1. It's your general frosty November Sunday in Calamity Carolina (that is to say, right on the border between North and South Carolina, too stuck up for the bottom, too backwater for the top, and right on the coast). Sometime getting on towards evening is when Noelle comes home with an empty pram. Noelle is Mrs. James Peter Cook, wife of Mr. Petey-Jack to you. They call him that ever since he was a boy in the school, too many Jimmies and Petes and Jacks and Jackies and Johns. He's a big, ginger-tom of a man, and he's sitting in the living room with the usual clutch of 'Good-fer-nuttins', playing poker and listening to god awful Country music or Better-Days Oldies on the tinny radio. They're drinking beer, of course. You knew that before I said anything. Good-fer-nuttin rednecks (and these are really, truly rednecks, my dears) sitting-- or 'settin'-- about very much anywhere are nearly always drinking beer. Unless, of course, they're drinking whiskey, and as yet, I cannot say that they are. T'isnt Noelle's place to be home yet, as she should know that there will be menfolk shooting the shit in her nice living room, talking and swapping the kind of dirt that might never come out of her kelly-green shag carpet, no matter how long she scrubbed. Petey-Jack thinks it's a 'right funny thing for a woman to do', and he tells his boys so. And his boys laugh, like it's funny. Funny, funny thing Noelle. And they joke and they laugh at her, and say hey. "Hey Boys." Noelle shuts the door behind her and smiles a very funny kind of smile. Kind of like the smile of someone who's just getting used to the fact that they've got AIDS-- full blown now, no longer just The Virus--, or that their tumor's gone malignant, and now they have to-- you know-- Get On with life, for as long as it lasts. "Hey Noelle." say the boys again, drunk and jovial, in arrangements as variegated as the pipes in the church organ. "Hey Baby." Says Petey-Jack, and then he sees her face. He goes and puts his big hands on her arms, to make her look up into his concerned expression. Her hands slide from the pram's push-bar and she stares up at her he-man, cause she knows that he's promised her so many times that he can take care of her and his little family. Her, and Him, and their son. Everything's gonna be all right, that's what his face tells hers, and she lets herself believe it, a little, at the corners of her eyes. "What's the matter, baby?" He says, very James Taylor crooning 'I'm Your Handyman'. But then he sees the cold, empty oval of the pram-basket and Noelle says, cold as the windshield of his pickup truck, "Goblins took the baby, Petey-Jack." The boys all look at her, ready to get the joke, or pretend like they get it. It's the punch line, right? But looking at her they see Petey-Jack by association, very un-joking, and his hands get tight around her slim white arms. She's wearing a sleeveless turtleneck sweater and designer, ass-hugging jeans, and when he shakes her, her strawberry-blonde hair bounces like a Soap-Opera starlet's against her crochet-cashmere shoulders. Her body arches like a swan, a diamond solitaire pendant slaps against her pretty bosom. It's on a fine, gold chain, and it was a gift from him to her. Bad luck, maybe, to give diamonds for the first anniversary, but he'd just made foreman at the shipyard and dammit, but his wife can wear diamonds like Zza-Zza Gabor. Real fine class. That's the kind of woman for Petey-Jack Cook. A real starlet. And just like a slapped leading man he's shaking her, face and voice tight as tourniquets, "What the hell is goin' on Noelle? Where's my son?" "Goblins took 'im." She says, broken record, "Goblins took the baby." Her body turns traitor-- those cashmere shoulders make a helpless shrug. Tiny, barely there. But a man with his hands around her arms like that feels every little nuance, and he knows his wife well, at least, right up to now he'd have said surely that he did. And he loves her, enough that all he does for the next Hollywood moment is shake her again, a little harder this time, not buying into her self-defeat, and demand, "Don't make me ask you again, Noelle, where the hell is my boy?" "Goblins took 'im, Petey-Jack. I told you. I tried, but they took 'im." She is in shock, maybe, she frowns like she's trying to talk to a child, and then her face just breaks in half. Maybe realising that patronizing is not the right mood, for the current situation. "I'm sorry." She whispers. If you had a movie camera, you'd cut and print. In the next scene, Petey-Jack lets her go and she staggers back a step. He remembers that he's got a room full of good-fer-nuttins, and that they're sure as hell not going to be any help for this. It's a Family Affair, like Sly and the Family Stone are insinuating on the Tinny Radio. "Beat it boys. I've gotta talk to my wife." And they do, slowly-moseying but not so slow as to push Petey-Jack's patience. They shuffle their chairs under the table-- token offerings of neatness, high coin in their exchange-- and trade their more tangible winnings of chips and dollars. They slap Petey-Jack on the back; tip their straw fedoras and greasy ballcaps at Noelle, and leave to the tune of 'Grande Ole Times' next week, and Marilyn McCoo's sweet voice beckoning them down to a Stone Soul Picnic. While the boys make the ceremonial leaving dance, Noelle cozies down in the yellow, flowered couch that they'd inherited from Petey-Jack's mother. It smells like burnt chili and beer. But not cigars, at least, she thinks crazily. No smoking in Noelle’s fine house. No suh. The door closes at last-or-finally, and her husband's boots, which he just doesn't take off inside (no matter how much she’s on about it), echo across the raised hardwood entry-landing, then fade into soft padding when they cross the carpet. He lowers himself down across from her, in the armchair that matches the couch. She flicks her eyes up at him, hope floating. He pinches it with his gaze like a live fly struggling between two patient, fat fingers. "Now honey," He says, very reasonably, giving her a chance to explain one more time, now that they were alone and she'd had a moment to think it all over again, like the preacher says you should do with a woman who is being confusing, "Why don't you explain again. Just what happened to lil' Jackie-Pete, an' where is he now?" His son's name is Peter James Cook, nicknamed according to the same backwards logic as his father. "I done told you everything." She says, cringing her hands, her entire body. Her hands are shoved up under the seat of her blue-jeans, twisting and clenching. She frees them to grip her knees, so that she'll look as reasonable as she's trying to make her voice when she says, "I know it sounds crazy Jack, but Marianne was there and she saw, and I swear it on the Bible." "Swear what on the Bible, Noelle?" Says Petey-Jack, Be-Careful with the Lord's Word tone. She starts and stares, and says the only thing she thinks she knows for sure. "I do swear, Petey-Jack, It was goblins and they took the baby..." And then she starts to cry, big shuddering sobs shaking her shoulders, her pendant, and her starlet hair. She buries her pretty face, mascara'd blue eyes and flushed, freckled face in her red palms, tears trickling under the gold band on her left ring finger. Petey-Jack is seated all the way back in the chair, and he stares expressionlessly at his wife's histrionics for a moment, two, four. Then he gets up softly out of the chair and proceeds to give her something to cry about. @me translator blurty geasbellicosity