She learned the truth about the chest that day. Octavia’s.
Borneo chest. Square. Iowa. Flying — planes (and lines (and points)).
He was… fascinated with that chest! she realized. What’s inside? Pictures of Octavia. Letters of love. Notes: “don’t forget to pick up milk at Speedy Mart before our rendezvous tonight” (etc.).
—–
She went back to her old home in (Paper-)Soap to check Mouse’s new info against her mother’s.
“Greene’s Motel,” she started. “That’s where the doctor — my father — said I was conceived.”
“Well there’s a green *door* inside. Along with a green phone. Maybe that’s what he was referring to.” Her Maw, Octavia Tart III, wondered if the old man perhaps was getting senile and confusing names with each other, overlapping colors where they shouldn’t be. Always fascinated with hues the good doctor was. Maw Tart wasn’t surprised that her old lover was involved with fellow doctors named Gray(son) and Brown, for example — fits the pattern. “Blue?!” he said one time to her, rubbing off the rouge she just put on that morning thinking it would please him. “I said red!” he said. Purple at the least, he thought to himself. She believed that was the day Alice came along. The door to her standard 104 room was locked for some reason — had to do it out back. Perhaps it was occupied, she realized now. Yes, Daisy was working that day as well. Made sense suddenly. Alice was conceived in the alley because of Daisy (she imagined). She’d have to mark it in her “Little Book of Vengeance” against the fellow hooker, now going on 12 (or 32) years at the Lucky Motel. 12 (or 32) years is too long — can’t call her Lucky now. Her: 6 (or 26). She still has some luck left but it’s running out quick. Mouse was a way out but wasted. No luck with Robert either, the owner of the swamp. Or so she thought.
“What about Claude? The golden robot?”
“What *about* Claude?” Maw Tart got tense all of a sudden, felt a surge of the unknown and probably unknowable coming, like in the Dark Days. Before the Coming of Jesus into her heart.
“Well… I mean, he — I mean, *she’s* in Cass City now. And he’s fiddling with her.”
“I bet he is,” spouts Maw Tart through the fear. Pleasure robots, *pheh*.
“No. I mean, he’s tinkering with her. Like in her parts.”
“My statement still stands.”
“*No*. Like… *reprogramming*. What do you know about the numbers 1886 and 1936?”
“I know they’re *years*.”
“50 years. Between them, I mean.”
“I’m counting, let’s see, 3822,” Maw said, showing off her math skills and being difficult at the same time. The fear was standing just behind her now, threatening to reach into her chest with its shadowy paw and pull out her savior.
“He’s interested in hues. Red to yellow to green to blue. Or something.”
“Hues, *huh*.”
“He’s doing *something* to that robot. He’s spying on his prospective replacements, Maw.”
“HUH — wish *I* had a replacement. Then I could go work at the beer factory they opened up in Barrow County; become like Laverne and Shirley like I always wanted to.”
Alice didn’t have the heart to tell her mother. Barrow County was no more. She’d been sending her postcards from the Void.
(to be continued)
Sunklands 