An atonishing mantle of scarlet, purple and indigo, all layered like Neapolitan ice cream, fell gently to earth. The Dog Star guided Artie and Kelly homeward. A grassy quadrangle lay illuminated by a sodium lamp. Bungalows for resident students stood in stark bas-relief.
Arriving at the pebbled promenade, Artie asked, "What happened to you, Kelly?"
"Beginning when?" Anger bubbled up like gas from a tar pit. Her Kickapoo eyes were black as a nun's rosary beads. Evidently he had pushed the wrong button.
"At the beginning."
"You want to know why I'm so small. So deformed."
Artie Hoffman. Peace Corps teacher who introduced PVC to fledgling engineers up in Lahore. Tour guide at the Whitney Museum. Humble leader of a Ruhani Satsang. Motorcycle gypsy, once married to a Morman prophetess. Now teacher at Lotus Land special school. Was fixed speechless.
"Of course you do, Mister Artie!" Her fury lanced into his unprotected soul. "My momma kept me from growing up tall and straight."
He offered his hands, palms up, in supplication. She hissed, all knotwood and knifefight. "Hear me, damn you! We lived in this li'l ol' Airstream trailer with iddy-biddy windows. Daddy drove us from one place to another so's he could pick tobacco. I 'member pineywood trailerparks where I came by all kinds of bogus aunts and uncles. Get what I mean? Momma and Daddy drank t'gether and would get stupid as turnips a'watchin' TV. When I was a baby going to hollerin' Momma shut me up with paregoric."
"Tincture of opium. I used to get just a drop with Milk of Magnesia."
"Well, Momma didn't fool around with no magnesia! She wanted to knock me out."
"Stunted your growth."
"Stunted my everything, Mister Artie."
"What about the scars on your back?"
"Foster daddy. Sumbitch Ed Fletcher whipped me with a 'lectrical cord 'cause I told his wife Lucy he diddled me. Got me knocked up, s'what he did. Please, Mister Artie, I don't want to talk anymore."
She gave him a soft hug. Her fury spent.
He watched her go. Feral, silent, becoming one with the night.
Kelly finished the Third Grade, able to read and write.
The school hired her as groundskeeper. Her wages paid for tuition, room and board. Staff people called her "Porcupine" (spikey hair) and "Half Pint" (short stature). But to Artie Hoffman she would forever be Kelly Alabama.
Fondness for her grew in their hearts. Some saw her as a mascot. Others saw her as a unique person. Always the wild child, she continued to mature along tangents that surprised everyone. The night sky with its constellations and the occasional aurora borealis fascinated her, speaking to her and giving her uncommon spirituality.
Artie presented her with a primer on astronomy and it became her new Bible. She learned the name and motion of each star that she could see, and within a year she was reading celestial omens.
One evening as they sat on his verandah she asked, "Mister Artie, how do you explain change in the world?"
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