Free Big Fish by Daniel Wallace Page B

he pirated the next shipment of girdles and hid them in a corner of the warehouse, where only he could find them. Mrs. Rainwater came in the very next day. She sat down in an overstuffed chair and pointed at one of the girls.
    â€œYou!” she said. “Bring me the girdle!”
    The girl grew flustered, for she feared Mrs. Rainwater.
    â€œThe girdle?” she said. “But none have arrived!”
    â€œOh yes they have!” Mrs. Rainwater said, her mouth wide and gaping like a cave. “I know they have arrived! You!” she said, pointing to another, her arm sloshing like a water balloon. “If she can’t serve me, you can. Bring me the girdle!”
    This girl ran crying from the floor. The next girl fell to her knees before Mrs. Rainwater even said a word.
    Finally, no one was left to point at but my father. He stood at the far end of the showroom floor, tall and proud. She saw him, but pretended not to. She pretended he wasn’t there at all.
    â€œCan someone please help me?” she screamed. “I want to see the new girdle! Can someone please—”
    My father crossed the showroom floor and stood before her.
    â€œWhat do you want?” she said.
    â€œHere to serve you, Mrs. Rainwater.”
    Mrs. Rainwater shook her head and stared at her feet; she looked like she wanted to spit.
    â€œMen don’t belong in this department!” she cried.
    â€œAnd yet,” he said, “here I am. And I alone know where the new girdles are. I alone can help you.”
    â€œNo!” she said, shaking her head in disbelief, her big horse eyes plainly shocked. “This can’t be . . . I, I—”
    â€œI’d be happy to get it for you, Mrs. Rainwater. More than happy.”
    â€œFine then!” she said, little bits of spittle collecting at the corners of her mouth. “Get me the girdle!”
    And so he did. Mrs. Rainwater stood. She waddled to the changing room, where the girdle rested on a stool. She slammed the door behind her. My father heard her grunt and groan and snap and tighten and finally, some minutes later, she emerged.
    And she was no longer Mrs. Rainwater. She had been completely transformed. The girdle had taken her, this whale of a woman, and turned her into beauty itself. She did have a bounteous breast, and a rear end of some proportion, but her figure was all wavy and smooth rolls, and she even seemed younger, and sweeter, and certainly a happier woman than before. It was indeed a technological miracle.
    She looked at my father as though he were a god.
    â€œThis is it!” she cried, her voice a melodious tune. “This is the girdle I’ve been waiting for all my life! And to think that you—you—I’ve been so unfair! Can you ever forgive me?”
    Then she turned from him and faced a mirror, where she enthusiastically admired her new self.
    â€œOh, yes,” she said. “Oh my, yes. This is how I was meant to look. With this, I can probably get a new husband. I never thought girdles could come so far so quickly! But look at me! Just look!”
    She turned and gave my father an adoring glance.
    â€œYou’ll go far here, young man,” she said.
    T HE THIRD AND LAST labor Edward Bloom performed had to do with a wild dog. After being speedily promoted from sales clerk to manager, my mother and father moved into a small white house across the street from the elementary school. They were only the second family to live in that house. It had been built by Amos Calloway, sixty years before, and he and his wife had raised a family there, and the children had all moved away. Mrs. Calloway had died many years before, and when Mr. Calloway died, everyone in the neighborhood assumed one of their lovely children would move back there to live. But they didn’t. The children had their own lives rooted in distant towns and cities, and, after burying their father, promptly put the house on the market, which the