“Shelly,” he said, “hand me the skeleton.”
“Don’t call it that,” said Shelly quietly.
“That’s what it is,” said Dad, sounding puzzled. “But I won’t call it that. Just give it to me careful.”
Shelly reached down and lifted the thing from the basin. It wasn’t more than two feet long — bigger than a newborn, to be sure; but not so big she should be scared of it. She shouldn’t be scared; but when a still-green twig bent like an arm flopped against Shelly’s knee as she lifted it, she nearly dropped the thing. Dad was right — this was a skeleton, and it was crazy to call it anything else. When she handed the skeleton off to Dad, she was trembling.
“I hate this,” she said.
“I know.” Dad smiled down at her with what seemed like real love — but it didn’t make her feel better. He cradled the little wooden skeleton with nearly as much affection as he lowered it to the stinking tar.
“This is going to help us all,” he said, as he dipped it head-first into the boiling tar. “Everything’s better from now on.”
“Dad?” said Shelly as they worked. “What do we need a tar baby for anyway?”
Dad was watching the tar. “You remember what I told you about Mr. Baldwin, don’t you, honey?”
Shelly remembered the story, all right; Dad had told it his first night back, while everyone sat around the kitchen table not looking at each other and picking at their food.
Mr. Baldwin was Dad’s prison buddy — his cell-mate for years. And Mr. Baldwin swore by his tar baby; a little man he kept under his bunk.
Mr. Baldwin’s tar baby was made from a pot on the roof of the pen’s south wing when it was under construction back in the 1970s and Mr. Baldwin had drawn work duty there. According to Dad, Mr. Baldwin was a puny fellow, more like a boy than a man in those days, and although Dad wouldn’t say why, small size and smooth skin was always a problem in a jail house. “Particularly when you’re like Mr. Baldwin, and won’t stand for nothing,” he said.
Mr. Baldwin had explained how he’d made the tar baby when he and Dad were cell-mates for a few months before Dad’s release, and Dad had paid close attention. After all, Dad explained — Mr. Baldwin was still alive after all these years, and although he wasn’t any bigger, and his skin wasn’t smooth anymore, it wasn’t scarred much either. Mr. Baldwin said he’d never been forced to do anything he didn’t care for, and over time since that day on the roof when the tar baby got born, everyone got to calling him Mister.
“It was a good time, when I was in with Mr. Baldwin,” Dad said, eyes focused far away and voice gone wistful. “No threats, no fights — nothing bad, nothing harmful. Men were respectful. The tar baby taught everyone a lesson.”
“Sounds boring,” said Blaine, watching the tar boil and bubble, the brambly skeleton now vanished beneath its surface.
“Hush,” said Dad. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, boy.” He leaned forward, peering through the thick fumes into the pot. “We need a tar baby, little girl, because your brother thinks peacefulness and respect are boring.”
Shelly still didn’t understand why Dad wanted a tar baby now that he was outside of jail, but she figured it was better not to press the point. Dad was concentrating.
“Is it done?” she asked instead.
“I think so. Lord, I wish Mr. Baldwin were here now. He’d know for sure.”
“Maybe we should wait,” said Shelly.
Dad thought about this, and shook his head. “No. It’s time now. Blaine?” Without looking up, Dad held his hand out. Blaine rolled his eyes at Shelly, and hefted the can of turpentine. Dad took it, unscrewed the top and held it over the pot.
“Hold your nose,” said Dad. He mumbled a verse about hair and salt and lizards, and began to pour. The turpentine in the hot tar made an awful dark vapour where it etched out the tar baby from the rest of it, and even though Shelly’s nose was held tight, she could taste it on her tongue and feel it in her eyes as it rose up around them and blotted out the dim light of the evening. She shut her eyes against it, sealed her lips, but it was still around her; she felt it sticking to her like the tar it’d come from, and the substance of it stayed on her even when the smoke cleared and Dad, arms tar-black to the elbow and grinning like a little boy, pronounced them done for the night.
“Come on,” said Blaine. “Get up off the ground, stupid, and let’s go.”
Shelly flinched back — expecting another punch maybe. But Blaine stood against the darkening sky with Dad, his hands tucked safely into his armpits.
“Before the cops come,” said Blaine.
Mom was watching an old episode of Frasier on TV when they got back, and when Dad came through the door after Shelly and Blaine, she glared at him like he was trespassing. In a way, he was. This was, strictly speaking, Mom’s house; she’d inherited it from her own mother, free and clear back before Shelly’d been born. The house was miles outside town, on an ugly flat scratch of land where the grass grew too high and you saw the neighbours by the smoke from their woodstoves in the winter. But it was theirs, free and clear.
Mom called it their haven; for without the security of a paid-off house in a jurisdiction where the taxes were low, who knew where their awful circumstances would take them? She couldn’t work anymore, not since the accident at the restaurant three years back where she’d bunged her knee; a mortgage or even regular rent on a place like this would ruin them. She couldn’t carry it on worker’s comp alone.
“Keep that thing in the shed,” she said, as Dad brought the basin inside. Mom probably wouldn’t have sounded angry to anyone but Shelly, and maybe Blaine.
If Dad understood her tone, he didn’t let on. “Won’t do in the shed,” he said. “Got to be here, or there wasn’t any point.”
Mom rolled her eyes. “There wasn’t any point. You got that right.” She picked up the remote from the side of the couch and pointed at the TV. Frasier’s dad and the little dog vanished, and the room darkened a bit. With a grunt, Mom shifted her feet from the couch to the floor, and lifted herself on her cane. It was no mean feat; Mom had gotten heavy since she’d taken off work. “You going to catch a rabbit with that?” she asked.
Dad didn’t get it, and Mom laughed unkindly.
“Mom’s talking about Bre’r Rabbit,” said Shelly, trying to help. “From Song of the South.” She’d seen the movie over at her friend’s house at Thanksgiving, and there was a tar baby in it. Bre’r Fox had used it to catch Bre’r Rabbit — and it’d nearly worked.
“Jail didn’t teach you much, did it now?” she said.
Dad sucked in his breath, like he was about to say something — and he looked down at the basin in his arms.
“Oh no,” he said. “We’re not starting this again. Not now.” He looked up, and his eyes had a calm about them.
“I’m putting this in the basement,” he said. “You won’t have to smell it, or even look at it if you don’t want to. So it won’t be any trouble for you — all right?”
“Whatever you say, dear,” said Mom, then turned to address Shelly. “Lord, now, isn’t it good to have a man around here? See, I wouldn’t have any idea how to put a bucket of tar in the basement and not stink up my house with it. Stupid little me wouldn’t know how to keep those fumes out of the vents, and before you know it, all the sheets’d start stinking like a blacktop highway in July!”