[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.“She looks like she’s selling apples,” said Vera, the first day she spotted Priscilla.“Look at her.Wearing out her legs to give her ass a ride.” But the bicycle did look spectacular.Little Pee was handy at welding, painting, and sanding.In fact, the only course he was passing at school was shop.And the skills he had picked up that aided in disguising the bicycle would someday be applied to automobiles that mysteriously disappeared outside the Watertown movie theater, and other establishments, to emerge again as mere ghosts of their former selves.No, it wasn’t that the quality of the job on the bicycle was shoddy that tipped off the bottom-of-the-hill Giffords.It was because the very bicycle that Little Vinal had bought a few autumns ago, with what he claimed was his potato-picking money, had mysteriously vanished.It was as if the old settler soil had opened up and swallowed it.And the new bicycle upon which Priscilla was traipsing the roads looked alarmingly like Little Vinal’s.If you looked closely.If you imagined it black, instead of a dazzling blue.If you stuck a bar back on and made the bicycle male.For a usually unmathematical family, Vera and her offspring had put two and two together to come up with the whereabouts of Little Vinal’s bike.“Little Pee could make the Titanic look like a canoe if you left him alone with it for an hour,” Vera had said, and waited with her fists opening and closing like petals for Big Vinal to get home.She forgot about supper.She let her big washing machine sit with dirty loads of clothing all about it on the floor.Where the hell had Pike and Goldie gotten the money to pay for a new bike, that’s all Vera wanted to know.She even forgot about the new mailbox that Vinal was thoughtful enough to get her.She had planned to touch it up with a quick paint job.Now the mailbox was leaning sadly on the back porch, its red flag lowered, the lettered announcement MR.& MRS.WALTER HEBERT, RR #2, WATERTOWN, MAINE 04774, awash in April sunlight.The kids were eating sandwiches from sticky jars of already mixed peanut butter and jelly when Vinal Gifford finally strolled in and slammed the kitchen door.“Is it too much work to mix your own?” he asked his wife.He was already tired from a day of imagining how the parking area of Amy Joy’s reception would fill up.He expected some peace, Vera could tell, so she put her rantings in limbo.Instead of starting with the bad news, she broke ice with the good.“Look here at Amy Joy Lawler’s engagement picture,” Vera said, and thrust the newspaper into Vinal’s face.“Ain’t she the picture of old Marge McKinnon? Look how that little nose turns right up into the air.”“Maybe we should wrap up a battery and give it to her,” Vinal joked.“Do you think she’d like a pair of hubcaps? Some booster cables?” That’s when Vera told him about the bicycle.“I want it back,” she warned her husband.“If you and Goldie would keep your traps shut,” Vinal complained, “them kids would play together like they should.God didn’t put us on the earth to fight.He put us here to relax.”“He did?” Vera countered.“Well, if he’d known how much you and Pike was planning to relax, he’d have put you both on the moon, where it’s quieter.”So Vinal was obliged to trudge up the hill for a short conference with his brother Pike.When he came back, he brought the blue bicycle down the hill, leading it like a tame deer, and gave it to Little Vinal.“Don’t say a word,” Vinal told his son.“You know damn well he turned that old clunker into what looks like a brand-new bike.And he’s gonna weld the bar back on so you won’t look like a sissy.Take it and shut up.It didn’t cost you a penny.”“She had her heart set on tramping the roads on that bike,” Vera said, as she lay in bed that night next to Vinal.“She’s as boy crazy as they come.”Vinal reached over and clasped a limp breast in his hand.Vera tried to avoid the hand by rolling on her side, her back to Vinal, but he followed the sagging breast.“I did five tubs of wash today,” Vera said, then she yawned.Vinal slipped off his long johns and rested a hairy leg on Vera’s thighs.“This’ll keep her mind off fighting with Goldie,” Vinal thought, and smiled.“As long as she’s fighting someone, she’ll be okay [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]