Practical Jean (20 page)

“
Hello, Kotemee!
” she shouted, emphasizing the
meee
. There was a speckling of applause from the thirty or so people, most of them elderly or mothers with infants who happened to be sitting at the picnic tables arranged haphazardly between the Activity Zone and the stage. The girl wrenched the microphone toward her mouth once more, as if furious with it for trying to escape. “
We are . . .”
She leaned back and let a dramatic pause swell, or, perhaps, given the way her mouth hung slack, she had forgotten what she was going to say. No, here it came. “. . .
Swamp Fire!
” At this, the bedraggled boys began to flail and shrug, and the amplifiers unleashed a sound like something forged hammer upon anvil. In front of them, the girl convulsed in rhythm.

Jean looked up at Welland, whose expression was apologetic. “Well, it's sort of countryish,” she yelled above the music.

“They had their own generator,” Welland yelled back. Then he added, with something like optimism, “A John Deere.”

Natalie held out her hand and looked toward the clouds.

Whatever else it was that Welland wanted to tell Jean, he seemed reluctant to express it at a shout. So Jean and Natalie made their way toward the other side of the Activity Zone, where a parked snack truck gave off smells of popcorn and fried dough, and where the music was no more oppressive than that sound produced by the teams of weed-whackers deployed semi-annually by Kotemee Council on all town-owned lands. As they went, the two women were forced to wade through children like Mennonites through fields of flax. But Jean was determined to make good on her private pledge to lift Natalie's spirits, so she tried to draw Natalie into the sorts of Activity Zone diversions she herself would normally have avoided. The petting zoo and the pony rides, for instance. In all their cow, goat, pig, rabbit, and saddled-pony glory, they seemed a bit pathetic, even cruel, to Jean. But she figured they'd be naturals for Natalie. She was an animal person, after all.

But as they approached the perimeter fence of the Animal Zone, Natalie would have nothing to do with either the petting or the ponies.

“I don't want fleas,” she said, shuddering.

“But you love animals,” said Jean.

“What makes you think that?”

“You're a
pet groomer
!”

Natalie shook her head. “That's faulty logic. Maybe I'm a pet groomer not because I like animals, but because I hate messy ones.”

They went next to the Ferris wheel, because Jean thought it would offer a nice view, and because for a little while it would place Natalie above just about everyone in Kotemee, which Jean thought would probably appeal to her in some deeply psychological way. But Natalie wasn't interested in the Ferris wheel.

“Have you seen the delinquent who's running the thing?” she said, jabbing her thumb toward a boy of about sixteen whose shirt was smeared with grease and also what looked like some mustard. “I wouldn't trust him to run his own mouth.”

Jean laughed and gave Natalie's shoulder a light, joshing swat. But really it seemed that she was just being difficult, and Jean thought there was a good chance her own patience was going to run out, and soon. She decided the best thing was to steer them toward the one annual picnic activity she herself actually enjoyed, which was the Wheel of Fortune.

As usual the Wheel was set up on the theme of playing cards, with suits and card values crudely painted on the plywood wheel and matched by betting spaces on the worn, painted-vinyl sheet laid lengthwise along a narrow table. A crowd of people was gathered around the betting table but Jean saw an empty space and squeezed in, and laid two dollars on the jack of clubs. Natalie could just mind herself for a while.

Pete Besseler, one of the librarian husbands, ran the Wheel. Pete was one of those men with a big Adam's apple and a wiry, ageless body so unlike Milt's. He had on the same dirty canvas apron that he wore every year, with big bulgy money pouches and a spray of card suits printed on the front. Jean suspected that some librarian with an eye to raising money had bought the apron and the wheel and the betting sheet all together in one big package ten or fifteen years before. Maybe the same librarian knew she had a ready Wheel runner in the family. Pete certainly acted as if he was born to the job.

“No more bets, no more bets!” he said, waving his big hands as though he were fending off autograph seekers. Without taking his eye off the betting board, as if he could trust no one, Pete reached up with his long, crane-like arm. He gave the wheel a tug, and it began to turn, the sprung metal tab at the top chattering against the nails. Jean loved that sound. Except it always seemed to her that when she had money down on the table, Pete never really gave the wheel a proper spin. She felt as though she had to beg the wheel to go around more than one full turn. Possibly it was a matter of perception, and possibly not.

After a moment the wheel came to a stop on the five of hearts. “We have a winner!” called Pete. The winner was a little dark-haired girl betting her mother's money.
Isn't that cute
, thought Jean, as Pete swept her coins off the jack of clubs into his pouch.

She put another two dollars on the jack of clubs. To her there was something boyish and fun about the jack, something ready for action. Other people around Jean placed money on various spaces, inexplicably choosing fives and threes and eights, numbers with no personality. They seemed to be betting indiscriminately, as if they were trying to get their money in before the storm came. Pete stretched out his hands in anticipation of the horde of autograph seekers. Beside Jean someone placed another two dollars on the jack of clubs.

“Oh,” said Jean, half turning. “No, I think he's already waved off the bets.”

“No he hasn't,” said the bettor.

“No more bets, no more bets,” waved Pete.

“
Now
he's waving them off.”

Jean suddenly realized the bettor standing beside her, standing firm and still with a pale-yellow sweater draped around her shoulders and her hands clasped in an attitude of confident repose, was Fran Knubel.

“Oh, Fran,” said Jean, feeling her face pinch. “Hi there.”

“Jean,” said Fran. It was more an acknowledgment—
I see that you exist
—than a greeting.

Pete was reaching up to hook his long, grappling fingers over one of the nails.

“Pete!” called Jean. She pointed down at her jack of clubs space. “I had my money in here first.”

Fran made a huffy sound. “Two people can have their money in the same space,” she said. Jean noticed that for once Fran wasn't wearing any attention-grabbing jewelery. Perhaps she thought it would be at risk among the common crush of Kotemeeans.

Pete shoved his hands in his money apron and came over wearing an official-looking scowl. “What's the problem?”

Jean leaned toward him in a way that he might have thought was friendly, or even flirty, and if he did then so be it. “It's just I had my money in here first.” She tapped Fran's coin. “This one's Fran's.”

“There's no problem,” said Fran, her hands unfolding in the manner of an open book. “Two people can bet in the same space.”

Around Jean, people who'd put their money down were getting restless. Someone grumbled, “Come on,” and a child echoed it more plaintively, “Yeah, come
on
!” There were spreading murmurs of agreement. It seemed to Jean that Kotemeeans these days were more impatient than ever. Was the world pressing down on them so relentlessly?

Pete wrapped his hand around the back of his long neck and looked down at the jack of clubs space. He swallowed and his Adam's apple slid up and down like a little elevator.

“I don't see the problem, Jean. Five people could put their money in there if they wanted.”

“Oh,” said Jean. “Really?” She sensed Fran nodding fiercely beside her. “Well, all right. I just wanted to make sure.”

A few of the other bettors cheered with ironic verve as Pete reached up and finger-hooked a nail. “No more bets! No more bets!” he repeated, and gave the wheel a nice tug for once, perhaps out of frustration.

“People do it all the time at the roulette tables in Las Vegas,” said Fran, as the metal tab chattered against the nails. Her voice sounded small and tight, as though she were wearing some sort of corrective collar. “Whenever Jim and I go, the chips are just piled on.”

“I am sure you're an expert on betting at Las Vegas, Fran,” said Jean, watching the wheel spin. “But this is Kotemee, and I thought the rules here might be different.”

“You just didn't want me in your space.”

“Well there are
lots of spaces
,” said Jean, spreading her hands. “I don't know why you have to copy me.”

That was when Fran turned to Jean. She turned with a full-body jerk, and Jean could tell that something big was coming, and that it was unavoidable. Fran turned, her mouth pursed tight but her eyes wide and wet as brimming soup spoons. She turned and said, “And I don't know why you have to be so hateful.
How's that?
” Fran stared wetly at Jean, not blinking. “I try so hard to be friendly and yet you push me away. You just push and push and I don't understand!”

It felt to Jean as if Fran was not actually expecting a response but just setting out her anger and frustration and dismay like a centerpiece on a dining room table.
Look at my bright dismay
, Fran was saying. Her big, wet eyes, her turbulent mouth, her aspect of injury; altogether it was something quite impressive, almost something to be admired.

“We have a winner!” called Pete at the wheel.

“So fine,” said Fran, her voice gone faint. “You don't like me. That's really the only thing that matters. And I don't need any more humiliation.”

Watching Fran turn into the crowd, Jean had the strange and empowering sense that she was becoming almost a student of human nature. Something about striving so hard to find the roots of her friends' happiness was making her more attuned and observant. She turned back to the Wheel, ready to train her new powers of perception onto Pete Besseler, and noticed that Pete was sliding eight dollars toward her across the vinyl betting sheet.

“What's that?” said Jean.

“Your winnings!” said Pete. “Yours and the other lady's. Where did she go?”

Jean felt her shoulders sag. “I'll take it to her.”

“No,” said Pete, giving his head an official shake. “Can't let you do that. Half that money's not yours.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” said Jean, grabbing the money out of Pete's hands. “If you feel the need you can call the police. My brother has a booth.”

The air felt weighted and damp against her cheeks and the dark clouds bulged oppressively low, like the underside of a vast, moldy bunk bed. Jean wandered around the perimeter of the Activity Zone looking for where Fran might have gone and came to the sudden realization that she had completely lost track of Natalie, too.

“Natalie?” she called. She turned in a complete circle, searching, searching, aware that she must look like a grandmother who'd lost a five-year-old child.
Incompetent woman
, people would be thinking.
I'd never trust her with mine.
As she peered out over the dozens of heads she caught on one that looked familiar. But it wasn't Natalie's, or Fran's. It was gray and combed and bobbing pertly in the direction of the Picnic Basket Zone. It was . . . Milt. Seeing his head so far away, so disconnected from her, gave Jean a queer sensation. It was as though she were lost at sea, her body tossed between the waves, and Milt's head were a buoy. She was in the grip of the tides, the cruel, unthinking hand of nature, and Milt's head was the only sign of civilization, her only connection to humanity. She stood on her toes and stared at Milt's head as it receded, as the currents took it farther from her, and the urge to cry out to him was so strong . . .

But then she noticed another head. It was near Milt's, it was also familiar, and it seemed to be moving in the same direction, at the same pace. Jean felt her stomach twist and she lost the ability to breathe. Her face went tingly and cold. She turned away, made her feet carry her in the opposite direction. She pushed past two young men gnawing like jackals on buns stuffed with sausage and sauerkraut, past a little girl holding a puff of blue candy floss, past a busty T-shirted woman with a swoop of black hair down her back, past an old man bending down for a quarter. They were in her way! She would push through! She would keep going in this new, better, happier direction even if it took her back to the Fiery Swamp!

In the midst of her flight over the trampled grass and dirt and food wrappers of Corkin Park, through the flaxen fields of children, away from the specter of those two heads . . . she nearly collided with Fran, who was turning away from the Kotemee Garden Club booth with something cupped in her hands.

“Oh, Fran!” blurted Jean.

Obviously startled, at a loss for words, even embarrassed, Fran glanced down at what she was carrying—a small, pressed-paper pot of soil that sprouted a slender green shoot—then looked up and around as if for a path of escape.

“Fran,” said Jean. “We won!” She showed Fran the money in her hand.

Fran frowned as if she were confused. She reached up to adjust the sweater around her shoulders, and her gaze flitted between Jean's face and the coins in her hand. “We won?”

“On the jack of clubs! Here.” Jean pushed the money into Fran's palm.

“How much?”

“I guess eight dollars.”

Like a prairie morning, Fran's face filled with a sudden light. “Well isn't that . . .” She held out the little pot. “This Blood Lily was seven dollars and eighty-five cents. And now . . . it's like it's free. Oh!” She looked mortified. “Is this
our
money?”