When Dad left this time, we went with him. We didn’t go very far but we soon missed those bright airy rooms with the lovely views of James River and the center of town. We moved into one of our views. Not the river. Practically into the Court House. We had two rooms—tiny, viewless, airless—behind a rundown little diner that very soon had a sign up proclaiming it “Woody’s Café.” There was a long high counter with twelve stools bolted into the cement floor on the right as you entered and four painted wooden booths on the left. I loved it from the first moment I saw it. Junior and Mom were dismayed. For the first time, Dad and I were in cahoots. And not dancing.
We moved in and cleaned and painted the place during Christmas vacation. We didn’t have Christmas on the farm that year and we all regretted it. It was our last chance. Grandpa had made a deal to trade the place for a smaller farm—only forty acres—a mile outside Oak Grove. Oak Grove, Arkansas. Population 30. He and Grandma moved at the beginning of the year. I wondered if they’d change the population sign to read 32.
Woody’s Cafe, which had been staked by a friend of Dad’s in St. Louis (a horse-breeder whom Junior and I dubbed the Stud and who was responsible for the fancy riding togs Dad sported), opened on New Year’s Day, 1935. It quickly became the gathering place for Dad’s old cronies who never spent a cent. Since we didn’t have a beer license, there was nothing we served that they could possibly want to drink. We had soft drinks: Dr. Pepper, Royal-Crown Cola, Nehi in all flavors, Cream Soda (an addiction of mine that Dad swore would bankrupt us before the end of the month), and of course coffee which one of Dad’s buddies called horse piss then changed his mind and said it wasn’t strong enough to be horse piss. We didn’t have tea.
The plan was for Mom to do the baking—pies, mostly—when she got home from school and Dad would be in charge of the kitchen. We served hamburgers, cheese and ham sandwiches and one blue-plate special every day—roast pork or beef with mashed potatoes and a soggy vegetable. We featured Dad’s specialty, chili. A great pot of beans was on the back of the stove cooking all the time. When they were ready, they were transferred to another pot and great hunks of a reddish brick-shaped mass of unidentifiable ingredients mashed together and hardened was cut up into the beans. The brick was wrapped in clear cellophane stamped with red letters spelling out simply: Chili-Bricks. They resembled in size the big bars of yellow wash soap we used in the cafe’s kitchen and I often wondered if Dad might not have sliced a bit of soap off now and then by mistake.
With all our efforts to make the cafe pay—I gave up my school lunch hour to wait on tables, Junior learned to scour the greasy chili pots without getting sick, Dad all but lassoed passersby—we had to admit defeat after the Spring court session. That successful six weeks wouldn’t be repeated until the next session. By the time school was out in May, Mom had long since stopped baking. Even Dad’s chili pot simmered for days before it was empty. We were facing a hot dead summer. We were losing money just keeping the place open. The exodus west continued. Galena was beginning to look like a ghost town. Stores and shops went out of business from one day to the next, leaving blank blind holes in the series of buildings lining the square. The Domino closed. An era was over. We were part of the past. And we didn’t seem to have any idea about the future. Until something happened that galvanized us into action and started us on our travels. Grandma Idy died.
The Woods really came out of the woods for this sad occasion. In front of Grandpa’s new Oak Grove house—a four-roomed clapboard of a heart-sinking familiarity—were parked cars with license plates from Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma (three), and one from Kansas. That would be Uncle Ed, Dad’s brother, who’d picked up his second wife in Kansas City where he’d worked for years. His wife had more than made up for the fact that she had a child already by providing Uncle Ed with a baby daughter with embarrassing speed. His step-son, Ronnie, was fourteen now and a particular friend of mine. He laughed at everything I did or said. A very endearing trait.
We were the last of the immediate family to arrive because we were going. Going on after the funeral, heading west. I suppose Mom and Dad had been discussing this move because everything seemed organized. Junior and I were each given smallish suitcases and told we could fill them and take nothing more. Anything that didn’t fit in that or the trunk we were sending on to Aunt Dell in Phoenix would be left with our belongings and sold at an auction sometime in the future. I was amazed at how little we owned once the tags had been put on the bits and pieces. Just how the cafe was disposed of, I have no idea. Junior said something about bankruptcy court, but I didn’t understand.
By the time we got to Oak Grove, Junior and I had arranged and rearranged ourselves in the car, squirmed around in the back seat like animals preparing nests for a long hibernation—which it eventually resembled—fitting ourselves and the few extra things in we’d begged to bring: Junior’s ball-glove, bat and ball, my shoe box with DO NOT TOUCH, Private Property of Carlton Woods scrawled on the lid and for some reason, a Chinese checker board with the marbles in a bag that Junior had stubbornly insisted on bringing. When the awkward size of the board was mentioned, he threw the closest thing to a tantrum I’d ever seen him resort to. That damned checker board was with us for several thousands of miles and drove me crazy from the beginning. It was either up against the window, cutting out the view or blocking the door when we stopped so we had to climb over it. He was impervious to our jokes about it and our screams because of it. He clung to it like a child to a teddy bear.
The funeral took place the afternoon of our arrival. Grandma Idy was laid out in the front bedroom of this house I didn’t know but in the big spool-patterned four-poster I’d known all my life, covered with her most beautiful patch-work quilt, looking very much like herself. The lace collar was pinned with the cameo under her chin. Her hair neatly and softly arranged. I had never seen a dead person before. She looked so natural, I had to remind myself why we were here. The solemnity, the hushed voices and tip-toeing around were unlike any family gathering I’d known. Grandma dead? She didn’t look dead. What finally convinced me was noticing that powder and rouge had been applied to her face. If she were alive, she’d never have allowed anybody to paint her face.
Chapter Six
THE HOUSE WAS FILLED with hushed confusion; neighbors paying respects—some Grandpa hadn’t even met yet in his first six months here—family members in and out the screen doors, children of all ages racing around all over the place trying not to have too much fun seeing each other again. Those voices that were raised were not considered out of order since they were directed at the children—reprimands, threats, admonitions.
Then Grandma’s coffin appeared, being carried out the door reminding us all what we were really here for. Babies that were being passed from hand to hand gurgling, cooing or wailing suddenly became as quiet as the grownups. The air turned still— there wasn’t a sound, not a cluck from the chicken run, no mules brayed or cows mooed, even the birds were silent. The silence of death. There was something about the way the coffin slid into the hearse that gave me the shivers. The box fit too neatly and smoothly into the rear end, feet first she went, swallowed up silently, disappearing from us. Disappearing in the ass-end of the bus. Everything was moving in the wrong direction. Feet first into the unknown. We were too. We were going from here to the unknown. To the west.
Everybody headed for the cars that were backing and turning to get in line to follow the hearse that had come all the way from Berryville for Grandma’s last short trip to the Baptist Church in Oak Grove a mile away. The house emptied behind me as people moved past me, silent except for sibilant whispers, filling the cars, jumping on top of each other as the cars eased down the lane, following Grandma in that long black car with the frosted windows. Was that Grandma? Grandma Idy who’d cooked for us, cared for us, was alive for us? Who’d always be alive for me? She had loved us. One less person in the world to love us. I wasn’t sure that we had enough of them to spare. I was beginning to ge
t an inkling of what death was all about. Finally real tears were welling up and blinding me.
“That you, Totsy?” I turned from watching the black death wagon creep away with its train of followers to find my Uncle Henry, married to one of Dad’s sisters, squinting down at me. “Oh. Thank God. Don’t recognize any of these kids. You’re the only easy one. You ain’t growed at all.” He moved myopically away toward one of the last cars as my tears got choked up on laughter. I was coughing and sputtering, blinded and choked when I felt an arm around my shoulder guiding me toward the last car. I was pulled into the car and down onto a lap into arms that held me tight. A new fit of coughing brought a hand to my back which thumped me gently between the shoulder-blades. I leaned back on a chest to catch my breath.
“Tots,” Ronnie’s lips were at my ear whispering. “You laughin’ or cryin’?”
“Both,” I gasped.
He started to tickle me but he felt my body freeze and knew this was not the right time. He moved his hands away from my ribs, crossed them on my chest and pulled me back tight against him. We’d been close ever since he came into the family some four years before. Uncle Ed brought his new wife, Edwina, and Ronnie down from Kansas City to meet us when they first married. He immediately became like a new big brother. He hugged me to him often like Junior did, he loved to watch me dance and encouraged me to show off at every opportunity. He didn’t think it was idiotic for me to want to be a tap dancer. He was the only one who knew of my ambition. Coming from Kansas City, he’d had the opportunity to see tons of vaudeville shows and movies and assured me I had real natural talent.
Junior and he got along pretty well, but it was me he’d seek out and lure away from all the other cousins at family gatherings. “You’re the only one of this whole outfit that’s got anything on the ball, Tots. I can talk to you.” He dismissed the rest of the Woods as a bunch of hicks.
He gave me my first cigarette when I was six. I got a bit sick and he held my head and laughed while I retched dryly. “I’m sorry, Tots. Thought you were more experienced than that.” I had lied about how often I’d smoked. When I confessed it was my first time he ruffled my hair and said, “You’re a crazy little kid, Tots, but I love you.” He told me proudly when they’d moved down here a few months ago that he was a bastard. “This ain’t no place for bastards, Tots. It’s OK being a bastard in a big town, but down here with all these Bible hicks, it’s going to be hell.”
At fourteen, he not only smoked—almost openly—he even shaved pretty often and I could feel soft bristles on my cheek as I moved to open the door of the car when we pulled up in front of the little church. Our car was the last and we had to stand at the back since there were no seats remaining. I got a glimpse of the coffin covered with flowers—mostly roses and garden flowers in simple bouquets spread around on the box with others in vases. I was glad that I couldn’t really see what was going on. Everybody was standing singing a hymn and from my low vantage point, I got only a sea of grownups’ bottoms unless I lifted my eyes. When I did, I got the back of their heads or the faces of babies looking at me over shoulders. During the prayer after the song, with everybody remaining standing, I couldn’t see the preacher, only heard a disembodied voice with quavering tones droning on and on.
When the congregation finally sat down, my view of the coffin was clearer and so was the awful finality of the occasion. The reading of verses of First Corinthians whatever through whatever had just been announced when a darting figure in frilly blue ruffles and white shoes dashed up the aisle toward the casket. Ruby! I could feel Ronnie stiffen beside me. His little sister. Half-sister. Uncle Ed’s pride and joy. She reached the coffin and was delightedly pulling the flowers off and handing them around to the people seated in the front rows. Hissed whispers split the hot air. Uncle Ed fought his way over feet and knees to get out of the pew, motioning frantically at the happy child who continued to distribute flowers. The preacher had chosen not to notice her but the congregation was hobbling up and down with silent laughter or horror. The suppressed titters became open when Uncle Ed tripped and fell headlong into the aisle.
Ronnie had me by the hand and out the door before I could catch my breath from the hoot of pent-up laughter that had to escape, even through a handkerchief, and we were weaving through the cars toward the main road.
He still had me by the hand, muttering to himself, as we passed through Oak Grove—all four stores, the filling station, the big old building called The Mule Barn, and the few houses—and out the other side. We walked toward Grandpa’s new house in the blazing sun, past the town sign which hadn’t been changed to read Population 32 and would now have had to be changed again if it had.
Ronnie didn’t say anything until we passed the last house and took a short-cut across an alfalfa field between the road and Grandpa’s orchard at the back of his property. “What a clod,” he murmured.
“Who?”
“Who? Ed, that’s who.” He shook his head. “Only that dumb hick could turn a funeral for a nice little old lady into a Mack Sennett comedy.” I didn’t know who Mack Sennett was. “And she was nice.” His mouth tightened and he looked down at his feet trudging through the dry short remains of the hay. He looked like he might cry. I’d seen no sign of any feeling one way or the other from him so far today. “She was nice. She was good to me. She made me feel that I had a family.” He kicked at a lump of dirt. “But that clod! Dumb hillbilly. Why’d Ma have to go and marry a hillbilly, for God’s sake?” He stopped at the barbed-wire fence. “Ed and Ed. What a joke! Uncle Ed and Auntie Ed. Mr. Ed and Mrs. Ed. Edward. Edwina. She surely didn’t marry him for the joke.” He held the bottom wire down with his foot and lifted the top with his hand making a wide opening for me to crawl through. I did the same for him. “Boy, what a joke. Just to give me a name? A last name? I liked our old one. Parks. I don’t know who my father was and I’ll bet she doesn’t either. Parks has some style.” He stopped and looked at me. “Not that Woods doesn’t. For you, I mean. It’s a very good name but you come by it naturally.”
“I guess so. I don’t think I’m a bastard.”
He laughed and put his arm around my shoulder. “Yeah, well. One in the family’s enough. See what it causes? She has to go and marry Ed just like she joined that hick hillbilly church.” He threw his head back and sang, “To wash my sins in the tide …” He stopped and stood in front of me. “You know what her sin is?” He poked his finger in his chest. “Me. Me. I’m her sin. She thinks by giving me Ed’s name and having his baby …” He rolled his eyes heavenward. “That baby. She sure is his. He’s mad about her. Ruby’s going to kill us all.” He hugged me to him. “Oh, Tots. If only you were my brother …”
“I feel like I am.”
“Yeah. Anyway we got the same name. Parks to Woods. Not really much of a change.”
“Can’t see the Parks for the Woods.”
He threw his head back and roared. “Totsy, you are a crazy little kid.” He turned me to face him. “And I do love you.” He gave me a little shake and looked down at me and smiled. His dark blue eyes changed mood in a blink. “Come on, enough serious stuff. Come on, Tots, let’s have a laugh.” He bent toward me with his fingers crooked like claws and rushed for my ribs. I let out the expected squeal and rolled my head back and jumped up and down screaming. He tickled me until we were rolling around on the ground, me kicking and squirming to avoid his insistent fingers, he laughing with me, crawling after me on his knees until I rolled under a big persimmon tree and onto one of the fallen soft orange fruit, squashing it messily with my elbow.
“Ugh. What a mess.” I was panting and still laughing.
“Come on, we’ll wash it in the pond.” The pond was almost dry, and the deep holes left by the cows’ feet in the mud had dried leaving an uneven bumpy bank all around the remaining water.
“Take your shoes off. It’s easier barefoot. Besides, if you slip, you’ll be up to your knees in the mud like the cows were.” Ronnie lighted a cigarette w
hen we were settled back under the persimmon tree shoulder to shoulder, our muddy feet stretched out in front of us drying, insistent flies buzzing around us, and crawling on my wet and sticky arm. I shook my head no when he offered me the expertly hand-rolled and lighted cigarette. “Savin’ your breath to compete with George Murphy?” I just looked at him out of the corner of my eye and grinned. “Good. It’s like being an athlete like Junior. You have to take care of yourself.” He took a long drag on the cigarette. “I just want to be rich.” He sat forward, drawing his knees up and rested his elbows on them. “And get the hell out of here.”
“Like us, huh?”
“What do you mean, like us?”
“I mean like we’re doing. We’re going to California.”
He looked stunned. “Going to California?” It came out in a whisper of disbelief.
“I thought you knew …”
“No.” He shook his head slowly from side to side. “No. Nobody said any …”
“We only decided ourselves—I mean Mom and Dad just decided when we heard Grandma died … I can’t hardly believe it myself.”
“Shit.” He hit his knee with a fist and stood up. “Ed drags us down here to that damned farm. Turns me into a Woods and then keeps me in the backwoods.” That made him laugh. “That’s pretty damned funny, ain’t it?” We both laughed. “And listen to me, I’m saying ‘ain’t’ like all the hicks. A bastard Woods in the backwoods. And now both Ed and Ma have turned into holy-rollers! They’re crying and praying all the time.” He raised his arms and looked up at the sky in imitation of religious fervor, “Oh Lord, my savior—forgive me for all my sins …” He looked down at me and pointed to himself and winked and went on, “cleanse me, oh my savior. Let me walk in that righteous path. Lead me to your ever-lovin’ arms, Oh God …” His arms fell limply to his sides, his head drooped. “Oh GooooOOODDD.” It was a low moan. “What am I going to do, Tots? I don’t get to see you all that much, but I knew you were there. Up in Galena. Or Crane. That’s not far. When we moved down here, just knowing that you were there made it better.” He grinned. “Not OK, but better.” He dropped back down beside me. We sat for a time in silence. I was looking up into the tree, counting the persimmons that were almost ripe. “Up there,” Ronnie went on as though talking to himself. “Up there in Galena, I could get to you. But California …” His voice trailed off.
In Tall Cotton Page 9
