Cries for Help, Various

by Padgett Powell

  The food was odd. “What’s the name of this again?” she asked, about some balls of something like pancake they were eating in syrup. “Evilskeever,” the woman said. “And this?” The girl took a bite of another food they’d served her to show she was not critical of it. It was also in a ball, but a mushy and not a cakey ball. “Ham and bean glob,” the boy said. “It’s the best.” There was no salt and pepper in sight. Everything was served in a bland ball. These people had figured a few things out. At her house eating was a trial, a series of repellent exotic challenges, everything so seasoned that it stank. Out here you could relax and eat, it looked like, without worrying about it.

  She had learned too that they had a horse—one, a working horse, named Carl. After this dinner of pancake balls and ham and bean mushballs they could put Romex on Carl and get her a little set of pliers for her own belt and head for the cave, and with her pliers she was going to tear off the roots coming out of the ceiling as her contribution to all the sense-making going on out here in the middle of nowhere. They could listen to Aerosmith or Queen or Genesis if they wanted to, they were doing things right out here. She hoped the Sheriff was corrupt or lazy or incompetent and did not call her father. Really, if a horse disappeared out here, there would be some answers for it, some answering for someone to do. A horse was not going to disappear out here. A horse named Carl did not disappear or do anything else ridiculous; he did his job and ate his feed and waited for his next job, which did not involve being skittish and violent and lame and sick and costing everyone so much money and anxiety that they got divorces and heart attacks. What they needed back in New Jersey was a horse named Carl and some ham and bean glob to settle their nerves. She was not going back if she could help it. “Man,” she said suddenly, and everyone looked at her, “this is living!”

  They laughed.

  “I need some of those pliers.”

  “No problem,” the father said, between gooey evilskeevers, of which he had eaten eighteen by her count. He was outright hoovering the evilskeevers. Another good sign.

  Outside in the dusk in the farmyard the boy picked up a piece of baling wire and wound it loosely around her finger. He pulled out his pliers in a motion so quick that she wanted pliers all the more and he twisted the baling wire lightly until it snugged on her finger and then he clipped the twist close, leaving a loose ring of galvanized wire on her finger and them both appraising it. “You are my wife,” the boy said. “Okay?”

  “Sure,” the girl said. “Sure.” She fingered the sharp little nub of the clipped twist and made the ring travel around her finger. The father approached with a set of pliers and a small leather holster that looked old and oily and forgotten until now, and they put it on her belt.

  They went fishing in their pond and the girl caught two catfish and the men caught nothing. With her own pliers the girl removed the hook from her catfish, the first fish she had ever caught. Seeing this, the boy said, “You have to bait your own hook too. If you don’t, you will be arrested.” At dark they went home. The kitchen was cleaned of all evidence of evilskeever and ham and bean glob, and the Sheriff had not called, and they went to bed. This was living.