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His arm, too, seemed abnormally short in proportion to his body.
Old Man grunted a good morning and didn’t say much for a while. But after he had sweated and cursed and chanted his way through the streets of Onaback and had arrived safely at the alleys of the west bluff, he relaxed. Perhaps he was helped by finding a large pile of papers and rags.
“Well, here we go to work, so don’t you dare to shirk. Jump, Dor’thy! By the sweat a your brow, you’ll earn your brew!”
When that load was on the truck, they drove off. Paley said, “How you like this life without no strife? Good, huh? You like alleys, huh?” Dorothy nodded. “As a child, I liked alleys better than streets. And they still preserve something of their first charm for me. They were more fun to play in, so nice and cozy. The trees and bushes and fences leaned in at you and sometimes touched you as if they had hands and liked to feel your face to find out if you’d been there before, and they remembered you. You felt as if you were sharing a secret with the alleys and the things of the alleys. But streets, well, streets were always the same, and you had to watch out the cars didn’t run you over, and the windows in the houses were full of faces and eyes, poking their noses in your business, if you can say that eyes had noses.”
“You must be a Paley! We feel that way, too! We ain’t allowed to hang aroun streets, so we make our alleys into little kingdoms. Tell me, do you sweat just crossin a street from one alley to the next?”
He put his hand on her knee. She looked down at it but said nothing, and he left it there while the truck putputted along, its wheels following the ruts of the alley.
“No, I don’t feel that way at all.”
“Yeah? Well, when you was a kid, you wasn’t so ugly you hadda stay off the streets. But I still wasn’t too happy in the alleys because a them figurin dogs. Forever and forever they was barkin and bitin at me. So I took to beatin the bejesus out a them with a big stick I always carried. But after a while I found out I only had to look at em in a certain way. Yi, yi, yi, they’d run away yapping, like that old black spaniel did yesterday. Why? Cause they knew I was sneezin evil spirits at em. It was then I began to know I wasn’t human. A course, my old man had been tellin me that ever since I could talk.
“As I grew up I felt every day that the spell a the G’yaga was gettin stronger. I was gettin dirtier and dirtier looks from em on the streets. And when I went down the alleys, I felt like I really belonged there. Finally, the day came when I coun’t cross a street without gettin sweaty hands and cold feet and a dry mouth and breathin hard. That was cause I was becomin a full-grown Paley, and the curse a the G’yaga gets more powerful as you get more hair on your chest.”
“Curse?” said Dorothy. “Some people call it a neurosis.”
“It’s a curse.”
Dorothy didn’t answer. Again, she looked down at her knee, and this time he removed his hand. He would have had to do it, anyway, for they had come to a paved street.
On the way down to the junk dealer’s, he continued the same theme. And when they got to the shanty, he elaborated upon it.
During the thousands of years the Paley lived on the garbage piles of the G’yaga, they were closely watched. So, in the old days, it had been the custom for the priests and warriors of the False Folk to descend on the dumpheap dwellers whenever a strong and obstreperous Paley came to manhood. And they had gouged out an eye or cut off his hand or leg or some other member to ensure that he remembered what he was and where his place was.
“That’s why I lost this arm,” Old Man growled, waving the stump. “Fear a the G’yaga for the Paley did this to me.”
Deena howled with laughter and said, “Dorothy, the truth is that he got drunk one night and passed out on the railroad tracks, and a freight train ran over his arm.”
“Sure, sure, that’s the way it was. But it coun’t a happened if the Falsers din’t work through their evil black magic. Nowadays, stead a cripplin us openly, they use spells. They ain’t got the guts anymore to do it themselves.”
“You’re a liar!” thundered Old Man.
He struck Deena on the shoulder. She reeled away from the blow, then leaned back toward him as if into a strong wind. He struck her again, this time across her purple birthmark. Her eyes glowed, and she cursed him. And he hit her once more, hard enough to hurt but not to injure.
Dorothy opened her mouth as if to protest, but Gummy lay a fat sweaty hand on her shoulder and lifted her finger to her own lips.
Deena fell to the floor from a particularly violent blow. She did not stand up again. Instead, she got to her hands and knees and crawled toward the refuge behind the big iron stove. His naked foot shoved her rear so that she was sent sprawling on her face, moaning, her long stringy black hair falling over her face and birthmark.
Dorothy stepped forward and raised her hand to grab Old Man. Gummy stopped her, mumbling, ‘“S all right. Leave em alone.”
“Look at that figurin female bein happy!” snorted Old Man. “You know why I have to beat the hell out a her, when all I want is peace and quiet? Cause I look like a figurin caveman, and they’re supposed to beat their hoors silly. That’s why she took up with me.”
“You’re an insane liar,” said Deena softly from behind the stove, slowly and dreamily nursing her pain like the memory of a lover’s caresses. “I came to live with you because I’d sunk so low you were the only man that’d have me.”
“She’s a retired high society mainliner, Dor’thy,” said Paley. “You never seen her without a longsleeved dress on. That’s cause her arms’re full a holes. It was me that kicked the monkey off a her back. I cured her with the wisdom and magic a the Real Folk, where you coax the evil spirit out by talkin it out. And she’s been livin with me ever since. Kin’t get rid a her.
“Now, you take that toothless bag there. I ain’t never hit her. That shows I ain’t no woman-beatin bastard, right? I hit Deena cause she likes it, wants it, but I don’t ever hit Gummy… Hey, Gummy, that kind a medicine ain’t what you want, is it?”
And he laughed his incredibly hoarse, hor, hor, hor.
“You’re a figurin liar,” said Gummy, speaking over her shoulder because she was squatting down, fiddling with the TV controls. “You’re the one knocked most a my teeth out.”
“I knocked out a few rotten stumps you was go
Gummy giggled and said, “Don’t think for a minute I quit goin with that O’Brien in his green shirt just cause you slapped me aroun a little bit. I quit cause you was a better man ‘n him.”
Gummy giggled again. She rose and waddled across the room toward a shelf which held a bottle of her cheap perfume. Her enormous brass earrings swung, and her great hips swung back and forth. “Look at that,” said Old Man. “Like two bags a mush in a windstorm.”
“I feel like a dog that’s found an old bone he buried and forgot till just now,” he growled, “Arf, arf, arf!”
Deena snorted and said she had to get some fresh air or she’d lose her supper. She grabbed Dorothy’s hand and insisted she take a walk with her. Dorothy, looking sick, went with her.
The following evening, as the four were drinking beer around the kitchen table, Old Man suddenly reached over and touched Dorothy affectionately. Gummy laughed, but Deena glared. However, she did not say anything to the girl but instead began accusing Paley of going too long without a bath. He called her a flatchested hophead and said that she was lying, because he had been taking a bath every day. Deena replied that, yes he had, ever since Dorothy had appeared on the scene. An argument raged. Finally, he rose from the table and turned the photograph of Deena’s mother so it faced the wall.