Stork Bite

by Simonds, L. K.

  “Amen,” the Tatums echoed in unison.

  Big Sherman picked up the plate of cornbread and handed it to David. There were no knives on the table, so David tore off a piece. The bread was dense cornpone—made with hot water rather than buttermilk—such as he had seen the poorest families bring to Sunday dinner on the grounds. Usually, they were families whose food he avoided. But on this night, Audie Tatum’s cornpone looked and smelled plenty appetizing. He took less than he wanted, but he hoped not more than his share, and passed the plate back to Big Sherman. The plate made the trip around the table, last of all to Audie. After she took a piece, they all began eating.

  “Those chickens sure took off when Whip came around,” David said.

  “Him and Audie been round and round about them hens,” said Big Sherman. “I thought she was gonna wring his neck and fry him up for supper before it was all said and done.”

  “He’s a fine dog,” said David.

  “He belongs to Mama,” said Sherman, as if David were trying to claim the hound.

  “I can see that.”

  “He’s a Whipper dog,” said Big Sherman. “That’s what they called them dogs because they’s fast as a whip. White folks used to raise them fancy dogs on a cotton plantation round here. Plantation long gone, but we think he come from that stock.”

  “He just showed up?”

  “Yes sir, couple a year ago. He was just a pup, but we never seen a mama dog or any other pups. Just him.”

  “Mama say Whipper was the white people’s name,” said Luke. “That’s why them dogs is called by that name.”

  “Well now, son,” said Big Sherman, leaning forward over his bowl. “That there’s a point a contention betwixt me and your mama. I say the name come from the dog bein’ fast.”

  Luke looked at his mother.

  “Your papa’s most always right,” Audie said.

  “Listen to your mama now, son.”

  Audie went on, “It don’t matter if’n he be wrong on this one occasion. Besides, Papa know very well that the man that owned the plantation was called by the name Whipper. Ever’body round here know that.”

  “Whippet,” David said aloud. He had been racking his brain for the name of the English sight hounds. The dog was a Whippet.

  “No. Whipper,” corrected Big Sherman.

  “Yes sir,” said David.

  “Mr. Tom, where is your home?” asked Audie.

  “Missouri.”

  “Don’t reckon we know anybody from over that way,” she said. “What your business here?”

  “Wiley College in Marshall. I want to get a job there and take some classes.”

  Audie smiled thinly, and Sherman glared at him.

  David was suddenly embarrassed. Here the Tatums were, most likely illiterate and barely getting by on red beans and cornpone, and he was going on about taking college classes. Mama would not have been happy.

  “Be careful what you say, David,” she once told him. “Not having things doesn’t make a person poor, so don’t make them feel as if it does. The Lord himself didn’t own a pot to pee in or a window to throw it out of, and he’s the king of all creation.“

  “Miss Audie,” David said. “This is the best meal I’ve had in a long, long time, since I ate my mama’s cooking. I sure appreciate you giving me a place at your table.”

  “You’s welcome to stay the night,” said Big Sherman. “You can bed down there beside the fire.”

  “Thank you. It’s pretty cold out there.”

  “Very well, then,” said Audie. She rose and cleared away the empty bowls.

  David lay awake after the family had gone to sleep. Their breathing and snoring filled the cabin, making it less forlorn. The wood floor was hard, and cold air seeped between the planks and through the thin blanket Audie had given him to wrap himself in. David unrolled his jacket, which he had used as a pillow, and put it on. He could not help wishing for his cozy thatched grass bed at Caddo, next to the fire pit that radiated heat all night.

  The Whippet hound lay a few feet away in front of the cabin door, his head resting on his front paws. David was surprised when they let the dog in for the night, but Audie seemed to prize him. Whip watched David wrestle with his jacket and the blanket, and he continued watching after David became still again. They looked at each other for a long time, and then David lifted the blanket, as he had lifted his blanket at home many times to invite Huck to snuggle on cold nights.

  The dog raised his head.

  David clucked softly.

  The dog rose and took a step forward, his head low.

  “Here, boy,” David whispered.

  That was all the encouragement Whip needed. He ducked under the blanket, made three quick turns and curled up against David’s stomach. David was so happy for a warm companion that he didn’t mind when, deep in the night, Whip dreamed of running and punched David with his quick and powerful hind legs.

  The next morning, David and Whip slipped out before daybreak to shoot some game for the family. They walked a long way to reach woods that had not been cut down, but they were rewarded with plentiful squirrels. Whip stole the first kill. He ran and hid to eat it but was back in time to get the offal of the next one. By late morning, David had shot and cleaned a mess of squirrels for the family. He hiked back to the house, and Whip trailed behind, tail low, full as a tick. As soon as they reached the dirt yard, the dog found a sunny spot beside the barn to sleep it off.

  David stood in the front yard, uncomfortable approaching the house if Audie was alone. “Hello!” he called.

  Big Sherman opened the door. “We thought you was gone.”

  David held up the squirrels. “I shot these for you.”

  Audie appeared beside Big Sherman in the doorway.

  “Do you like squirrel?” David asked.

  “Course we do,” Audie said. She squeezed around her husband and took the game. “You best come on inside.”

  “Leave that long gun by the door,” Big Sherman said. He stood aside for David to enter. David propped the .22 inside the doorway, and Big Sherman closed the door behind him. Audie laid the squirrels on the table.

  “Where are the boys?” David asked.

  Audie picked up a paper from the sideboard and handed it to David.

  “Is it you?” Big Sherman demanded.

  The corners of the paper were notched, as if it had been torn from a wall it was tacked to. “MISSING” was printed in large letters across the top. Beneath that was a likeness of David. He recognized it from a photograph his mother had taken the summer before. His name was printed below the likeness.

  David sat down, his haversack and canteen still slung across his chest. Under his name the paper bore instructions about who to contact with information. David recognized the name and address as Gramps’s lawyer in Shreveport. He had just come out of hiding yesterday, and already these people—people who lived in another state and could not even read—knew who he was.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “You didn’t answer my question. Is it you?”

  “Course it’s him,” said Audie. To David she said, “I remembered this paper the minute I laid eyes on you. Big Sherman went over to the church this mornin’ and took it off the wall. We been prayin’ for you at the church ever’ week, David Walker, cause a that paper. Pastor say somebody is lookin’ mighty hard for you to send such a paper as that ever’where. It say you’s missin’. Right there.” She pointed to the word.

  Big Sherman’s hand came down firmly on his shoulder. “Son, what did you do?”

  There were railroad tracks north of the farm. David had crossed them on the way from Big Cypress Bayou. He could walk north and follow the tracks until he found an opportunity to jump a train and make his way to Kansas City or Chicago. He had seen men jump trains in Shreveport. He would figure out how to do it, and he would get out of the South altogether.

  “I have to go,” David said.

  Big Sherman’s heavy hand remaine
d on David’s shoulder. “I keep thinkin’ about our boy Sherman,” he said. “If’n he run into trouble, would he find a friendly face?”

  David reached into his pocket and took out two hundred dollars he had separated from the banknotes in his boot. He could not think of a better use for the Klansman’s money than helping a poor black farmer. He placed the banknotes on the table and said, “For a new mule. I hope it’s enough.”

  Big Sherman pulled up a chair and sat in front of David, knee to knee. “They was a young fella named Pete lived near here,” he said. “Sherman and him was friends. Pete was a good boy. He was a real good boy, always lookin’ to help out. He done some work from time to time for a white fambly had a farm betwixt here and Marshall. About a year ago, the fambly’s youngest girl turned up with child. Told her daddy it was Pete had gone and forced hisself on her, and she been too scared to confess it.”

  “No,” David said. He did not want to hear this story.

  “A bunch of ‘em dragged poor ol’ Pete into Marshall and hung him from a tree next to the post office. Sheriff stood there a watchin’. Didn’t lift a finger to stop ‘em. They say the sheriff run with the Klan at night. Reckon it’s so.”

  David did not want to picture the mob or the frightened boy yanked to death at the end of a rope slung over a limb. He surely did not want to think about the sheriff approving it. No trial. No justice. No mercy. He thought about the men who rode the trains, men made hard for want of mercy.

  “That night the Klan burned out Pete’s fambly, the house and ever’thin’ in it. The barn. They shot the mule.”

  David wasn’t listening anymore. He thought about the railroad men who patrolled the cars, looking for tramps. They carried wooden batons. The cruelest among them carried lengths of iron pipe.

  “Sherman took it hard. Real hard. He ain’t been the same since.”

  “I can’t tell you what happened,” David said. “For your own good.”

  “Turned out the girl had her a sweetheart in town, a white boy, and the baby was his all along.” Big Sherman looked at Audie. “We sure could use a extra hand around here, Mama. Reckon we could work somethin’ out?”

  “If’n you think it best.”

  “Ain’t nobody around here much, ‘cept us.”

  Audie nodded, and Big Sherman turned back to David. “Reckon you could use to stay on with us for a while? We can feed you and give you a place to sleep.”

  “Maybe for a few days. Until I figure out what to do.”

  “Reckon you best put that paper away,” Big Sherman said. “Now about this money—”

  “Please keep it. Let it do a little bit of good in a whole world of wickedness.”

  Chapter Nine

  Audie shaved David’s face and scalp. The Tatums did not own a mirror for David to examine himself, but Audie said he looked swept clean.

  Big Sherman accepted the two hundred dollars David offered and bought a gigantic, snow-white mule. David thought Big Sherman would’ve been surprised—frightened?—to learn that a Klansman had funded his purchase. “I ain’t ever seen such a mule,” Big Sherman said. “He pull a load like he don’t even notice it.”

  The Tatums did not name mules, but David named the new white mule Pegasus, and he told Zach and Luke about the winged horse of Greek mythology. David renamed the hero who captured the mythical horse Zacharias because he thought the Tatum’s shy middle son could use a boost in confidence. Zachary beamed, and even Sherman, leaning against the sideboard with his arms folded, smiled a little.

  David told them that Zacharias rode the flying horse to the top of Mount Olympus, where the Greek gods lived, to slay a fire-breathing monster. The boys listened, spellbound by David’s description of a monster with two heads, one a lion and the other a goat. David couldn’t remember how the fable went, so he improvised. He had the lion breathing fire and the goat spitting lightning. He rolled Medusa into his tale, telling the boys the monster’s gaze turned folks to stone and the lion’s mane was made of snakes.

  “What’s a mane?” Luke interrupted. “Preacher talk about lions, but he ain’t never said nothing about manes.”

  Before David could answer, Zach asked, “They’s other gods besides the Lord?”

  “No sir!” Audie snapped. “They ain’t no other gods. Just forgit that part. I reckon that’s enough for one day.”

  Big Sherman said the white mule would be called Big Peg and Zachary would be the first to ride him, which David could tell pleased the boy to no end. David asked Big Sherman for the old mule, mainly to save him from whatever terrible fate awaited farm animals who’d outlived their usefulness.

  “You know anythin’ about mules?” Big Sherman asked.

  “No sir, but I can learn. I can use him to bring venison back from the woods. I’ve seen plenty of deer out there.”

  “Alrighty then,” Big Sherman said. “He’s yours.”

  David named the mule Methuselah, whom the family knew was the oldest man recorded in the Bible.

  The first farm chore David was given was chopping firewood. He was clumsy with the long-handled axe, even after Big Sherman demonstrated how to handle it. The tool seemed to animate in David’s hands, as if it had gone insane. The heavy blade slung itself all over the place, and the family kept their distance when he was at the woodpile.

  David’s next assignment was harnessing Big Peg to the wagon. The mule’s complicated harness confused David, and the leather straps twisted themselves into hopeless tangles that could only be sorted out by a Tatum. Even little Luke could make sense of them, but it was quiet Zachary who showed David the sequence that kept the traces straight. After David harnessed the mule, Big Sherman drove to town and came home with a wagonload of supplies, including a brown felt hat for David.

  “Now you look like a farmer,” Big Sherman said.

  David did not feel like a farmer. He felt as if he stuck out like a sore thumb. He seemed to go about everything contrary to the Tatums. He spoke differently. He ate differently. He laughed at things they did not find funny and he failed to see the humor in things they did. The only boost to his confidence during his first weeks on the farm was his aim with his rifle. He went hunting every morning, and he always brought back something.

  David took Methuselah to the woods and found the old mule tolerated the sound of the .22. The gun was too light for hunting deer, but David reasoned he was shooting well enough to kill a small white tail if he had a clean head shot.

  One morning, a little doe wandered into a clearing where David sat with his back against a pine tree. David raised his rifle slowly and waited while she foraged ever closer. When she was less than a dozen yards away, he shot her between the eyes. She dropped instantly. David tied a length of rope around the deer’s neck, threw the other end over a branch, and heaved the carcass off the ground. He field-dressed her, then walked Methuselah under the branch and laid the deer across the mule’s back.

  David and the Tatums ate like royalty on the tender venison. Big Sherman traded some of the meat to a neighbor who had a dairy cow, and Audie made two pans of buttermilk cornbread as good as any David had ever eaten. They ate the bread steaming hot and slathered with fresh butter.

  “You’s good luck,” Big Sherman told David while they lazed around the cabin after supper.

  “No sir. I ain’t lucky,” David said.

  Audie always knew when it was Sunday, even though farm time, like swamp time, did not march to clocks or calendars. David no longer bothered keeping up with what day it was, but he wondered how Audie managed it. “She gots a way,” Big Sherman said.

  One evening David saw Audie pick something from a chipped teacup on the sideboard and deposit it in another similar cup. When she wasn’t around, he examined the cups and found seven dried peas divided between them. He watched her after that and learned that when one cup was empty and the other was full, off the Tatums went to the church house.

  On Saturday afternoons, Audie commanded the men and boys out of their clot
hes and into blankets. They took turns bathing in a large washtub filled with water heated in the fireplace. The fire was stoked to blazing to keep everyone warm, especially the boys. David was the last to bathe, and by the time his turn rolled around the water was as thick as pot liquor. Audie scrubbed their clothes on a washboard on the porch and hung them to dry from the rafters inside.

  On Sunday mornings, the Tatums put on their clean clothes and left the farm for the weekly church service. David did not attend, which troubled the younger boys.

  “Why don’t he come?” Luke asked.

  “That his business. You young’uns leave him be,” Audie said.

  “Ain’t he saved?”

  “That be his business too,” Big Sherman said. He playfully swatted the boys on the behinds. “You two go on now and quit wartin’ ever’body.”

  Next Luke announced that he and Zach would stay home from church with David.

  “No sir,” Audie said, and that was that.

  The constant demands of the Tatum farm pulled David’s life out of his head, except on Sunday mornings when, idle and alone, he daydreamed as he had at Lake Caddo. For those few hours, David was himself again. When time neared for the family to return, he retreated to the barn to tend the mules and steal a few more minutes by himself.

  Peg and Methuselah had fallen in love with each other. The animals loved David too, and they made an impressive variety of honks and snorts and bellows whenever he approached. When David went to the woods to hunt, he gathered into his haversack a few handfuls of whatever caught Methuselah’s fancy and gave it to Peg.

  Audie sewed for David a thin mattress of hay-stuffed ticking. Every night, he unrolled it near the hearth and was asleep as soon as he was prostrate. He often woke up before anyone else and lay in the darkness with Whip curled close against his side. In the respite of those quiet mornings, David allowed his thoughts to dwell on his own family.