The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 3

by Donald Harington

  “We caint feed them kitties,” her mother announced, “so I reckon Paw had best put ’em in a tow sack and drown ’em.”

  Latha had to pester her sisters, her mother, her grandmother and finally her father to find out just what this meant and why it was necessary.

  “I’ll wait till they’re weaned afore I do it,” her father declared, and Latha had to pester her sisters, her mother, and her grandmother to find out what “weaned” meant. Granny Bourne explained that it’s bad luck to kill a cat, unless the cat is drowned in a running stream. Latha tried to puzzle out just what “luck” means, and how it is that if you do certain things a certain way it will affect the outcome of your life. She had serious dreams and some bad dreams trying to get it all straight. When the kittens were weaned but before her father could put them in a tow sack, Latha snatched the prettiest one and hid it in a dark corner of the hay in the barn where each day she took it something to eat. She gave it a name, Cutie-Pie Face. Its mother Jasmine found it and bit it on the back of the neck and tried to bring it back to the nest, and Latha tried to explain to Jasmine why she had to keep the kitten hidden. This went on for several days, Latha hiding the kitten up in a dark corner of the hayloft and Jasmine dragging it back down, until finally Jasmine just seemed to give up or maybe got it through her head that her other kitties had been drowned and Cutie-Pie Face was all she had left. So Jasmine took to sleeping up in the dark corner of the hayloft where Latha kept her kitten.

  If any more proof were needed that babies come from the barn, the day came when Mathilda, their cow, had her calf in the barn, and Latha spied from her hiding place while her daddy pulled the calf out of Mathilda. While she was convinced that babies did indeed come from the barn, she also had seen that they had come from inside their mother, even the eggs of the hen, and she did not understand what the granny-woman brought in her bag…unless the mother actually gave birth in the barn and then the granny-woman put the baby in a sack and took it to the house. That made sense. And it left only the question, how did the babies get inside of the mother in the first place? Did the mother have to eat something?

  The day finally came when Latha had to tell her mother that she knew she had been inside of her at one time but she would like to know how she got there. Her mother told her that she was much too young to think about such things, and she ought to think about something else.

  She had no trouble finding something else to think about anyhow. The world was full of wonders. She needed to know why the sun came up in the morning and where it went when it went down. She needed to find out why the sunlight would come through the window but not through the wall. She wondered what happened to the water in the damp clothes that she had to hang in the sunshine on washday, how the sun made them dry. And where did the water go? All on her own she figured out that the water which she drank came back out of her when she went to the outhouse. But what made it yellow and smelly? There were many yellow flowers which smelled nice, and she figured out that they were yellow and smelled nice in order to attract bees and other bugs, but that wasn’t why her pee was yellow and smelled not like flowers at all.

  She was full of questions. She had some trouble understanding the difference between “yesterday” and “tomorrow”, but she had “today” worked out. She understood the difference between morning and evening but had not quite worked out just why it had to be dark at night. She knew what caused it: The sun had disappeared. But was it so that you would go to sleep? Were all the other living things asleep? Did the trees sleep at night? She knew that sometimes the sun stopped shining not because it was night but because there were clouds covering it up and these clouds were full of water that sometimes but not often rained. She loved rain. She would have been just as happy if it rained all the time. But thinking about it, she realized that the reason she liked rain so much was that it was so different from the constant sun. Once she saw a great rainbow that filled the whole sky when the sun came out while it was raining. The colors dazzled her. She grasped that the sun was making the colors, but the colors couldn’t be there if it wasn’t for the rain, so the rain and the sun were not enemies but friends who helped each other. We appreciate the sun because it dries things after they’re wet, but we appreciate the rain because it keeps things from being so dry. Her daddy was always complaining about the lack of rain.

  She also decided that just as the sun makes us appreciate the rain, the night makes us appreciate the day, and being sick makes us appreciate being well, and being sad makes us appreciate being happy. She understood a question that nobody else could answer: where does the wind come from? What causes it? The sun, of course. When the sun dries the air and the hot air rises, cold air comes in to replace it, and that coming in is the breeze. Not only did no one else in her family understand this, but she was nearly certain that no creatures understood it. Her dog Rouser appreciated the cool breeze flowing over his hot body, but for all he knew some ghost was fanning him.

  Sometimes she studied smaller creatures and wondered how much they knew. Surely the butterflies who drifted through the breeze did not think that a ghost was fanning them. Did they ever think about why the air moved? Did they ever think about anything? She didn’t think it would be fair for her to have such profound thoughts and the smallest ant could not think at all. Latha went through a period of being fascinated with bugs. Once when she was making mud pies, which of course were only for play-like eating, except by bugs like dirt daubers and beetles, she spoke to the beetles, asking them if they ever had thoughts, but of course they couldn’t answer her. She liked to pretend that she was making real pies like the ones that Grandma Bourne kept in the pie safe in the kitchen, a big walnut cabinet with panels of black tin perforated in star patterns, which always had a custard pie or an apple pie or a gooseberry pie in it. Latha’s favorite was vinegar pie, which nobody makes anymore. Latha liked to pat those blobs of mud into shapes that she called vinegar pies, and even pretended to eat, yum yum. It was one day while she was busy patting her pies that she asked a couple of the bugs that question. She happened to notice that the two bugs were joined together, one on the back of the other. Then there was another pair of them. And another. Although she studied them for a long time, they remained stuck together, and she didn’t try to pull them apart. When she asked Mandy about it, Mandy said that it was just a kind of bug which has two heads. Latha wasn’t satisfied with that answer, because these bugs didn’t just have two heads, they had two whole bodies, one’s body on top of the other’s. She asked Barb about it, and Barb just shrugged and said that one bug was giving a piggyback ride to the other bug. But that didn’t make too much sense either, because they weren’t going anywhere. She was reluctant to bother the grown-ups with her trivial questions, but she really needed to know why those bugs were attached like that. Grandma Bourne said it sounded to her like one of the beetles was probably killing the other one. Latha’s mother just told her to stay away from bugs because she never knew when one of them might bite her or sting her. Latha’s daddy asked her why did she want to know? She said she was only trying to understand how the world works. He said well, that was just the way that bugs behaved, it might not make no sense but it happened everywhere all the time and there weren’t no use in worrying about it, you just had to take it for granted and let it go.

  Latha wasn’t able to let it go, but in due time she grew tired of studying bugs attached to each other who didn’t go anywhere, and so she began to study, at night, before they made her go off to bed, the tiny creatures that flew around in the night air and twinkled with light. For a long time Latha thought they were miniature people or fairies, although she didn’t know that word yet. Grandma Bourne said they were called lightning bugs, and they sure were pretty. “Purty as you,” Grandma Bourne observed, “and you’re the purtiest Bourne ever they was.” Grandma also explained how lightning bugs are signs: when they fly close to the ground it means there’s a big rain a-coming; when they fly high up in the air, it means we can expe
ct a long drought. Latha was fascinated by the idea that there were signs in the world which would tell you if something would happen, and she pestered her grandmother to tell her all the signs she knew, such as rain is good for funerals but terrible for weddings. Grandma said, “Happy is the bride that the sun shines on; Blessed are the dead that the rain falls on. If the dog Rouser starts eating grass, it means it will rain; if Jasmine sneezes, it will rain.” Latha kept a close watch, but Rouser never ate grass, and Jasmine never sneezed, and nobody had a funeral, and the lightning bugs flew high in the air.

  Latha was more interested in why they flashed their lights. One time Mandy and Barb caught a bunch of lightning bugs and put them in a glass jar, where Latha could study them. None of them were attached to each other, or showed any inclination for becoming joined. Latha asked her sisters why they flashed their lights. Mandy said, “Well, silly, it’s cause they have to see where they’re a-going in the dark!” Latha wondered why they didn’t just wait until daylight. Barb said that lightning bugs were like the stars in the sky: what’s the purpose of stars other than to make the sky pretty to look at? When Latha asked Grandma Bourne why the lightning bugs light up, Grandma just said, “Well, wouldn’t you, if you could?” So Latha didn’t bother to ask the question of her mother or father.

  She was about ready to give up asking questions anyhow. But there was one other question she wanted to know the answer to, which also involved a kind of joining. “How come,” she asked Mandy, “roosters jump on the backs of the hens and whack and smack ’em like they do?” Mandy said she reckoned it was because the rooster’s job is to keep order amongst the flock and he was punishing the hens. But why was he punishing them? Latha wanted to know. Barb offered the opinion that the hens was just too gabby, a-clucking and a-cackling all over the place, and the rooster was just trying to get them to shut up. That answer didn’t satisfy Latha completely but she was forced to live with it for a while. But then one day a strange dog wandered into their yard and their dog Rouser barked at it and then went out and sniffed its bottom and pretty soon climbed up on its back just like those roosters climbed the hens, and tried to poke his pee-pee into the dog’s bottom. Somebody—not Mandy or Barb but probably Grandma Bourne—had long ago answered Latha’s question about that thing that Rouser had between his legs, which he peed out of, and is therefore called simply a pee-pee. Neither Latha nor her sisters nor her grandmother nor her mother had a thing like that, although it was thought that possibly her father did. The purpose of it, as any fool could plainly see, was just to make water in such a way that it didn’t splash on your leg. But now was Rouser making water inside of the other dog? It was certainly baffling. And it didn’t take long for Latha to realize that maybe the two dogs were joined together in the same way that the bugs were and also, briefly, the rooster and the hens. Probably the lightning bugs too, although you couldn’t see them in the dark. It took a while for the dogs to finish whatever they were doing. Maybe, Latha wondered without voicing her theory to her sisters, Rouser was squirting some eggs into the other dog which would turn into babies! Latha smiled real big with the realization that she was finally beginning to understand the mystery of life. Apart from solving the mystery of why the wind blows, it was her first answer to the big question, How do things get to be the way they are?

  She had been taking Rouser for granted. He was just a dog, a good old dog, and friendly; when she was younger, whenever he was sprawled on the porch he had let her sit on his head as a cushion. He was supposedly helpful around the place, and he barked to let them know that somebody was coming, if somebody ever did. Sometimes, especially after rain, he smelled bad. And he spent an awful lot of time, especially when it was hot, just sleeping. But now he was real busy, pumping his bottom against that strange dog’s bottom and filling her up with eggs. Latha had other questions, for instance, how did Rouser know to tell the difference between pee and eggs, to squirt the right one? She didn’t ask these questions of anyone, convinced now that the others simply didn’t understand the mystery of life the way it was revealed to her. She knew that in time she would learn the answers on her own. From that day forward, she never asked anyone a question ever again.

  Chapter three

  Whenever she heard a new word she either learned what it meant by figuring it out on her own, without troubling to ask anyone, or she simply never thought about it. She heard frequent talk about a “drought” and managed in time to decide that it meant the fact that months and months had passed without any rainfall. She also heard the word “automobile” but was never able to determine what it meant and decided she didn’t need to add it to her vocabulary. She even heard her Grandma Bourne say the word “vocabulary,” but didn’t bother to ask her what it meant because she had decided not to ask, and therefore she didn’t think about it anymore.

  She heard the word “neighbor” several times eventually and was able to figure out that a neighbor is somebody who lives on the other side of the fence. There was a family whose names were Whitter living nearest them, in a cabin bigger but not much better, just over the hill to the east, down in a holler up against the side of Ledbetter Mountain. The biggest and oldest, therefore the father, was named Simon Whitter and he was a friend of Latha’s daddy Saultus Bourne, possibly even the only friend Saultus had, as he didn’t care for friendships, a word that had taken Latha a long time to puzzle out, because her sisters weren’t her friends, just her acquaintances, a word that Grandma Bourne had explained to her without being asked, meaning somebody you know and might even hug but don’t particularly think the world of. Saultus’ three daughters were all females, that is, they wore dresses and sometimes had to listen to their father complaining, “I sure do wush I had me a stout boy or two ‘stead of all you gals.” Simon Whitter had lots and lots of boys, who wore pants and went around spitting all the time and used words which Latha was able to determine were not nice. Barb said they were cuss words. Latha tried one of the words on her mother once and her mother took a bar of soap and jammed it into Latha’s mouth and made Latha chew and lick on it, so Latha never used that word again. But the Whitter boys said them all the time and nobody stuck soap in their mouths.

  It wasn’t too far to walk to get from the Bourne place to the Whitter place…and Latha had learned that “place” meant not just anywhere, not just where you live, but every bit of land you have and everything on it. Her daddy had pointed out to her the row of cedar trees which marked the line where the Bourne place stopped and the Whitter place began. Latha had been taken by her mother and father to visit the Whitter place, and her mother had told her and her sisters that they were never allowed to go there without having a grown-up along. The Whitter boys did not cuss very much when grown-ups were around, although two of the Whitter boys were pretty well grown-up already, and one of them, named Ike, was almost thirty which made him an old man. The Whitter house was bigger than the Bourne house, but not much. There was a sleeping loft where the boys slept, four to one bed and three to the other. There were only two girls, one about the same size as Latha, named Rindy, who slept in a trundle bed kept beneath her parent’s bed, and a full-grown older girl who slept in a shed behind the kitchen. In the Bourne’s small sleeping loft, the three sisters slept in one bed and Grandma Bourne slept in the other. Although the Whitter boys tried not to cuss while the Bourne girls were visiting, they did plenty of spitting, and they also said peculiar things like “How’d ye like to git some?” or “I’d shore like to jump yore bones” or “Let’s me and you git off,” or “Aint it about time for the dirty deed?” Latha might have wanted to ask her sisters what these words meant, but she no longer asked questions.

  The oldest Whitter boy, Ike, a full-grown man with big muscles and an ugly face, didn’t say such things. He told Latha that she was the purtiest creature he’d ever laid eyes on, and he was just going to wait until she got growed up and take her for his bride. He snarled his words whenever he talked, and his mouth was full of chewing tobacco, and she wa
sn’t sure she had heard him correctly. It seemed he’d said he planned to take her for a ride.

  One of the other Whitter boys (there were so many she didn’t know his name; he was the one who’d spoken of “the dirty deed”) whispered into her ear, saying he’d give her a penny if she would let him get down on the ground and look up her dress. She had the wisdom to collect the penny in advance. He later demanded it back because “I never saw nothing.” But she kept the penny, although a long time went by before she got a chance to spend it. She hoped her grandmother might take her for another walk into the village, but she didn’t. That piece of candy she’d once eaten had become only a distant memory; she couldn’t recall the taste of chocolate, only the feeling that it was wonderful in her mouth. One day she looked into the mirror and decided that she was big enough, old enough, to go into the village all by herself and buy some candy with her penny. So that afternoon she just took off, telling no one that she was going. Rouser followed her. It wasn’t all that far, less than a mile. She could have stopped at Jerram’s store and spent her penny there, but she was determined to return to the big Ingledew General Store. A woman coming out of Doc Swain’s clinic said to her, “Aint you awful little to be out all by yourself?” but she shook her head and went on. As she approached the Ingledew store, she saw sitting on its porch Ike Whitter and two other men, with rifles in their laps and six-shooters in their belts. They were eating sourdeens. They had opened many cans of sourdeens, and were stuffing themselves.