The Stories of Richard Bausch by Richard Bausch

hospital, while she was in surgery, Lionel paced up and down the corridors, muttering to himself. No one could approach him or speak to him. And poor Elvin was as miserable as I’ve ever seen a kid be. Finally Lionel came in to where the two of us were sitting in the waiting room and scrunched down in front of Elvin. “Don’t you worry,” he said. “They call this guy Buttonhole Smith. He’ll get that old appendix out and he won’t leave but the tiniest little scar, and Mommy’ll be just like new.”
    “Yes, sir,” Elvin said, and started to cry.
    “Hey,” said Lionel. “It wasn’t your fault. You hear me, kiddo? Nobody’s at fault here. Every now and then life gets serious on us.”
    “It’s above Glass Meadow,” Myra says now, looking at some instructions she’s brought out of her purse. “Past a place called Brighton Farm. Apparently there’s a sign just past the nine-mile post.”
    “Whoa,” Lionel says as we surge down a narrow hairpin curve and then shift upward again, heading skyward once more.
    Lionel was a gunner on a B-25 during the war. There’s a small star-shaped scar on the fleshy inside part of his left forearm and an oblong indentation on the outside of it, near the elbow, caused by the path of the same tiny piece of shrapnel. Lionel deflects questions about it, usually with other questions: Why do you want to know about the scar? What interests youabout it? Do you like scars? Is it the war you want to know about? Which war? Does war interest you? He is capable of making you decide you don’t want to ask another question about anything, ever again.
    “Glass Meadow. One mile,” says Myra, sitting forward, reading the sign as it glides by us.
    “I never saw the mile post. Or the farm.”
    “It said Glass Meadow. That’s what we want.”
    “Maybe there’s more than one Glass Meadow.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous, Lionel.”
    We drive on. We’re quiet now.
    On the left, as we come around another curve, is a novelty shop. There are bright tapestries hanging from a rack along the front. On the lawn are a lot of statues, looking like a gathering of little gray people and animals. Lionel pulls in.
    “Oh, no,” Elvin murmurs.
    “Stay together,” says Lionel. “No wandering off.”
    “Where would we wander?” Elvin asks, sitting back in the seat. He’s apparently going to stay right where he is.
    “You don’t want to come in, sweetie?” Myra says. But she doesn’t wait for an answer. She’s out of the car and moving swiftly across the lot in the direction of the statues. “Oh, look,” I hear her say.
    Lionel has followed her, keeping a small distance. He’s between the little stoop at the front of the place and where Myra has crouched in front of a stone angel.
    “I want one,” she says. “Lionel?”
    “Where the hell would we put it, sugar?”
    “The bedroom. All around the house.”
    “What house?” he asks.
    She ignores this.
    “An angel,” Lionel says. “Any idea what we’ll buy it with?”
    “Good looks?” she says, standing and putting all her weight on one leg, so that hip juts out.
    Lionel walks into the store, and I follow. “How are you,” he says to the man there, in a voice that is not his natural voice; there’s a heavy, sonorous music in it, a sadness. It causes me to stare at him. “Nice place you have, sir.”
    And here’s Myra, lugging her heavy stone angel. She sets it down on thestoop and comes up to where I am, in the doorway. “What’s wrong with Elvin?”
    “I think he’s carsick,” I say.
    “That’s the thing to do when you’re carsick,” she says, shaking her head. “Sit in the car.” She goes inside and speaks to the proprietor in a soft southern accent—slightly more pronounced than her ordinary speech. “It’s such a lovely day to be up in the mountains.”
    I walk over to the car, and Elvin gets out. “They’re cooking something up,” I say.
    He says, “Shit.”
    We walk up to the far end of the lot, near the