All Over Creation (50 page)

Yummy nodded. He watched her scan the crowd for her children. They were taking turns at the pitching booth. She waved to Cass, who had the baby. Poo was toddling around on little bowed legs, hanging on to her hands. He squatted and picked up a fistful of dirt and put it in his mouth. Cass leaned over and made him spit it out.

Yummy frowned. “He eats dirt,” she said.

“I've heard some babies do that.”

“Cass likes looking after him.”

“She seems to.”

“She never had kids.”

“Neither did I,” he said and was startled to hear how plaintive he sounded.

“I guess you think this is all kind of silly,” she said, looking around the farmyard. “But it's sort of fun, too, don't you think? It feels like an auction or a county fair. I just hope nothing goes wrong.”

He couldn't quite see what was fun, but he understood that she wanted it to be, and that was enough. Duncan had been right after all. This home-spun event was a molehill, and he would let it remain as such. Relieved, he decided to forget about work, to relax and just get into the swing of things for her sake. She looked so lovely.

“What could possibly go wrong?” he asked.

She didn't answer. Just then her daughter came running up.

“Did you see?” Ocean asked breathlessly. “Phoenix nailed Cynaco right in the eye!”

Elliot felt his chest constrict. Forgetting about work wasn't going to be that easy.

It was just after two when he spotted the Pinkerton leaning on a fence rail and headed over to talk to him. Yummy had gone in to put Poo down for a nap, and there was a lull in the events after lunch. Rodney was wearing a cap pulled down low over his face. He was watching Lilith get the children ready for the play. A pair of mirrored aviator glasses hid his eyes.

Lilith was painting the face of a little earthworm, holding the child between her legs. She was wearing a halter top, which bared her back, and a tattoo of a serpent coiled up her spine. She was explaining to the children, “You're all going to play soil organisms!”

“What's that?” one of them asked.

“Good things. Worms and bacteria. Beetles and moles. Stuff like that.”

“Those are
pests.
” The girl shook her head. “I don't want to be a pest!”

“How about a monarch butterfly, then? That's a big role. The Terminator kills you and you get to die.”

“I don't want to die!”

They settled on a ladybug. Lilith picked up a paintbrush and hitched up her skirt, spreading her knees so she could draw the girl in close.

Elliot approached the investigator from behind. “She's even better in real life,” he said.

Rodney showed no sign of surprise. He barely bothered to shrug, as though he'd been expecting Elliot to show up with a comment like this, and it simply wasn't worth an answer.

“Too bad about the Web site,” Elliot said, leaning on the fence rail. “Wonder why they decided to shut it down. Was that your doing, too?”

Rodney didn't answer for a while. Then he said, “Lucky for them they did.”

“You didn't like it?”

“I got grandkids.”

“Of course,” Elliot said.

They watched Lilith in silence. At one point she looked in their direction, and Elliot flashed her a smile, but her glance drifted past him to Rodney's cap. It was a promotional item from Cynaco's GroundUp™ Plant Protection Systems. On the front it read TOTAL CROP CARE, FROM THE GROUNDUP!”

“They're gonna demonstrate at a potato field tomorrow,” Rodney said. “At oh-nine-hundred. Then they're planning to march on the fertilizer plant in the afternoon, but I don't think they'll get that far.”

“What do you mean?”

“I've alerted the sheriff's office. They'll be here first thing in the morning.” He turned to Elliot and fixed him with a mirrored gaze.

“You did what?” Elliot could see himself, tiny and furious, reflected in the flat planes of Rodney's glasses.

Rodney spoke slowly, as though explaining the rules to a slow child. “They're planning on tearing up the field, Mr. Rhodes. That's trespassing for starters. Destroying crops is criminal mischief and malicious damage to private property, not to mention un-American. Could be grand larceny, but they gotta take the plants out of the field first—”

“That's not the point! I don't want them arrested. I just wanted them watched!”

“You don't live here,” Rodney replied, as though that were an answer, then turned his attention back to Lilith's thigh. Her ankle bracelet tinkled as her naked heel shifted in the dust. Elliot tried changing tactics.

“That's exactly what they want,” he said. “These kids know how to play the cops and the press like a fucking Nintendo. It'll be all over the papers.”

“Good,” Rodney said. “People should know. Not that everyone don't already. They even told the farmer whose field they're tearing up. Lousy idea from a tactical standpoint. Besides, the sheriff's had his eye on them, too, long before you got involved. Said he had cause to interrogate Fuller's daughter on a couple of occasions, once when that punk kid of hers got caught bringing a knife to school. My grandson's in his class.”

Lilith's ankle tinkled again as she jumped to her feet, hoisting the ladybug up by her arms. From the corner of his eye Elliot thought he saw her look in their direction again, but when he turned, she was spinning the ladybug in a circle to make her fly. The ladybug's laugh rang out loud and shrill, like a scream.

“Sheriff said he used to know Fuller's daughter,” Rodney said. “Said he thought he remembered you, too.”

 

 

Lloyd had noticed the man Yumi was talking to, thought he looked familiar but couldn't place him. He wasn't from Liberty Falls, that much Lloyd was sure of. Pocatello? At any rate he was a city man. Lloyd thought he might ask Yumi later on, but then he noticed how pretty she looked in her white dress, and after that, Melvin came to tell him that the garden tours were starting, and by the end of the long, exhausting, exhilarating day, he'd forgotten all about it.

So many of their old customers had come, some bringing children and even grandchildren. He hadn't expected that. He was worried, wondering how they would take to the Seeds and their crowd, but by and large, folks seemed tolerant and polite.

“She's adorable,” said Martha from Nebraska after the morning performance.

“She's my granddaughter,” Lloyd said, and he was amazed at the size of his pride. Then Martha asked her name.

“Ocean,” he mumbled.

“What an unusual name!” she said. “My daughter named her youngest ‘Moonflower.' ”

“She goes for the plants,” her husband said. “She called the boy Juniper. I told her I didn't like it, but it was better than Sneezewood or Sandwort or Bladderpod.”

“They like to be different these days,” Martha said. “Don't you find?”

He must have answered hundreds of questions and held more conversations than in the last several decades of his life. By the time he retired upstairs that night, most of the participants had left for the day or bedded down in their campers and tents, and the campfires were dwindling into ash and ember. All he could hear from the bathroom window was the faint sound of the young people drumming softly in the night.

He left the bathroom and made his way down the hall, past Yumi's bedroom door. It was open, and he looked in. Yumi was lying on her back on the bed. He would have thought she was asleep, but her eyes were open, and she was staring up at the ceiling. He cleared his throat.

“Good night, then,” he said.

She blinked, then turned her head.

“Oh,” she said. “Good night, Daddy.”

She spoke so simply. There were none of the usual currents in her voice, no hesitations or resentments or feelings withheld. Just the words themselves, sweetly said. She hadn't called him Daddy like that for as long as he could remember.

“Good night, Yumi,” he repeated, because he wanted to say something else but couldn't think of what.

She smiled. “Sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs bite.”

That was it. That was what he should have said. What he used to say when he tucked her in every night, and gave her a kiss, and nibbled her nose, pretending to be the bedbug biting.

But she had already turned her head away and was looking back up at the ceiling. He knew he ought to go, but suddenly he thought of something else he wanted to say. “Oh, Yumi!” Breathless, he hesitated, holding on to the doorjamb for support. “It's so much fun to be alive!”

His eyes filled with tears then, and this surprised him, but he didn't mind. He was just happy he'd expressed his feeling. She looked alarmed, but he gave her a smile to reassure her. As he headed down the hall, he kept one hand on the wall. He would be fine as long as the wall was there, to steady him.

That's when it hit me for the first time, that when Lloyd died, I was going to be sorry. His words knocked all those intervening years of attitude right out of me. As he shuffled away, I listened to the frail grit of his slippers on the floorboards and the sound of his fingers as they brushed along the wall.

I had been waiting until everyone was in bed before going out to see Elliot, but now I went down to the kitchen and phoned his motel room instead. I stood in the darkened kitchen leaning against the wall and cupping the receiver.

“I have to see you,” Elliot said. His voice was urgent, pressing me. “There's something I have to tell you.”

“I can't,” I told him. “Tell me tomorrow.”

I slept badly that night and woke late the next morning, filled with dread. I got dressed quickly and checked Lloyd's room. His door was open, and the bed was empty. I collected Poo and continued my search.

The bathroom had been used. I smelled his aftershave, and the scent knocked me back through the years. Old Spice. It was only for special occasions.

Downstairs, breakfast was over and the kitchen was empty. Someone was testing the PA system, and the wail of electronic feedback cut through the stillness of the morning. From the window I could see the stage area where Ocean and Phoenix were playing. Ocean had let Chicken Little out of her coop, and now they were trying to catch her. Ocean was screeching, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” Her wild voice sent shivers up my back. I walked out to the porch. Lloyd was sitting in his rocking chair, leaning forward and gripping a sheet of paper in his hands. His lips were moving. He heard me and looked up.

“What's that?” I asked, shifting Poo on my hip. He was chewing on my hair. He wanted his breakfast.

Lloyd ducked his head, sheepish.

“It's my speech,” he said, but his throat was so congested with spittle and fear he could barely get the words out.

“Oh, Dad! I wish you wouldn't . . .” My voice, too, had curdled into a petulant whine. He stiffened.

“I'll be fine,” he said, speaking more clearly now, and there was enough reproach in his tone to get my hackles up.

“Fine,” I echoed. “Whatever.”

I clattered back through the kitchen door and dropped Poo in his high chair, wondering what just happened—how it was that in a matter of minutes my heart could harden so completely.

Still, when Lloyd stepped onto the stage later that morning, I held Poo so tightly he howled in protest. Cass reached out, happy for the excuse to take him. I handed him over and squeezed her arm.

“Lloyd will be fine,” she whispered.

“Look at him,” I said. “He's too sick. This is crazy.”

He stood there, so tall and frail, holding the microphone and the piece of paper with his speech on it. He opened his mouth to speak, and the PA system gave an earsplitting squawk. He looked around, holding the mike away from him, not knowing what to do. The audience shifted, and someone laughed. It serves him right, I thought, furious with him, with everyone. I wanted to put a stop to this, to rescue him and drag him offstage, but I couldn't move. Then Geek came over and took the mike from him, tapped it, tested it, made sure it was safe and all was well, then handed it back. So calm and reassuring. Lloyd looked at Geek with bewildered gratitude.

Why couldn't I have done that?

The paper trembled in my father's hand. “My friends,” he began, but even with the microphone working, you could barely hear him.

“Speak up, Lloyd!” someone yelled.

“My friends!” he repeated, loudly this time. “Mrs. Fuller and I welcome you.”

Momoko was sitting just offstage in a folding chair. Someone in the crowd started to clap, and then a few more joined in. Lloyd waited until the clapping stopped, then raised his paper.