The guests cluster in the parking lot. Pretty Mary's 
stockings hang at half mast
around her ankles. She has a black eye and fresh bandages on her right
hand. Mean Mike again lifts my car off the ground and snarls about drugs
to make his dick bigger, then he starts singing a medley of hits, holding
a catsup bottle by the neck for a microphone. Socco and Elephant Gerald
squat on the curb counting cars. One keeps track of Fords, the other
Chevrolets. Elephant Gerald wears a Lone Ranger mask. Socco twirls his key
chain like worry beads, waiting to tell Chester Godfrey to leave his wife
alone. Everyone knows Socco shrinks like a penis in the pool when the
bully appears--but Chester is across the street, drinking breakfast with
the liar's dice. Elephant Gerald is waiting to interview Ada Lightbody on
his tape recorder. Ada is one of the Lightbody sisters--the matriarch. Her
destiny was to mother a farm, but at 11 Ada's mother followed her own
contrary destiny out the front gate. That was the year Ada's father
started saving string.Mr. Lightbody's ball was higher than the shed
by the time he crossed the river. 
The giant unskinned softball replaced
his wife as role model for their eldest daughter. Ada Lightbody is now a
cherubic crab with vein-laced legs. She's several inches shorter than she
once stood, and she may be withered, but each rise of flesh between the
creases is as soft as any mother. Ariel tells her so. (All the time.) And
Ada's not afraid of anything. Not axes, not taxes. Sister of the Sandhill
Crane--another ancient native of Nebraska--she arrives curbside just in
time. Elephant Gerald is eager to talk. He's wired to the transistor on
his hip, so he receives classical music in one ear and Ada in the other.
They amble toward the picnic table in the center of the compound. A
patched Cinzano umbrella stands between the horseshoe court and a strip
of earth that isn't allowed to live. Elephant Gerald is from California
and knows all about circular picnic tables, but they still trouble Ada.
She can't eat the food here but maybe she can talk.