Demon Box

  "That's the first time I seen the little scoot smile," I told Betsy.

  "Toby can't have our kitten, can he, Mom?" Caleb asks. Betsy says if it's all right with his folks it was most decidedly all right with her. I said with all the traffic maybe we'd better leave the kitty in the garden until he asks his mama. The smile went away but he didn't turn loose. He stood there giving us a heart-tugging look. Betsy said he could carry it if he was careful. "We'll ask M'kehla," she says.

  All the rest of the afternoon Toby hung on to that cat for dear life, Caleb worrying at him from one side and the anxious mama cat from the other.

  Sherree took me in to show me her new curtains and we all had some mint tea. We could hear things out at the stage getting worked up. We moseyed back just as an all-boy chorus from Utah was finishing up. People had commenced to push in towards the stage so's it was pretty thick, but the kids had saved me a nice shady spot with a blanket and some of those tie-dyed pillows.

  I didn't see Devlin or Mr. Keller-Brown, but that Otis, he was impossible to miss. He was reeling around in front of the stage making a real spectacle of himself, getting all tripped up in his sword, which was worked round between his legs, hollering Hallelujah and Amen and Remember Pearl Harbor. And somebody had spray-painted across the rump of his baggy pants: "The Other Cheek." I told Betsy he hadn't better turn that other cheek to me if he knew what was good for him.

  The announcer was one of the local ministers. After the all-boys from Utah he asked if we couldn't have a little quiet and a little respect - he said this right at Otis, too - "a little respect for one of the all-time great gospel groups of all time: The Sounding Brass!" I says good, just in time, and sits me down on one of them pillows.

  It started just like in Colorado Springs; a gong was rung backstage, soft and slow at first, then faster and faster and louder and louder. It's very effective. Even Otis set down. The gonging rose and rose until you thought the very sky was gonna open and, when you thought you couldn't stand it a moment more, made one last hard loud bang and they came running on stage and went right into "Ring Them Bells," the world-famous Sounding Brass.

  At first I thought we all had been tricked! The Sounding Brass? These five old butterballs? Why, the Sounding Brass is tall and lean with natural red hair that shines like five halos, not these sorry old jokes. Because I mean to tell you the men didn't have a hundred scraggly old white hairs divided between the four of them! Plus the woman was wearing a wig looked like it had been made out of wire and rusted. And I'm darned if she didn't have on a minidress! I could see the veins from fifty feet away.

  I finally just shook my head; it was them, all right. All their movements and gestures were exactly those I remembered. But it looked like they'd been set to moving and then forgot the grease. And their voices, they were just horrible. I don't mean old - I know a lot of older groups who sing fine, creaks, whistles, and all - I mean thin, hollow, like whatever had been there had been scraped away and left five empty shells. I recall reading how they'd had a lot of income tax problems; maybe that done it. But they were surely pathetic. They finished a couple of songs and people give them a little hand of pure charity. Then Jacob Brass stepped to the microphone.

  "Thank you and buh-less you all," he says. "Now, the next number... well, we hear from reliable sources that it is the favorite of a very fine lady out there having her birthday on this beautiful spring day. Eighty-six years young. So puh-raise the Lord this Good Friday song is especially ded-icated to our Good Friday Birthday Girl, Mrs. Rebecca Whittier!"

  I wanted to dig a hole and crawl in it. And let me tell you: if they sounded bad on their faster numbers they now sounded downright pitiful. To make matters worse that dad-blamed Otis got going again. They'd sing, "Were you there... when they nailed Him to the cross?" and Otis would answer back, "Not me, youse mugs! I was in Tarzana drinking Orange Juliuses I can prove it!" loud enough the people got to laughing. Which of course only encouraged him.

  "Pierced Him in the side? Ech. I wasn't there then, either. I don't even go t' roller derby."

  The Brass family was so peeved by the laughter that to the secret relief of all they stalked offstage as soon as they finished two choruses, absolutely furious.

  Betsy says she's sorry my favorite number got messed up and I says me too, but little Toby says, very seriously, that it'll be alright, because here comes his folks. Then did the crowd hoop and holler! The Birds of Prayer was the other end of the stick from the Brass family. They pranced out all in purple, Mr. Keller-Brown and another big black fellow with a beard, and three pretty little colored girls. The fellow with the beard played organ and sung bass, and Mr. Keller-Brown played those big native drums and kind of come in now and then, talking to them. The three colored girls sung and played guitars and shook tambourines. After the Brass family they were like a breath of fresh air. My grandson comes through the crowd toward us, bouncing up and down to the rhythm.

  "How'd you like your dedication?" he asks, taking a pillow alongside me so's he can reach the deviled eggs. I tell him it was fine but not a candle to them kids singing up there now. He grins, his lips all mustard. "So you like the Birds better'n the Brass?" A bushel, I say, that they were as good as anything I ever heard on KHVN. But I thought somebody said Mr. Keller-Brown's wife was one of the group? He says, "She is. That's her on the left." And before I thought I says, "But what about our little -" I stopped before I said "blue-eyed," but I'd said enough. My grandson shrugged and Betsy put a finger to her lips, rolling her eyes over at the little boy sitting there petting his kitty.

  I could have bit my stupid tongue off.

  Then the next thing that happened was after sundown. After the main of the crowd drove away or drifted off, a bunch of us walked down to the ash grove for my cake. Mr. Keller-Brown had pulled his bus down there and the kids had set up a table in front of where the cake was waiting. They sung "Happy Birthday, Great-Grandma" while Quiston scampered around with a box of matches trying to keep all those candles lit.

  "Here!" says I. "You kids help Grandma blow 'em out before we start the woods a-blaze."

  There was Devlin's three, Quiston, Sherree, and Caleb, and Behema's Kumquat May, and Buddy's Denny and Denise, and the usual passel of Dobbs kids all circled close to be first at the cake. Quite a cluster. I seen little Toby way in the back outside this ring of glowing faces. He was still holding that cat.

  "Let Toby in there, Quiston. This many candles gonna need all the breath we can muster. Okay, everybody? One... two..." - with all of them drawing a lungful except little Toby there, his chin resting between the ears of that Siamese kitty, both of them looking right at me, expressions absolutely the same - "blow!"

  When I could see again, his daddy was standing right where he'd stood, lighting a Coleman lantern. He'd changed out of his purple jumpsuit into his most spectacular outfit so far.

  "Goodness me! Aren't you something! You're almost as pretty as this cake."

  Actually, the cake looked like one of them lumpy tie-dye pillows whereas his robe was an absolutely beautiful affair, purple velvet and gold trim and wriggling front and back with some of the finest needlepointing I ever saw - dragons, and eagles, and bulls you could practically hear snorting. He thanked me kindly and did a slow swirl with the lantern held up hissing above him.

  "You must've locked your little woman home with needle and thread for about six months," I says. I'd had a glass of sherry with Betsy before and was feeling feisty.

  "Nope," he says, starting to ladle out paper cups of punch for the kids. "It only took three months. And I made it."

  "Well, my, my," I says, aiming to tease him was all, "I never seen anything so delicate done by a man."

  The kids all laugh again but he took it some way wrong and the laugh died off too quick. Instead of responding to my rib he went right back to handing out that punch. To try to smooth over my foolishness I says, "Go on. I bet your wife did too make it." By way of apology. But before he could accept my effort Otis s
tumbles up and butts across the front of us to take a Dixie cup.

  "Oh, I'll vouch for M'kehla's wife, Grandma, she doesn't make anything." Otis pours the cup about half full of brandy before he adds, "Anymore."

  The quiet got even quieter. I thought he was going to look two holes in the top of Otis's head. But Otis keeps sniffing his nose down in his booze like he don't notice a thing.

  "My first Christian communion and from a Dixie cup," he moans. "How rural. At my Bar Mitzvah we drank from at least clear plastic."

  After his success aping the Brass family, Otis had got worse and worse, singing and reciting and cutting up. Yet everybody had took it in good humor. Devlin told me once that Otis was like he was because he'd been given too much oxygen at birth, so nobody generally took offense at what he said. But you could tell Mr. Keller-Brown was aggravated, too much oxygen or whatever. He reached over and snagged the paper cup out of Otis's hand and threw it hissing into the fire.

  "Is this your first communion, Mr. Kone? We'll just have to get something more fitting for your first communion."

  I noticed back by the fire his wife's sister stood up from where she'd been talking with my two grandsons and Frank Dobbs.

  Mr. Keller-Brown turns from Otis and hands me the punch ladle. "If you'll take over, Mrs. Whittier, I'll see if we can't find Mr. Kone a more appropriate vessel."

  The sister comes hurrying over and says, "I'll get it, Montgomery -" but he says No, he'd do it, and she stops on a dime. Otis reaches for another cup mumbling something about not to trouble and he says No, it's no trouble and Otis's hand stops just the same way. He still hasn't looked up to Mr. Keller-Brown's eyes.

  The kids are beginning to get upset, so I say, "Why, if Mr. Kone gets a glass to drink out of, Mr. Keller-Brown, oughten I get a glass to drink out of?"

  Little Sherree, who is a Libra and a smart little peacemaker in her own right, joins in and says, "Yeah, it's Great-Grandma's birthday." And the other kids and Toby, too, says yeah yeah, Grandma gets a glass too! Those eyes lift off Otis and move to me.

  "Certainly," he says, laughing off his temper. "Forgive me, Mrs. Whittier." He winked to me and jerked his thumb back at Otis by way of explanation. I winked and nodded back to indicate I knew precisely what he meant, that many's the time I wanted to wring that jellyroll's neck myself.

  He went into the bus and the kids went back at the cake and ice cream. I never could stand having people fight around me. I've always been handy at oiling troubled waters. Like when I was living with Lena: Devlin and Buddy would get in terrible squabbles over whose turn it was to mow the lawn. While they were fussing I'd go get the lawn mower and mow away till they came sheepfaced out to take over. (More handy than straightforward, to be honest.) So I thought the storm was past when Mr. Keller-Brown come back out with three dusty brandy glasses and shared some of Otis's brandy. I blew at the dust and filled mine with the kids' punch and all of us clinked glasses and toasted my birthday. Otis said that he would sympathize with me, being eighty-sixed quite a number of times himself. Everybody laughed and he was down from the hook. Five minutes later he was running off at the mouth as bad as ever.

  I opened my little pretties and doodads the kids had made me and gave them all a big hug. Buddy rolled some logs up to the fire. We sat about and sung a few songs while the kids roasted marshmallows. Frank Dobbs stamped around playing the mouth harp while the big black fellow with the beard patted at Mr. Keller-Brown's drums. Devlin strummed the guitar (though he never could play worth sour apples) and the fire burnt down and the moon come up through the new ash leaves. Betsy and Buddy's wife took their kids up to the house. Mr. Keller-Brown took Toby into the bus, him still hugging the kitty. He brought out a jar of little pellets that he sprinkled into the embers. Real myrrh, he said, from Lebanon. It smelled fresh and sharp, like cedar pitch on a warm fall wind, not sickening sweet like other incense. Then he brought out some pillows and the men settled down to discussing the workings of the universe and I knew it was time for me to go to bed.

  "Where's that giant purse of mine?" I whispered to my grandson.

  He says, "It's in the cabin. Betsy has made the bed for you. I'll walk you up that way." I told him never mind; that the moon was bright and I could walk my way around this territory with a blindfold on anyway, and told them all good night.

  The crickets were singing in the ash trees, happy that summer was here. I passed Emerson's old plow; somebody had set out to weld it into a mailbox stand and had apparently give up and just left it to rust in the weeds, half plow and half mailbox. It made me sad and I noticed the crickets had hushed. I was taking my time, almost to the fence, when he was suddenly in front of me - a sharp black pyramid in the moonlight, hissing down at me.

  "Backdoor! Don't you never come backdoorin' on me or my little boy again, understand? Never! Y' understand?"

  Of course I was petrified. But, truth to tell, looking back, not utterly surprised. For one thing I knew immediately who it was behind that black pyramid and that hissing gutter drawl. For another, I knew what he was talking about.

  "The motherfuckin necklace I let pass 'cause I say 'She old. She just old. She don't know.' But then to pull the same shit about the motherfuckin cat... that's backdoor!"

  Two big hands from somebody behind grabbed both sides of my head, forcing me to look up at him. Fingers came all the way around over my mouth. I couldn't holler or turn aside or even blink.

  "White angel white mother angel, my ass! I show you white angel!"

  And then O sweet Savior it was like he pulled back the dark blouse of his face. Two breasts came swirling out toward me dropping out and down until the black nipples touched my very eyeballs... giving suck... milking into me such thoughts and pictures that my mind knew at once not to think or look. Let them slide, I said in my mind, sli-i-ide... and I made a picture of rain falling on a duck. This duck splattering around must have come as a shock to him because he blinked. I felt the invisible hands drop from my head and I knew there hadn't been nobody behind me.

  "So don' let me catch you -"

  The duck run out a great long neck and quacked. He fumbled and blinked again.

  "I mean y' better don' try no secret influence on my son again, is all I wanted to tell you. Y' understand? A dude, a father's got to look out for his own. You understand?"

  And was gone back in the bush before I could catch my breath to answer. I hotfooted right on up to the cabin then I hope to tell you! And without slowing one iota pulled the shades took two yellow pills got in bed and yanked the covers up over my head. I didn't dare think. I recited in my mind all the scripture I knew, and the words to "My Country 'Tis of Thee" and "O Say Can You See." I was into bread recipes before they took effect.

  Just like praying for something, Lord, I don't like to take a pill for sleeping unless it's absolutely necessary. Often's the night I laid awake till dawn listening to the elevators go up and down the Towers rather than take one of these blessed pills. They always make me sleep too long and leave me feeling dopey as a dog for days. Don't even let you dream, usually. But now I found myself dreaming like a fire broke out! It was those thoughts and pictures I'd been given suck with. I hadn't shed them after all. I'd just covered them over like sparks in a mattress. Now they were blazing to life in icy flames, revealing a whole different version of life, and death, and Heaven. Mainly it was this shadow thing - sometimes it was an alligator, sometimes it was a panther or a wolf - rushing through my world and snapping off pieces, all the weak namby-pamby limbs, like snapping off Devlin's hands playing the guitar, or Frank Dobbs's leg while he was striding around, or my tongue from saying little oil-on-the-water fibs. Miss Lawn it lopped off absolutely. And Emerson T, and most of my past. Then it moved ahead, a dark pruning shadow snipping through the years ahead until only the bare cold bones of a future was left, naked, with no more fibs, nor birthday cakes, nor presents and doodads. For ever and evermore. Standing there. And out of this naked thing the heat begins to drain, till the ground
was as cold as the soles of its feet and the wind the same temperature as its breathing. It still was because it was a true thing, but it was no more than the rock or the wind. And all it could do was to stand there gawking into eternity, waiting, in case God might want to use it again. Like an old mule or the ghost of a mule, its meaning spent, its seed never planted and wouldn't have grown anyway because it is a mule, a trick of God.

  It saddened me to my very marrow. It seemed I could hear it braying its terrible bleak lonesomeness forever. I wept for it and I wished I could say something, but how can you offer comfort to one of the bleak tricks of God? It brayed louder. Not so bleak, now, nor far-off sounding, and I opened my eyes and sat up in bed. Out the window I saw Otis under the moon, howling and running in circles, way past wishing he'd blown the dust out of his brandy glass. Devlin and the others were trying to get him, but he still had his wooden sword and was slashing at them.

  "Keep your place. It wasn't me not this wienie he had no call! Devlin? Dobbsy? Help me, old chums; he's put the glacier on your old - he had no justifications I'm already pruned!"

  First begging for help then whacking at them when they came close, screaming like they'd turned into monsters.

  "He's trimming me, boys, dontcha see? Me who never so much as - he had no right you black bastard all I was was just foolish!"

  And get so wound up he'd scream and run right into the fence around the chicken yard. He'd bounce off the fence and hew the men back away from him then he'd howl and run into the wire again. The chickens were squawking, the men hollering, and Otis, Lord Jesus, was going plumb mad. This isn't just foolishness, I told myself; this is simon pure unvarnished madness! He needs help. Somebody to phone somebody. Yet all I could do was watch like it was more of my same cold dream rushing about in the moonlight and chicken feathers, until Otis got his sword snaffled in the wire and the men swarmed on him.

  They carried him thrashing and weeping to the house, right past my cabin window. As soon as they were gone from sight I was up out of that bed. Without a further thought on the matter I put on my housecoat and slippers and struck out toward the ash grove. I wasn't scared, exactly. More like unbalanced. The ground seemed to be heaving. The trees was full of faces, and every witch-doctor and conjure-man story I ever heard was tumbling up out of my Ozark childhood to keep me company, but I still wasn't scared. If I let myself get the slightest bit scared, I suspicioned, I'd be raving worse than Otis under the curse of Keller-Brown.