The Anything Box

Her hands were coming together and moving upward till the light from the
fireplace had a rest from flickering on that cracked, wrinkled wreck that was
her face. But the hands didn't stay long. They dropped back to her saggy lap
like two dead bats, and the sunken old mouth that had fallen in on its lips
years before I was born puckered and worked and let Aunt Daid's tongue out a
little ways before it pulled it back in again. I swallowed hard. There was
something alive about that tongue and alive wasn't a word I'd associate with
Aunt Daid.
Ma let out a sigh that was almost a snort and took up her fancy work again.
"Guess it's about time," she said over a sudden thrum of rain against the
darkening parlor windows.
"Naw," said Pa. "Too soon. Years yet."
"Don't know ‘bout that," said Ma. "Paul here's going on twenty. Count back
to the last time. Remember that, Dev?"
"Aw!" Pa squirmed in his chair. Then he rattled the Weekly Wadrow open and
snapped it back to the state news. "Better watch out," he warned, his eyes
answering hers. "I might learn more this time and decide I need some other
woman."
"Can't scare me," said Ma over the strand of embroidery thread she was
holding between her teeth to separate it into strands. " ’T'won't be your
place this time anyhow. Once for each generation, hasn't it been? It's Paul
this time."
"He's too young," protested Pa. "Some things younguns should be sheltered
from." He was stern.
"Paul's oldern'n you were at his age," said Ma. "Schooling does that to
you, I guess."
"Sheltered from what?" I asked. "What about last time? What's all this just
'cause Aunt Daid moved without anyone telling her to?"
"You'll find out," said Ma, and she shivered a little. "We make jokes about
it—but only in the family," she warned. "This is strictly family business. But
it isn't any joking matter. I wish the good Lord would take Aunt Daid. It's
creepy. It's not healthy."
"Aw, simmer down, Mayleen," said Pa. "It's not all that bad. Every family's
got its problems. Ours just happens to be Aunt Daid. It could be worse. At
least she's quiet and clean and biddable and that's more than you can say for
some other people's old folks."
"Old folks is right," said Ma. "We hit the jackpot there."
"How old is Aunt Daid?" I asked, wondering just how many years it had taken
to suck so much sap out of her that you wondered that the husk of her didn't
rustle when she walked.
"No one rightly knows," said Ma, folding away her fancy work. She went over
to Aunt Daid and put her hand on the sagging shoulder.
"Bedtime, Aunt Daid," she called, loud and clear. "Time for bed."
I counted to myself. ". . . three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine,
ten," and Aunt Daid was on her feet, her bent old knees wavering to hold her
scanty weight.
I shook my head wonderingly and half grinned. Never failed. Up at the count
of ten, which was pretty good, seeing as she never started stirring until the
count of five. It took that long for Ma's words to sink in.
I watched Aunt Daid follow Ma out. You couldn't push her to go anywhere,
but she followed real good. Then I said to Pa, "What's Aunt Daid's whole name?
How's she kin to us?"
"Don't rightly know," said Pa. "I could maybe figger it out—how she's kin
to us, I mean—if I took the time— a lot of it. Great-great-grampa started
calling her Aunt Daid. Other folks thought it was kinda disrespectful but it
stuck to her." He stood up and stretched and yawned. "Morning comes early," he
said. "Better hit the hay." He pitched the paper at the woodbox and went off
toward the kitchen for his bed snack.
"What'd he call her Aunt Daid for?" I hollered after him.
"Well," yelled Pa, his voice muffled, most likely from coming out of the
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icebox. "He said she shoulda been 'daid’ a long time ago, so he called herAunt Daid."
I figured on the edge of the Hog Breeder's Gazette. "Let's see. Aroundthirty years to a generation. Me, Pa, Grampa, great-grampa,great-great-grampa—and let's see for me that'd be another great That makes sixgenerations. That's 180 years—" I chewed on the end of my pencil, a funnyflutter inside me.
'"Course, that's just guessing," I told myself. "Maybe Pa just piled it onfor devilment. Minus a generation— that's 150." I put my pencil down realcareful. Shoulda been dead a long time ago. How old was Aunt Daid that theysaid that about her a century and a half ago?
Next morning the whole world was fresh and clean. Last night's spell ofrain had washed the trees and the skies and settled the dust, I stretched inthe early morning cool and felt like life was a pretty good thing. Vacationbefore me and nothing much to be done on the farm for a while.
Ma called breakfast and I followed my nose to the buttermilk pancakes andsausages and coffee and outate Pa by a stack and a half of pancakes.
"Well, son, looks like you're finally a man," said Pa. "When you can outeatyour pa—"
Ma scurried in from the other room. "Aunt Daid's sitting on the edge of herbed," she said anxiously. "And I didn't get her up."
"Um," said Pa. "Begins to look that way doesn't it?"
"Think I'll go up to Honan's Lake," I said, tilting my chair back, onlyhalf hearing what they were saying. "Feel like a coupla days fishing."
"Better hang around, son," said Pa. "We might be needing you in a day orso."
"Oh?" I said, a little put out. "I had my mouth all set for Honan's Lake."
"Well, unset it for a spell," said Pa. "There's a whole summer ahead."
"But what for?" I asked. "What's cooking?"
Pa and Ma looked at each other and Ma crumpled the corner of her apron inher hand. "We're going to need you," she said.
"How come?" I asked.
'To walk Aunt Daid," said Ma.
"To walk Aunt Daid?" I thumped my chair back on four legs. "But my gosh,Ma, you always do for Aunt Daid."
"Not for this," said Ma, smoothing at the wrinkles in her apron. "Aunt Daidwon't walk this walk with a woman. It has to be you."
I took a good look at Aunt Daid that night at supper. I'd never reallylooked at her before. She'd been around ever since I could remember. She was as much a part of the house as the furniture.
Aunt Daid was just soso sized. If she'd been fleshed out, she'd be about Mafor bigness. She had a wisp of hair twisted into a walnut-sized knob at theback of her head. The ends of the hair sprayed out stiffly from the knob likea worn-out brush. Her face looked like wrinkles had wrinkled on wrinkles and all collapsed into the emptiness of no teeth and no meat on her skull bones.Her tiny eyes, almost hidden under the crepe of her eyelids, were empty. Theyjust stared across the table through me and on out into nothingness while herlips sucked open at the tap of the spoon Ma held, inhaled the soft stuff Mahad to feed her on, and then shut, working silently until her skinny neckbobbed with swallowing.