“Infantile paralysis. Polio.” She held up the copy of Time magazine that she was taking notes from. “It’s scary. Any of us could catch it. Even President Roosevelt had it.”
I knew that. I figured most people did, because of the President’s Birthday Balls coming up in just a few weeks. Every January there were big fundraiser parties all over the country. Rich people went to the balls, and all the money they gave supported the war against polio. The rest of us just read about it in the newspaper or brought dimes to school to help in our own small way.
Janie reached for the W encyclopedia. “I’ll be back,” she said. And something about the way she said that made it sound like a promise.
20
PLAYING HOOKY
January 1942
I should have kept that W encyclopedia longer and taken more notes on President Wilson. But at least I’d stayed out of trouble with Dudley, and Momma would’ve been proud of me for that.
Now I had to write the paper. At home, while I was struggling over it, I came up with the crazy idea to ask Granddaddy for help. If anybody had an opinion on Woodrow Wilson, it was him.
I took my composition book and my pencil into the bedroom. “I have to write a paper.”
From the look he gave me, you’d think I’d just told him I was fixing to take his radio away. “Do it someplace else,” he said, as if I was an intruder in my own bedroom.
“On Woodrow Wilson.”
Granddaddy turned off the radio. “Sit down.” He leaned over and spit tobacco juice into the tin can on the floor. Then he wiped his mouth with his stub, leaving it streaked with black.
I pulled a chair in from the kitchen, and by the time I came back he had that rocker going fifty miles an hour. Before I could ask the first question he started talking. “Wilson was a yellow-livered Democrat. He waited until America was attacked to do a thing about that war. By then it was too late.”
“Too late? Why was it too late? I mean, we helped win the war.”
Granddaddy shook his head.
“Too late for what?”
He didn’t answer me. Matter of fact, I don’t think he was even seeing me anymore. The chair stopped rocking. His eyes went cold and hard, and he raised his left arm like he was holding a gun. He steadied it with his right stub. And then he started yanking that trigger finger. “Axel. You sorry little upstart.” His voice dropped real low and mean. “It was all your fault.”
Axel? Pop? What did he mean, it was Pop’s fault? “Granddaddy! What are you talking about?”
Evidently Granddaddy remembered where he was then. He dropped his arms and pounded the arm of the rocking chair. Then he said, “Go on. Git outta here.” He shut his eyes and clamped his teeth, but that trigger finger on his left hand kept on jerking.
I don’t know why I let him run me out of my own room. Except it didn’t much feel like mine anymore, and that room with him in it was scary sometimes. I needed some outside air.
I pulled on my coat and hat with the flaps that fit down over the ears and headed out the back door. Butch and Jesse hurried to meet me. I stopped on the big stone step and gave them each a good belly scratch. Then I stuffed my hands in my pockets and took off walking, out past the oak tree and the shed until I came to the garden. It was a tangle of dead vines and a few bent corn stalks—dark as shadows against the earth.
Pop would have loved this night. The air was crispy cold, and the stars were so bright they put me in mind of millions of headlights off in the distance. I sure wished they could shine some light on my understanding.
“Pop? He said it was all your fault. What was all your fault? What did you do? And why was he acting like he wanted to shoot somebody?”
There was a whole lot I didn’t understand about Granddaddy. But I was starting to realize something. Whatever was wrong with my pop was probably Granddaddy’s fault. Instead of the other way around. When Pop was alive I was busy just trying to get him to notice me. It never crossed my mind to ask questions about him. Now I wished I had.
After a while I heard Momma on the back porch, banging the water dipper against the well bucket and calling my name.
“Coming, Momma.”
She was waiting in the kitchen with a cup of hot Postum. “Child, it’s freezing out there. Land sakes! I thought you fell through the hole in the outhouse.”
“I was just having a little talk with Pop. That’s all.”
“Oh,” said Momma. “And what did he have to say?”
I shrugged. “Nothing much.”
During the night I dreamed about Granddaddy standing in the middle of Brookford pointing a gun at Pop. He was yanking that trigger finger. And I just knew my pop was about to die.
I woke up with one big question. Why did Granddaddy hate his own young’un so much?
I headed off to school that morning without finishing that paper on Woodrow Wilson. Every time I thought about it, my mind went back to Granddaddy and how he went from talking about President Wilson to my pop. What in the world did they have to do with each other?
When the bus turned in to the school I could see where the highway made a sharp turn toward Hickory. At the bottom of that hill on the way into town was Brookford. My aunts, who were too sorry to take care of their own daddy, were less than a half mile away from me right that minute.
All of a sudden I wanted to talk to them. Maybe I could learn some things. So, just like that, I decided to pay a visit to Pop’s sisters.
I waited until last to get off the bus. When the rest of the students went through the side door of the school, I moseyed over to the front of the school grounds past Miss Hinkle’s Plymouth and all the other teachers’ cars. And then I took off at a run—down the bank, across the road, and into the trees on the other side of the highway.
It didn’t take me ten minutes to reach the aunts’ houses. I followed the stepping-stones to Lucille’s front porch and knocked on the door. There was a window beside the door, and Aunt Lucille pulled back the lace curtain and peeked out at me. Her eyes widened, and I saw from the way her mouth flew open and how she threw her hand over her heart that I had caught her by surprise. She dropped the curtain and then the latch rattled and she opened the door.
“Junior. Is everything okay? Did something happen? To somebody?”
Funny how she didn’t mention Granddaddy in particular. But she must’ve been asking about him. I shook my head. “I just have some questions. About my pop.”
“Axel?” She waved me in and pointed toward the easy chair near the window. “What about Axel?” She reached around the back of her waist and untied the apron she was wearing. Then she slipped it off and carried it into the kitchen. Maybe my aunt figured she had to be all gussied up to see me, but I was used to women wearing aprons with flour and food spills on them.
Aunt Lucille’s house was toasty warm. And no wonder—it had an oil heater sitting in the middle of the living room. That thing wouldn’t cool down in the night like our woodstove did.
“Now,” said Aunt Lucille, “what about Axel?”
All of a sudden I didn’t know what to say. I stopped and started over a few times and finally I just blurted out, “Why did Granddaddy hate him?”
Lucille ducked her head a little and squinted as though I was some stranger come to her door, meddling in her family business. And in a way I was. But I was also her nephew, and with Pop gone, I figured if I wanted to know anything about his family I should hurry up and ask.
While she was making up her mind whether to answer my question we heard footsteps on her porch and then a knock at the door.
“My stars!” said Aunt Lucille. “That must be my sister.” She went to the window and peeked out. “Just as I thought. Lillian is dying of curiosity. She hasn’t talked to me in two months. And now, three minutes after you show up, that woman is on my porch with a tin of fudge. If she thinks she can sweet-talk her way in this door, she has another thought coming.”
21
AUNTS
Jan
uary 1942
Aunt Lucille’s determination started to crumble the second her sister pushed the tin into her hand. She took a deep breath, and I could almost see the smell of fudge filling her up. She closed her eyes and breathed it in. Then she pulled herself together. “Lillian,” she snapped. “What is this for?”
Aunt Lillian laughed, and her voice went sweet as chocolate. But it had a bitterness too, like Momma’s cocoa powder. “Lucy, have a piece of fudge.” She turned then and looked at me. “Why, Junior Bledsoe! Is that you? Do tell. Lucille, share some of my fudge with our nephew.”
Lucille held the fudge out to me and I took a piece.
“Have another,” said Aunt Lillian. She stepped inside and pushed the door shut behind her.
So there I was, with a piece of fudge in each hand, watching her and Aunt Lucille tiptoeing around each other. I tried to imagine them with Pop, playing together when they were all young’uns. But those two women eyeing each other didn’t seem like the kind of people who could have been small and childlike once upon a time. For one thing, they were both tall. And big-boned. Right now, Aunt Lucille’s face was more serious than Miss Hinkle’s in the middle of a handwriting session. Lillian was smiling, but I could tell she was all pretend—just trying to buy something with that fudge of hers.
Lillian sat herself down on the sofa. She patted the cushion beside her. “Sit, sister. And do taste the fudge. Tell me if I’ve lost my touch.”
Lucille frowned and then kind of shuffled over to a straight-backed chair on the other side of the room. She set that fudge on a side table and turned her head away—like she was trying to forget it was there.
But the smell of that chocolate was strong. I couldn’t wait a second longer. I popped one of the pieces into my mouth.
“How do you like it, Junior?” asked Lillian.
“Mm,” I said. “Delicious.” I licked the melting chocolate off my fingers.
“You’re just saying that, aren’t you? It’s so good to see you. But why aren’t you in school?”
Lucille glared at Lillian, then at me—like she was warning me not to talk to her sister. But why shouldn’t I? I wanted to know some things, and I wasn’t convinced that Lucille would answer my questions.
“I was asking Granddaddy about Woodrow Wilson,” I said. “He started talking about the war and was real angry about something—he said it was Axel’s fault. But then he just quit talking.”
Lillian’s eyebrows went up, like she was surprised. Then down, as if she was thinking. I had a feeling she knew something. She glanced at Lucille but didn’t say a word.
We sat there quiet for a minute and then I said, “I got to thinking, maybe y’all would remember something.”
“Well,” said Lillian. Then she stopped.
“Yeah?” I said.
“Daddy never fought in the war. And he blamed Axel for that.”
“Why?”
“Axel was having a hard time sitting still in school,” said Lillian. “He couldn’t think unless he was fiddling with something. Daddy would stand over him while he was doing homework, rushing him and saying how he didn’t have all night to do one arithmetic problem. That made things worse. So finally Axel just up and quit. He could be mule-headed that way.”
That sounded like Pop, all right. But what did it have to do with Woodrow Wilson?
Since Lillian was talking, I guessed Lucille wasn’t going to be outdone. She grabbed up a piece of fudge and took a bite. Then she started talking. “Daddy took him to the mill and made him sweep floors. There was plenty of work there to keep him busy.”
“And hundreds of machines,” interrupted Lillian. “It turned out, while Daddy thought he was sweeping up, Axel was studying the machines. And how they worked. By the time Daddy figured out what was going on, Axel was already helping to fix those machines.”
“But he wasn’t earning any money for it,” said Lucille. “Daddy was all fired up about that—the boss man getting free labor out of his son.”
“Your granddaddy didn’t mind his son sweeping floors for no money,” said Lillian. “After all, that was his idea, but fixing the boss’s machines? That was another story altogether. But the boss refused to pay for Axel’s labor. Said the law wouldn’t allow him to hire a boy that young.”
“The whole time, war was threatening,” said Lucille. “And your granddaddy’s draft number came up. Boy howdy—was he happy about that! He was all set to go and then he had the accident.”
“Oh. His hand?”
“His fingers got caught in the carding machine and he lost half his hand before they could turn it off,” said Lillian.
“Axel was the last person to work on that machine,” said Lucille. “Daddy said he did it on purpose.”
“Ridiculous!” Lillian declared. “Carding is dangerous that way. The machine has metal teeth to comb the cotton and separate it into fibers. If you don’t watch yourself, it’ll eat your fingers. Daddy must’ve been careless. On top of that, he didn’t go to the doctor. Wouldn’t let Mother come close to it with soap and water. So it started turning black.”
Lucille nodded. “Gangrene.”
“Finally one day our neighbor brought him some whiskey and while Daddy was passed out drunk he had a doctor tend to that hand. But it was too late. He couldn’t save it.”
“Thing was, Axel was the last person to work on the machine.”
“You already told him that.”
“The boy was only eleven years old. But Daddy said it was Axel’s fault he couldn’t play on the mill’s baseball team anymore. And you know what made Daddy maddest of all?”
“What?” I asked.
“The war.” They both said it together.
“He couldn’t go off and fight,” said Lucille.
“Oh, but he tried,” Lillian added. “He was determined that nothing would keep him out of that war. He’d go outside every single day and practice shooting with his left hand.”
“But the neighbors complained about the racket. So the police came and took his gun away.”
“Daddy was sure mad about that. Mad enough to start a war all by himself. And I guess you know who his enemy was.”
All of a sudden I felt sick to my stomach, thinking about my pop on the receiving end of Granddaddy’s wrath when he was just a young’un. Eleven years old.
Lillian stood and shoved that tin of fudge into Lucille’s hand. “Eat some more,” she said. “It’ll make you feel better.” Then she offered some to me too.
I took one for each hand. “I reckon I better be going,” I said. “But thanks for the fudge and for telling me about Pop.”
After that cozy living room, the cold air hit me in the face. But I let out a big sigh of relief to be away from those two aunts, and when I did, I could almost see that sigh hanging like a frosty cloud in front of me.
I spent the day walking around Brookford. The town was a couple of hills with little white houses lined up along them. They reminded me of train cars that had come unhooked from each other. I walked up Red Hill, where Granddaddy used to live before we moved him in with us. Somebody else lived in that house now. But I stood in the street and imagined Pop inside at the kitchen table trying to do arithmetic with Granddaddy standing over top of him.
No wonder he left school.
There were other buildings in Brookford—stores, a gas station, a pool hall, and a couple of churches. The redbrick cotton mill where all those people worked was big enough to set half the houses right inside it. I figured Pop knew that place inside and out, considering he’d swept its floors and fixed the machines.
Somewhere down there on the river was a swinging bridge. Once, when I was six, Pop took me to see it. I still remembered how scared I felt up so high and how the bridge rocked with every step we took. But Pop held my hand real tight and told me to hang on to the cable with the other hand. “Don’t look down,” he said. “Keep your eye on where you’re going and you’ll make it across just fine.”
Someday, ma
ybe I’d go looking for that bridge, but for now I wanted to get back to the school and sneak onto the empty bus that parked there during the day. I knew I could stay low until it was filling up with noisy young’uns. By then the driver wouldn’t even notice me.
My plan worked. Even Ann Fay didn’t ask questions, so I figured she hadn’t missed me at school. In fact, playing hooky was so easy I had half a notion to try it again.
I never thought I’d be the kind of person who would do such a thing. But now, I felt like I could even quit school if I wanted to. Maybe there was a law saying I had to go. But nobody seemed to care enough to enforce it. My old pal Calvin Settlemyre was proof of that.
22
OXYMORON
January 1942
“I assume you were sick yesterday?” asked Miss Hinkle.
“I’ve got a lot on me right now,” I said.
She peered over her glasses at me and started to speak. Then stopped. Then started again. “Yes, Junior. I know you do,” she said. “But now you also have to catch up on the work you missed.”
She’d taught a lesson on metaphors and similes, it turned out. And today she was teaching oxymorons. She wrote oxymoron on the blackboard and drew a line under it. Then she wrote two contradictory words or ideas used together. Under that definition she wrote awfully pretty. “That is an oxymoron,” she said, “because awful and pretty contradict each other. It’s essential, when writing or speaking, to always choose the right word.”
She asked us to each think of an oxymoron, to write it on the blackboard, and to use it in a sentence.
It didn’t take Janie Aderholt two seconds to think of one. She raised her hand and went to the board and wrote pretty ugly. Then she turned to Miss Hinkle and said, “The war is getting pretty ugly.”
Next thing I knew, there was a list of oxymorons on the blackboard. Sad smile, small crowd, only choice, loud whisper, sweet sorrow.
The only thing I could think of that contradicted itself was holy terror, which I didn’t figure she would count since I’d be stealing it from Granddaddy when he used it on Christmas Day. The other idea that came to my mind was neighborly teacher. And I sure wasn’t going to write that on the board.
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