“Could you bake one?”
“No time.”
But O’Dell was not through yet. He began jumping up and down with excitement and pointing. His face lit with frustration as he tried to find the words to present what was clearly the most complex thought his brain had ever attempted to generate. His eyes rolled. His tongue fought in his mouth for fluidity.
He was putting two pictures together in his mind.
Ed + Pros = Cake.
How could he get them to understand?
“Ed,” he was saying, knowing that somehow it was wrong. The harder he tried, the more angry at himself he got. Sometimes he wanted to rip out his own eyes and tongue for being so different. The pressure rose as he tried to form the word!
“Ed. ED!”
“Ed?” said Richard.
“Ruta Beth, do you know what he's trying to say?”
“No idea,” she said.
“O’Dell, honey, you go slow and try and say all the letters.”
“O’Dell made an effort to calm himself. When he at last seized control of his own voice, he spat out the word 'Bed.”
Bed? thought Richard.
“Bread,” shouted Ruta Beth.
“Yes, Richard, he's saying bread.”
The excitement was intolerable. Richard felt it himself.
Yes. What was a cake but bread with sugar? Well…
why not put some sugar on a nice loaf of bread, then cover it with frosting. Wouldn't that be sort of like a cake?
“We can do it!” he shouted, exalted.
“We can do it.”
O’Dell smiled rapturously as Ruta Beth kissed him and 'Wi-chud” gave him a manly clap on the shoulder.
Eagerly, they set to work. Richard's artistic talents came to the fore. One problem was that, shed of its wrapper, the loaf of bread kept separating into slices. It was Richard's brainstorm to pierce it with uncooked spaghetti strands to provide a kind of internal discipline that would hold it together.
O’Dell didn't have the patience to spread the frosting, but it turned out that Richard didn't either, even with his art training. It fell to Ruta Beth. With her eyes squinted and her tiny face knitted up like an angry fist, she dabbed the frosting on the sugary bread a dollop at a time. When she was finally done, by God it did look like a cake!
He began to sing, 'Py birfee, a-py birfee.”
“We need candles,” said Richard.
“Candles would really make it work.”
“Suppose it ain't his birthday? Or suppose he's one of them that don't like to be 'minded of his age?” Ruta Beth asked darkly.
But Richard held firm.
“No, it should have candles,” he said.
“I think we can take it on principle that Lamar is the sort of man who’d see the necessity for the ceremony.”
His will held sway. They had no birthday candles, of course, but they did find some candles kept in case the power went out. Richard cut them up and wedged them, like carrot stumps, into the frosting. When they were done, it looked pretty much like a cake. But something was missing.
Richard tried to guess what. It just looked sort of disappointing.
The frosting was white, somewhat unevenly applied, but mainly it was that the shape of the loaf of bread wasn't obscured enough. It just looked like a loaf of bread smeared with frosting.
“We can do better than that.” he said.
Then he knew.
“It needs… a lion!”
Everybody agreed that this was a wonderful idea. Richard set to work.
Quickly he located supplies: peanut butter to etch the face, two raisins for eyes, smashed bits of Frito to form the mane. Steadily he worked, as the other two hovered over him in the small, warm kitchen.
At first it was chaos. But Richard had invested so much over the weeks in lions that he was able to bring the shape out from nothingness, just seem to demand that it emerge from the swirls of peanut butter. And the liquidity of the peanut butter as a medium was interesting: somehow it was more naturally akin to the texture of muscle that he had had so much trouble getting into his drawings. The body-form just seemed to define itself out of the glop, powerful and radiant, vibrant with predatory muscularity. It pleased him.
Slowly, like a Mediterranean mosaicist adding his last few tiles, he built the Fritos into a mane. Then he added the two raisins. They were too big. It looked stupid. Then he saw a half-opened package of Oreo cookies; O’Dell liked to pry the Oreos apart and lick the frosting off. He took a cookie out, broke it into bits, and found two of approximately the right size that looked like eyes. Carefully, he placed this last detail where it belonged.
“Wi-on! Wi-on!” shouted O’Dell.
“Lordy be,” said Ruta Beth.
“It do look a lot like a lion.”
Just then, they heard the car pull into the yard. Lamar parked near the barn, then ambled toward the house.
“Git ready for a su-prise!” called Ruta Beth.
Lamar climbed to the porch, opened the door, and stared at the candles glowing in the dark.
“Now what the hell—”
“SURPRISE,” shouted Ruta Beth, Richard, and O’Dell simultaneously, leaping from the corners of the kitchen at Lamar in the split second after Ruta Beth had turned on the lights.
For the first time in his life, Lamar stood agape. His mouth fell open. He looked at them dancing merrily in the kitchen and at the thing they had made for him.
Then he started to cry.
“That's the goddamned prettiest thing I ever saw,” he said.
“Oh my, oh my, oh my, how you have made me proud today. That's the goddamned best surprise a man could get!
And a lion on it! Richard, boy, I know your work, that's you! Oh, it's so goddamned nice!”
“Gake! Gake!” shouted O’Dell.
“Well, let's up and have us a piece,” said Lamar.
“Lamar, it ain't a real cake. It may not taste like much,” said Ruta Beth.
“Well, damn, I'd say it's as real as a cake could get, Ruta Beth.” He bent to cut it, but O’Dell yelled 'Kwandul, kwandul.”
“Candle,” said Richard.
“He is saying, Blow out the candle. Make a wish.”
Obediently, Lamar blew out the candle.
“What'd you wish for?” Ruta Beth wanted to know.
“For us always to be this happy,” he said. He cut the cake into four pieces, the knife in his big fists, the f u c k and the y o u I blazing off his knuckles, and passed the pieces out, for the birthday boy always hands out the cake.
And if they sort of closed their eyes and let the sugary bread run in with the frosting, it did taste like real cake.
There wasn't but a dime's worth of difference between the two of them.
So it was that Lamar woke strangely happy the next morning. He had started scraping the house for its new
