All Over Creation (23 page)

“You're not going to read it, are you?”

“No.”

Daisy sighed, then leaned over and looked through the back window at Poo. “Moo,” he said, knocking on the window and waving a hoof. Poo gurgled and wiggled his fingers like a sea anemone. “Cute kid,” Daisy said. Poo hurled his teething ring to the floor again.

Phoenix and Ocean were nowhere to be seen. I had told them to be ready and waiting. I scanned the entrance of the school building. Several young people, ratty and earnest, were darting forward and waylaying mothers. They were dressed in jeans and headbands and tie-dyed scarves and layers of shaggy knit things that looked like matted fur.

“What's wrong?” asked Daisy.

“Nothing. Just the way those kids are dressed.” I was feeling homesick. We had a lot of kids like this in Pahoa—hippies, earthmuffins, white rastas, and back-to-the-land types. They came for the cheap real estate and excellent
pakalolo,
and because you won't die of exposure if you happen to smoke too much and pass out on the beach or by the side of a road.

Daisy ducked her head apologetically. “Usually we try to dress a little more straight when we're doing an action, but this was kind of spur of the moment.”

“Spontaneous, huh? Far out. You mean, like a happening?”

“No,” he said stiffly. “It's more political than that.”

“Political? Well, now, we don't get too many of you hippie-agitator types 'round these parts,” I drawled, trying to hit the right twang of hostility and suspicion.

Daisy backed off and nodded his large head so mournfully that I felt sorry for him. “Listen, Cow. I'm just kidding around. The dress code reminded me of my misspent youth, acid flashbacks, Berkeley in the sixties or something.”

“Oh, right,” said Daisy, relaxing. “Hey, cool. I can relate.” He cocked his head. “You're too young to have been dropping acid in the sixties.”

“You're right,” I said. “It was the seventies.”

“Oh, man, the seventies sucked,” the cow said sadly.

“Sure did.” Together we watched the raggedy crew dart around with their pamphlets. Phoenix was talking to a skinny boy wearing a ski cap pulled down low over his eyes and big, baggy pants.

“Phoenix!” I yelled. “Get over here.” Phoenix looked up and flapped his hand impatiently. “Who's he talking to?” I asked the cow.

“That's our Frankie. Our Frank Perdue.”

“What a name!”

“You said it.”

“Poor kid.”

“Totally.”

“Phoenix!” I hollered again.

“Phoenix,” Daisy said. “Now, that's a cool name,”

“Thanks. I like it, too. But he hates it. Prefers to be called Nix.”

Ocean emerged from the school building and looked around, then spotted the Pontiac. I waved, and she came running like a good daughter.

“So how come you call him Phoenix?”

“Habit, I guess. Nix sounds so negative.”

“Gotta get through the negative to reach the positive.”

I looked at the cow. “Good point.” I took a deep breath.
“Nix!”

Startled, Phoenix glanced up, then high-fived Frank Perdue and started loping toward the Pontiac. His sister skipped up and tagged the fender, making a big show of getting there first.

“Hi,” Ocean said, panting. She looked from mother to cow and back again. “Who's that?”

“Get in. We're in a hurry. We have to pick up your grandpa by three.”

“I'm Ocean,” said Ocean to Daisy. “Who are you?”

“I'm Daisy the Dairy Cow. Do you like milk?”

“Cows are girls,” she said accusingly. “You sound like a boy.”

“Well, I'm not really a cow. I'm a man in a cow costume.”

“Is that like a wolf in sheep's clothing?” she asked me.

“Ocean, get in the car. We have to go.”

“Well, is it?”

“Yes.” I got in behind the wheel.

Ocean turned to the cow. “I don't think I'm supposed to talk to you, then.” She climbed into the backseat next to Poo, who had fallen asleep.

Phoenix jogged up.

“Nice of you to join us.” I reached across the front seat and opened the door for him. “Get in.”

Phoenix sighed and rolled his eyes.

I started the car. “Good-bye, Daisy.”

“Hey!” Daisy banged on the hood of the car. “Check out that flyer, okay? It's unbelievable.”

I pulled away and looked in the rearview mirror. Daisy was watching us go, waving his foreleg.

“Oh,
gross,
” Phoenix said, picking up the flyer from the seat. “This is
so disgusting!
”

“What? What's disgusting?” Ocean cried. She undid her seat belt and hung over into the front seat to get a look, but Phoenix held the flyer just out of her reach.

“Ocean, sit back and buckle up. Phoenix, tell her what it is and stop tormenting her.”

“It's this stuff called bovine growth hormone, and they shoot up cows with it.”

“You mean like drugs?” Ocean asked. “Why do they do that?”

“So the cows'll make more milk, stupid.”

“What's a ‘bovine'?”

Phoenix ignored her and started to read. “ ‘This overmilking leads to a condition called mastitis, resulting in open sores on the udders of the cows . . .' ”

“Ewww yuck!” said Ocean, throwing herself against the backseat. “What's an utter?”

“. . . that leak pus and blood into the milk you drink.”

“I'm gonna puke,” said Ocean.

“You don't even understand what it's about,” Phoenix said.

“I do, too! It's about blood and pus in milk. Mom, I'm never gonna drink milk again, okay?”

“No, it's not okay.”

I glanced over at my son's profile as he read. “Listen, son, that's all just fine, but you can't believe everything people tell you, especially some guy dressed up in a cow suit.”

“Oh,
Yummy!
” he said. He hates it when I call him son. “They're
activists.
” He folded up the flyer and stuck it in his knapsack. Like that explained everything.

I winced. “
Especially
activists, son. Especially activists in cow's clothing.” Listening to the words coming from my mouth, I was struck by how easy it was to sound like a parent.

 

 

My father sat in the passenger's seat, wrapped in a blanket like a mummified cadaver, shrunken and hauled from a crypt. The kids, scared by his extreme fragility, were in the back, lined up, neat and quiet. Lloyd kept his eyes half shut, his gaze fixed on the landscape passing outside the window. I didn't know what he was watching for, but somehow I doubted he was finding it. There was nothing out there. Finally he gave a deep sigh and closed his eyes.

“You okay, Dad?” When he didn't answer, I figured he must be asleep, or maybe he just hadn't heard, but then I caught Phoenix's eye in the rearview mirror, silently asking the real question—
Is he dead?
—and I understood that while he was still alive, this question would accompany his every pause or silence. I tried to smile reassuringly at Phoenix. When we had gone another mile or two, Lloyd spoke, so soft and slow it seemed his answers were part of a conversation happening somewhere else, far away, in a different life or time.

“I'm fine.”

And then, “I'm just tired, that's all.”

“You can rest when we get home. You'll be in your own room.” I was thinking about the room and the work I'd done to get the house ready for him, worried it would not be right.

“Oh,” he whispered. “My own room!” His head dropped back onto the padded headrest, and I glanced over to see a tear leaking from his wrinkled eye. “That's exactly what I want . . .”

When I was a little girl, I used to make him presents—ashtrays from plasticine and macaroni paintings. I would wait, so excited, for him to come home from the fields before my clay cracked or my noodles came unstuck. Darting to the window or onto the porch, I'd search the horizon for the cloud of dust that signaled the approach of his pickup. When he finally walked through the door, he would see me waiting and bend down and coax the offering from behind my back.

“My, my, my,” he'd say, turning the object over in his hands. “It's exactly what I wanted.”

 

 

Cass was waiting for us. She and Will were in the house, and their Suburban was parked in the driveway. Next to it, in the middle of the turnaround, was the most bizarre vehicle I'd ever seen. It was covered with armored plating and looked like something that you might want to take camping in Beirut or Bosnia.

Phoenix exhaled. “Awesome!”

Cass and Will came up as I got out of the car. “What is it?” I asked.

“Used to be a Winnebago, by the looks of it,” said Will. “They showed up about an hour ago.”

“Who did?”

Cass shrugged. “Some young people. I've never seen them around here before. They said they knew you.”

The way she said it made me nervous, as though the apparition were my fault. Phoenix and Ocean edged closer for a better look. Will peered into the Pontiac at my father.

“Hey there, Mr. Fuller. How you feeling?”

Lloyd looked up weakly. “Will Quinn? That you?”

“Sure thing, Mr. Fuller. Here, let me give you a hand getting out.” He took Lloyd's elbow. Lloyd tried to sit forward, and you could see how, in his mind, he was swinging his legs toward the ground and lifting his body out of the car the way he'd done all his life, but this time, after jerking his torso a few inches forward, he fell back against the seat and closed his eyes. Cass squeezed my arm. “This isn't going to work,” she whispered.

Will looked over at me. “Maybe I should carry him?”

“Could you?” I said.

But Lloyd opened his eyes and held up his hand. “No!” he said, still catching his breath. “Wait.” He closed his eyes. We waited.

Just then a noise from the camping car made us all look up as the armored door swung open and a tall man emerged. He had a long, flowing beard and hair matted into dreadlocks that hung below his shoulders. He was draped in a caftan. A second guy followed, clean-shaven and stockier, wearing glasses with thick, round lenses. They took in the scene and sauntered over to the Pontiac.

“Hey,” said the bespectacled guy. “Is that your dad?”

I nodded. His deep voice sounded familiar.

“You just getting back from the hospital?”

I nodded again. We watched as the bearded man walked over to the passenger's seat. He bent to look inside. “Hey, dude,” he said.

Lloyd opened his eyes, and a strangling noise rose from his throat. He stared at the man, taking in the beard, the dreadlocks, the garb. “Oh,” he whispered. “My Lord!”

The man leaned in toward my father and reached out his arms. “Can you put your hands around my neck?” he asked. “It'll make it easier.” Then, without an upsy-daisy or another word, he scooped up my father.

For a moment Lloyd looked stricken. Then he raised his arms and encircled the man's head. He closed his eyes, and his lips began to move in prayer.

“Where do you want him?” the man asked.

“Up—” I stammered. “Upstairs.”

He carried Lloyd quickly toward the porch, and I stumbled after.

The bespectacled man held the door open and cleared a path through the kitchen. “You don't recognize me, do you?” he said, smiling. “I'm Daisy.”

We climbed the stairs. The kids held back, watching. Momoko was nowhere to be seen. She must have been hiding in the seed shed.

I had rented a hospital bed and had it installed in Lloyd's bedroom, and, entering now, I saw that while we'd been in Pocatello, Cass had turned back the covers and found some cut flowers for the nightstand. The bed lamp cast a warm circle of light upon the pillow.

The tall, bearded man entered the light and lowered Lloyd onto the bed. My father's lips were still moving. He opened his eyes.

“Lord,” Lloyd whispered, his hands still clasping the bearded man's neck as he searched his face, “ ‘I am poured out like water. . . .' ”

“You take it easy and get some rest now, sir,” the man said, disengaging Lloyd's arms, settling him, then pulling up the covers. “You're just all tired out.”

I watched the last remaining strength drain from my father's frail limbs as he gazed adoringly at the face of the stranger.

 

 

“Y?” Cass asked.

“Short for Yeats. That's my last name. First name's Melvin.”

“Nice to meet you, Melvin,” I said. “Have a cup of coffee.”

“Just water for me, please. I don't do caffeine.”

“Are you Church, Melvin?” Will asked.

The man looked perplexed.

“He means Mormon,” I interpreted. “Latter-Day Saints. It's big around here. They don't do caffeine either.”

He shook his head. “No. Life is my church. And if you don't mind, I prefer to be called Y.”

I put a glass of tap water on the table in front of him, then poured coffee for Will and Cass, who hung back alongside the kitchen counter. Cass had brought over a pot roast for dinner, which was in the oven. I was hungry and wanted to eat, but the children were restless after the somber car ride home and hovered now around the edge of the newcomers' aura, drawn to them. They were strange and exotic in Idaho, but they reminded the kids of Pahoa.

“I hate my name, too,” Ocean confided.