The Beans of Egypt, Maine

by Carolyn Chute

  The babies hiss at him.

  The men walk over to the store, Beal carrying the tomato, the Letourneau stooping to pick up a small rock, winging it at a road sign: Thwannggg!!! and both men laugh.

  Roberta Bean returns to her chair.

  Both the babies jab the pennies into their mouths at the same time. Although the tall woman sees them do this, she doesn’t wrestle the pennies from those tongues. She straddles her folding chair all the more comfortably and rearranges her tortoiseshell combs.

  The babies swallow the pennies.

  2

  EARLENE COUNTS her change on the table. Gram drinks orange juice in a paper cup with her good hand. Earlene whispers to herself, “Wax paper, peanut butter, batt’ries, milk, English muffins . . . and . . . hamburg.”

  Gram moans.

  There is a lamp on the table, a bull Earlene’s father carved when he was in high school, a hundred-watt bulb on the hump of its shoulders, which shines on Earlene’s hands as she lays pennies in groups of fives, nickels in twos. There are several windows in this ell kitchen, yellow check curtains, but it’s such a dark day with muggy, slanted, grumpy light.

  Earlene scrapes the coins into her change purse. “Be right back, Gram,” she says, pulling a noisy plastic dry cleaner’s bag over her yellow hair.

  Only after she is out in the downpour does she realize she’s got her fuzzy yellow slippers on. “Oh, no!” But she keeps running. She runs past the tall woman’s wee blue house. Of course, the vegetables are not on display today.

  Two empty logging trucks idle along the road in front of Beans’ Variety. A white dog smells their tires. Rain slaps the plastic bag on Earlene’s hair. On the open piazza of the store she sees Beal Bean and a red-haired man squatted down by the door, drinking beers. She pulls the plastic low over her eyes.

  She scampers up the three wet steps in her slippers. A freckled arm stretches out and grabs her ankle. “Well, I wouldn’t know it was you, Earlene, ’cept for that yellow hair in the back . . . Give us here a look.”

  “Quit it!” Earlene snarls. She kicks at him. It’s Fred Brown from school, only somewhat older, more weathered, quicker. He wears a T-shirt with a marijuana leaf, baggy army pants. His hair is the reddest of reds, but his eyes are dark. On one forearm is a colored tattoo of Donald Duck in mid-quack. He howls, “Earlene! It must be you!”

  Beal’s not wearing sunglasses today. His eyes avoid her. He opens another beer, flips the cap into the grass.

  “You want a kick in the mouth, Freddie?!!” Earlene hisses, then lunges for the door.

  Her hands are shaking as she pulls wax paper from the shelf and then peanut butter. She looks over the soups. Decides on tomato.

  Behind the store, thunder makes a crackle, then a boom.

  “Jesus!” chuckles the Bean ringing up Earlene’s things. “I think it hit my trash can.”

  “A packa Kents, please,” Earlene says.

  He reaches for the Kents, adds them in.

  The rain outside the piazza thickens, an impassable wall of water.

  The door opens and Fred Brown comes in, watches the Bean putting the groceries in the bag. Earlene keeps her eyes on the Bean’s hands.

  Fred Brown looks at Earlene’s slippers. “I can’t allow this!” he shrieks. “It ain’t right!!”

  Earlene gives him a scorching look.

  As she reaches for the bag, Fred Brown picks her up . . . She is child-sized, easy to move about, except for the flounce of massive yellow hair that rakes across his face.

  He passes Beal, who is still scooched on the piazza, gallops through the rain. Beal is opening another beer, studying something almost invisible on one of the far-off gray hills.

  When Fred reaches the screen piazza of the Pomerleaus’, Gram’s bell is ringing wildly inside the house. Fred puts Earlene down with a flourish, then says, “Ain’t you gonna thank me?”

  Earlene sniffs. “If you squished this wax paper and my cigarettes, there will be nuthin’ to thank.”

  He is turning away. “Don’t thank me, then!” He giggles, dashing into the rain. The hills whiten as electricity stretches down, touching the open field like a tickling finger, withdrawing with a loud CRACK! CRACK!

  “What is it, Gram?” Earlene says as she comes into the kitchen. “What’s all this fuss?”

  Gram pitches the bell. It skids on the painted boards, rolls between Earlene’s feet.

  For the rest of the afternoon Gram sits by the window, looking out into the rain.

  3

  GRAM DOESN’T GO to church anymore. She doesn’t go anywhere. If you ask her to come along, she shakes her head. She sits in her wheelchair on the piazza and watches Earlene and Lee moving along under the dead elms and the almost dead elms. The road is spotty with leafy light. And the shoulders and faces of Earlene and Lee are spotty, too. They walk along, not talking. Earlene carries her hymnbook. She wears a sundress of pale green check and a real yellow rose in her hair, cheapy rubber sandals that go between the toes, and a sullen half-smile. She sees Beal Bean on the steps of Beans’ Variety, dark blue LIBBY’S LOGGING shirt buttoned to the throat, his black beard burying the word LOGGING. He’s sitting with his knees up. Nothing in his hands. There’s no logging truck in the parking lot this time . . . just Beal’s old pickup with spotty light on the roof and raised hood. On the ground beside his truck are some black rags and a tin box of tools.

  Lee wears his new pale-color suit jacket, his shoulders back, swinging his arms. Lee is not an old man. There are times he seems so stiff and so tired, but today he is young.

  Earlene says huskily, “Daddy, there’s that grimy Beal Bean that used to have pimples.”

  Lee reddens. “Look at the scenery on this other side of the road. See how Mr. Goodspeed’s fixed his place up over here.”

  “Yes, Daddy. It looks good, don’t it?”

  Earlene feels something hit the back of her leg. It burns. She looks in time to see an acorn rolling to a stop on the pavement. She looks back and Beal Bean’s fox-color eyes move in deft circles over her sundress. She looks away and keeps walking, tossing her yellow hair.

  4

  UNCLE LOREN STOPS in for a visit with Gram. He parks his new one-ton truck out on the road. There’s a handsome, long-legged hog painted by a sign maker on the truck doors: POMERLEAU FARMS in a crescent underneath. The hog is black and white, his expression one of supreme understanding. He is the prince of hogs.

  Uncle Loren sits at the table for close to an hour without talking. He smokes. Now and then, he leans back on the two legs of his chair and pulls open the refrigerator door. “Earlene . . . got any bread ’n’ butters?”

  “They ain’t ready,” says Earlene, standing with her hands on her hips in the door to the dark hall.

  “You plant too late?” Uncle Loren asks.

  “What’s late?” Earlene asks.

  Uncle Loren lowers his chair legs and grins over his shoulder at Earlene. “When they ain’t here when I want ’em.” His hands are big red scaly pig-farming hands. He lights a cigarette with a wooden match. Gram moans.

  Gram always used to say you can’t get the smell of pigs out of the house after one of Uncle Loren’s visits. Gram always used to say her boy Lee is a genius. He can do anything, you name it. She liked to add that her boy Lee has accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior.

  “What about Uncle Loren?” Earlene used to ask her.

  “I’m afraid, Earlene, that the Lord will lose patience. Ain’t no sneakin’ in the back door.”

  Uncle Loren uses his hand as an ashtray, wipes each ash into the knee of his striped overalls. The smoke of his cigarette is thick and curved.

  Earlene sits down in a chair next to him. “How’s the pigs?” she asks.

  “Good,” says Uncle Loren.

  Earlene lights up a cigarette by pushing the end of it on the element of the stove. Loren’s eyes widen. He scratches one of his huge, freckled, sunburned arms. “Well, well, golly gumdrops,” he says deeply.

>   Earlene sits in the chair across the table from him and smokes, tapping the ash into a teacup.

  Loren breathes noisily in and out of his mouth.

  Earlene says, “Uncle Loren, how long have you smoked?”

  “Since I was seven,” he says.

  Gram moans.

  Earlene smiles. She tosses her yellow hair. “Your lungs must be pitch-black,” she says.

  “Ayuh,” he says. “But I’m supposed to . . . I’m a man.”

  Earlene giggles. “Uncle! That’s old-fashioned!” She shoots the smoke out her nose, leans on one elbow, and looks out through the glass in the door to the new pig truck. “Uncle Loren, don’t you ever get lonesome livin’ with just dirty old pigs?”

  “Ain’t dirty!” Loren says. “Pigs are clean. Ain’t you never seen a litter of bitty pigs in fresh hay?”

  “Ain’t never been to your place, Uncle Loren.”

  “Well . . .” He leans forward, his pale eyes bright as open windows. “Sweetheart, pigs and hogs is superior to folks. Folks are ratty messed-up back-stabbin’ sons-a-whores.”

  Gram moans.

  Earlene blinks.

  He adds, “I’d rather be a born-once hog than a born-again Christian any day . . . you name the day!” Then he bares his little teeth. “Pigs was created in the Lord’s image.”

  Gram leans forward with a shriek . . . then something like the kai-yai-ing of a little puppy. Her good arm makes a graceful arc. She sweeps everything off the utility table. Everything: bread box, napkins, tea-bag cannister, a bouquet of plastic yellow flowers, sugar, salt. It all settles on the kitchen floor in a cloud of white flour.

  5

  WHEN LEE GETS HOME, his brother’s truck is gone. His mother is sobbing. Her glasses have flown off somewhere, and only her eyes are human. The rest of her is floured . . . ghostly. Her good hand twists in the lap of her dress. All around her is the flour-coated debris.

  “Mumma!” Lee cries. He dusts her off. “What happened! Who did this?”

  Gram howls.

  “Where’s Earlene? Why isn’t she here lookin’ after you? Has something happened to Earlene?”

  Gram waves her good hand matter-of-factly.

  Lee collapses on his mother, hugging and holding. “Praise God!” he sobs.

  Gram pats him.

  6

  EARLENE IS UPSTAIRS with the sewing machine, hemming a sundress with eyelet lace. Her room is small and crowded with things. There is a gray haze from many cigarettes.

  Something hits the door like a punch.

  She stops the machine, stares at the door. “Who is it?”

  “Your father.”

  “Be right out.”

  “NOW.”

  “Daddy, I’m almost done.” She puts out her cigarette, covers the ashtray with scrap fabric.

  Again he gives the door one furious single bang.

  “Okay. Okay.” She unlatches the door.

  He has a tall bottle of honey and wheatgerm oil discount shampoo in his hand. He twists the top off. They look into each other’s eyes.

  “Oh . . . jeez,” Earlene croaks.

  His eyes are ringed with sleeplessness, tears bulging.

  “Okay, Daddy . . . what’d I do now?”

  He tosses the bottle cap down. It rolls under Earlene’s bed.

  “Daddy! This is almost funny!” She giggles. “You an’ your soap.” Her laughter becomes almost like singing, eerie, high, and sweet. “I’m grown up!”

  He races at her and grabs her sleeve, stretching her shirt away from the neck.

  “Daddy!”

  He turns, still grasping her sleeve, and kicks the bedroom door shut, tears hanging off the end of his nose.

  Earlene yanks away. He chases her around the bed. She pushes at him. Struggling, they are like two awkward children, tiny, twisting figures at play. Finally he gets the advantage. He drives the bottle into her mouth and a cold thickness fills her throat.

  She is dizzy, wild, gagging.

  He howls.

  “Bein’ sick,” she gasps . . . red-faced. “Bein’ SICK.” She vomits . . . a foamy wob of orange . . . and as she vomits again . . . again . . . she clutches his khaki shirt . . . and he prays with his eyes closed. Like a small scared boy.

  7

  SHE STANDS on the weedy shoulder with her thumb out. A half-dozen cars pass with their windshield wipers swishing. As each one passes, she screams, “Pig!”

  The hard rain makes tea-color streaks in her yellow hair. The rain runs off her chin. Another car passes. “PIG!” she cries into the rain. “Pigs . . . all pigs. Daddy’s a pig. Gram’s a pig. All fat pigs.” She burps up the taste of shampoo.

  When the logging truck hisses to a stop, she looks surprised. He pulls her by the arms up into the high seat. He wears his railroad cap low over his eyes. Nothing shows of his face. He is just all hair.

  “I’m running away,” she says dully and lights up a soggy cigarette.

  He watches the road through the windshield wipers, cranking high speed.

  She looks at him. His soft denim shirt is patched in a dozen places, lays on his body like a ratty dishtowel.

  She draws on her cigarette, makes a curtain of smoke. “Mind if I smoke?” she says in her high Minnie Mouse voice, almost tunelike.

  He shrugs.

  She looks out at the trees blurring by. “High up, ain’t we?”

  He nods.

  “We goin’ to the mill?” she asks. She blows smoke in a long, hard, ruler-straight line.

  “That’s right,” he says.

  They strike a frost heave and she is jarred almost off the seat. She puts her cigarette out on her shoe. She burps up more shampoo taste. She sees a long stone wall rising-falling and leaves being beaten by the rain. “We sure are high up . . . I never rode this high up before.”

  He smiles.

  8

  SHE STANDS behind him in the doorway, lighting a Kent with nervous fingers. Rain drips from the eaves of the wee blue house. She turns and looks at the windows of her own house next door, wondering if, in the hours she’s been gone, her father is sorry yet.

  There’s a comedy routine on the black-and-white TV, but nobody looks at it. The top of the tall woman’s head nearly scrapes the ceiling. She wears a housedress made for a much fatter woman. Behind her is a fat yellowish refrigerator with black smudges around the door handle. The tall woman is cutting hair. The babies and older kids wait turns. A baby with an adult-sized red T-shirt low on the shoulders sits Indian-style on the supper table, and the tall woman clips away at this one.

  Beal says, “Auntie . . . thiii-is is Earlene. She’s running away from home.”

  The house smells of soft, rotting, wet wood.

  The tall woman looks blankly at Beal. She doesn’t stop working the scissors.

  Earlene smokes.

  Beal says, “It’s raining out, Auntie. She needs a place.” He pulls the door shut behind them, and a few of the babies give Earlene dark looks.

  The rest of them ring closer around the table, watching their mother’s hands. She snaps the scissors, working the crew cut into a shorter crew cut. The scissors are those orange kind they say you can cut pennies and dimes with.

  Beal says softly, “Just one night, Auntie?”

  The baby on the table drives its fingers around in its soft red mouth. The tall woman draws its hand down. But the fingers just go back again.

  Earlene looks around frantically for a place to put her cigarette out.

  The tall woman drinks from a jar on the table. Between the times she drinks from the jar, other hands reach up and take the jar to drink from, then set it back.

  Earlene spits in her hand and touches the cigarette to her palm.

  The scissors clack and the hairs seesaw downward.

  A warm hand closes around Earlene’s wrist. Beal says, “It’s okay, Earlene.” He steers her through a room with a low bed and cold greenish light. They go up lightless narrow stairs. “Watch your head,” Beal whispe
rs.

  At the top of the stairs Beal feels for a chain. The attic blooms into a hideous, glaring gray light. There are blankets strewn on the unfinished attic floor, pink Fiberglas still in rolls in one corner. Two young boys are asleep here.

  Earlene moves her eyes cautiously.

  Beal scrapes up some blankets from directly under the swaying light bulb. The single dormer is curtainless, busy with spiders. Beal makes a pallet with the blankets.

  “I’ll make a pillow,” he whispers and takes off his shirt, rolls it up. Then he sits on the blankets. Earlene stays standing.

  “Well, here’s yaaaw-your hideaway, Earlene. How long you runnin’ away for?”

  Earlene frowns. “I don’t know.”

  He pulls on his beard.

  She glances at the sleeping boys.

  The light seems to scream from the bulb.

  She says, “You’re gonna sleep here, too?”

  He nods.

  He looks like an upright BEAR. She thinks of her father’s childlike frame. Shakily, she sits on the blankets next to him. His smile shows one broken tooth within the tumbling beard. He takes some of her hair into his hand.

  A hardness comes to her throat.

  She twirls a corner of a blanket in her fingers.

  He laughs. Deeply. “I like your hair,” he says.

  She stares into the light till it almost blinds her.

  He rubs his palms together, parts them, looks into them.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asks.

  He laughs. “Wicked work.” He unlaces his boots.

  Earlene watches the huge feet emerge. She says, “I ain’t gonna do nuthin’, you know . . . you know . . . with you.”

  The heads of the sleeping boys stir. Faces appear. They watch Beal pull off his dungarees. There’s nothing under the dungarees. Earlene covers her face. Beal laughs. He says, “Earlene . . . you are grown up, remember? You c-ah-aaah-can handle this!” He goes down on his knees.