He drove up Mrs. Anderson’s lane and parked his bicycle in the garage. A small black and white dog came bouncing across the yard. When Escobar opened the gate the dog danced wildly around his legs and finally flung itself on his heavy boots, stomach up. Escobar leaned down and rubbed its stomach. The friendly dog was a good omen. Only friendly people kept friendly dogs.
“Little fellow,” Escobar said. “Hello, pretty little fellow.”
Wendy got up and shook herself. Then she started to explore with her nose every inch of his boots. Escobar cleaned his boots almost daily but they never quite lost the smell of fertilizer. Sometimes Lucia, his wife, complained of this. She was a city girl, born and raised in San Diego, and she considered manure (even steer manure swept off cement floors) as rather coarse and unpleasant. When Escobar tried to explain to her that manure was sometimes necessary as food for plants, Lucia wasn’t quite convinced. She kept two potted geraniums on the windowsill in the kitchen and they got along nicely without fertilizer, only a little water now and then.
The boots moved across the yard and Wendy followed them, sniffing, and yelping in frustration when they wouldn’t stand still.
Ruth came to the screen door. “Be quiet, Wendy.”
“He is a pretty little fellow,” Escobar said.
“It’s a she. A girl. Her name’s Wendy.”
“She’s a pretty little fellow.”
“She’s only a pup, eight months old. Naturally” — Ruth’s laugh came through the door, sharp and defensive — “naturally she’s not a thoroughbred.”
Escobar nodded cautiously. He was not certain what a thoroughbred dog was, since he had always connected the word with horses. He could not see Ruth clearly through the screen door, but he didn’t like her sound, and in spite of the omen of the friendly dog, Escobar was uneasy. He hoped the woman would stay on the other side of the screen door.
“Mrs. Anderson’s gone to work,” Ruth said. “I’m her cousin. I’ll be here all morning if you want to consult me.”
“Yes, boss.”
“Mrs. Anderson said just to start in. The tools are in the garage. I noticed, I happened to be looking out the window, and I noticed you brought some extra ones.”
He nodded again and began to back away from the porch. The dog followed him and Ruth called her back.
“Wendy, come here.”
“Go on, little fellow,” Escobar said, waving his hand toward the house. “Go on.”
The dog paused and Ruth said, “Come and get your goody. Here’s your goody. Come on.”
She opened the door and the dog streaked into the house. Escobar had a momentary glimpse of her before she closed the door again. She was an old lady with white hair.
Ruth fed Wendy the rest of the scrambled eggs from breakfast, bit by bit, and as she fed her she talked. This was Ruth’s hour — two of them had gone to work, and the other one was still in bed — and she intended to spend it as she usually did. But with the Mexican out in the yard, she felt self-conscious, as if he might be eavesdropping. He couldn’t hear anything, of course, since she talked in whispers to avoid waking Josephine, but still he was there, and the words she used to the dog were a little different from usual.
“There, my pretty, there’s your goody. What a glutton you are. What a fat little glutton. And the manners! Sniffing people like that, my goodness, what bad manners!”
He probably smells, Ruth thought. He looked clean enough but they all smelled under the surface. Their dark skins didn’t show the dirt and they were too lazy to wash if it wasn’t necessary. Bone-lazy. She would have to supervise him and see that he didn’t cheat Hazel out of her hard-earned money by standing around watering things instead of really working, or by taking too much time to eat his lunch. Hazel was too easy on other people and too easy on herself as well.
You had to watch these Mexicans very carefully. They were sly. They put on a great show of innocence and stupidity but Ruth saw through that clearly enough. She had had several of them in her fifth-grade class before she lost her job, and one of them in particular was very sly. He had curly black hair and brown eyes like an angel’s, but Ruth knew that the instant she turned her back the Mexican boy did something. What this something was or how he did it, she never knew, but she knew it was done. The boy terrified her and she reported him to the principal at least once a week. “He does something, Mr. Jamieson, I swear it, I feeI it!” “I think you need a rest, Miss Kane.”
That had been two years ago, but she still thought of the Mexican boy, she thought of his smooth innocent forehead and the dark angel’s eyes. In the middle of the night she tried and tried to figure out what he had done, until desperation seized her and she had to cram her fist into her mouth to keep from screaming and waking Hazel. The boy had become a symbol of fascinating, exciting, evil things she dared not name.
You need a rest, Miss Kane.
To: The Superintendent of Schools, Ernest Colfax, A.M.
From: Percy Hoag, M.D.
I advise an immediate medical leave of absence for Miss Ruth Kane, such leave to extend for an indefinite period of time.
She was only thirty-six, but her hair was white and her skin and eyes were pale as if she had been bleeding internally for years.
Josephine called from the bedroom, “Ruth.”
“Coming.”
She went through the dining room, drying her hands on her apron, and opened the door of Josephine’s bedroom.
“Oh dear,” Josephine said. “I woke up — what time is it?”
“Nine.”
“Oh dear.”
“How do you feel?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t moved yet.” She hadn’t moved at all during the night. She’d gone to sleep on her back with her head propped on two pillows, and now she was awake in the same position, and not a strand of her long brown hair was out of place. Nearly every night Josephine slept like this, quietly and without dreams, and when she woke up she lay without moving for a long time, remote and self-contained. During the day she brooded or wept, she had placid daydreams or she quarreled, she had headaches and spells of overwhelming fear. But at night she entered another world, and emerging from it in the morning she was rejuvenated. Her face was untroubled, her eyes clear and lustrous, and her skin seemed to glow. It was as if she drew nourishment, during sleep, from a part of her mind or body that she didn’t know existed.
“Something woke me,” Josephine said. “A noise. There, you hear it?”
They listened and heard just outside the window the spasmodic sounds of Escobar’s shovel. The faint shriek as it cut the ground, and the smack as Escobar spanked each clod of earth to free the roots of the weeds.
“That’s the Mexican,” Ruth said.
“So early.”
“Do you want a graham cracker before you get out of bed?”
“No, no, I think—” Josephine moved her head experimentally. “No. Is Harold—? Of course. Oh dear. I guess I’ll get up. It’s Saturday, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Harold’s off this afternoon. It’s nice having Harold around. The days—” She helped herself up with her elbows — “awfully long sometimes. The waiting — hand me my corset, will you? — four months yet, oh dear.”
She stood up and began lacing up the maternity corset, not too tight, just tight enough to give her some support. She was small-boned and slender, and her condition was becoming much too noticeable.