To Make Death Love Us (11 page)

Paulette was born
prematurely in the thirtieth week of gestation. She weighed scarcely a pound, but Janine, who
herself loved to eat, saw to it that her own infant was taught the wonder.

The family cow grew
thin trying to provide enough milk and Paulette grew fat.

When they got
around to celebrating Paulette's tenth birthday, they celebrated her two hundreth pound as
well.

About that time,
out of nowhere, a tall, skinny hog raiser named Sunday Pastor—people are humorous with names in
some parts of Texas—came courting and up and married Janine.

Sunday raised the
biggest, whitest hogs in all Ochiltree County. They had pink snouts and rosy rings for
eyelids.

Janine didn't have
any more kids. On poundage alone, didn't they already have a big family?

Sunday Pastor was a
man who liked fat things. That was for certain. His wife and stepchild didn't get any leaner
under his roof.

When they went to
the Ochiltree County Fair each year, Sunday Pastor was as proud as a kid with a new willow
whistle. One year—the year Paulette was fifteen— Sunday lost first prize in the hog show to a
gentleman fanner (who was no gentleman) from the East who'd rung in some champion
ringers.

The gossiper type
of folks said that after the judging was done and the blue ribbon pinned on a pig larger than his
own, Sunday Pastor looked at his stepdaughter with a speculative eye, as though he'd like to have
entered her for the judging instead. Folks added unkindly that she would have won.

She weighed three
hundred pounds, after all.

Medical men say
that obesity has to do with inherited body type. Both Janine and Paulette were endomorphic. They
also say that overweight patients are very respon­sive to the availability of food. In other
words, if the food's on the table, they'll eat it. That seems logical enough.

There's another
villain in the piece: the hypothalamus. It's a little gland buried deep in the brain. One part of
it is the appetite center and the other the satiety center. One part says "Eat." The other part
says "Don't eat." This whole complex is called the appestat. When it malfunc­tions, it adds to
the problem.

Sunday Pastor's
family didn't know a thing about appes-tats but they knew a hell of a lot about apple pie,
well-sugared and swimming in creamery butter. They knew
about lard on bread with a bit of salt, pork chops, and thick rich cow's
cream by the pitcher.

By the time she was
seventeen, Paulette had grown into immensity. Paulette was the local wonder.

Sunday Pastor died
of a fever on a Friday of that year and so got to be buried on his name day.

Janine, unable to
tend the farm herself, sold it off, al­lowing as how she'd always hated the smell of pigs. With
the proceeds, she and Paulette moved into the big city of Borger. Out on the road leading to it,
the widow opened up a truckers' café.

It was the kind of
business both Janine and Paulette found ideal. It was after all, involved with eating.

It was there Will
Carney found Paulette as he was travel­ing the Southwest in a 1959 panel truck, with the back
filled with junk jewlery and ladies' cotton drawers.

It wasn't love or
lust that stirred Will at the sight of Paulette sitting by the soda-pop cooler fanning herself
with a cardboard Coca-Cola fan. It was something more insidious. It was ambition.

He'd meant to pay
for his hamburger and greasy beans with a display of juggling, if he could wangle it. But he
slyly put on his usual show and when his money was waved away—as he intended—at their pleasure in
it, he insisted on paying all the same.

Will Carney stayed
eleven days in Borger and gave a
display
of skill each morning, noon, and night, much to the delight of Janine, Paulette, and the truckers
who hap­pened by. It was a calculated performance. His hands were clever as they tossed rubber
balls or paper cups or saucers, even catsup bottles and spoons, into the air above his head. But
even more clever were the plans that he juggled in his head.

When he left
Borger, Texas, he took Janine's twenty-four-year-old daughter, Paulette, with him and a cheery
promise to keep her safe and pure, to see that she never wanted for what to eat or where to sleep
or the means to care for herself and, too—of course, since that was the final selling point—he
promised to send a check home to Janine once a month.

It was the check
once a month to Janine that was the certified clincher.

As to his promises,
Will kept her safe as he could, times being what they were. She was still pure, and unhappy for
it, for she knew that people—men and women—did cer­tain things together—he-ing and she-ing as she
called it— that were a great delight and denied to her. She didn't always eat all she wanted and
there were even days when there was nothing to eat at all. Will protected his invest­ment, when
he could, by stuffing her with cheap candy, but she did at times sorely miss her mother's
cooking. Paulette slept sometimes, sitting up under a canvas shel­ter or a summer tree, but that
was the least of hardships, for she'd slept sitting up for some long time for the benefit of her
heart. She kept herself squeaky clean, another trait her mother had passed on to her, though
sometimes that meant washing herself a square yard at a time with a handcloth and a pan of
water.

Will Carney never
sent a damn penny back to Janine.

Sometimes Paulette
wanted to go home and felt she'd had enough of the wide world, which seemed to be noth­ing but a
series of small, dusty, mean towns. But the thought didn't last long. The truth was, she'd grown
used to Will's cheery ways—at least he was cheery the first few years until his hand got busted
up and he couldn't juggle worth a damn. Later, there was Serena come to join them. And then the
others, all of whom accepted her for what she was in a way others had not. The longer she stayed
with these people, the deeper her kinship with these strange folk grew, and the farther and
farther in her mind her thoughts of home receded. Most of all, she felt a pro­tective love for
the little albino, wanting never to leave her alone and afraid of the dark.

Paulette wrote her
mother from time to time. Less often as the years passed. Her mother never wrote at all. Paulette
loved her mother but she had the sneakiest little suspicion that Janine was just as happy to have
her gone.

It seemed that
Paulette, as much as any of them, was where she was because she had no place else to
go.

Colonel John Thumb
had no intention of dying scattered all over a Tennessee mountain face if there was any help at
all for it. He became aware that he had been breathing in long, ragged gasps as Paulette had
shifted her great weight across the width of the van. His ears now caught
the sound of the other's breathing with the hiss of panic
in it as well.

"Well, now," he
said in his perkiest voice. "We've got one leg up on the problem, as it were."

"One leg and a
wonderful lot more," Pepino said, seem­ing to divine the reasoning behind the Colonel's little
joke and making more fun with it.

The Colonel thanked
Pepino with a wink of his eye.

Paulette
giggled.

Serena seemed to
glow in the dark like a hearth that warmed and comforted them all.

"Now, then, first
things first and next things next. We must move all the baggage and welter of things away from
the back door until it rests against the side of the truck nearest the mountainside," said
Colonel John.

"I've got no
strength for that. I'm . . . The way I move. . . . I'm awkward," she said
apologetically.

"No need, no need,
my little artichoke. I would have you just exactly where you are and not to move one tiniest
inch."

Colonel John
shifted himself a bit in his confining nest in order to crane his neck and poke his head out
beyond the barrier enough to see a bit more. His action gave no tremor to the balanced mass and
he was heartened by the fact.

"Don't be afraid
and, whatever happens, don't move from your places or struggle to get free. I'm going to attempt
to extricate myself from this mess and welter that has me hemmed in. Don't be afraid."

"You'd better damn
well stay still or I'll kill you," Will grated in a voice that was, for the moment, well under
control with its burden of hate and fear. "Don't do a thing until I think on it."

Serena spoke then,
a thing she seldom seemed to do.

"I'm with you,
Colonel John. How can I help you?"

Pepino nodded. "Me,
too."

Will was enraged.
"I'm warning you. You're going to kill us all with your meddling. You're not bright enough to
think for yourselves. That's why I'm boss. You just shut up and settle down back there. Give me a
chance to think!"

Colonel John shook
his head. "This is a time for deeds. Not management."

"I'm the boss,"
screamed Will. "You'll do as I say or else you'll . . ." Will couldn't think of an "or else." He
was losing not only control of himself but also control over his charges.

Finally, he
suggested with desperation, "We must wait it out. Someone's bound to come along this road. They
could hook a chain on us and steady the truck until we could get out. The thing is to sit
quietly. Help will come!"

It was not a
convincing argument. It sounded weak to Will even as he said it, but it did raise some doubts in
the others.

Paulette was the
first to voice the doubt.

"Will might be
right. Maybe help will . . ."

But Colonel John
would have none of it. "Is that your idea of doing something? Wait for it, wait for help we damn
sure know won't come?"

Pepino agreed. "By
the time someone is liable to travel this ill-used road, it would be only to find our bodies
strewn at the bottom of the mountain. I say it's up to us. Colonel John has the right of
it."

Serena thought
affirmative thoughts in turn to Pepino, Paulette, Will, and silent Marco, who, in his pain, was
past all decisions.

"Damn it!" cried
Will. "I'm the one that should say how we handle this!"

The Colonel reared
back his head and laughed. "Then go out the door, climb atop the cab, scoot across the roof of
the van, and open the tailgate door for us."

There was a long
silence. Finally, Will spoke and there was less authority in his voice.

"You damn little
fool. If I tried to do that, this whole rig would tip over and go crashing down the
mountain."

The Colonel smiled.
"But, Will, there's nothing to it. Just go slow and easy. If you feel her start to slip, pop
inside as quick as a wink." The Colonel seemed to be enjoying it, this suggestion as to how Will
should save them all.

"But there's
nothing for me to stand on. No place to give my feet purchase," countered Will.

"Use your hands and
the strength in your arms, man," said the midget a touch impatiently. Time was pressing them all.
This was no time for explanations.

"My God, you know I
can't use my maimed hand. It's not got the strength of a baby's hand." There was a whine in
Will's voice that made those who heard it wince in shame for his weakness.

The Colonel found
in that his justification for taking over. "I forgot all about your handicap, Will," said the
midget in a very gentle voice. "That lets you out of this, then, Will. With your injured hand,
you can't be expected to do it."

Will sighed with
relief, settling back against the seat. He felt a little better now that he had an excuse for
doing nothing. He felt some of the pressure ease. Whatever happened now, it was no longer up to
him. He was a cripple, after all.

"Just sit you as
still as you can, Will, and let me go about this risky business. I'm small and that's a blessing.
I've not much weight, so I'm suited to this and my hands and arms are strong enough to pull me
along, where my legs would fail me."

The midget
straightened his shoulders, as if adjusting a heavy burden, and made a funny clicking sound with
his
tongue as he said, "Well, I'm about
to go at it. Remember what I said, stay in your places and no one panic."

Colonel John
examined the barrier of things that formed a roof above his head and reckoned the one he might
move with least disturbance to the others. He chose a carton containing strings of light bulbs,
which he knew to be fairly light and liable to easy shifting. One or two other parcels of goods
were supported upon it but, as nearly as he could judge, moving the carton would simply allow the
others to slide down together to form a sturdy arch.

He braced himself
against the bundle at his back and grasped the carton with his tiny hands. He heaved up slowly,
with not inconsiderable strength. He applied the upward pressure with force combined with
feathery deli­cacy. The tiniest hiss of paper against paper marked the movement of the box as he
tried to slip it out from be­neath the weight of the containers above it. A bit of label tape
caught an edge, impeding the box's forward motion. He applied a bit more pressure and the small
snag gave way all at once and the carton jerked free.