let Grandma cut the suckers off our fruit trees. I rescued mice from sticky traps. I fed a litter of feral kittens and got fleas and worms from them. Maybe this rescuing is the one part of Grandma I inherited.
Who’s to say which is more worthwhile, pushing atom bombs far out into space or one of these little things I do? Well, I do know which is more important, but if I were the junco I’d like being rescued.
Sometimes Grandma goes out, though rarely. She gets to feeling it’s a necessity. She wears sunglasses and a big floppy hat and scarves that hide her wrinkled-up face and neck. She still rides a bicycle. She’s so wobbly it’s scary to see her trying to balance herself down the road. I can’t look. She likes to bring back ice-cream for me, maybe get me a comic book and a licorice stick to chew on as I read it. I suppose in town they just take her for a crazy lady, which I guess she is.
When visitors come to take a look at her I always say she isn’t home, but where else would a very, very, very old lady be but mostly home? If she knew people had come she’d have hobbled out to see them and probably scared them half to death. And they probably wouldn’t have believed it was her, anyway. Only the president of the Town and Country Bank—she rescued him a long time ago—I let him in. He’ll sit with her for a while. He’s old but of course not as old as she is. And he likes her for herself. They talked all through his rescue and really got to know each other back then. They talked about tomato plants and wildflowers and birds. When she rescued him they were flying up with the wild geese. (They still talk about all those geese they flew with and how exciting that was with all the honking and the sound of wings flapping right beside them. I get goose bumps—geese bumps?—just hearing them talk about it.) She should have married somebody like him, potbelly, pock-marked face and all. Maybe we’d have turned out better.
I guess you could say I’m the one that killed her—caused her death, anyway. I don’t know what got into me. Lots of times I don’t know what gets into me and lots of times I kind of run away for a couple of hours. Grandma knows about it. She doesn’t mind. Sometimes she even tells me, “Go on. Get out of here for a while.” But this time I put on her old tights and one of the teeny tiny bras. I don’t have breasts yet so I stuffed the cups with Kleenex. I knew I couldn’t do any of the things Grandma did, I just thought it would be fun to pretend for a little while.
I started out toward the hill. It’s a long walk but you get to go through a batch of pinons. But first you have to go up an arroyo. Grandma’s cape dragged over the rocks and sand behind me. It was heavy, too. To look at the satiny red outside you’d think it would be light, but it has a felt lining. “Warm and waterproof,” Grandma said. I could hardly walk. How did she ever manage to fly around in it?
I didn’t get very far before I found a jackrabbit lying in the middle of the arroyo half dead (but half alive, too), all bit and torn. I’ll bet I’m the one that scared off whatever it was that did that. That rabbit was a goner if I didn’t rescue it. I was a little afraid because wounded rabbits bite. Grandma’s cape was just the right thing to wrap it in so it wouldn’t.
Those jackrabbits weigh a lot. And with the added weight of the cape.…
Well, all I did was sprain my ankle. I mean I wasn’t really hurt. I always have the knife Grandma gave me. I cut some strips off the cape and bound myself up good and tight. It isn’t as if Grandma has a lot of capes. This is her only one. I felt bad about cutting it. I put the rabbit across my shoulders. It was slow going but I wasn’t leaving the rabbit for whatever it was to finish eating it. It began to be twilight. Grandma knows I can’t see well in twilight. The trouble is, though she used to see like an eagle, Grandma can’t see very well anymore either.
She tried to fly, as she used to do. She did fly. For my sake. She skimmed along just barely above the sage and bitterbrush, her feet snagging at the taller ones. That was all the lift she could get. I could see, by the way she leaned and flopped like a dolphin, that she was trying to get higher. She was calling, “Sweetheart. Sweetheart. Where are yooooowwww?” Her voice was almost as loud as it used to be. It echoed all across the mountains.
“Grandma, go back. I’ll be all right.” My voice can be loud, too.
She heard me. Her ears are still as sharp as a mule’s.
The way she flew was kind of like she rides a bicycle. All wobbly. Veering off from side to side, up and down, too. I knew she would crack up. And she looked funny flying around in her print dress. She only has one costume and I was wearing it.
“Grandma, go back. Please go back.”
She wasn’t at all like she used to be. A little fall like that from just a few feet up would never have hurt her a couple of years ago. Or even last year. Even if, as she did, she landed on her head.
I covered her with sand and brush as best I could. No doubt whatever was about to eat the rabbit would come gnaw on her. She wouldn’t mind. She always said she wanted to give herself back to the land. She used to quote, I don’t know from where, “All to the soil, nothing to the grave.” Getting eaten is sort of like going to the soil.
I don’t dare tell people what happened—that it was all my fault that I got myself in trouble sort of on purpose, trying to be like her, trying to rescue something.
But I’m not as sad as you might think. I knew she would die pretty soon anyway and this is a better way than in bed looking at the ceiling, maybe in pain. If that had happened, she wouldn’t have complained. She’d not have said a word, trying not to be a bother. Nobody would have known about the pain except me. I would have had to grit my teeth against her pain the whole time.
I haven’t told anybody partly because I’m waiting to figure things out. I’m here all by myself, but I’m good at looking after things. There are those who check on us every weekend—people who are paid to do it. I wave at them. “All okay.” I mouth it. The president of the Town and Country Bank came out once. I told him Grandma wasn’t feeling well. It wasn’t exactly a lie. How long can this go on? He’ll be the one who finds out first—if anybody does. Maybe they won’t.
I’m nursing my jackrabbit. We’re friends now. He’s getting better fast. Pretty soon I’ll let him go off to be a rabbit. But he might rather stay here with me.
I’m wearing Grandma’s costume most of the time now. I sleep in it. It makes me feel safe. I’m doing my own little rescues as usual. (The vegetable garden is full of happy weeds. I keep the bird feeder going. I leave scraps out for the skunk.) Those count—almost as much as Grandma’s rescues did. Anyway, I know the weeds think so.
THE GIFT BEARER, by Charles L. Fontenay
It was one of those rare strokes of poetic something-or-other that the whole business occurred the morning after the stormy meeting of the Traskmore censorship board.
Like the good general he was, Richard J. Montcalm had foreseen trouble at this meeting, for it was the boldest invasion yet into the territory of evil and laxity. His forces were marshaled. Several of the town’s ministers who had been with him on other issues had balked on this one, but he had three of them present, as well as heads of several women’s clubs.
As he had anticipated, the irresponsible liberals were present to do battle, headed by red-haired Patrick Levitt.
“This board,” said Levitt in his strong, sarcastic voice, “has gone too far. It was all right to get rid of the actual filth…and everyone will agree there was some. But when you banned the sale of some magazines and books because they had racy covers or because the contents were a little too sophisticated to suit the taste of members of this board…well, you can carry protection
