Ken Kesey - Demon Box

Mr. Keller-Brown smiles and says, "We work on being the good helper, don't we, Tobe?" and the little fellow nodded back.

"Yes, Daddy."

I couldn't help but gush a little bit. "What a change from most of the little kids you see being let go hog wild these days, what a gratifying change."

The main elevator was still being used to clear out the collection of metal they found when they opened poor Mr. Fry's apartment, so we had some wait for the other one. I said I hoped we didn't miss the Brass family. Devlin says we got plenty of time. He said did I know that Mr. Keller-Brown was part of a gospel singing group himself? I says, Oh? What are you called? Because I might have heard them on KHVN. Mr. Keller-Brown says they were called the Birds of Prayer but he doubted I'd heard them, not on AM.

The elevator arrived with Mrs. Kennicut from 19 and the two Birwell sisters. I told them good afternoon as I was escorted on by a big black Arab. You could have knocked their eyes off with a broomstick. Otis gave them each one of his handbills, too. Nobody says a thing. We went down a few floors, where a maintenance man pushed on carrying a big pry bar much to Mrs. Kennicut's very apparent relief. He don't say anything either, but he hefts his pinch bar to his shoulder like a club. So nothing will do but Otis take out his sword and hold it on his shoulder, too.

We slid on down, packed tight and tense. I thought Boy, is this gonna cause a stink around me for months to come – when, from below, I felt this little hand slip up into mine and heard a little voice say, "It's crowdy, Grandma. Pick me up." And I lifted him up, and held him on my hip the rest of the ride down, and carried him right on out through that lobby, black curls, brown skin, blue eyes, and all.

I seen some rigs around Eugene – remodeled trailers and elegant hippie buses and whatnot – but I never saw anything on wheels the beat of this outfit of Mr. Keller-Brown's. Class-y, I told Mr. Keller-Brown, and was it ever. From the five purple birds on the side right down to a little chrome cross hood ornament. Then, inside: I swear it was like the living room of a traveling palace: tapestries, a tile floor, even a little stone fireplace! All I could do was gape.

"I just helped minimally," he explained. "My wife is the one that put it together."

I told him he must have quite some wife. Otis puts in that Montgomery Keller-Brown did indeed have quite some wife, plus his wife had quite some father, who had quite some bank account… which might have helped minimally as well. I watched to see how Mr. Keller-Brown was going to take this. It must be touchy enough for a Negro man to be married to a white girl, then if she's rich to boot … But he just laughed and led me toward the rear of the rig.

"Devlin told me about your back. I've got a chair here I think might suit you, a therapeutic recline-o-lounger." He pushed back a big leather chair. "Or there's the bed" – then ran his hand over a deep purple wool bedspread on a king-size bed fixed right into the back of the bus.

"Fiddlesticks," I says. "I hope it never gets to where I'm not capable of sitting in a chair like a human. I'll sit here awhile, then maybe I'll lay on that bed awhile, as my fancy takes me!" He took my arm and helped me into the chair, my face burning like a beet. I pulled my dress down over my legs and asked them what they were waiting on, anyhow. I could feel twenty stories of wrinkled old noses pressed to their windows as we drove out of the lot.

Me and my grandson gossiped a bit about what was happening with the family, especially Buddy, who seemed to be getting in two messes with his dairy business as quick as he got out of one. Up front, Otis had found a pint bottle of hooch from one of his big baggy pockets and was trying to share it with Mr. Keller-Brown at the wheel. Devlin saw the bottle and said maybe he'd better go up and make sure that addlehead doesn't direct us to Alaska or something. I told him, Phooey! I didn't care if they drunk the whole bottle and all three fell out the door; Toby and me could handle things! Devlin swayed away up to the front, and pretty soon the three men were talking a mile a minute.

The boy had his own little desk where he had been piddling with some Crayolas. When Devlin left he put the Crayolas back in the desk and eased out of the seat and sidled back to where I was. He took a National Geographic out of the bookcase and made like to read it on the floor beside my chair. I smiled and waited. Pretty quick sure enough his big blue eyes came up over the top of the book and I said peek-a-boo. Without another word he put the book down and crawled right up into my lap.

"Did Jesus do that to your face?" he asks.

"Why, don't tell me you're the only boy who never heard what Tricker the Squirrel done for the Toad?" I says and went into the tale about how Mr. Toad used to be very very beautiful in the olden times, with a face that shined like a green jewel. But his bright face kept showing the bugs where he was laid in wait for them. "He would have starved if it wasn't for Tricker camouflaging him with warts, don'cher see?"

He nodded, solemn but satisfied, and asks me to tell him another one. I started in about Tricker and the Bear and he went off to sleep with one hand holding mine and the other hanging onto my cameo pendant. Which was just as well because the therapeutic recline-o-lounger was about to kill me. I unclasped the gold chain and slipped out from under him and necklace both.

I backed over to the bed and sunk down into that purple wool very near out of sight. It was one of those waterbeds and it got me like quicksand, only my feet waggling up over the edge. Very unladylike. But wiggle and waggle as I might I could not get back up. Every time I got to an elbow the bus would turn and I would be washed down again. I reminded myself of a fat old ewe we used to have who would lose her balance grazing on a slope and roll over and have to lay there bleating with her feet in the air till somebody turned her right side up. I gave up floundering and let the water slosh to and fro under me while I looked over the selection in Mr. Keller-Brown's bookcase. Books on every crazy thing you ever heard of, religions and pyramids and mesmerism and the like, lots with foreign titles. Looking at the books made me someway uneasy. Actually, I was feeling fine. I could've peddled a thousand of these waterbeds on TV: "Feel twenty years younger! Like a new woman!" I had to giggle; all the driver would have to do was look in that mirror and see the New Woman's runny old nylons sticking spraddled into the air like the hindquarters of a stranded sheep.

And I swear, exactly while I was thinking about it, it seemed I felt sure enough a heavy dark look brush me, like an actual touch, Lord, like an actual physical presence.

The next I know we were pulling into the old Nebo place. Devlin was squeezing my foot. "Thought for a minute you'd passed on," he teased.

He took my arm to help me out of bed. I told him I'd thought so for a while, too, till I saw that familiar old barn go by the bus window. "Then I knew I wasn't in no Great Beyond."

The bus stopped and I sit down and put on my shoes. Mr. Keller-Brown came back and asked me how my nap was.

"I never had such a relaxing ride," I tell him. "Devlin, you put one of these waterbeds in your convertible and I just might go gallivantin'." Mr. Keller-Brown says, Well, they were going to drive to Los Angeles to sing Sunday morn and he would sure be proud to have me come along. I told him if things kept going my way like they had been I just might consider it. Little Toby says, "Oh, do, Grandma; do come with us." I promised all right I would consider it just as Mr. Keller-Brown scooped him up from the recline-o-lounger, swinging him high. I see he's still got a-holt of my pendant.