THE PLAGUE, THE LOCUST AND THE GRANDMA

The email said: “I’m sending you your grandson. There’s no other place for him to go except jail. I’m leaving for Africa.” The details of arrival followed.

“Oh, fuck,” she said and had to stop working on her latest painting even though it was a commission and she needed the money. Her career was carefully aborted every time she got near success, and she sort of knew why. It was the same reason that any advances from anyone seeking intimacy were quickly nipped in the bud. Even the ones that weren’t at all sexual, just wanting to be close friends. Success and intimacy were her two phobias and she was very good at avoiding them both.

But many of her strategies backfired. Old patterns are very hard to break when they are so deeply anchored in the unconscious. Way down deep, she craved both the intimacy and the success, which only meant that she had to fight them harder. It was the way she had avoided becoming a drunk, like her daughter. NO alcohol allowed in the house. Resistance and avoidance. If she were at a showing or a gallery, no matter how high-quality the booze was, she left as soon as she spotted it.

Now she stood in the bus station searching her jeans pockets. It had occurred to her that this boy was liable to be hungry even if his guardian had given him some travel money. Finally, she found a ten dollar bill. Just then the bus pulled in with a great snort and gasp, stinking of diesel and sagebrush as though it had plowed through the landscape, which it had, of course. The door flung open and out came a bony boy with hair in his eyes. That meant nothing. They all looked like that. 

She hadn’t seen this boy since he was an infant and her daughter stormed off with him. He didn’t look like his mother — he looked like HER. Oh, fuck. And then she thought she’d better stop talking like that with a kid on the premises.

“Come on, kid,” she said to him. “You hungry?” 

His eyes got big and wide — evidently his guardian hadn’t explained her very accurately. He was an Indian, American not the other kind, and a Pentecostal minister. Liable to be filled with spirit and do something inspired — like go off to Africa to help with some plague or other. He couldn’t resist need. That’s why he ended up with her daughter, the Plague, and the offspring, the Locust. She forgot his other name. Wasn’t registering much at the time.

Her old rattletrap pickup pulled through the fast food window lane. Neither one of them wanted to go inside. His stuff flung into the rear bed, his body crammed against the pickup door. he sat rigid but eating. Good enough.

She’d made him a bed in the room she used for storage. Literally, she had hammered together a bed from plywood and some old four-by-fours. “I’ll clear out more of this stuff later,” she explained. “You can make your own headboard if you want one.”

Actually, it was a nice bed, clean and soft, intact sheets on a relatively new foam mattress. No curtains in the room, but this far out in the country, they weren’t needed.

“Anything I can get you?” she asked.

For a moment he was stumped — then he asked, “Do you have a dog?”

“Nope. Two horses. You can see ‘em out there in what used to be an orchard.” He looked but didn’t really see.

“If you intend to stay a while, I ‘spose we could get you a pup to raise.”

Clearly he didn’t know what to intend. He said, “I thought you’d be older.” She suspected the Pentecostal helper had sold him the idea he was taking care of an old lady.

She left him to his thoughts and went back to her easel. Maybe she should take it out to one of the sheds and let this room go back to being a “front room,” whatever “front” implied. But, what the hell, the front porch would be good enough for sitting around until fall. Then she’d figure out some way to heat a shed. On the other hand, he’d be in school then so she’d have all day to work.

There was no sound from the shed/bed room. She glanced in on her way past and saw he was wearing earbuds, looking at her stuff in the room. Not unpacking. She figured she wouldn’t have to feed him for a few more hours — time enough to make a meatloaf.

“The Plague” had only been the result of a fever at first, the infection of lust, but it was also real love --  and most of all total commitment to a remarkable man. She had lost herself in love, ignoring consequences, and doing all she could to make her lover famous. Except that she got pregnant just about the time his fame was spreading and no one wanted a pregnant wife around, least of all the crowd of glamorous but needy women. Not that they needed money, they easily bought their way into his life with galleries and shows, coiffed, scented, dressed, and high heeled. Age meant nothing for these well-tended women and their network of contacts. They bought their way as much with their Rolodexes as with their fond praise.

But the Plague, even with her smell and noise, was irresistible, and that was a new attachment.  He could resist them when he was working, but not when he was out of the studio with the the little apartment in back.  It was good for a while.

Then there was a terrible disease and he was no more in any place. Not even a grave: he had wanted cremation. By then the Plague was just old enough to have begun separating from her mother and to long desperately for a father. At least she didn’t fool around with other kids, but she got pregnant by an older family man, firmly married and respectable enough to help her out with money so long as she stayed away from him.  The baby was the Locust.

There were some hard times. The artist had carried on with the studio, as a painter rather than a sculptor, but the glamour girls left with their checkbooks. Maybe it didn’t matter since her style and genre was quite different from his, but for a few years she wasn’t really developed as an artist and real customers hadn’t turned up. The Plague took the Locust and went to Mexico. 

That’s when both mother and daughter had a bit of a drinking problem for a while. Actually the Plague preferred weed and was quite a bit more mellow than her mother.

The artist stood in the doorway of the boy’s room, considering him. “What do they call you?”

“Books.”

“No, I mean what do your friends call you?”

“Books.” He rolled to the side so she could see he had thrust a spiral notebook under his backside to hide it. He was holding a pen. “I write books and they think that’s funny.”

She leaned her forearm on the door frame higher than her head. “Written many so far?”

“Some. Don’t ask whether any were published. Publishing is dead.”

“I’ve heard that.” She said. “Don’t you have a computer? A laptop or something?”

“I always use the ones in the library or cafés. I like the anonymity.”

“Okay, Books. I do have an old desktop Mac I keep in emergencies. It’s in the kitchen. Use it how and when you want.”

“Lou said you were a good person.” Lou was the Pentecostal boy-saver.

“I sure hope he’s right,” said the Grandma. “I’ll give it a try.”

He smiled for the first time. “What kind of a dog do you think would be good?”

“No pit bulls,” she said. And smiled.  "I'm the pit bull."