Stairbirds In Love

Chapter 1 -- The Pretender

She’s waiting in the back room. Ollie shivered a little in the draft from the opened door. He gestured with his thumb toward the dark storeroom, but remained at the register, counting.

Does she have the kids? Meggs asked from the doorway.

Ollie nodded, busy with facing the bills.

Meggs let the door close behind him. He took a peppermint from the complimentary dish. Is she ready?

The café was empty, the lights dimmed. The closed sign blinked in the frosted window, casting a feeble orange glow against a scrappy tinsel border of hearts and cupids. Outside only tumbleweeds traveled the deserted highway. Still the two men whispered.

Ollie took a minute to scribble in a ledger. Yeah. You’ll have to stop by the trailer to pick up their coats. It turned cold so fast she didn’t have a chance to bring them. There’s a sewing machine she made the payments on. Fact is, she made most of the payments on her and Rosa’s car, too. Doubt if old Miguel will turn loose of the car, but it might be worth a try for the sewing machine. Miguel says him and Rosa are leaving in the morning, before dawn.

They can’t take Rosa’s own sister and kids?

Ollie closed his ledger and zipped the day’s deposit into a bank bag. Miguel’s out of work. He has a chance for a job in Las Animas. If the truth was known, I’d say that old Miguel isn’t any more comfortable with Migra than Tedi is. Anyway, they have to move fast and Tedi ain’t going nowhere fast. Migra is after her and she don’t have no place to go in Mexico but to a step-father who hits her. Are you getting cold feet?

For a moment, Meggs’ eyes were fixed on his giant work boots. Then he shrugged. Too late now.

Ollie tossed the deposit into an open safe in a corner of the kitchen. He left the safe’s door ajar. If you’re not one hundred percent on this, forget it. I’ll call Migra and get it over with. They’re not monsters. They’ll feed her and the kiddies and put them on a bus to El Paso. I’ll slip Tedi some cash to tide her over till she finds something. He hung his apron on a hook behind the door then switched off the lights. I don’t stick my neck out for no one. I’m no do-gooder.

Meggs followed him out of the kitchen. That why you are feeding her and letting her stay here when she can’t work?

Ollie raised a chapped hand to fend off the charge. She worked hard for me when she could. She’s cheerful, honest, a decent person. No sense with men but that’s most women – at least the pretty ones. I like Tedi fine but I’m not stupid enough to dick with Migra. You need a housekeeper. She needs a place to stay. You like her. She likes you. It might could work out.

I’m thinking about family. Meggs took another peppermint and very carefully unwrapped it. He slipped the mint into his mouth and the cellophane into the bib of his overalls.

You haven’t told your folks nothing?

Just what, Ollie, am I supposed to tell them?

Have you even tried?

Haven’t even.

Jeez, Meggs! What are you? Pushing forty?

Meggs stepped to a mirror that hung next to the coat rack. I was going to ask Dad for something to cover up the gray, but I forgot. He tugged at his beard.

Ollie took up his feather duster. You’re my baby cousin. God knows I try to hold my tongue because of the tragedy and all, but sometimes you are flat peculiar.

Meggs was still at the mirror, fiddling with the band that held his dark ponytail. Can’t see how the folks could bitch, but they will.

Ollie dusted each of several toy tractors that were displayed in the window. Aunt Stevie is bound to kick a little. Just in her nature. The girls might… well, Tharon. You know Tharon will have something to say.

Meggs adjusted a gallus then tugged his sport jacket to cover his overalls. I’d like to break it to Mom first.

Ollie opened the side door to shake the duster. Tedi needs someplace to sleep tonight. That little cot in the backroom just isn’t big enough for all of them. Kids are cranky and edgy, starting colds. At night the wind just cuts through this place.

Meggs looked down at his mighty hands. A stubborn blotch of yellow paint stood out on his well-scrubbed wrist. Nervously he swiped at it with his bandana. Okay. I’ll just have to spring her on the family tomorrow sometime. Might be easier to catch everyone together on Sunday.

No way you are going to keep this quiet for even a day! Now, if you are not gentle enough in your mind about this arrangement to tell your own folks, you had better clear out. The heavy door blew shut on Ollie, almost snapping the duster in half.

Meggs turned from the mirror to stare out the café window. It was February, the month of brooms. A dry, howling wind scoured the prairie like a phantom broom pusher, raising clouds of frozen grit, jangling the bayonet, and scattering jackrabbits and coyotes alike.

On the windowsill, the cupids, a row of toy tractors and a small dish of Easter cactus made a brave show against the menacing night. The wind rattled the window and kicked an empty cardboard box down Highway 50, which was also Main Street for the two blocks that comprised Pierceville, Kansas.

That’s some wind, Meggs observed.

Terrible fierce, Ollie affirmed.

Sky won’t snow, wind won’t let it. Meggs shuddered and glanced again into the mirror. Okay.

Ollie took a minute to water the Easter cactus. Clinic tomorrow in Charleston. Sam or Phil will be there. Tedi doesn’t have an appointment but she needs to see a doctor.

Has to, Meggs agreed.

She has quite a bill there. Don’t look like Alberto is going to pay any on it. Ollie looked steadily into Meggs’ face.

Okay, Meggs said again, starting down the dim hallway that led to the storeroom, his great, heavy Wolverines ringing hollowly on the linoleum. He stood for a moment, jingling the silver and keys in his pocket.

Ollie opened the door for him. For just a split second, Meggs had the impression of a den, with a bitch and pups huddled in the dark. Then Tedi struggled to stand with the sleeping baby in her arms. Ollie helped her up, taking the baby. She picked up a single, duct-taped suitcase. Meggs took the suitcase from her. Tedi lifted Yesi, who wrapped her legs and arms around her mother and buried her face in her blue black hair.

Meggs led them through the dark café. He stopped at the register and blinked at the empty coat tree.

They don’t have no coats. You’ll have to pick them up on your way out of town, Ollie explained patiently.

Tedi stood, head down.

Meggs slipped his coat around her and Yesi.

Ollie pulled Bobby’s dingy blanket around his chubby face. He took a toy tractor from the windowsill and tucked it in with the sleeping baby. Boy is plumb nuts about tractors, he explained.

Meggs opened the café door and walked the sidewalk to his ‘76 Laredo. He turned the heater to full blast and drove, over the sidewalk, to the very entrance of the café.

We’d better both help Tedi in, Ollie advised, handing up Bobby, who had yet to open an eye. Meggs and Ollie both worked to get Tedi, who was about the size of a small house, into the pickup cab. She sat silently, almost sullenly, holding the children to her.

Meggs thought back on the slim, sassy girl who had brought him his iced tea and pie, his patty melt and salad, all summer. He shook his head as he climbed behind the wheel, wondering how women got themselves into the fixes they did. Ollie slammed the pickup door and its baling wire handle jangled. Bobby jumped but did not wake.

They bumped through the dismal village of Pierceville then crossed a concrete bridge that arched ridiculously over a dry bed of scrub willow, ragged tumbleweeds and frozen sand. Once out of town, Meggs followed a winding, rutted road which ended in a weedy trailer court. He stopped in front of the most rundown of the court’s six trailers. Tedi opened the pick- up door. Meggs held her arm. You stay here.

There was a flicker of light in her dark eyes.

He left the truck, stepped over a yard of dismantled furniture, and rapped on a duct-taped front door. Miguel answered. The house was in boxes and crates. Several children slept in the living room, on threadbare sofa cushions.

I came for Tedi’s car and her sewing machine.

Miguel shook his shaggy head. Ella no tiene un caro.

Meggs shook his shaggy head. Tedi made the payments.

No, Rosa lo pagó. Chee hev title, Miguel handed out a single cardboard box.

Meggs took it and waited. Miguel tried to close the door. Meggs inserted his huge boot.

What joo wan? Miguel snarled.

The sewing machine.

Ella nos debe dinero.

Speak English.

Chi are ode oss.

Speak English!

No es HAIRS. ¡Es nuestra!

The sewing machine!

¡La maquina es nuestra!

You bastard! Meggs said this with some heat although he had been expecting it. Miguel took a step backwards and shoved a sorry box of broken toys and rags at him.

Thees hit! Thees hall! Now you gat the hail!

Meggs was thin, gray and stringy but he was a big man who swung hammers for his livelihood. He had the advantage despite the age difference. His huge fist was working, but he didn’t need any trouble with Migra. Miguel sensed this, cutting his eyes contemptuously at Tedi.

You thievin’ greaser bastard, Meggs snarled.

Gringo. Miguel spat and slammed the door.

Meggs carried the boxes to Tedi. Coats? he asked.

She rummaged through the boxes and shook her head. He threw the boxes into the truck bed and climbed into the cab.

¿La maquina? she whispered.

No maquina.

Her eyes narrowed. Ladrones, she hissed.

Bastards, he affirmed.

They drove south and west on a county road, slithering across barren sand hills and nothing else. The wind shook the pickup cab. Tedi wept quietly. Yesi, unnerved by her mother’s distress, wept also. There were no streetlights, no guard rails, no signposts, no horizon. There was only the dead, moonless sky above them, the sickly green dash light, a woman crying softly, and a child crying softly, in the vast darkness. Meggs had never heard anything so heart-wrenching and timeworn.

He took his bearings from a round-top, a stock tank, a pear tree and a clanking windmill. He turned east. He hadn’t wanted to make any major expenditures until he was certain that the arrangement would work, but he couldn’t have his family, coatless and weeping, in the cold and dark.

He navigated the country road, made a bootleggers’ turn at a dilapidated round-top and bumped up, onto the pavement. It was late. He was tired. He had been hauling junk and painting most of the day but he was a family man now. He reached for a second wind and watched Tedi out of the corner of his eye. She had no idea of direction, and so was unconcerned. He was relieved. He hadn’t wanted to frighten her.

Chapter 2 -- All That Glitters

On the outskirts of Dodge City, she turned to him with a frown. Here we are?

Wal-Mart, he explained.

She nodded.

He parked then helped Tedi and Bobby out, resnuggling his coat around them. He lifted Yesi from the seat, shielding her from the wind with his sport jacket as best he could. Yesi folded her arms. She would not look at him.

He carried Yesi with one arm and walked with his other hand on Tedi’s elbow. It was late. The store was almost deserted but it was always open. In the doorway he caught the greeter, a Hispanic man of about seventy, giving Tedi a strange look then dealing him the evil eye.

Meggs looked closely at her. His heart sank, his face flamed. She had covered it with powder but under the harsh fluorescents it stood out like… a black eye. Grimly Meggs added Alberto’s name under Miguel’s on his ‘To-Do’ list. He avoided the greeter’s eye as he seated Yesi in the cart.

The man looked brazenly, intently, into Yesi’s sullen face then at Meggs, his black eyes cold with contempt. Meggs felt the man’s eyes on his back as he pushed the cart to the outerwear department.

Reluctantly Tedi chose two cheap, flat, children’s coats. Meggs removed them from the basket and chose two pricey, puffy coats; pink with a silver appliqué of ballet slippers for Yesi and blue with a red Spiderman for Bobby. He picked up matching hats and mittens. He pointed to the ladies section. Find something nice for yourself.

Quickly Tedi chose a black and gold jacket. Meggs threw a pair of black gloves into the basket. He moved on to the baby section and pointed at the diapers. She chose a box. He took two more and a walker for Bobby, because his nephews and nieces had used walkers and the idea of a baby scooting around his living room tickled him. At the end of the aisle, he found sleepers – the warm, fuzzy ones, with the feet. He gestured to Tedi. She chose one for each child. He checked the size and chose two more apiece. He moved on to children’s clothing and pointed. She picked a couple of items.

Más. Necesitan más, he said.

She jumped a little and gave him a look. ¿Cuánto más?

He spoke slowly, pointing out the items on the racks. Muchos. Blue jeans, sweaters, t-shirts, flannel shirts. There is a big yard to play in, as soon as I get it cleared out.

¡Son caros!

What?`

Too mosh the money joo pie!

He chose some things and put them in the basket.

She clucked and removed them, but chose more in the correct sizes. He took down a red velveteen dress embroidered with golden hearts and held it to Yesi. Yesi’s eyes flickered but she said nothing. Tedi looked at the price tag and gasped. Maxx! Too mosh!

Es mi dinero, he said firmly.

She took the dress in another size. Then, almost guiltily, she took a pair of gold tights. He pointed to hair ribbons. She chose a red heart barrette. He led them to the maternity section. He motioned for her to pick. She did so, putting two sweaters and two pairs of pants in the basket.

Más, Tedi, he said sternly.

For one snippet of a second, her old, sassy smile broke out. She chose two more outfits and another sweater. He added two flannel nightgowns, a robe and slippers. Para llevar en el hospital.

Maxx, she almost smiled.

He took down a red knit dress. He held it to her.

Maxx," she said again, but she put it in the basket.

He pushed them to the shoe section for shoes and snow boots then to the sewing machines.

He gestured to the table models. She was clearly shaken. Magnanimously, he waved again. It was more money than he had budgeted for, but he had enough common sense to know that a family man must always have an emergency stash. He never wanted to hear her cry again.

Tedi took her time in the decision, carefully reading the Spanish selection on each box. Meggs tried to catch Yesi’s eye with a reassuring smile but she was having none of him. He was not disheartened. His Doctor Spock said that the three year old was often apprehensive about testing the independence she had won at two.

He was studying Tedi studying the sewing machines when Bobby opened his coffee bean brown eyes directly into Meggs’ gray eyes. The baby gave a little start. Meggs held his breath. Bobby’s triple chins quivered.

Maxx, ven aquí.

At the sound of his mother’s voice, Bobby relaxed, gurgled a greeting and broke into a slow sleepy smile. Meggs handed him his tractor. He cooed his thanks, his dark eyes glowing with trust and affection.

#

Some fifteen years and a few odd months later, Meggs was reminded of this first meeting, as he pulled Bobby from a muddy slough and worked frantically to revive his eldest son.

It happened like this: On a Friday evening, in the early spring of the first decade of the second millennium, Meggs had been welding a corral gate. He paused to watch the sky as black, menacing clouds stacked, one on top of the other, directly over their little farmhouse. He quit his torch and mask. Small white clouds scurried in and out of the thunderheads, like terriers at the heels of bulls. He took a step towards the house. A rifle-crack of thunder rang out, the sky was split by six or seven lightning strikes. One snapped sparks off a cottonwood down by the creek. One zigzagged into a round-top only yards away. Meggs shouted for his family.

Tedi, now a little heavier, a frost of gray in her blue-black hair, but still very well constructed, appeared from the back yard where she had been sketching at the picnic table. Their young son, Clyde, was in her arms. She shooed him into the back porch and stood at the doorstep. Yesi, wearing an asbestos apron and carrying a silversmith’s peen, peeked out the shop door.

Yesi! Get in the house! Meggs ordered.

But, Dad, I just started the kiln.

Turn it off! Go in the house!

Don’t be nuts. It’s only a thunder…

Lightning popped off a transformer down the road. The transformer dropped from its pole and the house went dark. Now! Meggs roared.

Dad, you’re plain flat nuts, Yesi muttered, walking, not running, for the house.

Jamie rattled up in a battered pickup truck, a bale of alfalfa in the back. Meggs ran to the truck, arms outstretched, as if he could shield his son from the sky.

Dad! We were on the swather! That first bolt almost hit us! Jaime shouted over the storm, bailing out of the pickup and into his father’s arms.

Where’s your sister? Meggs choked, holding his son close.

Jamie opened the pickup door to show a gray-eyed girl cowering under the dash. Meggs scooped her into his arms and ran for the gate, his son at his side. Tedi pulled the storm cellar doors open and motioned them in. Yesi held Clyde.

Where’s Bobby? Meggs shouted, because all hell had broken loose over their heads.

He’s moving that brush. He didn’t want to come in, Jamie answered, on the verge of tears.

That damn fool! Meggs jerked the keys from Jamie.

Maxx! ¿A dónde vas? Tedi shouted, going to the doorstep.

Stay back! Keep them in the cellar! he commanded, running the side yard and kicking the gate open.

He jumped into the pickup, slammed it into gear and barreled down a road that was both wet and dusty. Barely a quarter section down the road, he found a rider-less tractor circling a field. He bailed from the truck and sprinted the furrows, calling Bobby’s name like an old woman, fighting against the wind and rain.

He found him, face up, sprawled in a puddle of muddy water, just as the bolt had laid him out. Meggs pulled his boy free and cradled him to his weepy old heart, sobbing his name.

Bobby opened his eyes and gave his father his slow, sleepy grin. Hey, Dad? What happened?

Relief which gives way to white hot anger is every parent’s cross. Meggs gave vent to it now, berating Bobby for his stupidity.

But Dad, you said if I didn’t have the brush cleared by supper, I’d have to do it tomorrow. I have practice tomorrow!

Wracked with a tardy attack of nerves, Meggs sat twitching in the rain, as Bobby, now a blue-jeaned, t-shirted demigod, chased the tractor down. He tackled the tractor and stopped it cold, swaggering over the muddy furrows with a cocky grin, to the fencepost where his ancient father wept.

Bobby couldn’t help smiling. This would make a funny story to tell his sibs, his cousins and classmates. Around the county, his father was known as an eccentric, a loner, a cantankerous steel-fisted buzzard. He, his mother, and his sibs knew Meggs for the old hen he really was; as shy and sensitive as a fourteen-year-old girl at heart. But something in the pellets of hail clinging to his father’s hoary locks wiped the smile from Bobby’s face. He stooped to pick Meggs’ sodden panama from the mud. Tenderly he placed it on his father’s bowed head. Tenderly he massaged at his bent shoulders. Dad, that lightning missed me by half an acre.

Meggs wept on.

#

Ven, amigo, Tedi said again.

Afraid to leave the children alone in the carts – there were warnings against this all over the store – Meggs pushed them to where Tedi stood pondering the boxed machines. Thoughtfully she explained the pros and cons of each machine. He didn’t understand much beyond maquina, carra, hecho and barrato; still he listened attentively. It was obviously important to her to have someone listen to her thinking. It occurred to him that this was a weighty decision for one so young.

Finally, gravely she chose one from the middle of the shelf. He pointed to a box or two from the expensive end, because the Dupees always thought it was better to pay a little more. She shook her head. Ese. She pointed to her first choice.

He lifted it then stowed it under the first cart – by now they had two. He led them to the toys. For Bobby, he chose some blocks, a rainbow tower of stacking rings, another tractor, some cloth books, a Spiderman doll, a musical teddy bear and a workbench with hammer and pegs. He motioned Yesi to take some toys. She crossed her arms and looked at the floor. He took down a stuffed kitten, a couple of books that he remembered reading to his nieces and nephews, a big ball stenciled with stars, a floppy, blue-haired clown doll, and a set of pots and pans with comical faces. She looked at none of these. He wracked his brains and finally moved on.

They were almost to the checkout, the carts too heavy to push comfortably, when Meggs made an impulsive turn to jewelry. Face burning, he asked to see the wedding bands. The clerk, a Hispanic woman, was openly curious about the arrangement. He easily dodged her leading questions but he felt Tedi grow sullen. He sensed that it was important to her that he choose from the expensive end of the showcase and he did so, picking a three ring set that was much too gaudy for him, but caused Tedi to gasp in approval.

The clerk sized and boxed the bands but Meggs asked for the small diamond. Hands trembling, Meggs pushed the ring onto Tedi’s puffy finger.

He had wanted different circumstances. He had wanted the situation to mellow, to season, to do this alone, one evening in the moonlight. He had meant to tell her that he wanted the arrangement to blossom into a love match, that he had been watching her for months as she carried his slaw and chicken fry, his Reuben and iced tea, but of course they couldn’t leave the children unattended. He did it roughly, silently, almost curtly, in his overalls, his long, dark, grizzled hair draping into his eyes, with Bobby banging his tractor on the shopping cart for serenade.

Then, because a bit of the Dupee blood had infiltrated his veins by osmosis, Meggs made a showboat move. He called down a tray of glittering bracelets – the kind college girls wore to play tennis. He was a silversmith and could do, would do, silver and turquoise for her. He wanted something he couldn’t, wouldn’t make, something gaudy, sassy and rich to wear on her slender wrist – a wrist he had been watching all summer as she brought him his BLT and lemonade, burger and fries. He wanted something to fetch back the mocking, graceful beauty that had been swallowed up by the enormous midriff, the black eye and swollen lip.

He chose a pearl and garnet number with a three digit price tag, because it went with her new dress and because his heart had leapt at the beauty of her dusky skin foiled by the pomegranate red stones. He paid for it all – the bands, the bracelet, the sewing machine, the toys and clothes, shoes and coats, with a single check. Both Tedi and the cashier watched nervously as he filled it out, as if he might throw down the pen and confess that he had no money to cover an expenditure of that magnitude.

The cashier took the check skeptically. Her face was cold until she read the name. As always, the name counted more than the overalls, the shabby sport jacket, the heavy work boots. She summoned a boy to help Señor Dupee with his overflowing carts.

At the door, Meggs watched Tedi zip Yesi into her new coat. Being a man with some avuncular credentials, he took Bobby’s coat from the basket, de-tagged it and tugged him into it. Bobby watched him gravely, covering Meggs’ great hands with his tiny, pudgy ones as Meggs zipped then adjusted the coat and hood for him. Meggs took the new red mittens from their bag. Bobby gabbled in approval. Meggs slipped them onto Bobby’s hands. The boy held his hands up to inspect this wondrous gift. Meggs shouldered him.

¿Papa? ¿Papita? Yesi crooned.

Meggs’ heart jumped. What did she say? ¿Qué te dijo?

Tedi took Yesi’s hand. Papita – snack. Chee hev hongry. I tell her we it mañana.

If she is hungry, she eats, Meggs said, flat.

Chee hev the soap, bifor.

He paused,