Pigs in Heaven (21 page)

Alice stares, but Sugar is not smiling. In fact, she looks irritated. “Ostriches?” Alice asks. “An ostrich farm?”

“That’s what I’m a-telling you.”

“Who ever heard of the like?”

“I never did,” Sugar admits, “before this fellow name of Green come in from New Mexico or New Hampshire, one of the newer states, and says you can get rich on raising ostriches. He’s been trying to get the state government in on it. The thing is, though, you have to be rich to
start
with, to raise ostriches. They cost you around twenty thousand dollar for a pair, just to set up housekeeping.”

“Lord,” Alice states. “Every feather on their hide must be worth a thousand.”

“That’s about it. The fellow was trying to sell the eggs for a hundred dollar, telling people around here they could hatch them out and get into the business that way.” Sugar starts to giggle. She holds her fist in front of her mouth. “Roscoe’s friend Cash, that just moved back here from Wyoming, told the man he’d buy one if Mr. Green would promise to set on it himself.”

Alice feels intensely curious. She has never seen an ostrich, and combs the ridge for the sight of sassy tail feathers and a long pink neck, but she sees only velvet grass. “I don’t reckon they’re out today,” she says at last, disappointed.

“Oh, you see them, some days,” Sugar insists. “The kids like to pester them to pieces, to try and get them to run. Or spit, I heard
they’ll spit if they’re mad. I don’t know that a bird could spit, but they’re an odd bird. They don’t bury their heads, that’s just a tale. Mr. Green says he’s going to shoot the kids with rock salt, and that’s
not
a tale, he’ll do it. He said out loud in the grocery he’d like to see Boma Mellowbug drop dead tomorrow.”

“Who?”

“Boma Mellowbug.” Sugar nods at a great ramshackle house nested into the woods just over the fence from Hideaway Farms. The house itself is small, composed of wooden shingles, but it has many things tacked onto it to increase the living quarters, such as a school bus, very rusted. Alice can see chairs and a stovepipe inside the bus, and so many plants growing in there that their leaves jam against the windows and windshield like greenhouse plants. Horse trailers and refrigerators are parked in the yard among the huckleberry bushes. A trio of hens step primly around the splayed, spotted legs of a dead-looking beagle.

“What’s the man got against Boma?” Alice asks, though she can guess. The white fence between the two properties could be the Iron Curtain. It’s not clear to Alice, though, which country she’d want as her own, if she had to choose.

“Well, mostly he hates her bees. She’s got bees living in her roof. He says they’re going to kill his birds, but they wouldn’t. They’re good bees if you love them, and Boma does. A bird wouldn’t know enough to hate a bee, I don’t think. Do you?”

Alice has already decided that Heaven is a hard stone’s throw beyond her ken. “I wouldn’t know,” she says, which is the truth. Nothing in her life has prepared her to make a judgment on a war between bees and ostriches. As they walk slowly past Boma’s mailbox, which has been fashioned from a length of drainpipe and a wire egg basket, Alice hears the faint, distant thrum of the hive. She makes up her mind that for as long as her mission takes, on this stretch of Heaven’s road at least, it would be a good idea to love Boma’s bees.

T
AYLOR TURNS THE
H
ANDI
-V
AN UP
Yesler Way, climbing the long hill above the waterfront. The streets are lined with dapple-trunked sycamores. From between the buildings come sliced glimpses of cold-looking water. A blind passenger in the seat behind her is telling Taylor about how she is forgetting the colors. She has lost all of them now but blue. “I
think
I recall blue,” the woman says, “but I haven’t seen it for forty years, so I have no idea how far off track I might really be.”

Taylor stops carefully at a light. This morning she made a hard stop at a railroad crossing, and someone’s seeing-eye dog slid all the way up the aisle from the back. She could hear the toenails scraping over the grooves in the rubber floor mat. After the van had come to a respectable standstill, the dog simply got up and walked back to the rear of the van, making Taylor feel terrible, the way people do when you step on their toes and they sigh but don’t say a word.

“I never thought about that, that you might forget colors,” Taylor says, trying to concentrate on her driving and also be friendly to the blind passenger, although this conversation is depressing her deeply.
She recognizes the woman as a regular: Tuesdays and Fridays, for dialysis.

“Oh, you do, you forget,” the woman insists. “It’s not like forgetting somebody’s name. It’s more like you have in mind your idea of a certain color but it might drift, you know. The same way you can drift off the note a little bit when you’re singing.”

Taylor’s radio comes on in a fit of static and demands to know her location.

“I just plussed at Pioneer Square and I’m ten-nineteen to Martin Luther King,” she says. “I have two minuses at Swedish Hospital.”

“Okay, Taylor, ten-twenty-seven after that,” says the radio.

“Ten-four,” she replies.

To get the job with Handi-Van, Taylor only needed a good driving record, a Washington State license, and three weeks of training, plus a course in CPR. The hardest part was learning to use the radio code, which she still feels is unnecessary. It doesn’t actually save syllables, in Taylor’s opinion; for instance, “ten-twenty-seven” is no easier to say than “return to base.” It’s probably less embarrassing to say “ten-twelve” than “I need a bathroom break,” but the code doesn’t keep any secrets, she has discovered. Yesterday the radio announced a 10–161, and all six of her passengers looked up and asked anxiously, “What’s that?” Taylor had to read the code display on her sun visor to find out it meant an intersection obstructed by an injured animal. She could imagine every Handi-Van driver in the city looking up at the sun visor on that one.

On her way up Yesler, Taylor passes her own apartment, which resides in a long brown box of a building with twenty identical doors in the front, spaced every twenty feet or so like boxcars. The apartment is gloomy, with battle-scarred linoleum and precariously thin walls and neighbors on both sides who shout a lot in what sounds like Chinese; sometimes Taylor gets the feeling the two sets of neighbors are shouting at
each other
, using her apartment as a conduit for curses or strange instructions. But it’s a roof over their heads, for now, and she’s feeling more optimistic about finances. It took only about two-thirds of the $1,200 Alice gave her to pay the
first month, get the lights on and move in. The rest she hid away inside a plastic cube on her night table that has family photos smiling on all six sides—Jax and Turtle back home in the Retarded Desert; Jax wearing his swimsuit and a paper bag over his head; a very old snapshot of Alice shelling out lima beans; that kind of thing. Taylor figures that’s the last household object on earth a burglar would steal. Barbie is still with them, and was partly responsible for their winding up here; she insists the Pacific Northwest is on the verge of becoming very popular. She also agreed to use some of her loot to help cover expenses. For the time being, Barbie looks after Turtle in the daytime, and starting this week, Taylor is making eight dollars an hour.

She has decided she likes this city, which seems like Tucson’s opposite, a place where no one will ever think to look for them. Bodies of water lie along every side, and snowy, triangular mountains crouch on the horizon, helping her to orient her mind’s compass needle as she winds through unfamiliar city streets. Several times each day she has to drive the van across the lake on one of the floating bridges that bob like a long, narrow barge. Apparently they couldn’t anchor them, as is usual with bridge construction, because the lakes are too silty and deep to sink concrete roots into. Taylor got this information and a world of other facts from Kevin, a fellow Handi-Van driver who has asked Taylor seven or eight times if she would like to go out with him. Kevin doesn’t exactly float her boat; he’s a pinkish young man whose jeans always appear brand new and never quite fit him. Kevin’s main outside interest seems to be the pale mustache he is trying to grow. He talks in radio code even when he’s off duty. In spite of all this, Taylor is about to relent. It’s been so long since she had any fun she’s afraid she’ll forget how. The next time she talks to Jax, she wouldn’t mind telling him she was dating someone. She makes her decision while she is helping the woman who has forgotten color find her way to the fire-engine-red door of the hospital: this Saturday, Taylor and Turtle will go somewhere with Kevin. If he didn’t have Turtle in mind, that’s his tough luck. He can go along with the idea, or he can turn himself around and 10–27.

Barbie and Turtle are out on the tiny patio behind the kitchen when Taylor gets home from work. Barbie has on a pink bikini and is lying on a bedspread, working on her tan. She looks like some kind of exotic bird tragically trapped in a rotten cage. Taylor slides open the stubborn glass door and drags out one of the falling-apart kitchen chairs, reminding herself to borrow a screwdriver and some screws from the garage at work. The late-afternoon light seems too weak to penetrate human skin, but it’s the first time they’ve seen the sun in two rainy weeks, and Barbie claims she can’t miss her window of opportunity. She says her tan is an important element of her personal identity. She has put Turtle to work cutting out gold foil stars and gluing them onto a short denim skirt Barbie found at a store called Second Hand Rose.

“That’s going to fall apart the first time you wash it,” Taylor observes.

Turtle stops cutting out stars. She lays the scissors carefully on the cracked concrete patio and comes over to sit on Taylor’s lap.

“Oh, I know
that
.” Barbie is lying facedown and her voice is muffled. “I just won’t ever wash it. See, Taylor, this is costuming, it’s not like regular clothes.”

As far as Taylor can see, everything Barbie wears is a costume. “What happens if it gets dirty?”

Barbie turns over on her side, looking a little peeved. “I’m careful, okay?”

“Okay. It’s your skirt.”

“This is going to be the All American ensemble,” Barbie says patiently. “It goes with a red-and-white-striped halter top and a lace petticoat. It’s just come out, we saw it today when we were scouting out what’s new in the Barbie section. I’m like, this is so perfect, but it’s not going to be easy to get lace like that. That’s going to be a challenge.”

Taylor is tuning out; she’s learned when to stop listening to Barbie. She knows she won’t get a quiz later on the All American ensemble. Kevin, the computer whiz, would say that Barbie is all output and no interface. Taylor strokes Turtle’s hair. She’s wearing
the same green overalls she wore on the Oprah Winfrey show, though they are a good deal the worse for a summer of wear, and, Taylor notices, they’re short in the leg and tight around the middle. Her toes have grown an inch or two past the ends of her sneakers; Taylor was horrified to realize Turtle was doubling up her toes in there, without complaint. Now she’s wearing Barbie’s size-six yellow flip-flops. She’ll have to have new clothes before she starts school in a week and a half. More costs. Taylor feels defeated. If only Barbie’s wardrobe talents could be put to civilian use.

“What did you do today?” she asks Turtle. “Besides scouting out the toy store and cutting out stars?”

“Nothing.”

Taylor doesn’t consider Barbie the ideal baby-sitter, but she’s obviously short on choices. She hopes school will begin before Turtle gets warped by the world of fashion design. “You want to go to the beach or something on Saturday?” she asks.

“Yes.” Turtle leans back against Taylor’s chest. She takes both Taylor’s hands in hers and crosses them in front of her.

“I’ve decided to go out with Kevin,” she tells Barbie.

“Who?” Barbie asks, with genuine interest.

“That rabbity guy from work. Just mainly so he’ll quit asking.”

“Oh, right, Taylor. Like going out with somebody is a real wonderful way to give him the message you’re not interested.”

“I see your point.”

“Did you bring a newspaper?” Barbie asks.

“I forgot.”

“Tay
lor!
This is, like, the fiftieth time I’ve asked you. I wanted to look at the want ads.”

“For a waitress job? But think about it, it’s not worth it. You won’t make as much as I’d have to pay for baby-sitting.”

Turtle glances up at Taylor, her dark eyes showing a rim of white below the pupils and her mouth tucked like a made bed.

“Oh, I can make money all right,” Barbie says. “And I don’t mean waitressing, either. All I need is some job in an office with a color Xerox machine.”

Taylor is afraid to ask for more details on this scheme, so she doesn’t. But after a minute Barbie rolls over on her back and half sits up, so that the muscles form ridges in her narrow abdomen. She shades her eyes and looks at Taylor peculiarly.

“You want to know why I left Bakersfield?”

“You said there weren’t enough career opportunities for Barbie lookalikes.”

“Well, I lied,” Barbie says flatly, her voice stripped of its usual friendly effort. “I was wanted for counterfeiting.”

“Counterfeiting
money?
”

“What else can you counterfeit? Duh.”

“How?”

“A color Xerox machine. It’s so easy. Just come into the office a little early, lay out some twenties on the glass, copy them front and back, and blammo, you’re ready to go shopping.”

Taylor stares. “Are you kidding me?”

“Listen, I don’t know why everybody in the world isn’t doing this. My boss only found out because I left some messed-up bills in the trash once.”

Taylor feels a little shaky. In these moments when Barbie’s surface cracks, the feelings inside seem powerful and terrifying. Taylor wonders what it must have taken to turn someone’s regular daughter into such a desperate, picture-perfect loner.

“Isn’t that a federal crime?” she asks.

Barbie examines the end of her ponytail. “Oh, probably. I don’t know.”

“Are we going to start seeing your picture in the Post Office?”

“No way.” She flips the ponytail behind her back and lies down again. “My boss won’t press charges. I’d tell his wife what he tried to pull on me one day in his office.”

Taylor glances down at Turtle, who unfortunately is taking everything in. “I don’t think it’s your boss you have to worry about. I think it’s the U.S. Treasury Department.”

“Well, don’t you think they’ve got
criminals
to catch? I mean, it’s not like I murdered somebody. I just stimulated the economy.”

Taylor is never sure when to argue with Barbie, who behaves like a tourist from another solar system who only read a toy catalog before arriving here. You can’t argue with someone like that about family values. But Taylor wishes Turtle weren’t hearing this. The casino robbery seemed adventurous, like piracy or Robin Hood, but photocopying money sounds like a simple crime of greed.

Barbie, with her eyes carefully closed, presumably to get an even tan on her eyelids, feels around for the plastic glass near her elbow and rattles the ice cubes into her mouth.

“So why did you leave Bakersfield?” Taylor asks.

“They started putting up these signs in all the shopping malls, like ‘Warning, warning!’ I guess they started noticing the bills in their cash registers. Maybe when they tried to turn them in to the bank. I don’t know. So I’m like, forget this! I have to leave town just to spend my money!”

Taylor doesn’t know what to say. She would try to argue with Barbie, but she is bone-tired from driving the Handi-Van all day, strapping down wheelchairs and engaging in powerfully depressing conversations and enduring the superiority of seeing-eye dogs. She feels oppressed now by the ugly concrete patio. It’s hardly big enough for a dog to turn around in, with a high brown fence separating it from the identical patios of the neighbors. She wonders if the color scheme of brown is some sort of international code for poverty. It would be more cheerful back here if she had a few plants, at least. A red geranium in a pot, or a tomato plant, something to use the free sunshine and give something back. But it will be weeks before they have even three extra dollars to spend on something like that. In the meantime, she thinks, who knows? Maybe Barbie has the right idea. Use the free sunshine yourself. Use whatever comes your way.

On Saturday, Kevin and Taylor and Turtle buy ice-cream cones in Pioneer Square to celebrate Taylor’s first paycheck. Taylor is not in a party mood: the check was much smaller than she expected, after what fell out for taxes and Social Security. She’s working full time,
and has no idea how she’s going to cover both rent and food, unless Barbie helps. She’s not crazy about using Barbie’s money, either, considering the source.

“Look, Turtle, lick the side toward you. Like this.” Taylor licks the crown of her own pistachio cone to demonstrate. Turtle nods, but goes right on turning her ice cream cone upside-down to lick the opposite side. A growing dampness is spreading outward from her chin onto her T-shirt like a full, green beard. Kevin, inscrutable as a traffic cop in his mirrored aviator sunglasses, has been ignoring Turtle.

It’s a hot day, but the sycamore trees, with their mottled brown-and-white trunks leaning like the necks of tired giraffes, seem to know it’s almost fall. Their leaves are browning mournfully at the edges, starting to give up the ghost. Quite a few have already fallen. They curl together in piles like brown-paper lunch bags, and Turtle kicks up noisy crowds of them as the three cross through the little park under a wrought-iron gazebo. Listless men and women sit on the benches in every kind of clothing—some in grubby overcoats, some in thin cotton trousers—but still they seem alike, with weathered faces and matted hair, as if these clothing styles were all variations of the uniform of homelessness. Kevin leads Taylor away from the benches toward the street, past a parked car that must have come from somewhere less rainy because it is covered in a deep tan fur of dust. Someone has written
WASH ME
across the rear window. Kevin takes this opportunity to explain to Taylor that the eastern part of the state is a virtual desert.