checks—” Yatata, yatata, yatata, while the truckdriver keeps trying to butt hi with excuses and Belshazzar the Magnificent eats grass and sometimes gives Princess Lei-lani a brotherly lick on the nose, for by that time Princess Leilani has dropped the nervous act and edged over mooing plaintively.
Mrs. Parry yells: “See that? I don’t hold with artificial insemination but you dang stockbreeders are driving us dairy farmers to it! Get your—your steer off my property before I throw him off! I got work to do even if he hasn’t! Belshazzar the Magnificent—hah\”
She turns on me. “Don’t just stand around gawking, Bub. When you get the stovewood split you can stack it in the woodshed.” I scurry off and resume Operation Woodlot, but I take it a little easy which I can do because Mrs. Parry is in the cowbarn nursing Agnes of Lincolnshire and the preemie calf.
The next morning at breakfast I am in a bad temper, Brenda has got the giggles and Mrs. Parry is stiff and tired from sleeping hi the barn. We are a gruesome threesome, and then a car drives up and a kid of maybe thirty comes bursting into the kitchen. He has been crying. His eyes are red and there are clean places on his face where the tears ran down. “Ma!” he whimpers at Mrs. Parry. “I got to talk to you! You got to talk to Bonita, she says I don’t love her no more and she’s going to leave me!”
“Hush up^ George,” she snaps at him. “Come into the parlor.” They go into the parlor and Brenda whistles: “Whoo-ee! Wait’111 tell Maw about this!”
“Who is he?”
“Miz’ Parry’s boy George. She gave him the south half of the farm and built him a house on it. Bonita’s his wife. She’s a stuck-up girl from Ware County and she wears falsies and dyes her hair and—” Brenda looks around, lowers her voice and whispers “—and she sends her worshing to the laundry in town.”
“God in Heaven,” I say. “Have the cops heard about this?”
“Oh, it’s legal, but you just shouldn’t do it.”
“I see. I misunderstood, I guess. Back in the Third Ward it’s a worse rap than mopery with intent to gawk. The judges are ruthless with it.”
Her eyes go round. “Is that a fact?”
“Sure. Tell your mother about it.”
Mrs. Parry came back hi with her son and said to us: “Clear out, you kids. I want to make a phone call.”
“I’ll start the milkin’,” Brenda said.
“And I’ll framble the portistan while it’s still cool and barkney,” I say.
“Sure,” Mrs. Parry says, cranking the phone. “Go and do that, Bub.” She is preoccupied.
I go through the kitchen door, take one sidestep, flatten against the house and listen. Reception is pretty good.
“Bonita?” Mrs. Parry says into the phone. “Is that you, Bonita? Listen, Bonita, George is here and he asked me to call you and tell you he’s sorry. I ain’t exactly going to say that. I’m going to say that you’re acting like a blame fool . . .” She chuckles away from the phone and says: “She wants to talk to you, George/Don’t be too eager, boy.”
I slink away from the kitchen door, thinking: “Ah-hah!” I am thinking so hard that Mrs. Parry bungles into me when she walks out of the kitchen sooner than I expect.
She grabs me with one of those pipe-vise hands and snaps: “You young devil, were you listening to me on the phone?”
Usually, it is the smart thing to deny everything and ast for your mouthpiece, but up here they got no mouthpieces. For once I tell the truth and cop a plea. “Yes, Mrs. Parry. I’m so ashamed of myself you can’t imagine. I always been like that. It’s a psy-cho-logical twist I got for listening. I can’t seem to control it. Maybe I read too many bad comic books. But honest, I won’t breathe a word.” Here I have the sense to shut up.
She shakes her head. “What about the ducks that sank and Agnes dropping her calf before her time? What about
Belshazzar?” She begins to breathe through her nostrils. “It’s hexin’, that’s what it is!”