by Sam Halpern
45
Mr. Berman said we had to move and the next couple days were awful around the house. Most of the time it was dead quiet. Dad hardly talked, and when he did, it was about how he didn’t know any way we could buy a place with what little we had for a down payment.
Mom wouldn’t say anything for a time, then she’d yell at him and bawl. Then it would be silent again. It was really bad, boy.
I headed back to the Mulligans’ the next Saturday. This time I decided, come whatever, I was seeing Fred. In just one week it had gotten deeper fall and we had our first killing frost. Trees that were only turning a few days before were yellow or even red, and the chill in the morning air was staying until almost noon. There was a little north wind starting too, and as I walked through the hickory and locust thicket it showered me with leaves. Everything that hadn’t seeded was doing it in a hurry and a strange haze was starting. There was no mistaking the signs. Something bad was coming.
When I got to the barbwire gap, I could hear the sound of an ax biting wood in the direction of Cummings Hill. I went to the Mulligan house but it looked deserted, the only things moving around being a few old Dominicker hens. I climbed up on top of the hog lot gate and called. On my third call, Thelma Jean came out on the front porch. She had on a flowered feed sack dress. It was dirtier than usual and I guessed nobody was cleaning it for her.
“Whatchawant, Sam?”
“Fred around?” I asked, straddling the gate.
“Naw.”
“Where is he?”
Thelma shrugged and looked away into the distance.
I threw my other leg over the gate and set on its top rail. “I’d like t’ see Fred, Thelma Jean. We’re best friends and it’s a long time since we saw each other.”
“Ain’t none of your bidness where he is,” she said, narrowing her eyes and looking at me. “Fred don’t want nobody a-botherin’ him. Whyn’t you go way ’n’ leave us alone.”
I started to say something back hot when a voice from the upstairs window said, “He’s cuttin’ wood out on Cummings Hill, Samuel. I think he’ll see you now.”
It was Annie Lee. From the top of the gate I could see most of her and wudn’t any doubt about one thing: Annie Lee was gonna have a baby. I remembered then that she had a pot belly at the funeral. She’d never had a pot belly before, and this was why.
“Thanks,” I answered, and jumped down into the yard and began walking along the path through the weeds. I could feel her eyes following me. Before the path turned the corner of the house, I looked around. Annie Lee was sitting in the window smiling at me. I smiled back.
Any fool with ears could’ve found Fred. The thunk . . . thunk . . . thunk of his ax cut through the warming day like shotgun blasts. I circled where he was working, slipping from tree to tree. He looked different. His face had always been old, but now it kind of had lines. He was thinner too and moved slow. In his hands was an old single-bit ax and he was working on a fallen log about two foot thick. All around was worked-up limbs. You could look at the cut ends and tell it had been an awful job. The wood was mostly mashed apart. Fred’s ax was dull as a rock. At the rate he was going, one cut through the log he was working on would be a half-day job. He didn’t stop though. Thunk . . . thunk . . . thunk in a steady beat.
The first time he let up, I stepped into the open and called out. “Fred?”
For a few seconds I didn’t know what he’d do, then he turned toward me with a little grin on his face. I went bounding down to him. “Hidey, Fred Cody.”
“Hidey, Samuel,” and he tried to sink his ax in the log for a rest but it just bounced off. He turned the blade up and looked at the edge. “Wouldn’t cut hot butter.”
“Looks like you could use a file.”
Fred nodded, then sat down on the log and put one brogan on its top. He was wearing Alfred’s old shoes, and for the first time since I’d known him, Fred had heels.
“How y’ been?” he asked.
“Tolerable,” and I straddled a log and faced him. “How ’bout you?”
“Doin’ all right. Got a shit-pot full of work t’ get done, though. Gonna have t’ start strippin’ tobacco soon. Not that there’s much t’ strip. Hit’ll about pay our fertilizer bill and a little of th’ grocery bill.”
He stopped talking and looked around. “Ever see so much Life Everlastin’.”
“Naw,” I said, looking down the hillside where little puffy sprigs stuck out everywhere.
“Ducks left early. Squirrels goin’ crazy. What they ain’t a-storin’ they’re eatin’ fast as they can. Saw a groundhog out here th’ other day so fat he could hardly move. If I’d of had a stick, I coulda killed him he was so slow from fat.”
“Gonna be a cold winter,” I said, looking down when I spoke.
“Yeah,” he half whispered. “Samuel, I got t’ get lots of firewood and more grub. I been workin’ like a dog for more’n a week cuttin’ wood and what I’ve worked up won’t last ten hard days. Boy, I wish we hadn’t lost our hogs. We could’ve sold some and bought a chain saw and killed a couple and had plenty of wood and meat. We got t’ have plenty of wood and meat.”
I knew what he meant, and thought it was time to let him know. “Saw Annie Lee.”
Fred kicked some dirt with his heel. “Figured y’ did. Bea says hit’s gonna come in January or February. Wouldn’t you know hit, them’s th’ roughest months we have. I don’t get up enough wood t’ keep th’ house warm, hit’ll die.”
“WK ought help get up wood too . . . don’t you think?”
“Huh! Old WK run off somewheres soon’s he found out he was gonna be a daddy. He’s a egg-suckin’ pup.”
“Maybe he’ll come back.”
Fred shook his head slow and run his thumb along the ax edge. “He ain’t a-coming back. He don’t care about th’ baby. Don’t care about nobody but him.”
“What you gonna do?”
Fred scraped his heel around in the dirt and sighed. “Keep at hit, I reckon.”
This all just wudn’t right. Then I thought of something. “Could you use a little help?”
He looked at me and his eyes widened. “I’d be appreciative. ’Specially if hit come with a cross-cut saw ’n’ a twenty-minute shot on an emery wheel.”
I got off the log and stood with my fists on my hips. “Pick out seven or eight trees that ain’t too big and come over about four this afternoon and bring your ax. I’ll get Dad t’ let you use th’ emery wheel and with a little luck, I’ll meet you here tomorra mornin’ with some hands,” then I struck out cross-country to the Little Bend bottoms.
I had luck. Lonnie and his pa had just come in from fishing, and Mr. Miller was in a good mood. When I asked if Lonnie could help the next day even though it was Sunday, Mrs. Miller said it was okay because the ox was in the ditch. They even let Lonnie bring his own ax.
When I got home I got out our cross-cut saw, wedges, sledgehammer, and the rasp and put them aside for the next morning, then asked Dad if Fred could use our emery wheel. He said yes, and by the time Fred finished on the wheel, a body could shave with his ax. When Lonnie arrived the next morning, we grabbed everything and took off. By nightfall we had downed seven trees, cut them into two-foot sections, worked up most of the limbs, and left the wedges, sledgehammer, and rasp for Fred to split logs with. It was a tired Sunday, but I sure felt good.
Before Lonnie and I left, Fred asked me if I could come over the next Sunday and bring my slingshot and lunch box. I thought it was an odd thing to ask considering all he had to get done, but the next Sunday I came over with a lunch box full of sandwiches, a whole bunch of food from Mom for the Mulligans, and my slingshot. I told Fred not to eat much in the house because I had the lunch box stuffed for us. Boy, did Mamie, Annie Lee, and Thelma Jean eat. They didn’t even notice when we left.
“Where we goin’, Fred?” I asked when we got out of earshot of the kitchen.
Fred grinned at me and started through the backyard toward Cummings Hill,
grabbing a gunnysack as we went. “Hun’ney, we gonna do somethin’ best friends ought do but don’t ’cause they don’t think about hit. Bring your slingshot?”
He was sounding mysterious. “Yeah. Why’d you want me t’ do that?”
“Because th’ first thing we’re gonna do is eat th’ stuff in that lunch box.”
That didn’t make any sense as an answer. “Then what?”
Fred’s grin got bigger. “Then I’m gonna tell y’.”
We took off up Cummings Hill and I realized that we were on our way to where we felled the trees. A pretty good distance from the top we come to two shovels and a grubbing hoe. Fred sat down beside one of the shovels and said, “Let’s eat.”
The sandwiches didn’t last long, even though there was a lot of them. When we finished eating I said, “Lunch box is empty.”
Fred nodded. “Lunch box ’thout somethin’ in hit ain’t worth havin’, is it?”
Boy, he sure wudn’t making any sense. “Fred Cody, what you up to?”
Fred got up and pointed to the top of Cummings Hill. “See that big oak, and that littler oak down below hit?”
“So?”
“Line up th’ handle of that shovel with those two.”
I did, then said, “Now what?”
“Now look yonder,” and he pointed around the side of the hill, where a big pine stood with a lot of little pines around it, and one small oak tree closer to us. “Take th’ other shovel handle and line that big pine up with that oak this side of it and move everything t’ where th’ shovel handles cross.”
I did, then waited for him to say something. He was fooling with me but it felt good to see him happy.
“Time t’ start diggin’,” he said, and picked up a shovel and I grabbed the grubbing hoe. We dug down about three foot and about that much square in the spot where the shovel handles crossed, then we hit a rock that covered the whole bottom. “Fred, we can’t bust through that thing. It could go down forever.”
Fred laughed. “Don’t want to.” Then he got a strange look on his face that gave me the willies. “Samuel, you ’n’ me are best friends. We done a lotta stuff t’gether and we’re still doin’ hit. Th’ things we done t’gether don’t general happen t’ folks. Things is changin’, though. I got this feelin’ we ain’t gonna be makin’ slingshots next year . . . probably won’t until we’re hepin’ our kids make ’em. These here slingshots we got now are th’ last we’re prob’ly ever gonna make for ourselves together. Gimme yours.”
I got my slingshot out of the back pocket of my Levi’s and handed it to him. The way he was talking made me uneasy. He was dead-on earnest. “Whatcha gonna do?”
Fred took his slingshot out and kind of wrapped mine up with his, then he nodded toward my lunch box. “We gonna bury them in your lunch box and dig ’em up a long time from now. Hit’ll be something we can remember about th’ days when we didn’t have no worries. Pa never had nothin’ to remind him of a better time, and when things went bad, he just natural slid on down th’ hill real sad. We had some good times together, me ’n’ you, and this is gonna remind us of that someday. Long time from now, Samuel.”
I wudn’t hot on the idea at first because it didn’t make a lot of sense, then I got to thinking about what was going on at home. Maybe it was a good idea after all. We put the slingshots in the box, wrapped the gunnysack around it, put the box in the hole, and shoveled in the dirt. I knew Mom was going to ask where the lunch box was and I sure couldn’t tell her I buried it. I decided I’d think of something, though.
Over the next several Sundays, Fred and me did everything from cutting more wood to picking every apple in the neighborhood. We made ten deadfalls too, and stripped away on their tobacco crop. Every day, the weather got colder and the little north wind stirred harder.
46
It was a cold winter, boy. Snow on the ground from Thanksgiving on. The sky was overcast and there was this haze. Sometimes the haze turned into mist and drifted the valleys.
It was a terrible time for Dad. He brooded and worried about where we were going and ought we to buy a place or not. Mom was feeling bad too, and just fumbled around. I was the only kid at home now that Naomi was at nurse’s training and I heard Mom say she wished Naomi was closer because she was about to go crazy alone. Most of the time the only sounds were the howling of the north wind. We finished stripping in early December because the crop was so short. When everything was totaled up, we lost almost three thousand dollars for the year.
I saw Fred a lot. I’d get home from school, do the milking and feeding, grab a bite and a flashlight and run to the Mulligans so we could set the deadfalls. We had saved two bushels of apples for bait. Anything that could be stored for winter, we stored. Hickory and walnuts, even acorns. Trouble was, the squirrels and groundhogs and had pretty much got everything.
Most of the time we were together, Fred would talk about Annie Lee’s baby. It got so that was all he wanted to talk about. He and Annie Lee decided if it was a boy they were going to call him Alfred and if it was a girl, Alfreda. Alfreda didn’t sound like much of a girl’s name to me, but seeing as how things were, I let on I thought it was beautiful.
Through most of the late fall, things went okay for the Mulligans. There was plenty of firewood and rabbits, and Mom gave Fred my old clothes. She sewed some for the girls too, and a few church folks pitched in with salt butts.
In late December the hard cold hit, and the mist drove everybody into their houses. It was funny about that mist, how it hung over our valleys and hills and wouldn’t go away. The sun couldn’t burn it off and little swirls sometimes come all the way to the ground. Everybody talked about it at first, and then nobody did. Matter of fact, people kind of stopped talking. If folks met they’d mumble to one another, then stare out through the mist and shuffle back to their homes.
In mid-January the rabbits disappeared. We run the deadfalls day after day. Nothing! Wudn’t even any tracks! When the salt butts from the church folks were used up the Mulligans didn’t have anything to eat, other than some skim milk, flour, and chickens we gave them. One bushel of sweet apples was left from what we used to bait the deadfalls, and Fred and me decided the family might as well go ahead and eat them since there wudn’t any rabbits.
About this time, it turned really cold. Night seemed to go on forever and folks got strange. The animals got even stranger, especially the dogs. They wouldn’t stay around people if they could help it, and when you called them, they just slunk away. Pers’s old coonhound near tore one of the Langley boy’s arms off when he tried to pet him, and a Langley knows more about hounds than anybody. Pers went for his shotgun to kill the old devil and it run off and never come back. At home, our one-horn buck knocked Dad down and when he got up, the buck come again until Dad had to nigh beat it to death.
The worst come a couple weeks later when Uncle Lex went out to feed his hogs and didn’t come back. Aunt Belle went to look for him and found an awful sight. Wudn’t much left of Uncle Lex. Couple folks got together and buried what the hogs didn’t eat.
With all the strange happenings, lack of food, mist, and terrible cold, Fred was happy. We’d be sitting around the Mulligan stove watching the fire flicker through its isinglass window and he’d break out singing “Old Dan Tucker” or “Filipino Baby” like he was Ernest Tubb or he’d grab Annie Lee around her middle and squeeze and she’d let out a yelp and yell, “Fred Cody, you’re gonna hurt me and I’m gonna put a knot on your head,” but she’d be grinning when she yelled it, and her face would just beam. Fred would laugh like a fool. The bigger Annie Lee got, the happier the family got. The Mulligans were the happiest folks around and everybody thought they were miserable something awful.
Late one afternoon I was getting ready to go to the Mulligans’ when Mom said no.
“Morris, the radio says snow, high winds, and severe cold tonight. That’s a long walk to the Mulligans’ house. Suppose there’s a blizzard?”
I could see Dad th
inking but he knew I really wanted to go. “If there’s a blizzard, he could probably stay there.”
Mom looked at Dad like he was crazy. “At the Mulligans’?”
“Yeah,” said Dad, shrugging his shoulders. “Why not?”
“What would he eat? They need every scrap of food they have for themselves.”
“He’s eaten supper.”
“Supper? A supper like that wouldn’t keep a bird alive. It’s cold and dangerous in that old firetrap. Don’t you give a damn what happens to him!”
Generally, that would have made Dad mad. Now, he kinda slumped in his chair. “M’dom, he’s fine. He wants to help his friend. They’ve been through a lot together.”
That seemed to bother Mom, and she got tears in her eyes and spoke soft. “Don’t I help the Mulligans? Who cranks that cream separator every night and gives them milk? And clothes. How many clothes have I—”
“I know, M’dom. I know you have. You’ve done more than me. It’s wrong that I haven’t done more, but I’ve been feeling so bad that—”
“You always feel bad!” she yelled, and it went on and on like that until they forgot about me, so I got my mackinaw and slipped out.
God, it was cold. The snow and ice had frozen the barn door tight and I had to climb the hog lot gate. I thought about Uncle Lex and was glad we didn’t have any hogs. When I climbed to the top of the gate behind the barn, I looked out at the mist which was layered above the little valley and hid most of the volcano hill. It didn’t move. It just lay there like a spooky white blanket. I realized then that the wind had quit blowing. I jumped down and walked a ways, then stopped again. It was strange. Wudn’t any sound of any kind. I dug my heel through the top of icy snow to make a little noise and an awful wail seemed to rise into the air. That scared me and I took off as hard as I could go, raced across the frozen creek, past the hickory and locust grove, and in no time I was at the gap. The wire loop fastener at the top of the gap was frozen to the post and when I touched it my fingers stuck giving that awful feeling and I jerked back.
