Dogland | Page 5

lying in the back of the taxi. Her blue print dress was all rumpled and stained, and the taxi seat was, too, but that was okay. Ma was smiling. In her arms, she held a wet little red thing that looked like an ugly puppet or a shaved monkey. "Chris," Ma said. "Say hello to your little brother."
"Ma?" I whispered. "You okay, Ma?"
"I'm fine, Chris. Let Little Bit see, too."
"Yes, Ma." As my sister squeezed past me, I backed away, back through the sea of legs, and started to turn to run as fast and as far as I could. A hand gripped my shoulder, and I looked up into the hairy man's face.
"Ugly li'l bastard, ain't he?"
I nodded hesitantly, not sure whether I should let anyone talk that way about my new brother.
"But he's beautiful, too. It's tough to understand, but there it is. Chew on it awhile, son."
"Yes, sir."
The policeman, by the cab door, grinned like the drunkest of the festivalers. "Sure is a handsome li'l fellow. Got a name for 'im, ma'm?"
"We're not sure," Ma said gently, which meant that Pa hadn't said if there was a name he wanted Digger to have.
"George'd be good," said the hairy man. "Means he works with the earth."
"George?" Ma spoke as if she were tasting the name on her tongue.
"George is right nice," said the fat woman with oak leaves, and she smiled at the hairy man. A breeze touched the taxi and the crowd, erasing the damp Louisiana heat for a moment.
Ma smiled. "George." She stated it in the quiet voice that she almost never used, the voice that meant she had decided something and nothing anyone, even Pa, could do or say would ever change her mind.
"George!" someone in the crowd shouted. People called, "Good name, ma'm!" and "Let's hear it for George!" and "Who the hell's George?" I couldn't make out much else in the joyous babble. Someone put a dark bottle in my hands and I drank deeply, thinking this was soda pop. When I began to cough, someone grabbed my shoulder. I thought I was about to be spanked for drinking wine, but the hand belonged to the policeman, who pushed me toward the taxi. "Get on in, boy, your mama still ought to get to the hospital."
I looked around. The hairy man and the woman in oak leaves had gone. I nodded, mumbled, "Yessir," and got in next to Little Bit.
The police car ran its siren all the way to the hospital. Little Bit sat next to me in the taxi and kept sliding onto my side of the seat to look out the window, but I didn't mind. Ma sat with the baby and smiled and whispered to him, and the taxi flew so fast that the wind whipped through the window, so fast that the Louisiana heat couldn't catch us, and Little Bit laughed, and everything was as wonderful as it could be, even if I did have a shaved monkey doll for a brother.
Pa came home five days later. Grandma Letitia, who'd arrived the night of Digger's birth to take care of Ma and us kids, went right back to Minnesota. I tried to tell Pa about the tree woman and the hairy man, but Pa said that's Mardi Gras for you, people'll do any damn thing for fun, and why'd the hospital expect us to pay the full bill when Ma never even got a peek inside the delivery room?
I was sorry that Ma didn't remember the hairy man. I'd wanted to ask if he had looked like the drunken man at the hospital in South Carolina when I was born.
I have few memories about the pink house in New Orleans that Ma loved, and the few that I have are suspicious, as if they come from things I was told rather than things I lived. I believe I remember running around in a small yard of lush green grass with a coke bottle in my hand, but that may come from Ma telling me how all the neighbor kids drank soda pop, and we Nixes would want some, so she would give us orange juice in a Coca-Cola bottle, and for awhile, that satisfied us.
I think the end of our street curved, rather than came to an intersection. I remember running with other kids around a winding sidewalk. Where it took us, I have no idea.
I do remember moving from the pink house. Some people took away our swing set--in the back of a pick-up truck, I think. Little Bit and I, and maybe Digger, too, ran behind it, watching it go away. I think we cried. (Ma said once that I watched our possessions being sold, and she explained that we would be getting a new house, new