Rose Bunch
The Needy
Dean and Ray are leaning against a truck when I pull up at Bug Stompers. Ray gestures with his hands as if pleasuring himself and pokes his tongue out like a sick pig. Dean’s eyes are on me, but when he sees what Ray is doing, he jabs him in the gut.
“Fools,” I say. I slam my door so hard the plastic black widow spider on it advertising our services rattles. Its legs are still wiggling as I go inside to the meeting.
Our weekly meeting addresses any employee concerns, equipment issues, scheduling or projected growth. The bug business is booming. Martha, Ray, Dean, Bill and I cram into a room that doubles as both our break room and equipment storage. Cannisters of Vikane and Invader – HFX laced with Bay’gon line the shelves, as well as peanut butter and crackers. Bill ticks off a list he has written on a yellow pad: truck maintenance, Farmer’s COOP, mice infestation at the elementary school cafeteria.
“And one last thing. Dean and Ray, I want y’all picking up your spit cups from now on,” Bill says.
Bill looks hard at Dean and Ray.
“Sorry Bill,” Dean says. “I’m trying to give it up.”
His brown hair hangs limply over one eye as he slumps in his chair. I kind of like watching the way he moves sometimes, like a sloth I saw once on a nature show. It makes me feel peaceful.
Ray snorts and shakes his head like he can’t understand who wouldn’t just love finding cups full of moldy Skoal juice on the shelf. Ray isn’t really inclined to consider other people’s feelings on anything. He faintly resembles a possum with his pink-rimmed eyes and pointy teeth.
“If there’s nothing else, then we’re done,” Bill says.
I see my opportunity.
“I have a small announcement,” I say. “I would like my name withheld from the Christmas employee drawing this year.”
“Withheld?” Bill asks. “What do you mean?”
“I just think it is more in the real spirit of Christmas if rather than spend money on each other we found a needy family who we could really help,” I say.
I can’t help but get a little nervous with everyone staring at me. The sudden silence makes me feel wrong, uncertain. Then I remember all the articles and TV shows advertising generosity, all the sermons I’ve ever heard. I feel warm and tingly, spreading out somewhere from the pit of my stomach as I stare at the floor. I wonder if that was how my mother felt, and if this is finally God’s spirit descending down into me like a ray of light the way it looked like it did in those velveteen, backlit pictures of Jesus staring all dewy-eyed up at the sky. When people said they invited Jesus inside them, maybe this was what they meant.
“Wait a minute,” Ray says. He’d have an opinion on his own asshole. “I like the gift exchange.”
Ray likes to give unique gifts, especially if he draws a lady’s name. Beef jerky and Skoal are not uncommon. Last year he went too far when he gave me a box of ribbed rubbers. Dean couldn’t look me in the face until the cockroaches started swarming in the spring and we had to work double-shifts together. He kept telling Ray to shut up every time Ray wanted to know if I was putting my Christmas present to good use.
“I just think that at this time of year we should be thinking about all those less fortunate than ourselves who are in need,” I say. The spirit spreads right down to my toes, which feel light enough to walk on water.
Ray’s sitting next to me and whispers “church mouse” low enough no one else can hear it. He knows Bill doesn’t go for him making fun of my over-bite. Ray places his hands together as if to pray, and then rolls his eyes at the ceiling and sticks his upper teeth out. He lowers his hands quickly when Bill shoots him a warning look. Martha’s trying to stare me down to see what my plan is, but I won’t meet her eyes. She puts too much eyeliner and mascara on, and it gives her the appearance of a spiteful raccoon.
“OK,” Bill says. “But what about everyone that wants to go ahead with the exchange?”
“That’s fine. But as for me I would prefer that whatever money I would have spent on someone else, or that they would have spent on me, go to help support a needy family in the area this Christmas,” I say. “And I think it would be a fine thing if the Bug Stompers wanted to help me.” My body burns like a flaming sword in the service of the Lord.
The other employees shift uncomfortably. I hear “church mouse” a little louder this time from Ray who’s kicked hard by Dean. Martha clears her throat with a wet grunt and Bill sighs.
“Why I think that is a fine idea,” Martha says. “But why don’t we go ahead and do the gift exchange too. Kind of combine the two. I have all kinds of ideas of what we could do for a family or two I have in mind.”
I am prepared for this.
“I still want my name withheld, and Martha I have my needy family already picked,” I say, even though I don’t. “Of course, if you wanted to help me...”
“Fine,” Bill says. “Let me know what you want me to do.”
Bill doesn’t seem exactly pleased with the idea, and Martha wads a Kleenex as if strangling a small animal.
Ray starts to say something else, but Dean kicks him again in the shin. Dean can shut down Ray when he senses he’s about to go too far with me. When I catch him looking at me when I am getting ready for my morning rounds, I get a little tingly feeling, but how can you consider a man anything more than a fool if he runs around with Ray?
* * *
It’s Thanksgiving week. I work my Meals on Wheels run, scraping my car’s bottom across the washed-out roads snaking into the hills. All this charity had better not cost me a new muffler. It is mostly old women who come to the door with too many or too little clothes on, scented with talcum powder or pee. They trick me into coming inside by acting like they are too feeble to take the plate. I have to go in and set it up for them on the TV tray while they talk, surrounded by piles of old Field and Stream magazines and Avon perfume bottle collections arranged on a million knitted doilies. Everyone seems to have the same Cinderella in sunshine yellow. I know from experience she comes apart at the waist, and the perfume smells lemony, like floor polish. “Well take care and God bless you.” I pat their hands and the touch seems to satisfy enough for me to draw away and get back out the door. Little girl or young lady they call me. Few remember my name, yet they always talk about my mother Shirley. “The dressing don’t taste nothing like Shirley’s.” I can’t do much about that.
Back home I sit down with my own plate from the service after heating it up and watch replays of highlights from the Macy’s Day parade. Famous, richly dressed people I don’t recognize looking uncomfortable in the rain, their lips twitching from smiling for too long, wave from floats or walk arm and arm with cartoon characters. Mother is propped in a corner of the living room in the rental hospital bed beneath a display of knitted psalms and proverbs from the women of her church where she used to volunteer. She had me working there three nights a week since I was eight, doing everything from cleaning to cooking for Meals on Wheels. I was such a help to her, she said. Our nights assembling care packages for the elderly or sick we’d sing together in the warm kitchen. A series of strokes over four years has worn Mother’s body down to nothing.
The first stroke was the day after my high school graduation. I found her face down in the garden patch. She’d trapped a raccoon stealing from our garden and was still gripping an axe in one hand to kill it. When I turned her over her face drooped, shutting one eye halfway, and she had dirt stuck in her teeth. Her haywire brain seemed to be trying to communicate with me through the other unblinking eye. I understood and took the axe from her. Right before I sank it into the raccoon’s skull it shielded its head with its hands, like a little frightened person. After that Mother never walked or spoke again, but she still made certain noises that I took to be prayers or questions. People would visit at first and say, look Levonna, she’s praying for us all, but she just gummed her tongue and moaned. When it was clear she wasn’t going to die anytime soon the visits slacked off.
As I change her diaper, she fixes one controlled, watery eye upon me. I announce for her what is going on even though she can see herself. “Here comes Pinnochio,” I say when the inflatable puppet rounds a corner, floating face down, staring blankly at the little people below it. She used to love this stuff, but I can’t tell if she cares about it any more or not.
After I feed her, I read to her like she used to for us by opening the Bible at random to see what sort of message it might have. Today it falls open onto a long line of begettings. I try again, closing the book and allowing it to fall open, divine providence guiding our readings, but this time it’s a passage on things to remember when dealing with cloven-hooved animals. There is a lot to remember, and I tire of the sound of my own voice and all the reasons to avoid pork. Pork rinds and Dr. Pepper are my two favorite things.
Since it’s nearing Christmas, there are ads showing fly-covered children in other countries that don’t even have Christmas. For ten dollars you can save one for a while the commercials say, but they get to pick which one. You get their photograph back and they make them sit down and write or at least color you a picture, but it isn’t like you’ll ever hold them in your lap and talk to them. You will never get a hug.
Mother makes a noise and stretches one hand out, maybe to comment on the starving children. She loves babies, and even seems to like the funny looking ones belonging to Rhoda, the Hattabaugh woman from up the road who watches her for me when I’m at work. Mother’s manicured fingers flex briefly and then curl hard into her palm. I keep them painted in her favorite color so that when she raises them before her face she’ll see Petal Pink. Her once strong hands now look frail, bony, like the monkey’s fist that granted wishes from that old fable. No one possessing that paw ever got their wishes right and each wish wound up being a curse instead. All those kinds of stories end like that because wishing is for fools. Or maybe because anybody hawking a dried-up old monkey hand is someone you should be suspicious of.
I go to bed by ten and the faded pink curtains I helped Mother make when I was six flutter over me. I hear her snoring softly in the living room as I fall asleep. In the morning I feed her grits and scrambled eggs before Rhoda shows up with two of her kids, baby Kyle with the wandering eye and three-year-old Leighann, who lisps and sounds like a cute snake.
“Aren’t you something else,” I say to the baby, poking at its belly. It giggles spit bubbles and clenches its fists.
“I brought you some biscuits,” Rhoda says. “They’re still hot.”
I can’t afford to pay Rhoda much, but she doesn’t have anything else she does during the day and I have a satellite dish. Her husband took off supposedly to work on an oil rig, but wherever he is not much of that money must find its way back to her. Mother always seems clean and content when I get home though, and Rhoda remembers to smoke outside and put her butts in the Folgers can on the porch. Her stubbed-out Virginia Slims look like thin cigars. When I go out to my truck one of the larger Hattabaugh children, Jerry, is lurking near it stroking the black widow on the door. I swear he’s going to rub the paint off.
“Can they really get this big?” he asks.
“Probably,” I say, “in hell.”
“Shit.” The boy takes a step back and spits expertly into the dust. “They got bigger things than that in hell.”
* * *
“When you going to tell us who our recipients are?” Martha asks when I arrive at work. She’s started giving me any assignment that involves crawling under a house. “We could always give to the Springstons you know.”
The Springstons are a moderately needy family at our church whose main problem stems from being dumb. Maybe if they knew how to use those ribbed rubbers they wouldn’t have to take everyone’s hand-me-down t-shirts and extra squash. Plus, if they were members of our church Martha would make it all about her once again. People would be coming up to her, patting her on her plump little shoulders, praising her generous spirit.
“I just need to finalize something,” I say. “I’ll get back with you on it.”
* * *
You would think living in Dardanelle in the Ouachita hills there would be tons of needy families available come Christmas time. On TV they are everywhere, clutching their screaming babies and stretching their empty bowls out at the camera. But all I find are angel trees at Walker’s Drug, Fred’s Grocery and Walmart with tags hanging on them where you can pledge gifts to under-privileged children: Barbie dolls, Tonka toys, and My Pretty Ponies. There’s all the bell ringing in front of Walmart too. I’ve worked too hard to blow my money on some anonymous little tag no one would ever read on a fake tree or support a thrift store industry. I go to the Salvation Army just to look for a new lamp for Mother’s bedside table and that place is a nightmare. People fighting over just about any kind of crap. There’s one old woman with floppy tits and no bra gripping a busted inflatable crocodile, trying to tug it away from another woman with no teeth. Everybody so common and filthy. And it has a smell I can’t stand, like nachos, candy corn and sweat. There's the United Way too, but they want me to donate something to their general fund where it would be absorbed, soaked up like water on dry soil, and the only other suggestion they have is to donate food for one of the immigrant families that works on the chicken-gutting lines for Tyson.
“I don’t speak Mexican,” I tell them.
They say it doesn’t matter what I speak. All that matters is helping people, but I don’t know anything about that. Those brown, foreign faces and talk make me uncomfortable whenever I run into a pack of them at the grocery store. What would you get for them anyway? I wouldn’t know what to pick even though their section of special food was taking up more and more of aisle six at Fred’s. There has to be some place I could find a private needy American family, one of my very own, that looks a little more like what you would see in a made-for-TV movie. Finally, I get the idea to go the elementary school principal.
“I got a family that fits the bill, but be careful,” Mr. Armstrong says. “Four kids, ranging from one to twelve. The father isn’t around. White. Called Hattabaugh.”
“Hattabaugh?” I say. “I know them. Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Just watch ‘em, if you know what I mean.”
I know what he means, I think, but the Hattabaughs? I’m running out of time and have to take somebody, though.
* * *
“I’ve got the needy family,” I announce at the weekly meeting. “The Hattabaughs.”
They seemed ordinary, too familiar and not nearly needy enough, but I’m pressed and Christmas is unstoppable.
Bill is unmoved. He raises his eyes from the list of termite contracts and says that sounds fine. Ray and Dean are sitting on opposite sides of Bill. Things have chilled between them recently. The day before I found a brick of Velveeta and a mouse trap sitting on the hood of my truck. Ray glares nonstop at me but whenever I look up Dean is looking back and quickly looks at his boots.
“The Hattabaughs are those ones that live out on Round Mountain in what’s left of the old Stokenberry house?” Martha says.
“Yes,” I say.
“Isn’t that out where you live?” Martha asks.
“Yes,” I say. “Mr. Armstrong said they were the most needy at the elementary school and he said he would provide me with a list of what they need most. You can help me get things together as soon as we get the list, if you want to.”
I’m surprised Mr. Armstrong suggests the Hattabaughs, since they don’t seem to miss any meals, but I’m going to have to watch Martha.
“Fine then, let’s get on it,” Bill says.
Halfway through my afternoon rounds doing a silverfish spray at a duplex my walkie-talkie goes off.
“Uh, Bug One to Bug Two.”
“This is Bug Two, come in Bug One.”
“Uh, Bug Two, I mean, uh Levonna, I was just gonna say that I didn’t have nothing to do with that mousetrap on your truck or the Velveeta. That was all Ray’s doing.”
“OK Dean.”
The line crackles briefly but Dean is silent.
“I’m in the middle of spraying down a duplex here Dean.”
“Uh, OK, just wanted you to know that.”
“OK. Bug Two, out.”
* * *
The list the needy children provide has several things on it that I cross off immediately. The writing is scrawly and broad, as if it was written using one of those gigantic pencils first graders used. The kids want a video game console and several violent sounding games with words like smackdown, splatter, or blood in their titles. The mother didn’t put anything down at all. The list doesn’t contain the children’s sizes, so I’d have to guess or ask them outright.
“They’re built pretty large,” Martha says. Her daughter is in the same class as one of the needy family girls. Her daughter is no pixie herself.
Somehow, I don’t want fat children to be the beneficiaries of my good will, reaching out plump greasy fingers to thank me, but it’s too late to back out. Everybody, especially Martha, would talk about how Levonna talks all big about the season of giving and then doesn’t follow through. Besides, I never noticed the Hattabaughs being that fat. I take up a general collection from the Bug Stomper’s employees and Bill says he’ll chip in a hundred-dollar check just for their holiday incidentals. All told we have about $180 dollars from the employees, Martha even contributed $25, with Dean putting in fifty dollars of his own, counting it out slowly in front of me.
“My goodness Dean!” I say.
He shrugs like he shits $50 bills every morning.
“Uh, Levonna, I was thinking you might want to go to a movie or something sometime,” Dean says, “with me.”
“Why don’t you help me buy the things for the needy family at Walmart after work?” I say.
My heart gives a little flutter. I’m not sure if I have time to fool with a man, but I kind of want to see what Dean acts like outside of his role as a Bug Stomper and former best friend to Ray.
“Yeah, I guess,” he says.
He looks at me directly. His one visible eye is green with golden flecks.
Using the size list, plus an extra $100 I throw in of my own money (this can’t be done half-assed if my name is attached to it), Dean and I walk down the brightly lit corridors of merchandise at the Dardanelle Walmart Super Center. I push the cart and Dean holds the list. He unfolds it over and over, stopping to mark items off or just look at it as if it holds some undeniable truth. He blushes when we pass things related to feminine hygiene or babies. We dig through the sale piles and are able to get some good deals on coats.
“What about this one for the oldest girl?” I ask.
“Purple’s pretty,” he says, “on you anyway.”
Then he looks to the list again and underlines something twice.
I feel my face warm, and grab a scarf and glove set for Rhoda.
We buy some toys too, but mainly educational ones that are supposed to make your brain bigger by counting penguins or matching up shapes. I figure those kids could use some sort of stimulation besides my satellite TV. For their dinner we get a frozen turkey, a sack of potatoes, two frozen pies, canned cranberry sauce, toilet paper and diapers.
“You two have been keeping yourselves busy,” the checkout girl says. She winks at Dean.
“These are for someone else’s kids,” I say.
The checkout girl shrugs. Her eyebrows are over-plucked and the shade of pink on her lips clashes with her freckles. I’m pleased to see Dean barely looks at her. He carries every last thing out to the truck and volunteers to see me home with it, but I say no thanks.
“Don’t forget what I said about the movie,” Dean says, his finger tracing a line in the dirt on the truck window.
I can’t forget all the way home and even have trouble forgetting long enough to get to sleep, but I think maybe that’s just excitement about the big handover the next day.
* * *
Martha insists on being present for the delivery and meets me at my house before the sun has totally risen.
“It’s the least I can do,” she says, and even brings me a cup of coffee and a donut from Fred’s Grocery. She’s wearing a new red sweater with a snowman on it and red heels I’ve never seen before. She picks her way through the yard carefully so her heels won’t sink into the dirt.
“Aren’t you worried about this porch?” she asks, staring at our rotten floorboards.
“Why?” I ask, but Martha just shrugs and comes inside.
The phone rings in the kitchen. It’s Dean, calling to say Bill is irritated two people will be gone and he’ll have to answer the phone himself. When Dean asks if maybe he could go to help carry stuff, Bill shuts him down quick.
“Be thinking of a movie,” Dean says. “Maybe this weekend?”
“This weekend would be fine,” I say.
Back in the living room Martha is touching Mother’s hand. Mother stares somewhere to the side of Martha’s head, her lips moving softly.
“What pretty pink nails you have,” Martha says.
She strokes Mother’s hands like they’ve just pulled Jesus down from the cross, and Mother seems to calm at the touch.
* * *
The Hattabaughs aren’t far up the road, behind a thick line of cedars, but we have to catch them early before Rhoda comes to my house. I hardly ever go that way and have never been inside. When we pull up to their old farmhouse, dogs flow out from the briars growing in the yard, from behind a rusted, silver septic tank, from under a broken-down car on cinder blocks. One drags itself awkwardly out of a hole in the front porch. I honk the horn twice to get someone in the house’s attention while they howl and growl around us. Nothing moves. I honk the horn again. A one-eyed bitch slams her forepaws against the black widow on my side, rattling the door. A hand pulls back a curtain from the front window.
“Hang on a minute,” Martha says. “We’re a few minutes early.”
“They won’t care,” I say. Then a blue van with a Pope County Times sticker on it pulled in directly behind us.
“Bill thought the publicity would be good for the Bug Stompers,” Martha says.
A child’s voice cusses something at the dogs, and they slink back.
I see Martha get out of the truck clutching the envelope with the check in it and head for the reporter and photographer. I stare after her until she turns around and hollers for me to get the rest of the stuff. While I’m dragging the Walmart bags up to the porch, Martha tells the reporter all about how much she wanted everybody to know the Bug Stompers cared about the community. Even after the third trip, neither the reporter nor the photographer had looked at me or offered to help.
“Let’s get a picture of them all on this porch, handing over the check and surrounded by the gifts,” the reporter says.
The Hattabaughs do not fully emerge from the house until I bang on the door.
“Rhoda?” I call.
As she somes out a wisp of smoke follows her through the screen door.
“What is this again?” Rhoda says. She’s barefoot and smoking a cigarette. The two oldest kids shove past her onto the porch.
I start to step up and explain it to her, the frozen turkey in one hand and diapers in the other, but Martha cuts me off with the check.
“A special Christmas wish for you and your family from Bug Stompers,” Martha says.
“Yeah,” I say. “This is for you from all of us at Bug Stompers.”
“Huh,” Rhoda says. She leans over and peers into one of the sacks and takes a drag on her cigarette. “Why?”
“Well...” Martha says, waving the smoke away from her hair.
“You were chosen by an anonymous community member,” I say.
The children rip into one package containing a coat and mittens.
“We didn’t ask for this,” the boy Jerry says, kicking the wrapping paper. “Where’s Hell Splatter?”
The girl peeked into the grocery sacks and asks if there are any cookies or candy. Rhoda wants to know what Jerry wrote down and who he gave it to.
“There’s pies,” I say.
“We’ve supplied you with all the fixings for your Christmas dinner, as well as certain necessities for the children,” Martha says.
Rhoda picks up one of the winter coats and holds it out in front of her.
“It ain’t that cold,” she says. “Do you still have the receipts? You could get your money back and give it to someone else.”
“We would also like to give you this check from Bug Stompers for any of your more personal needs this winter,” Martha says.
“So you can buy each other presents or pay the bills or stuff,” I say. It’s hard to edge myself any closer in without falling in the hole the dog crawled out of. I lean in toward Rhoda and the kids, but the frozen turkey throws me off balance.
“Can we get a picture of you handing the check over?” the photographer asks.
Martha suggests they arrange some of the gifts around their feet. She hands the check to Rhoda who regards it as if she is being presented with a bug. She looks to me and raises her eyebrows. I give her a nod.
“Thank you,” she says. “Do you do this every year?”
“This is the first,” I say.
“But I think we should do it every year,” Martha says. She smiles at the reporter while the photographer gets another shot. “After all, this is the season to give to those who need it most.”
Rhoda holds the check as if it’s a dead thing and turns away from Martha to me.
“Am I still watching your mama today then?” she asks.
* * *
The photo they published is a close-up of Martha, all smiling teeth and outlined eyes, cropped so close you can only see the top of the head of one of the children, Rhoda holding the check and squinting at Martha, and an outline of a toddler’s face peering through the screen door from within the house. The baby’s eyes glow through the screen in some sort of trick of the light. My right shoulder is in the picture, but the diapers I’m holding cover up my name sewn onto my coveralls. Martha’s name is mentioned in the title, as well as Bug Stompers, and they run the photo on the front page where they usually run pictures of kids on the playground or the leaves turning pretty colors. There is no mention of me. Martha prisses around the Bug Stompers for two days and put a clipping of the newspaper article up on the wall by the coffeepot. Ray draws a raccoon tail on her.
I didn’t think I have the spirit to do anything else for the needy this year, or maybe ever. Maybe I’m just not very good at it. Dean and I go to see a movie with a talking dog in it that weekend. The dog’s lips don’t move but there’s a voiceover of what the dog is thinking. I think it’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen, but something about sitting there, the heat from Dean’s arm on the armrest, the way our fingers brush when we both reach for the popcorn, makes it wonderful. We make plans together every other day and when Christmas comes around he promises to drop by in the afternoon after he visits with relatives.
* * *
At midday on Christmas, I watch TV with Mother. I give her some applesauce and her eyes water when she looks at me. We are watching her favorite movie and Jimmy Stewart is about to give up shaking the dust of his small town off to marry and have a million kids when there is a knock at the door. It seems early for Dean, but I jump up, and check my hair in the mirror. My face is as it always has been, and there is something in my own reflection that I want to love. I take a deep breath and turn the knob, but when I open the door there was no Dean. All I see is two Hattabaugh children running away, their feet beating small puffs of dust from the road. At my doorstep, on the rotten planks, lay full plates of turkey and stuffing, and an entire pumpkin pie, still warm from the oven.
Rose Bunch (she/her) is a MacDowell Fellow, Fulbright Scholar, and two-time Pushcart Prize nominee whose work has appeared in Tin House, TriQuarterly, Gulf Coast, and others, including anthologies from Akashic and Press 53. Originally from the Ozarks, she now splits her time between there and Porto. Learn more about her work at rosebunch.com.