The National Guard returned.
Tar Calhoun and I were outside of the shed where we lived with Hyacinth and Lady Luck, and we hooted a hello to the National Guard soldiers. We raced to greet them.
After both of the trucks had stopped, the troops unloaded themselves, and their supplies, and boxes. But no Springfield rifles.
“Arly!”
Hearing my name, I looked at the back of one of the trucks. Someone was being helped to the ground, and it weren’t one of the Guardsmen.
“Coo Coo,” I said, running to him.
Grinning with every tooth he had (not too many), Coo Coo looked dirtier and happier than I’d ever see him. He held out his arms to me. We sure did hug each other. Right then, I knowed how beautiful a lame old pickie could smell. It was like I was home.
“Arly,” he said, “I was afraid you was …” He couldn’t seem to finish what he was efforting to say.
“I was feared you was,” I said.
He looked at me. “I’d fell down. Then the Nationals come along, to help me git up. One of them soldier boys, I guess he’s a officer, said that there was a kid named Arly over to here. I couldn’t believe my ears. But I fibbed and said you was my grandson, because they’s trying to put families back together. So I picked you, Arly. You’re all I got.”
“Coo Coo, I’m so happy you’re alive.”
“Me too.” He looked at Tar. “Hey, who’s your little pal? Is this new friend of yourn a boy or a gal?”
“Boy. This is Tar Calhoun. Say hello, Tar.”
Tar didn’t. All he done was stand there in the long shirtdress that Hyacinth had put him into.
“His mama’s coming,” Coo Coo said. “That woman don’t seem to look like too much pleases her. Certain not me.”
“Oh, that’s Hyacinth. Her name’s Mrs. Day, not Calhoun, and she’s sort of a mama to us both. It’s like we’re a family. And we even got a cat. Her name’s Lady Luck.” I turned to my small friend. “Come on, Tar. Don’t be afraid. Coo Coo’s nice, like Hyacinth.”
Coo Coo walked in the middle.
He was holding my hand, and Tar’s too. We was both hauling him toward Hyacinth, to meet her proper. I could, however, feel that Coo Coo was sort of dragging his feet.
“You seen Our Father, or Delilah, or any of the Golden Prophet Sisters?” I asked Coo Coo.
“No,” he said, “I sorry ain’t. It’s sad.”
“We mustn’t lose hope, Coo Coo. That’s what Hyacinth is always telling Tar and me. Every day, she walks off to places and calls out for Wilbert, her man.”
Nearing our shed, the three of us come to where Hyacinth stood waiting. It was plain that she was looking at Coo Coo as if he begged a bath and that the air around him needed a fresh breeze. Earlier, she’d already attacked both Tar and me with one of her treasures. A bar of soap. Hyacinth had even attempted to scrub up Lady Luck, without too much success. Except for hissing.
Hyacinth grunted. “Kids,” she muttered without smiling as she eyed Coo Coo. “They’s all time tugging home a lot of useless junk.”
Tar and I had already heared Hyacinth Day’s daily opinion of what she called trash. There was black trash and white trash and Mex trash. Like sugar candy, she said, human trash come in all kinds of flavors, and none of it was worth knowing, or keeping.
“This is Coo Coo,” I said.
“Maybe so,” Hyacinth said in a huff, “and maybe no.”
“He’s awful nice,” I said. “Honest he is. Because his real name is Charles, and he’s been baptized.”
“You can forgit that,” Coo Coo spat.
“Tar likes him,” I said.
With her fists on her generous hips, Hyacinth looked poor Coo Coo up and down, and made a face at him. “Well,” she said, “what Mr. Tar Calhoun cotton to, and what I favor, is plenty different.”
“Please like him, Hyacinth. Please do. You just gotta. Coo Coo is … well, he’s sort of my grandpa.”
Hyacinth said, “I wouldn’t claim it too loud. On account somebody might hear and believe you.”
“Morning,” said Coo Coo.
“One more mouth to feed,” Hyacinth snorted.
Right then, Lady Luck paraded out of the shed, stretched, arched her back, then sat to lick a paw. Tail up, she stroll over to Coo Coo, sniffed his bare feet, which was their usual color of field dirt, and rubbed her side on his bony white shin.
“See?” I asked Hyacinth.
Coo Coo scratched hisself (a action I’d bet the world that Hyacinth noticed) and then asked Hyacinth if she was the boss. Even though I holded quiet, I’d come lately to figure out that Hyacinth would act dreadful close to being the boss anywhere she do select.
“Ain’t no bosses no more. You a picker?” she asked Coo Coo.
“Used to be, a while ago back. But later, until the hurricane hit us, I was sort of a Prophet.”
Hyacinth looked at the dirty knees poking through Coo Coo’s sorry trouser legs, with their raggy bottoms. “Don’t seem to be much profit on you.”
“Well,” said Coo Coo, “before the storm, I got slicked up enough to become a acting honorary of The Golden Prophets of Salvation.”
“A honorary what?”
“Kind of a honorary … performer.”
Saying no more, Hyacinth turned and went inside our shed, the little make-up place where the three of us had been living, with Lady Luck. She come back out again, frowned her face, and tossed her precious hunk of brown soap to Coo Coo. He natural dropped it. This seemed to please Hyacinth. She now was wearing a slight smile, for a change, as Coo Coo bent careful to fetch it.
Hyacinth barked a order:
“Wash! If you can remember how.”
“Yes’m.” Coo Coo looked around in a pitiful way, as if he’d been commanded by devils to do a dishonest deed.
“Come on,” I telled Coo Coo. “Keep along with me and we’ll find the washing place. Come on now.”
Tar come too.
Lady Luck followed us, as though not wanting to miss an event that few eyes had ever seen: Coo Coo’s uniting hisself with soapsuds. He didn’t smell like a rose. But then, Coo Coo never had. He’d always smelt like a old wino who’d only owned one raggy shirt, which he might lend to somebody worse off.
“You gotta like Hyacinth,” I said.
Before answering, Coo Coo stared at the soap in his hand, as if wondering what it was. “I ain’t washing to please nobody. Because I’m not fixing to tarry around here, or toe the mark for that bossy Queen of Sheba.”
“She’s in the Bible,” I said.
Coo Coo stopped. “Who? That ornery hellion?”
“No. Sheba’s in it. Honest, because Our Father John read me about it, how the Queen of Sheba come to visit Solomon.” I laughed. “If Hyacinth is Sheba, then I s’pose you can be King Solomon.”
“Me? I ain’t wise. Not like old Solomon be.”
I winked. “You’ll be wise to wash.”
Coo Coo chuckled.
“Arly, I missed you, boy.” Leaning forward, he kissed the top of my head. Falling to his knees on the muddy ground, he put his thin old arms around me. He was shaking. “Oh, I done missed you awful bad.”
“I sure missed you, Coo Coo.”
“You real did?”
I nodded, wondering how anybody alive could smell so bad, and yet so good. “I’m glad,” I said, “that we’re pals.”
“Aw,” he said, “maybe we’re even more’n that. If you don’t mind at all, I’d like to be your adopted grandpa, for keepers.”
Seeing as I’d not never had me a grandfather, or a mother, I said, “I’d like it too.”
“Then it’s a deal,” Coo Coo said.
To seal the bargain, we both pretend to spit on our hands, then shook. His hand felt so hard from field working that it was like holding a eagle claw. Or a tool.
Earlier, Hyacinth had discover a horse barn. No horses in it. But there was a tin washtub, so old it was turning green. She’d dumped out the muddy storm water, righted it, and let the frequent rain do the rest.
We called it our washing place.
Yet we never was so stupid as to leave our soap there. Had we lost it, Hyacinth might’ve handed Tar and me some of what she called correction.
Coo Coo washed.
Tar washed too.
And then, so did I.
Lady Luck was washing herself, with her tongue, and it was simple to see that she was the cleanest of all. Cleaner than clean.
Except for Hyacinth, who’d invented it.