The Beans of Egypt, Maine Page 9

  Then Beal sits at the table, wiping his hands, watching her.

  He frowns because she is putting the best bunny parts into a bread bag, crowding them into careful sticky intercourse so they will fit—footless, handless.

  “What are you doin’, Auntie?” he asks.

  She moves her small face in his direction, the strange dark eyes squirming. “Ain’t your business,” she says softly.

  She goes outside, leaving him at the table.

  She tapes a note to Donald Goodspeed’s front door . . . a childlike scrawl: WELCOME TO EGYPT HERES A LITTLE PRESENT.

  And then, always the good neighbor, she ties the bag of bunnies to the doorknob.

  She is silent out there in the fog, careful not to scuff against the hot top so she won’t wake the man who wears the shiny shoes, her consideration bordering on love.

  Then she strides away.

  4

  BACK AT HER HOUSE, she picks up the babies one by one and arranges them in their shared crib in the kitchen. She turns off the TV. She takes down her hair and brushes it hard with water by the sink. There are still bits of bunny in the corners of the sink. On the supper table there are small white eggs mounded in a Tupperware colander under the shaded kitchen lamp, a peach-color feather stuck to one. She turns off the kitchen lamp and enters the weak, green light of her bedroom. Beal is in her bed, pretending he’s asleep.

  She comes up to the bed slowly, knees the bed hard.

  He doesn’t move.

  “Get outta my bed!” she snarls.

  He rolls onto his back, his dark, bare arms spread like a crucifix. “Please,” he murmurs.

  Her close-together eyes wriggle. “Ain’t you got a little girlfriend yet, Beal?”

  He shakes his head.

  She sits on the bed. Her housedress is a cornflower print. There are still some twenty-two shells in the pocket. Her smile, just a blushing dilly-dally of the lips, close upon the teeth. And yes, her terribly small face. And yet, so wondrously long, this woman.

  “So you drove a big truck today, eh?” she says.

  He nods.

  “Not bad for nineteen years old. All grown up now . . . Ayuh . . . You’re big.”

  His eyes grow rounder. He moves his fingers.

  She gives one of his fingers a little tug.

  Her voice rises. “Don’t want no parta you, Beal. Ain’t messin’ around. You’re just so tricky. You’re hurtin’ me every time you come here . . . you stupid kid.”

  He jerks himself up on his elbows. “Ain’t hurtin’ you! I make you feel nice! What kinda shit you slingin’!”

  “You’re good and you’re bad. Ain’t messin’ with you. Get out!” She yanks at his wrist.

  “Auntie! Li-eh-aaah-listen! I ain’t bad!”

  She tears at the grayed quilts that smell of a thousand sleeps. She works to pull him to the edge of the bed. “Get dressed!” she cries.

  “Please!” he cries.

  She picks up his clothes. “Put these on!”

  “Pah-ah-aaah-palease . . . I think of you all the time. I can h-hah-help you now! I got a job. I can buy stuff. . . for them!” He points through the bedroom door and to the upstairs.

  His body spilling to the floor from the quilts is nothing like it used to be. Now there are dramatic dark ravines between the muscles, hair big as an apple on the groin.

  He hugs her legs, the endless bare legs, the old boots.

  She doesn’t talk to him anymore but pulls him up and stuffs his clothes into his arms. He says, “I ain’t never comin’ back. You’re not gonna ever see my face again, no matter how wicked bad you beg!”

  She leads him to the back door, opens it. He grips her wrist. Her black eyes turn crazily in on themselves. Then she pushes him out. She knows in the morning she’ll find him in the gray straw. She’ll shake him awake. And she’ll have fried rabbit and canned apples and runny scrambled eggs on his plate waiting for him. And while he eats, nobody talks.

  5

  FORTY-FIVE MILES per hour. He is coming up the crumbly road in the lavender twilight, the window down, his tie off, his sheaf of papers flapping and fluttering on the seat beside him.

  He steps on the gas. Fifty-five miles per hour.

  At times, the Lincoln seems to be lunging through an upper atmosphere. There’s no sensation of earth being rolled under tires. He is aware only of the sweet, almost sinewy, night air. The speedometer reads sixty. He takes sharp curves with an intermittent yelling of tires.

  The Lincoln pounces onto a bridge, the one that straddles the railroad bed. There’s a straight-away after that which seems to end in the dead center of the moon.

  Sixty-five miles per hour.

  The huge radials catch the soft shoulder. Donald yanks on the wheel . . . but the wheel seems disengaged . . . a kind of toy wheel. “Arrr!” he cries. The Lincoln bucks. He sees the blackness of an embankment rear up, saplings dancing, a sideways sky playfully appearing, then disappearing.

  The Lincoln, a handsome forest green, stands at last stock-still in the culvert, its front end high like a motorboat. Donald’s heart beats in his back, beats in his head, and on the palms of his hands. He strains to get the door open. It is heavy at this angle.

  Once outside, he feels the Lincoln all over, squinting in the lavender twilight for dents. His face is wet. His shirt is wet. He reaches inside the car for his suit jacket . . . sets the flashers.

  6

  THE MOON RISES slightly like a self-luminating craft idling up there to observe the town of Egypt, Maine. And out of it clamors the black fenderless pickup . . . making the sound of a half-dozen cowbells.

  He says to himself, “Oh, no! Not again.”

  The truck squeals to a stop.

  Then there’s the face with the dark eyes that gleam. The mouth opening: “You in the cul-vet, huh mistah?”

  “Yes, I’m in the culvert,” he says softly.

  He sees beyond her, lighted by the greenish dash, the babies all asleep in a pile.

  She opens the door, leaves her truck parked in the road with the headlights splayed dimly on a wall of trees, the moon behind her rising another half-inch off the ground.

  He sees she’s wearing a light-colored housedress and no shoes. Close to him now, he swears he can smell boiled dinner on her: cabbage, potatoes, carrots, and ham.

  “Eeeee-yup, she’s in the hole,” says Roberta Bean. She wears a visor cap that says MERTIE’S HARDWARE. She puts her hands on her hips. “Mistah . . . I got a chain on me, but my little Chevy ain’t no match for that . . . that thing . . . what is it there . . . Chrysler . . . I mean Lin . . .”

  “A Lincoln,” he says.

  “Same thing,” she says.

  He narrows his eyes.

  As if the moonlight were blinding, she shades her eyes with one hand and studies the Lincoln. “Why, ain’t that a tool!”

  Up on the crown of the road her truck sputters, like it’s about to stall. The lights flutter. But it regains its composure.

  “Well, mistah, the best I can do is give you a ride ta my nephew Rubie’s place. He’s got a loggin’ rig an’ all the chains your little Lincoln desires . . . Aye? Just hop right up here an’ I’ll give ya a lift.”

  “I’ve got Triple A,” he says flatly. He glares at the open door of the truck. “I just need a phone.”

  She nods, says no more. She strews her long legs up over the seat and her bare feet clasp the pedals.

  When he opens the passenger door, the heads of all the babies go up. Their eyes grow enormous. Their teeth grate, and popping noises come from the walls of their mouths. They flatten themselves against their mother, leaving him a bit of room. Where they’ve been lying is wet. Some are wearing only soaked diapers and the deep creases of the truck’s upholstery stamped on their skin.

  Donald hesitates.

  Roberta’s face is turned toward him.

  He hops up, drapes his suit jacket over his lap, slams the door. The truck lurches forward. He notes the greenly lit cons
ole. The gas tank reads empty. The speedometer registers zero. He imagines he is riding backwards. Indeed, the trees seem to move that way at first. His stomach swells like a big cake baking.

  The babies’ eyes are on him, and out of their little mouths come the grating, popping noises.

  Roberta’s broad scarred hands grip the vibrating wheel.

  Donald Goodspeed smiles stiffly. “Well, you can take me right to my place. I’ll call from there.”

  Roberta doesn’t respond.

  His torso shifts. His white shirt is as wet as if he’d been swimming in his clothes.

  He sighs. “Miss Bean . . .” He hesitates. “This would be a good time to have a little talk.”

  She still shows no response.

  He says, “I’ve been meaning to ask you . . . although I’ve been too busy to get over . . . but I was wondering if you might happen to know which locals might be wanting to tease me?”

  Roberta doesn’t move, or speak. The babies hang off all her parts, equally motionless.

  Donald clears his throat. “Do you know anything about . . . someone fastening a bag of . . . chicken meat on my front door?”

  Roberta’s head turns. There is glittering in the backs of her eyes. “Ain’t chicken,” she says grumpily. “Was rabbit. Don’t you like rabbit, Mistah Goodspeed?”

  All at once the babies scramble. A foot cuffs his cheek. He ducks away, puts his arm up—which only makes them scramble all the more. The tall woman seems unflustered by this, but Donald Goodspeed is against the door with his eyes closed.

  After a while, Roberta says, “I know you been livin’ in the neighborhood almost a year now, but you know how it is, you’re still the new fella to us all. Massachoosits an’ all.”

  Donald sees that the MERTIE’S HARDWARE cap has been knocked back on her head. It is the first time he has seen her hair. It is parted in the middle. Lovely hair.

  “Look here, Miss Bean . . . or is it Mrs.?”

  She smiles.

  “I have a wife, you know,” he says.

  Roberta’s long neck swallows.

  “She’s a paraplegic . . . having a bad time adjusting. She’s with her mother in Amesbury. I’m going for her when I feel she’s ready for this place.”

  “A paraplegic,” says Roberta.

  One of the babies pulls a clump of stuffing from the seat and throws it at Donald Goodspeed. It falls on his suit jacket. Donald leaves it there, ignores it.

  Then another baby, together with the first baby, yanks two or three even bigger pieces out, and these hit the side of his head. Some sticks in his hair.

  Before they reach his house, Donald Goodspeed is snowed over almost completely.

  When the old pickup clangs and wheezes to a stop in front of his house, he looks up at his unlit windows with an expression of near panic.

  7

  IT IS NOON. There is no view of the hills. The fog is low and dark. The black truck is parked on the narrow bridge. Both doors of the truck are open and Roberta Bean’s long legs stick out from the seat, the boots propped up on one truss. She is eating an Italian sandwich with double cheese and ham. Some of the babies are in the truck. Some are out on the bridge, throwing little stones and little sticks down onto the railroad tracks.

  The logging truck takes the curve with a screech. All the babies look up with expressions of welcome. The logging truck horn fills the air with a startling blast. The great truck heaped with pine saw logs screams to a halt a bare six inches from Roberta Bean’s black truck’s puckered-up, dimpled tailgate.

  When the babies see that it’s Beal Bean up on the seat of the truck, their expressions of welcome disappear.

  Roberta sits up, leans forward. Her dark eyes slowly creep to Beal Bean’s face. Then she leans back and rearranges her feet on the truss.

  Beal drops to the pavement and walks toward her, squaring his shoulders in a dark blue workshirt that says LIBBY’S LOGGING on the pocket. “Fuck you!” he shouts. “You crazy broad . . . You wanna be dead . . . thuh-aaaah-that’s the way ta do it . . . parkin’ on a one-lane bridge!!!” The logging truck idles. The fog is so thick the top of the load of logs is only a fuzz.

  The babies hiss at Beal. They close up in a huddle and dangle from the tall woman’s long legs.

  Roberta smiles. “Want me to move?”

  Beal is red-faced. “You scared the shit outta me!” he snarls, wipes his sleeve over his eyes. His black hair is in a turmoil.

  The babies squint up at him. One of them picks a sliver of green pepper off the seat and hurls it at Beal. It misses.

  Roberta is wearing her other housedress. A pale green print. Beal can hear change jingle in her pockets as she shifts on the seat. “Ain’t seen you in a while,” she says. Her eyes don’t meet his, but dangle somewhere near LIBBY’S LOGGING on his pocket. With her teeth, she tears off a few inches of the sandwich.

  Beal says, “What’s it to you?”

  She points at a sign that they can’t see the front of. “Sixton limit,” she says with her mouth full.

  He shrugs.

  She takes a roll of blue toilet paper from the dash, snaps off five or six sheets, wipes her mouth. She’s wearing no hat. Her head is small and hard-looking. The hair, its straight part, is no-nonsense. She silently reads the words on Beal’s pocket. “You’re gonna die young, dear boy . . . I hate to say it,” she says, and rips off another few inches of the sandwich with her teeth.

  He puts his shoulder against the cab of her truck. “It’s got to be better when you’re dead,” he says.

  She says, “We’re havin’ us a little picnic, ain’t we, kids?” She smiles, balls up the Italian sandwich paper and tosses it over the bridge. Her arms are long enough to reach from the truck all the way to the green trusses of the bridge.

  Beal squares his shoulders. “I won some money last night, Auntie.”

  She stuffs in the last of her sandwich. “Good boy.”

  A baby tosses a black olive. It whizzes between Beal’s knees.

  Roberta says, “Been over Lucien Letourneau’s barn, aye? Don’t Auntie Hoover make a stink over that?”

  He flushes. “Ain’t none of her business.”

  She smiles. “As long as you’re under her roof . . .”

  He says low in his throat, “I been stayin’ over at Rubie’s.”

  She chews. Looks into the fog. Her eating noises are self-satisfied. “Rubie Bean’s a pig,” she says.

  He grips her wrist. “I’ll d-uh-do what I damn well want, okay?”

  “You gettin’ his ways,” she says.

  “Ain’t his ways . . . It’s my ways. He’s him. I’m me.”

  “All in the blood.” She laughs deep in her long neck.

  When he lets go of her wrist, he gives it a push into her body.

  “Well,” she says. “We was goin’ ta wait for the train. The kids wanted to see the train before we left. But you never know when the old train might come. It’s a kinda free ’n’ easy train.” She peers down the foggy tracks that have been laid through two dynamited walls of ledge. She takes a huge breath.

  Beal’s hand goes for her shoulder, closes down on the green, flowered fabric.

  “Well . . .” she says. She rolls up one of the babies’ sandwiches. “The worm turns.”

  Beal tightens his fingers. There is only the bone of her shoulder. How fleshless a woman!

  She says, “Now, Bushy, look what you done . . . You took all the stuff outta that sandwich. If all you like is bread, I ain’t purchasin’ you no more loadeds.” She gives the paper with the vegetables a heave over the side of the bridge, and it flaps down like a white dove shot in midflight—with an explosion of onions and tomatoes and so forth.

  “I won sixty bucks,” Beal Bean says. His beard is still soft, still sparse, silly-looking.

  She ignores him.

  He pats his pocket. “Sixty bucks . . . Four of a kind and a full house . . . It was pure hell on Armand. Ruth come out and blew out all the lamps. We figured it wa
s time ta go.”

  She seems not to hear.

  Beal kneads and kneads the shoulder, the young skin tight on the bone. How much older is she than he? Seems they have forgotten.

  The babies click their teeth at him. One of them chews on a piece of Italian sandwich paper . . . then spits it at Beal. It hits Beal’s chin, then ricochets.

  The tall woman shifts her boots on the bridge. “Too bad we don’t get to see the train, kids . . . but we gotta let this man’s load through.”

  Beal steps around and faces her, straddles the long legs. He has fox-color eyes. The tall woman sighs.

  Beal says, “Auntie . . . sometimes you want me . . . Why you get like this?”

  She squeezes her eyes shut like she’s in the middle of a little prayer.

  One of the babies scuttles forward on the truck seat and bites Beal’s forearm, leaving spit and a bit of chewed bread.

  “Jesus!” Beal shakes his arm. “Little smartass!”

  He stands back.

  When she starts the truck up, it sounds like a half-dozen cowbells. It lurches forward. All the babies stand in the back window and stare at Beal.

  “Goddam . . . caaah-c-crazy woman!” Beal hisses to himself as he lets the brake go in the logging truck, then creaks onto the six-ton bridge. The smaller truck travels the crumbly road at twenty miles an hour, and the big truck tailgates till the straight-away, where it passes in a roar.

  8

  AFTER SUNSET the tall woman lunges out of her wee blue house. The blue of Roberta Bean’s little house is the blue of a plastic fork or cheap blue comb . . . a tacky blue. Her old pickup is parked close to the door. Her housedress is made for a much shorter woman. Her visor cap says MERTIE’S HARDWARE. She carries a cardboard box of laundry. Hens hunker on the limbs of an apple tree by the road, hens not much bigger than apples, soundless as apples.

  Over the grade, a Lincoln moves in silence. In the dying pink light its forest-green finish looks black.