by Tony Earley
Mama was sitting at the table. “Jim!” she said. “Your feet!”
Jim crashed into his room without stopping and dove under the bed. “Sorry,” he called out, unwrapping his glove from the oiled cloth in which he kept it. The ball was nestled snugly in the pocket. He put the glove on and ran back through the kitchen. “Ty Cobb is on the Moon!” he yelled.
Mama said, “What?”
Jim jumped off of the porch into the yard. He yelled over his shoulder, “Uncle Zeno told me to get my ball and glove!” By the time Mama got to the door, he was already flying down Depot Street.
When Jim got back to the station, he shoved his ball and glove toward Uncle Zeno. Uncle Zeno pushed them back toward Jim.
“No,” he said. “You and Penn play ball right there beside the train. Go on. Let Ty Cobb see how good you are.”
“Come on, Penn,” said Jim.
Jim jumped over the mud hole. Penn waded through it. In the narrow strip of ground between the mud hole and the road bed, Jim backed a few steps toward the head of the train; Penn backed toward the rear. Jim’s first throw almost flew over Penn’s head, but Penn reached up and caught it.
“Settle down,” said Uncle Zeno.
“Take your time,” said Uncle Coran.
Penn’s throw came back straight and true. It slapped soundly into the pocket of Jim’s glove.
“Atta boy,” said Mr. Carson. “Air it out, Penn.”
“Easy windup now, Jim,” said Uncle Al. “Nice and easy.”
Jim felt as if he were pitching in the World Series. He tossed the ball carefully back to Penn. All three of the uncles clapped.
“There you go, Jim,” said Uncle Zeno.
Again Penn’s throw came back straight and hard. He had a strange, almost desperate look on his face.
“Jim,” he said. “Let me use the glove.”
“No,” Jim said, this time throwing a little harder.
Penn’s throw back came so hard it made Jim’s palm sting when he caught it.
“Jim,” Penn said. “Please let me use the glove.”
“No, Penn. It’s my glove.”
“Throw him a curveball,” Pete said. “Throw him a curveball, Jim.”
“I don’t know how to throw a curveball,” Jim said.
“I should get to use the glove,” Penn said. “I’m a better ballplayer than you are.”
Penn was throwing the ball so hard that Jim was afraid he was going to miss it in front of Ty Cobb.
“You are not,” he said.
“You know I am, Jim. You know I’m better than you are. Give me the glove.”
“You are not better than me,” Jim said. He threw the ball almost as hard as he could at Penn. He saw Penn wince when it hit his hands.
“Easy boys,” said Uncle Zeno.
“Penn,” Mr. Carson said gruffly.
“Jim won’t let me use the glove.”
“It’s his glove,” said Mr. Carson.
“But Ty Cobb,” Penn said. “Ty Cobb is watching us and I don’t have a glove.”
“Stop begging, Penn,” Mr. Carson said.
“Let Penn use the glove a time or two,” Uncle Coran said.
“It’s my glove,” Jim said.
Jim was about to fire one at Penn when he saw that Penn wasn’t looking; Penn was staring beyond Jim toward the head of the train. Jim turned around. The two men who had crawled underneath the locomotive were crawling out. One of the men stood up with the toolbox; the other pushed something long and straight in front of him as he crawled from under the engine. When he stood up, Jim saw that it was a cow’s leg, cut off just below the shoulder. The hair on Jim’s neck stiffened when he saw it.
“There’s the problem,” said the conductor.
The man waved the cow’s leg over his head with both hands as if it were a flag or a torch. He tossed it into the mud hole beside the track and climbed onto the locomotive. The conductor waved back.
“All a-BOARD,” yelled the conductor.
“JIM!” Penn said angrily. “Let me use the glove NOW!”
“I told you NO!” said Jim.
Penn screamed, “GIVE ME THE GLOVE, YOU BABY!”
“Penn!” Mr. Carson said. “You come here to me.”
“Game’s over, boys,” said Uncle Zeno.
The conductor ducked inside the car and closed the door. Jim was furious that Penn had called him a baby in front of the uncles and the conductor.
“BABY!” he yelled. “I am not a BABY!”
He closed his eyes and threw the ball at Penn as hard as he could. It sailed over Penn’s head. When it finally hit the ground, it skipped several times over the wet ground and rolled down the grade into the mud hole.
Penn stared at Jim with such hatred that Jim thought he was going to charge. Jim tensed to fight him. Instead Penn turned to go after the ball. He took a single step and fell face-first onto the ground. Jim heard him say, “Uh-oh.” Penn pushed himself up with his hands, but fell again when he tried to stand. He rolled onto his side and looked down at his legs, his face filled with a kind of wonder. The uncles and Mr. Carson ran toward him. Pete jumped down off of the platform. The train lurched and clanked and began to move. Penn lay back and wailed, a forlorn, animal sound that opened up a hole deep inside Jim. When Jim closed his eyes he could feel himself falling and falling.
An Afternoon in the Sun
PENN HAD polio.
The sheriff drove out from New Carpenter and nailed up quarantine notices. The local still stopped at the depot to deliver and take on mail, but nobody got on the train and few people got off. School was turned out and locked up for the summer, even though it was only April.
Jim sat in his room and waited to die. He had squatted on the ground and held Penn’s hand. Penn had stared at his legs as if snakes were crawling on them. Now, Jim could feel things crawling on his fingers, and up and down his arm. Mama came in regularly and rested her palm on his forehead to see if the fever had come.
Despite the quarantine, the weather was warm and bright. The breeze blowing up out of the south smelled like the river, and like the earth waking up. The uncles would soon return to the fields. Mama would cook for them and clean their houses. Jim closed his eyes. Everything would go on without him.
Mr. Carson had scooped Penn off the ground and run to his truck. In his haste, he took Penn all the way back up the mountain over the muddy roads, instead of to the hospital in New Carpenter. The uncles wondered if Mr. Carson had simply forgotten about the hospital, or if he only trusted the doctor who lived on the mountain.
Jim sat on a kitchen chair pulled up to the window, his arms propped on the sill. There wasn’t much to look at outside. Nobody walked up or down the street or drove into the store yard or stomped in and out of the hotel or the depot. Still, waiting to die was surprisingly interesting. A bird flashing across the sky became an event, a thing to remember; Jim watched three dogs sleeping in the middle of the street as if he had never seen dogs before. When the dogs stood and walked off in the direction of the store, he wondered how they decided where they wanted to go and when it was time to get up. Every so often he stood and flexed his knees and bounced up and down as if he were getting ready to broad jump.
The only time Jim felt sick was when he thought about Penn. The memory of his selfishness the day Penn fell occasionally washed over him and took his breath away. And then he remembered hitting Penn in the back with the ball; he remembered his glee when he beat Penn in the greasy pole-climbing contest; he remembered every bad thing he had ever said or thought about his friend. He wished more than anything that he had let Penn use his glove. He whispered, “Please, please, please,” which was at once a prayer for Penn, and a plea for the bad memories to go away and leave him alone.
When Jim opened his eyes, Abraham stood outside his window.
“Hey, Abe,” Jim said, sitting up.
“Hello, Mr. Glass,” said Abraham. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“I wasn’t as
leep,” Jim said. “I was just sitting here.”
“I was just passing this way,” said Abraham.
Jim wondered why Abraham was walking through the yard, and not on the street, but he didn’t say anything.
Abraham smiled for no reason that Jim could see. He stretched and yawned expansively.
“I could use a nap myself,” he said. “I ate too much dinner.”
“Oh,” said Jim.
Abraham reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a small parcel wrapped in grease-stained brown paper.
“That reminds me,” he said. “I’m too full to eat this fried apple pie. Do you want it?”
Jim eyed the pie. He hadn’t realized it before, but a fried apple pie was exactly what he wanted. But he didn’t know what Mama would say about his taking it.
“It’ll go to waste,” Abraham said. “I’d eat it myself, but I’m full as a tick.”
Jim remembered that he was waiting to die, and decided he was entitled to a last fried pie.
“All right,” he said. “Just so you won’t have to throw it away.”
Jim took the package and put it under his bed so he could eat it later.
“Well, I guess I better be getting on back,” Abraham said. “It was good to talk to you.”
“Thanks for the pie,” said Jim.
Abraham nodded and took a step backward, but didn’t turn to leave; the skin of his forehead suddenly slid toward his eyes; the weight of it forced his eyebrows downward into a frown that made him look very old.
“You’re in God’s hands, Mr. Glass,” Abraham said. “Even when it don’t seem like it.”
Jim nodded.
“And Mr. Carson, he’s in God’s hands, too.”
“He’s my best friend,” Jim said.
“Well, there ain’t no better place he could be than in God’s hands.”
“But he’s got polio.”
“Shoot,” Abraham said. “Polio is a thing of this earth. Things of this earth don’t mean nothing to God. You just try to remember that.”
“I will,” Jim said.
“You’re going to be all right,” said Abraham.
“Okay,” said Jim. “I’ll try.”
Pete carried something heavy-looking inside a paper sack.
“Hey, Pete,” Jim said.
“Jim,” said Pete.
Jim didn’t know what to say next. His conversations with Pete rarely proceeded beyond Pete’s greeting.
Pete handed Jim the sack.
“I was kicking around in the coal pile the other day and I found this,” he said. “I don’t have any room for it. It’s yours if you want it. I’ve got enough junk as it is.”
Inside the sack was a large, flat piece of coal covered with the delicate imprints of leaves. Jim couldn’t believe his eyes. It was the fossil Pete kept on his desk at the station. More than once Pete had refused to take money for it.
“Gosh, Pete,” Jim said. “Thanks. Why are you giving this to me?”
“I just thought I’d clean up the place. That’s all. It was either give it to you or burn it in the stove.”
Jim ran his finger over the outlines of the ancient leaves.
“There’s forty-one different leaves there,” Pete said. “I counted them. If you’ll look, you’ll see that they look like ferns.”
Jim nodded in agreement. In the summertime, the wooded banks of the river were cool and lush with ferns.
“It was loaded onto a train at Bluefield, West Virginia, and dumped off here. It’s kind of amazing, when you think about it.”
“What is?”
“That we can hold something in our hands that was alive millions of years ago. That it was dug up by some coal miner in West Virginia and wound up here in North Carolina with us looking at it.”
Jim held the piece of coal closer to his face and for an instant saw the leaves growing green and bright on a strange riverbank.
“When you think about the sun coming up and going down hundreds of millions of times, it kind of makes what’s going on today not seem that important.”
“I guess so.”
“Sure it does,” Pete said. “Think about it.”
“Okay,” said Jim.
“All right, then. There you go.”
Jim didn’t know what else to say. What was going on today still seemed to him pretty important. He pretended to study the fossil some more.
“How’s your mama?” Pete asked.
“She’s fine,” said Jim, glancing up to see Pete’s face rapidly turning scarlet.
“You tell her I said hello.”
“I will.”
“I think highly of her.”
Jim nodded because he didn’t know what to say.
Without looking at Jim, Pete began backing across the yard.
“And I think you’re all right, too. But don’t spread it around.”
“I won’t.”
“You think about what I said about the fossil,” Pete said.
“I will,” said Jim.
“What’s going on today doesn’t matter that much.”
“Okay.”
“Everything’s going to turn out fine.”
“Okay.”
“So don’t worry about it.”
“I won’t.”
“And don’t play ball like Cobb. Cobb was dirty.”
“Do you really think Ty Cobb was on the Moon?” Jim asked.
“Maybe,” Pete said. “But there’s not much point in worrying about it, now. Whoever he was, he’s gone.”
“I guess so.”
“Okay. Well, ‘bye,” said Pete.
“’Bye,” said Jim.
“Oh,” Whitey said, “I almost forgot. This is for you.”
He handed Jim a small piece of lead, grooved on one end, flat and misshapen on the other.
“What is it?” Jim asked.
“It’s a Minnie ball from the Civil War,” Whitey said. “It came out of my grandpa’s leg.”
Jim stared in disbelief at the piece of lead in his hand.
“Your grandpa got shot in the leg?”
“Battle of Franklin,” said Whitey. “They had to cut his leg off. That flat part there, that’s where it hit the bone. Broke it all to pieces.”
“They cut off your grandpa’s leg?”
“Yep,” Whitey said. “He was a farmer before the war. But after they cut his leg off, he started preaching.”
“Oh.”
“He made a pretty good one-legged preacher, too. He gave me that when I was about your age. And I want you to have it.”
“Thank you,” Jim said. “I promise not to lose it.”
Whitey took off his hat, scratched his head, and put his hat back on.
“Look, Jim,” he said. “We might not see each other anymore after this.”
“How come?”
“I lost my job,” Whitey said. “Business ain’t so hot, nobody’s buying feed and seed much, so the company laid me off. I won’t be running my route anymore, so I won’t be coming to Aliceville on the train.”
Jim swallowed and nodded.
“I hate it,” Whitey said. “I’m just tore up about it, but there ain’t anything I can do.”
“I bet the uncles would give you a job.”
Whitey smiled a little.
“We thought about it, but that probably ain’t too good an idea.”
Jim remembered the night at the tenant house.Mama had never mentioned it. Jim had never mentioned it to Mama.
“I guess not,” he said. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” said Whitey. “I might go up north and I might go out west. Wherever somebody needs a salesman, I’ll go there.”
“That’s a good idea,” Jim said.
“I just wanted you to know that I’ve enjoyed being your friend. I think you’re a good boy.”
Whitey stuck out his hand.
“I might have polio,” Jim said.
“I’ll take that chance.”<
br />
Whitey squeezed Jim’s hand in both of his.
“Jim Glass,” he said, “I wish things could have turned out different.”
“I know,” said Jim.
Whitey cocked his head and raised an eyebrow.
“I saw you talking to Mama that night in the woods.”
“You did, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Well. Your mama said she was afraid somebody was going to see us, and I guess she was right.”
“Did you try to marry Mama?”
Whitey laughed, a sad-sounding noise that came up out of his belly in a chuff.
“I tried,” he said. “But she wouldn’t have me.”
“I figured,” said Jim.
“She said she still loves your daddy.”
“He died before I was born.”
“I know,” Whitey said. “It’s a sad thing.”
“I guess so.”
Whitey tilted his head back and locked his fingers behind his neck.
“But we’ve all got to get on with things, don’t we, Jim?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’ve got to work hard and keep moving and try to do the right thing.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You take good care of your mama, okay?”
“I will.”
“And don’t take any wooden nickels.”
Before Jim could say, “I won’t,” Whitey spun on his heel and started across the yard toward the hotel.
BOOK VI
The View from Up Here
Our Boy
LATE IN the morning on Jim’s eleventh birthday, something like a miracle happened: Mama gave him permission to go up the mountain with the uncles. When the time came to leave, she even followed them outside to say good-bye. Uncle Coran and Uncle Al climbed into the bed of the truck and sat down in the straight chairs they had placed against the back of the cab. Mama stepped onto the running board and looked in at Jim and Uncle Zeno. Uncle Zeno pressed the starter and the engine shook itself and growled to life.
“You’re welcome to come along, Cissy,” Uncle Zeno said over the noise.
Mama shook her head.
“Zeno, you know I can’t go up there,” she said. “I don’t think I could stand it.”
Jim tried not to look at Mama and looked down at his baseball glove instead. When he glanced up, she took his face into her hands and peered at him intently.
