‘Anything.’ She eyed him. ‘You’re sort of stoopid, you know that, Lone. I got to tell you every little thing four times. Now listen, if you want to know something you tell me and I’ll tell Baby and he’ll get the answer and tell the twins and they’ll tell me and I’ll tell you, now what do you want to know?’
Lone stared at the fire. ‘I don’t know anything I want to know.’
‘Well, you sure think up a lot of silly things to ask me.’
Lone, not offended, sat and thought. Janie went to work on a scab on her knee, picking it gently round and round with fingernails the colour and shape of parentheses.
‘Suppose I got a truck,’ Lone said a half-hour later, ‘it gets stuck in a field all the time, the ground’s too tore up. Suppose I want to fix it so it won’t stick no more. Baby tell me a thing like that?’
‘Anything, I told you,’ said Janie sharply. She turned and looked at Baby. Baby lay as always, staring dully upward. In a moment she looked at the twins.
‘He don’t know what is a truck. If you’re going to ask him anything you have to explain all the pieces before he can put ‘em together.’
‘Well you know what a truck is,’ said Lone, ‘and soft ground and what stickin’ is. You tell him.’
‘Oh all right,’ said Janie.
She went through the routine again, sending to Baby, receiving from the twins. Then she laughed. ‘He says stop driving on the field and you won’t get stuck. You could of thought of that yourself, you dumbhead.’