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FEED THE BABY OF LOVE Orson Scott Card This story will appear in the anthology
OCTOBER'S FRIENDS, ed. by Martin Harry Greenberg, consisting of stories
written in honor of Ray Bradbury's 50 years of publishing science fiction.
For this anthology, Ray Bradbury authorized the contributors to use characters
and settings from his novels. This may be the only story in the anthology to
use Douglas Spaulding, the main character from the Dandelion Wine
stories. NOTE: The story "Feed the Baby of Love" is copyright (c) 1991
by Orson Scott Card. The game "Feed the Baby of Love Many Beans or Perish in
the Flames of Hell" is copyright (c) 1990 by Greg Johnson. All quotations and
game features depicted in this story are used by permission of the gamewright.
The lyrics to "The Baby of Love" by Rainie Pinyon are used with the consent of
the copyright holder. FEED THE BABY OF LOVE Orson Scott Card When
Rainie Pinyon split this time she didn't go south, even though it was October
and she didn't like the winter cold. Maybe she thought that this winter she
didn't deserve to be warm, or maybe she wanted to find some unfamiliar
territory -- whatever. She got on the bus in Bremerton and got off it again
in Boise. She hitched to Salt Lake City and took a bus to Omaha. She got
herself a waitressing job, using the name Ida Johnson, as usual. She quit
after a week, got another job in Kansas City, quit after three days, and so on
and so on until she came to a tired-looking cafe in Harmony, Illinois, a small
town up on the bluffs above the Mississippi. She liked Harmony right
off, because it was pretty and sad -- half the storefronts brightly
painted and cheerful, the other half streaked and stained, the windows
boarded up. The kind of town that would be perfectly willing to pick up
and move into a shopping mall only nobody wanted to build one here and so
they'd just have to make do. The help wanted sign in the cafe window was so
old that several generations of spiders had lived and died on webs between the
sign and the glass. "We're a five-calendar cafe," said the pinched-up
overpainted old lady at the cash register. Rainie looked around and sure
enough, there were five calendars on the walls. "Not just because of that
Blue Highways book, either, I'll have you know. We already had these
calendars up before he wrote his book. He never stopped here but he could
have." "Aren't they a little out of date?" asked Rainie. The old
lady looked at her like she was crazy. "If you already had the calendars
up when he wrote the book, I mean." "Well, not these calendars," said the
old lady. "Here's the thing, darlin'. A lot of diners and what-not put up
calendars after that Blue Highways book said that was how you could tell a
good restaurant. But those were all fakes. They didn't understand. The
calendars have all got to be local calendars. You know, like the insurance
guy gives you a calendar and the car dealer and the real estate guy and
the funeral home. They give you one every year, and you put them all
up because they're your friends and your customers and you hope they do good
business." "You got a car dealer in Harmony?" "Went out of business
thirty years ago. Used to deal in Studebakers, but he hung on with Buicks
until the big dealers up in the tri-cities underpriced him to death. No, I
don't get his calendar anymore, but we got two funeral homes so maybe that
makes up for it." Rainie almost made a remark about this being the kind
of town where nobody goes anywhere, they just stay home and die, but then she
decided that maybe she liked this old lady and maybe she'd stay here for a
couple of days, so she held her tongue. The old lady smiled a twisted old
smile. "You didn't say it, but I know you thought it." "What?" asked
Rainie, feeling guilty. "Some joke about how people don't need cars here,
cause they aren't going anywhere until they die." "I want the job," said
Rainie. "I like your style," said the old lady. "I'm Minnie Wilcox, and
I can hardly believe that anybody in this day and age named their little girl
Ida, but I had a good friend named Ida when I was a girl and I hope you don't
mind if I forget sometimes and call you Idie like I always did her."
"Don't mind a bit," said Rainie. "And nobody in this day and age does name
their daughter Ida. I wasn't named in this day and age." "Oh, right,
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you're probably just pushing forty and starting to feel old. Well, I hope I
never hear a single word about it from you because I'm right on the seventy
line, which to my mind is about the same as driving on empty, the engine's
still running but you know it'll sputter soon so what the hell, let's get a
few more miles on the old girl before we junk her. I need you on the morning
shift, Idie, I hope that's all the same with you." "How early?" "Six
a.m. I'm sad to say, but before you whine about it in your heart, you remember
that I'm up baking biscuits at four-thirty. My Jack and I used to do that
together. In fact he got his heart attack rolling out the dough, so if you
ever come in early and see me spilling a few tears into the powdermilk, I'm
not having a bad day, I'm just remembering a good man, and that's my
privilege. We got to open at six on account of the hotel across the street.
It's sort of the opposite of a bed and breakfast. They only serve dinner, an
all-you-can-eat family- style home-cooking restaurant that brings 'em in from
fifty miles around. The hotel sends them over here for breakfast and on top
of that we get a lot of folks in town, for breakfast and for lunch, too. We
do good business. I'm not poor and I'm not rich. I'll pay you decent and
you'll make fair tips, for this part of the country. You still see the
nickels by the coffee cups, but you just give those old coots a wink and a
smile, cause the younger boys make up for them and it's not like it costs
that much for a room around here. Meals free during your shift but not after,
I'm sorry to say." "Fine with me," said Rainie. "Don't go quittin'
on me after a week, darlin'." "Don't plan on it," said Rainie, and to her
surprise it was true. It made her wonder -- was Harmony Illinois what she'd
been looking for when she checked out in Bremerton? It wasn't what usually
happened. Usually she was looking for the street -- the down-and-out
half- hopeless life of people who lived in the shadow of the city.
She'd found the street once in New Orleans, and once in San Francisco,
and another time in Paris, and she found places where the street used to be,
like Beale Street in Memphis, and the Village in New York City, and Venice in
L.A. But the street was such a fragile place, and it kept disappearing on you
even while you were living right in it. But there was no way that Harmony
Illinois was the street, so what in the world was she looking for if she had
found it here? Funeral homes, she thought. I'm looking for a place
where funeral homes outnumber car dealerships, because my songs are dead and I
need a decent place to bury them. It wasn't bad working for Minnie
Wilcox. She talked a lot but there were plenty of town people who came by for
coffee in the morning and a sandwich at lunch, so Rainie didn't have to
pay attention to most of the talking unless she wanted to. Minnie found
out that Rainie was a fair hand at making sandwiches, too, and she could fry
an egg, so the work load kind of evened out -- whichever of them was getting
behind, the other one helped. It was busy, but it was decent work -- nobody
yelled at anybody else, and even when the people who came in were boring,
which was always, they were still decent and even the one old man who leered
at her kept his hands and his comments to himself. There were days when
Rainie even forgot to slip outside in back of the cafe and have a smoke in the
wide- open gravel alleyway next to the dumpster. "How'd you used to
manage before I came along?" she asked early on. "I mean, judging from that
sign, you've been looking for help for a long time." "Oh, I got by, Idie,
darlin', I got by." Pretty soon, though, Rainie picked up the truth from
comments the customers made when they thought she was far enough away not to
hear. Old people always thought that because they could barely hear,
everybody else was half-deaf, too. "Oh, she's a live one." "Knows how to
work, this one does." "Not one of those young girls who only care about one
thing." "How long you think she'll last, Minnie?" She lasted one week.
She lasted two weeks. It was on into November and getting cold, with all the
leaves brown or fallen, and she was still there. This wasn't like any of the
other times she'd dropped out of sight, and it scared her a little, how easily
she'd been caught here. It made no sense at all. This town just wasn't
Rainie Pinyon, and yet it must be, because here she was. After a while
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even getting up at six a.m. wasn't hard because there was no life in this town
at night so she might as well go to bed as soon as it turned dark and then
dawn was a logical time to get up. There was no TV in the room Rainie took
over the garage of a short- tempered man who told her "No visitors" in a tone
of voice that made it clear he assumed that she was a whore by nature and only
by sheer force of will could he keep her respectable. Well, she was used
to letting the voice of authority make proclamations about what she could and
couldn't do. Almost made her feel at home. And, of course, she'd do whatever
she wanted. This was 1990 and she was forty-two years old and there was
freedom in Russia now so her landlord, whatever his name was, could take his
no-visitors rule and apply it to his own self. She saw how he sized up her
body and decided she was nice-looking. A man who sees a nice-looking woman
and assumes that she's wicked to the core is confessing his own desires.
After work Rainie didn't have anywhere much to go. She ate enough for
breakfast and lunch at the cafe that dinner didn't play much of a part in her
plans. Besides, the hotel restaurant was too crowded and noisy and full of
people's children running around dripping thick globs of gravy off their
plates. The chatter of people and clatter of silverware, with Montovani and
Kastelanetz (?) playing in the background -- it was not a sound Rainie could
enjoy for long. And when she passed the piano in the hotel lobby the one time
she went there, she felt no attraction toward it at all, so she knew she
wasn't ready to surface yet. One afternoon, chilly as it was, she took
off her apron after work and put on her jacket and walked in the waning light
down to the river. There was a park there, a long skinny one that consisted
mostly of parking places, plus a couple of picnic tables, and then a muddy
bank and a river that seemed to be as wide as the San Francisco Bay.
Dirty and cold, that was the Mississippi. It didn't call out for you to swim
in it, but it did keep moving leftward, flowing south, flowing downhill to New
Orleans. I know where this river goes, thought Rainie. I've been where it
ends up, and it ends up pretty low. She remembered Nicky Villiers sprawled on
the levee, his vomit forming one of the Mississippi's less distinguished
tributaries as it trickled on down and disappeared in the mud. Nicky shot up
on heroin one day when she was out and then forgot he'd done it already and
shot up again, or maybe he didn't forget, but anyway Rainie found him dead in
the nasty little apartment they shared, back in the winter of -- what,
sixty-eight? Twenty-two years ago. Before her first album. Before anybody
ever heard of her. Back when she thought she knew who she was and what she
wanted. If I'd had his baby like he asked me, he'd still be dead and I'd have
a fatherless child old enough to go out drinking without fake i.d. The
sky had clouded up faster than she had thought possible -- sunny but cold when
she left the cafe, dark and cloudy and the temperature dropping about a degree
a minute by the time she stood on the riverbank. Her jacket had been warm
enough every other day, but not today. A blast of wind came into her face
from the river, and there was ice in it. Snowflakes like needles in it. Oh
yes, she thought. This is why I always go south in winter. But this year I'm
not even as smart as a migratory bird, I've gone and got myself a nest in
blizzard country. She turned around to head back up the bluff to town.
For a moment the wind caught her from behind, catching at her jacket
and making it cling to her back. When she got back to the two-lane highway
and turned north, the wind tried to tear her jacket off her, and even when she
zipped it closed, it cut through. The snow was coming down for real now,
falling steadily and sticking on the grass and on the gravel at the edges of
the road. Her feet were getting wet and cold right through her shoes as she
walked along in the weeds, so she had to move out onto the asphalt. She
walked on the left side of the road so she could see any oncoming cars, and
that made her feel like she was a kid in school again, listening to the safety
instructions. Wear light clothing at night and always walk on the left side
of the road, facing traffic. Why? So they can see your white, white face and
your bright terrified eyes just before they run you down. She reached the
intersection where the road to town slanted up from the Great River Road.
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There was a car coming, so she waited for it to pass before crossing the
street. She was looking forward to heading southeast for a while, so the wind
wouldn't be right in her face. It'd be just her luck to catch a cold and get
laryngitis. Couldn't afford laryngitis. Once she got that it could linger
for months. Cost her half a million dollars once, back in '73, five months of
laryngitis and a cancelled tour. Promoter was going to sue her, too, since he
figured he'd lost ten times that much. His lawyer talked sense to him,
though, and the lawsuit and the promoter both went away. Those were the days,
when the whole world trembled if I caught a cold. Now it'd just be Minnie
Wilcox in the Harmony Cafe, and it wouldn't exactly take her by surprise. The
sign was still in the window. The car didn't pass. Instead it slowed
down and stopped. The driver rolled down his window and leaned his head out.
"Ride?" She shook her head. "Don't be crazy, Ms. Johnson," he said.
So he knew her. A customer from the cafe. He pulled his head back in and
leaned over and opened the door on the other side. She walked over, just
to be polite, to close the door for him as she turned him down. "You're very
nice," she began, "but --" "No buts," he said. "Mrs. Wilcox'll kill me
if you get a cold and I could have given you a ride." Now she knew him.
The man who did Minnie's accounting. Lately he came in for lunch every day,
even though he only went over the cafe books once a week. Rainie wasn't a
fool. He was a nice man, quiet and he never even joked with her, but he was
coming in for her, and she didn't want to encourage him. "If you're
worried about your personal safety, I got my two older kids as chaperones."
The kids leaned forward from the back seat to get a look at her. A boy,
maybe twelve years old. A girl, looking about the same age, which meant she
was probably younger. "Get in, lady, you're letting all the heat out of the
car," said the girl. She got in. "This is nice of you, but you didn't
need to," she said. "I can tell you're not from around here," said the
boy in the back seat. "Radio says this is a bad storm coming and you don't
walk around in a blizzard after dark. Sometimes they don't find your
body till spring." "Dougie," said the man. That was the man's name,
too, she remembered. Douglas. And his last name ... Spaulding. Like the
ball manufacturer. "This is nice of you, Mr. Spaulding," she said.
"We're just coming back down from the Tri-cities Mall," he said. "They can't
wear last year's leather shoes cause they're too small, and their mother would
have a fit if I suggested they keep wearing their sneakers right on through
the winter, so we just had the privilege of dropping fifty bucks at the shoe
store." "Who are you?" asked the girl. "I'm Ida Johnson," she said.
"I'm a waitress at the cafe." "Oh, yeah," said the girl. "Dad said
Mrs. Wilcox had a new girl," said Dougie. "But you're not a girl, you're
old." "Dougie," said Mr. Spaulding. "I mean you're older than, like,
a teenager, right? I don't mean like you're about to get Alzheimer's or
anything, for Pete's sake, but you're not young, either." "She's my age,"
said Mr. Spaulding, "so I'd appreciate it if you'd get off this subject."
"How old are you, then, Daddy?" asked the girl. "Bet he doesn't
remember," said Dougie. He explained to Rainie. "Dad forgets his age all the
time." "Do not," said Mr. Spaulding. "Do so," said Dougie. It was
obviously a game they had played before. "Do not, and I'll prove it. I
was born in 1948, which was three years after World War II ended, and five
years before Eisenhower became president, and he died at Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania, which was the site of a battle that was fought in 1863, which
was 127 years ago last July, and here it is November which is four months
after July, and November is the eleventh month and so I'm four times eleven,
forty- four." "No!" the kids both shouted, laughing. "You turned
forty-two in May." "Why, that's good news," he said. "I feel two years
younger, and I'll bet Ms. Johnson does too." She couldn't help but smile.
"Here we are," he said. It took her a moment to realize that
without any directions, he had taken her right to the garage with the outside
stair that led to her apartment. "How did you know where to take me?"
"It's a small town," said Mr. Spaulding. "Everybody knows everything about
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everybody, except for the things which nobody knows." "Like Father's
middle name," said the girl. "Get on upstairs and turn your heat on, Ms.
Johnson," said Mr. Spaulding. "This is going to be a bad one tonight."
"Thanks for the ride," said Rainie. "Nice to meet you," said Dougie.
"Nice to meet you," echoed the girl. Rainie stood in the door and leaned
in. "I never caught your name," she said to the girl. "I'm Rose. Never
Rosie. Grandpa Spaulding picked the name, after his aunt who never married.
I personally think the name sucks pond scum, but it's better than Ida, don't
you agree?" "Definitely," said Rainie. "Rosie," said Mr. Spaulding,
in his warning voice. "Good-night, Mr. Spaulding," said Rainie. "And
thanks for the ride." He gave a snappy little salute in the air, as if he
were touching the brim of a non-existent hat. "Any time," he said. She
closed the door of the car and watched them drive away. Up in her room
she turned the heater on. During the night the snow piled up a foot and a
half deep and the temperature got to ten below zero, but she was warm all
night. In the morning she wondered if she should go to work. She knew
Minnie would be there and Rainie wasn't about to have Minnie decide that
her "new girl" was soft. She almost left the apartment with only her
jacket for warmth, but then she thought better and put on a sweater under it.
She still froze, what with the wind blowing ground snow in her face. At
the cafe the talk was that four people died between Chicago and St. Louis that
night, the storm was so bad. But the cafe was open and the coffee was hot,
and standing there looking out the window at the occasional car passing by on
the freshly plowed road, Rainie realized that in Louisiana and California she
had never felt as warm as this, to be in a cafe with coffee steaming and eggs
sizzling on the grill and deadly winter outside, trying but failing to get at
her. When Mr. Spaulding came into the cafe for his lunch just after one
o'clock, Rainie thanked him again. "For what?" "For saving my life
yesterday." He still looked baffled. "Giving me a ride up from the
river." Now he remembered. "Oh, I was just doing Minnie a favor.
She never thought you'd stay a week, and here you've stayed for more than a
month already. She would have reamed me out royal if we had to dig your
corpse out of a snowdrift." "Well, anyway, thanks." But she wasn't
saying thanks for the ride, she realized. It was something else. Maybe it
was the kids in the back seat. Maybe it was the way he'd talked to them. The
way he'd kept on talking with them even though there was an adult in the car.
Rainie wasn't used to that. She wasn't used to being with kids at all,
actually. And when she did find herself in the presence of other
people's children, the parents were always shushing the kids so they could
talk to her. "I liked your kids," said Rainie. "They're OK," he said.
But his eyes said a lot more than that. They said, You must be good people if
you think well of my kids. She tried to imagine what it would have been
like, if her own parents had ever been with her the way Mr. Spaulding was with
his children. Maybe my whole life would have been different, she thought.
Then she remembered where she was -- Harmony, Illinois, otherwise known as
the last place on Earth. No matter whether her parents were nice or not, she
probably would have hated every minute of her childhood in a one-horse town
like this. "Must be hard for them, though," she said. "Growing up miles from
anywhere like this." All at once his face closed off. He didn't argue or
get mad or anything, he just closed up shop and the conversation was over.
"I suppose so," he said. "I'll just have a club sandwich today, and a
diet something." "Coming right up," she said. It really annoyed her
that he'd shut her down like that. Didn't he know how small this town was?
He'd been to college, hadn't he? Which meant he must have lived away from
this town sometime in his life. Have some perspective, Spaulding, she said to
him silently. If your kids aren't dying to get out of here now, just give
them a couple of years and they will be, and what'll you do then? As he
sat there eating, looking through some papers from his briefcase, it began to
grate on her that he was so pointedly ignoring her. What right did he have to
judge her? "What put a bug up your behind?" asked Minnie. "What do
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