The Education of Little Tree

by Forrest Carter

  Granpa set down on a rock, and I seen he was going to give some thought to it, for which I was glad. My calf had his front legs spraddled in front of him and was pantin’ pretty hard.

  “Howsoever,” Granpa said, “iff’n ye taken a knife and cut fer half a day into that politician’s gizzard, ye’d have a hard time finding a kernel of truth. Ye’ll notice the son of a bitch didn’t say a thing about gittin’ the whiskey tax taken off … ’er the price of corn … ’er nothin’ else fer that matter.” Which was right.

  I told Granpa that I had noticed the son of a bitch never said a word about it.

  Granpa reminded me that “son of a bitch” was a new cuss word, and was not to be used no way at all around Granma. Granpa said he didn’t give a lick-damn if priests and nuns mated every day in the week, no more’n he cared how many bucks and does mated. He said that was their matin’ business.

  Granpa said that as far as them feedin’ young’uns to dogs, that there would never come a day when a doe would feed her young to a dog, ner a woman, so he knowed that was a lie. Which is right.

  I commenced to feel some better about the Catholics. Granpa said that wasn’t no doubt in his mind that the Catholics would like to git control … but he said, iff’n ye had a hog and ye didn’t want it stole, jest git ten or twelve men to guard it, each one of which wanted to steal it. He said that hog would be safe as in yer own kitchen. Granpa said they was all so crooked in Washington City, that they had to watch one another all the time.

  Granpa said that they was so many trying to git control, it was a continual dogfight all the time anyhow. He said the worst thing wrong with Washington City was it had so many damn politicians in it.

  Granpa said, that even being that we went to a hard-shell Baptist church, he would sure hate to see the hard-shells git control. He said they was total agin’ liquor drinking except maybe some fer theirselves. He said they would dry the whole country up.

  I seen right off there was other dangers besides the Catholics. If the hard-shells got control, me and Granpa would be put out of the whiskey-making trade, and would likely starve to death.

  I asked Granpa if it wasn’t likely that the big shots, which made barrel sniffin’ whiskey, wasn’t trying to git control too; us putting a dent in their trade and all, so they could put us out of business. Granpa said that without a doubt they was trying hard as they could, bribing politicians practical every day in Washington City.

  Granpa said they was only one thing certain. The Indian was not never going to git control. Which appeared not likely.

  While Granpa was talking my calf laid down and died. He just laid over on his side and there he was. I was standing in front of Granpa holding onto the rope, and Granpa pointed behind me and said, “Yer calf is dead.” He never owned to half of it being his.

  I got down on my knees and tried to prop its head up and get it on its feet, but it was limp. Granpa shook his head, “It’s dead, Little Tree. When something is dead … it’s dead.” Which it was. I squatted by my calf and looked at it. It was might near close to being as bad a time as I could remember. My fifty cents was gone, and the red and green box of candy. And now my calf—being worth a hundred times what I paid for it.

  Granpa pulled his long knife from his moccasin boot and cut the calf open and pulled out its liver. He pointed at the liver. “It’s speckled and diseased. We can’t eat it.”

  It looked to me like there wasn’t anything at all that could be done with it. I didn’t cry—but I might near did. Granpa knelt and skinned the calf. “Reckin Granma would give ye a dime fer the skin; likely she can use it,” he said. “And we’ll send the dogs back … they can eat the calf.” Reckin that was all that could be made of it. I followed Granpa down the trail—carrying the hide of my calf—all the way to the cabin.

  Granma didn’t ask me, but I told her I couldn’t put my fifty cents back in the jar, for I had spent it for a calf—which I didn’t have. Granma give me a dime for the hide and I put that in the jar.

  It was hard to eat that night, though I liked ground peas and corn bread.

  While we was eating, Granpa looked at me and said, “Ye see, Little Tree, ain’t no way of learning, except by letting ye do. Iff’n I had stopped ye from buying the calf, ye’d have always thought ye’d ought to had it. Iff’n I’d told ye to buy it, ye’d blame me fer the calf dying. Ye’ll have to learn as ye go.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Now,” Granpa said, “what did ye learn?”

  “Well,” I said, “I reckin I learned not to trade with Christians.”

  Granma commenced to laugh. I didn’t see hardly anything funny at all about it. Granpa looked dumbstruck; then he laughed so hard he choked on his corn bread. I figgered I had learned something funny but I didn’t know what it was.

  Granma said, “What ye mean, Little Tree, is that ye’ll be likely to have caution at the next feller who tells you how good and what a fine feller he is.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, “I reckin.”

  I wasn’t sure about anything … except I had lost my fifty cents. Being plumb wore out, I went to sleep at the table and my head come down in my supper plate. Granma had to wash ground peas off my face.

  That night I dreamed the hard-shells and Catholics come amongst us. The hard-shells tore up our still, and the Catholics et up my calf.

  A big Christian was there, smiling at the whole thing. He had a red and green box of candy and said it was worth a hundred times as much, but I could have it for fifty cents. Which I didn’t have—fifty cents; and so could not buy it.

  At the Crossroads Store

  Granma taken a pencil and paper and showed me how much I had lost on my trade with the Christian. Turns out, I didn’t lose but forty cents, as I cleared a dime off the calf hide. I put the dime in my fruit jar and didn’t take it in my pocket no more, it being safer in the jar.

  On our next run I made a dime, and Granma upped it with a nickel. This give me twenty-five cents, so I was beginning to get my money built back up.

  Though I had lost fifty cents at the store, I always looked forward to delivering our wares; though carrying my tow sack was a pretty good job.

  I was learning five words a week out of the dictionary, and Granma would explain the meanings, then had me put the words in sentences. I used my sentences considerable on the way to the store. This would get Granpa to stop while he figured out what I was saying. I could catch up and rest with my fruit jars. Sometimes Granpa would totally knock out words, saying I didn’t have to use that word no more, which speeded me up considerable in the dictionary.

  Like the time I had got down to the word “abhor.” Granpa had got way ahead of me on the trail, and I had been practicing a sentence with that word so I hollered to Granpa, “I abhor briers, yeller jackets and such.”

  Granpa stopped. He waited until I had caught up with him, and set down my load of fruit jars. “What did ye say?” Granpa asked.

  “I said, ‘I abhor briers, yeller jackets and such,’” I said. Granpa looked down at me so steady-hard that I commenced to feel uneasy about the whole thing. “What in hell,” Granpa said, “has whores got to do with briers and yeller jackets?”

  I told him that I didn’t have no way in the world of knowing, which I didn’t, but the word was “abhor” and it meant that you couldn’t hardly stand something.

  Granpa said, “Well, why don’t ye just say ye can’t stand it, instead of using ‘abwhore’?” I said I couldn’t figure that out myself but it was in the dictionary. Granpa got pretty worked up about it. He said the meddlesome son of a bitch that invented the dictionary ought to be taken out and shot.

  Granpa said that more’n likely this same feller had worked up half a dozen more words that could discolor the meaning of the same thing. He said this was why politicians could git away with slicker’n folks and always claiming they didn’t say this ’er that—or that they did. Granpa said, if you could check it out, the damn dictionary was either put up
by a politician or they was some behind it. Which sounds reasonable.

  Granpa said I could just knock out that word. Which I did. There was usually a lot of men around the store in the winter time or during laying-by time. “Laying-by” time was usually in August. That was the time of year after the farmers had done with plowing and hoeing weeds out of their crops four or five times; and the crops was big enough now that they “laid by,” that is, no hoeing or plowing, while the crops ripened and they waited to do the gathering.

  After we delivered our wares, and Granpa got paid, and I had picked up the wood chips for Mr. Jenkins and taken the stick of old candy off his hands, me and Granpa always squatted under the store shed with our backs against the wall and kind of stretched out the time.

  Granpa had eighteen dollars in his pocket … of which I would get at least a dime when we got home. He had usually bought sugar or coffee for Granma … sometimes, a little wheat flour, if things was going good. Besides, we had just finished up a pretty hard week in the whiskey-making trade.

  I always finished off the stick of old candy while we set. It was a good time.

  We listened to the men talking about things. Some of them said there was a depression and fellers was jumping out of winders in New York and shootin’ theirselves in the head about it. Granpa never said anything. Which I didn’t either. But Granpa told me that New York was crowded all up with people who didn’t have enough land to live on, and likely half of them was run crazy from living that-a-way, which accounted for the shootins and the winder jumping.

  Usual, there was somebody cuttin’ hair at the store. They would set a straight chair under the shed and take turns gettin’ their hair sheared by a feller.

  Another man—everybody called him “Old Man Barnett”—jumped teeth. Not many people could “jump teeth.” This was when you had a bad tooth and had to get it taken out.

  Everybody liked to watch Old Man Barnett working, jumping teeth. He would set the feller whose tooth he was going to jump down in a chair. Then he would heat up a wire over a fire until the wire was red hot. He stuck the wire on the tooth and then taken a nail and placed it against the tooth, and with a hammer, he hit it a secret way. The tooth just jumped out on the ground. He was right proud of his trade, and would make everybody stand back while he done it so they wouldn’t nobody learn it.

  One time, another old feller about the same age as Old Man Barnett—they called him Mr. Lett—he come to get a bad tooth jumped. Old Man Barnett set Mr. Lett down in the chair and heated up his wire. He stuck the wire to Mr. Lett’s tooth, but Mr. Lett wrapped his tongue around the wire. He bellered louder’n a bull and kicked Old Man Barnett in the stomach, knocking him over backwards.

  This made Old Man Barnett mad and he hit Mr. Lett in the head with a chair. They got to fighting on the ground until everybody crowded in and pulled them apart. They stood cussing one another awhile—or leastwise Old Man Barnett was cussing—you couldn’t understand what Mr. Lett was saying, but he was mad!

  Finally they calmed down and a bunch of men held Mr. Lett and drawed out his tongue and poured turpentine on it. He left. It was the first time I ever saw Old Man Barnett fail to jump a tooth, and he didn’t take it lightly. He taken pride in his trade and went around explaining to everybody why it was that he hadn’t jumped that tooth. He said it was Mr. Lett’s fault. Which I reckin it was.

  I made up my mind right then that I was not ever going to have a bad tooth. Or if I did, I wasn’t going to tell Old Man Barnett about it.

  At the store is where I got acquainted with the little girl. She would come with her Pa during laying-by time, or in the winter. Her Pa was a young man who wore ragged overalls and was, most time, barefooted. The little girl was always barefooted, even when it was cold.

  Granpa said they was sharecroppers. He said sharecroppers didn’t own no land, or nothing else to speak of—usually not even a bedstead or a chair. They would work on somebody else’s land and would sometimes get half of what the owner got for his crop, but mostly they just got a third. They called it working on “halves,” or on “thirds.”

  Granpa said by the time everything was taken out, what they had et all year, and the seed and fertilizer cost—which the landlord paid for—and use of mules, and about everything else, it always turned up that the sharecropper didn’t actual make nothing but something to eat. And not much of that.

  Granpa said the bigger family that a sharecropper had, the better chance he had of gittin’ on with a landlord, for then everybody in the family worked in the fields. A big family could do more work. He said sharecroppers all tried to have big families, for it was necessary. He said the wives worked in the fields, pickin’ cotton and hoeing and such, and put their babies under shade trees or somewheres to scuffle for theirselves.

  Granpa said Indians would not do it. He said he would take to the woods and run rabbits fer a living before he’d do it. But he said somehow or another some folks got caught in it and couldn’t git out.

  Granpa said it was the fault of the damn politicians who spent all their time yammerin’ around using up words instead of working at the trade they was supposed to work at. He said some landlords was mean and some wasn’t, like everybody else, but it always come out at “settlin’ up” time, after the crops was gathered, that more’n likely there was a big disappointment.

  That’s why sharecroppers moved every year. Every winter they would hunt for a new landlord and find one. They would move to another shack, and set around the kitchen table at night, the Pa and Ma, and build up dreams as to how this year on this place they was going to make it.

  Granpa said they held on to that all during spring and summer until the crops was gathered, then it was all bitter again. That’s why they moved every year, and folks that didn’t understand, called them “shiftless,” which Granpa said was another damn word, like calling them “irresponsible,” fer having so many young’uns—which they had to do.

  Me and Granpa talked about it on the trail home and he got so worked up about it that we rested might near an hour.

  I got worked up about it too, and seen right off that Granpa had a total understanding of politicians. I told Granpa that the sons of bitches ought to be run off. Granpa stopped talking about it, and cautioned me again that “son of a bitch” was brand-new cuss words that carried much starch and that Granma would total put us out of the cabin if I used them around her. I marked that down right then. It was a pretty powerful set of words.

  The little girl come and stood in front of me one day while I was squattin’ under the store shed eating the old candy. The little girl’s Pa was in the store. She had tangled-up hair and her teeth was rotten; I hoped Old Man Barnett didn’t see her. She wore a tow sack for a dress and just stood looking at me, and crossing her toes back and forth in the dirt. I felt right bad, eating the candy, and so I told her she could lick on it for a while, if she didn’t bite off any, for I would have to have it back. She took the candy and licked on it pretty regular.

  She said she could pick a hundred pounds of cotton in a day. She said she had a brother that could pick two hundred pounds and that her Ma—when she was feeling right—could pick three hundred. She said she had knowed her Pa to pick five hundred pounds if he picked into the nighttime.

  She said they didn’t put rocks in their pickin’ sacks neither, to cheat on the weight, and was knowed for giving a honest day’s work. She said her whole and entire family was knowed for that.

  She asked me how much cotton I could pick, and I told her I had never picked none. She said she figgered that; for everybody knowed that Indians was lazy and wouldn’t work. I taken back my candy. But she said, after that, that it wasn’t because we could help it—that we was just different and maybe we done other things. I let her lick some more on the candy.

  It was still wintertime, and she said their family was all listening for the turtledove. It was well knowed, she said, that whatever direction you heard the turtledove calling, that was the directio
n you was going to move the next year.

  She said they had not heard it yet, but was expecting to just anytime, for they had been total cheated by the landlord, and her Pa had fell out with him so they had to move. She said her Pa had come to the store to see about talking to somebody there that might want a good family on their place which was knowed for giving honest work and causing no trouble at all. She said she expected they would come up with about the best place they could have ever thought of, for her Pa said the word was gittin’ around about what hard workers they was, and so next year they would be settin’ pretty.

  She said that after the crops was in on the new place they would be going to, she was going to git a doll. She said her Ma said it would be a store-bought doll that had real hair and eyes that would open and close. She said more than likely she would git a whole lot of other things too, as they would be practical rich.

  I told her we didn’t own no land, except the mountain hollow with our corn patch, and that we was mountain folk with no use at all for valley farming and flatlands. I told her I had a dime.

  She wanted to see it, but I told her it was at home in a fruit jar. I said I didn’t carry it because a Christian had slickered me out of fifty cents oncet, and I was no wise figuring for another’n to slicker me out of my dime.

  She said she was a Christian. She said she got the Holy Ghost oncet at a bush arbor meetin’ and got saved. She said her Pa and Ma got the Holy Ghost practical every time they went and said they would talk in the unknown tongue when they got it. She said being a Christian made you happy and that bush arbors was times when they was happiest, being full of the Holy Ghost and all. She said I was going to hell as I hadn’t been saved.