Chapter 4

Ethyl Esther Keetone was an ethereal woman, prone to waving her hands in the air like a fluttering bird.  For Ethyl Esther’s fifth birthday her Grandma Swartz had  given her a copy of The Child’s Book of Poetry and even though  it was so big she could hardly hold it on her lap, Ethyl Esther had paged through it again ad again.  She had been especially enamored of a picture of a fairy floating above the flowers and being led by a butterfly on a leash.  For the next two weeks she had spent hours throwing string at any butterfly she saw.  Finally her mother told her to stop  crying: her explanation was that it didn’t really mater if Ethyl Esther had that kind of pet because she was already to light to leave footprints in sand.  This created an image that would follow her for the rest of her life.

A partial result of this image was that she could make biscuits that almost floated off the plate and Rude Crawlback nearly made himself sick on her ox-tail and white bean stew.  He put some of Ethyl Esther’s old tablecloths over two industrial wire spools and covered the backdoor light bulb with an orange plastic globe.   Some of the regulars accused him of betraying tradition, but now and then a few brought their wives to eat Ethyl Esther’s roasted chicken rubbed with ginger and flour to make its own gravy.