expanded, the other half to her painting. She was in no rush to mount a new show; anyway, she didn't dare renew contact with the Greenbaum Gallery or with anyone at all from her past life, until the police found Enoch Cain.
Truly, the time spent helping Agnes had given her uncountable new subjects for paintings and had begun to bring to her work a new depth that excited her. 'When you pour out your pockets into the pockets of others,' Agnes had once said, 'you just wind up richer in the morning than you were the night before.'
As Celestina and her mother loaded the last of the pies into the ice chests in the Suburban, Paul and Agnes came back from her station wagon at the head of the caravan.
'Ready to roll?' Agnes asked.
Paul checked the back of the Suburban, since he fancied himself the wagonmaster. He wanted to be sure that the goods were loaded in such a way that they were unlikely to slide or be damaged. 'Packed tight. Looks just fine,' he declared, and closed the tailgate door.
From her Volkswagen bus in the middle of the line, Maria joined them. 'In case we get separated, Agnes, I don't have an itinerary.'
Wagonmaster Damascus at once produced one.
'Where's Wally?' Maria asked.
In answer, Wally came running with his heavy medical bag, as he was vow doctor to some people on the pie route. 'The weather's a lot better than I expected, so I went back to change into lighter clothes.'
Even a cool day on the pie route could produce a good sweat by journey's end, because with the addition of the men to this ambitious project, they now not only made deliveries but also performed some chores that were a problem for the elderly or disabled.
'Let's roll 'em. out,' Paul said, and he returned to the station wagon to ride shotgun beside Agnes.
In the Suburban with Wally and Grace, as they waited to hit the trail, Celestina said, 'He took her to a movie again, Tuesday night.'
Wally said, 'Who, Paul?'
'Who else? I think there's romance in the air. The cow-eyed way he looks at her, she could knock his knees out from under him just by giving him a wink.'
'Don't gossip,' Grace admonished from the backseat.
'You're one to talk,' Celestina said. 'Who was it told us they were sitting hand in hand on the front-porch swing.'
'That wasn't gossip,' Grace insisted. 'I was just telling you that Paul got the swing repaired and rehung.'
'And when you were shopping with her and she bought him that sport shirt just for no reason at all, because she thought he'd look nice in it?'
'I only told you about that,' said Grace, 'because it was a very handsome shirt, and I thought you might want to get one for Wally.'
'Oh, Wally, I am worried. I'm deeply worried. My mama is going to buy herself a first-class ticket to the fiery pit if she doesn't stop this prevaricatin'.'
'I give it three months,' Grace said, 'before he proposes.'
Turning in her seat, grinning at her mother, Celestina said, 'One month.'
'If he and Agnes were your age, I'd agree. But she's got ten years on you, and he's got twenty, and no previous generations were as wild as yours.'
Marrying white men and everything,' Wally teased.
'Exactly,' Grace replied.
'Five weeks, maximum,' Celestina said, revising her prediction upward.
'Ten weeks,' her mother countered.
'What could I win?' Celestina asked.
'I'll do your share of the housework for a month. If I'm closer to the date, you clean up all my pie-baking and other kitchen messes for a month-the bowls and pans and mixers, everything.'
'Deal.'
At the head of the line, Paul waved a red handkerchief out of the window of the station wagon.
Shifting the Suburban out of park, Wally said, 'I didn't know Baptists indulged in wagering.'
'This isn't wagering,' Grace declared.
'That's right,' Celestina told Wally. 'This isn't wagering. What's wrong with you?'
'If it isn't wagering,' he wondered, 'what is it?'
Grace said, 'Mother-and-daughter bonding.'
'Yeah. Bonding,' Celestina agreed.
The station wagon rolled out, the Volkswagen bus followed it, and Wally brought up the rear. 'Wagons, ho!' he announced. The morning that it happened, Barty ate breakfast in the Lampion kitchen with Angel, Uncle Jacob, and two brainless friends.
Jacob cooked corn bread, cheese-and-parsley omelettes, and crisp home fries with a dash of onion salt.
The round table seated six, but they required only three chairs, because the two brainless friends were a pair of Angel's dolls.
While Jacob ate, he browsed through a new coffee-table book on dam disasters. He talked more to himself than to Barty and Angel, as he spot-read the text and looked at pictures. 'Oh, my,' he would say in sonorous tones. Or sadly, sadly: 'Oh, the horror of it.' Or with indignation: 'Criminal. Criminal that it was built so poorly.' Sometimes he clucked his tongue in his cheek or sighed or groaned in commiseration.
Being blind had few consolations, but Barty found that not being able to look at his uncles' files and books was one of them. In the past, he never really, in his heart, wanted to see those pictures of dead people roasted in theater fires and drowned bodies floating in flooded streets, but a few times he peeked. His mom would have been ashamed of him if she'd discovered his transgression. But the mystery of death had an undeniable creepy allure, and sometimes a good Father Brown detective story simply didn't satisfy his curiosity. He always regretted looking at those photos and reading the grim accounts of disaster, and now blindness spared him that regret.
With Angel at breakfast, instead of just Uncle Jacob, at least Barty had someone to talk to, even if she did insist on speaking more often through her dolls than directly. Apparently, the dolls were on the table, propped up with bowls. The first, Miss Pixie Lee, had a high-pitched, squeaky voice. The second, Miss Velveeta Cheese, spoke in a three year-old's idea of what a throaty-voiced, sophisticated woman sounded like, although to Barty's ear, this was more suitable to a stuffed bear.
'You look very, very handsome this morning, Mr. Barty, ' squeaked Pixie Lee, who was something of a flirt. 'You look like a big movie star 'Are you enjoying your breakfast, Pixie Lee?'
I wish we could have Kix or Cheerios with chocolate milk.
'Well, Uncle Jacob doesn't understand kids. Anyway, this is pretty good stuff.'
Jacob grunted, but probably not because he'd heard what had been said about him, more likely because he'd just turned the page to find a photo of dead cattle piled up like driftwood against the American Legion Hall in some flood-ravaged town in Arkansas.
Outside, engines fired up, and the pie caravan pulled out of the driveway.
'In my home in Georgia, we eat Froot Loops with chocolate milk for dinner '
'Everybody in your home must have the trots.'
'What're the trots?'
'Diarrhea.'
'What's? dia? like you said?'
'Nonstop, uncontrollable pooping.'
'You're gross, Mr. Barty. No one in Georgia has trots.
Previously, Miss Pixie Lee had been from Texas, but Angel had recently heard that Georgia was famous for its peaches, which at once captured her imagination. Now Pixie Lee had a new life in a Georgia mansion carved out of a giant peach.
'I ALWAYS EAT CAV-EE-JAR FOR BREAKFAST,' said Velveeta Cheese in her stuffed-bear voice.
'That's caviar,' Barty corrected.
'DON'T YOU TELL ME HOW TO SAY WORDS, MR. BARTY'
'Okay, then, but you'll be an ignorant cheesehead.'
'AND I DRINK CHAMPAGNE ALL DAY,' said Miss Cheese, pronouncing it 'cham-pay-non.'
