I didn’t answer. He sat down next to me, put his feet on the coffee table, and waited. He followed my stare out the front window to the box.
“I was having a good day. A really good day,” I said. “Now, I’m about as low as a body can be.”
“Ray has that effect on people,” Henry said, like he knew exactly. “I was out in the studio feeling the same way. Anything I can do?”
I shook my head. “Ray’s coming brought everything back.”
“Everything is a lot,” Henry said gently.
“Yeah, and it bugs me that it bugs me, you know?”
“I do.”
I sighed big. We both stared some more at the box.
“I hate it that it’s out there,” I said. “But I hate it more that another part of me wants to know what’s in it.”
“Yeah, I know,” Henry said, still staring at it. “But it’s infected with Ray and your mama’s craziness, with everything, right?”
I looked at Henry. He knew.
Just then Mr. C flew off the front porch and into the yard and jumped right on top of that box.
Henry and I looked at him and then at each other. Henry took my hand. “C’mon,” he said.
Turned out, wasn’t much in that box at all. Nothing but a bunch of old musty nightgowns and bathrobes, scarves, and junk jewelry. Not one single item I could for absolute certain identify as Mama’s.
The scarecrow was Henry’s idea, but I latched onto it right away. Less than an hour later, he’d welded together a metal frame for a body with a round gear for a head. Like a life-size stick figure except that the arms stretched out straight in front from the shoulders. At the ends of the arms Henry welded two horseshoes—my idea—ends up, so the luck wouldn’t run out. They looked like two hands saying stop. A metal pole made a neck, spine, and lower body, which Henry stood in a stand he made from a hollow pipe welded to a round base.
He wheeled the welded frame into the front yard, and I dressed it in all eight or nine of the nightgowns and robes, draping the filmy pink, purple, blue, and green material so the skirts and sleeves would flutter in the breeze. I hung the jewelry from the horseshoes for the crows to take for their nests, then wound the head part all around with the scarves, leaving the ends long to trail behind like hair.
When I was satisfied, Henry wheeled our creation to the end of the yard next to the drive, where people would see it as they drove up. He called Fred and Bessie, and then the Padre, asking if he might come baptize it with holy water. The three of them arrived in high spirits with Harlan in tow and the Padre in his baptizing vestments. We all gathered around it as the Padre flung holy water and oil from two flasks, saying, “Out with the old and in with the new!” and everyone hooted and clapped.
And it was beautiful, more beautiful than anything that had ever come from Mama.
Harlan tipped his head from side to side, like he was trying to figure it out. “So what would you call this exactly?” he asked Henry.
“You’ll have to ask the artist,” Henry said, looking at me. Everybody was looking at me.
I thought for a long minute. “This is a one-of-a-kind, one-hundred-percent-guaranteed combination universal craziness deflector luck magnet and wild thing.”
Henry smiled. “Otherwise known as a work of art.”
17
Soon after Ray took off and Henry and I made our wild thing, the boy came back.
That afternoon Fred put up a Christmas tree in the front room, hung three stockings Bessie had quilted for Henry, me, and Mr. C’mere from the mantel, and fixed a fragrant cedar wreath to the front door. The effect was nice. I liked the piney scent of the tree and the way the little white lights encircling it twinkled in the dark at the end of the day.
Henry was working late, finishing up the last of the pieces for Lillian’s New Year’s show. He told me to go ahead and eat supper without him, that he’d look in on me when he came in. I saw to Mr. C on the porch, fixed myself a meat-loaf sandwich, read for a while in front of the fire, and then went upstairs to bed.
When I opened my eyes, the boy was sitting cross-legged on the rug beside my bed. He looked right at home, whittling away on a little piece of wood, letting the shavings drop to the floor. Henry’s welder was still going strong out back. I wasn’t afraid at all, not even startled really. I was glad to see him and realized that I’d expected him to come.
His canvas sack lay on the floor beside him. The letters WIL were scrawled in capitals on the bottom, facing me.
“Is that you?” I asked, pointing at the letters, and he nodded slightly. He reached in the sack and grasped something inside, then held his closed fist out to me, smiling. I reached out and he dropped an object into my open hand. It was another carving of Sister, running full out, her legs extended front and back, lifelike and graceful in every detail.
“Sister wants you to have that,” Wil said. He smiled again. That he was pleased to see me showed in his face, relaxed and even handsome under all that dirt.
“I thank her. It’s beautiful,” I told him. “Where is she?”
He tilted his head toward the window.
“Have you had any more trouble?” I asked.
Wil snickered. “Sister’s always trouble.”
“I mean real trouble.”
He didn’t answer. “Finish the story,” was all he said.
I’d forgotten I hadn’t told the end of the Japanese boy’s story that day at the cabin before Harlan interrupted. I wondered if Wil had come to see me or just to hear how the story came out.
“There’s something you’ve got to know first,” I said, and told him what I’d forgotten to last time,
