All The Bells on Earth (33 page)

Bentley had a fixed expression on his face now. His head swiveled slightly, and he glanced at Walt. Walt winked at him.

“And do you know what I told Velma?”

Walt shook his head.

“I said, ‘Velma, you’ve got to be compensated.’ That’s just what I said. Those were my very words. Compensated.”

“I fully agree,” Walt said.

“Somehow I knew you would. I could see it in your face.” She stood up and patted him on the hand. “I’ll just put on the teakettle,” she said, and stepped across the living room, through the arched doorway that led to the kitchen.

“This is an outrage!” Bentley hissed at him. “She means to take us straight to the cleaners.”

“I’ll mollify her,” Walt said. “It won’t be much of a cleaners.” He went into the kitchen, drawing two of the twenties out of his wallet. Mrs Biggs fussed at the stove, an old O’Keefe and Merritt. There was the formaldehyde smell of gas on the air, and she waved a lit match at the burner, dropping it suddenly on the stovetop and shaking her hand.

“Pilot won’t work?”

“It hasn’t worked in ages.”

“Let me take a look.” He lifted the griddle in the center of the stovetop. The pilot was burning fine. It was probably the pipes clogged with grease or dust. “I think I can finagle this if you have a rat-tail brush—like for cleaning out a turkey baster.”

“I have just the thing,” she said, opening a drawer.

“Henry said something about owing you a few dollars,” Walt said to her. “I don’t know what for—something he borrowed, I guess. He likes to pay his debts. Will this cover it?” He held out the two twenties. She took them out of his hand without answering and folded them into the pocket of her muumuu.

“When you’re living on a fixed income …” She shook her head sadly. “Velma had a little one-bedroom walkup. I guess I should feel lucky.”

She found the brush and handed it to Walt, who pulled apart the pipes in the stove. There was nothing very complicated about the plumbing in an old gas stove. A couple of minutes of sweeping out the dust was all it usually took, just to get the crumbs out….

B
ENTLEY CAME IN AND
stood in the doorway. “Henry’s still in the car,” he said to Walt, nodding back over his shoulder.

“This won’t take a second.” Walt laid the tube that ran to the pilot back into its slot and cranked the knob. Nothing happened. He fiddled with it, but after a moment there was the smell of gas again, and he twisted the knob back off. Something else was wrong. “Let me check one more thing,” he said.

“You might as well make yourself useful too, Reverend,” Mrs. Biggs said to Bentley. “Have you ever emptied a trash bucket before, or do you just do the soul’s work?”

“Of
course
I’ve emptied a trash bucket. Emptying trash buckets
is
the soul’s work.”

“Then you’re in luck,” she said, and she swung open the cupboard beneath the sink and gestured at the red plastic trash bucket. “The cans are out behind the garage. Separate the recycle!”

Bentley hesitated for a moment, then moved into the room and pulled the bucket out from its cupboard. She opened the back door for him, and he went out. Walt took the stove top apart, piece by piece, setting it around on the floor, only then noticing that the undersides of the chrome top pieces were slick with dirty grease. “Any newspaper?” he asked.

“Might as well wash it all up, now that you’ve gone and pulled it apart.” She put a stopper in the drain, cranked on the hot water, and found a box of Brillo Pads under the sink. Walt picked up the cast-iron burner grills and put them into the hot water.

Bentley came back in just then, carrying the empty bucket. He didn’t look happy.

“Look there,” Mrs. Biggs said, pointing at the linoleum floor. There was a litter of muddy dirt on the tiles. Bentley looked at the sole of one of his shoes, which was caked with mud from the backyard.
“Now your
work’s cut out for you,” she said. “Broom and dustpan’s in the pantry. And take your shoes off first! Put them out on the stoop.”

Bentley stood staring at her. “Henry’s in …” he started to say.

“In the car,” she said. “We all know he’s in the car. Let him sit there. It’s the best place for him. As long as he’s in the car he’s not out wrecking the lives of half the women in the neighborhood. He won’t get heatstroke, not on a day like this.”

Bentley set the trash bucket down, turned around slowly, and went back out through the door, where he slipped his shoes off.

“These preachers,” Mrs. Biggs whispered to Walt. “Too heavy for light work and too light for heavy work.” She shook her head.

“He’s just out of practice,” Walt said. “Do you have any kind of degreaser? Something in a spray bottle?”

“Just the thing,” she said, reaching under the sink again. “You might as well do the job right.”

Bentley came back in.

“In the pantry,” she said to him, pointing toward a big cupboard near the door.

He opened it and got out a broom, then poked at the dirt on the floor. The dirt was too wet, though, and simply smeared across the linoleum.

“Mop’s in there too,” she said. “Hot water’s in the sink. Use the right tool for the right job. I’m surprised I have to tell you that, a man your age. Maybe you’d better fetch Henry out of the car after all at this rate, the kind of job you do.”

She took a flyswatter from a peg on the wall and slammed the hell out of a fly that was just then buzzing against the window, then settled herself on a stool by the sink.

“He wouldn’t have lasted a week at the Paradise, my place in Honolulu. Any of those little Filipino girls could clean circles around him.” She squinted at Bentley, who clearly kept his silence for Henry’s sake. He edged past her, dipping the mop into the sink and then twisting some of the water out of it.

“That’s still too wet,” she said to him, pointing at the mop with the swatter. “It’ll take a week for the floor to dry. You’re not bathing a poodle here, you’re just picking up a little dirt.”

He wrung it out again, leaning into it, nearly tearing the head off the mop, then he moved off across the kitchen again and slapped it around on the muddy floor.

“Watch out with that mop! For heaven’s sake!” she said. “Mind the cream pitchers!”

On a shelf above the back door stood a half dozen ceramic pitchers—cow and moose heads, a pig with a corkscrew tail, a Cheshire cat. All of them had holes in their mouths or noses where the cream could pour out. Bentley looked at them for a moment as if he didn’t quite understand them, then went back to mopping.

“That’s right,” she said, “back away from it, don’t walk through it or you’ll get your socks wet and track it all over the rest of the floor. There, you missed some—along the baseboard.” She gestured with the swatter again. Walt sprayed the degreaser on the last of the stove pieces and wiped them down with a rag. The least he could do was leave it clean, since, he knew by now, there was no way he was going to fix it. He didn’t have the foggiest idea what was wrong with it.

Bentley rinsed the mop again, then took one last swipe at the remnants of the mud. Turning toward the sink, he clipped the cream pitcher shelf with the mop handle, and the cow head pitched off the shelf onto the floor, breaking into three or four pieces.

B
ENTLEY STARED AT THE
broken cow head in disbelief. Mrs. Biggs slumped, putting her face in her hands as if this had finally defeated her utterly.

“I’m
terribly
sorry,” Bentley said, dropping to his hands and knees. He picked up the fragments and tried to fit them together. “Here we go, here’s its eye …” He groped under the edge of the clothes dryer.

“That was a
priceless
antique.”

“Let me pay you for it,” Bentley said. “Honestly…. How
stupid
of me …” He held his hands out, shaking his head helplessly at Walt.

“Maybe some Super Glue?” Walt said helpfully.

“That’s kind of you,” Mrs. Biggs said to Walt, “but I’m afraid your friend has ruined it. I won’t say that he did it on purpose, but …”

“I most certainly did
not
do any such thing!” Bentley said, his face suddenly red. “I’ll be
happy
to take your word for it being valuable.” He hauled his wallet out, fingering the bills inside and drawing out a ten. She stared at it, as if it were some kind of Chinese phoney-dough.

“Don’t in
sult
me,” she said coldly.

“All right. Fair enough.” Bentley took out a twenty and started to put the ten back, but Mrs. Biggs pulled them both out of his hand.

“Fifty dollars should just about do it,” she said. “
If
I can replace the creamer at all. That object was made in
Germany
—prewar.”

Bentley looked at Walt again. “That’s it,” he said. “I’m tapped out.”

“What do you need?” Walt asked, settling the chrome top back onto the stove. “Another twenty?” He got his wallet out and handed over a twenty. Mrs. Biggs took it politely.

Uncle Henry appeared right then, out on the driveway, standing next to the Buick and looking like a lost child. He waved at them.

“You might as well get the old goat in here,” Mrs. Biggs said to Walt. “He can at least lend a hand. He’s got to be good for something.”

“Now look here,” Bentley said, starting up again. “This has gone just about far enough. We’ve mopped your floor and repaired your stove …”

“And broke my priceless heirloom, you might as well say.”

Walt opened the back door and gestured at Uncle Henry. “Watch the mud,” he said as the old man came around the back side of the house.

“Is she still on the warpath?” Henry whispered.

“She’s had it with Bentley. He’s not much of a diplomat.”

“Roll up your sleeves, Henry, and scrub up this mess in the sink.” She shouted past Bentley and waved Henry in through the door. “And you, Reverend, why don’t you see what you can do with a tube of glue, unless you’ve got the shakes. You don’t look too steady. Not a secret toper, are you? Or is that what your big rush is all about? Too long away from the sauce?” She grinned at him for a moment before opening a drawer and pulling out a little green tube of Super Glue. Bentley sat down at the table without a word and went to work on the cow.

“That stove looks
fine
,” she said to Walt. “Good as new. Now, how about that tea?”

“I’d like a cup of tea,” Henry said.

“Maybe not,” Walt put in, glancing at his wristwatch. “It’s nearly time to get the kids from school.” The stove
looked
first-rate, but there was no telling …

“Oh, just one cup,” she said. “Just to celebrate a job well done.”

Henry hauled one of the cast-iron grills out of the sink, dried it off, and set it over its burner. Mrs. Biggs put the teakettle on top of it and twisted the knob. There was a faint hiss, but nothing happened beyond that.

“Takes a moment to run the gas back in through the pipes,” Walt said, knowing what he said was nonsense. The stove was completely buggered up. There was the smell of gas in the air, heavy now, so something was working, anyway. Walt picked up the matchbook on the counter and struck a match, slipping it under the edge of the grill. The burner ignited in a whoosh of blue flame, a fireball the size of the stovetop that singed all the hair off both of his arms. Walt danced backward, fanning at the stove with his hand, but there was no point; the flames were already out. He moved forward and twisted the knob, shutting down the burner.

“I guess this is a job for the gas company,” he said, shaking his head. “Sorry. I gave it a try.”

“No harm done,” she said. She looked wistfully out the window. “I don’t suppose the gas company can come out today, though. Not this late. And I can’t use the stove in this condition—it’s like to blow up the house, isn’t it?” She sighed. “Lord knows I can’t afford to eat out, though, not these days. I’ll eat cold food, I guess, out of the fridge. I’ve got the rest of a box of frozen day-olds from the All-Niter. That’ll do for the likes of me.”

“You’ve got fifty dollars,” Bentley said, trying to glue the cow’s eye back into its head.

“That’s pitcher money,” she said. “You ought to know that much, unless that bourbon’s ate up all your brain cells, too.”

“Maybe we could treat Maggie to a meal,” Henry said. “I didn’t bring any money, but …”

“I’ve got another twenty in here someplace,” Walt said, dipping into his wallet again. Hell, he thought, looking at the two singles that were left. There was no use putting it off. Obviously she’d have those too, before they left; might as well burn it all down right now. “Here you go, dinner on us.” He handed her the whole works, tipping his wallet toward her to make it clear it was empty of anything but moths.

“There
we go,” Bentley said heartily, setting the repaired cow pitcher down on the table. “Darned well good as new.”

Even from halfway across the room Walt could see that there was something wrong with it. A chip was apparently missing, and Bentley had tried to compromise by gluing the eye in a quarter inch too far down the nose. The effect was startling, almost demented, as if the cow were trying to look up its own nostril. Mrs. Biggs picked up the creamer, flinching when she got a good look at it. “Now it’s ruined good and proper,” she said. “It’s trash now, isn’t it? You’ve finished me off, Reverend.”