The Beans of Egypt, Maine

by Carolyn Chute

  “Fuck Pip! He can just go fuck himself with his goddam sayin’s,” Beal snarls, and the mosquitoes dance on his beard.

  “You havin’ a tiff with Pip again?”

  “Ain’t no tiff, just tired.”

  “You stay away from Rubie’s woman . . . Been hearin’ some gossip ’bout you ’n’ that one . . . Get yourself in a bind if you don’t . . . I wouldn’t hang around over there, Beal. Pip says you can come back.”

  He pushes his leg harder into her back. “I been takin’ Rubie’s guns to the cellar hole . . . bustin’ up glass.”

  “Dontcha foul up no blue Masons or I’ll crown ya myself.”

  “Crown me, Auntie.” He pushes again.

  In her scooching position, she swivels and pushes her face into his dungarees.

  “Ain’t foolin’, are ya?” he says softly.

  She stands, only a hair of rose-color light on the left side of her form, her strange small face. She opens up her mouth and her arms and fixes hard upon him. He paws at the buttons of her pale dress.

  Then Bonny Loo hears Roberta chuckle, “You smell pure hot, Mistah Man. Ain’t no way I’m gonna fool with these pretty little squashes in the ruttin’ season of your kind.”

  She lets him undo the dress. She pushes herself into his hands. He makes a ghoulish howl and fumbles with his dungarees.

  And Bonny Loo blinks as the two figures vanish in a whirl and whine of mosquitoes.

  6

  SHE STANDS with her hands on her hips. She wears shorts and a Red Sox T-shirt, bare thick arms. She is grass-stained, soggy, and bruised from hard play. She says huskily, “Ma, it’s worse in here.” In one hand is a single black-eyed Susan.

  The room is near ninety degrees. Houseflies wheel against the ceiling. Earlene turns her head away from the light of the open door so that it only touches the outline of her razorlike cheekbone.

  Bonny Loo goes to the foot of the bed and squeezes her mother’s toes. “Feel that, Ma?” she asks.

  Earlene nods.

  “You ain’t dead yet, then!” the child chirps.

  Earlene closes her eves.

  Bonny Loo waves the black-eyed Susan in her mother’s face. “Actually, these kinda flowers stink,” she says.

  Earlene’s large eyes have begun to sink. The mouth looks huge.

  Bonny Loo says, “I am going to call the hospital about you. You’re goin’ there.”

  Earlene says mournfully, “Don’t.”

  Bonny Loo sits on the bed. “It’s awful in here, Ma!”

  Earlene says, “It’s okay. It’s quiet.”

  “Ain’t quiet,” says Bonny Loo, glaring at the wheeling flies. Bonny Loo’s shoulders suddenly stoop. She stretches her T-shirt up to wipe her face. She makes a little animal grunt and her face goes red. She sobs and her eyes are lost in tears.

  She pitches the black-eyed Susan at the wall, then leaps up and runs for the window and yanks at the shade. It flies up with a ratatatatatatat and an explosion of light.

  “THERE!” she screams.

  And she clatters out of the room.

  7

  MORE GUESTS. Bonny Loo leads the way up the polished stairs, points at the closed door. The house is filled with rustling, with urgency.

  “That door?”

  “Yep,” says Bonny Loo, crossing her arms.

  The doorknob twists. The door opens. Roberta Bean’s hugeness fills the doorway. Roberta Bean, pregnant again. And across the sill on both sides of this big Bean, an army of mostly naked little Beans with contemptuous posture, their bellies flushed and tuberous, one with its ruptured navel twisted like a bow.

  Earlene’s eyes grow enormous.

  The babies raise up and down on their toes. Like white, pointing fingers, their maleness is most teeming, most conspicuous.

  Earlene’s voice creaks, “I don’t believe this.”

  “Enough rest!” says Roberta. “What are all these shades down for? P.U.!”

  Roberta wears her blue housedress without a belt, the belly pumpkin perfect beneath the fabric of handsome blue clouds and cornflowers. She plunges forward off the sill and says to Earlene, “Everybody thinks you’re at death’s door. We are all sorry to hear that.”

  Earlene feels the light from the hall stamp itself to her face and throat like a gloved hand. “Leave me be!” she cries.

  “You must come out and get some sun. Come out and chat with me! And we can have a little snack or somethin’.”

  Earlene covers her face with bony hands.

  The little boys swing on the skirt of their mother’s blue cornflower dress. Their eyes are dark like little doggies’ eyes. Their unfreckled, unmarred bodies stretch unself-consciously, rippling nuances of coffee and cheese colors, the darkest being the shoulders where the sun most often drums.

  “Please,” Earlene whimpers, her greenish eyes flying to the walls . . . the ceiling. “I don’t want to be with you.”

  “But we have things in common,” says Roberta.

  “Don’t SAY that! Don’t you EVER say that again!” Earlene screams, and her face reddens.

  “Not even a TV in here,” says Roberta. She smiles and her teeth are like a fort unto the darkness of her mouth. “You made yourself a nifty grave here.”

  The babies pad in on the old rug and their feet whisper. Their faces peer up over the edge of the bed. Earlene sees in the hand of one baby a TOMATO. Earlene’s eyes widen with horror.

  Roberta says, “Look here! We have a present for you, Earlene!”

  The baby raises its hand. It is fruit at its most fit. The insides of coons and rabbits are like this just before being let out by a sharp knife. You see its readiness to come.

  Earlene cringes.

  Under the babies’ long molelike snouts are the suggestions of smiles.

  Then the fingers of the baby holding the tomato shift slightly. POP! The perfectly ready fruit collapses. Pale seeds in gel clobber Earlene’s face and hair, fill one of her eyes.

  “Ooooops!” say the babies in unison.

  Earlene screams.

  The tall woman wipes Earlene’s face with a corner of the sheet. She lifts her from the stinky bed. She carries her into the hall and down the stairs. On the screen piazza is Gram’s wheelchair folded up. The tall woman plumps it out and squares Earlene in it. Earlene’s sparrowlike legs squirm out from under her tomato-stained gown. The little boys go up on their toes and strain together like a team of tiny ponies and make the chair go.

  Through a tunnel of trees, in and out of sun where the crumbly road scorches the pads of their feet, the wee kidnappers wheel and wheel and wheel.

  And chirp, “Yippeee!”

  Earlene moans.

  The tall woman is a ship unto them all, carrying the afternoon on her light-color dress.

  8

  BONNY LOO is on her knees. “See! It’s an onion.”

  The stalk is record length. The blossom regal.

  “You think so?”

  “I put it in the ground,” Bonny Loo says, rising with her hands on her hips. “So . . . will you help me make a scarecrow for it?”

  Beal wipes his face with his bandanna. “Crows don’t eat onions, Bonny.”

  “They’ll eat THIS beautiful one.”

  9

  HE MOVES up the mountain like a packhorse, crunching many small sticks and branches underfoot. She rides on his shoulders like a child. She wears a child-sized summer dress, and her bare legs are almost lost in his beard. Her hair is almost a fluorescent yellow. She is still very bony, very white, very silent. She smells of her morning bath.

  On the mountain are countless birches: gray, gold, and the white, some of the young ones bending from last winter’s pitiless snows. There is not much shade here. Song bugs scream from all directions.

  Earlene says, “I’m not like Roberta, you know.”

  Beal grunts over a stone wall and crashes through fern and over soggy ground. “She’s a nice person,” he says. “She saved you.”

  Her thro
at tightens.

  They go into a dark pine grove and his boots hiss.

  They can hear a brook. A dragonfly tests Earlene’s hair, then veers away. Beal sways slowly toward the brook.

  He carries her higher, higher, over a barbed wire. Her yellow hair attracts another dragonfly. This one buzzes in her ear. She swipes at it.

  Beal wears his railroad cap, his dark sunglasses. She feels the packhorse muscles of his shoulders and neck working against her legs.

  “I HATE Roberta,” Earlene almost sobs. “Daddy says it’s just a mattera time before the health department shuts her down.”

  He is silent. When he comes to the brook, he crosses on round, flat stones. He stops and looks up at the trees, at their autumnal mauve. He stands stock-still except for his hands, which stroke Earlene’s ankles, prod the hardness of her nails. Then he turns.

  Below are the tiny rooves, a tatter of field, the broad violet hills, here and there a ruffled pond. He stands and stands and stands, not at all looking at the view . . . just being.

  Earlene

  Warren Olsen’s Look of Love

  SINCE WE come to live with Madeline Rowe, Beal’s found another job. Cutting for Everett Hill’s crew. Less than minimum wage. “You gotta take what you can get,” he says. “Pip always says that,” he says.

  His boots leak. One night last winter we sat up most the night with them toes. I hold ’em. Then he holds ’em. You roll ’em between your fingers. We take turns tryin’ to warm ’em. He says, “They ain’t gonna come out of it, for chrissakes!” I say, “Beal, you gotta get you some new boots next pay.” He gives me a sideways look. “Shows hah-aaah-how much you know ’bout the price of boots,” he says.

  The next mornin’ I’m in the kitchen with Madeline. We’re pickin’ up. I’m collectin’ the kids’ bowls. She’s feedin’ the stove. I’m singin’ a hymn, one of Gram’s favorites, and Beal comes out of the bedroom and he says, “Earlene, shut up!” He sets on the stool by the woodstove where Madeline’s coaxin’ the fire and he puts on his boots. I see them boots are still wet. He don’t say nuthin’, just puts ’em on, laces ’em up. Then he goes out and puts another can of thirty-weight in the truck.

  I say, “He’s in a bad mood.”

  Madeline says, “Frig him, then.”

  We hear the truck start, then he’s gone.

  That was winter, now it’s summer. Black flies. Deer flies. He don’t complain.

  Madeline says, “Let’s go to a movie! I’ll treat.” She wears her crazy frizzy black hair under a rolled bandanna like an Indian.

  I say, “Maybe Beal’s run outta gas again t’night.”

  I hope she will say, “Let’s drive down one-sixty and see if we find him walkin’.”

  I can picture him in them awful boots, his shirt around his waist, pushin’ his sunglasses up on his head as the sun gets lower, dogs runnin’ out of houses at him, smellin’ the backs of his legs.

  Madeline Rowe is Rubie Bean’s woman. She says Rubie’s just a pretend man. “I made him up,” she always says. “Only this missin’ tooth is real!” She points into her mouth whenever she tells us this.

  Tonight she’s counting out dollar bills on the table. She says, “It’s a Disney film!”

  The kids go wild. Cookie, her youngest—Bonny Loo’s age—comes in from the outhouse and asks me to do her safety pin. Cookie. I always wonder how Rubie coulda made Cookie, bein’ away like he is.

  Sometimes I love her so much, Madeline Rowe. She was maid of honor at our little wedding . . . Ernest Bean best man. Madeline and I carried matching bouquets of silk flowers. Daddy didn’t come for the ceremony, said his back was acting up. But he gave us a neat owl lamp, one of his carving jobs. He’s a little genius. After the ceremony, ol’ Madeline Rowe kissed Beal long and wet on his mouth. He put his arms around her.

  When we go out in the yard, carrying pillows for the kids, Atlas and Pinkie are on top of Madeline’s old VW. Cookie and Bonny Loo run ahead, carrying the popcorn we made.

  Madeline says, “I ain’t seen a good Disney flick in at least five years. I think Disney is my absolutely all-time favorite.”

  I say, “Beal sure is late.”

  Madeline says, “Jesus, Earlene! He needs the overtime.” She hugs me to her as we move through the mosquitoes, their deafenin’ high whine. Madeline has huge, quaking breasts. They dangle under her peasant blouse like loaves of Wonder Bread. Her words always come like she’s out of breath. I guess them big breasts crush on her lungs.

  Bonny Loo tries to shoo Atlas and Pinkie off the roof of the VW. She runs around, wavin’ her arms. Cookie dives for the back seat and the VW rocks like a boat. In a while, all of us are in, includin’ Madeline’s two long-legged teenagers and then Kaiser, who stinks awful. Mosquitoes drift over the windshield, trying to get in.

  Bonny Loo says, “I ain’t never been to the movies before.”

  There’s a gagging sound. Teenaged Florence is holding her nose. “Ma! Give us a break! Make Kaiser stay home. He’s wicked.”

  Madeline turns her hot face toward me with the monstrous black frizzed-out hair touching the VW ceiling. “Why ain’t your Bonny Loo been to a show? Ain’t got nuthin’ to do with that God stuff, does it?”

  Overhead we hear Atlas and Pinkie walkin’ around.

  I says, “No, Madeline.”

  Sometimes I despise Madeline. I despise her a million times a day. In the kitchen, she likes to put her big hip against Beal when she hands him a beer. She’s always got a beer for Beal, lookin’ into his eyes with her strange yellow eyes.

  Beal says we can get our own place soon. But we always stay a little longer. With the money Beal makes . . .

  Last winter, I wanted to ask Madeline for a loan to get Beal new boots. She was gettin’ good hours at the cold storage. But I chickened out. And she never offered, even though she can plainly see them wet, torn-up boots dryin’ under the stove.

  We have a scarecrow who wears a green workshirt. It says REUBEN on the pocket. Beal says to Madeline, “Do you miss the real Reuben?”

  She gives the scarecrow a strangling hug, kisses its pillowcase face. “You mean this gentle sweet one ain’t the right one?”

  She’s told me a time or two about the beatings, how Rubie punched all the cupboards, punched ’em to splinters, then beat her in the corner of the kitchen. Then when she thought he was walking away, he runs back, comes down on all fours like a dog, and bites her in the face.

  In the garden she mostly wears a halter of T-shirt material. Her breasts are all over the place. Sometimes one slips out. She laughs and stuffs it back in, never blushing. If Beal is on his knees weeding in the garden when a breast does this, he don’t politely look away. I catch my breath, stand up quick, go to the edge of the trees to be alone. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want . . .” And I say the whole thing. I say it two or three times. “. . . Thou anointest my head with oil . . .” And when I come back to the garden, they don’t suspect a thing.

  This is when I hate her. Madeline Rowe.

  She hunts for the VW keys in her bag. Now and then the long legs of Madeline’s teenagers push into the back of my seat. Kaiser puts a yellow paw between the seats and lunges at a mosquito.

  Madeline starts up the engine.

  Cookie screams, “Mumma! Atlas and Pinkie!”

  “They’ll take care of themselves, for cryin’ out loud!” Madeline snorts, puts the car into first, and we lurch forward. One by one, Pinkie and Atlas spin off into the bushes. Branches whip the windshield.

  As we ride along, I light up a cigarette and Bonny Loo looks at me and smiles. Her glasses don’t fall on the floor anymore when she’s actin’ up. You know . . . jumpin’ off chairs and things like she does, bouncin’ in the bed . . . usin’ her rope swing over the pond . . . ’cause her Special Ed teacher give her a black stretchy strap that goes around her head . . . holds ’em on.

  I hum, “Swing lowwww . . . sweet charrrri-aaaw-t . . .”

  Bonny Loo pushes at
my shoulder. “That’s enough God songs, Ma! Let’s sing ‘Abba Dabba’!”

  A sad tightness comes to my throat.

  2

  THERE’S NO ELECTRICITY in Madeline’s house . . . Well, it’s actually Rubie’s house. Bean land.

  I aim the flashlight beam into the bed. There’s Beal with his arm hanging down almost touching the floor. He lays on top of the spread with his clothes on, even his boots. Bonny Loo marches over to her little bed in the corner of our room and lays on it with her clothes on.

  “Take off your glasses, Bonny Loo, or you’ll break ’em,” I tell her.

  I light the lamp with book matches.

  Bonny Loo swipes her glasses off and puts them on the music box next to her bed.

  I’ll never get used to how big Beal is.

  I say, “Where’s the truck? It ain’t out front.”

  His face is in the pillow. He says into the pillow, “Lost the fuckin’ brakes. Okay?!”

  I light a cigarette and stand lookin’ at him.

  “You all right?” I says.

  He grunts.

  I go out of the circle of light and change into my summer nightgown. I sit on the bed. “Want me to help you with your boots?”

  No answer.

  I light another cigarette. I take another stab at “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” . . . softly.

  Bonny Loo says, “Ma! Tell him about the movie!”

  Silence.

  “We went to a movie, Beal,” I finally say.

  Bonny Loo chirps, “Madeline said they shoulda hung Walt Disney by the balls for makin’ a movie dull an’ rotten as that. Didn’t she say that, Ma?”

  Silence. I put out my cigarette. He rolls onto his back. The lamp flickers. I unlace his boots. It is a warm night. His feet are hot, dry feet, the socks full of sand. I smile at him and get up on my knees. I press my fingers into the arch of his right foot, work all my fingers into the long bones. I rock the foot like a small baby in the curve of my groin. I feel the taste of the long day in my mouth. My hair dangles across the rolled-up cuffs of his dungarees. He’s got the bed fulla sawdust and sand again. I kiss his feet.