The old grocer lady was this crusty German hag, cussing out all we longhairs among her twisted potatoes, her cabbages, but she took one look at you and her face cracked wide open, suddenly stunning, I mean a beam of light blasted out of her mouth. And she said, Oh, well if that ain’t the littlest bit of a hippie ever made!
So this is how you came to be, Ridley Sorrel Stone, named for a town we never did see. Our Littlest Bit of a Hippie. Oldest soul in Arcadia. Our heir with no spare, Abe says, and his eyes pinch, then go clear again, and he nuzzles Bit around the neck, which tickles and makes Bit laugh, healing the invisible soreness in the Bread Truck, making them both forget the red-eyed wolves and the storm and the weariness of Hannah and the morning full of hard work now bearing down on them.
The first few days without Handy, the world feels off balance. He’s not there for the weepers or the bad trips, for his daily cheery wanders around each work unit to urge them on. No scraggly gray beard, no quick-blinking eyes, no constant tinkle of his guitar or ukulele or banjo. For a few days, the ones left behind tread too softly on the ground, and every other word that falls from their lips is Handy. Then, one morning goes by and Bit doesn’t think of Handy at all, until he trips over little Pooh, who throws herself in Bit’s path, and he skins his hands, and waits for Handy to come down from the Pink Piper to lift him, to look deep into his eyes and gather cosmic energy, and say, Oh, Littlest Bit, you’re A-OK, man, don’t have a freak-out. Pain is your body telling you to be more careful. Instead lovely Sweetie Fox kisses his palms and rinses them with cold water and puts a bandage on them. Abe organizes the work crews. Astrid smoothes over conflicts, assigning the hug therapy or work yogas to dissolve the tension. Two of the guys from the Singleton Tent are so mad at each other that in their yoga they rip down almost all the rotten plaster in the upstairs of Arcadia House in one day, a miraculous feat, and now are best friends, hanging on one another’s shoulders. The music isn’t as good but there still is music: recorders and guitars and harmonicas. It is as if all of their edges have bled a little into the space where Handy had been, the way separate stews eke across the plate to mingle when the rice in the middle has been eaten.
In his half sleep, late, Bit hears Hannah murmur: It’s nothing. I’m just tired.
You sure? Need a break? I’m sure we can scrape together the Greyhound. .
No, baby.
Fabric sounds, something against his foot.
Speaking of which.
Hey. Wait. I’m sorry. Babe, I’m sorry, no.
Will we ever? Do you think? Ever again?
It’s just. I would prefer not to.
Okay, Bartleby.
His parents laugh quietly, and when they stop there is a different kind of silence. Bit listens until his hearing fades and he carries only the sound of the kiss with him into his sleep.
Like the tractor that leaps forward with a nudge of the throttle, Arcadia jumps into high gear. Someone is always breathless, someone is always running. People have long conversations about wood rot and epoxy. There are knocks on the Bread Truck door in the middle of the night, the Scavengers home from Syracuse, Rochester, Albany, Utica, from the abandoned mansions they rip into for parts. In the morning, Abe whistles while he fondles the intricate carved mantels or soapstone sinks that have magically appeared on the Quad in the Octagonal Barn. He is a whirlwind of plans, sudden private laughs, and his energy spreads into the others, makes even Bit want to dance.
Bit makes up a song and sings it to himself all the time: Renovelation, renovelation, renovelation, fix and patch and clean and paint. . renovelation.
At night, making soy cheese and onion quesadillas, Abe beams at him, saying, Renovation, honey. But Hannah squeezes Bit and whispers, I think your word is apt. Re-novelization. Reimagining our story. She touches under his chin with her soft fingers, his mother, and he laughs for the happiness of pleasing her.
It is morning. Hannah has put hot coffee into Abe’s thermos. She has made them scrambled yeggs, soft, fresh tofu yellowed with nutritional yeast. When Abe marches up the hill to fix Arcadia House, his toolbelt jingling, Hannah goes to work in the Bakery.
Bit is building a castle out of woodblocks with Leif and Cole when he sees Hannah trudge back across the Quad and go up into the Bread Truck. He waits all day, but she doesn’t come to get him. Twilight spreads over the windows. All around the Quad the cold air sounds with the voices and bootsteps of the menfolk and ladies who are coming home. The Family Quonsets are abuzz, the Pink Piper spills kids into the dusk, the scents of fried onions and tempeh rise from the Singleton Tent, the tinny wail of baby Felipe is answered by the echo of a smaller baby, Norah or Tzivi, startled awake. Doors open, doors slam, voices call out in the raggedy homecomings of Ersatz Arcadia. At last, he gets Sweetie to suit him up and walks home alone.
Hannah sits up from the bedclothes, stretches, and gives Bit a piggyback outside for a pee, hopping barefoot over the frozen ground. Inside the loo, it smells like wet muskrat, though it is warm out of the wind. Hannah curses when she eyes the wipe-nail, filled with glossy squares cut from a Life magazine. Glossy means sharp and cold against your crack, itching later.
When they come in, the damp chill of the Bread Truck seems somehow colder than the outdoors, and Regina is standing at the kitchen table, a loaf of bread before her. She turns and gives a small wave. Hey, she says.
Hey, Hannah says, setting Bit down. He runs to the bread and tears off a hunk to gnaw. Bit hid when Hannah didn’t pick him up for lunch, and hasn’t eaten since breakfast. He’s starved. Hannah crouches to start a fire in the white ashes of the woodstove, the pinecones a fragrant kindling.
So we missed you this afternoon in the Bakery, says Regina. I looked up to ask you to make the granola, and you were gone. She has flour in her black crown of braids and a smear of something shiny on her cheekbones. Her eyes are tiny and set deeply in her head, her eyebrows are crows’ wings.
I got sick, Hannah says. Her voice is taut, but when she touches the match to the kerosene lamp, her face looks normal in the glow. I didn’t want to get anyone else sick, so I thought I’d go home.
Oh. Uh-huh, says Regina. Okay. It’s just that what with the Arcadia House project, it’s just me and Ollie up at the Bakery when you do that. Which is okay on the days you tell me, but when we’re relying on you, it’s a real pinch.
Sorry, Hannah says. I’ll be there all day tomorrow.
Is this about what happened in the fall. . begins Regina, but Hannah makes a shushing sound. Bit looks up to find Regina peering at him.
Really? Regina says. I mean, it’s not really our style to hide, you know? It’s a matter of life—
He’s so little still, Hannah says. We’ll tell him when it’s time. It’s our choice.
Handy says that kids don’t belong to individ—
My kid, says Hannah, more forcefully. I don’t care what Handy says. If you had one, you’d know.
The women turn away from one another and pick up things to examine: Hannah a match, Regina the coffee percolator. The air is rich with the silent adult language that Bit can never understand. All right, says Regina. She sets the percolator down with a bang. She picks Bit up, squints at him. Little Bit, make sure your momma pulls her weight, okay? she says. No slackers allowed in Arcadia.
Okay, whispers Bit.
When the door clicks behind Regina, Hannah says, Nosy bitch.