Flight Behavior

“Wow, what superpowers do you have?” Dellarobia asked, but Wool Man was off, orbiting the skirting table and calling out answers on the fly, including being tricky and eating grass. His shenanigans pulled the fleece apart in less than a minute, as Hester predicted, and that was all it took to get the family thrown out of the proceedings. Hester ordered Dellarobia to round up Preston and Cordie and the other two boys and take them in the house for the rest of the day.

She felt bruised, and inclined to argue, but this was Hester’s show. Immediately Crystal was demoted into Dellarobia’s former position of step-and-fetch, and ran to get the next fleece. No more ogling Luther Holly’s biceps until the spring shearing. Dellarobia went to find the kids and tell Cub they’d been banished to the house, in case he should wonder. Her anger collapsed into a familiar bottomless sorrow. It was just the one fleece, and not an especially valuable one. A more forgiving grandmother would have let Preston have it for a day of play, since it clearly made him happy. The woman had no feeling for children’s joy. She could take the fun out of ice cream, dirt, fishing with live bait, you name it. Being around Hester tended to invoke an anguish for Cub’s childhood that made Dellarobia wish she could scoop him up and get him away from there. Probably that was where all her family troubles began.

At half past five, she lay flat on her in-laws’ uncomfortable sofa with Cordie asleep on her chest. The jelly toast Mical had demanded, but not eaten, sat flattened in its plate on the floor where Jazon had stepped on it, and then violently refused to let her take off his sneaker. He’d used his fists. As a personage of third-grade status Jazon was no joke, within striking distance of her own height and weight. Probably one of those kindergarten holdbacks where teachers tried to postpone the inevitable. She’d surrendered to spending some of the afternoon crawling on her knees with a damp dishtowel following that sticky, waffled left footprint over rugs and floors and sofa cushions, imagining Hester’s ire if she overlooked one. When Jazon started running and leaping against the wall to see how high he could leave a jelly print, poor little dutiful Preston lost it and started crying, which set off Cordelia too. Dellarobia finally started up a game of Crazy Eights for money—a desperate measure—in which kids were allowed to use shoes for money, and won on purpose so she could gain control of the offending sneaker. She hid it upstairs in a laundry hamper.

Her mind was on temporary leave from the din when her phone caused her to jump, ratcheting its manic jangle from the sofa cushions under her. It must have slid out of her pocket and attempted its own escape. She tried to move Cordie without waking her, but missed the call before she could locate the phone. Dovey. She hit call.

“Help,” she moaned. “I’m trapped in that Twilight Zone episode where a child has mental power over adults and turns one of them into a three-headed gopher.”

“I hate when that happens,” Dovey said. “So how does that work, are there three corresponding butt-holes?” Dovey and Dellarobia had started life under the surnames Carver and Causey, thrown together in grade school by alphabetical seating. No one had come between them since. “So where are you?” Dovey asked.

“At Hester and Bear’s. Hell, in other words, department of child management. Can you come over? I’m seriously losing my mind here.”

“Nope. I’m on break, I had to come in to work. Three guys called in sick.”

“Three? So you have to close, on a Saturday? That stinks.” Dovey worked behind the meat counter at Cash Club, a man’s world if ever there was one, and was of such slight stature she had to stand on a box to use the grinder. But Dovey held her own. Be sweet and carry a sharp knife, was her motto.

“There’s a U-T game today,” Dovey said. “I’m sure that’s the reason those guys called in, basketball flu. So yes, I’m closing, and we’re swamped. That’s why I couldn’t answer when you texted, like, sixteen times. Jeez, Dellarobia.”

“Sorry.” She lay down again and eased Cordie back onto her chest, facedown, without disrupting the child’s devoted unconsciousness.

“The problem can’t possibly be those angels of yours,” Dovey said. “It’s you.”

“Actually it’s Crystal Estep’s two boys. She and Valia are over here for the shearing, and Hester is using the occasion to put me in my place.”

“Oh, God. She stuck you with what’s-their-names, Jazzbo and Microphone?”

“Affirmative. I’m in the custody of two small men with plastic AK-47s forcing me into the slave trade.”

“Why do they even make toys like that? I ask you.”

“Crystal said Jazon and Mical are fixing to be terrorists for Hallowe’en.”

“No real stretch there. Okay, look, you have to find your fierce. That’s what the instructor says in my kickboxing video. Aim for the groin.”

Dellarobia lowered her voice. “To tell you the truth, I’m kind of scared of Crystal’s boys. She told us about some friend of hers that came over and the kids broke her fingers in a car door.”

“Here’s my advice. Run for your life. Maybe put in a really long video first, so you’ll get to the state line.”

“A video, are you kidding? Jazon and Mical are hating on me here because there’s no X-box in Hester world. The only child-oriented thing she’s got is this one DVD they’re playing over and over, probably for revenge. It’s that squeaky-voiced muppet thing with the red matted hair.”

“You want to know something? That creature right there is why I have no children. That voice was invented by the drug companies to get all the parents on Xanax.”

“My own kids have better taste, I’ll give them that much. Listen.” She held up the phone. Preston had stuck his fingers in his ears and was walking in a circle shouting the words to “Willoughby Wallaby”: An elephant sat on YOU!

“Do you hear that? That’s my son. He is innocent by reason of insanity. His sister gnawed awhile on a stuffed dog and then she conked out.”

“Okay, honey, I suggest you do the same. I have to run, my break’s almost over.”

“Here I go. This is me, chewing on a stuffed doggie.”

“Listen, Dellarobia.”

“What.”

“Not now, but sometime. Are we going to talk about it?”