Jewelweed (15 page)

“We should go up now and meet Grandmother Florence. She lives on the third floor.”

“Your grandmother?” repeated Danielle, as if she'd never heard of such a thing.

“Yes. Florence is one hundred and eight years old and doesn't require much help. One meal is all, and she eats the same thing every day.”

“What's that?” asked Danielle, as they followed Mrs. Roebuck down the hallway and up the wide wooden staircase. There were enough rooms, Ivan noticed, for five or six families.

“Sardines and raisin toast.”

“That's it?”

“We argued for years over her diet, but after she reached one hundred the doctors said we should let her eat whatever she wants. They said she'd outlived what medical science could make sense of.”

“Is she always in bed?”

“Oh no. She gets up every morning at seven thirty, takes a bath, dresses, lays out her clothes for the following day, and then sits in her chair by the window. She usually stays there most of the day, making her rosaries.”

“Her what?”

“Her prayer beads. She's made over a thousand. The church takes them to less-fortunate countries for people to pray with.”

Ivan couldn't think of anything more wacko than praying with beads.

“A thousand?” repeated his mother.

“She enjoys it.”

“She doesn't need anything else—just sardines and toast?”

“Not usually. She's happy as long as she has her supply of beads, crosses, and the special thread to string them. If she needs anything else, she'll tell you.”

“She can talk?”

“Of course.”

“Where do you get her supplies?”

“The church sends them after the priest blesses the thread.”

By this time they'd reached the third floor. Danielle and Ivan followed Mrs. Roebuck down a long hallway, at the end of which she gently tapped on a door.

From the other side Ivan heard, “Come in, Amy.”

“She always knows it's me,” Mrs. Roebuck explained as they entered the room.

“You always knock the same way, dear,” said a wrinkled old woman only slightly larger than Ivan. She was sitting in front of an arched window with stained glass around the sides. There was enough room for another person to sit on each side of her in the overstuffed chair, and her black shoes hovered several inches above the floor. She speared a bead with a long needle and worked the red crystal all the way down the thread to a waiting line of other beads.

“Oh, visitors,” she added, noticing Ivan and his mother. She set the wooden bowl of beads beside her on the chair.

“Florence, this is Ms. Workhouse and her son, Ivan.”

“Dart,” said his mother.

“Welcome, Dart and Ivan, to my little room,” said the miniature woman, whom Ivan now thought of as Bead Lady.

Her voice came out thin, weak, and her speech was very slow. Waiting for her to finish a sentence was like watching the very last drop of syrup grow, stretch, and plop from the bottle.

“I hope you didn't find the climb up the stairs too difficult.”

“We didn't,” said Dart.

“How about you, young man?” she asked Ivan, her eyes dancing with pale fire.

“He didn't, either,” said his mother.

The Bead Lady winked at Ivan, taking about the same amount of time as it would to close and open a window. “My mother was just like yours,” she said and smiled.

This didn't seem possible to Ivan, and he asked, “How old is your mother now?”

“Ivan!” shouted his mother, gripping his shoulder with a five-pincer crab claw. “I apologize, Mrs. Roebuck. It's because of the rotten school he's in that he thinks he can ask questions like that. They taught it to him.”

Florence laughed and another drop of syrup came out. “I'm afraid my mother doesn't have any age now, Ivan.”

Ivan was all ready to say that everyone had an age, but the look on his mother's face kept that thought inside him.

Just then a ruckus kicked up outside, and footsteps climbed the stairs and came down the hall. Wallace Roebuck stuck his head into the room. Now he was wearing a pair of faded blue overalls and knee-high rubber boots. “They're pulling in the net,” he said.

“We better go down,” said Mrs. Roebuck. She went on to explain that a team of people from the Department of Natural Resources was seining the pond behind the house. “They want to be able to see all the creatures living in the water.”

Wallace helped Florence, and Mrs. Roebuck led the way down the stairs to the first floor and out onto the back deck.

A huge pond spread out beyond the house. About thirty or forty yards away from the deck, several utility trucks with winches on the front were parked uphill from the pond. They were cranking in steel cables from the water. Three men watched the cables winding up into the winch drums. One of them might have been a woman, but Ivan wasn't sure. Four men were standing in the water wearing waders and holding long poles with nets on the end. One man in green coveralls had a pole with a spiked hook. The drums turned slowly and the six cables made crunching sounds as they wrapped up.

“Can I go down there?” Ivan asked his mother.

“No.”

“We're looking for a big turtle,” explained Mrs. Roebuck. “They're going to catch it and take it away.”

“Why?” Ivan asked, and again felt the crab on his shoulder.

“He's too big for this pond, Ivan,” said Mrs. Roebuck. “The fish don't like him.”

Ivan wanted to ask how a turtle could be too big for a pond, or how anyone knew what fish thought, but he kept quiet.

“They tried to catch him yesterday with smaller nets,” said Mrs. Roebuck.
“So today they brought in the heavier equipment, to make sure they're reaching the bottom.”

Wallace left Florence standing next to Ivan and started down the deck stairs toward the pond. Mrs. Roebuck warned him about keeping his balance, but he waved his hand at her as if he were shooing away a mosquito.

“Wallace, be careful,” said Florence.

The door opened behind Ivan and he felt the deck boards sink. When he looked around, a giant had come out of the house, wearing the infant car seats on his feet. Ivan came up to his waist. Each of his legs was bigger around than Ivan at his widest. His hands looked to be carved from tree stumps.

“Careful there, Dad,” the giant said, and hurried down the steps after Wallace. “Some of those young government guys aren't familiar with the machinery they're using.”

With each monster step the deck shuddered, and Ivan wondered if a five-gallon bucket would fit over the giant's head. His hair was tar-black and buzzed short. He caught up to Wallace and extended a hand to steady him. Wallace waved it away.

“I've been around machinery and young people my whole life,” he said, and headed toward the turning drums. The giant was right behind him.

“I'll introduce you later,” explained Mrs. Roebuck apologetically. “Buck is protective of his father.”

“Is he real?” Ivan asked.

“Ivan, shame on you!” shrieked his mother. “It's that rotten school, I swear, Mrs. Roebuck. You have no idea what idiots them teachers are.”

When Amy stopped laughing she said, “Buck's real, Ivan, though he takes some getting used to.”

Standing beside Ivan, Florence spoke, her tiny hands on the porch rail.

“It comes from his mother's side of the family, Ivan. One of them worked in a circus. I'm still not used to him.”

Ivan was beginning to like her a lot, though she spoke unbearably slowly. The pale fire in her eyes never went out.

“Can I go down there?” he asked his mother.

“No.”

The edges of the net were coming out of the pond and the men in the water moved in closer.

“Careful there!” shouted Wallace, wading into the water. “Don't hurt those fish. Work through them slowly. Easy does it.”

“Dad, get out of the water.”

“I had another one of those dreams last night, and I don't want any more fish weighing on my conscience,” said Wallace. “You there, toss that grappling hook out onto the grass. That's a weapon, not a tool.”

“Look, Buck, you better take your father back into the house,” said a man standing next to the turning drums. He had a badge on the front of his jacket and a mustard-colored mustache. “This isn't the place for him. There's a lot of tension on these cables.”

“This is where he lives and he goes wherever he pleases,” said Buck. Then he turned to his father. “Dad, get out of the water.”

“No one could ever tell Wallace anything,” said Florence.

More of the net came out of the pond, and as it did, fish began to break through the surface of the water, flopping, gulping, and jumping in the air. Diesel exhaust poured out of the trucks.

“Can I go down there?”

“No.”

The door opened behind them and a woman came out onto the deck. She crept over, walking as if all the good people in the world would die if her shoes made any noise. “Excuse me, Mrs. Roebuck.” She sighed. “I'm sorry to bother you. I apologize. Excuse me.”

“Oh, Grace, let me introduce you to Ms. Workhouse and her son,” said Mrs. Roebuck.

After they all said hello, Quiet Shoes—who was a nurse dressed up to not look like a nurse—said Kevin wanted to come out. She wondered if that would be all right. And if it was all right, she needed help bringing him.

“Yes, of course he can,” said Mrs. Roebuck. She and Quiet Shoes went back into the house, and when they returned there was a boy between them. Kevin was older than Ivan, pretty tall, real skinny, and the color of a peeled onion. He wore pajamas and a plastic tube was stuck up his nose, attached to a tank on wheels, which Quiet Shoes pulled behind her.

When Kevin was introduced he looked at Ivan as if he knew Ivan had failed fifth grade. Then he turned away.

More of the net came out of the water, dragging a load of shiny, wriggling fish—black, gold, blue, orange, green, brown, purple, and red. It
looked as if the plug at the bottom of the world had been pried open and all the things living down there had come up. Wallace waded out farther, giving orders to the men with poles as they lifted the fish over the side of the net and put them back into the pond.

“Easy there, go easy.”

Some fish were so big it took two men to get them out of the net.

Snakes slithered over and under the fish, escaping back into the water. Every once in a while the men would find a brown, green, or yellowish turtle—including some big ones—but not the one they were after. These turtles, too, were tossed back into the pond. Crayfish and salamanders climbed over the fish. Frogs hopped among the decaying waterweeds. Slimy things writhed around, churning up the slimy water.

Some fish were making noises, quietly screaming, and when their gills opened they were red inside. One of them had a hog's face and another had human eyes, only yellow. The government men were standing waist-deep in them, hurling them over the cable-net back into the pond, looking for the giant turtle.

The truck engines smoked, the drums turned, and the cables squealed and howled as they wound onto them.

“Let up on those winches!” shouted Buck. “You're dragging deadweight uphill. The lines will break. Dad, get out of there!”

One of the trucks stalled. Another backfired and a black belch of smoke came out.

“Lampreys!” one of the men yelled, and held up a fish with a dozen bloodsuckers hanging like attached hoses from its sides. It looked sucked dry. “Lampreys!” someone else yelled. All the fish with suckers on them were thrown out onto the bank.

“Can I go down there?” asked Ivan again.

“No,” replied his mother.

“They'll never get him,” said Kevin.

“Why not?” asked Mrs. Roebuck.

“Because he's the devil, that's why.”

“Of course he isn't, Kevin. He's just an old turtle.”

“He's the devil. They'll never get him.”

The air smelled like fish, rotten plants, mud, and exhaust. Flies swarmed around the net and settled on the exposed fish and muck and everything
else. Then birds came out of the trees and started squawking and gobbling up the flies. Other birds were pecking at the lampreys and the fish that had been thrown out onto the bank. Turkey vultures floated overhead, wishing they could get at the fish. Dogs came to the edge of the pond and one of them carried off a fish.

“Get out of here, you!” yelled Wallace, waving his hands in the air.

“I wish I'd brought a rosary,” said Florence, and took hold of Ivan's hand. He smiled at her and her eyes smiled back.

“Come out of the water, Dad!” shouted Buck.

Suddenly one of the cables snapped with a whistling crack from the drum and whipped over the water. Two men ducked and just barely missed having their heads cut off. “Jesus!” one of the men yelled. A corner of the net fell away and fish poured through it back into the pond. Another net was brought in to cover the open area and keep the fish from escaping before they were examined.