Victoria Lampshade Apt. 27

Gifts

Grandmother is the sort of woman whom you can crown with a thousand and one metaphors but never quite capture in type. She is as immense, as ancient as the Appalachian mountains wherein she dwells. She has tree-trunks for legs, boulders for breasts and white wisps of cirrus clouds for hair. Her teeth are jagged stones, her face is an autumn-leaf tracery of wrinkles and veins. Her blind eyes are the sun-starved gray of a snail's underbelly, and yet she sees incalculably more than those with technically perfect vision (which is a good thing, on account of her being somewhat hard of hearing).

The wind was howling, the sun rising and the year 1989 when Grandmother felt it -- the strangest sensation, as if something had reached its hand into her, grabbed a clavicle and started tugging.

Vexed, she stopped her knitting to swat at the thin air and mutter, "Busy, busy now. Leave me, you hands, you little imps' hands!" Then she resumed the project that lay across her lap -- something trying very hard to be an afghan but, in truth, more closely resembling an exploded woolen eggplant.

It was no use. The tugging only grew more insistent. So Grandmother tossed aside the blanket-in-progress/defunct aubergine and with a tormented cry of "Imps! Damned little imps!" reared to her full height (which was as impressive as a mountain's, a redwood's, a bear's, etc). She stormed out the cabin door, through brambles, across creeks and up steep slopes (in her stocking feet, no less) before finally her demons relented. She cupped her hand to her ear and heard something -- a weak wailing, a whimper. She dropped to her knees. Sure enough, there it was at her feet -- a mewling infant, black curls just beginning to sprout on its out-sized head.

The blood drained from Grandmother's wrinkled face and her voice dropped to a whisper. "It has begun."

. . .

Victoria ponders the question for a second, tops, and then shakes her head no. "He's not for sale." The man heaves an alcohol-reeking sigh, but Victoria only strokes the vulture's unfeeling head and offers the man a squirrel instead. "Little guy makes an excellent paperweight."

"I'll take him," the man says amiably before shifting to a more conspiratorial tone of voice. "You, uh, know of any good gambling around here?"

She glares at him. "I don't hold with gambling, Mister."

He shrugs. "I'll take that as a no."

She turns back to the vulture as the sinful man leaves with his squirrel. "That was a close one," she hisses. "I've just plucked you from the very fingers of perdition, you know."

She nods at the fat woman who has just now passed by, with grocery bags in her hands and an elegantly cut coat on her back. "Look at her," Victoria adds. "Where did she get a coat like that, I ask you, in a place like this? She's a harlot if ever a harlot I saw. This is a wicked place, and only me between you and it. You'd best remember that, and try doing your job -- next opportunity you get, that is."

Then she smiles, believing her feathered associate sufficiently chastened. "Oh, I could never part with you. You're downright important, you know! Why, I'm not quite sure . . . but Grandmother said it was so."

. . .

"I will give you three things before you go, Victoria," Grandmother said. "And they're all of them downright important."

First was the opossum, and next to it a bottle of whiskey. "Give this one a drink, and he speaks the truth," Grandmother said. "Just don't spoil him with fine liquor. Whiskey will do."

Next came the vulture. "This one will scream when danger is near -- and you'd best take heed of such warnings when they come."

Finally, the box. Grandmother did not explain the box. She said only, "Do not open this. It will open when the time comes."