing a new jacket with a Sherpa collar, one with longer sleeves than the last. He never seems to stop growing. His weight makes the top step sigh.

  In another room, a greenish light appears. Beal waits.

  She comes to the door wearing men’s long underwear. The greenish light tumbles along the dimpled cloth, the white, unshaky legs, bare feet. In the dark, her deep eyes are like no eyes. Just eye pits. Her black hair, in a bun, strains against a strip of kerchief tightly wound.

  “You run away again?” Her wonderfully reedy voice.

  He pushes in around her, stands by the supper table in the greenish half-dark. He breathes like he’s been running.

  She closes the door.

  “Ain’t you too big to run away?” She faces him, folds her arms across her chest.

  “I got a job,” he says. He looks around suspiciously. In the greenish light her smile is dark and slow-coming, like the unlatching of her back door.

  “What kinda work?” she asks. Her arms drop away, long, flashing white.

  “Drivin’ for Libby’s.” He gets out a dark rag and wipes his face.

  “Logs?”

  “Eyup. Got my second-class this spring.”

  “Good. That’ll be good for you.”

  In the other room there’s a rustling, like eggs hatching . . . feet scraping along the linoleum. The greenish light flutters.

  “Well,” says Auntie Roberta Bean, “guess you don’t call it runnin’ away when you’re an all-growed-up man.”

  Beal watches the room of greenish light. “I j-aaah-aaah-ust wanted to see how you’re doin’,” he says.

  “Doin’ good,” she says.

  They come to stand in the bedroom doorway, five nearly look-alike babies in diapers and crinkly plastic pants. One wearing shoes. They stare at Beal Bean with eyes deep and black as their mother’s. They raise up and down on tiptoe, flex their calves.

  Beal frowns. Avoids their eyes. “They’re big,” he says, making his voice low.

  She smiles.

  One baby picks up something from along the mopboard and hurls it at Beal. Beal sees it flutter down onto his left boot, a piece of Christmas tinsel. The baby hisses at him.

  “We ain’t seen you in a long time,” the tall woman says. Soft. Reedy. Almost flutelike.

  Beal nods.

  The babies scuttle to their mother’s legs, bunch up handfuls of her long johns. They dangle from her, squinting at Beal.

  “Well . . . I guess you can stay here, if you gotta.” She turns toward the greenish light. Beal sees the bed of grayed crazy quilts. He knows the smell. It is a low bed, raised on stumps of pine with bark still on them. She says, “But you ain’t sleepin’ in here like you think . . . not no more.”

  As she moves, the babies hug her legs. Her bare feet scuff the pink-fern linoleum. She turns and Beal looks at her long neck. He looks at her mouth. “I’ll get the little foam mattress for you from under the stairs,” she says. Her black black eyes glitter on him.

  Beside her bed is the green globe electric lamp. Beal knows there are more children in the attic. The two older ones. Lying on boards, wrapped in their quilts and coats. His mouth trembles. “N-n-neh-eaaah-ever mind!” he says hoarsely. He glances again at her bed. She never sleeps with sheets. There’s never any pillows. She always rolls up caterpillar-style in her quilts. Beal remembers a dozen mornings there. The room is always dark . . . and he would never have known it was morning except for the quickening blood in his body.

  Tonight he looks long at her face. He pulls out of the greenish light. He opens the back door. “See ya,” he mutters.

  He closes the door. She can hear his feet on the frozen mud . . . thud thud thud. She knows in the morning she’ll find him with the hens. Through the gray straw, she’ll touch his dark hair.

  2

  THE DOOR OPENS and the new neighbor, Donald Goodspeed, the celebrated highway engineer, hurries down the hot-top path to the hot-top driveway in his pointy dress-up shoes and asphalt-color suit.

  Across the road, the tall woman, Roberta Bean, is dressed in a man’s ribbed undershirt and green wool pants. She is circling a piece of bare ground with an axe, her babies in yellow raincoats. The babies ornament her ankles, dangle from her pant legs. Thwank! Thwank! Thwank! Her axe beats upon the chopping block.

  Donald Goodspeed unlocks the door of his Lincoln. He lays a folder of papers on the seat. He does not say good morning to Roberta Bean. He quickly dives into his car. The tall woman circles the chopping block, her babies moving as she moves.


  Roberta Bean has a small head with a blue knit cap stretched over the top of it. The hat has a chrome-yellow cuff. Nowhere does her black, black hair show.

  Donald Goodspeed shuts the door of his Lincoln.

  Roberta Bean’s axe goes Thwank! Thwank! Thwank!

  Donald was to be in Portland by ten . . . a site walk for a new shopping center. It is 10:03. He turns the key. The Lincoln breathes almost like a human being. Donald pats the folder of papers on the seat. He clicks on the news. He starts to back out of the yard.

  The tall woman is so tall she divides Donald’s rearview mirror into two clean halves, white grass to the left, white grass to the right. And everywhere, shuffling and darting, are babies and the tall woman’s peach-color hens.

  The Lincoln stalls partway into the road. Donald twists the key.

  Out of the openings of the undershirt, Roberta Bean’s assiduous, straining, bony neck and long, long, young arms work the axe on the stringy wood. Faster. Faster. Now and then one of her dark eyes turns onto the Lincoln Continental.

  The Lincoln whispers, “A-herm hm hm hm” . . . little burps, little giggles. “Start, damn you!” the highway engineer demands.

  Some of the peach-color hens have come to his lawn, poke in his short grass. Donald rubs his eyes.

  The tall woman moves all over the Lincoln’s rearview mirror as a prizefighter moves around the ring. The white wood is spewed into the pile . . . faster, faster. Her back is to Donald now. She seems to ignore him.

  Donald checks his watch. 10:09. He twists the key. “Start!” he commands.

  The Lincoln only laughs.

  The man slumps in his seat, his heart scrambling inside his dress shirt.

  The babies seem unconvinced of the possibility of being stepped upon by one of the tall woman’s mighty boots. Dazed by their love, they keep in step.

  Donald squints at the mirror.

  Roberta puts down her axe. She looks at Donald Goodspeed.

  Donald can smell gas.

  Roberta Bean crosses the road. With her flutters an army of boots and yellow raincoats, a hollow tromp tromp tromp tromp.

  “Why is this happening?” Donald breathes. He picks a ball-point pen from his breast pocket and snaps it fast. He takes a breath of his Lincoln’s rich interior.

  Roberta Bean’s tiny head is smiling at him through the glass.

  Donald has gray hair, the color of faded newspapers. You’d never know he had been a blond as a child; you’d never have known he had been a child. His eyes show leadership, are fibrous as salad olives. Green.

  Her eyes look scintillating.

  Reluctantly he scratches at the button. The window glass disappears as naturally as a lake thaws.

  Donald says, “It’s just flooded. It’ll be all right in a few moments.”

  Roberta Bean redistributes her stature, somewhat to the left, and simultaneously there’s the rumble of ten oversized boots, each boot to the left.

  Long feelerlike noses sniff up at Donald. He looks down just in time to see one baby pick up a small piece of broken glass and aim it at his Lincoln. “Make that child behave!” Donald shouts.

  Roberta’s dark, close-together eyes move onto the child.

  The baby puts the glass in its raincoat pocket.

  Another baby spits. The foamy wob slides down the door of the Lincoln.

  “You need a jump,” the tall woman says. Then her mouth opens for a smile, the teeth like the far-apart teeth of a Doberman, long, fat, yellow, sharp.

  Donald says, “It’s flooded. That’s all.”

  Roberta says, “Eyup . . . gas stinks.” She puts both hands on the window frame and rocks the Lincoln so that Donald and the Lincoln move in great waves on the luxurious springs. “Ain’t she a dandy!” the tall woman says.

  Donald’s eyes rest on the front of her undershirt, its rapt, fat flowers of spilled coffee, and some year-old blood shaped like the paw of a cat.

  She says, “You set there, mistah, an’ I’ll getcha some help.”

  “No. In a few moments the gas will dry out. You just go back to what you were doing.” He is as commanding as a trainer to a huge but humble dog.

  “Yes-suh,” she sneers, withdrawing her hands. “If it was just flooded. But you cranked on your throttle till she don’t hardly turn over . . . does she? . . . You’ve run your batt’ry down. I’ll getcha some help.” And she veers away in the horrible scuffing of many boots.

  He hangs his head.

  One of the peach-color hens steps up and hammers with her beak on her reflection in the Lincoln’s hubcap.

  On the same side of the road as Roberta Bean’s wee blue house is Beans’ Variety Store. With sweaty dread, Donald anticipates four or five of those woolly, squinting Egypt, Maine, men over on the piazza of the store—fluorescent vests, black nails, wagging beards—ambling toward him, hailed by Roberta Bean. And they would study him frankly through the tinted windshield, the way visitors to hospitals gape through Plexiglas at newborns.

  But no. She returns without them.

  Her black truck is parked by the front steps of her wee blue house like you tie a dog out to pee. She and her babies get into this truck, and she backs it out onto the pavement with a clanging like a half-dozen cowbells. The yellow-raincoated shapes of her children bounce around beside her on the seat.

  She lines up her hood with his hood.

  Donald closes his eyes, opens them slowly.

  He turns in his seat and there’s the tall woman, hurrying, helpful. Around her neck and shoulders are jumper cables . . . she wields them with such exuberance! . . . like pet snakes. He squares his shoulders, pats the knot of his asphalt-color necktie.

  Roberta whaps open the heavy Lincoln door, gives the hood release a deft pull. A jumper cable clamp clonks against the chrome of the vent window as she lurches back and away.

  “Shit!” he cries as his folder of many papers slips to the floor, covering the pedals and his pointy, shiny shoes.

  Now she flings up both hoods. He opens his eyes to see her fingers strum the cables’ silken skins. And how gracefully she capers between the vehicles, her eyes misting in a joy Donald cannot fathom.

  A half-dozen hens are now pecking at the bright hubcaps.

  Meanwhile, the babies storm out of the black fenderless truck, three of them fastening to one of the tall woman’s calves, two the other.

  Donald sweeps open the door of his Lincoln, authority written on his face, knotting him up hard.

  She is clasping the cables onto the terminals as he drives his own arms through her long long bare ones. “I’ll do that now,” he says.

  But she is done.

  The babies glare up at him. One is looking at Donald’s left pointy black shoe.

  Donald’s arms are still parallel with the tall woman’s bare ones. He is drawing back in slow motion, in disbelief. His heart is just one of the babies’ oversized boots . . . tromp tromp tromp tromp. Roberta Bean’s smell is in his face, a smell he is convinced is the smell of the inside of her wee blue house. Because of this smell, he sees the long fingers worrying the rubber from a Mason jar of cloudy green beans, boiling them hard, doling out baggy white yeast rolls, everything of a hotness that is injurious to the lips and gums, while this brood with crew cuts and long noses, like a bizarre litter of moles, tries even at the table to get close to her, forever close, madly close.

  He backs onto the short grass of his yard. His necktie flounces.

  With curling lips, the babies stare at his pointy black shoes. “YUKK!” one of them says.

  A small hen sees her reflection in his heel, jabs at it.

  Donald re-enters his Lincoln.

  In a matter of moments he is shifting into reverse, giving the Lincoln the gas. It lurches over the road, backwards. Hens squawk. The babies look up at the tall woman, their eyes wrinkled up with love. The big car lunges up the grade and springs into the sun.

  3

  BEAL WAITS out on the step with the big battery lamp across his kn
ees.

  Roberta Bean handles her old boots lovingly, then slips them sockless on her long, silvery feet. She loads her twenty-two with a clip of seven cartridges and fills her housedress pockets with a couple dozen more. The babies sleep in a wreath of blubbery snorts and sighs around the TV on the kitchen linoleum.

  She latches the door of her wee blue house. Beal stands up. They enter the moon-whitened fog, fog so thick it seems to hold them back at times. He carries the high-powered lantern in one hand. The tall woman turns her face down, as if peering to the bottom of a warm, shoulder-deep pond. Water drips from the pines, from hemlock, from hardwood. A bunny dives around her boots, maddened by the feather atmosphere. These are not the long-footed, leggy bunnies nature intended. These are what comes after Easter goes. White or spotted. Black and brown. How gently and wordlessly they have stormed Roberta’s gardens. Tonight the power of their hind legs could rip you. Tonight is frantic, a war on bunnies. Beal turns the lamp on each, and into each Roberta fires. The night is filled with the squeals of bunnies and the clap of powder making the droplets churn.

  Back in the blue house, they stand side by side with their hips to the sink, the tall woman and Beal Bean. They clean the bodies in enamel basins, with two slender, dark-bladed knives. They pile the oozing hides in a cardboard box. They mound the bunny vitals in a bowl, and these look like strawberries with buds of rainwater on them.