Rabble Starkey Read Free Page B

me here to the Bigelows' garage to live.
    She'd been working as a waitress, see, down to Buddy Rivet's Seafood, and she'd met Mr. Bigelow, Veronica's father, there. His real estate office was
right there, downtown, and he used to come into Buddy Rivet's for lunch. Mr. Bigelow is the kind of man who takes an interest in people—all kinds of people—and he knew all the waitresses at Buddy Rivet's. He knew that Leona Harrison suffered from varicose veins and a husband with a fondness for drink. He knew that Carol Sue Brown had been Miss Elkins County in her prime a few years back, and now was selling Mary Kay products on the side, hoping to win a pink car.
    And he knew that back with her family in Collyer's Run, Sweet Hosanna Starkey had a little girl named Parable Ann, the same age as his own little girl. Me and Veronica was both eight years old then.
    It was right at the time that Mrs. Bigelow was expecting Gunther, though of course she didn't know it was Gunther she was expecting; it might have been just about anybody, but it turned out to be Gunther, the homeliest baby in Highriver, West Virginia, bar none.
    And Mrs. Bigelow wasn't up to snuff. She'd been having a lot of these emotional problems for some time, see, and Mr. Bigelow was worried about would she be able to care for the new baby that was coming. So when Gunther was born, he hired Sweet-Ho to come there and help out, pointing out to her that it was a way she could have her little girl there with her, something that Sweet-Ho surely did appreciate.
    While Mrs. Bigelow was still in the hospital, Sweet-Ho came to Collyer's Run to get me and we both showed up at the Bigelows' with everything we
owned in two suitcases with busted locks and a couple of giant trash bags, the four-ply kind you see in them commercials. Mr. Bigelow didn't blink an eye. He just said, "How do you do, Parable Ann," when we was introduced, and he said he had a little girl just my age and he would go to find her right that minute. Then he handed Sweet-Ho the scrawniest baby in the world, and it was Gunther, with his face all scrunched up homely and his little drumstick legs sticking out straight from them big diapers.
    Veronica's mother, she had to stay in the hospital longer than Gunther, see, because she had all these emotional problems, which they was trying hard to fix. And also she was getting herself all sewn up shut so she wouldn't have no more babies. Anyone would do that if they gave birth to something as homely as Gunther, if you ask me, so I don't fault her none and neither does Veronica. What we can't figure out is how she ever goes to the bathroom, all sewn up shut as she is. But shoot, you can't ask somebody that, not somebody who smiles all the time but doesn't talk none, like Mrs. Bigelow, and who seems to have some kind of serious trouble going on.
    Me and Sweet-Ho, we settled right in and been here ever since, right in two rooms up top of the garage. For a while, when he was a baby, Gunther, he lived here, too, even though he was technically a Bigelow.
    "Rabble," Sweet-Ho said, that first day after she set that homely baby down on the drainboard of the sink
and looked around. "Right here is what you and me is going to call home."
    Now I'd been at my grandma's for all them eight years, excepting for the past few months when Gnomie had the poisonous kidneys, and I went round and stayed with cousins here and there. I never lived up over no garage before. But it didn't look too bad. Needed scrubbing, but shoot, I was good at that.
    "We don't gotta keep that here with us, do we?" I asked Sweet-Ho, pointing at Gunther. He was sound asleep right there on the drainboard beside a can of Ajax. If we'd wanted to we could of shot him with the rubber squirting hose on the sink. I kind of wanted to, but I didn't say it.
    "Shoot, no," Sweet-Ho said. "His mama'll be coming home any day now. We can stand him till then. And you like that girl okay, don't you?"
    "Yeah." I had liked