To Make Death Love Us (10 page)

Pepino was wound
around with poles and canvas rig­ging. He seemed now like a spider trapped in its own
web.

The colonel himself
was held in a kind of small cave of many things. "Is there a heavy tool or iron bar close to your
hand, Pepino?"

The Rubber Man
extricated one arm and felt all about in front and to the side and far behind him in the places
no normal man could cast his hand. A smile illuminated his dark face as he dragged forth a heavy
pry bar.

"Can you reach far
enough with it to crack the window glass?" asked Colonel John.

Pepino tried,
stretching out his arm to the limit of his curious skill. The truck shook and seemed to rock
gently. Pepino recovered his place.

"Serena can reach
it from where she sits, I think," Pepino said. He handed the pry bar first to Colonel John. It
was very heavy, but he held it in one hand and felt very powerful. He passed it across to Serena.
He feared, as he did so, it would be too much weight for the fragile moon child to
bear.

"Reach out your
hand and take the metal bar from me," he said. "Don't be afraid."

"I'm not afraid.
Just tell me what to do," she said and laughed a little. It was a strangely happy
sound.

"The window to the
cab has to be broken. You'll have to do it. We need more light in here," said Colonel John
anxiously.

"Yes, light," said
Serena, with her own meaning to it, and she swung the heavy bar unerringly at the window. The
blow landed with surprising force. The glass turned milky with starring. Colonel John gasped in
admiration.

"And again, my
little love," said Colonel John with pride.

She swung again and
again. Bits of glass fell to the floor. Again and again. Broken shards fell inside the cab, as
well.

Finally, the
chicken wire embedded in the glass was cleared, bent but still intact.

They seemed
suddenly to become aware that Will was screaming at them in a voice that was a siren-loud keen.
"Stop it! We'll go over! You'll kill me! Stop! Stop!"

The truck had
shifted not an inch and had made no protest. But in Will's mind it had given a great lurch with
each blow. Actually, Serena, as she swung the bar, was at that perfect point of balance that a
hundred engineers never could have plotted.

"Now for the
chicken-wire mesh," Colonel John said, delighted with the progress they had made. He reached into
his pocket and managed to bring out the clippers with which he trimmed his nails. He handed it
across to the blind girl. "Can you reckon how this works?" he asked.

She manipulated the
little tool in the finger of one hand, immediately divining its usefulness. She set it properly
to lever the cutting blades, and, reaching up as before— when she'd first touched the glass—she
snipped away at the wire.

Snip. Snip.
Snip.

The nail trimmer
made a cricket like sound. Soon a space was made.

In the cab, Marco,
perhaps feeling the vibrations, had turned slightly in his seat, until he could see the hole
taking shape in the window. Serena worked industriously at the wire. It was slow going, as the
wire resisted the rapidly dulling blades.

With a silent grunt
of pain, Marco forced his arm up until his hand closed on the gap in the mesh. His fingers
gripped the mesh and he fell back, using his weight as much as his muscles to pull it free from
the window.

Will moved then,
thrusting the lamp through into the van. Serena grasped it, led to it by the heat of the
bulb,
and handed it down to the Colonel.
He in turn gave it over to Pepino, who held it high over his head midway along the length of the
van.

The Colonel could
see well, now. It was clear to him that Paulette was not so badly trapped as she believed she
was. There was a puddle of wet at her feet. In the light, she stared at him with her small
currantlike eyes suddenly grown wide and round in her thick pudding of a face.

"Paulette, my love,
move your left arm very, very slowly. If that box holds on top of the one beneath it, half of you
will be free," the Colonel urged.

"I'm afraid," she
whimpered.

Serena sent a warm,
comforting thought at her, trying to ease the fear that choked her.

Colonel John
blinked in the light. "Such a big girl," he soothed, and there was no drollery in his words.
"Come along and give it a try. There's nothing, my big darling, to be afraid of."

She stood or lay
there, quivering with fright, unable to make that first tentative move.

"Come along now, my
little roly-poly, my little cushion of perfume." It sounded silly in the dark and that was how he
meant it. She so loved things that were silly.

"Come along, my
pretty cake of French cheese. My little apple-cheeked darling. Would I suggest you do any­thing
to harm yourself?"

Serena's thoughts
had no effect on Paulette but Colonel John's silly words reached her. She giggled. She could not
resist absurd endearments. She moved her mountain of an arm and nothing tumbled down about
her.

"There! You see!"
said Colonel John triumphantly. "You're quite safe. Now, my little goose, move your other
arm."

Paulette moved
again and the van trembled. She screamed and cried out. "I'm going to faint!"

"If you do, and
cause us to fall, I'll never kiss your pretty cheeks again. And you know you'll get no better
kisses elsewhere." It sounded comical, this strange threat he made, and it worked. He laughed
softly in the dark and it was the thing that kept Paulette from going over. The Colonel laughed,
although fear was like a hand at his own throat.

Serena smiled. She
admired the little man's courage and even more, the depth of his understanding and love of those
around him. Only by making light of it, by playing it for laughs, could he still Paulette's
fears. It was a stroke of genius, the way he kept her sane, for, despite her great size, in some
ways, Paulette was the most fragile of them all.

Paulette giggled in
spite of herself. He did have the sweetest way about him, did Colonel John.

"Keep moving, my
wondrous jelly roll. Move ever so slowly toward the back of the truck, now there's my love," said
Colonel John, sweat dripping off his face.

Pepino stared at
Paulette as a hare is transfixed by the gaze of a snake. Serena stared into her private dark and
smiled softly. She alone of them, felt no fear. What, after all, had she to fear? While it
lasted, it was adventure, it was time and motion and life and death, intensified a hundred times
and made larger than all things in creation. If it ended in death for her, it did not concern
her. She cared only about the others, about their living or dying. As for herself, it would be,
if she met death here, only a going from one darkness to another.

Paulette moved
back, slowly, inch by inch.

"Once more,
Paulette, my little sugar bun."

Paulette moved,
drawing back until she was completely unencumbered, and everything stayed in place—boxes,
baggage, trunks, and all. If the truck settled at all, it was in
a positive direction, the front of it lifting up as she moved to
the back.

"Oh, what a delight
you are. Now you've gone as far back as you can go. Just a little more, my love. Spread your
feet, balance yourself carefully. Then edge over, move inch by inch to the side of the truck
farthest from you, to the side closest to the mountain wall. Are your feet firmly on the
floor?"

"Yes."

"Move as slowly as
a snail, my love."

She moved, stopping
for a second when the metal of the truck cried in warning.

"I can't go
on."

"You must or we're
done for. Move or we're dead."

She gasped and the
Colonel could imagine her heart beating in the great, ice-cream mound of her. He knew the risk in
frightening her so. She might well have made some sudden, fateful move in a terrified attempt to
escape the death he warned her of. But he had no choice. He could no longer mask his own fear.
This threat of death was his only play. But she did not panic and he was glad he had taken the
hard line.

"Don't move! In the
name of God, don't move!" Will screamed in that desperate way that was more a whisper than a loud
cry.

"Do it, Paulette,"
the Colonel demanded in a strong, unforgiving voice. "In the name of the Juggler." The last
remark was a subtle and sardonic one meant to sting Will Carney. In the use of the sarcastic
phrase, so often used by Will to explain the reason for all things that were done, fair or
unfair, the Colonel did, as well, emphasize to Paulette that she was one of the freaks in a small
and special fraternity. It brought her back to herself.

Paulette laughed.
It was a fierce, trapped, almost hate­ful sound.

She moved her tiny
feet, one tiny, tiny step after an­other, until she was brought up short by a large trunk on the
grounded side of the van.

"That's good
enough. Sit down now, love," the colonel praised. "What a wonder you are! What a special wonder!
You have saved us from our most immediate of dangers! You may well have bought for us the very
time we need to reckon our way out of this mess."

The great burden of
Paulette's life had become, in this moment, their temporary salvation.

Paulette smiled
secretly and dimpled her many chins.

Paulette was billed
on the side of the van as the "HUMAN PACHYDERM" and that most often drew derisive taunts. Of all
the freaks, perhaps Paulette drew the bitterest and least respectful regard.

A midget was
somehow cute, childlike. A moon child, a rubber man with changing symmetry, the mighty muscu­lar
grace of Marco, all these things, in their way, suggested some kind of beauty, some kind of
dignity that poor Paulette was denied.

She was often
driven to tears by crude insults and lewd and suggestive remarks. It was a terrible torment to
her but Will Carney pointed out to her that the casting of such insults pleased the rubes and
brought in the silver, sure enough. Still and all, her feelings were terribly hurt.

On the large canvas
banner that was her own among those set up on poles to form their three-sided tent, she was
otherwise described as "the girl who was so fat it took six grown men just to hug her." She was
girlishly pleased by that.

Paulette was
conceived in Spearman, Ochiltree County, Texas, on May 7, 1945.

On that day, V-E
Day, her mother, Janine Howard, had traveled with two girl friends from their hometown of Booker,
on the Oklahoma border, to the larger town for what celebration of victory it might
afford.

There were some
service and supply troops from a nearby depot raising Cain, flasks on their hips and cam­paign
caps tipped so far over their eyes that they had to hold their heads back to keep from tripping
over their own exaggerated senses of self-importance.

They were barracks
troops, most none too bright, who'd have fainted if ever a shot was fired. But they were all
brave boys that day, kissing the girls and accepting the hearty backslaps of the townspeople, who
maybe saw in them the surrogates of their own sons, many of whom would never come back from the
war.

Paulette's mother,
Jannine, was a smaller version of Paulette, perhaps a blueprint of what Paulette herself was to
become.

Janine was about
five feet tall. In grade school they called her "Pint." By the time she made high school, she'd
graduated to "Quart," and now that she was out on an expedition to comfort the troops, she was
practically a "Gallon."

Despite her size,
Janine, everyone said, was as pretty as a valentine. Her skin was cream and rose, even though
there was too much of it. Janine was orphaned at seven­teen. She slept with her first boy when
she was eighteen.

She worked as a
cook and housekeeper on a small ranch. That gave her the chance to do what she liked best. Mostly
eat.

If liking to eat is
a hereditary trait, Janine certainly had enough of the trait to pass on to Paulette.

On V-E Day, the
soldiers found her a delight. She had other qualities besides being pleasingly overplump. She
giggled more than she talked and that made the young warriors think they were mighty smart, and,
swept away with the great tidal wave of V-E Day exultation, she was overly willing and that made
the young soldiers feel mighty bold.

When Janine's
pregnancy announced itself, she felt half proud despite the fact that she couldn't name the
father.

"Just got carried
far, far away that day. That V-E Day. That Victory Day," she'd often say. "All those handsome
boys in their smart uniforms. A body just felt she
had
to thank them for risking their
lives and young limbs to save us ... to save America."

In that haphazard
sort of way, Paulette gained entry to the world.