The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

by Jenny Wingfield

Finally, Toy said, “I’d like to thank whoever took my clodhoppers this afternoon and brought me back a brand-new pair.”

  “Those aren’t new clodhoppers!” Swan chortled. “They just look new because I shined ’em!”

  He gave her an unbelieving look. “You don’t say. I could have sworn these shoes were spanking new. They even feel different.”

  Swan laughed from her toes. Beside her, Blade was about to come out of his skin, wondering whether his gift would also be acknowledged.

  Toy said, “And whoever brought me flowers had better come get a hug.”

  He was looking at Swan expectantly when he said it, so he was surprised when Blade got down out of his chair and stole over beside him. The boy stood there, wordless and waiting, with the family looking on.

  Toy stared at him. “You did that for me?”

  Blade nodded shyly. Still waiting. Toy scooted his chair back a little, and took Blade into his lap, and hugged him good. Blade didn’t have the nerve to hug him back, but he was sure eating this up.

  “I always wondered what it felt like to be a king,” Toy said, “and I reckon now I know.”

  Calla Moses beamed. Just beamed.

  Nothing lasts forever. A couple of hours later, the law descended on Never Closes in the form of Deputy Dutch Hollensworth, who had been sent by Sheriff Early Meeks, who had been visited (again) by Ras Ballenger, who was the picture of righteous indignation. By that time, Blade had done something none of the Lake children had ever even tried, much less accomplished. He had followed Toy into the bar after supper.

  At first, Toy had ordered him out, telling him that kids weren’t allowed in there, but Blade had responded by darting around gathering up last night’s ashtrays and emptying them into the trash can behind the bar. The ashtrays did need emptying, so Toy let him finish that job, and before he could remember to remind him to leave, the kid had grabbed a broom and was sweeping up the floor. That was what he was doing when the regulars started arriving, and they thought it was the cutest thing ever, that little rascal with the bandage over one eye, working like a bee.

  “That boy looks like a pirate,” Bootsie Phillips told Toy. “Only, he’s got the wrong color eye patch. A really good pirate needs a black eye patch.”

  Toy didn’t say anything, but the other men said enough to make up for his silence. One of them told Blade he sure hoped he wouldn’t make them all walk the plank, and an old codger named Hoot Dyson asked him where he kept his parrot, and then Bootsie Phillips said, parrot, hell, he wanted to know where all the gold was buried. Blade was getting more attention than he’d ever gotten in his life, and it was the best feeling he’d ever had, so he swept faster and faster, and even added a little dance step of sorts to his routine. Before long, the men were dropping nickels on the floor and telling him that anything he swept up, he could keep. He had a pretty good jingle going in his pockets when Dutch Hollensworth arrived.

  Toy’s heart sank. Maybe this had to happen, but he wished it didn’t have to happen so fast. And all at once, he wasn’t one bit sure he was going to let it happen at all. He motioned to Blade, trying to signal him to scoot out the back door, but Blade was too busy entertaining the regulars to see.

  Dutch saw, though. He saw Toy, and he saw the boy, and he kept his eyes on that youngster as he made his way across the room. When he reached the bar, he leaned his big frame sideways against it, so that if Blade cut and ran, he could go after him. Toy pulled a beer from a tub of ice at his feet, uncapped it, and put it into Dutch’s hand. Dutch held the icy cold bottle up against the side of his face.

  “I believe I’d like to take a bath in that tub of ice,” he said. And then: “Sheriff told me if I saw that boy yonder, I had to pick him up and take him home, much as we all hate it.”

  Toy blinked at Dutch as if he didn’t know what in the world he was talking about. “What boy?”

  “Ras Ballenger’s boy,” Dutch said, pointing at Blade. “That boy right there.”

  Toy cut his eyes in the general direction of where Dutch was pointing and scratched his head, like he was trying to unravel a great mystery.

  “Hey, fellas,” he called out to the room, “anybody here see a little boy?”

  At that, Blade glanced over, and sized the situation up, and stood still as a stone.

  The regulars understood immediately what Toy Moses wanted them to say. The idea fell over them like a revelation. They might not carry much clout in the world, but by damn, this was one time they could make a difference. One by one, they looked first at Blade, then at the deputy—and shook their heads regretfully.

  “Maybe your eyes is goin’ bad, Dutch,” Bootsie Phillips said.

  And Nate Ramsey put in, “You haven’t been doin’ any of them things my mama used to tell me I better not do ’cause they’d make me go blind, have you, Dutch?”

  Somebody let out a snicker, and then everybody in the room cracked up at the same time. Dutch stood there watching them all carry on, and he knew there was no way he was going to walk out of there with the kid. In a situation like this, his badge wouldn’t mean a thing unless he used his gun, and he did not intend to draw his gun on his friends. Not over a thing like a little boy hiding from a man who had more than likely put his eye out with a bullwhip.

  “Y’all sure you don’t see him?” Dutch asked the crowd. The question had a going-once-going-twice sound to it, kind of like, if there were no more bids, this auction was over.

  They all shook their heads again.

  Dutch drank down his beer, and belched, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Well, then,” he said, “I reckon I must’ve been seeing things.”

  And that was the end of that. For the time being, anyway. The regulars cheered, and somebody went over and slapped Dutch on the back and told him he was a good man, and several people bought him beers, even though he protested. Blade Ballenger’s heart quit trying to jump through his throat, and the next time Toy motioned for him to get out of there, he slipped out the back door into the kitchen, quick as a lizard.

  The other kids were sitting around the table, waiting for him, their eyes glued to the door.

  “What was it like in there?” Bienville wanted to know as soon as Blade made it into the room. “Was it tawdry?”

  Blade wasn’t sure what he was confirming, but he said, yeah, he guessed it was tawdry enough.

  Noble said, “There’s a law car outside. Did that deputy see you?”

  Blade plopped down into a chair beside Swan, and took the nickels out of his pocket, and stacked them on the table in front of him. There were eleven in all.

  “He thought he did,” Blade answered, “but he changed his mind. Do y’all think I look like a pirate?”

  When Ras Ballenger found out that his son was being harbored at the Moses place, and that the law and a good portion of the community were conspiring to keep him there, he was fit to be tied. He’d kill Toy Moses, that’s what he’d do. He’d walk in and shoot the S.O.B. right between the eyes.

  “You’d get the chair,” his wife told him, after about the tenth time she heard him make the threat. She didn’t even duck when she said it.

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” he snarled.

  She did have a point, though. You kill somebody in cold blood, especially in public, there’s generally a price to pay. When it comes to justifiable homicide, the law doesn’t necessarily see things from the point of view of the person who felt justified.

  Ras spent every waking minute thinking about how to get back at Toy and the whole Moses clan. With everybody in creation knowing about the hard feelings between the two families, Ras would get the blame for anything that happened over there. If that house burned down, he’d be arrested for arson. If somebody fell off a ladder, he’d be accused of sawing through the rungs.

  Finally, one morning, he hit upon a plan that was so beautiful, and so simple, that he didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it sooner. He was sitting in the backyard, in a straight chair, when
the thought came to him. Sitting there looking over his yard and his outbuildings and his maze of pens and feedlots, while Geraldine gave him a haircut. Up until that moment, he’d been a ball of nerves, all mad and twisted up inside, but once he knew what to do, he relaxed all over. It was the best feeling he’d had in a while.

  This plan wasn’t the kind of thing that could be carried out overnight, not if it was done right, and he’d be damned if he’d do it any other way. He’d have to be patient, and in the meantime, his high-and-mighty neighbors could stew in their own juices. Let ’em lie awake nights wondering why he hadn’t made another move to get his boy back, and what kind of hell would rain down when he did. Come to think of it, that helped make the waiting worthwhile—just knowing that there was no way those folks could be sleeping easy.

  Geraldine finished the haircut and blew the snippets of hair off the back of his neck. Ras got up out of that chair feeling like a new man. By the time dark started coming on, he had cleaned up his tack room, trimmed all his horses’ hooves, and set the posts for a new feedlot.

  Chapter 27

  Time rocked on.

  The Moses family and the Lake family knew in the back of their minds that Something Terrible Could Happen, but the more days that passed, the less that idea seemed real, at least to the kids. Swan and Blade and Noble and Bienville spent the rest of that summer riding Lady and playing pirates and digging for buried treasure. Sometimes they all crawled under the house, and lay on their bellies, and drew pictures in the soft dirt with their bare fingers—something they’d learned from Blade. There were days when they’d start drawing under the porch and not stop until they’d covered every inch of ground from there to the other side of the house.

  The grown-ups watched the kids playing, and smiled at how happy they all were, and marveled over how fast they were all growing—especially Blade. That boy was filling out like a young calf on new grass, his skin gleamed like burnished copper, and anytime he wasn’t smiling, he was about to.

  Samuel, meanwhile, spent his days doing work that was not what he was called to do. His nights were even worse. He tried not to let anyone see the desperation that was building inside him, but the music and laughter from Never Closes often drove him upstairs to his room, where he sat listening to Radio Bible Hour and calling on God for answers. Sometimes he’d go off in search of a church service somewhere. He went to prayer meetings. To revivals. If none of the white churches in the area had anything going on, he went to black churches, where the spirited music lifted him up and soothed his soul.

  As he came and went, Bernice was constantly putting herself in his path. She felt the need to go to services tonight. Would he mind if she rode with him? He couldn’t very well say no, but he always asked Willadee to come along. Willadee had enough to do already, what with taking care of the kids and canning food out of the garden, but she made the time. It was more church than she was used to, though, and after a while it started to wear on her.

  “Maybe we could just all stay home and be together as a family,” she told Samuel one night. He was getting ready to go to a prayer service over at Emerson, a little spot-beside-the-road community a few miles away. Willadee was supposed to be getting ready to go, too, but she had put up twelve quarts of string beans and that many quarts of pear preserves that day, plus, she’d done the wash and cleaned the house and made the meals, and she was tired. “I think sitting in the backyard watching the kids catch lightning bugs is a pretty good way of worshiping God every once in a while.”

  Samuel told her she didn’t have to go if she didn’t feel up to it, but he was determined not to let up on seeking answers from the Lord until he got them.

  “Maybe the answer is that we’re supposed to cut a watermelon and let the juice run down our chins,” she said. Which only made Samuel feel that she was making light of the whole thing, although she wasn’t. As far as she could see, God made watermelons for people to eat in hot weather, and He made people to love each other and enjoy life. It seemed to her that, when you’re constantly seeking God’s will, you may just be ignoring the obvious.

  But she got ready, and she went. And so did Bernice.

  August ground along, hot as a pistol, and dry as a bone. Samuel’s residual income had been petering out as farmers’ crops baked in the fields, and now the few folks who had actually been making their Not So E-Z payments no longer saw fit to do so. Some of them no longer saw fit to answer the door when Samuel came around to collect, either.

  Samuel hated collecting from people who couldn’t afford it, and he didn’t have the heart to employ any of the hateful intimidation tactics that Mr. Lindale Stroud endeavored to teach him. Robbery was robbery, whether you used a gun or an insult to get the goods. He kept expecting God to open up some new source of income, but God’s plan was turning out to be more complex than that. No matter how many applications he put in around town, there was no work available. He’d kept on contacting his preacher brethren, but the response was always the same: if they needed someone to fill their pulpits, he’d be the first person they would call. Now summer was almost over.

  With school starting back, Samuel and Willadee took the four children into Magnolia and bought them all new shoes. Swan wanted black-and-white saddle oxfords, but her mother told her she’d get awfully tired of all that black and white before she wore the shoes out or outgrew them—which was how long she’d be wearing them. They settled on penny loafers, and Blade (who had all kinds of coins these days, from his friends in the bar) supplied the pennies.

  The boys each got high-top tennis shoes and two pairs of jeans. Ordinarily, what would have happened next was that Samuel would have taken the boys to buy shirts while Willadee and Swan browsed the fabric counter. Actually, Swan looked forward to that. Imagining what could be created from this bit of fabric and that bit of trim was ever so much nicer than plowing through the racks of look-alike dresses in endless stripes and plaids, with their cheap buttons and tacky bows.

  This year, Samuel didn’t say a word about taking the boys to buy shirts, and they passed the fabric counter without even slowing down.

  “What do you mean, pick out the ones I like?” Swan asked. Her mother had just summoned her to the living room, where a couple of dozen pieces of fabric were draped over the settee, the chairs, the various side tables.

  “I mean, which ones do you think are prettiest,” Willadee said. “I kind of favor the ones with the smaller prints.”

  Swan squenched one eye shut and peered at the fabric with the other one. There were bright colors and subdued colors and bold designs and delicate designs, with one common thread running through the mix: they were all feed sacks.

  “Are you and Grandma Calla going to piece a quilt?” she asked. Although she knew the answer. You don’t grow up the child of someone who lived on a farm during the depression without hearing about feed sacks and their many uses.

  “Your grandma’s got more quilts than she’s got people to sleep under them,” Willadee said. “We’re going to make some darling dresses.”

  Swan didn’t think she’d ever heard her mother use the word darling before. She opened the eye that was shut and closed the other one. For a long second, she stood there with her mouth hanging slack and her breathing on pause.

  “I thought people had pretty much stopped making dresses out of feed sacks,” she said finally.

  “People have pretty much stopped needing to.” Willadee sounded as cheerful as what she was being at the moment—a saleslady trying to sell somebody something she didn’t want. “But you need dresses, and the boys need shirts. You get first choice.”

  Swan wanted to say that her choice was to go back to town and look at some polished cotton and maybe some pretty eyelet, but there was something in her mother’s determined smile that kept her from it. She drew a deep breath and eyeballed those fabrics again. After due consideration, she announced her decision. “You’ll never get the boys to wear pink or lavender, so I’ll take those. They can hav
e the blues and greens.”

  Willadee breathed a sigh of relief. She’d gambled on Swan, and it had paid off.

  Swan said, “This means we’re really poor, right?”

  “Not really poor. Really poor people don’t have enough to eat, and can’t afford to go to the doctor when they get sick. There’s a difference between being poor and being prudent.”

  Swan sighed. “I don’t suppose there’s any way to know how long we’ll be prudent, is there? Because I’d sure hate to still be prudent at Christmas.”

  “If we’re still prudent at Christmas,” Willadee promised, “we’ll find ways to make up for it.”

  September showed up right on schedule, and lasted a whole month. The first day of a new school year had always been a big event for Swan. This year, she had mixed feelings about it. On the plus side, there was Blade, riding beside her on the school bus, looking up at her, so excited he couldn’t sit still. Uncle Toy had bought him a black eye patch from some mail-order company, and he really did look like a pirate now—a small, full-of-mischief one. Living in a place where he didn’t have to be afraid was bringing out his true nature. He was buoyant. Exuberant. Carefree. You couldn’t have found the frightened, silent little boy that he had been if you’d followed him around with a divining rod.

  Willadee had made his shirts out of the scraps she had left over from the other kids’ clothes (all the other kids’ clothes), and he’d insisted that morning on wearing the shirt that matched Swan’s dress—which was pink, with tiny yellow flowers. Bienville had groaned, and Noble had told him the other boys would call him a sissy. Blade wasn’t bothered in the least.

  On the minus side, for Swan, was the bus itself. She’d always walked to school and had never even thought about what it might be like to lurch along, packed in tight with a bunch of rawboned farm kids who looked as though they might have wrestled steers before breakfast. Blade was going into the third grade this year, so he was an old hand at riding the bus, and he told her there was nothing to it. All she had to do was scoot over real fast if a big kid tried to sit on her.