by Sam Halpern
That scared me. “We ain’t swimmin’ in it, are we?”
“Lordy no! We just gonna tease th’ ghost. You know, stand back where th’ hand can’t get us and throw rocks. I done hit couple times. Didn’t see no hand, but Johnny Flickum said he seen it. Course, you can’t never believe a Flickum.”
That was true. Nobody in those parts ever believed a Flickum. A Flickum could come in the house and say the barn was on fire and wouldn’t nobody move.
We swished our feet in the creek awhile more, then I said I had to get going. We climbed the hill toward the stock barn and on the way, Fred kept talking. He said he might get a bicycle on account of things going so well for his pa.
“Th’ acre of strawberries we put out ought t’ bring us in some money and Pa says we’re gonna buy a bunch of shoats. We got us a good show this year.”
When we got to the barn, Fred climbed the hog lot gate, then put his hands on the top slats and grinned. “Samuel, hit’s gonna be great this summer. We just gonna have a big time.”
“Yeah,” I said, grinning back. “S’long, Fred.”
“S’long, old buddy,” and he walked off whistling and dragging his no-heels in the dust.
It took us three weeks to set the tobacco. We had fourteen acres and swapped work with the MacWerters, who had twelve acres across the Cuyper Creek Pike from us on Mr. Charlie Cornwall’s place. Mr. MacWerter’s name was George, but folks called him Mr. Mac. He had a boy named Edwin who he called Babe. Edwin didn’t like being called Babe since he was about thirty-five, but wudn’t much he could do about it. I learned how to set tobacco on the setter with my sister Debby while she was home on leave from the Army Nurse Corps. We finished the last part of May and I was free, which meant having fun with Fred.
It was really a fine morning to learn fishing the day I did. Clear blue sky, warm sun, a little dew, and a honeysuckle smell in the air. Fred come over early so we could walk together, this being my first time across country to his place, it being a lot quicker than taking the roads. I was excited as we climbed the rickety, half-slung gate where I first met him, waded the creek at the bottom of the slope, then skipped along a dusty path through the big field that rose gentle toward a hickory and locust thicket. The thicket was dark green with lots of bluegrass and ended at a gap that was made of three strands of barbwire tied to a pole. It was saggy unless it was hooked up right, which we did by putting the bottom and top of the pole into loops of smooth wire that were lashed to a line post. It looked flimsy, but it kept the cattle in and if you ever fooled with barbwire, you know why.
On the other side of the gap was another big field that stretched to a wooden farm gate everybody called the hog lot gate because it was next to the Mulligan’s hog lot. About thirty foot on the other side was their house.
The house was small and covered with black tar paper and had a porch in front and back. It didn’t have a yard, just kind of set in an acre space made by fences. The front of the house was maybe fifty foot from the Dry Branch Road. The backyard had a chicken house and a privy. Tin cans lay everywhere and a few Dominicker hens wandered around clucking.
We climbed the hog lot gate and walked to the kitchen window where a shovel was stuck in the ground. Fred picked it up and started digging. Pretty soon, Fred’s sister Thelma Jean, who was eleven, come out and helped us by smacking clods against the side of the house and collecting worms to put in our can. We were all set to go fishing when Mamie, who was Fred’s mama, come strolling to the window and leaned her skinny chest and elbows on it. Her eyes shined in her thin, brown, hill-woman face, and her mud-colored hair hung straight down.
“You Mr. Simpsky’s boy?” she asked, shooing the flies away from her face.
“Yes, ma’am,” I answered, figuring it wudn’t going to do any good telling her my last name was Zelinsky because she’d never say it that way. Hill people never could.
“What’s your Christian name?”
“Samuel,” I answered, and she thought for a minute.
“Hit’s a good name.” She nodded finally. “Had ’nother boy, I’d of named him Jacob.” She straightened up and looked at Fred. “Fred Cody, reckon you think you’re a-goin’ fishin’.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, I got news for you, young man, you ain’t a-goin’ nowhere ’til you get some fresh water from Pers’ spring, then you can go fishin’.”
We got the bucket and started down the hill to the branch. “Hit’ll only take a minute. You’ll get to see Pers’ spring. Hit’s hainted. My uncle Charlie seen th’ ghost.”
“He sure it was a ghost?”
“Hun’ney, hit couldn’t of been nothin’ else. My uncle Charlie can tell a ghost a hunnert yards off and if’n he said hit was a ghost, hit was a ghost!”
“Ain’t you kind of scared going down there now?”
Fred seemed a little put off by my question and we walked a distance without sayin’ anything. Then he said, “You don’t know much about haints, do you?”
“I know lots about haints,” I said, gettin’ my dander up. “We lived with one for three years. Reckon I ought to know about them.”
“Didn’t he haint you?”
“Every now and then he’d make a little noise, but mostly he just stayed in that old attic. He left us alone, and we left him alone.”
“That’s a good kind,” said Fred. “Ain’t like a haint’s been murdered. Th’ one at Pers’ spring must of been, ’cause he come out at Uncle Charlie madder’n a hornet.”
To get to Pers’ spring, we had to go down the Dry Branch Road to the culvert, then cut across the creek. About a hundred yards or so past Pers’ cabin was a spring that come out from under a big tree and trickled down to the branch.
After we drank and filled the bucket, we went wading in the branch. It was harder for me than Fred since he’d been going barefoot since late April and had thick calluses. It sure felt good, though, and I decided to carry my shoes and go barefoot. We must’ve waded longer than we thought because Mamie started calling.
“Fred Codeee!”
“Yo!” yelled Fred, then he turned to me. “We better get on up there, hun’ney. I don’t want none of her hidin’s today! Come on!”
We ran up the Dry Branch Road as hard as we could, Fred on one side of the bucket and me on the other with water slopping all over the place.
“Where you been, Fred Cody?” Mamie asked when we got to the house.
“Down’t th’ spring,” said Fred.
“Hit don’t take no forty minutes t’ get t’ th’ spring and back. You been wadin’ in that branch, ain’t you?”
“No’m,” he said, and Mamie looked us up and down. Our Levi’s was rolled up over our knees, and the edges was wet. A half-sick grin spread over Fred’s face.
“Go get me a dipper ’n’ quit lyin’,” she said, and he took off like a shot.
It was after ten by the time we got to the pond. Since I didn’t have a pole or line, we had to make up my gear from scratch. That’s when I found out how Fred did things. He wouldn’t use nothing but elm, and the limb had to be perfect. We checked every elm tree around until I was about to go crazy. It was almost an hour before he settled on one, but then he whittled it into shape in no time. All we had left to do after that was tie on my line, attach a hook and a little whiskey-cork bobber that Fred got from his uncle Charlie, and we were fishing.
I kept watching Fred, trying not to seem dumb. “Reckon that’s enough worm?” I asked, holding up a six-incher.
“Hit’ll choke ’em t’ death if nothin’ else. Use about a inch off his hind end,” and he pinched off the butt of a big fat worm. “You give a brim more’n that, he’ll just steal hit.”
We started, and I was learning about fishing undercuts and sunken tree limbs, and how much bobber to let a brim take before you jerked him, when Fred took a pain.
“Got t’ go, hun’ney. I’ll be back in a minute,” he said, and took off.
Fish were biting like crazy. Suddenly
there was a thrashing in some blackberry briars. I whirled around and there stood a man looked like a hundred with hair down to his shoulders, long scraggly beard, and rags. His clothes kind of hung on him because he wudn’t more than skin covering bones. His eyes were strange, and he come straight for me.
“Bob warr’ll cut ye,” he said, coming to maybe three foot of me, holding a hickory stick he used for walking.
“Ye . . . yeah,” I said, and backed up a step. His eyes didn’t have lashes and were sunk so far back in his head I figured he couldn’t see from the sides. One of the eyes was cockeyed too. When his mouth opened, there was only a couple teeth that looked like they were in the way.
“I said bob warr’ll cut ye. S’matter th’you boy, ain’t ye got no ears?” And he moved a little closer, shaking the hickory stick in his skinny old hand and kind of jiggling.
“Hidey, Uncle Lex,” come Fred’s voice.
The old man doddered in a backward circle until he was half facing Fred, then stood there swaying from side to side. “Uh . . . hidey . . . hidey. Hu . . . you Alfred’s boy, Fred Cody?”
“Shore am, Uncle Lex. You seen me just last night, remember?”
“Hu . . . shore I do . . . Uh . . . that there your uncle Charlie?”
“Naw, Uncle Lex, that’s Mr. Zilski’s boy, Samuel. Him and me’s fishin’ today. Whyn’t you go up th’ house and get some cool water?”
“Huu . . . don’t know no Zilsy. Where’s he live?”
“In th’ big white house on th’ other side of th’ place. Where Berman goes.”
“Berman? Huu . . . that th’ Jew owns th’ place?” and he staggered around more.
“Yeah, hit’s him.”
“How do he Jew? Ain’t never seen one do it.”
“He gets along okay, Uncle Lex. Say ’lo t’ Samuel.”
“Huu . . . you Zilsy’s boy?” he said, looking sideways at me.
“Ye . . . yeah,” I answered. “And howdy, Uncle Lex.”
“Hidey, hidey,” he said. “You know bob warr’ll cut ye?” And he pulled up the sleeve of his long underwear and showed me some scars on his skinny arm I figured was from barbwire.
“Yeah, it sure will,” I said quick.
Fred moved next to me and said, “You go on up and get some fresh spring water, Uncle Lex. Samuel and me just brought up a cold bucketful out of Pers’ spring.”
“Hu . . . yeah,” he muttered, and began staggering toward the Mulligan house.
“Uncle Lex won’t hurt you,” Fred said, after Uncle Lex was gone.
“Does he live around here?”
“Lordy, yes, hun’ney. He’s a Cummings.”
“He live on Cummings Hill?”
“Naw,” Fred answered as he threw in. “Uncle Lex lives back on th’ Big Bend cliffs.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s crazy. All Cummings is crazy. Always have been.”
“What makes them crazy?”
“Folks say th’ Lord done it. Cummings have always been crazy far as anybody knows and lived back on th’ cliffs. They used t’ own all this land.”
“Are there any more of ’em?”
“Aw, yeah. Uncle Lex has a woman . . . Aunt Belle . . . she’s crazy too.”
It seemed odd, both of them being crazy. “She go crazy when she married Uncle Lex?”
Fred laughed. “Naw, she was already crazy. She was a Cummings. A Cummings won’t marry nobody but a Cummings. Say, Samuel, when you gonna get that inner tube?”
“Real soon,” I answered, reaching for my pole as the cork went under. “Dad told Mom just th’ other day that he was goin’ t’ see his friend Ike right after th’ corn was in and he ought t’ finish plantin’ by Friday.”
“Lordy, a whole tube,” Fred whispered. “Ain’t never had a whole tube before. I’m gonna make us some daddy slingshots. Man, are we gonna go froggin’!” and he put his arm out like he had a slingshot in it and drawed back with the other. “Bam! Got one a foot long!”
We fished until six and talked about everything, the ghost at Moneybags’ place, Fred’s uncle Charlie, and all sorts of people who lived around us. By the time we quit fishing, I felt like I was born on Berman’s.
5
I was relaxing in the tree when I felt ants crawling up my legs. I stuffed the two remaining apples into my pockets and quickly climbed down. When I reached the ground I de-anted myself, then drove to the farm’s gate. I was here! Even though I hadn’t wanted to return, I felt a rush of excitement. It had been over sixty years since our family had followed a truck out of the lane en route to our own farm in Indiana. Indiana had never felt like home to me; now, eerily, this place did. I checked the mailboxes, but the names were unfamiliar.
I decided to park and walk. The entrance gate was dilapidated. Most of the gravel had washed out of the lane and at times I couldn’t tell if I was still following it because the weeds were so tall. Someone was farming the land though, because off to my right, on the other side of a fence, was a tobacco patch. The plants were knee-high and deep green. The creek was still in the hollow, but there was no tobacco barn, corncrib, or sheep barn.
Ahead of me was a grove of huge maples and oaks, so dense that everything beneath was lost in their shadows. I began walking faster and entered the grove. The yard fences were gone but the house remained, or rather, what was left of it. The walls were tilted inward and the roof had collapsed. I could still see parts of the screened-in porch and the window of my room. A mangy cat was sunning himself on the windowsill, oblivious to me, but a cow-sucker snake did take notice and slithered under the porch. I moved closer to see inside my old room, waking the cat, who skedaddled. The interior was a mess, the walls collapsing and floor rotted away.
I glanced over my shoulder toward where the orchard had been. Only the cherry tree remained. It was loaded, so I picked a handful of cherries, then continued to reconnoiter.
The weeds were lower in the kitchen yard. There were also three new trees, two maples and an oak, undoubtedly the progeny of my old friends in front. The kitchen and its screened-in porch were almost totally collapsed. I walked toward the kitchen door and stubbed my toe on a crumbling concrete slab. The top of the cistern! I started searching and found the housing for the chain that had brought up the little cups of water and dumped it into a bucket. It was rusted out, but the dent I had put in its side with a baseball was unmistakable. I turned toward where the stock barn had been. Now there were just interconnecting fences, one of which guarded the growing tobacco. The fences were new. There was nothing where the barn had stood. Then I noticed a huge line post. Hinged to it was a new wooden gate. Was that my line post, the one that held the gate Fred had been sitting on when we first met? I ran to it. Yep, still had the gouge the wagon bed had made when our horses swung too close and hit it.
After patting the line post, I put my arms on top of the gate and looked across the field. It had been pasture land when we lived on Berman’s, but now it was covered with twenty acres of alfalfa. The little creek still ran through it, creasing the field. In the distance I could see the hickory and locust grove. I had walked this way to the Mulligans’ so many times. In my mind I could still see Fred, sitting on top of the old gate in his Levi’s, multiple shirts, and no-heel shoes. Fred had been the portal to a great adventure—part beauty, part terror, all wonder.
It was getting toward noon. The heat and humidity were making my clothes sticky, and the sound of insects filled the air with a hum. I scanned the vista. Open meadows, dark groves of trees, and green hills covered with patches of wildflowers. Below the hills were valleys with slightly different carpets, but just as remarkable in their glory. I could almost hear the hills speak to my soul. Embrace us, embrace us, our prodigal son. You’ve been long away, but we still love you. Come, mingle, lie among us and become the soil of life.
I inhaled deeply and the air filled my body to my socks. Had I returned to Canaan?
Fred leaped back into my mind. He was a year older th
an I, so he would be seventy-three. I wished he were here beside me. Then again, would he stand beside me? Would any of them? What would I say when I met them? The summer of that first year on Berman’s was the best summer of my life and through it all, Fred had been my mentor. All that summer I had been barefoot, naked to the waist, deep-tanned, and wore the same pair of Levi’s every day until Mom wrested them away from me for a wash. I remember . . .
. . . we fished pretty nigh every day. Sometimes, Lonnie and LD come over, but mostly it was just Fred and me. Pretty soon, I could hit those brim fast as they nibbled my hook, and sometimes I made one worm last two, three fish. Fred said he never saw nothing like it, how I caught on and all, and that I was on my way to being a fishing daddy and would be just as soon as I done some river fishing and pulled in a few big channel cats and a buffalo or two.
“When you wanta go?” I asked as we walked away from the pond one night.
“Tell y’ what,” he said, “tomorra evenin’s meetin’ time and LD and Lonnie’s gonna be there for sure ’cause Brother Fletcher is holdin’ th’ meetin’ and their moms like listenin’ t’ him. When things are over, I’ll see when th’ best day is for them. We can fish down’t th’ Little Bend bottoms and that way we can go to th’ Blue Hole. I’ll let you know tomorrow and you can get an okay from your folks.”
“Great. See you tomorrow,” I yelled, and waved as we split up.
The next evening, Fred come by just as I was settling down to milk the last cow. I was doing the milking in the barnyard now because it was hot in the barn. It was getting deep dusk and Fred looked fuzzy from where I was milking, him up on the swing post of the hog lot gate, his bare feet pressed into the slats and kind of whistling soft-like while the milk squirts sprayed against the bottom of the bucket. Pretty soon, I was milking away to Fred’s tune and giggling, trying hard not to laugh because I didn’t want to scare my cow. When I finished, Fred climbed down and followed me to the tall milk can where I poured in.
“You ’bout ready for some river fishin’?”
