WHEN AGNES REACHED HER CAR, SHE WAS SURPRISED TO see the packages on the backseat and the sack with three rolls of different Christmas wrapping paper sticking out of the top like candy canes.
In the evening’s excitement, she’d completely forgotten her spree before she came to school. She felt ashamed of herself. All on a whim, she had given into the “Christmas Preview Sale” at the drugstore. She’d gone there just to get another ice pack for TJ. She had discovered a swollen place big as a goose egg on his shin.
But then the drugstore display showed all manner of nice toys for kids on sale. A big plush red bear, a little mirror and comb set made of pink plastic, a whole box of wooden paddles with rubber balls attached. She used to watch boys play with that toy when she was a girl. Big boys could dance on their roller skates and paddleball so fast the ball was just a blur. And next to the paddleballs were Slinkys, which could be worn on the arm like a bracelet.
And there the toys were, all in the backseat. Maybe she was just getting too impulsive.
This evening, she’d been outside, all safe, and she’d just had the impulse to walk right back in that building and sit down with Cat. What would TJ do without her? She’d known the girl had to be near ’bout scared to death, had to be, and if she wanted to sit with her—well, that was her choice to do. But going after Christmas now! Each toy had been like some child smiling at her.
Agnes settled into the driver’s seat, and then she heard a voice clear as if he was sitting in the seat beside her. She knew that voice.
“That you again?” she said.
And then he shut up. Oh, he was a trickster, all right. She just waited patiently.
Then she heard him again; he had such a snide voice: “Second childhood, Agnes?”
As always, she spoke to him out loud. “Oh, I know you. I just ain’t gonna pay you no attention. Can’t get my goat.”
“Now, Mrs. Agnes, you ought to be friendly. You privileged to have a friend like me. I’m your guardian angel, ain’t I? You ought to look out for my welfare.”
She started the motor.
He went on, “You look out for me—it just the same as looking out for you.”
“Like looking out for a part of me, maybe. The worst part.”
“Why, I’m just a little voice inside your own head.”
“I got better voices than you to listen to.” She took one hand off the steering wheel and pressed her bosom. “In here.”
“You’re getting too involved with impulsive people, Agnes. Hard telling what they want you to do next.”
“You ain’t nothing but mental illness.”
“If you’d listened to me,” he said, “you’d be a happy woman today.”
“That right!?” she said. “I don’t believe that and when I get home, I tell TJ you’re bothering me again.”
“Figure it up. Here you worried about a little impulsive spending! Consider that tithe promise. Instead of ten dollars on the hundred, suppose all these years you done just gave nine. Suppose that you had for yourself or your own loved ones one out of every ten dollars you gave the church, for—how long?”
“Thirty years,” she said. And she thought how she’d stopped short of buying a little electric train at the pre-Christmas sale. “I been a faithful tither for thirty years.” One dollar a week made fifty-two in a year. Take fifty-two thirty times and that was money worth having.
“And how’s that good husband anyway?”
“He just like always. He good. He give me a brain pill when I get home, and you be knocked dead, you old haint.” The doctor had explained it. Some people saw haints, others heard them. Once TJ told her the tithe was just too high a cut; they ought at least to take it out of what was left after expenses, not before. But when he saw the expression on her face, he never said that again.
“TJ good for sitting in the easy chair, yeah? He good on the dance floor and good at praying in the church pew. Oh, yeah. But where’s all your fine children and grandchildren, woman?”
“They in my heart.”
She heard laughter like bones rattling. Her hair tried to stand on end. She looked hard at the seat beside her. Just as she was about to see him, she had to look straight ahead. Something was passing in the road ahead, a kind of ghost cat, running hard from one side of the road to another. But she’d gotten a glimpse of him, Mr. Bones. As a child, she’d seen him in the old-timey minstrel shows, so she knew what he looked like.
In the car, sitting on the bench seat beside her, he’d been almost transparent. He’d had one skeletal foot cocked up on the other thigh. It was just the vaguest outline of bones, maybe something of the rib cage, that she’d discerned. He looked like an X ray.
“Li’l spirits,” she called out as if she was calling the chickens to get their grain. “Little girls.”
They came buzzing like honeybees.
We’re here
Don’t be scared
You be all right
Once you get home