by Haven Kimmel
Oliver sighed, squirmed, went back to sleep.
“I think,” Amos said, putting on his glasses and taking a deep breath, “not that you’ve exactly asked me what I think, but I believe that the Jesus we have come to know spoke in parables because there is no other psychically adequate way to address the human condition, and that while it seems that what Jesus is saying is that the Kingdom is like a naked singularity, a trick of physics, it’s equally possible He’s saying you have to choose. What you choose determines the life you live, quite simply. If the Kingdom of Heaven is here now, and that requires from you a fearful clinging to the status quo, then that’s who you are and what your life meant. If it’s ahead somewhere, and out of reach in this lifetime, you will spend your days accordingly. For me—I speak only for myself now—the Ineffable, the Eternal, the Kingdom of Heaven seems to be inbreaking in our lives all the time, every day. I think it’s here, just beside us, and if we turn our heads we’ll enter in. I think all kinds of people, especially dogs and Buddhists, have gone in ahead of us, but there’s always another chance. The Kingdom of God is a door perpetually opening, and it makes me, as dear Emerson said, ‘glad to the brink of fear.’”
Rebekah blinked, tearful. She knew what he meant. She had been that glad.
Amos closed his Bible, centered it on the podium. “You must be tired of me saying it, but God is Love, and the doorway is Love, and the Kingdom of Heaven is Love. And not because of the birth of Jesus, but it’s one of the things He was born for. So. Merry Christmas, all of you, and may your new year be, as they say, bright.”
They stood, and were instantly surrounded by people who took Rebekah’s hand and told her their names and wished her a happy holiday, and again and again she heard Claudia say, This is my baby, including to Amos, who cupped Oliver’s head in his palm and shared a look with Claudia that was intimate, a benediction.
“It’s about time,” Millie said, getting out of her car.
Claudia closed the door to the Jeep, took a deep breath. The weather was lovely, it was Christmas. She remembered a time when she would have come home from church alone, looking forward to lunch, and there would not have been a chance in the world that Millie would be lying in wait.
“I haven’t seen you for so long.” Millie reached into Claudia’s backseat and began unfastening Oliver’s car seat, all but pushing Rebekah away.
“We saw you yesterday,” Claudia said, trying to keep the desperation out of her voice.
“You didn’t see me today.”
“It’s true,” Rebekah said, nodding. “We haven’t seen her yet today.”
“I stopped on the way home from here last night, the Wal-Mart was open late, and got Oliver some new clothes and shoes. McDonald’s is making baby clothes now and they are just totally precious.”
Claudia started toward the front door, stopped. “God in heaven.”
“What? What did I say?”
“McDonald’s baby clothes? What, are they dipped in lard? Addictive?”
Millie opened the back of the Explorer, took out a large plastic bag. “You always did have a critical spirit, Claudia.”
“I don’t think criticizing a fast food empire is a reflection of my spirit, Millie.”
“Do you want to have lunch with us?” Rebekah asked, opening the front door.
“Besides,” Millie said, unbuttoning her coat, “what’s so wrong with McDonald’s? I practically raised my children on that food and look at them. Neither one is an ounce overweight. It’s protein, Claudia, and potatoes. They weren’t given little cigarettes with their Happy Meals.”
“We could stay here or we could go out. I think the cafeteria at the mall is open today. Do you want some iced tea, Millie?”
“And everyone’s always going on about working conditions, I hear that all the time on the news, about working conditions at McDonald’s and Wal-Mart. You tell me where the black people are supposed to work if we closed down all the McDonald’s like the hippies and the save-the-planet people would have us to do? Last summer Brandon had a job at that local hardware store, couldn’t hardly get any hours. If there were extras they went to the owner or his son. But next summer Brandon’s going to work at Wal-Mart and his schedule will be his schedule, no questions asked. And again I ask you, what about the black people. We have to put them somewhere.”
“I could heat up the chicken and dumplings we had last night, or we could go to MCL.”
Millie began taking clothes out of the bag, stacking them up expertly on the couch, and removing their tags with a pocketknife. “Who drives a white car?”
Claudia closed the door to the coat closet, turned and looked at Millie. “No one I can think of. Why do you ask?”
“I’m going to go change Oliver,” Rebekah said. “Decide about lunch while I’m gone.”
“There was a white car in the driveway when I got here,” Millie said, gathering up the little plastic T shapes she’d cut off the tags.
“Who was driving it?”
“I’d rather go to MCL, personally. Rebekah is a great cook and all, but chicken and dumplings sounds a little heavy to me. I’d like to have some Jell-O salad.”
“Millie,” Claudia said, sitting down next to her on the couch. “Who was driving the car?”
“Well, I don’t know, it was in your driveway, and also as I got out of my car and started to walk up to it, they drove away. Whoever it was.”
“Claudia?” Rebekah called down the stairs. “See who’s pulling into the driveway.”
I am beset, Claudia thought as she opened the front door.
“Oh great, it’s Hazel,” Millie said.
“Who is it?” Rebekah called.
“It’s Hazel,” Claudia yelled back.
“She has a dog with her,” Millie said.
“She has a dog with her,” Claudia yelled up the stairs. She watched as Hazel struggled with a blur on the end of the leash. It leapt from the front seat to the back and forward again, then tried to jump out the open door.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and she’ll strangle it to death right here before our eyes,” Millie said, leaning closer to the window. “You should tell her not to bring it in; Mom would never allow animals in the house.”
“It’s you who won’t allow animals in the house, don’t blame it on Mom. You might remember Jumpin’ Bean.”
“How could I forget, it was always Jumpin’ Bean this and Jumpin’ Bean that.”
“Good Lord, Millie.”
“Well, excuse me, but a, fleas, b, filth, c, animals. They belong outside.”
Rebekah came down the steps with Oliver, who’d been polished and fluffed and didn’t seem nearly so angry as he’d been by the end of the drive home. “I thought you said Hazel was here.”
“She’s struggling with a dog out by her car,” Claudia said, watching Hazel.
“A dog, huh? Here, take him.” Rebekah handed Oliver to Claudia, who handed him to Millie, and walked out the door toward the conflagration of animal and puffy coat. Claudia watched her, surprised again by Rebekah’s ease. Claudia herself had stood there pondering the situation, but Rebekah just strode right out and set to taming all the savage beasts. “But why does she have a dog, I wonder,” Claudia said.
“Why anything with Hazel,” Millie answered.
There was a transfer of leather at the back of Hazel’s car, and then Rebekah was being dragged forward, right toward the front door, by a massive-chested, red-nosed, ear-disfigured…“Bandit?” Claudia said, stepping out the front door and closing it behind her.
“Look what I’ve got!” Rebekah said happily, although her right shoulder seemed in danger of being dislocated. The dog changed course and headed down the driveway.
“Bandit?” Claudia said, staring at Hazel, who refused to meet her eye.
“He is strong,” Rebekah said as she disappeared behind Millie’s car.
“It’s a she,” Hazel said, still not looking at Claudia. “Merry Christmas!”
The f
ront door opened and there was Millie, now without Oliver, her hands on her hips and an expression on her face like an old fisherwoman. “Is that some kind of pig? What is that? Is that a pig on a leash, Hazel?”
“Millie,” Hazel said, giving her a wave. “Always lovely to see you.”
“Why did you bring that dog?” Millie asked.
“Yes, Hazel. Why did you bring that dog?” Claudia took a step forward so that Hazel had to look up at her.
“It’s sort of a story. Can we go inside?”
“You’re not bringing that dog inside,” Millie said, shaking her head, as Rebekah was being towed across the yard toward the door.
“Why not?” Hazel asked, now putting her fists on her own hips. “What’s it to you?”
“Well, if I am not mistaken, that is some sort of pit bull, Hazel Hunnicutt, and there is a baby in this house.”
“Oh, oh, how silly of me. She’s a pit bull, so let’s just smear Oliver with condiments and tuck him in a bun.”
“Excuse me,” Rebekah said as Bandit pulled her past Millie and into the house.
“You can’t pretend I’m wrong, Hazel, I read the news.”
“You do? Then who is the Majority Whip?”
Claudia cleared her throat. “What I’d like to know is—”
From inside the house Rebekah yelled, “Claudia! Come quick!”
Claudia ran past Millie, terrified that now, of all times, Millie would be right about something and little Oliver would be missing an arm. What she found was Oliver in his swing, laughing madly and turning his head back and forth against the swing’s seat as Bandit licked him with a tongue the length of an ironing board. Oliver was laughing harder than Claudia had ever heard him, a deep, physical sound that carried in it a premonition of the boy he would be.
“Look at this! It’s like they know each other,” Rebekah said, her face flushed.
“They…” Claudia swallowed, barely able to speak. “They do.” Hazel, too, must have felt how sad it was, that this was what Oliver had—not parents or photographs, no baby book or engraved silver cup, no one guarding the story of his birth and first year as if it had been the Nativity. He had this mangy, scarred, brutalized animal, his companion in the kitchen at Cobb Creek.
“I can’t tell you how I disapprove of this,” Millie said, sharpening all of her angles.
“I went out there, you know, Claudia,” Hazel began.
Claudia looked at her and saw it on her face, the wet cold, the garbage, the empty plastic chair facing the psychedelic poster on the wall. How would she ever tell Oliver the truth? Where would she say he had come from? “And?”
“And mostly everyone is gone. There were a couple people asleep in the living room. There has been some…attrition among the pets.”
“I see.”
“The pups are gone, and Bandit was chained to a radiator in a back room. You can see that she’s gone a bit thin.” Hazel’s words were clipped, her tone aimed not at Millie but at Claudia alone; she was trying to tell a story by leaving all of the details out.
Bandit was certainly thin. She seemed to have lost muscle mass over her spine, and her hips were rising up, as clearly defined as an anatomical model’s. More alarming were the calluses over her elbows, as if the skin had thickened to keep the bones from breaking through.
“I couldn’t leave her there.”
“Of course you couldn’t,” Rebekah said, bending down and pulling Bandit away from Oliver’s swing by a thick, stained collar.
“I stopped at the store and got fifty pounds of dog food, bowls, this leash.”
Claudia gave Hazel her most level look. There was nothing, really, to say: she couldn’t have left the dog there to die. And what came next, that Hazel couldn’t take her home because of the cats, was also true.
“I’m wondering…”
“You should leave her here with us, shouldn’t she, Claudia? Couldn’t we keep her for a while, just until Hazel figures something else out? I’ve never, I was never allowed to have a dog at home—”
“You cannot have that dog here, Claudia, around the baby. It looks like a disease on legs. It will destroy the house and—”
“I think,” Hazel said, “and of course you’re welcome to disagree, but I think this is really the best place for her. Claudia, look at me.”
But she didn’t need to look at her; Claudia didn’t need to have her fate outlined and read aloud. What Hazel wanted didn’t matter; what Millie said was irrelevant. That Rebekah wanted the dog was a point on the ledger. The only vote that counted, at least today, was Oliver’s. His new swing moved forward and back with a soft ticking sound and he himself was still, his eyes fixed on that battered, cinder-block head. Bandit watched him, too, her mouth opened all the way back to where her ears would have been, her eyes as clear as bottle glass. The dog and the baby studied each other as if the war had ended and a noble country had offered them repatriation. It would be exhausting, and she might live to regret it, but Claudia was that country. She blinked, let out the breath she’d been holding, then walked out to Hazel’s car to bring in the food, the bowls, another bed.
1970
She awakened every Christmas morning to gifts she did not need and smiled politely, thanking her parents, telling them again—as she had the year before—that the sweater was just the right color and size, the scarf would look lovely with her new coat. Later in the day her mother would find occasion to sneak up to Hazel’s room with a stack of new hardcover books, each one wrapped in accordance with its gravity or mirth. Caroline had no time for fiction and she was a society unto herself; Hazel, too, stood guarded and apart, so that the books on the bed in their gold foil and sprigs of mistletoe were like smoke signals sent across a mountain range, between neighbors so distant they could not see one another at all.
Hazel and her mother worked together in the silence of complicity, together as a sort of corporation, and for Albert when their own work was slow. And it often was—sometimes weeks would go by without the frantic phone call or the veiled letter from A Friend. There were trends, if Hazel would take the time to see them. Of course they were cosmological: as above, so below. The heavens moved, the oceans boiled, and tectonic plates ground against each other. She didn’t chart the events, but someday she might, she told herself, seeing the possibility of a life’s work: a hypothesis that would marry the Ephemera with medical records, final proof that the universe was Female and sick of Her condition. Something was waiting there, in that idea, but Hazel never looked directly at it; she only glanced.
And in the afternoon of Christmas Day—for how long now? for as long as she could recall—she would go to Finney’s house to exchange gifts with her. There was more pleasure in one of those afternoons than in all the Christmases with Hazel’s own family combined. Hazel delighted in watching Malcolm fall asleep after dinner, tipped back in his recliner in front of the television: just that. A man who could be sated by nothing more than turkey and the gift of new socks. Janey bustled around the clean kitchen in an apron, usually in her battered house slippers, baking Christmas cakes that sometimes fell. What a treasure they were, these people for whom cakes collapsed, sleepy, normal people who worked hard and loved their daughter, and knew how to take a holiday off and spend it. They spent Christmas Day, like a bonus check or a tax return, while at the sterile Hunnicutt Clinic shoes were always worn; sleeping was a private activity conducted only at night, in a bedroom; and everything was hoarded—money and joy alike.
Last year and this year were different, and Hazel mourned the change even as she was driving toward it. At four o’clock the day was near fully dark, and Hazel was heading not in the direction of Malcolm and Janey’s farm, where she had spent so much of her life, but toward Jonah. Hazel pictured the farm and it was summer there. She and Finney were driving a tractor back to the farthest southern lot to check on a mare and her colt. Or it was evening and the four of them were in the family room watching television, eating pizza off paper plates. Three
cats from the ever-changing population were there with them, sitting on the back of the couch. Or there was a snowstorm, and Malcolm had just come in from the barn, saying, “The lights are out from Dan to Bathsheba,” which Hazel knew meant a long, long way.
The gate to the front yard at Finney’s farmhouse was crooked and wild roses grew up on either side of it in the spring. Janey had once owned a rabbit named Persnickety. Malcolm had, in 1957, hit and killed a silver fox and never forgiven himself. Hazel drove on Christmas Day, tried to quantify how much she knew of them, how much she remembered, but there was no end to it. Recalling Finney’s life, Finney’s family, was easier than recalling her own.
She drove past the high school and through the downtown; crossed the river and wandered through back streets to the mill houses along the railroad tracks and close to the grain elevator—the neighborhood known locally as Shack Town. Jim Hank had grown up here, but had saved his money and gotten out when his father finally died from drinking. Jim lived downtown now, in a small apartment above a shop that sold sewing machines.
In this light the houses were an indistinguishable gray; most seemed to have no paint left at all. There were no driveways here, or garages—just yards in which snow-covered, hobbled old trucks rested on blocks, and children’s bicycles had been left to rust. The scene was even more dispiriting come spring, when the disguise of snow was gone and the mud and ruts were revealed. There were dogs, too, Hazel knew, shivering now in dark doghouses. In spring they appeared, dragging tow chains so heavy they sometimes became embedded in the dogs’ necks.
