The Beans of Egypt, Maine

by Carolyn Chute

  I take another step.

  He grabs at my gown but misses.

  “BEAL!” I take two very quick steps closer to the baby.

  Beal flies at my back.

  BUT THOU, O LORD, BE NOT FAR OFF! O THOU MY HELP, HASTEN TO MY AID!

  He presses the gun across my back. He screams in my ear, “Stay on this fuckin’ porch like I tell you!”

  I AM POURED OUT LIKE WATER AND ALL MY BONES ARE OUT OF JOINT; MY HEART IS LIKE WAX, IT IS MELTED WITHIN MY BREAST; MY STRENGTH IS DRIED UP LIKE A POTSHERD . . . Sometimes it’s so hard to tell if the words are in my head or if I mumble them, but when they are in Gram’s voice they roll hard and joyously from my deepest parts . . . THOU DOST LAY ME IN THE DUST OF DEATH. YEA, DOGS ARE ROUND ABOUT ME . . .

  He puts the gun across the arms of the wooden chair. His teeth chatter crazily. He fills both hands with the waist of my gown.

  I says, “What’s the matter with you? You’re nuts!”

  The baby’s cries are muffled. He must be cryin’ into the blankets.

  “Earlene!” Beal tips his head.

  Silence.

  His one good eye blurs with wetness. “I NEED it!”

  Silence.

  “It?” I ask.

  He waves his arms around. I fall back against the door.

  “Jesus, Earlene . . . a FUCK!” The door starts to swing open behind me. The baby’s cries seem only inches away.

  I say, “You got to be kiddin’.”

  His legs shake. I think any minute he’s goin’ to faint.

  DELIVER MY SOUL FROM THE SWORD, MY LIFE FROM THE POWER OF THE DOG! SAVE ME! OMYGODOMYGODOMYGOD . . . Gram’s voice ends in a little giggle.

  “Beal, how can you want to now? How?”

  The baby sounds far away . . . miles away . . . a thin other realm.

  Beal points at the floor.

  He don’t undress, just unzips hisself. He says, “I want it dog-style.”

  I am so amazed that little stars of light drift sideways across my eyes.

  Beal says deeply, “Turn around.” He paws at my gown, tryin’ to hurry me.

  The baby makes a single monumental cat squall.

  I turn around.

  Silence.

  The weight of Beal collapsing on my back makes me sprawl on my face. A nearby rocking chair starts up a snappy little ghostlike creaking.

  The smell of his eye makes me feel faint. I hold my breath. I flatten my lungs right out.

  His teeth chatter, and so do his bones, everything crazily aquiver and out of control. The hands are hot. The penis hot. The cries at the nape of my neck hot. Dark damp hot. Hot as Hell.

  4

  THE RED LIGHT sweeps across this house. The violet moon looks spotty with decay. A man in an orange rescuer’s jacket takes Beal by the arm. They cover him with soft blankets. His teeth clack. They peer at his eye with flashlights. “You think we can save the eye?” they ask. The deputy comes last. He holds the flashlight on various corners of the porch. Sees the gun. Handles the gun. Puts the gun back on the chair arms.

  Bonny Loo holds Dale, gives him the last of the milk she ran over to Crosmans’ for. She sings to him in her raspy voice . . . Hard rock.

  I don’t ride in the ambulance to Portland. I ain’t got no way to get back. So I stand on the piazza and watch the red light hammering through the trees till it’s gone.

  When we get indoor, Bonny Loo’s hand passes over mine . . . and magically a cigarette appears.

  5

  IT’S SUNDAY . . . My birthday. Rosie brings me a store-bought cake. As she brings in the cake in its fancy box Bonny Loo and I watch and clap our hands . . . “Yaaaaay!” Then Rosie goes back and gets Jessica out of her car seat.

  Bonny Loo says, “Ma! Allen and I are goin’ for water . . . so leave us some cake . . . Don’t hog it all.”

  I says, “Get them covers on tight this time.”

  They bustle with dozens of empty milk jugs and the wheelbarrow.

  Rosie looks at Allen sideways. She says, “I wouldn’t trust that little weirdo.”

  I says, “That’s Bonny Loo’s best friend. Don’t cut him down.”

  Rosie says, “I feel like tea.”

  I start the tea water.

  It’s been one of them dry summers with cold mornin’s and not many bugs. And the light is apricot-colored. We ain’t had money for fertilizer, for seeds, for poison. But I got a few hills of zucchinis, some ratty-lookin’ potatoes. Hill has cut Beal’s hours. Says business is slow. Sold one skidder. Can’t make payments on two skidders, he told Beal. Cuttin’ down all way around. Beal likes Hill. Hill’s got a funny way of sayin’ things, Beal says. I never seen Hill.

  There’s the blows of a dozen hammers buildin’ that new place across the way. Rosie says she’s gotta use the “Necessary Room.” I get out two cups. Jessica crawls around the kitchen, pulls Atlas out of the woodbox. “Keeee!” she squeals, pointin’ as he lunges out of her arms.

  Rosie comes back in. The screen door whacks behind her. “Jesus, Earlene! No Necessary Paper.”

  “Sorry,” I says. “I can fix you a soapy diaper to take back out.”

  “Nah . . . I used my sock.” The hammers across the way sound like machine guns. “What’s this?” says Rosie. “New neighbors?”

  I sigh. “I don’t know ’em. They musta bought the orchard property from Dunlaps.”

  “Classy-lookin’ shack, ain’t it?”

  I says, “Yeeup.”

  Beal always says Rosie looks like Barbra Streisand. I always says, “That’s a compliment to Rosie.”

  “Guess it is,” Beal always says.

  And I says, “How much do you look at Rosie?”

  “Daaaah-don’t get so pissed off, Earlene. When we was kids, Rosie tortured me.”

  I know Beal’s right. She looks like Barbra Streisand, I got to admit.

  She stands in her shocking-pink parka, looking out at the new house. Jessica roams around the kitchen, corners Pinkie under the table. Rosie says, “Couple them carpenters look good.”

  I say, “Take off your parka. Go in and throw it on the bed.”

  She scowls, twitches the long hook nose. “And freeze my ass off? . . . No way.”

  I pour hot water into the cups. “Here’s your tea, Rosie.”

  “Where’s Beal?” she says, lightin’ up one of her thin brown cigarettes.

  She spins her weddin’ ring. She has earrings shaped like crosses that spin and spin. Her husband, Ronnie, is a Roman Catholic. Her black hair is cut right off, a glossy duck’s tail against her long neck. She flicks her ash into her hand.

  I say, “He took one of Rubie’s guns down to pick at cans.”

  “Gonna shoot up all Rubie’s ammo?” She laughs.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “When Rubie gets home, he’s gonna be mad as hell,” she says softly.

  I rinse off two spoons. Jessica pushes up onto her feet and trods after Pinkie down the short hall, stoppin’ to grin back at Rosie. Rosie says, “Jessica, leave them Christly cats alone.” She drags on her brown cigarette, her fox-color eyes passin’ over me. “Jesus, Earlene . . . you’ve got skinny!”

  I smile. “I don’t really feel good. Got the blahs.”

  She says, “You look like a rag.”

  I shrug.

  “Where’s Dale?” Her cigarette moves from hand to hand, her cross earrings catch the light, catch the musty color of the room.

  “Sleepin’. Bonny Loo tires him out runnin’ him on that old trike.”

  “I wouldn’t let Bonny Lou roughhouse him so much,” she sighs.

  I shrug.

  There’s shots from the woods. Rosie turns her long neck, narrows her eyes.

  I says, “Let’s go out on the piazza and watch ’em put up the house.”

  She says, “Cripe! We’ll freeze out there!” She follows me out. We put Jessica in Dale’s playpen. Rosie picks a straight-back chair, sets her cup on the piazza sill. “Jeez!” she exclaims. “Lookit t
hat one with the tan! Hubba. Hubba.”

  I look over and think what a crazy thing this new house is. Until now, there ain’t been neighbors . . . and now we got ’em. I says, “It’s a pretty place.”

  She whistles. “They got moocho, that’s for sure.” She rubs her fingers together. She says, “Earlene, what’s them classy folks gonna think of this?” She leans back on the legs of the chair and picks at the tarpaper wall.

  I shrug.

  I light a cigarette. I rock hard. The smoke inside me is a hard whole thing, like a dog turning and turning to get comfortable and safe. I says, “Praise Jesus! Ain’t this a pretty day!”

  Rosie snarls, “Could be warmer!”

  Then there’s seven shots. Rosie counts them aloud. “Maybe Beal’s sendin’ us a message.” She laughs.

  I stop rockin’, lean over my knees and watch a truck backin’ into the birches of the new place, a truck full of perfect blond boards. The house has a million tall windows. Sometimes Bonny Loo and Allen go over and set in the tall weeds and watch.

  Beal’s shots come again and Jessica points that way.

  A sudden cluster of hammers and Beal’s gunfire ring together, overlap.

  When I check on Dale, he’s settin’ up, holdin’ my hairbrush to his mouth. He smiles. I put one of them handwashed pink diapers on him, stiff as the Sunday paper. He drives his hard feet into my stomach.

  After an hour or so, Beal comes through the back way into the kitchen with one of Rubie’s big-caliber rifles against his back, the strap across the front of his soft old shirt. The kitchen smells of him. His forearms are dark from sun. He is drinking warm water from a milk jug. Pinkie and Atlas drive themselves against his legs.

  Somethin’ catches my eye and I turn to the supper table. I whisper, “What the devil? . . .”

  It’s a dead lamb with sticks and leaves in its cream-color coat. And crisscrossed over its shallow hip are squirrels, some without heads, some with torn shoulders, open bellies . . . and the dark shape, I guess, is a bird.

  Rosie croaks, “Jeepers, Beal! You ain’t handsome no more. That eye makes you look like a goddam Saint Bernard.”

  He lowers the jug and takes a long breath. “Nosie Rosie, whatchoo got your coat on for?”

  Rosie makes a face. “It’s freezin’, don’t you know it?”

  I’m watchin’ Beal’s hands put down the water jug and wipe the hair out of his eyes. The lamb’s head bleeds over the edge of the table. The fallin’ blood goes ping! ping! ping! against a metal chair leg.

  Rosie moves the cake to the workbench, takes the lid off the box, opens two or three cupboards, lookin’ for plates.

  Dale grabs some of my hair, puts it in his mouth.

  Beal sees my eyes brush the bleeding head of the lamb. He smiles, shows the great gap of his most recently broken tooth. His teeth are penny-color along the gums.

  I say huskily, “I thought you was shootin’ cans.”

  The doctors say the tissue is ruined. The eyelid sags, half-covers his eye all the time. They say, “Oh, but you are lucky even to have an eye.” He presses the gun into the corner of the kitchen. “Suppah!” he says, grinning.

  I say, “That’s one of Crosmans’ Suffolks, ain’t it?”

  He holds a finger to his lips. “Shhhh.”

  Rosie digs out forks, rinses some drinkin’ jars. She don’t turn around.

  Dale points at Jessica, who’s standin’ at my feet, lookin’ up. Dale cries out, “Da!”

  Beal says, “Earlene . . . heat me some water . . . I gotta dress out this lamb in here . . . in case . . . you know . . . the deputy . . .”

  “Do it yourself!” I says.

  He looks hard at my mouth.

  “I can’t believe you’d do this, Beal!” I carry the baby into the light that spills in from the piazza. “I think you oughta get that sheep outta here an’ bury him out back!”

  Dale frowns from the sun. He swings his legs. “Da!” He points at Beal.

  “And I ain’t eatin’ no squirrels, either!” I scream. “Ain’t no difference between a squirrel and a rat, not one specka difference!”

  Beal’s mouth trembles. He says, “You’ll eat ’em if you get hungry enough. Maybe you woulda ate one when I was outta work last spring. Maybe you’ll eat a rat next payment we make on Rubie’s property taxes.” Then he laughs. His beard lashes like a tail.

  Rosie turns. Her eyes meet with Beal’s. She says, “Oh, Earlie, don’t be such a baby.”

  I get a strangling feeling in my throat.

  “Well,” Beal says to me, “you’re the one who wanted to get cigarettes instead of usin’ my last check all on the groceries.”

  I sneer. “How many hot dogs am I gonna get with the price of a pack of cigarettes?”

  “Four,” he says. His good eye winks at Rosie. I see over his boot and on the outside of his leg a dark red drizzle where he carried the sheep.

  Rosie’s watchin’ me, the cake-cuttin’ knife in her hand.

  Ping! Ping! Ping! The blood falls in more giant drops against the chair leg. Jessica pulls out a drawer and tosses folded-up paper bags onto the linoleum.

  I look among the faces—Bonny Loo and Allen comin’ in through the shed with water—and all these eyes are fixed on me. I am puny. Cornered. The many eyes creep all over me.

  I slam the screen door behind me. Maybe I should go back for my cigarettes on the piazza. Never mind.

  I carry Dale through the sun.

  If I walk down this washed-out road to the paved road and walk for the rest of daylight, I’ll find Daddy’s kitchen full of bright and dainty things . . . and Daddy’s small hands carvin’ wee lobstermen, wee sea gulls, wee moose.

  Then another few yards is the church with its peelin’ green doors, overgrown forsythia, and little littered entryway that smells like mushy wood. . . and Pastor Bowie’s handshake which practically breaks your hand. When I try to remember what it was like, my mouth gives a twist and I cry the most realest tears. Did I love that other life or hate it? Gram and God. I never feared either one. Daddy feared ’em. But me, I weren’t never scared enough . . . nor tested enough.

  6

  ROSIE’S GONE. There’s a queer smell in the kitchen. Beal’s nowheres. Out back, I guess. He’s driven a nail over the hallway door and there’s a piece of stiff rope hangin’ down. And around it are my enamel kettles . . . my turkey roaster . . . filled with cloudy water. Another is filled with blood. There’s a hacksaw. A bag of woolly skin.

  The queer smell hangs the thickest over the bag that has—praise God—the lamb’s head.

  Flies are chasin’ and singin’.

  And here’s the piece of cake they left for me, right here on the workbench. It’s got one sugar rose.

  I take the baby to the wicker rocker out on the piazza and give him some cool milk. I smoke a Kent.

  Beal comes onto the piazza with a box wrapped in white paper bags.

  “Here,” he says. He lowers it to my knee. He smiles, his good eye strangely wide.

  I say, “Take him.”

  Beal lifts the baby, then stands with the sun across the legs of his dungarees and across part of his old soft shirt.

  I lift from the taped-together bags a cuckoo clock.

  He says, “I got it from Hill. His ol’ lady don’t like it, so he give it to me. Way back. I been savin’ it. You like it, dontcha?”

  I feel the little house shape of it, the little door that opens.

  Beal says, “Hill claims it works good. Yoo-oooo-you like it, Earlene?” The baby’s long legs swing across his beard.

  “I like it,” I says.

  “Where you gonna hah-hang it?” he says. “You think between the windows in the kitchen might be okay?”

  I says, “Yuh.”

  He says, “All this time I been thinkin’ that’s a good plaa-ace.”

  “Yuh, that’s a good place.” I touch the raised birds.

  He says, “It prob’ly cuckoos the number of times the hour is . . . then o
nce on the half-hour.”

  I roll one of the metal pinecones between my fingers.

  “You like it, Earlene?”

  “I like it.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m wicked sure.”

  7

  AT THANKSGIVINGTIME, a Mayflower backs up to the new place. There’s a hot-top driveway with a lamppost at the end. At night, there’s a circle of light on the hot top around the lamppost, a circle which looks like white lace.

  8

  I SEEN THEM in their car once . . . just once. They got a great big Chrysler with tinted glass. The wife, she’s got a pink coat and a heart-shaped face, and blond hair up in back, but it comes undone around her ears. The fella—the day I seen him up close—had a dark red tie and a shirt with tiny stripes. Blue watery eyes, but I guess his eyes was waterin’ ’cause of the wind. He was workin’ a screwdriver, puttin’ up his mailbox down on the paved road alongside ours, only his was the biggest prettiest mailbox I ever seen. On it was white letterin’: J. K. SMITH. There was two little towheads in back of the Chrysler in leather safety seats. The kids had matchin’ chocolate-color coats. They as holdin’ these blue-and-silver pinwheels, which weren’t turnin’ around ’cause of course there weren’t no wind inside the Chrysler.

  That’s the only time I seen the new people up close.

  9

  BEAL HASN’T BEEN HOME for three days. I guess he’s with the tall woman. I ain’t gonna kid myself. The last time I seen him he was untyin’ his old boots, settin’ on this bed, when all of a sudden—I couldn’t believe it—I says, “Beal! What’s that smell?”

  He won’t look me in the eye. He just keeps unlacin’ them boots . . . pullin’ the first one off real slow.

  “Beal?”

  I sit up and light the lamp. I can tell by the tilt of his head that he’s walked most the way home from New Hampshire.

  “I MESSED myself . . . Okay?”

  I spring out of the bed and fill the kettle on the stove. Across the swan curtain his shadow moves. His voice is low, passin’ through the swan curtain. “My stomach . . . you know . . . Earlene . . . It gets me in the stomach . . . all this hoo-ha.”