Then when Mert reached in his pocket for a few bucks the taxi drove off and Brownie said the school nurse had paid and he could bring her the money the next day. He was throwing up “all over the place,” he said, and she was afraid he had a bug. A couple of throw-up bugs, Brownie explained, were still going around, and he didn’t want to spread them. “So you’re bringin’ ’em all home to us, thanks a lot,” said Mert, and laughed when his grandson frowned, taking him literally. “Better go right to bed, then, son.” Mert went back to the pack basket he was making for the local craft center exhibition. He’d made egg baskets, apron baskets, thimble baskets, laundry and pack baskets, even a large cradle with a canopy over its woven bottom. He was pleased with those baskets. It beat putting auto parts together the way he’d done the first thirty-five years of his adult life. He was part of five or more generations of basketmakers on Abenaki and French sides of the family. The baskets had kept both sides alive through depressions and oppressions, like the time a woman with a fancy WASP name had come knocking on the door to take his Aunt Maxine to the hospital for “a little procedure,”
