Demon Box

I finally just shook my head; it was them, all right. All their movements and gestures were exactly those I remembered. But it looked like they’d been set to moving and then forgot the grease. And their voices, they were just horrible. I don’t mean old—I know a lot of older groups who sing fine, creaks, whistles, and all—I mean thin, hollow, like whatever had been there had been scraped away and left five empty shells. I recall reading how they’d had a lot of income tax problems; maybe that done it. But they were surely pathetic. They finished a couple of songs and people give them a little hand of pure charity. Then Jacob Brass stepped to the microphone.

“Thank you and buh-less you all,” he says. “Now, the next number… well, we hear from reliable sources that it is the favorite of a very fine lady out there having her birthday on this beautiful spring day. Eighty-six years young. So puh-raise the Lord this Good Friday song is especially ded–icated to our Good Friday Birthday Girl, Mrs. Rebecca Whittier!”

I wanted to dig a hole and crawl in it. And let me tell you: if they sounded bad on their faster numbers they now sounded downright pitiful. To make matters worse that dad-blamed Otis got going again. They’d sing, “Were you there… when they nailed Him to the cross?” and Otis would answer back, “Not me, youse mugs! I was in Tarzana drinking Orange Juliuses I can prove it!” loud enough the people got to laughing. Which of course only encouraged him.

“Pierced Him in the side? Ech. I wasn’t there then, either. I don’t even go t’ roller derby.”

The Brass family was so peeved by the laughter that to the secret relief of all they stalked offstage as soon as they finished two choruses, absolutely furious.

Betsy says she’s sorry my favorite number got messed up and I says me too, but little Toby says, very seriously, that it’ll be alright, because here comes his folks. Then did the crowd hoop and holler! The Birds of Prayer was the other end of the stick from the Brass family. They pranced out all in purple, Mr. Keller-Brown and another big black fellow with a beard, and three pretty little colored girls. The fellow with the beard played organ and sung bass, and Mr. Keller-Brown played those big native drums and kind of come in now and then, talking to them. The three colored girls sung and played guitars and shook tambourines. After the Brass family they were like a breath of fresh air. My grandson comes through the crowd toward us, bouncing up and down to the rhythm.

“How’d you like your dedication?” he asks, taking a pillow alongside me so’s he can reach the deviled eggs. I tell him it was fine but not a candle to them kids singing up there now. He grins, his lips all mustard. “So you like the Birds better’n the Brass?” A bushel, I say, that they were as good as anything I ever heard on KHVN. But I thought somebody said Mr. Keller-Brown’s wife was one of the group? He says, “She is. That’s her on the left.” And before I thought I says, “But what about our little—” I stopped before I said “blue-eyed,” but I’d said enough. My grandson shrugged and Betsy put a finger to her lips, rolling her eyes over at the little boy sitting there petting his kitty.

I could have bit my stupid tongue off.

Then the next thing that happened was after sundown. After the main of the crowd drove away or drifted off, a bunch of us walked down to the ash grove for my cake. Mr. Keller-Brown had pulled his bus down there and the kids had set up a table in front of where the cake was waiting. They sung “Happy Birthday, Great-Grandma” while Quiston scampered around with a box of matches trying to keep all those candles lit.

“Here!” says I. “You kids help Grandma blow ‘em out before we start the woods a-blaze.”

There was Devlin’s three, Quiston, Sherree, and Caleb, and Behema’s Kumquat May, and Buddy’s Denny and Denise, and the usual passel of Dobbs kids all circled close to be first at the cake. Quite a cluster. I seen little Toby way in the back outside this ring of glowing faces. He was still holding that cat.

“Let Toby in there, Quiston. This many candles gonna need all the breath we can muster. Okay, everybody? One… two…”—with all of them drawing a lungful except little Toby there, his chin resting between the ears of that Siamese kitty, both of them looking right at me, expressions absolutely the same—“blow!”

When I could see again, his daddy was standing right where he’d stood, lighting a Coleman lantern. He’d changed out of his purple jumpsuit into his most spectacular outfit so far.

“Goodness me! Aren’t you something! You’re almost as pretty as this cake.”