by M. E. Kerr
“Well, what’s he like?” Cowboy said.
“You’d like him,” I said. “He doesn’t have a long nose, he has a long tooth. And he reads really depressing stuff. On the way to The Palace last night he told me about this short story called ‘The Dwarf’ by Ray Bradbury.” I got out of bed and looked in my closet for something to wear. “This dwarf keeps going to this house of mirrors in this carnival so he can see himself reflected with a tall body. One day they trick him and change the mirror to one that makes everything look really tiny, and he’s so shocked he tries to kill himself.”
“Neat!” Cowboy said.
“He uses a pistol, though, not Dristan or Midol.”
“Well, most men don’t have Midol around,” Cowboy said. She gave me a wink.
The ash at the end of her Camel was almost an inch long. There were cigarette ashes everywhere in our room, inside drawers, on the rug, on the floor, on the tables, everywhere Cowboy’d passed. Our nearsighted mother never seemed to see them, and Mrs. Hootman never mentioned them because she thought I was the smoker, being the older.
She’d clean them away cheerfully, then catch me up in her arms and hug me, while she whispered into my ear, “You know you can get away with murder, don’t you, Little Missy? But you have to be careful of those teeny-tiny lungs of yours, you know.”
This time while Cowboy pushed her leg through the panty hose she curled her big toe under.
“I’m not going to wear white,” I said, picking out a pink dress. “I’m not going to look like something off the top of a wedding cake when I get with Little Lion.”
“Which one do you like best?” Cowboy said.
“That’s a dumb question,” I said. “I just went to a movie with him.”
“Half a movie,” said Cowboy.
“He probably doesn’t ever want to see me again. If you were him and you were going to a movie with me and my father rushed down and carried me off caveman style and told him there was a taxi stand across the street, would you ever want to see me again?”
“I’d rise to the challenge,” said Cowboy. “I’d think of something dramatic to do. I’d wait until your birthday was underway and then I’d come dancing in under my shell, with my music playing ‘La Cu-ca-ra-cha’”—she did a little dance step in her panty hose—“‘la cu-ca-ra-cha,’ and crash your party in a burst of glory. Would that impress you?”
“ROACH! ROACH! ROACH!” I chanted the way the crowds had at the game, and Cowboy and I chased each other around the room, laughing.
“Well, it could happen,” Cowboy said. Off the floor of her closet, she fished a blue skirt that was always balled up there next to her hockey skates. She began brushing off the dustballs on it. “It’s your birthday. Anything can happen.”
“Cowboy?” I said. “Do you really like Little Lion?”
She was saved from answering by my mother’s voice calling out, “Where’s my birthday girl?” as she came up the stairs. Cowboy made a dive for the ashtray, emptying it into one of her Nike sneakers, whirling around, and raising the window. I grabbed the Johnson Wax Glade powder air freshener and aimed it at the ceiling where the smoke collected.
My mother sang out, “Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you—”
“Don’t let her in here!” Cowboy said.
“How’m I going to keep her out?”
Cowboy gave me a shove. “Pretend you’re on your way to the bathroom!”
My mother opened the door and said, “Whew! Whew! Girls! Someone’s got on too much perfume.”
Cowboy said, “After God took his paintbrush to the leaves, he took his powder puff to our bedroom.”
“Cowboy,” said my mother, “I call that sassy.”
“I call it good,” I said. “Imaginative. Poetic.”
Cowboy took a bow. “I wrote it in a day,” she said.
19: Sydney Cinnamon
DIGGER LOOKED UP AT the dark morning sky and said, “It’s gonna rain buckets in about two seconds. Hurry, Roach!”
I was practically leaping to catch up with him, both of us sweating in our good suits from the ride up to Lake Road and back in the muggy heat.
There was a banner strung across the front of the church reading:
WELCOME LITTLE LION!
WELCOME TADS, TADPOLES, AND PODS!
The street was lined with traffic and policemen trying to control it.
“We’re probably too late to make it inside,” said Digger.
But we got in, during the choir’s singing of “Over There Where the Heathens Are Dying.”
Digger had to stand up in the back with other standees, but an usher led me down front and squeezed me in beside some TADs and TADpoles.
“Little Lion’s on next,” he whispered at me, smiling.
In addition to all the people packing the church, an overflow crowd was contained in the basement, where loudspeakers were set up.
The first thing I saw after I got seated was an enormous white ladder set up beside the pulpit. It was strung with white roses, and under each rung there was a sign, so it looked like this:
100%—I DID!
90%—I WILL!
80%—I CAN!
70%—I THINK I CAN!
60%—I MIGHT!
50%—I THINK I MIGHT!
40%—WHAT IS IT?
30%—I WISH I COULD!
20%—I DON’T KNOW HOW!
10%—I CAN’T!
0%—I WON’T!
While the choir sang, Reverend La Belle sat in a throne chair behind the pulpit. In the front of the pulpit there was a bouquet of white chrysanthemums in a brass urn. A white ribbon was pinned to the flowers, and across it in gold was LITTLE LION.
The dwarf beside me was balancing a ten-gallon hat on his knees.
He turned to me while the choir was singing and whispered, “I’m Gus Gregory,” holding out his hand, “Little’s better, less is more.”
I shook his hand. “Sydney Cinnamon,” I said. “What’s better?”
“Little’s better, less is more. Aren’t you a TAD or a TADpole?”
“Not yet,” I said.
“That’s our slogan,” he said.
I was wiggling around in my seat, craning my neck to try and find Little Little in the crowd.
“Little Lion won’t come from the back,” said Gus Gregory. “He’ll come from behind the curtains up front.”
Then, as though that was his cue, the choir began “Just As I Am,” there was movement behind the purple curtains, and Little Lion stepped out.
“Just as I am, tho’ tossed about,” the choir continued bravely, drowned out by the applause, “With many a conflict, many a doubt.”
Gus Gregory was standing on the red cushions of the pew, swinging his sky piece, and others in our aisle stood on their seats, too.
“Fightings and fears within, without,” the choir persisted, “O Lamb of God, I come, I come.”
Little Lion was resplendent in white from top to bottom, complete with a white rosebud boutonniere.
As he walked toward the white ladder, he held up his hands to try and stop the applause, but there was no way. There were even whistles.
The choir was relentless:
“Just as I am, and waiting not,
To rid my soul of one dark blot.”
I stood on my seat in the excitement and finally spotted Little Little, sitting on something that elevated her, between her mother and father. She was wearing pink, a white rose pinned to the collar of her dress. She was in a middle row, clapping and smiling while I did hypnosis on her: Look my way, and flopped. She continued looking straight ahead at Little Lion.
Little Lion was climbing the ladder.
The crowd was calming down; the choir was coming through again:
“O Lamb of God, I come! I come!”
When Little Lion reached the top of the ladder, Reverend La Belle stepped forward.
He said, “Little Lion is at the top of the Ladder of Achievement, ready to share his though
ts with you. Having him with us this Sunday morning is a great achievement for us! Little Lion?”
Then there were a few minutes more of applause while Reverend La Belle disappeared through the curtains, and Little Lion stood on 90%—I WILL!, with his hands holding firmly to 100%—I DID!
“The best lesson I ever learned, I learned from an oyster,” Little Lion began. “Up here in lake country, I don’t know if you know about oysters. Up here in the beautiful Finger Lakes of New York State, I doubt you think very much about oysters … unless you’re going out somewheres fancy to eat a gourmet dinner, and then maybe you think about oysters. Oysters Rockefeller, with the spinach and the celery and the Parmesan cheese, fancied-up oysters that’ll give you a taste thrill for some five, six, seven dollars or more now in these inflated times!
“Oysters. Up here in the beautiful Finger Lakes of New York State you don’t think about oysters, do you? Unless you’re hungry and your taste buds are telling you ooooooh I’d like an oyster, like one on the half shell, like one with a little horseradish sauce, like one with a wedge of lemon to squeeze over it, like an oyster on the half shell, iced, sitting in a bed of crisp, cool lettuce. An oyster.
“Well now, you didn’t come here this morning for this, to hear about oysters, up here in the beautiful Finger Lakes of New York State, say what the heck is that dwarf doing talking about an oyster, Sunday morning, church … oyster? Oyster?”
Little Lion looked out at us, all around the room, so silent you could hear a pin drop. He ran his hand over his red curly hair.
Then he shouted, “Yes, an oyster!”
And the heavens above collaborated with him: Lightning flashed at the long, thin windows of the church.
“An oyster is an extraordinary creature, in case you don’t know about oysters up here in lake country. Up here in lake country you’ve got a lot of problems and I know it. I know you have! You step outside your door every morning to face them: Your kids are leaving this town because there’s no industry to employ them, nothing to keep them here. Your kids are going to school and they’re finding pot, marijuana, right there in the recess yard along with the slides and swings, grass that isn’t the kind you walk on, but the kind that clouds the mind! You have problems up here in the beautiful Finger Lakes. I know you have!”
There was more lightning.
Little Lion looked as though the heavens were exclaiming with him and nodded.
“You got in-law problems, and outlaw problems, and you can’t communicate with your wife, and your husband drinks, and your mother is old now and feeble, and your best friend and you have lost touch, and your parents criticize you all the time without ever asking to hear your side. They don’t want to hear it, sometimes it seems they don’t give a plugged nickel for your side, just everyone’s but yours. You get so darned discouraged with everything that’s going on, you could die! I know it. Lord, I know it.”
Little Lion stepped down to 80%—I CAN!
“What’s the sense of it all, anyway?”
He stepped down to 70%—I THINK I CAN!
He said, “What’s the point of it all? You tell me.”
It began to rain, a hard windy rain that beat against the church windows. He went down to the next rung and said, “Faith? Faith in what? You tell me.”
He went down to 50%—I THINK I MIGHT! “Love? Speak up, I didn’t quite catch the word. Love? Did you say love? What’s love? Hah? You tell me.”
Another rung down. Beside me, Gus Gregory was clutching his hat so tightly his knuckles had turned red.
“It’s all turned against me, see. How do you cope when it all goes against you? How? You tell me.”
On 30%—I WISH I COULD!, Little Lion paused, removed a white handkerchief from his pocket, put it to his face, held it there, put it back. Then he sobbed out, “Don’t console me! I’m tired of it. Don’t pacify me! I’ve had it! Don’t lead me on and on and on because where am I going? I don’t want to keep going until I know where I’m going…. You tell me.”
Little Lion moved down to the next rung. “O Lord, where’d you go? Were you ever here or was that all just so much … talk,” the last word very softly. “Was it all just talk? Were you ever interested in me? Me, Lord. Me! Are you around for me? You tell me.”
Little Lion stepped to 10% and stood there silently.
Then he said, “The most extraordinary thing about the oyster is this. He doesn’t have to go out and find his problems. He’s got them built in! Irritations! Irritations! They’re as much a part of him as my heart or my liver or my lungs are a part of me. How does he stand living with those irritations built right into his shell?”
Little Lion stepped down to 0%—I WON’T! He shook his head and said in a humming whine that began a great sob, “You tell me!”
Then he stepped away from the ladder.
He walked slowly to the front of the podium.
“He tries to get rid of the irritations. Oh, God, how he tries! He tries to get rid of them and he tries to get rid of them and oh, God, they don’t go away! They won’t go away. They are there to stay. They are as much a part of him as my heart or my liver or my lungs!
“He says go away, get out, go, leave me, please, go! But they are there to stay!
“Now listen to what he does. Listen to what this oyster does. This extraordinary creature doesn’t ask what’s the point of it all! He doesn’t say anything about faith in what—he’s got enough faith to fill an ocean! He doesn’t say, What’s love? He doesn’t ask how to cope, or where he’s going, or how he’s going to get there, and he doesn’t question the Lord!
“I’ll tell you what he does, and how he knew to do it, you tell me.
“I’ll tell you what he does!
“When he cannot get rid of his irritations he settles down to make them into one of the most beautiful things in this world. He uses the irritations to do the loveliest thing that an oyster ever has a chance to do!
“If there are irritations in your life, take an example from the oyster, my friends, and make a pearl.
“Make a pearl….” He stared out at us. “Have you got the love? Have you got the faith? … You … tell … me.”
Then the choir began singing:
“Throw out the lifeline across the dark wave,
There is a brother whom someone should save….”
“Will you walk up here to me, friends?” Little Lion began. “Walk up here for a blessing. Who will walk up here now for Christ?”
“Throw out the lifeline, throw out the lifeline,
Someone is drifting away,
Throw out the lifeline, throw out the lifeline,
Someone is sinking to-day.”
Dwarfs and normals began filing up the aisles as the choir continued and Little Lion shouted above it, “You know who I mean. There’s someone special here who needs this blessing, and you know who you are. I am talking to you directly now and you know it’s you I mean. And you know you’re special, and you know I’ve reached you, and why aren’t you walking down here to me? I’m going to keep after you until you do. I’m going to wait for you.”
Digger and Laura Gwen went past me with the babies, and Gus Gregory left his hat on his seat and squeezed past my legs.
I looked over my shoulder to see Little Little settled back in her seat, watching.
Little Lion’s voice rose even higher. “You know who you are! Can’t I reach you? Aren’t you coming? Don’t you care?”
There was no special expression on Little Little’s face.
“You can shout, ‘I’ll walk with you, Little Lion,’” Little Lion barked. “I wish you would. I wish you’d shout it out and come down here to walk with me!”
At first some people mumbled it, and then gathered courage and called it out, “I’ll walk with you, Little Lion.”
Little Lion had his handkerchief back out and was almost crying now, while he shouted, “What will it take to move you? O Lord, what do you want me to do? I’m trying everything I know! I’m b
reaking my heart here trying to get you to walk with me. Don’t you want to? Won’t you tell me that you want to and come forward? Please? Don’t you want to? Can’t you tell me that you want to?”
I kept looking over my shoulder to be sure Little Little hadn’t gotten down to go up the aisle.
Practically everyone in the church had, and they were lined up at the front, the TADs and TADpoles invited up to the stage to stand behind Little Lion.
“Who else?” Little Lion yelled out, his voice hoarse. “You know who you are! Oh, why won’t you do it? Don’t you want to? Won’t you tell me that you do?”
There was a sudden bolt of thunder, and then a female voice shrieked, “I do, Little Lion!”
I turned to see her dancing up the aisle, as I had seen her dance across my television screen so many times: Dora, minus her lettuce leaf.
Even Little Lion looked surprised.
20: Little Little La Belle
“LITTLE LITTLE,” SAID LITTLE Lion, “I want you to meet Eloise Ficklin, also known as Dora, The Dancing Lettuce Leaf.”
“Oh, happy happy days,” my mother sang. “When I lie down I’ll have a coat of golden mayonnaise.”
“We’ve met,” I said.
“We have? Where?”
“In Pennsylvania at a TADpole party. You were in the motel pool at the deep end and you told me you could stand at that end, that you weren’t one of us.”
“Well now, Little Little, you have the best memory!” Eloise Ficklin exclaimed. “I don’t remember meeting you at all.”
We were gathered in Grandfather La Belle’s study, at the back of the church, waiting for the crowds to thin out and the street in front to clear of traffic.
Grandfather La Belle had gone around back to the parking lot to bring my father’s car to the side door. Then we were all going to head for our house, for a light lunch before the banquet later that afternoon.
Eloise Ficklin was sticking to Little Lion like glue, dressed all in white the same as he was, and plucking his boutonniere from his lapel for a souvenir.