House of Earth (16 page)

“Tiiike. You old clumsy thing you. Donnn't. Will you
or will you not ever learn how to be careful?” The springs of the bed screeched with rust when she sat down to rub her face with her hands. “Old mean thing.”

“Turn th' radio on. Play me some music.” He nodded at her. “I got a damned tender soul. I need perty music jumpin' down all aroun' me here while I'm a doin' my work.”

Ella May lifted the weight of the baby in her stomach and went over across the room to connect the naked ends of two wires that would make the radio play. She grunted in a good-humored way as she walked, “Oho hum hummy hummy hummm.”

“No! You set back down over yonder on th' bed! I'll tie them two wires together!” Tike splashed more paste about the room as he waved his broom. “Oughta be able to take a reg'lar bath in some awful good music ever' day an' ever night for a hunderd an' seventy days.”

As she sat back down on the edge of the bed, she worked at the knobs of the radio. It was an old one, in a green metal box, and the loudspeaker stood up on top of the box like an air ventilator on a ship. As Tike hooked the two wires together, Ella May looked at the speaker and worked the handles. Tike had put the radio close to the head of the bed so “Lady could just lay there with 'er baby in 'er arms an' lissen.”

“I don't see what ever did possess you to go and give that much for such an old junk heap as this, anyway,” she scolded at him in her soft way as he spit on his fingers and
smoothed down a little hump in his wallpaper. “Why did you ever?”

“Goshamighty whizzers, Lady, that ain't too much to pay for a good radio. An' that's a good one. I seen an ad in a big magazine that said so. Company speaks mighty well of it.”

“Yes. I should suppose the company would. I would too if it made me a millionaire and rich.” She held her right hand up over her left breast and bent over with a stitch of sharp pain. When she saw that Tike's eyes followed her, she lifted herself up straight again. This little sharp cutting pain had been over her left breast now, coming and going, for months. In her own mind she traced it back to that day when she had carried the cream cans across the yard, and Tike had punched her with the sharp bone of his elbow. It had been there ever since, but not so bad that she had ever told him about it. Once or twice he had seen her bent over with the hurt and he had asked her what it was. She passed it off as just some kind of a regular female pain that all women have when their breasts swell at their monthly period. His eyes were faster and sharper in these days since the baby was in her, and he had got to where he did not trust what she said anymore about pains because she always moved her shoulders and passed it off as nothing. He kept his eyes on her until she felt nervous.

“'Smatter over there?” he asked.

“Oh, just little stitches in my muscles here and there.
When I get bent over, I can't hardly get straightened back up again. Go on with your project. Don't worry so much about me.”

“Just what in the hell else would you say I oughta worry about then, Missy?” He sounded like he held her in suspicion.

“Your work. Ahhh. Ding bust this dad-ratted old dod-rotted radio to the south pole and back, anyhow! Tike! Did you fix those wires together good?”

“Good as they'd go. Why?”

“Ohhh. I don't know.” With her fingers she combed her hair back out of her eyes. “All I can get out of the old thing is just this crazy rattling sound and this infernal screeching. And I do honestly believe to my soul that this is going to force my brain to just stop and quit functioning completely!” In spite of the fact that she did try to sound humorous and fresh, there was a tired drag in every word that she spoke. “Could it be that the wires up on top of the house are knocked down or something? Something. I don't know. It's just not working. Maybe it just doesn't like me.”

“Ya gotta talk good to it.”

“I guess it's just got it in for me.”

“Treat it nice. Talk to it like dice. You gotta talk all kinds a super spucious words to it.”

“Super spucious? What kind of words are those?” There was a hollow look about her jaws as she studied the radio with all of her mind. “Super what did you call them?”

“Spucious. Spucious. Don't you know? You mean to set
there an' tell me that you're a great big grown-up womern, old enough to have a baby in your gut, an' you still don't savvy what super spucious is?” He put on an expression of great self-importance and held his elbows out to his sides like a family butler.

“Well, then, sir, if you happen to be so familiar with matters of this nature, then in all probability your efforts and not mine will meet with the most success in our maneuvers to coax this machine to play,” she said, bowing to him. And there was a flirty look in her eyes as she said again, “Maybe you could tell me just what about your super spucious words are. And just where about did you learn them?”

“Grampaw Hamlin taught 'em to me, one at a time on th' shortest day of ever' year way down in a slick-off canyon of th' Cap Rock cliff.” He marched over with his brush in his hand and a proud look.

“And sir. Just what are those words?”

“Words you use to make all kinds a forces an' powers come down to one little spot an' go to work for you an' do whatever you tell 'em to. Brings all of th' invisible forces down to work on th' visible ones.”

“My. My. My.”

“It's th' words of th' dead civilizations an' th' civilizations that ain't even been born yet. You gotta know just how to go about it. Brings th' past an' the' future down to work on th' present.”

“The past and the future down to work on the present?”

“I don't say nothin' super spucious but once.”

“Well. Do say.”

“Yeahh. Perty handy thing to know. You know.”

“Well, I should daily remark.”

“Ahhhh. Here. Let me have that knob. I'll get some noise out of that contraption. Here. You hold my wallpaper brush. I don't want to gum the thing all up with paste. Ahhhemmm. Now, let me see. Let me see. Now, let me see.”

“Go ahead and see. I'm not hindering you, am I?”

“Where's that set of directions that come with this outfit?”

“They are right there in that little book hanging on that nail.” She pointed.

Tike reached out his hand to get the book of instructions. “Ha.”

“I thought you said that you said you were going to use your super spucious magic to make it play. You don't need that little old book of directions. Call your powers down to go to work on it.” She looked at him with a tired, sad smile.

“Hogey hogey hogey hogey hogey, dogey dogey dogey dogey, hogey hogey hogey riz a riz a radio, play! Play! Play!” He held both hands over his head and danced around, kicking one foot against the linoleum. As his toe struck down against the dry, rotted, flaky thin worn linoleum, a cold shiver went through his whole body, and his face and his skin became wet with a chilly sweat. As he whirled and said his magic words, the floor, the walls, the whole house moved and trembled, and the loose dust made a loud noise as it sifted down behind the dry wallpapers. He kept dancing.
He smiled. His eyes turned into lights and were half shut as he danced. For a few moments his wrists ached and his fingers burned and he felt a craving to take his two fists and beat the whole house down, take his two feet and kick the odd pieces out into the night. He knew that he could do it. Not a plank nor a board on the whole house could have stood up under one good crash of his shoulder, and most of them he could have rammed through with his bare fist. He was thinking to himself, “I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll scatter its carcass all over these upper plains! This measly shack cain't keep my woman an' my baby on a ball an' chain.”

Ella leaned her head back against the fancywork of the iron bed rail. She heard the house shake, the wallpaper crack some more, the dust sift down and down and on and down and down. She smiled. She felt Tike's craving to crash it in. She sat there, leaned her head back, and smiled, but there was a vacant spot, an empty place somewhere there across her face. Tike saw that, and this was what made him have his raging desire to just shut his eyes and double up his fists and just whale away and batter the whole thing down into a trash pile and then strike a match to that. He still danced. He whirled. He jigged. He waved his arms above his head, and fanned them at his sides, he whooped, yelled, and made gobbling noises with his hand over his mouth. It was not that he wanted to dance, it was not that he enjoyed it nor got any fun out of it, but it was because it was keeping that last little trace of Ella's smile on her face there. And it seemed that he had got started and just could not stop. He
hollered himself hoarse, and worked his clothes into a suds of sweat. He cursed the angels, the devils, the spooks, the saints, the tides, the seasons, and everything else above and below the earth, but all of these he cursed to himself under his breath. He cried out his super spucious words, “Oolagy, dooley, moola katolly, hobity hotine, hobity hotine!” Then he waved his fingers into the speaker of the radio and said, “Plazay! Plazay! Plazay!”

Ella looked into the speaker.

“Play!”

She kept looking.

“Play!”

“Pulllay!” she helped him out.

Tike fell down tired on the floor and hugged her legs as she sat down on the bed. He put his head sideways into her lap and breathed like a tired dog after a swift chase, his clothing soaked with large spots of perspiration as he rubbed his hard hand over his wet cheek. He was so out of wind that he could hardly talk, but finally did manage to say, “Playyy!”

Ella May's voice sounded thin and a long ways off. “Play.”

A hum, a scratchy rasping blur of noise, a rattle, a whine, a clicking, clacking, several high and low zooms, far-off rumbles, sobs, sighs, and then a terrible clatter came from the mouth of the loudspeaker. This was the only answer that it made to all of Tike's sweating and working and dancing.

“Guess,” he said between gasps of air, “guess, guess, maybe th' battery's run down.”

She felt his hair and cheek and chin with the ends of her fingers and asked, “Didn't old Grandpa Hamlin teach you any super spucious words about how to charge batteries again?”

“Yeah. He did.” He shook his head in her lap and pulled his shoes up under him. “He showed me some. Works ever' time.”

“Then why don't you get up there and say them and dance them and yell them and scream them and charge these old batteries again?” she asked.

“Well. Ah. Just to tell you a fact for a fact”—he panted as he thought—“ah, th' super spucious words an' the dancin' that it'd take to recharge them old dead batteries is, ah, well, perty hard. Fact is, ahhh, I believe, believe it'd be a little easier just to carry them batteries into town an' th' man run 'em up again on his reg'lar machine.”

It was after several minutes of stillness in the room that Ella said, “You know it was certainly nice of Blanche to stay here with me these last few days.”

Tike had rolled a cigarette, spilled loose tobacco in the wrinkles of his pants, and turned to face the room and to lean his head back against her knee. She smelled his khaki pants and blue shirt filled with his sour sweat, mixed in with the smoke that he blew from his mouth as the cigarette hung down from his lips. She heard him blow smoke without moving the cigarette, and heard him say, “Yeah … Really
sure 'nuff was. You're a dern daggone fool, though, Elly, to let her leave you alla these four or five hours. Kid was to poke its head out right now, shucks, I wouldn't know which a way to jump. Where did you say that she went?”

“Into Jericho to buy some things. She'll be right back. It's not more than nine miles by the new shortcut road. I look for her right now any minute. Of course it is getting dark, all right. And I would feel just a touch better if she would come. But, you know, Tike, she has just been the nicest thing that you ever did see.”

He shook his head and listened. “Yeahhh.”

“And besides, Mister, you could use a few more brains than you've got right now, yourself. You could even learn how to welcome a little newly come baby into the world your own self. Old Grandma and Grandpa told me they brought two of theirs in without the help of any doctor.”

“You're nuts.”

“Why? Wouldn't you like to be the first human to shake hands with this little fellow? Tell him howdy, give him a good friendly sendoff in the world?” She laughed. “I would really like to see you, Old Tike Hamlin, reaching and snatching and fretting and fuming and foaming and jumping around all over the place! Ha ha ha ha!”

“You're a downright liar an' th' truth ain't in you,” he shot back at her. “You're lyin' an' you know you're a-lyin'!”

“No sir. But that Blanche is really just about the sweetest and the nicest one woman that anybody anywhere would ever hope to see. Why, do you realize that she just won't
hardly let me turn a hand to lift a thing, to pull at anything, to heave nor to tug, nor to bend nor to stoop, nor to bounce around nor shake up and down nor to strain myself in any way, shape, form, or fashion? She is certainly fine. And she hasn't left my sight now for ten days until just today. I think that she gets letters from a sweetie and she doesn't want us nor any of her folks to know anything about it. And so she didn't have him to send them here to the farm, but rented her a box of her own in Jericho. She thinks that the box will be just running over with all kinds of sweet things from him, and, well, I certainly don't blame her for wanting to go. Of course, this is all just what I think. I might be wrong. But I have watched her slip letters out from under her apron and read them and then hide them real quick again before I noticed her, or before she saw me. So she walked up to the road and caught the mail carrier going in, and she got in and rode with him. She said that she could catch some of the ranchers coming back out. She seems to know just about when everybody in this whole country does their buying in town. This is Thursday and I do know that the Pitzer folks and the Steins go in with their cream and eggs. She'll get out over there on the Sixty-Six just a mile, and it won't take that Blanche girl but just about three hips and a couple of hops to come a-bouncing in at that old door right there. She might be feeling so good from her letters that she will just about run the whole house down when she does burst in. I look for her any minute now.”