Demon Box

Then, behind him, bobble-butting out the bus door, come that big-mouthed doughball of a character from Los Angeles by the name of Otis Kone. Otis is a kind of full-grown sissy and has always rubbed me the wrongest of any of my grandson’s gang. For instance the way he stood there, looking at the Towers like he might buy it. He had on a little black beanie and around his rump he had strapped a belt with a scabbard. He pulled out a big long sword and flashed it around his head for the benefit of all. About the only good I can say about Otis is that he always goes back to Southern California as soon as our rains start in the fall, and stays there till they stop. Which is to say he stays away most of the year, praise the Lord. Watching him parade around Devlin with that sword I says to myself, Uh-huh, that’s who was giving me the willies from the other end of the phone!

Then, out come this other fellow. A big fellow, draped in white from crown to toe like an Arab. Was he something! I strained through the glasses to see if I knew him but his face was all a-swirl. In fact, it seemed that he was wrapped in a kind of slow swirl. He come out of that bus and sailed about like he was moving fast and slow at the same time, pausing in midair to reach back for somebody else then swirling around again, opening like a flower as he lit down. I saw he had a little child who was also dressed in white but only in short pants and shirt with nothing over his head. It was quite apparent then that both of them were of the black race. He set the little child on his shoulder and followed Otis with his sword and my grandson with his forehead into the building, out from beneath my sight. But you could imagine it: Miss Prosper the nurse and receptionist craning over the top of her Organic Gardening, the rest of the lobby loafers looking up from their games and so on. I bet you didn’t hear so much as a checker move.

I just had time to get the last clippie out of my hair before there came two quick knocks at my door, then one, then two more.

“Let me in queeck, Varooshka; they are on to us! Ve must atomize the feelm!”

It was of course that nitwit Otis. I shudder to think what would have happened had he pulled that at Mr. Firestone’s door by mistake. I opened as far as the chain would let me and seen it was just a wooden stage sword painted silver. He was wearing some patched-up baggy pants and the fly not even zipped. “Sorry,” I says, “I gave all my rags to the mission,” and made like to slam it before I said, O I am sorry. They laughed at that.

“Happy Birthday,” Devlin says, hugging me. “You remember Otis Kone?”

I took Otis’s hand. “Sure.” I give it a good squeeze, too. “Sure I remember Otis Kone. Otis comes up from California every summer to try and get my goat.” To which Otis says, “It’s not your goat I’m after, Granny,” wiggling his eyebrows, then made to reach for me. I spronged his fat little fingers with a clippie, harder’n I meant. He howled and duckfooted around the hall like Groucho. I told him to get his pointed head in out of the hall before somebody called the Humane Society. He slunk past so low I had to laugh in spite of myself. He is a clown. I was about to apologize for ragging him when the third fellow glided into sight.

“Grandma, this is my longtime friend M’kehla,” Devlin says, “and his son Toby.”

“Mrs…?” he asks. I tell him it’s Whittier and he bows and says, “It’s Montgomery Keller-Brown, Mrs. Whittier. The name M’kehla was… what would you say, Dev? a phase?” Then he smiles back at me and holds out his hand. “Everyone has told me about Great-Grandma. I’m very honored.”

He was even grander than through the field glasses: tall, straight-backed, and features like the grain in a polished wood, a rare hardwood, from some far-off land (though I could tell by his voice he was as country southern as I was). Most of all, though, with a set to his deep dark gaze like I never saw on another earthly being. I found myself fiddling at my collar buttons and mumbling howdy like a little girl.

“And this man-child,” he says, “is called October.” I let go the hand, feeling relieved, and looked to the little feller. About five years old and cute as a bug, squinting bright up at me from behind his daddy’s robe. I lean down at him. “Was that when you was born, honey? October?” He don’t move a hair. I’m used to how little kids first take how I look, but his daddy says, “Answer Mrs. Whittier, October.” I say, “It’s all right. October don’t know if this ugly old woman is a good witch who’s going to give him one of her taffy-babies or a bad witch gonna eat him up,” and stuck my false teeth out at him. That usually gets them. He eases out of the shrouds of his daddy’s robe. He didn’t smile but he opened his eyes wide enough so I suddenly seen what it was made them so strangely bright.

“Toby is the name I like best,” he says.

“Okay, Toby, let’s get some candy before that Otis consumes it all.”