Stanzi—Sunday—The Answers
The dangerous bush man isn’t selling lemonade tonight. He’s not in the bush. I can’t imagine where he’d be on a Sunday evening, but I guess everyone must need a day off and maybe today is his.
I walk into his bush and check to make sure. No man. No trench coat. No letters for sale. When I walk out of the bush, China is standing there, staring at me with her stomach. She is shivering—from fear, not cold. China never walks down this road. China always uses the parallel road because of the bush man.
“Is he in there?” she whispers.
“No.”
“Oh,” she says. She shakes even more. I can hear her teeth chattering somewhere inside herself.
“I was coming to ask for… um… help with my homework.”
“Why would he be able to help with your homework?”
“He has the answers,” China says.
“Can I help?”
“No.”
“Want to come to Gustav’s with me?” I ask.
“I can’t. I said I’d meet Lansdale with the answers.”
“The answers?”
“For our… um… homework.” China isn’t looking directly at me. Not even with her duodenum.
“Are you sure everything’s okay?” I ask.
She lets out a sigh. “That’s what he always asks,” she says, pointing to the bush.
I wait a minute to see if I’ll eventually understand what she’s talking about. Then I realize it’s hard to understand what a stomach says. I think that’s the point. It may be why China swallowed herself in the first place.
“Will we walk home together tomorrow?” I ask. “I’d love to hear some of your new poems.”
“Have you finished your poem for English yet?” she says. “You can read it to us.”
“I haven’t had time,” I lie. “I can’t figure out what to write about.”
“You should dissect something and think about it,” she says. “Frogs always help you concentrate.”
She scurries off then, in the direction of Lansdale’s house. She is off-balance, teetering. I wish I knew what to say to her these days, but I don’t.
Gustav is suspended from a bungee screwed into the ceiling. He is hovering above the main rotor, I bet, securing the fixed ring at just the right angle. I’ve been reading up on helicopters. They aren’t so different from frogs, really—just a bunch of parts that make a whole.
He’s got his tool belt on, and it jingles as he rotates himself around on the bungee. I can see he is concentrating deeply, so I walk in, I sit on the upturned plastic five-gallon bucket, and I wait. Two hours go by. Gustav has sweat out a pitcher of pink lemonade, and his father brings him a protein bar and then drinks Gustav’s sweat and replaces it with a bottle of water that Gustav gulps down in one go.
Gustav’s father glares at me, the distraction, even though I haven’t said a word.
After two hours of this, I wave good night and walk toward my house.
The dangerous bush man catches me off guard.
“Give this to China,” he says as he hands me a long string of flat, colorful cardboard letters—like the kind on our HAPPY BIRTHDAY sign at home.
The letters go on forever. Infinity. I can’t fit them all into my hands, so I let them trail behind me. They are the same letters. A, B, C, D, E. A, B, C, D, E. Just not in that order. As I walk home, the weight of infinite letters drags me and I leave them on my driveway where one of Mama’s snotty tissues escaped her cleanup mission when we got back from Red Lion. I call China.
“The man from the bush gave me your answers,” I say. “They’re really long. Can you come and get them?”
She asks for my help.
I meet her three minutes later in the driveway and the two of us try to pull the string to her house, but infinity is too heavy.
“What did you have to do to get this many letters from him?” I ask.
“It was Lansdale,” she says.
“Well, what did she have to do?”
“She never has to do anything. She’s Lansdale,” China answers.
We stop trying to pull the letters any farther. She calls Lansdale on her cell phone and they decide to dictate the answers. China will read them and Lansdale will write them down.
I hear Lansdale say, “Don’t forget. You have to start at the beginning. If we get even one out of order, we’re screwed.”
I help China find the very beginning of the string of letters, and she reads. “A B E C D A B C A D D E A D A A B D C A D…”
I wave good night after I get a chair from the porch and place it under her. She sits and pulls the string of letters over her lap as if she’s spinning wool, letter by letter.
I think about what can be woven from wool. Things as small as baby booties or a tiny hat for your pet hamster. Things as large as king-sized blankets. Tents. The world’s longest scarf. I think about what can be woven from letters. Things as small as China’s haiku or a tiny I love you note. Things as large as laws. Treaties. And during test week, one could knit a scarf that wraps around the equator a million times—all from those five letters.