The Education of Little Tree

by Forrest Carter

  Granpa never commented on it. And so I thought on it, over the years. I figured it was Willow John’s way of saying what he had to say. His people were broken and lost, scattered from these mountains that was their home and lived upon by the preacher and others there in the church. He couldn’t fight, and so he wore his hat.

  Maybe when the preacher said, “Lord …” and the frog said, “LARRRRRRRRUPP!” the frog was answering for Willow John. And so he cried. It broke some of the bitterness. After that, Willow John’s eyes always twinkled and showed little black lights when he looked at me.

  At the time I was sorry, but later I was glad I give Willow John the frog.

  Every Sunday, after church, we went into the trees near the clearing and spread our dinner. Willow John always brought game in a sack. It would be quail, or venison, or fish. Granma brought corn bread and vegetable fixings. We ate there in the shade of big elms and talked.

  Willow John would say the deer was moving farther back to high ground in the mountains. Granpa would say the fish baskets yielded such and so. Granma would tell Willow John to bring her his mending.

  As the sun tilted and hazed the afternoon, we would get ready to leave. Granpa and Granma would each hug Willow John, and he would touch my shoulder with his hand, shy.

  Then we would leave, walking across the clearing toward our cutoff trail. I would turn to watch Willow John. He never looked back. He walked, arms not swinging but straight by his sides, in a long, loping awkward step. Always looking to neither side; misplaced somehow—touching this fringe of the white man’s civilization. He would disappear into the trees, following no trail that I could see, and I would hurry to catch up with Granpa and Granma. It was lonesome, walking the cutoff trail back home in the dusk of Sunday evenings, and we did not talk.

  Will ye walk aways with me, Willow John? Not far;

  A year or two, at ending of your time.

  We’ll not talk. Nor tell the bitter of the years.

  Maybe laugh, occasional; or find a cause for tears;

  Or something lost, could be, we both might find.

  Will ye set a spell with me, Willow John? Not long;

  A minute, measured by your length on earth.

  We’ll pass a look or two; we both will know

  And understand the feeling; so when we go

  We’ll take comfort that we kin the other’s worth.

  Will ye linger at our leaving, Willow John? Just for me.

  Lingering reassures and comforts us who part.

  Memories of it help to slow the quickened tears

  With recalling of you, in the later years;

  And soften, some, the haunting of the heart.

  Church-going

  Granpa said that preachers got so taken up with theirselves that they got the notion they personal held the door handle on the pearly gates and wouldn’t let nobody in without their say-so. Granpa figgered the preachers thought God didn’t have nothing at all to do with it.

  He said a preacher had ought to work and git to know how hard a dollar was come by, then he wouldn’t throw money around like its use was going to end tomorrow. Granpa said that good, hard work, whether it was in the whiskey trade or whatever, would keep a preacher out of mischief. Which sounds reasonable.

  People being so scattered, there was not enough to keep more than one church going. This led to some complications because there was so many different kinds of religion; folks believing so many different things that it made for disagreements.

  There was hard-shell Baptists who believed that what was going to happen was going to happen and there was nothing you could do about it. There was Scot Presbyterians who would get stomping mad at such a notion. Each bunch could total prove out their viewpoint by the Bible. Which led to confusion as far as I was concerned as to what the Bible was talking about.

  Primitive Baptists believed in taking up a “love offering” of money for the preacher and the hard-shells did not believe in paying a preacher anything. Granpa leaned toward the hard-shells on this point.

  All the Baptists believed in baptizing, that is, getting total sunk under the waters in a creek. They said you could not be saved without it. The Methodists said that was wrong; that sprinkling on top of the head with water done the trick. They would each one whip out their Bibles there in the churchyard to prove out what they said.

  It ’peared like the Bible told it both ways; but each time it told it, it cautioned you had better not do it the other way or you would go to hell. Or that’s what they said it said.

  One feller was of the Church of Christ. He said if you called the preacher “Reverend” that you would flat go to hell. He said you could call him “Mr.” or “brother,” but you had better not call him “Reverend.” He had him a place in the Bible to prove it out; but a bunch of others proved out, also in the Bible, that you had better call him “Reverend,” or you would go to hell.

  The Church of Christ feller was bad outnumbered and got hollered down, but he was stubborn and would not give it up. He made it a point to walk up to the preacher every Sunday morning and call him “Mr.” This led to hard feelings between him and the preacher. Once they nearly come to blows in the churchyard but was separated.

  I determined that I was not going to have anything at all to do with water around religion. And I was not going to call the preacher anything. I told Granpa it ’peared to be more than likely the safest thing to do, as you could easy git shipped down to hell depending on how the Bible was thinking at the time.

  Granpa said if God was as narrer-headed as them idjits that done the arguin’ about piddlin’ such, then Heaven wouldn’t be a fit place to live anyhow. Which sounds reasonable.

  There was one family of Episcopalians. They was rich. They come to church in a car. It was the only car in the churchyard. The man was fat and wore a different suit might near every Sunday. The woman wore big hats; she was fat too. They had a little girl who always wore white dresses and little hats. She looked up all the time at something, though I could never determine what she was looking at. They always put a dollar in the collection plate. It was the only one in the plate every Sunday. The preacher met them at their car door and opened it for them. They set in the front row.

  The preacher would be preaching. He would make a point, and look over at the front row and say, “Ain’t that right, Mr. Johnson?” Mr. Johnson would give a little jerk of his head, certifying more or less that it was a fact. Everybody would look over to get Mr. Johnson’s head jerk, and then settle back satisfied as it was so.

  Granpa said he reckined Episcopalians had a total know-how on the entire thing and didn’t have to waller around on the fringes worrying about water and such. He said they knowed where they was going and was closemouthed about letting anybody else git in on it.

  The preacher was a skinny man. He wore the same black suit every Sunday. His hair stuck out on all sides and he had the appearance of being nervous all the time. Which he was.

  He was friendly to folks in the churchyard, though I never went up to him; but when he got in total control, standing in the pulpit, he got mean. Granpa said this was because he knowed it was agin’ the rules for anybody to jump up and challenge him while he was preaching.

  He never said anything about water, which was disappointin’. I was interested in finding out the way you had better not use it. But he laid it heavy on the Pharisees. He would get to working up on the Pharisees and come down out of the pulpit and run up the aisle toward us. Sometimes he would might near lose his breath, he got so mad at them.

  One time he was giving the Pharisees hell and had come down the aisle. He would holler about them and suck in his breath so hard his throat would rattle. He run down close to where we was setting, and pointed his finger at me and Granpa and said, “You know what they was up to …” It ’peared like he was accusing me and Granpa of having something to do with the Pharisees. Granpa set up in his seat and give the preacher a hard look. Willow John looked toward him and Granma
held his arm. The preacher turned off to pointing at somebody else.

  Granpa said he had never knowed any Pharisees and was not going to have any son of a bitch accusing him of having knowledge of nothing they had done. Granpa said the preacher had better commence to point his finger some’eres else. Which after that he did. I reckined he saw the look in Granpa’s eye. Willow John said the preacher was crazy and would bear close watching. Willow John always carried a long knife.

  The preacher also had a total disliking for Philistines. He was continually raking them up one side and down the other. He said they was, more or less, as low-down as Pharisees. Which Mr. Johnson nodded his head that it was so.

  Granpa said he got tired of hearing the preacher raking somebody over all the time. He said he didn’t see any earthly reason for gittin’ the Pharisees and Philistines stirred up; there was enough trouble as it was.

  Granpa always put something in the collection plate, though he disagreed with paying preachers. He said it paid the rent on our bench, he reckined. Sometimes he give me a nickel that I could put in. Granma never put anything in and Willow John would not look at the collection plate when they passed it.

  Granpa said if they kept continually sticking the collection plate under Willow John’s nose, that Willow John would take something out of it; figuring they was continually offering him some of it.

  Once a month there was testifying time. This is when people would stand up, one by one, and tell how much they loved the Lord, and what all bad they had done. Granpa would never do it. He said all it done was cause trouble. He said he knew personal of several men who had been shot afterward when they had told something they had done to a feller, and the feller hadn’t knowed about it until he heard tell of it from the church. Granpa said such wasn’t any business but his own. Granma and Willow John didn’t stand up.

  I told Granpa I felt more or less like he did about it and was not going to stand up either.

  One man said he was saved. He said he was going to stop liquorin’ up; said he had been liquorin’ around fairly heavy for a number of years and now was not going to do it anymore. Which made everybody feel good; him trying to better himself. People shouted, “Praise the Lord!” and “Amen!”

  Every time somebody got up and started telling the bad things he had done, a man over in a corner would always holler, “Tell it all! Tell it all!” He would keep this up every time it ’peared they was going to stop, and they would try to think of something else bad they had done. Sometimes they come out with some pretty bad things, which they might not have done if the man had not been hollering. He never did stand up.

  One time a woman stood up. She said the Lord had saved her from wicked ways. The man in the corner hollered, “Tell it all!”

  Her face turned red, and she said she had been fornicatin’. She said she was going to stop. She said it was not right. The man hollered, “Tell it all!” She said she had done some fornicatin’ with Mr. Smith. There was a commotion while Mr. Smith disassociated hisself from the bench he was on and come walking down the aisle. He walked real fast and went out the church door. About that time two fellers on a back bench got up and eased out the door without hardly any commotion at all.

  She called out two more names with which she had done some fornicatin’. Everybody was praising her and telling her she had done right.

  When we left the church house, the men all walked wide around the woman and would not speak to her. Granpa said they was scared to be seen talking to her. Some of the womenfolks, however, crowded around her and beat her on the back and patted her and told her she had done the right thing.

  Granpa said these was women who was wanting to know about their own menfolks, and they figgered if they showed how comforting it was to talk and how good you got treated by talking, they could git some more fornicatin’ women to testify.

  Granpa said if they did, it would be a hell of a mess. Which it would.

  Granpa said he hoped the woman didn’t change her mind and decide to go back to fornicatin’. He said she would be in for a disappointment. He said she would not find anybody hardly at all to fornicate with, less’n he was drunk and out of his senses.

  Every Sunday before preaching started there was a special time set aside when anybody could stand up and tell about folks who needed help. Sometimes it would be a sharecropper between movings who didn’t have anything to eat for his family, or somebody whose house had burned down.

  All the people in the church would bring things to help. We always carried a lot of vegetables in the summertime, which we had plenty of. In the winter we would carry meat. One time Granpa made a hickory limb chair and seated it with stripped deer hide for a family that had lost their furniture in a fire. Granpa taken the man aside there in the churchyard and give him the chair and spent a long time showing him how to make it.

  Granpa said if you showed a feller how to do, it was a lot better than giving him something. He said if you learnt a man to make for hisself, then he would be all right; but if you just give him something and didn’t learn him anything, then you would be continually giving to the man the rest of your natural life. Granpa said you would be doing the man a disservice, for if he become dependent on you, then you taken away his character and had stole it from him.

  Granpa said some folks liked to just continually give because it made them feel uppity, and better than the feller they was giving to; when all they had to do was learn the feller a little something which would make him dependent on hisself.

  Granpa said human nature being what it was they was some fellers found out that some people liked to feel uppity. He said these fellers got to be such sorry men that they was anybody’s dog that would hunt them. They got down to where they would rather be a hound to Mr. Uppitys than to be their own man. He said they continually whined about what they needed, when what they needed was some learning done by a hard boot stuck in their backside.

  Granpa said some nations was uppity in the same way and would give and give so they could call theirselves big shots, when if they had their heart in the right place, would learn the people to who they was giving how to do for theirselves. Granpa said these nations wouldn’t do this because then the other people would not be dependent on them, and that’s what they was after in the first place.

  Me and Granpa was creek washing when he got to talking about it. He got worked up on the whole thing and we had to crawl out on the bank, or he would, more than likely, have drowned in the waters. I asked Granpa who Moses was.

  Granpa said he had never got a right clear picture of Moses, what with the preacher a’suckin’ air and rattling and hollering. The preacher said Moses was a disciple.

  Granpa cautioned me not to take his word as bound oath, because he couldn’t tell me anything except what he had heard about Moses.

  He said Moses taken up with a girl in some bull rush reeds, which he understood growed on the riverbank. He said this was natural, but the girl was rich, and as a matter of fact belonged to a mean son of a bitch called Faro. He said Faro was always killing people. Faro got it in for Moses, more than likely on account of the girl. Which causes some trouble today.

  Granpa said Moses hid out and taken the people with him that Faro was trying to kill. He said Moses headed out into a country that didn’t have any water in it; and Moses taken a stick and hit a rock and some water come out of it. Granpa said he had no notion at all how he done it … but that is what he heard.

  Granpa said Moses wandered around for years with no idee whatsoever as to where he was going. As a matter of fact, he never did git there but the people that kept follering him around did git there. Wherever it was they was going. He said Moses died while he was still wandering around.

  Granpa said Samson come in there somewheres and killed a lot of Philistines who was always making trouble. He said he didn’t know what the fight was about, or if the Philistines was Faro’s men or not.

  Granpa said a conniving woman got Samson drunk and cut his hair o
ff. He said the woman fixed Samson so his enemies could git at him. Granpa couldn’t recollect the woman’s name, but he said it was a good Bible lesson; that you was to watch out for conniving women who tried to git ye drunk. Which I said I would.

  Granpa taken great satisfaction from learning me that Bible lesson. It was, more than likely, the only one he had ever learnt anybody.

  Looking back on it, me and Granpa was pretty ignorant of the Bible. And, I guess, confused as to all the technical ways by which you got to Heaven. Me and Granpa more or less figgered we was out of the whole thing, technical wise, for we never could get it reasoned out to make any sense at all.

  Once you give up on something, then you are kind of an onlooker. Me and Granpa was onlookers when it come to technical church religion, and had no anxious feeling about it at all … as we had give it up.

  Granpa said I had just as well fergit about the water situation. He said he had totally give up on it a long time ago, and felt better since that time.

  He said he, privately speaking, couldn’t reason as to what in the hell water had to do with it.

  I felt the same way and so give up on the water.

  Mr. Wine

  He had come all through the winter and the spring, once a month, regular as sundown, and spent the night. Sometimes he would stay over with us a day and another night. Mr. Wine was a back peddler.

  He lived in the settlement, but walked the mountain trails with his pack on his back. We always knew about the day he would come, and so when the hounds bayed me and Granpa would go down the hollow trail to meet him. We would help him carry his pack to the cabin.