Free The Late Child by Larry McMurtry Page B

stories were interrupted.
    â€œDaniel prayed to God and God made the lions gentle,” Neddie told him.
    â€œBut lions
can’t
be gentle, they have to be fierce,” Eddie insisted.
    Pat opened the front door a crack and smiled at Wendell, who stood on the front steps as if planted. He looked a little confused.
    â€œMy sister’s prostrate with grief,” Pat told him. “She don’t want to ruin your evening, though. How about if you and I go eat some Hawaiian food?”
    Wendell had been a little frightened at the prospect of actually going out with Harmony, though he had been wanting to do just that for at least ten years. He knew she had been drunk thatmorning, when she made the date, and was prepared for her to inform him it had all been a mistake; but now her plump sister was proposing to take him off to eat Hawaiian food, whatever that might be. Despite being plump, the sister looked pretty in the face, too.
    â€œOkay, don’t go away, I’ll just be a minute,” Pat said, shutting the door in Wendell’s face before he had a chance to think up an excuse.
    â€œPat, you could have asked him in,” Harmony said. “You said yourself it was hot out.”
    â€œWhy risk it, he might remember it’s you he’s in love with,” Pat said, taking off her apron. “Seeing you in your nightgown might jog his memory or something, and then I’d have a boring evening.”
    At that point Harmony remembered how irritating her sister Pat could be. Supposedly she had come all the way from Oklahoma to provide a little comfort in time of grief, but now all she could think of was making Wendell buy her a Hawaiian dinner that was probably way more than he could afford.
    â€œPat, he’s not good at conversation,” Harmony said, but Pat had already raced upstairs to freshen up; two minutes later she raced back down and was out the door without a fare-thee-well.
    Meanwhile, Neddie was having hard going with the Bible stories. Harmony had never told Eddie much about God, mainly because she didn’t know much about God; she sort of believed in letting children figure religion out for themselves. Now Neddie was reading Eddie the story of Jonah and the whale and Eddie had the look on his face that he got when he was hearing something from an adult that he didn’t believe. It was a skeptical look—if Eddie didn’t believe something, he didn’t believe it, even if it was from the Bible. Harmony began to feel a little guilty; probably she should have been taking him to Sunday school instead of letting him watch TV so much.
    â€œAunt Neddie, whales don’t eat people,” Eddie said immediately, when Neddie finished the Jonah story. “Whales eat plankton—they’re like little tiny shrimps. Whales eat millions andmillions of plankton. I learned about them on the Discovery Channel.”
    â€œThis story happened a long time ago, Eddie,” Neddie said. “Maybe whales ate different foods in those days.”
    â€œBut whales are gentle creatures,” Eddie protested. He loved the Discovery Channel—it was full of information about animals he was interested in.
    â€œPeople can swim right up to them and pet them in the water,” he added. “They don’t swallow people.”
    â€œWell, the Bible says one swallowed Jonah, but at least the story had a happy ending,” Neddie said, closing the book of Bible stories. She had three grandchildren and none of them had any trouble believing that the whale had swallowed Jonah. All of her grandkids were as mean as little wildcats, whereas Eddie was a sweet, bright boy, who said “Please” and “Thank you,” and who probably didn’t bash his playmates, as her own grandchildren were always doing. He just happened to have a skeptical attitude toward Bible stories, which was no doubt mostly his mother’s fault, for not taking him to Sunday school, not