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Late in the afternoon the rain stopped. Sog went out to the workshop, where he thought he’d seen Bitch disappear. She wasn’t there. Sog even peered into the two big barrels that for some reason Madewell had left behind and not sold with his other barrels. Sog intended to use one of them as an old-fashioned rain barrel, to collect water, although there was a good deep well behind the house, still with its operating pulley, to which Sog had attached a new chain and a new galvanized tin bucket. He didn’t think they’d ever run out of water, but wanted the rain barrel for insurance, and maybe just as a kind of tribute to old Madewell, who had made all of this possible.

“Bitchie babe?” he called. But she wasn’t around. Maybe he’d just imagined her. Or maybe it was her ghost. Yeah, probably she’d been eaten by a coyote or a bear off in the woods and her ghost was here to keep him company. But just in case it was her, he opened one of the bags of Purina Dog Chow, filled a new plastic dish he’d bought in the pet aisle of a supermarket, and set it out for her.

Then he hiked back to the pickup, and drove to Harrison. He checked the gas gauge and noted it was getting low. He didn’t need a full tank. He needed just enough to make this trip to Harrison, then one more trip to Stay More for the yard sale and one last trip to Harrison to pick up his truelove.

Chapter six

I
f you stare and stare at a mirror, and not because you’re getting dressed or fixing your hair, does it mean that you’re vain? She liked to just look at herself and try to imagine what she’d look like when she was eighteen or twenty. If she wasn’t badly mistaken, she would be a dish, which is what her grandfather often called her. Grandpa Spurlock liked to say to her, “Honey, you’re going to break hearts all over the place.” She’d had explained to her what he meant when he called her a bombshell, and she knew what he meant when he called her “cutie pie” and “turtledove” and “chickabiddy” but she had trouble understanding what he meant when he called her “jailbait” and especially when he called her a “killer,” because she couldn’t be blamed if somebody’s heart broke over her and they died. She would never deliberately kill anybody, although actually she might kill Jimmy Chaney if he didn’t back off. Today at school during that horrible thunderstorm he got very flirty with her and even talked nasty. Thunder petrified her, and Miss Moore had stopped teaching the class and allowed them to take cover in the cloakroom, and Jimmy had snuggled up beside her. He said he was going to crash the birthday party and sleep with her. Jimmy was really the only boy she liked, usually, but he was ill-behaved and unpleasant, the same as all boys are. And possibly he had a wicked mind. She would never forget the time last fall when he’d come over to her house after school, breaking the strict rule that she was never allowed any visitors—girl or boy—when her mother wasn’t there, and the fact that he wasn’t supposed to be there made her dizzy and so titillated she didn’t know what she was doing, and she probably encouraged him. He suggested that they ought to uncover their genitals and show them to each other. “Parts,” he had said, and maybe if he had used some other word she might have been willing, but the fact of the matter was that she didn’t have any parts. There was nothing there. This in itself didn’t bother her too much—she had taken shower-baths with her mother at a very early age and one time she and Becky McGraw had not only shown each other theirs but had drawn pictures of each other’s, so she knew this was a fact of the way all females were made, without parts.

But she hadn’t wanted to compare what she didn’t have with whatever he did have. She’d never seen a part. She had heard several things it was called besides “part”—the thought of that word made her giggle at the idea that it could be replaced, like automobile parts. Becky said it was just called “thing.” Beverly knew it was properly called “doodad.” Gretchen had heard it referred to as “pecker.” Only Kelly had ever actually seen one, belonging to her father, and she said it was called “weenie” and attempted to describe it, and the two little pouches drooping from it, called, everybody knew, “nuts,” although sometimes simply “balls.” Robin had never seen a weenie and doubted that it looked anything at all like a hot-dog-type weenie, or frankfurter. Although blessed with a fabulous imagination, she had difficulty imagining what it looked like, and just out of curiosity she nearly allowed Jimmy to take down his pants. But instead she had told him that she was very sorry to have to tell him that they would both have to wait until they were much older before they could exchange peeks as he suggested. “You’re so smart you won’t ever have any fun,” he said.

Once a couple of years ago while she was sitting on Grandpa Spurlock’s lap and he was telling her one of his stories—he told such great stories about the old-time folks who had lived in these Ozark mountains—she had noticed some kind of bump or lump beneath her bottom and reached down to squeeze it and ask, “Grampa, what is
that
?” And he had squirmed and got real red in the face and said, “Aw, Cupcake, that’s jist my mousy. Don’t you be a-foolin with it.” And she hadn’t tried to squeeze it again. But later when her friends were talking about what a part could be called, she contributed “mousy,” although she didn’t say she’d learned it from her step-grandfather.

She just loved Grandpa Spurlock. He was the only male she knew (including Jimmy and Mr. Palmer, her Sunday school teacher, and Dr. Vanderpool, her pediatrician) toward whom she really felt respect and affection. She knew he wasn’t really her grandfather but just married to her grandmother. Still, she felt closer to him than to her mother, who was so strict and distracted, or even her dear grandmother, who was so religious she had once told Robin she didn’t care what she did so long as she got into Heaven, by and by.

The reason she was thinking of Grandpa this afternoon was not because of his mousy but because she was playing with her paper dolls, and every time she did that she thought of him, because one of her paper dolls was Grandpa Spurlock. It had been he who had given her a book of punch-out paper-dolls when she was four, and who, upon discovering that she liked to create her own paper dolls, had provided her with reams of paper and pasteboard with which to cut them out and clothe them. He had even given her a very good pair of scissors so that she didn’t have to use her mother’s, although her mother was very upset at the idea of Robin owning something so sharp and pointed. Although Grandpa Spurlock had also given her Paddington, her beloved teddy bear without whom she could not sleep at night, it was the paper dolls that really made her think of him, and even name one after him as a citizen, in fact the mayor, of her little town. Robin had created a whole village of paper dolls: men, women and children, families named White, and Brown, and Green, and Black, and Gray, and she had her hands full managing their wardrobes, not to mention inventing a life story for each one of them, and creating enough struggles and entanglements among them to give drama to her private world. Paddington sat in the chair opposite and watched her solemnly while she snipped and snipped and snipped. Her village, which was called Robinsville, even contained a paper bear named Paddington.

In fact she was running out of paper, but Grandpa had promised to bring some more the next time he came, and she hoped he might even come today.

Now it often happened in Robin’s life that whenever she thought about something, or was hoping for something, that that something actually came to pass, it really occurred, it appeared as if by magic, the magic that was in Robin’s head. It made her feel powerful and it made her wonder if she had the ability to perceive things that other people could not.

Anyway, there came a knock at the door. There were hardly ever any knocks at the door. Once in a great while there might be a couple of women selling a religious magazine and she had to tell them that she was not allowed to open the door. Robin ran to the door and called, “Who is it?”

And the voice said, “It’s your grandpa. Open up.”

And she turned the deadbolt and was about to open the door, ready to jump into his arms and be lifted up, when suddenly she realized that he had not knocked with the code, shave-and-a-haircut-six-bits.

“You didn’t knock wight,” she called to him, sorry that the return of her speech impediment robbed her voice of authority.

“I didn’t? Well, drat my hide.” He sure sounded like Grandpa. “How’s this?” And he knocked a sort of knock knockedy-knock knock that sounded like the code. But it wasn’t quite it. Robin fled to the living room window and peered out. Grandpa’s car was not out there. It was just an old pickup truck.

She returned to the door. “What’s your name?” she called.

“Grandpa.”

“What do people call you?”

There was a silence, too long, on the other side, and she was convinced that this man, whoever he was, was a stranger, and therefore a danger. “Please open the door,” he said.

“Go away,” she said. “You’re not my grandpa and if you don’t go away I’ll call the police.”

“I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down,” he said.

She couldn’t help giggling. “Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!” she said.

She could hear him making some exaggerated breathing and blowing on the other side of the door, huffing and puffing. Then he said, “Piggy-wiggy, that didn’t work. Your house won’t blow down. I don’t rightly recollect how the rest of it goes. Does the big bad wolf climb down your chimney next?”

He sure sounded like Grandpa, and she wondered if Grandpa was just playing with her. “No,” she corrected him, “you’re supposed to say you’ll take me at six o’clock in the morning to Farmer Smith’s turnip patch.”

“Okay. Will you meet me at six o’clock in the morning?”

“I’ll be there at five o’clock but with a bunch of police.”

“Piggy-wiggy, I aint the big bad wolf, no foolin. I’m your lover boy. Me and you are fated to spend the rest of our lifes together, so we might as well get started right here and now.”

She thought,
Something may be wrong with me, but I will never be in love. I will never have a lover boy. I love Paddington so much, but he’s not really a boy.
She said, “I’m going to count to ten and if you’re not gone I’m calling the police.”

“Don’t you even want to see my face? For all you know, I could be your Prince Charming. Open the door and have a look.”

“You sure don’t sound like anybody’s Prince Charming,” she said. “Now
get!
One…two…three….”

“Awright, I’m a-going, but you’ll be sorry you turned me away. I’m fated to have ye, and I’ll have ye one way or t’other, wait and see.”

She waited, not commenting on that, and she waited, and finally she heard the truck start up. She ran to the window and looked out and got just a glimpse of him in profile driving away. He was just some old guy. Not a Prince Charming at all. More like the frog before he turned into the prince.

She returned to Robinsville and tried to resume her supervision of the lives of its citizens or at least of their wardrobes, but she was breathing hard and could feel her insides were all out of whack. She thought of calling the police anyway. Or calling her mother. Yes, she had better call her mother at the store. She went to the phone and started dialing but was stopped by the realization that if she reported this visitor to her mother there was no way on God’s earth that she would be allowed to attend Kelly’s birthday slumber party. It was bad enough already that Robin had refrained from telling her mother that Kelly’s parents planned to take all the girls to the roller rink for the earlier part of the birthday party. Robin loved the roller rink more than any other place in Harrison, but her mother would never, ever let her go there, and if she knew that Kelly’s parents were planning to include it as part of the party she wouldn’t let Robin go. Robin sighed, and put the phone down.

There came another knock at the door! She actually jumped. But wasn’t it the code knock? She went to the door and called, “Who is it?”

And the voice said, “It’s your grandpa. Open up.”

He was back! Whatever bluster and courage she had had during his first visit was now lost. She thought she would faint. “What’s your name?” she asked.

She recognized his laughter. “Why, Leo Spurlock, I reckon,” he said. “Last time I looked, anyhow.”

She ran to the window again and looked out and sure enough it was Grandpa’s car out there. She opened the door and leaped into his arms.

“Cupcake, you’re trembling,” he said. “Did I give you a scare?”

“No, but there was a man here. He was pretending to be you. Where’s Grandma?”

“Aw, she wanted me to drop her off at the shoe store. Which means I don’t have to go get her for another hour. So I thought I’d just run out and bring you some more cutting paper. I’ve got two reams in the car, one white and one colored.” He returned to his car and brought her the big packages of paper, which would provide a summer and fall wardrobe for everybody in Robinsville. Then he sat in his favorite chair and patted his lap for her to sit in it, but she was getting too old for that. “What’s this about somebody pretending to be me?” he asked.

She sat on the sofa and started telling him the whole story of the stranger’s visit, but she got only as far as the huffing and puffing part when Grandpa laughed and said, “That’s a great story, sugar bun, but you sure it aint jist a story?”

“He was
here
, just a little while ago, just before you came.”

“Hmmm,” said Grandpa. “I seen a feller in a pickup driving down the road as I was coming in.”

“That was him. He was in an old pickup.”

“Didn’t git a good look at him but he shore didn’t look like me.”

“I told him I was gonna call the police, and he went away.”

“Well, you know, there’s lots of fellers like that in this world. Your beauty just swept him off his feet and he didn’t know what he was doing.”

“But he never saw me!” she protested.

“Might’ve seen you get off the school bus.” Grandpa nodded his head and kept on nodding it, as if that was the answer to the whole matter. Some stranger had seen her get off the school bus, had greatly admired her and even—what was the word? yes:
lust
—the stranger had lusted after her and wanted her body. Miss Moore had given the class information about why it was so necessary for both girls and boys to avoid strangers and not allow themselves to be lured, and afterward Becky had said to Robin, “I still don’t get it. Why would a stranger go to all that trouble? What does he want?” and Gretchen had said, “Silly, he wants to
fuck
you!” Robin had heard that word several times and had a fairly good idea of what it meant. It was something very wicked that some people did for fun and nastiness. Gretchen had tried to tell them that mommies and daddies did it too, and Robin had become so angry at Gretchen she hadn’t spoken to her since then. “Why don’t you sit on my lap,” Grandpa said, “and I’ll tell you a story or two, like old times.”