“Is there some problem, Sheriff?” Mr. Svendergard asked.
“No problem. I just came out to see how things were going with the boy.”
“He’s fine,” Mrs. Svendergard was quick to say.
“I was just wondering why you haven’t enrolled him in school.”
“The kids in school call him a murderer.”
“There’s worse things.”
“What would that be?” challenged Mrs. Svendergard.
Sheriff Dudival just looked at her blankly. Possibly in his experience, there were worse things than to be called than a murderer, but he didn’t say.
“Is the boy around?”
“Sure, he’s around.”
“May I talk to him, please?”
Mr. Svendergard turned to his wife.
“I’ll go get him,” she said.
“How’s the cement business?” the sheriff asked Mr. Svendergard while waiting.
“I can’t even get enough Portland to keep up with demand.”
The sheriff assumed that that was good thing and nodded appreciatively.
Now Buster entered the room with Mrs. Svendergard.
“’Lo, Sheriff.”
“Hello, Buster.”
The sheriff noticed that everyone’s eyes darted back and forth to each other as if there was something funny he was not being let in on.
“How’s it goin’?”
“Good,” Buster said.
The four of them just stood there awkwardly.
“Mind if I talk to the boy alone for a moment?”
“Sure,” said Mr. Svendergard. “I’ve got a truck goin’ out, anyway.”
The sheriff then looked at Mrs. Svendergard and smiled curtly. She got the message and followed her husband out of the room. Maybe it was a small thing, but Dudival noticed that her blouse had been put on inside out.
“I brought you something,” Sheriff Dudival said, presenting Buster with a book that had been gift-wrapped with an FBI Most Wanted flyer.
“Mrs. Humphrey’s Manners for Men. I’ve read it many times myself. Thought it might be…” He pulled up short. “Are they treating you all right here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Anything you want to tell me about?”
“Not much to say.”
The sheriff noticed something behind Buster on the Svendergard’s breakfront. He stepped forward to examine a tin pie plate that had—with ballpeen and awl—been hammered into a portrait of someone.
“Ah made that,” Buster said proudly.
“He looks familiar. Do I know him?”
“You shor do. That there’s the late Mr. Dominguez.”
“I see.” The sheriff handed the plate back to Buster. “I think you nicely captured him.”
“Thanks, Sheriff.” Then Buster whispered entre nous, “Ah’m workin’ on one a Mr. Svenergard. Gonna surprise him.”
“Well, I’m sure he’ll appreciate that.”
They stood there for a moment. Buster was to offer nothing more.
“Okay, then. I guess I’ll be going. I’ve written my phone number on the inside of that book cover just in case you ever need it.”
“Okey doke,” Buster said.
Buster had not been exactly forthcoming with the sheriff about his living conditions. The Svendergards, as it turned out, weren’t just about cement. On a warm day a few weeks after moving in, Mr. Svendergard purchased several bales of hay and had instructed Buster to stack them one on top of the other by the gravel silo. Zella cheerfully rolled out a large archery target.
“Ever shot a bow and arrow before?” said Mrs. Svendergard.
“Nope.”
Then Mr. and Mrs. Svendergard disappeared giggling into the maintenance barn. When Buster was finished hoisting the target up onto the hay bales, he turned around to find Gil and Zella reappear from the barn completely naked except for the hawk feathers in their Indian headdresses.
“Oh gosh…” Buster guffawed and covered his eyes.
“It’s okay, Buster. You can look at us.” Buster peeked between the crack in his fingers. So much for the pinkness of the Svendergards’ skin.
“Jiminy Christmas, Mrs. Svendergard,” Buster said.
“Buster, take your hand away from your eyes. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” Mrs. Svendergard said. “Look, I’m not embarrassed.”
“Everybody’s got the same equipment, son.”
“Buster, it’s clothes that are the problem. They hide us from our real selves.”
“Mind if ah keep mine on, for the heck of it?”
“Of course not. We just thought it was time for you to know who we were. And that you should never be ashamed of your own body. Buster, no matter what they’ve taught you at Sunday school, just know this—the human race enters the world in an innocent state,” said the uncircumcized Mr. Svendergard.
“Uh huh.”
“The system corrupts us,” the mister continued—his wagging finger seeming to power the metronome of his wagging scrotum. “They turn us into vessels filled at the altar of consumerism!” Buster tried to digest that. A vessel was a boat. That’s as far as he got before Mrs. Svendergards’ breasts caught his attention. For a chunky woman, her bosom was firm and aerodynamic as the chromed nosecone of a ’53 Studebaker Champion. And then there was her pubic hair. It was the same color as her eyelashes, and a copse of it climbed out between her legs and encroached her belly button like summer vines over a window. “That’s why, when we take off our clothes, we’re making a statement. And do you know what that statement is, Buster?” And Mrs. Svendergard’s rear end was pink and plump and swaybacked into a perfect dimpled hollow where a fellow could lay his head—if he so desired—while taking a nap under a shade tree.
“I said, do you know what that statement is?”
All Buster knew was that he was the luckiest boy in town. And then he fainted—because in the last seventy-five seconds he had forgotten to breathe. After the initial shock, Buster accepted their enthusiasm as second nature and joined them—in the water-filled quarries where they bathed naked, riding their Shetland ponies in the buff, jumping on the trampoline and playing naked hangman at the basketball hoop. Nudity, and the adoration of the Great Aten, the Egyptian Sun God, had long ago replaced the Svendergard’s regular churchgoing.
“Hail Aten, thou Lord of beams of light, when thou shinest, all faces live. Hail Aten!”
“Hail Aten!” Buster repeated, arms outstretched, palms facing the sun. That’s how Buster and Mr. Svendergard began each day at the concrete company.
The earth circled Aten three times and as the equinox began, the Svendergards were visited once again by Sheriff Dudival.
“Good afternoon, ma’am.”