“No, not her . . . she didn’t tell me.”
“Well,” Bonnie Loo sighs. “Actually one of Lee Lynn’s best traits is that she is not a gossip. Not a mean gossip. She sees herself as a healer. Just don’t get me mixed up with Tambrah. Tambrah is gone. You’ll never meet her. And . . . the History as it Happens books . . . kids stretch everything. Maybe your kids’ve been digging into Settlement history.” One hiccup of a laugh.
Silverbell tucks some of her stringy hair behind an ear. “It was Gordon who told me.” The hand at her ear now has a real elderly shakiness.
Bonnie Loo takes note.
“Well, that . . . whatever I did do, it’s history. This is now. You are safe here and . . . at home. Believe me.” And yet in this very moment Bonnie Loo is straightening to a fuller more bearlike height and bulk, as if to rise up beyond belief to swipe Silverbell Rosenthal away. Away.
Silverbell almost moans, “I don’t think this is the place for me to live.” And yes, her hands are shaking mightily. And this causes Bonnie Loo to have a flash, the body memory they call it, of her own hell, her father once younger than she is now, falling from the sky through police floodlights, the squirting black red meat of him bursting through his shirt, and from his head, face . . . crack! crack! crack! . . . every shot fired by them emptied more of him into the weeds around the loaded logging truck.
“Is there anything really really really special I can make you for supper tonight?”
A sharp “No!” Silverbell holds her hands against the front of her white T-shirt, her trim stomach, hands steadied. “This you brought will last for the rest of my life.” She snort-laughs.
“You’ll . . . love your cottage. It has a view of the sheep. And there is a smaller cottage going up near you. Benedicta’s. You’ve not met her yet. She’s a cute elderly lady.”
“I might be gone soon.”
“Don’t leave the Settlement cause of me. I might be gone soon.”
“I didn’t mean on account of you.”
Bonnie Loo sees how unrumpled all the beds are, a pair of rocking chairs with seat cushions of the same fabric as used in many dresses, skirts, and kids’ sunsuits here . . . obviously Silverbell has been sitting in the dark in one of these rockers. Or standing? For hours of every day? “Did you tell anyone else you aren’t staying? They’re hammering away up there making you a place.”
“He’s scary.”
“Who?”
“They say he can hypnotize people, brainwash them.”
“Who? You mean Gordon?! That’s horseshit from talk radio.”
“I don’t listen to talk radio.”
“Who said it?”
Silverbell backs up to one of the rockers, sits very carefully.
“Before I came here. Everybody was saying it.”
“But now you can see he’s not that way.”
Silverbell doesn’t reply.
Bonnie Loo steps closer to the rocker with Silverbell in it. “If you leave, where would you like to go? We know people all over the state. Someone could help you find a job and a rent. What kind of work do you do? Besides raising dogs.”
Silverbell says nothing. Her eyes flood.
Acorns smash upon the roof. Seems like hundreds.
Bonnie Loo swallows. That empathetic stone in the throat. “There’s no rush, for God’s sake. It’s not like you’re on the side of the road. You can take your time to figure things out. Everyone says Eden and Bard are doing okay.”
Then Silverbell says through clenched teeth, “He touches me.”
Bonnie Loo’s eyes widen. “He?”
“Gordon, yes.”
“Touches you?”
Silverbell glares at Bonnie Loo and waves a hand with spread fingers. “Yes.”
“Where the fuck does he touch you?” Bonnie Loo hisses.
“My ears.”
Bonnie Loo explodes. Fiendish laughter. Wide open jaws. Ugly almost cruel guffaws.
But wait, Silverbell Rosenthal’s long hollow face is opening with a smile. Now laughing, too, a fearsome crowing, a hee-haw, a screech. Both persons teary and heaving and breathless, wiping their eyes.
Yes, yet another AP offering. Dateline: Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Shows a figure not blurry but motion-stirred, backing away from the camera as he pulls himself into the open door of a pickup truck. Eyes, one narrowed with white redneck HATE, the other raised open wide with LUNACY. Or so it would seem. Phrases in the one-column piece leap out. “Militia connections,” “wives of 40 governors” and “terrorized.”
Bruce Hummer separates the page from the rest of the paper and folds it preciously, as you would save news of a friend.
It is night, but I woke up. Nothing to do.
Today I saw a picture of Jeffrey, who we are going to visit in Texas. He is on the wall in the East Parlor. He is not a kid, but grown up. Age nineteen, I think. He is very quiet-looking in the picture. He is the color brown like my father, Damon, who I saw his picture, too, only a million times. This Jeffrey person is wearing a white outfit like in a hospital.
It would make you cry about Jeffrey. The government is going to KILLLL him in his jail. They will hold him and kill him. Gordie says the government guys are like hyeeenas with bad breath and big pink asses and that this shows the human race is not above. When Gordie gets upset about the human race he blows up with noise. Beth calls it rants.
I am just on my bed now, drawing Jeffrey like his real picture, only better. Pictures you make are good because you can make him get away. He can fly. And maybe get invisible while sneaking. I make yellow rays shoot out from him. And a smile. And in each hand he has presents with bows. And by his feet is presents with bows. And one present has a red heart. That one is from me.
Last spring when we did the OCEAN was when it all starts the Monarch terrarium we built in the empty shop. Call it the royal chamber. Next we went to a house of Claire’s friend of college. She does Monarch WAtch. It’s called MASS TAGGIng. Hundreds of people do it. This is how the way they do it seeing the Monarchs go thousands of miles like birds.
We sent off for books mapS PosTErs and pam-flits. It tells how THE South they call the Monarch King Billie which is a King whose colors were blAck and OrangE. He was in England and WANTED to OWN IriSH people Misty says. But the butterfLiEs were hERE. And some IRisH people went hEre.
We did skits on The Metim morfiss of MonaRcHS afTER eating taSTY Milk Weeds. Katy and Karma called the first one Noof. So Noof goes to Mexico and some humans here go to TEXAS to see JEFrey who the govinment is Going to murdEr.
A lady on the kitchen radio who says shE has a spy who knows THAT Place she means Settlement said you can’t call this stuff edUcation going to visiT death row and