A Small Crowd of Strangers

by Joanna Rose

  “Hmm, indeed,” he said.

  “What are they doing?”

  “Trash-can turkey,” he said. “Now you know as much as I do.”

  The three men and Mrs. Taskey all stood around the turkey with their arms folded. Josie ran out of the HOT water door and Batgirl came next. She now had yellow boots on, and she stood right next to the turkey on its stake. Josie took a picture, Batgirl waving at the camera.

  “Well,” Father Lucke said. “If ever a bird needed a blessing, it’s that one, and I’d hate to miss that.” He let go of her elbow and said, “Come soon. All will be revealed,” and he just stood there, looking into her face. “All creatures great and small, the bread I will give is of my flesh, whatever you need to do to be a caring person. Josie and the kids take care of the transients. They seem to need to do more than many of us. Ha!”

  “Transients live in that house?”

  He said. “It’s all about love, especially if one avoids the trappings of Easter, or Christmas, or even Thanksgiving.”

  He looked at her directly for another moment, and then away. “Or the church.”

  “The church that burned down?”

  He said, “The church is her people. Heard that one?”

  She stared at his round pink face, her eyes watering a little in the wind.

  He said, “We’re all just people trying to live in the Word of Christ.”

  “And you’re their good shepherd?”

  He laughed, lifting his face to the wind and the sun. “I just know most of the best stories by heart. Although I must say, Tammy is running me a close second. See you at four.” And he left her standing there. His footsteps ground on the gravel, and at the top, where the gravel became pavement, he turned and yelled back, “I know one. ‘Every man hath his proper gift of God.’”

  Then he went on, into the front door of Ruby’s Roadhouse.

  She could see why they wanted to kick him out of the priesthood.

  Bullfrog had gone to sleep sitting in the sand. He seemed to do that sometimes, just fall asleep sitting up, and he hardly ever tipped over, although he did usually end up lying down.

  Between the buildings, Mr. Bleakman had picked up the shiny new trash can, and Batgirl stuck her head up inside of it. He started to lower it over her, and her squeal came over the wind. Mr. Bleakman lifted the trash can then, and lowered it again, this time over the turkey on the stake instead of over Batgirl. He set it on the ground, and Batgirl beat on the top like it was a drum. One of the guys grabbed her, her squeal coming to Pattianne across the sand, her yellow boots kicking. Another guy wheeled a wheelbarrow over, and one of them shoveled its smoking contents onto the top of the upside-down trash can. Mrs. Taskey clapped, the sound coming to Pattianne in pops. Then the large boys came out of the “hot water” door, and some smaller kids, and they all ran around the trash can, Josie taking pictures. The man with the wheelbarrow was dumping the rest of the stuff on the ground around the trash can, on top of the tinfoil.

  Father Lucke showed up. They all stood still, and then they held hands. Josie too. Batgirl broke loose from the guy holding her and ran to Father Lucke. He bent down to her, and she whispered in his ear. Then the circle slowly started to move around the trash can. The singing came down to her in bits.

  “Ring around the rosy, a pocket full of posy, ashes, ashes, they all fall down.”

  Then they all fell down. Even Mr. Bleakman. Even Mrs. Taskey. Even pregnant Josie.

  “This place is weird.”

  Bullfrog woke up and looked back up the beach. Where the dead sea lion was, crows now hopped around on the rocks.

  “Let’s go,” she said, and he agreed.

  At home, she picked him up and put him on the bed. She crawled into her sleeping bag next to him. The warmth from his body came through the layers of down, and then his quiet snores were the only sound, and she just lay there listening. Her arm went to sleep, and she didn’t move. Soon his paws would twitch and he would dream. If she moved, he would wake up annoyed and hop down. He didn’t really like sharing the bed. And she really wanted him there, a living, breathing creature right next to her, warm and dreaming.

  There was banging on the door, and two kids were there, pushing it open, yelling, “It’s turkey time! It’s turkey time! Sugarlips gets to come too! There’s gizzards!”

  She sat up on the edge of the bed. “Is that turkey done already?”

  Bullfrog jumped to the floor and wagged over to the kids. They both wore bright striped knit caps pulled down over their foreheads. They were maybe eight or nine, pretty short. One of them went to the table and said, “Are these your muffins?”

  And the other kid said, “No, it’s dog doots, what do you think?”

  The first kid said, “I’m telling,” and the other kid said, “I didn’t say a bad word,” and they both ran out the door. Bullfrog followed them, and they ran back in, making the floor shake with their stomping feet.

  “Come on,” one shouted. “Does Sugarlips have a leash?”

  She said, “Is that turkey all cooked already?”

  “Father Lucke is gonna pray on it.”

  “On the turkey.”

  “It’s a special Josie’s-birthday prayer.”

  “No, it isn’t. It’s just plain old saying grace.”

  “I’m telling.”

  Pattianne wrapped the plate of biscuits in one of the dish towels and slid them into a plastic bag.

  One kid said, “I’ll carry that,” and the other kid said, “No, I will,” and she said, “No, I will,” and the one kid jammed his hands into his pockets and said, “Oh, man,” and the other kid looked at her with his mouth open. He had huge front teeth.

  The other kid walked around the room, stomping. He said, “How come you live here?”

  “I don’t. I’m just visiting.”

  He stopped at the bathroom door. “Don’t you have a bathtub?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t get dirty.”

  They looked at each other.

  “Never?”

  She put on her jacket and stared down the bigger of the two kids. She said, “And his name is Bullfrog.”

  They walked out the door, the two boys ahead of her, Bullfrog trotting along with them, his tail happy and high. The boys kept looking back at her, and one said, “I don’t believe her. Everybody gets dirty.” The other one said, “She doesn’t look too dirty.”

  She looked back at the house where they thought she lived, and it was her house all right. Mr. Bleakman could probably rig up a shower easy enough. And it would be nice to have a big, thick down comforter, and there were more green dishes in the junk store in Ucluelet, and maybe Jen would come visit. She could stay at Ruby’s Roadhouse. Except there was a divorce to deal with, or annulment, or whatever the fuck it was to be.

  A table was set up in the middle of the lobby of Ruby’s Roadhouse, and Bullfrog followed her right in. The place was full of noise and full of people, and the table was full of food. She set her biscuits on it and stood close to the wall. There were no chairs around the table, and no spaces for plates. There would be no sitting down together. She took her jacket off and held it.

  Li Song was doing tricks with dominoes for three little boys. The turkey sat at one end of the table, golden brown flesh falling off the legs, the ends of the bones reaching up into the air like fists. Cal stood there with his hairy arms raised, a carving knife in one hand, a big fork in the other, and Josie took his picture.

  The three big easy chairs had been pushed under the window. Two old men sat there under a lamp. One man was bald, and the lamp lit up his head. The other wore a lumpy, red knit cap. There didn’t seem to be any teeth between the two of them. They were both nodding and looking around, and one of them shrank back into his chair when Lakshmi stood in front of him with a cup of coffee, or maybe tea, or maybe spicy mulled wine.

  She took his hand and guided it to the cup, and said, “You got it, Tuc
k?”

  Tuck grasped the cup with both shaking hands and shouted, “Got it.”

  There were other black-haired, dark-skinned girls, sisters or cousins, and there was Mr. Patel, and maybe Mrs. Patel. Pattianne tried to remember seeing her at the Pink Dolphin. She wore a sari of gauzy bright turquoise. The room was big and full of people. The other easy chair under the window in the sun was empty. Pattianne’s breath was choppy, and she hated standing here like she always hated standing in a roomful of people, except when Michael was there, standing, shining, beside her, soaking up all the attention, her just warm in the glow of him.

  Father Lucke stood at the other end of the table, and the room became quiet.

  “Too quiet,” he said, his voice full of that giggle. “God loves noise. God would want everyone to talk at once, don’t you think?” and he held up a big glass of wine that sloshed down his wrist, and there was laughing all around and then quiet again. Josie took his picture, snap, flash.

  Father Lucke held his wine in one hand, and with the other, he took a biscuit from the plate. It crumbled and most of it fell on the table. It was one of her biscuits. He held it up.

  He said, “You are the body, you are the blood. You are all Jesus, and we are all God. We all give each other this day our daily bread, and it makes the heavens full of stars, hallelujah. At the Last Supper, Jesus said, ‘This is my body.’ Let’s just say that’s what he meant―how you eat food and it becomes part of your body. And when you love each other, that’s feeding each other too, so then you are each of you like Jesus!” He popped the biscuit into his mouth and took a gulp of wine, and everybody yelled “Hallelujah!”

  The biscuit plate started going from hand to hand. Broken bits of biscuit went from hand to mouth, each person feeding the next, the words, “body and blood” following the plate of biscuits around the room, and laughing and the snap and flash of Josie’s camera following it too. The boys who came to get her stuffed whole biscuits into each other’s mouths and then opened their mouths wide at each other. Lakshmi carefully poked a piece into the toothless mouth of one old man, then the other. Then she set a piece carefully on the seat of the empty chair. Mrs. Taskey held Barbie’s arm by the wrist and guided the thick, overgrown child fingers to her own mouth.

  Someone would come Pattianne’s way any second, and she was in a panic, but it was Maya, who stuck a chunk of bran muffin into her mouth, and Pattianne swallowed it, whole and dry.

  Maya said, “There you go,” and Pattianne said, “Thanks.” Maya whispered, “No, go ‘body and blood.’” So Pattianne whispered back, “Body and blood.” Maya nodded solemnly and said, “That’s good,” and Pattianne got her smile, her amazing sweet smile.

  The two boys who came to get her—she thought it was the same boys—were on their knees. Bullfrog was under the table. One of the boys yelled, “Sugarlips gets some, all creatures great and small. Come here, Sugarlips.”

  Maya took the dishtowel off the plate. Crumbs scattered. She wrapped the dishtowel around her head and it dangled there. She put her hand on one hip and stood right in front of Pattianne, Pattianne thinking, No, no, don’t do it.

  She had a big voice for such a little thing. “No dogs at Ruby’s Roadhouse,” she said, loud and singsong. “Says so there on the sign.”

  Marie was watching.

  She came over to them. She was tall, and she was not smiling.

  With her big fingers, she tucked in the edges of the dishtowel with its pink and yellow hearts, one flap there, a fold there, and suddenly Maya looked just like her.

  Then Marie smiled. At Maya. At Pattianne. She shook her head, and the bells rang.

  The eating had begun, people lining up at the table with plates.

  Pattianne lined up too. She went back to her spot at the wall, slid down to sit there, and she ate, more than she had eaten in days, weeks. Evening came on, and there were lights on in every house on the hillside and all the way up the road toward the highway. She kept looking out the window at her house and wondering why she hadn’t left yet. Li Song was setting up Run Soldier Run with some small boys. They had stood the dominoes on end and lined up them under the table and around the back of the easy chairs by the window and around the corners of the lobby. Bullfrog was watching them. Paper plates were everywhere, and the girls kept rounding them up and stacking them carefully on the empty shelves. They put paper napkins in the trash. They put turkey bones in a basket. There seemed to be some kind of plan here.

  One of the older boys had a guitar. There was always a boy with a guitar. Frankie probably had a guitar, and she didn’t want to think of him, but there he was, and maybe somewhere in New York City, a skinny boy with a crooked tooth was thinking of her, and his boyfriend who is too old to be called a boyfriend was also thinking of her, perhaps kindly, probably not.

  Li Song stepped outside and stood on the porch where she could see him. He turned in and looked at her through the window, then looked away again, so that she thought that perhaps he hadn’t really looked at her. Then he lit a small cigar. Or maybe not. Maybe he was lighting a cigarette and she could join him. There were Marlboros in her pocket. There was the vial of Emerson “Bud” Paul in her pocket. There were her hands in her pocket, clenching into fists and letting go, clenching and letting go. Bullfrog, who had been watching the dominoes patiently, was now sleeping with his nose pointing toward a spot under the makeshift table. She got up, stepped over him, out the door.

  It was like an evening in spring. The air was balmy and soft, and the offshore breeze was actually warm on her face. The cherry smoke of the cigar was in the air, and the pine perfume of the island. No ocean smell. She felt like she was somewhere else. It was a dark night, low clouds hiding the moon, like a careful hand was cupped over Tofino and all of them.

  Li Song drew on the cigar. His face lit briefly. He said, “How are you doing here, with this crazy gathering of lost souls?”

  In the darkness, she could look right at him. “Are you a lost soul?”

  “Actually, my wife is the lost soul.”

  “Your wife?”

  He said, “She was going to meet me here. I started to build us a house. She decided to remain in Korea and become my ex-wife. So I stopped. I have found being stopped to my liking.”

  He didn’t shrug his thin shoulders, but it seemed like he did, and he said, “It is tiresome to be the hero of a sad story.”

  The room behind them filled with sudden laughter and a flash of light. Father Lucke held a small girl on each shoulder. They held the broken wishbone above his head, and Josie took another picture, and people were clapping. Bullfrog was snuffling around but still safely away from any turkey bones.

  “So,” she said. “Is he really a priest?”

  “I think he is. Truly. I also think he is about to be excommunicated. And justifiably so.”

  She would imagine so, after seeing the sacrilege of the communion dinner inside. Then she saw what she was thinking, and beyond that, to a tall cement Jesus with tears of laughter in his eyes.

  “So they’ll get another priest? One who will rebuild the church?”

  “They don’t want a church. Or another priest. They want him. He helped Josie set her place up. She had a place like this in Alaska. He got her a grant to feed and house these people. She was doing it out of her own pocket. Now he’s working on a grant for Kamal Patel.”

  “The Pink Dolphin?”

  “Keep all those girls out of trouble. Keep them safe. Most of them are from Vancouver. The little one, Maya, is from Calgary. He and Rasa are foster parents.”

  “Lakshmi?”

  “Foster daughter. They had another daughter who was lost to them. Their sad story.”

  “Is anyone here from here?”

  “Of course.” He tried to look stern, but he couldn’t even frown. “Think of your history. We are all guests. Here by the grace of someone else’s story.”

  They were a small crowd of strangers, here on the edge of the continent.


  Then he said, “Look,” pointing out toward the road, toward the dark ocean, which was not dark at all, but lit up as though a spotlight were out there on the beach, as though the moon were shining on the waves. They were bright.

  “Silver tide.” It was a whisper.

  He turned and opened the door. “Silver tide!” It was a shout.

  Father Lucke raised his tumbler of wine. Bullfrog looked straight at her through the window. The two old men in the easy chairs nodded. The soldiers ran. So did the children, out the door, Bullfrog chasing after them.

  Her fingers wrapped around the blue glass vial, and her heart said it’s time, her heart speaking plain English, in whispered words that she heard with her ears. Li Song’s hand was on her elbow, and Bullfrog was dancing.

  The beach, when they reached it, was splashing with light. The tide low, and the tide pools were rounds of dark water until small feet splashed them to life. Three big boys threw rocks into the water, and they kicked high arcs of silvery water at each other. The water splashed their faces with silver and ran in outlines of light down their bodies. Smaller children stamped the wet sand, silver spraying out around their feet.

  “Is it the silver tide?”

  “El Niño maybe?” Father Lucke stood near her. “It’s usually a summer thing.” His words were slippery with wine. A wave washed over their feet, the water actually warm, and Bullfrog backed away. He didn’t go far. Everyone was here now.

  Emerson “Bud” Paul was here now. She took him out and held him. The vial was black in her palm.

  Li Song said, “What is it?” He was close to her, next to her.

  “My sad story.”

  She unscrewed the tiny cap.

  Maya ran up to them. “What is it?”

  “A sad story,” Li Song told her.

  She said, “Oh,” and ran away to other kids, splashing in the shallow tide.

  Pattianne opened the vial, swung her arm wide. She couldn’t even see the ashes that flew out into the water, and they made no silver splash, nor any sound. Then she tossed the vial into the waves, let go. A tiny silver dot disappearing.