Jim the Boy

by Tony Earley

  The uncles and the field hands were still moving away, hoeing as they walked. Jim was afraid he would get into trouble if Uncle Zeno found out he had chopped down another stalk of corn. He could not bear the thought of Uncle Zeno being mad at him. He got down on his knees and dug a small hole with his hands. He stuck the end of the stalk in the hole and filled the hole around it with dirt. Then he patted the dirt around the stalk so that it stood up straight.

  Jim picked up his hoe and wiped his nose on the back of his arm. He wiped the back of his arm on the leg of his overalls. He felt calmer. He decided that he would hoe until dinnertime. He couldn’t think of a way to get home until then, but he knew that Uncle Zeno wouldn’t make him come back to the field after dinner if he didn’t want to.

  Jim threw a rock toward the place he had started work. He often threw rocks as a way of gauging how far away things were. He wanted to know how far he had hoed. The rock, however, was a little flat and light, and curved off short to one side. Jim hunted around until he found a better rock. Good throwing rocks were hard to find in the rich dirt of the river bottom. He threw four or five more rocks until he was satisfied that he had hoed farther than he could throw a rock. This seemed like progress.

  When Jim picked up his hoe, he noticed that it was about the length of a baseball bat. He grasped the handle right above the blade and took a couple of practice swings. He found a suitable hitting rock and tossed it up in the air and swung at it with the handle. Strike one. The hoe blade made swinging the handle awkward. Jim struck out twice before he finally hit the rock. It whizzed off to the right. Foul ball. He hit three more rocks before he got in a satisfactory lick and turned his attention again to the weeds growing in the field.

  Jim saw a rock at his feet that looked like an arrowhead. He dug it up with his hoe, but found that the rock was fat and round on the bottom; it only looked like an arrowhead from the top. Jim had found only one arrowhead on his own, but the uncles often brought him the ones they found. Uncle Coran was the best at finding arrowheads. He could hardly walk through a field without picking one up. When Uncle Coran was a boy, he had even found a stone knife. He kept it in a cigar box on the mantel in his bedroom, and wouldn’t give it to Jim. Jim was afraid the uncles would pick up all the arrowheads in the bottoms before he got good at finding them, but Uncle Zeno said there would always be plenty of arrowheads to find. More turned up every time the fields were plowed.

  Jim studied the rock in his hand closely. Maybe it had been the start of an arrowhead. He didn’t think so, but he could ask Uncle Coran about it at dinnertime. Uncle Coran knew a lot about how the Indians had lived. Uncle Coran said that Indians had started their fires by hitting two rocks together. Jim scraped together a small pile of dry grass and found another good-sized rock. He held the rocks close above the grass and hit them together until sparks flew off. The sparks, however, did not ignite the grass. Jim could not understand how Indians had been able to start fires like this. Nor did he understand how Indians made canoes out of tree bark, or got close enough to deer to shoot them with bows and arrows. Jim often wished he were an Indian, but thought that being a cowboy would be easier. He couldn’t walk in the woods without making noise, and he couldn’t start a fire by hitting two rocks together. Cowboys at least got to use matches and guns, but they also had to ride bucking bulls. Jim didn’t know if he would ever be brave enough to ride a bull. He began to think he would never be good at anything. The end of the field again seemed farther away than the last time he had looked.

  Jim could smell sweat soaking his overalls. He touched the denim covering his thigh with the palm of his hand. The cloth was hot to the touch. Jim squinted up. The sun was small and white; the sky was devoid of color, empty even of clouds and birds. Jim tried to figure out what time it was by looking at the sun. He tried without success until he could no longer see. He could not remember ever being as hot as he was right then. There was a bucket of water in the truck, but Jim knew that you weren’t supposed to drink from it until you had hoed back to the head of the field. The uncles did not believe in wasting steps. The uncles and the field hands had made the turn and were hoeing back toward Jim. They were still a long way off, but Jim knew they would see him if he went to the truck. Two drops of sweat trickled out from under Jim’s hat, and he stood still to see where they went. One drop ran into his eyes, and the other trickled down his cheek. A gnat flew into his mouth. Jim spat it out. He took off his hat and waved it around his face, but could not make the gnats go away.

  “What are you doing down there, Doc?” Uncle Zeno asked.

  Jim jumped. He had not noticed Uncle Zeno’s shadow cover the ground where he crouched. “I’m looking at this praying mantis,” said Jim.

  “Did it bite you?”

  “No.”

  Jim had knocked the praying mantis off a corn stalk and chopped it in two with his hoe. He was poking at the two pieces with the sharp point of the handle.

  “Praying mantises eat other bugs, Jim,” Uncle Zeno said. “If you want to kill something, kill a grasshopper. Grasshoppers eat corn.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jim said.

  He covered up the two green halves of the praying mantis with dirt. He wondered if in killing it he had added another lick to Uncle Zeno’s list.

  “Well,” said Uncle Zeno, “let’s see how you’ve been doing.” He walked back toward the head of Jim’s row, looking at the ground. “You missed a lot of morning glories through here,” he said, scratching at the ground as he walked. “They’ll take over a field if you don’t get ‘em before they get up on the corn.”

  Uncle Zeno came to the cornstalk Jim had chopped down and stuck back in the ground. He stood and looked at it a long time. Then he pulled it up and turned around and looked at Jim. Uncle Zeno was extremely tall. Jim had never noticed before exactly how tall.

  “What happened to this one here?” Uncle Zeno said.

  “I don’t know,” Jim said.

  “You don’t know,” said Uncle Zeno,

  “No, sir,” said Jim.

  “You know it won’t grow now.”

  Jim nodded.

  “Then why did you stick it back in the ground?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jim.

  “You don’t know.”

  “No.”

  Uncle Zeno held the corn stalk up like a scepter, as if seeing it better would help Jim answer his questions.

  “Jim, this was just a mistake until you tried to hide it,” he said. “But when you tried to hide it, you made it a lie.”

  Jim looked at the front of his overalls. He felt a tear start down his cheek. He snatched at it and hoped that Uncle Zeno hadn’t seen it.

  Uncle Zeno threw the cornstalk away from him as if it were a dirty thing, something to be ashamed of.

  “Do you lie to me a lot, Jim?”

  “No,” Jim said.

  “Should I worry about believing the things you tell me? I never have before, but should I start now?”

  Jim shook his head. He wasn’t able to say no again.

  “What’s the matter?” Uncle Zeno said.

  “I don’t feel good,” said Jim.

  “Are you sick?”

  Jim shrugged.

  “Go on home, then,” Uncle Zeno said.

  Jim looked down the row toward the river. He suddenly wanted to finish his work.

  Uncle Zeno pointed in the direction of town. “Go on,” he said. “If you’re sick, you don’t need to be out in the sun.”

  “I think I can make it till dinner,” Jim said.

  “No, you go on home and tell your mama you’re sick.”

  Jim sent a small whimper out into the air between himself and Uncle Zeno, like a scout in advance of the protest that would follow.

  “Go on,” Uncle Zeno said.

  From the edge of the road Jim turned around and looked back at the field. Uncle Zeno was hoeing the row Jim had abandoned. The field hands were spread out through the bottom. Uncle Al was still way out in front
of everybody else. He was approaching the river for the second time that morning, working as if he would never stop.

  An Unexpected Gift

  JIM WALKED home through the fields and pastures. Along the way he did not try to flush baby rabbits from their hidden beds in the tall grass of the hay field. Nor, when he took off his shoes and waded across the branch, did he search among the stones for gold nuggets, or look beneath the larger rocks for crawdads and spring lizards. Jim particularly liked holding the small lizards in his cupped hands and watching their tiny hearts beat beneath the pale, thin skin of their undersides. And he liked the fierce, snapping claws of the crawdads. But today he simply crossed over to the town side of the creek, put on his shoes, and continued on his way. When he skirted the small clearing in the woods that held the abandoned tenant house where his mother had lived with his father, he didn’t throw rocks onto the tin roof, nor sneak onto the creaky porch for a peek through the dirty windows.

  In town, Jim swung wide of the uncles’ houses. An early appearance at home would worry Mama. She would make him lie down, and put her hand on his forehead to see if he had a fever. Sometimes she made him wear a jacket when it was warm outside. She had not wanted him to go to the cornfield, and relented only when the uncles promised to watch him every minute. Often the uncles had to rescue Jim from her tender care.

  To Jim’s relief, Aliceville, in the long hour before noon, was almost deserted. The dogs who might have barked or wagged their tails when Jim passed were asleep in the round holes they had dug in the cool dirt beneath some porch. The men and boys who might have been about at some other time of the day were off working. The women, Jim knew, were cooking dinner for the men to eat when they came in from the fields. The town squatted quietly in the sun as if tied to the ground by the web of crisscrossing power lines stretched between the houses.

  The only person in sight was Pete Hunt, the railroad station agent. Pete was a small man with a big mustache. He sat on the porch of the depot reading a magazine. He did not like kids much. If a kid looked in the window of the freight office while Pete was using the telegraph, Pete pulled the shade down. Sometimes Pete let Jim search through the coal piles for fossils, but sometimes he came out of the depot and ran him off. Jim could never tell with Pete. He never noticed that Pete only ran him away from the coal pile when he was with another boy. Pete looked at Jim over the top of his magazine.

  “Hey,” said Jim.

  Pete nodded once, but didn’t say anything. He moved the magazine upward until it covered his eyes. Pete had wired the uncles’ houses for electricity when Jim was a baby. Mama said Pete had almost lived with them for the month it took to do the job, yet he hardly spoke the whole time.

  Jim moved slowly down Depot Street toward the store, although he didn’t particularly want to see Uncle Coran, either. He did not want to have to explain himself. He stared at the ground, but with little interest in trying to follow any of the tracks left in the dirt. Today, Jim couldn’t think of anything he wanted to do, a game he wanted to play, or a place he wanted to be. He felt sorry for himself because his birthday was turning out so poorly. He kicked a rock, but didn’t watch to see how far it rolled.

  Jim was in front of the hotel when Whitey Whiteside called his name from an open window upstairs. The hotel was a skinny, brick building where salesmen and railroad crews stayed while waiting in town to catch one train or another. Whitey Whiteside was a drummer for Governor Feeds. He took orders for the sacks of feed and seed that the uncles sold in the store. His given name was Ralph, but he said it was harder to forget a salesman named Whitey than it was to forget one named Ralph. Jim liked Whitey because Whitey carried rock candy in his coat pocket, and always gave Jim a piece. The uncles said Whitey Whiteside was honest; they would not buy feed or seed from other drummers.

  “Hey,” yelled Whitey Whiteside from the window. “Hey, Jim Glass.”

  Jim looked up at the hotel window. He smiled slightly before remembering how unhappy he was.

  “Hey,” Jim called back. “Hey, Whitey Whiteside.”

  “Where you going?” Whitey asked.

  “Nowhere,” said Jim.

  “Hang on a minute, then,” said Whitey. “I ain’t going nowhere, either.”

  Jim waited while Whitey Whiteside clomped down the stairs of the hotel and came out into the street. He was tall and skinny like the uncles. His brown hair was going gray, which he said was a good thing, even though he was young. Gray hair on a young man, he said, coupled with the name Whitey, would make people remember him even better.

  “What happened to you?” Whitey asked. “You’ve got dirt all over your face.”

  “I’ve been hoeing corn with the uncles,” said Jim.

  “That’s good, Jim,” Whitey said. “Hard work’s good for a man. Hard work will grow hair on your chest.” He studied Jim closely. “But you know,” he said, “you ought to carry a bandanna in your pocket, and wipe your face off with that, instead of your hand. That way, if you run into a pretty girl on your way home, you won’t have dirt all over your face.”

  Jim shrugged. He liked Whitey Whiteside, but didn’t always know what to say to him. Whitey Whiteside talked to Jim like Jim was grown. He had even asked Jim to call him “Whitey,” and not “Mr. Whiteside.”

  “Well,” Whitey said, “I don’t guess it matters.”

  Jim shrugged again and looked at his hands. He wiped them on the legs of his overalls and then stuck them in his pockets.

  Whitey Whiteside always wore a suit and a starched white shirt. He wore big fedoras with stiff brims, felt in the winter, and blazing white straw in the summer. Jim thought Whitey Whiteside must be rich.

  “I mean,” said Whitey, “it’s probably more important to a pretty girl that a man has a good job and works hard and looks after things, than whether or not he has a little dirt on his face. Don’t you guess?”

  “I don’t know,” Jim said.

  Jim and Whitey stood in the street for a long moment without talking.

  “The uncles let me off a little early today,” Jim said. “It was almost dinnertime, anyway.”

  “I see,” said Whitey.

  Jim studied one of his footprints in the dirt. He could see the nail marks around the outside of the sole. Jim could feel some of the nails sticking through on the inside of his shoe. The nails didn’t bother him unless he thought about them. He wiggled his toes.

  Whitey took his watch out of his pocket and looked at the face as if it were unfamiliar.

  “Let’s see here,” he said. “It’s still a little bit until my train pulls in, so why don’t we walk up the hill and have a look at that new school?”

  Whitey covered his routes by riding trains all over North Carolina. He had even ridden the Carolina Moon, which was the newest, fastest passenger train on the Great Southeastern Railway. The Moon did not stop in Aliceville.

  “Okay,” Jim said. “I guess we can go look.”

  The new school was the biggest building in Aliceville. It was two stories high and made from red brick. The hotel was the only other brick building in town, but it was narrow and dirty and sad-looking. The new school sat on top of the hill like a fortress. You could see it from all over Aliceville. It had been under construction for as long as Jim could remember. It was supposed to open in the fall. Jim and Whitey walked up the dirt street toward the school.

  “That’s some building, huh, Jim?” Whitey said.

  Jim didn’t say anything. He was nervous about going to the new school. The old school he had attended since first grade had only two rooms. Jim knew everybody who went to school there, even the older kids. But when the new school opened, all the country schools around Aliceville would close down, and the kids who went to those schools would come to school in Aliceville. They would ride to town on buses. Even hillbilly kids from Lynn’s Mountain would come to the new school. Jim had often seen hillbilly kids with their fathers at the store. They stared at Jim as if they hated him already; he didn’t like th
em, either. Jim’s grandfather lived on Lynn’s Mountain. Jim had never laid eyes on him, and did not think he ever would. Mama would not permit it. Jim was a little afraid of going to school with kids who might know his grandfather, but he had not told anyone that.

  Jim stopped at the edge of the school yard, but Whitey Whiteside marched up the steps and tried the wide front door. It was locked.

  “Shoot,” Whitey said. “I was hoping we could get inside.”

  Whitey walked down the steps and over to the nearest window. He was just tall enough to look in. He pushed his hat back and cupped his hands around his face and peered through the glass.

  “That’s the principal’s office, I guess,” he said. “You’ll need to make sure you stay out of there, Jim. You want to see what it looks like?”

  Jim shook his head. He did not want to look inside the principal’s office. His old school didn’t have a principal, just two teachers, and they were both nice.

  Whitey walked farther down the side of the building and stopped at another window.

  “This’ll probably be a classroom right here,” he said. He peered inside and whistled. “Boy, this is something, Jim,” he said. “Come have a look.”

  Jim shook his head again.

  “Oh, come on,” Whitey said. “You’re not going to get into trouble for looking in the window.”

  He made a low step with his hands. Jim put his foot into it and Whitey hoisted him up. Jim pressed his face against the glass. The glass was warm from the sun. He had watched the school going up, but he had not looked inside before. The first thing he noticed was that the room did not have a proper ceiling. The beams holding up the second floor were visible.

  “What’s that up there on the ceiling?” Whitey asked.

  “It doesn’t have a ceiling,” Jim said.