It was a beautiful day, with a spring breeze wafting up from the river, so Goldie had taken her canary outside in its little wicker cage so that it could enjoy a panorama of Mattagash, Maine, and all the places it would never fly.
“Oo needs to shake-um off that old cage fever,” Goldie said, and tied the cage to the front porch clothesline. Feathers was the only pet she had ever owned, the only one she didn’t have to share with others. Goldie’s mother had never allowed pets: “If there’s any extra food in this house, it ain’t going into the mouth of a dog or cat.” Goldie used to stare at pictures in storybooks of little girls holding furry kittens on their laps or tugging well-groomed puppies about on fancy leashes. And she promised herself that one day, when she was in her own home, she would have a pet of her own. But it seemed the human babies came so quickly, pink and wrinkly and crying, that Goldie, still seventeen when she had her first one, forgot about the luxury of owning things just for pleasure. It was true that the senior Pike had dragged home a stray dog after the first kids were toddling along, but that was the family’s pet. Then, the day her youngest baby started kindergarten, Goldie put down her usual cup of morning coffee, slung her purse over her shoulder, and drove Pike’s old clunker all the way to the Newberry’s in Watertown. She had no idea what she might buy as she stood there in the back of the store where they kept birds, white mice, hamsters, and big bowls of tropical fish. But when she saw Feathers, his tiny head canted, his round eyes focused on her, she knew the answer.
“This is the first pet I ever owned all by myself,” Goldie told the clerk behind the Newberry cash register.
“We got a big sale on them white mice,” the clerk had answered. But Goldie had the pet she wanted. On the way home, Feathers had flitted happily about his cage, singing sweetly. It didn’t seem to matter a hoot that he was on his way home to Giffordtown. He didn’t wish for a McKinnon or a Craft to come to his rescue, Goldie could tell. She would share the family dog with the kids, but Feathers was all hers.
“Now oo stay wight here,” Goldie cooed to Feathers, and blew a soft kiss into the cage. Then she went back to the drudgery of her housework.
As she did so, Little Vinal was crawling up the long hill on his stomach, dragging the BB gun behind him. Occasionally a stab of pain coursed through the bruised arm if he applied too much weight to it. But war was all blood and guts. The canary suspected something and cocked its head every now and then before it returned to its preening. It felt relatively safe where it was. After all, it was in a cage, protected from freedom, and dangling high enough in the air to outwit any cats.
“You ain’t built the fort that’ll keep me out,” Little Vinal sneered to the enemy, and let fly a dozen BB’s.
Goldie herself saw the sharpshooter bounding away, guilt in every leap. But which of Vera’s kids it was, she was at a loss to say. They all looked alike to her. And for some strange reason she could never understand, they all seemed to be the same size, all eight of them. She suspected it was the steady diet of surplus food given out by the town. Goldie watched until the boy running down the hill disappeared into Vinal’s teetering garage. An hour later, when she went out to see what Bond McClure had left for her, she found Feathers already stiffening in his cage.
“Oh, Feathers,” Goldie said softly. She took the stiffening bird up into her hands. A breeze rippled over its body, the soft, sad caress of spring.
“Don’t cry, Mama,” Priscilla, Goldie’s thirteen-year-old, pleaded. “We can get you another one.”
“I don’t want another canary,” Goldie whispered.
“Let’s get one of them white rats,” Little Pee excitedly offered. “They been at the Newberry’s forever.”
Little Pee and Priscilla were able to find several of the little gold beads about the porch and ground. They were obvious misses or—and Goldie grimaced to think of it—ricochets. Now her grief billowed into anger. How dare they kill her bird! She was certain now of the culprit’s identity. Little Vinal had already built a wide reputation around Mattagash for escapades with his BB gun. All of the Giffords at the top of the hill had heard how Little Vinal had picked the candy beads off his teacher’s birthday cake and replaced them with BB’s. Several of his classmates ate plenty until the teacher bit firmly onto one and destroyed her new dental bridge. Questioned by an irate principal as to why he’d done it, Little Vinal said, “Because she’s always shooting off her mouth.” It brought in quite a large guffaw back home, at the bottom of the hill.
“By God, they won’t get away with this,” Goldie threatened, and stomped in to wake Big Pike. She promptly snapped off As the World Turns and insisted that he pay heed. The world wasn’t turning very well in Mattagash, Goldie let him know, and she demanded that he take Feathers down the hill and collect the five dollars she had paid for him.
“Who?” asked a sluggish Pike. He wondered for a second if they had named one of their own Feathers. Flora, he suddenly remembered. They had one named Missy Flora. That’s what had tripped him up. The naming process had always bothered Pike, as it would any thinking man. When two people get married and set about having children, why not just alphabetize them according to birth? It would make things a whole lot easier when talking to the welfare people.
“But there’s no amount of dollars they can pay for my broken heart,” Goldie wept. “And you can tell them that!”
Pike watched as the little white dot, the same tiny ghost that appears in the old-fashioned televisions of rich and poor alike, in Mattagash or faraway Portland, flickered like a Sominex tablet on the black screen. Inside that little dot was Penny Prescott, who had just found out that husband Linton was cheating on her with her sister Ingrid, who had just adopted Korean twins—all this at a time when Penny had made arrangements at the hospital for her hysterectomy. All those problems were inside that small white dot. Then the dot vanished and the screen was blank. Pike wished his problems were like that, too. Switch-off-able.
“Linton Prescott don’t know the half of it,” thought Pike, and pulled on his boots. He grabbed Feathers from Goldie and pushed open the screen door. Goldie, Little Pee, and a mob of smaller mourners followed on his heels, the screen door slamming behind them.
At Vinal’s house the door was opened slowly by a small girl’s hand. Then a tiny head covered with the dark Giffordish curls poked around the door and demanded, “What?!” Big Vinal appeared behind her.
“That’s Molly, my baby,” he said to Pike. “Can you believe how big she’s getting? She’s already wanting to drive the car.”
“There’s no stopping them once they take it in their heads to grow,” Pike said, and gave the child a token pat on the head.
“Tell him about Feathers,” whispered Goldie, poking Pike’s back and hushing the smaller children behind her.
“Well, we got us a little problem,” said Pike. “Goldie here says she saw Little Vinal shoot her canary with his BB gun, and the whole family’s up in the air about it.”
Vera appeared behind Vinal with her swarm of children situated on both sides. They pressed forward eagerly, all the same height and width.
“Little Vinal!” his father shouted, and a gangly boy with freckles came forward, looking like a Norman Rockwell creation until he squirted a frothy plug of spit off the porch. His left arm was wrapped in what had been a pristine bandage the day before at the Watertown hospital but was now a brown rag.
“You shoot this canary?” Vinal thrust the remains of Feathers under Little Vinal’s nose. Before the boy could shake his head no, his father gave him a sharp slap across the face. Little Vinal slumped back, and then disappeared into the mass of children around Vera. His footsteps sounded inside, angrily, on the steps leading upstairs.
“I’m sorry about this, Vinal,” said Pike to Goldie’s dismay. “I guess boys’ll be boys.”
“Yeah,” Vinal agreed. “But he knows he’s supposed to shoot birds that ain’t
store bought.” He chewed on his toothpick, which was a piece of yellow straw from Vera’s broom. Food stamps didn’t include fancy toothpicks.
The two brothers had talked in depth about how to keep their women happy. It was far better to go along as best they could, as long as they themselves didn’t get caught up with them. All women were silly, but Gifford women would come to blows. And both Pike and Vinal were certain Goldie wouldn’t stand a chance against the burly Vera.
“It’d be just like that Cassius Clay–Sonny Liston fight,” Pike once said to Vinal as they sat in the battered Plymouth, beer bottles foaming between their legs. “We’re talking six, maybe seven seconds.”
“We want the five dollars we paid for him,” said Goldie over Pike’s shoulder.
“What for?” asked Vera over Vinal’s. “It can’t be to say a mass. Not over at the Holy Roller church you been going to.”
“You ain’t been to a church in so long, Vera, you couldn’t tell a mass from a TV commercial,” said Goldie. “And besides,” she went on, from the safety behind Pike’s shoulders, “I read in Reader’s Digest that juvenile delinquents pee the bed, then they’re cruel to little animals, then they set fire to something. You know damn well the only thing that child ain’t done is burn us out of house and home. And that’s next. He’s gonna end up in jail, in the same cell as Irving.”
“Don’t talk about my boys like that,” Vera shouted, and lurched forward, but Vinal caught her arms.
“Send Goldie up the hill, Pike, so you and I can talk,” said Vinal. He shoved Vera back into the faces of her children, into a scattering of bony arms and flying ponytails.
Outside on the front steps, Vinal pushed his hands deep into his pockets and listened as Pike scolded Goldie back up the hill. She went, with the children’s blond heads bobbing around her, all of them looking back at intervals to see what the men were doing. From her kitchen window Vera watched them go.
“Them kids remind me of dandelions,” she said to Molly, who was retrieving lint from her navel.
Vinal lit a cigarette and tossed the match out into April’s soggy grass. He stared down at the patch Vera had glued to one of his rubber boots to keep the slush out. It could get damp on the way to the mailbox, or kneeling by the hubcaps of some stranger’s car.
“How about this?” Vinal asked, and squinted at his brother. “You tell Goldie I give you the five dollars. I’ll tell Vera I never give you a cent.”
“Let’s hope they don’t git on good terms someday,” said Pike, and winked. “If they ever start talking, look out.”
Vinal spit a large plug of snuff from under his lip. The juice of it sprayed the tomato fledglings that Vera had placed on the front steps. They grew out of milk cartons the kids had brought home from school; Grant’s Dairy Milk, they advertised. Vinal kicked one and it flew like a small red and white football into the air until it landed with a loosening thump of dirt and seedling.
“Not them two women,” said Vinal, and reached down to pick up a set of shiny hubcaps he had selected earlier from out of the pile near the back steps. The rightful owners were probably driving around Watertown without them at that very minute, their drab wheels turning sadly.
“They’re a couple of mean ones,” Pike agreed.
“Well, Vera takes after her old man,” Vinal said. “I’ll admit that. Uncle Frankie was Hitler without that little mustache.” He picked at his back teeth and freed a piece of relief meat that had been bothering him since noon.
“Hell, you know Goldie,” said Pike. “She gits uppity and that sets Vera off. It’ll pass. By the way, how is Irving making out?”
“He oughtta be out in five months,” said Vinal of his eldest son. “I don’t know what he was gonna do with that snowmobile in April. He should’ve waited until December. Not only would it have been easier to sell, but it’s hard to send a man to jail right before the holidays.”
“Well,” said Pike sympathetically, “his timing was just a little off. Looks like a storm coming over from Hayfey Mountain.”
“I got to get me a new mailbox,” Vinal said, and motioned with his head to the road. “Little Vinal tore the door off that new one.”
“You must be expecting a wedding invitation from Amy Joy Lawler, too,” said Pike. “Special delivery, with Sicily licking the envelope herself.”
Hearing with satisfaction that his brother found the joke worthy of a belly laugh, Pike started off across the road, scuffing his heavy boots. He lifted one finger high in the air to test for raindrops.
“A good rain won’t hurt us none,” Pike said with authority.
“It’ll eat up the last of that snow,” Vinal shouted after him. Then he went back inside his house, where Vera was waiting to hear that no way in hell did he give one penny to pay for some foolish dead bird.
Vera listened with satisfaction as she shoved another pair of grayed long johns through the wringer of her washer, and then sent the littlest children to close all the windows from the rain.
“What high-class stunt will she pull next?” Vera asked gruffly. “Can you imagine buying a bird in a store when your garden is so full of starlings nothing will come up?”
THE HOUSEGUESTS WELCOME RANDY: HOLLYHOCKS, VALIUMS, AND A CRANBERRY SWEATER
“Well, what do you expect her to do? It isn’t like she can take them off till after the party.”
—Marvin Ivy, to his wife, Pearl, with respect to Monique Tessier’s bosoms, Ivy Funeral Home Christmas party
Randy Ivy tapped his fingers on the desk and waited for his grandfather to acknowledge his presence. Junior, his father, sprawled in a chair next to him, his belly threatening to pop the buttons on his shirt. The elder Ivy was on the phone, engaged in a frustrating conversation with an irate customer.
“But we can’t guarantee a monument against vandalism,” Marvin Sr. was saying. “I’m sorry to hear that hoodlums would go into a sacred place and do such things but…”
Randy’s fingers tapped more slowly. It was a Steppenwolf tune he was drumming out on his grandfather’s desk. Don’t Bogart that joint, my friend. Junior sweated in his tight shirt and tried to ignore the gestures of Monique Tessier, whom he could see through the open door of his father’s office. She was at her desk, in a splendid cranberry-red sweater with an unabashedly low neckline. She held up a sheet of typing paper, quickly, for Junior to read CALL ME TONIGHT! Junior nodded imperceptibly, then glanced at Randy to see if he had witnessed the communique between his father and the Ivy Funeral Home secretary. But Randy was tapping a fast-paced rendition of “Born to Be Wild.” Marvin put his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and said, “You want to lose those fingers, keep on doing what you’re doing.” Randy’s fingers stopped. Marvin nodded.
“No, we certainly did not guarantee that the angel wings wouldn’t break off, not if someone went at them with a sledgehammer,” Marvin said. People could be irrational during a reign of grief. “Well, have your lawyer do that, then,” he said and hung up.
“Hoodlums in the graveyard with sledgehammers,” Marvin said to Junior. “What will the world do next? They were probably all high on drugs,” he added, and cast a remonstrative eye on his grandson. Randy Ivy didn’t catch the slur. He had become awestruck with the fluid movement beneath Monique Tessier’s cranberry-red sweater. Junior felt a surge of jealousy when he followed his son’s gaze. Ignoring Monique’s eyes, he got up abruptly and closed the door.
“Was that Dale Porter’s wife?” Junior asked.
“Yeah,” said Marvin. “Crib death, remember? I don’t know why she just doesn’t have another baby and leave us to hell alone.”
“Hoodlums in the graveyard,” Junior mused. He was hoping to ingratiate himself by repeating Marvin’s contempt. “What next?” he scoffed.
“Speaking of hoodlums,” Marvin said, and turned his attention to his only grandson. “If it hadn’t been for your grandmother
, I want you to know, I’d never have agreed to this.”
“Great,” said Randy. “Like you’re doing me a big favor letting me work in the boneyard.”
Marvin’s face tightened, and his hairline receded slightly.
“That’ll be enough,” said Junior. The old man was already on the warpath about him and Monique. Randy needn’t add to it. “You tell your grandfather thank you.”
“Thanks, man,” said Randy, and his fingers went back to “Born to Be Wild” on his grandfather’s desktop.
Randy’s offense was a first one, so his father had managed to get him released on probation. Speeding on the Kawasaki had alerted a policeman, who pulled him over and discovered the Baggie. It was not, as Marvin first suspected, parsley flakes but some of the best Colombian gold to hit Portland in months.
It was pure luck that the Ivy Funeral Home had buried the judge’s mother a month earlier. His driver’s license, a hefty fine, an apology, and a promise is what the judge wanted from Marvin Randall Ivy III. The judge took the license. Junior paid the fine. Randy apologized. And Marvin, at Pearl’s prodding, promised to give Randy gainful employment at the Ivy Funeral Home. The probation would last a year and would be over when spring bounced back again with daffodils and green grass. The kind that doesn’t get smoked.
A Wedding on the Banks Page 8