The horse snorts, expecting breakfast: two flakes of timothy hay is enough roughage to occupy her until noon, when they open up shop. But the racket doesn’t spook Lady Wonder, for whom the world’s only typewriter/xylophone is as familiar and friendly as a halter and lead. Portable, it clatters and squeaks across the barn floor on repurposed furniture casters. Clarence Fonda, a miner for the Tredegar Iron Works, the contraption boasts thirty-six hinged tin keys, one for each letter of the alphabet, plus all ten digits, padded with sponge rubber. This lurid island of orange upholstery is where she knits when business gets slow, Pudgy snug in her lap. Fonda’s legs as she wheels his instrument into the barn’s sitting area. Fonda wheels forth the sawed-off kinderklavier with its soldered-on doll’s chair, cushioned throne of Pudgy the Pomeranian, canine virtuoso. Fonda of Chesterfield, Virginia disappear into the tack room, where their equipment is locked nightly to deter teenage thieves and the wary neighbor women who sashay past the Fonda pew, crossing themselves against the evil eye.įirst Mrs. There she was and is and always will be, cross-tied and magisterial in her box stall, watching Mrs. Hear now the legend of Lady Wonder: tell her nothing, and she tells all.
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