The Madman of Piney Woods

by Christopher Paul Curtis

  When we passed Langston’s grocery store, Mr. Langston’s son, Huey, was standing in front, sweeping the sidewalk.

  He called, “Good morning, Mrs. O’Toole; good morning, Alvin. Terrible about the fire, isn’t it?”

  She pulled me along by my collar and hissed at me, “If ye say one word to him, ye little magpie, I’ll strap ye within an inch of yer blessed life, then tie ye to a tree in the South Woods so’s that black savage Lion Man can come and eat all the meat off yer very bones.”

  Most times she ended that story by saying that all Father would find was my skeleton at the base of a tree. Today she was too angry to give the usual ending.

  We walked right by Huey Langston and I kept my eyes down, saying a prayer of gratitude that an ugly confrontation had been avoided.

  I could have saved my gratitude.

  Huey Langston called after us, “Would either of you like to sample these grapes that just came in?”

  Grandmother O’Toole stopped as if she’d been slapped. She released the collar of my shirt and walked back to Huey Langston. She hadn’t shrunk from her talk with Mr. Thompson.

  She snapped, “So tell me, you think we need yer charity, do ye?”

  He seemed surprised. “Dear me, no, Mrs. O’Toole; it’s just that the grapes are exceptionally sweet, and I thought …”

  Grandmother O’Toole said, “Pardon me if ye would, before ye foul the air with any of the balderdash tha’ ’tis rattling about in your head, and tell me, is yer father still among the living?”

  “Well, yes, Mrs. O’Toole; he’s not doing well, you know. Poor man will be ninety-five years old in September.”

  Grandmother O’Toole said, “Would ye be so kind to deliver a word or two to him for me?”

  Poor, innocent Huey Langston said, “Why, of course! Hearing from old friends and customers is one of the few things that brings a smile to Dad’s face.”

  A knot began tightening in my stomach.

  “Wonderful!” she said. “But I was neither a friend nor a customer of the rotten old bugger. I know it’s convenient for ye to forget, but yer lovely, ailing father wouldn’t serve us, wouldn’t even let us in the door. So would ye kindly tell him that Sinead O’Toole says that tonight she’ll pray hard that the lamb of God stirs his hoof through the roof of heaven and kicks yer father square in his arse straight down to hell? Could ye pass that along to the fine old gentleman for me? Perhaps ’twill help speed the old rotter on his way.”

  Grandmother O’Toole’s lungs must be similar in size to those of an elephant, for as Mr. Huey Langston stood there sputtering, she dredged up a huge wad of saliva from her chest and splashed it on the window of Langston’s Groceries.

  She dragged me toward Shanahan’s Groceries. I don’t know who was more appalled, me or Huey Langston.

  A few blocks down Main Street, I found my voice. “Grandmother O’Toole! How could you say those horrible things, and why did you do that to the Langstons’ store? Father will die of embarrassment. He is the judge after all!”

  She stopped and grabbed my shoulders.

  She said, “Listen, ye little redheaded monster. Ask yer father about those people. Those good, God-fearing Canadian Langstons. Ask him if he remembers what they were like not so many years passed. Ask him about the sign the upright Mr. Langston had in that very window of his shop.”

  I knew I was stepping over my bounds, but I had to say, “Sign? What kind of sign could make you treat someone so rudely?”

  “Ask yer father why we used to have to go all the way to London or even down into that cursed Buxton to shop. Have him tell ye why we had to pay some other Canadian person to shop for us in Langston’s before Shanahan’s opened up.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, so ye don’t know everything, do ye?”

  “Grandmother O’Toole, what are you talking about?”

  “ ’Tisn’t my job to explain these things to ye. Ask your da. Let him tell you about the sign that hung in that window not twenty years past, big as anything, that said, WE SERVE NEITHER BLACKS – NOR DOGS – NOR IRISH.”

  “What? Really?”

  “I swore those many years ago that my shadow would never darken the doorstep of that store. Now that carbuncle of a son wants to act as though all’s forgiven and forgotten. Well, ’tis not. It will burn within me till the day I die.”

  “I didn’t know they did that. How could they not let people in because of where they’re from?”

  Grandmother O’Toole was hopeless. Any sort of sympathy or understanding I might have felt toward her flew away when she said, “They did it because they’re fools. That’s why I hate these Canadians even more than I hate the English.”

  Then she brought up one of her favourite subjects to moan about – the Saint Lawrence River and Grosse Ile, where she and her family first landed in Canada.

  “ ’Tis beyond the personal, laddie. Yes, the Canadians murdered many of us on those ships in the river, but if you’re approaching things with the mind of a divil, which is all they’re capable of, that can be understood. They didn’t want the jail fever to spread and they didn’t care who they hurt to stop it.

  “But that filthy sign in that window is what opened my eyes to show these Canadians are lower than even the scabbiest Englishman.”

  She banged her cane on the sidewalk. “How dare they? How dare they put a good white Irish soul in the same light and breath that they put one of those black heathens from Buxton? ’Tis the grandest of insults; for that they’ll never be forgiven.”

  Even though I was only seven years old when it happened, I still remember how clearly I wished I could spend my Saturday mornings somewhere else.

  “Can you believe this, Benji?”

  What a silly question. No one would believe this.

  The second I saw it, two feelings started tussling inside me: pride and envy. And those are two feelings that never sit comfortably in the same spot at the same time.

  Spencer said, “From down here it looks better put together than my own home. Look at the way those joints are perfectly tight, and how those windows fit. And the shingles! They’re so spot-on, it looks as though they were painted on instead of being real pieces of cedar. This is amazing!”

  Me and Spencer were standing at the base of a sixty-five-foot tall maple, our heads thrown back and our mouths open, showing that same stupid look of amazement everyone gets when they see something Stubby and Patience have made from wood.

  “Boy!” Spence said. “Let’s go up.”

  Spencer couldn’t stop pointing out how perfect everything had been put together.

  “Even the boards for the ladder have been shellacked and routed! Why would they go through all of that trouble?”

  “They’re showing off,” I said. “They don’t have a bit of humbleness between them; they’re grandstanding.”

  Spencer said, “I don’t think so. If they were trying to show off, seems to me like they would’ve built this right on the road so folks could easily see it, not hidden so deep in the woods.”

  “Are we going to talk about this or go up?”

  We climbed the ten boards to the tree house. When we got to the trapdoor at the top and climbed through, instead of leading into the house, it opened onto a porch with a railing and two rocking chairs!

  “A porch?” Spencer said. “They put a porch on a tree house? And look how solid it is.”

  He jumped hard and nothing moved, nothing. The tree house was braced so strong that it might as well have been sitting right on Buxton’s soil instead of being put in the boughs of a maple, twenty-five feet off the ground.

  Spence laughed and said, “A screen door too? Did you have any idea your brother and sister were this skilled?”

  Who didn’t know? Mr. Craig, the master carpenter, had told Mother and Father they felt and understood wood like no one he’d ever known.

  I said, “I get the point; they’re very good.”

  I hoped that didn’t sound like a complime
nt. It wasn’t meant to.

  “I can’t wait to see what’s inside.”

  Spence opened the screen door. I followed him in.

  It was dark and cool inside. The only light that found its way into the tree house sneaked in through the four windows, one on each wall. It took a while for our eyes to get used to the dark.

  The giant maple went right down the middle of the house, coming out of the floor and leaving through the ceiling. In one corner sat their wooden toolboxes, Patience’s with two horses carved on the top, and Stubby’s with a train.

  “Those two have got a lot of nerve coming into our woods and building this without asking,” I told Spence. “A lot of nerve.”

  “I can’t believe how beautiful this is; they must have started during the first thaw. They’ve been working really hard on this for a very long time.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I snapped. “If we let them get away with this, who knows what’s next? Why, they might even try to put a … a … sawmill in, and then what happens? There’d be people from all over Elgin County invading our woods to get lumber cut.”

  Spencer didn’t understand how serious this was. He laughed and said, “Maybe they’ll let us use it some of the time.”

  “Let us use it? Let us use something in my own woods? No, Spencer Alexander! This thing has got to go.”

  “Benji, haven’t you noticed? This tree house isn’t going anywhere for a good long time. It’s built like a brick crap house; I think it could last for a hundred years.”

  He still didn’t understand. And I didn’t have a hundred years to wait.

  “Then we’ll tear it down.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. We’ll tear it down.”

  He saw I was serious and said, “Aww, Benji, let’s just –”

  I said, “We’re friends for life. You have to help me.”

  “I don’t know, Benji. If we tore the tree house down, it would be like we stole it from them.”

  I hate moments like this! Times when you’re arguing with a forensics champion who lives and breathes public speaking, and all of the good points seem to be on his side. It’s like every argument you come up with gets sunk as soon as you launch it.

  “Wait!” I said. “Instead of getting axes and tearing the tree house down, we could bring it down in sections very gently, then we could put it right back up!”

  Spencer looked at me for a very long time, then shook his head.

  “Benji Alston, that is the worst idea I’ve ever heard in my life. I’ve got a better idea. Instead of tearing it down and putting it back up, why don’t we pretend we took it down, go swimming, then come back and pretend we put it up again? You’re sounding very addled, you know.”

  “You didn’t give me a chance to finish,” I told Spencer. “We’ll take it down, then put it back up, but …”

  I paused, a trick I’d learned from Mr. Swan, who’s the best storyteller in Buxton. You find yourself paying even more attention and getting even more excited when he pauses in unexpected places in his stories. I was giving Spencer the same chance.

  He looked at me and if there was one trace of excitement anywhere inside him, he was really good at hiding it.

  I finished, “But! When we put the tree house back up, we’ll put it back upside down! Can’t you see what a hoot that would be? They’d cry like babies! We could hide in the woods and watch; it would be great fun!”

  “Benji, can’t you see how long that would take? This is a fortress.”

  “We’ll have four days. Patience and Stubby are supposed to go to Toronto to visit Uncle June with Father. We’ll have plenty of time.”

  “Four days?”

  “Four.”

  Spence scratched his chin and smiled. “I’m only doing this because we’re best friends. But you’ll be greatly in my debt, Benji Alston, greatly.”

  Spence laughed and offered his hand.

  As soon as we shook hands, I was a bit disappointed that since Spencer is supposed to be so good with words, he hadn’t done a better job of talking me out of this. It did seem like a lot of work for nothing.

  If I wrote this as an article for my paper, I’m afraid the headline would have to read:

  PAIR OF IDIOTS SPOTTED SHAKING HANDS UNDER TREE HOUSE.

  Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound.

  * * *

  We took the shingles off first and then, using the mule and a block and tackle, brought each half of the roof down separately.

  Taking the tree house down was a cinch; we had it resting on the ground with less than a day’s work. Putting the whole thing back upside down was a house of a different colour.

  I couldn’t believe what I’d done. For one who tries to live by the scientific method, I had fallen horribly short. The beauty of scientific thinking is that it can be applied to events not related to science. Therefore, if I would have simply and impartially observed all of the data, I would not have been so startled when the truth became clear.

  This much was obvious: Curly Bennett’s father was back to drinking and, judging from my observations, he was drinking hard.

  He was neither raging in town nor urinating in or otherwise fouling the wells of those with whom he had some type of disagreement, but the signs were there just the same: Curly’s mother’s seamstress shop had been closed since Wednesday, Curly had missed nearly a week of school, and when I went to their cabin, he answered my knock but wouldn’t open the screen door. In addition to this, he was wearing his hat inside the house.

  “Hey, Red.”

  “Hey, Curly.”

  Most times, Curly would step out on the porch and exchange a few words with me, but he kept himself in shadows behind the closed screen door.

  We looked at each other before I finally said, “So how are you doing?”

  “I’m fair to middling.”

  “Are you coming to school at all this week?”

  “I ain’t sure.”

  “A few of the lads and I are going fishing later this evening and were wondering if you wanted to join us?”

  “Naw, I’m just … Who’s going?”

  “Hickman, the Baylis boys, and me.”

  “What ’bout Petey?”

  “I’m not sure; no one has asked him.”

  “Why not?”

  “There’s no reason. I suppose I could.”

  “Well, if all the people you said and Petey Demers are going fishing, walk by here and whistle and I’ll go too.”

  Curly was known for peculiar behaviour, so this didn’t strike me as strange.

  “All right, if Petey comes, I shall whistle from the woods behind your house. Make sure you dig up some night crawlers.”

  “You make sure Petey’s there.” He closed the screen door, then pushed it back open a crack. “Don’t let Pa see none of you.”

  Everybody knew the fewer dealings one had with Curly’s pa, the better.

  “I’m not stupid.”

  I could make out a smile on Curly’s face through the screen.

  “I know, you just look that way.”

  I shook my head and walked toward the road.

  * * *

  That evening, Bucky and Buster Baylis, Hickman Holmely, and Petey Demers waited on the road while I walked the path to Curly’s shack. They refused to come with me; they took the sign that read ALL TREZPASERS WILL GET SHOT very seriously.

  There were no lamps lit at the Bennett cabin. No one was sitting in the chairs out front, so I stayed in the woods and sneaked around to the back. I brought my fingers to my lips.

  Before I could whistle one note, a thick arm wrapped around my neck from behind, blocking any attempt to breathe and causing my feet to dangle off the ground.

  My heart stopped!

  A voice growled, “What you doing sneaking ’round my house, boy?”

  Curly set me back on my feet and laughed softly.

  “What is wrong with you? I nearly died of fright! I thought your father had captured me!�
�

  When he set me down, the hat he was wearing was knocked askew, and I could see that his right eye was swollen shut and his lip was puffy and appeared overly ripe.

  Curly quickly pulled the hat over his face again.

  He said, “Did Petey come?”

  “Yes; why are you showing all of this interest in Petey so suddenly?”

  “Who said I was interested in Petey?”

  “Well, you never …”

  He punched my arm. “So, we going fishing or we gonna sit and chat like this is afternoon tea, Your Honour?”

  Curly called me that whenever he wanted to put me in my place. Since Father is a judge, he probably thinks it’s an insult.

  He picked up a tin can that I assumed held night crawlers and headed toward the road.

  There were so many questions that needed asking, but my breathing had not yet returned to normal from the scare I’d taken. I rubbed my throat and quietly followed.

  The lads were still at the side of the road. As soon as they saw us, they stood and started pelting Curly with the same questions I wanted to ask.

  “Hey, Curly, we ain’t seen you at school; what’s the matter?”

  “Why you got that hat pulled so low?”

  “How come your ma’s got her shop shut up?”

  “Sharon said you’re about to move; is that true?”

  “Why haven’t you been hunting with your brother?”

  Curly brushed their questions aside and said, “By the time I answer all your prattles and nonsense, the fish will quit biting.”

  He looked directly at Petey. “Ain’t you got no questions to ask, Petey?”

  Petey shrugged. “I figure if you got something to say, you’ll say it.”

  Curly edged up to Petey.

  “Matter of fact, I do got something to say. I got a couple questions for you.”

  Petey just looked at him, wondering like the rest of us what this was all about.

  Curly said, “You’re pretty tall, ain’t you?”

  Petey looked down into Curly’s eyes in such a way that any answer would be redundant.

  Curly said, “Just how tall are you?”

  Petey said, “Six feet, three inches. Why?”

  Curly said, “I was just wondering how high they could pile crap before it would tip over.”