The Amulet. A.R. Morlan

their city councilman, Irma of the creamed-corn complexion and whiny voice had called every­one on the block, accusing them of making the “mean call about our tub,” Irma’s vocabulary level matched that of a small, whining child. When her cat was lost (again), she called it “my kitty cat,” and when her husband’s hunting hound was barking, it was “Zack’s doggie talking loud again.”

      More than once Anna wondered who’d bribed the exam­iner when Mrs. Downing took her driver’s test (like Norma Grasnowski bribed the fellow when her retarded son Gary took his test—and passed). She doubted that the examiner was as hard up as potbellied Zack was when it came to getting a freebie in exchange for a passing test.

      To Anna, creatures like Zack and Irma and her missing link brother Elmo of the perpetual stocking cap and half­-unbuttoned plaid shirts were hardly worth the air they inhaled or the food they ingested. It was as if a command from God had gone wrong, and instead of being the goats or swine or worms they deserved to be, they had scaled the evolutionary ladder a little too soon. Rather like Jonathan Swift’s Yahoos, who looked and even on occasion acted like people, yet were still animals who ate raw ass flesh and smelled each other’s asses, unashamedly.

      She was never sure if her own family situation made her feel so unaccountably above those with less gray matter upstairs, and much less couth in general. If the way she had been treated produced her feelings of superiority, so be it, she figured. Perhaps it was the way the ones who tormented her got theirs back. At any rate, regardless of why she dubbed them Yahoos, they did act as if they belonged to a sub-species of the human race.

      I mean, how can cruds who put bumper stickers on theircars saying, “No muffs too tough—we dive at five,” or “Wanna get laid? Crawl up a chicken’s ass and wait” and leave skinned-out deer carcasses in the driveways after bow-hunting season, expect to be treated like decent human beings? You act like an animal, prepare to be regarded like one....

      “...and my Gramma always said, ‘Just because it walks upright and wears pants doesn’t mean it has to be called a man—’”

      Anna put down her fork and stared at the smelly old lady. Doubt filtered into her mind. Had the old lady really been so terrible during all those years, or had some of the badness been in Anna’s mind? The old lady was actually making sense for a change, while Anna’s memories suddenly seemed surreal, childish in their simplistic black-and-whiteness.

      The dichotomy of her feelings was growing too uncom­fortable; she had to either change the subject or leave the house. Pushing her plate forward with a forced burp, she said, “No more. It’s wonderful, but I’m so full.”

      Leaning against the back of the white wood kitchen chair, which had been part of the old lady’s mother’s kitchen set, before Anna’s great-grandmother died not twenty feet from this very room, if the old lady’s account of the incident could be believed (and if what Bib Stanley inferred that morning was correct, a lot of people didn’t believe what the old lady had to say about the night her father went...strange)—Anna glanced around at the kitchen, and the rooms visible beyond. Even though Ma had been coming over to clean up for the past few years, the place was still a rat trap, the walls oddly mildewed, with moldy black circles indicating the studs underneath the painted plaster walls, and a funny, sharply stale yet damp odor permeating the sticky varnished woodwork.

      Old newspapers, magazines, and Dean County Shoppers were stacked in piles everywhere. Anna doubted that the bundles of paper the old lady kept were worth anything; the old lady had Ma religiously deposit her social security checks in the Ewerton Savings and Loan (the old lady had worked only a few years, back in the early fifties when they were strapped for workers at the paper mill), along with her trust fund checks from the combined money her maiden aunts had left her years ago.

      Odd, when Anna got to thinking about it, that the two old women (Anna vaguely remembered Aunt Joan, who was all talc and spider-down hair when Anna was tiny) didn’t trust their grown niece with a lump-sum inheritance, as if she was still the six-year-old half-orphan entrusted to their reluctant care.The trust fund did work out for the best, though, since it was in interest-bearing bonds. And considering that the old lady had had no husband to count on for a bigger cut of social security, the trust fund kept both the old lady and the family house in one piece.

      Not that the house seemed to be of a whole; ever since Anna could remember, parts of it had been inaccessible, off-limits.The old sewing room off the kitchen, for obvious reasons. The basement, at least for little Anna. Ditto for the attic, which was said to have bats fluttering loose in it. A couple of the bedrooms were shut off, empty and airless, because they weren’t needed.

      And now, without Anna and Ma constantly around to keep things reasonably clean, the place was going to seed within. Flat bats of dust settled under the bigger pieces of furniture; hazy films of it covered the flat surfaces (Anna remembered how the old lady used to tell her, “I don’t have to dust...that’s your job”—and Anna was all of four years old, barely big enough to grasp the wooden handle of the feather duster), and the jumble of bric-a-brac assembled haphazardly on the end tables and hanging shelves. One shelf was a geometric black affair backed with several oversized gold-painted wooden leaves. The leaves had gone springlike, all green and soft looking.

      The musty tang of mold spores made the inside of Anna’s nose sting. Ma had said that when she first came back, the old lady’s coffee grounds were piled up in a gray bearded heap on the counter, and that her linens were indescribable. There were torn shreds of towels and washcloths, mended and remended, sitting out, while dusty, fluffy stacks of new, unused towels, part of Ma’s bridal gifts (the same towels which the old lady had removed from their packing boxes before they moved out, and replaced with old stained floor rags and dishrags), rested on the high shelves near the bathtub.

      And the old lady’s toilet still wasn’t working. If you wanted to flush, you had to dump in a bucket of water. Anna wondered if the plumbing remained unrepaired by design or accident. It was common knowledge that no repairman would set foot on the Miner house porch unless Ma was there to keep the old lady away from the fellow while he worked.

      (Once, a couple of years before Anna and Ma left, during one of Anna’s winter breaks from college, they had had the back screen door replaced, and the old lady leeched onto poor Steve Umbert and refused to back off. She made him hot chocolate after he expressly told her he didn’t want any, then fumed when he took one sip of it and left the remainder untouched. And worst of all, she’d dragged Anna downstairs, hiss-whispering, “Go on, flirt with him!” and Anna shook off the old woman’s grasping claw, with a horrified whisper, “How could you? The man is married. I know his wife. You are absolutely disgusting—just because you fooled around doesn’t mean—”

      (If Steve hadn’t been there, Anna might not have screamed so much when the old lady hit her, but Anna had to let someone know what was going on—and when Steve came running, wanting to know what was happening, the old lady made it seem as if Anna was doing something to her, pulling away, whining, “Don’t hit an old lady...I’m just an old woman! But Steve’s eyes were knowing as he quickly wrote out a bill and said, “I’ll have my brother come over later to finish up,” only his brother Chad never did come, of course, and Ma ended up doing the job herself...and for some odd reason known only to themselves, neither Anna nor the old lady explained why Steve left in mid-job....)

      Yet those incidents seemed so alien, so removed from reality. that Anna found their very veracity questionable, even though there were plenty of people in town who could have either refreshed or supplemented her memory of them, if only they’d realized that she was now doubting. And paddling happily in dangerous depths.

      “Yahoos...I do believe that I like that word,” the old lady was saying. She added, with a phlegmy gurgle, “It’s...how do you say. Asp.”

      “Apt,” Anna gently corrected, pulling the plate of pie back for one last polite bite.

      “Yes, apt. Like my Gramma used to say, ‘If it walks upright and wears—’”

      “Oh, guess what,” Anna quickly interjected, before the old lady did a complete rerun of their conversation, “I met Bib Stanley this morning, and he