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Show 134 That was a ki£ big mistake for Helen, publicly agreeing with Red. "And how come I had to cart Bush up to the hospital to see Jon everyday," Red said to Helen. "She's old," said Helen. "She xx can't walk axy like she used to, and she shouldn't have to stand in the snow and cold waiting for busses." "What about her own family? what about them?" They were all there at Bush's, including Jon, £ fresh out of the hospital, for Bush's last Kxxixxxxx Christmas. Which happened to be one of the densest xaiiaaiiaaxaixxhaxxixiaaas collections of shovel-faced people in the world, because Uncle David and his family had shovel-faces and pick-ax noses just like Uncle Stanley and his family and seeing them all there together made me happy that Helen failed to inherit or transmit any of those shovel-faced characteristics to us, though it sure looked like Andrew xx had inherited his pot-belly and sunken chest from Stanley and Jon and David. Edju and Elizabeth didn't make it in but Aunt Frances was there with her family of three sons who all looked like pin heads. There were six billion of us sitting in that tiny living room and every once and awhile Bush called a shift out to the kitchen for xxx beer basted ham, potato salad, khuka, and duck's blood soup, family by family mostly, though one of the aunts or uncles occasionaly wandered into the kitchen to make ika conversation of adulthood, pretty boring stuff. My cousins were creeps, they were all going to be doctors, except for cousin Audrey-Mary Pell, Stanley's daughter, who seemed to be engaged to the stranger in the room, a little nerd with dark hair and black horned-rim glasses and a dark three piece xxiia suit xkax named David Strong, a son of one of the richest landowners in town. He'd got his hand caught in a faucet or something while getting a drink of water and so had to exercise it by learning card tricks and now that he knew them he guessed everybody in the world loved card tricks and so he did card tricks, card tricks, card tricks while cousin Audrey-Mary re-told and re-told the story of his miraculous and tenacious recovery and all the money they sued the faucet company for and Uncle Stanley and Uncle David laughed at every trick while crosssing their legs and drinking Carling Black Label and Ba3|tua*-ya», yaw. ^raw with their knees bouncing and Joseph and |
