Read Eggs for Free Online Page B

Primrose’s van.
    “Yo, Johnny Junk!”
    Sometimes Primrose was there, and she would scream back at them: “Hey, why don’t you get out of the car and say that! Come on over here and say that!” They wouldn’t, of course, so Primrose would turn to John, who would be grinning, and growl, “You don’t
care
if they say that stuff? You’re not even mad.” And he would grin some more and say, “Why should I get mad? You’re mad enough for everybody.” And Primrose would get madder.
    “You’re not like your mother,” John would say.
    “Thank God,” Primrose would say and roll her eyes.
    “She’s always in a good mood.”
    “That’s her problem.”
    Refrigerator John would laugh. He had liked Primrose and her mother before he even met them, just from knowing they were moving into the old machine shop down the way and he would no longer be the only human inhabitant on April Street. He liked Primrose even more when he met her. She didn’t seem to notice how short or gimpy he was. She looked him in the eye and talked to him. Sometimes she would plop herself down and watch TV and ignore him for hours until she said, “So what’s for dinner?” She almost always wore a sourpuss, and for some reason he liked that too.
    And now she was coming around with this kid David. The kid was only nine and about half Primrose’s size, and it looked out of whack, the two of them together. But they seemed to get along. Maybe because he had a sourpuss to match hers.
    John liked them both. Actually, he liked all kids. Of the two kinds of people — kids and grown-ups — he liked kids better. But kids didn’t like him back. Little kids feared his floppy foot. Big kids mocked him.
    From the outside, Refrigerator John’s place looked like it was patched together from the junkyard that surrounded it. Cinder block here, plywood there, tar paper there — he had done it with his own hands. He called it “the abode.” The furnishings, from kitchen table to easy chairs, had come from appliance customers who had other stuff they wanted to get rid of.
    No one had ever given John a TV, so for years he was quite content with a radio — until the two kids began coming around almost every night. Knowing he could not command them to stay off the streets, he decided to entice them to stay at his place as much as possible. He filled his freezer with frozen pizza, and stacked cartons of Mango Madness halfway to the ceiling. He hung a dartboard on the bathroom door and set a Monopoly game in the middle of the dining room table.
    And he bought a TV. A 28-incher.
    But it didn’t work out quite the way he had expected.

16
     
    They ate the pizza, drank the Mango Madness, and ignored the Monopoly. After a week of dart games, the bathroom door was full of holes. He took down the board. They fought over what TV shows to watch. When she got her way, David wouldn’t watch. And vice versa.
    At least once a night David said, “I don’t like you.”
    And she said, “Ditto.”
    On those rare occasions when they agreed to a program, they hardly ever saw it through to the end. Primrose could not let a show go by without a parade of comments.
    Quiz shows: “Who let you in? That’s the stupidest answer I ever heard.”
    Murder mysteries: “You deserve to get killed for wearing such stupid clothes, you idiot.”
    Situation comedies: “Oh, that was really funny. I can hardly control myself. Look how hard I’m laughing. I’m wetting myself. Ha-ha.”
    Talk shows: “You what? . . . You
what
?”
    Half the time, with a final “This is too stupid,” she would snatch the remote and punch off the POWER button.
    “Hey!” David would shriek.
    “It’s
my
show,” Primrose would retort. “I can turn it off if I want.”
    “Then put on something I want to see.”
    “It’s my half hour. I can do anything I want with it.”
    If the boy reached for the remote, she would smack his wrist and he would bellow: “Refrigerator!”
    But Refrigerator would