Fat drops of rain started to slap across the black hood of the Ford, first one then another. Slap! Pop! Pop! Slap! One at a time they hit. Cool air rushed in through the windows.
I looked out at the sky. The clouds had gone from black to gray, stretching out over the sky like an upside down ocean with lights flashing inside it.
“You kids roll them windows up,” Momma said.
I rolled up my window, still crying.
The rain exploded so hard it looked like white dust, a mist all over the cars and the road. The gray building was behind us now. I could see it way back there behind the white dusty rain, a black battleship going down under the clouds.
“He’s got nothing to cry about,” Victor said.
“How you can be so smart and stupid at the same time is beyond me,” Momma answered. “I told you not to never mention what happened to their Daddy. They got feelings Victor.”
The rain drowned over the windshield wipers.
I thought about Black Jack and the fire. I thought about coloreds. Negroes. Niggers. Mean niggers in Detroit with knives. Daddy burned up alive by one.
Not no accident, not like Momma said.
I looked outside at the rain. The sky exploded like a bomb. One mountain crashed into another mountain. Thunder. Rain smashing and smoking over everything.
Victor leaned over the steering wheel trying to see. “Feelings,” he said under his breath. “I’ll give them feelings.”
Part Four
8
Nobody to Play With
Granny fibbed about kids being down here. There weren’t even any grownups far as I could see except Bird and Nealy and that was across the road. Mostly I played by myself. I read comic books, drew sailing ships and made battles with my army men. I climbed up the chicken yard fence and watched Granny slop the hogs. I threw rocks at the barn door. I threw rocks at the dirt dobber’s nests in the hayloft. I moped around until I got tired of moping around, then I beat on things with sticks. Weeds. The side of the house. The milk bucket. I put dents in one of Granpaw’s hubcaps with a hammer.
Granny had fibbed about him too, saying how Granpaw and me would have fun together, how he’d take me fishing, show me how to look for worms. That never happened. He tried to teach me to hoe tobacco, but the hoe was too big and kept going the wrong way, slipping out of my hand and cutting into the tobacco stalks. Granpaw got fed up with that. “I reckon you ain’t big enough to handle a hoe yet,” he said. “Best you go on up to the house.”
He worked all the time. Most mornings he was already gone when I came down to breakfast. At the end of the day he came in all wore out and grouchy-like. He’d sit down to supper and not even talk at all unless he was wanting something. Then it was Mattie this or Mattie that, Mattie pass the butter or Mattie, where’d you put that cornbread?
After supper he would go in the front room and sit under the light bulb that hung naked in there from a black twist of cord. Moths and other flying insects would be making circles in and out of the light, flying off other places and coming back around. Granpaw would open up his Bible under there and read, every now and then stopping to spit in a big blue Maxwell House Coffee can he kept on the floor by his chair. He read like Momma did, mouthing the words, following them along with a calloused big finger.
I’d lie in there on the floor and read my comic books. I had Superman and Flash Gordon and The Fantastic Four. I had Batman and Robin. I also had “The Body Snatchers” a book Victor gave me, all about pod creatures from outer space that took over people’s bodies and walked around like zombies.
The front room was just plain. Green cracked walls. Brown linoleum on the floor. There were two windows, one that looked out on the front porch and one behind a bumpy red couch that looked out toward the barn. There were cigarette burns on the arms of the couch Granny had covered with pieces of dingy lace. Across from the couch was a table with Granny’s sewing machine. There was a small day-bed beside the sewing machine with a picture of Jesus and The Last Supper hanging on the wall above. Jesus looked sad. He always looked sad. Even when he was smiling he looked sad.
On the walls and over the fireplace were pictures of Granny and Granpaw and of Momma and Daddy and of Missy and me. There were other pictures too — people I didn’t know — a wall-eyed woman with a square jaw, her hair piled up on top like a box — a little colored boy on a tractor with a chicken in his arms — three happy looking colored women, standing on a porch in housedresses, all squinting and smiling in the sun.
When Granpaw read his Bible, he would rub at the knot on the side of his head. One time Granny yelled at him to stop, and he did for a while; but then he started doing it again.
“Strode you’ll get that to bleed,” Granny said.
“Shit,” Granpaw said, closing the Bible. “Cain’t a man do nothing private around here?” He set the Bible on a side table by his chair.
“You’ll make it worse,” Granny said.
Granpaw spat in his coffee can, set it down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Then he got up from his chair and did that stepping-off-in-a-ditch kind of walk, in a circle, looking all around the room, at me, at Granny, at the pictures on the walls. His hawk eyebrow tried to pin everything down. “Ain’t a thing in this world the matter with me,” he said to the air in front of him. Then he did that ditch-walk back through the kitchen and went off to bed.
Granny said he was sicker than he let on. “Had that stroke last year. That’s how come him to walk that way. Too much sugar.”
Too much sugar was why he had to shoot himself in the butt too. Once he shot himself in front of me and Granny in the front room, dropped his coveralls right there and poked a needle in his butt. He yelled and jumped up in the air. “Good God A Mighty, that hurt!”
I thought it was for real.
“Strode,” Granny said.
Granpaw looked at me and grinned. “Did you think Granpaw was hurt son? Come here and look at my needle.”
“Leave him alone,” Granny said.
Granpaw laughed.
I tried to stare daggers at him but all that did was make him laugh even louder.
“He ain’t stout like he used to be,” Granny said. “He’ll kill hisself, working the way he does. Ornery old devil.”
Granny worked too. She was all the time feeding the farm animals, the chickens and the hogs, hoeing out tobacco, cleaning house, washing clothes, sewing and cooking. On top of that she went to church. Granpaw was too tired to go to church so I got to stay home with him. I was glad about that.
———————
The chickens belonged to Old Man Harlan, but Granny took care of them. Because of that, she got most of the eggs. They walked funny; the chickens did, like they were trying to be real careful not to step in anything messy. They would put one foot down; then look around like they were seeing if there was anything on the ground they didn’t want to step in. Then they would put their other foot down. The rooster’s name was Geronimo. He was a big black rooster with a red head and green and black burnt-up looking butt feathers.
The day after blackberry-picking Granny and me were out taking care of the chickens. Granny had fed them and was pouring water from a bucket into a long wooden trough. “If I had more time, I’d try to sell me a few of them eggs, but then I wouldn’t have none to give away.” She finished with the water and set the bucket down. “I’ll take some over to Kingdom sometimes. Sometimes I’ll make up a basket for Moses, if the chickens is laying good. See them little chickens yonder?” Granny pointed out two white chickens that stood next to the fence, stretching and fanning themselves in the sun. “I want you to take care of them for me. I’m thinking of entering them in a beauty contest.”
“A beauty contest for chickens Granny?”
“Yeah for chickens,” Granny said, “at the County Fair. They’d take first prize, they was big enough. Don’t you think they would?”
They already looked pretty, standing up bright as snow in the morning s
un. Snowbirds, I thought they were, showing off their snowy bright wings.
“What you want me to do Granny?” I asked.
“Feed them. Take care of them. You know. Be nice to them. So they’ll grow good.”
“What do you want me to feed them?”
“Corn. Or that feed there.” Granny pointed to a grass sack by the fence. “Or just get you a piece of good loaf-bread and break it up. They’ll like loaf-bread. Can you do that?”
I nodded that I could; glad to have something to do. I liked the chickens a whole lot. I named one ‘Johnny’ and the other ‘Elvis’.
“Those are boy’s names,” Granny said.
“I don’t care Granny.” I pointed to Elvis. “That red thing. See how it flops over his eye?”
“Her eye,” Granny said. “That’s a comb. All chickens got combs.”
“Elvis Presley’s hair goes like that. He sings Hound Dog music.”
“Hound dog music?”
“Uh huh. And Jailhouse Rock!”
Granny seemed to ponder that a second; then she said, “I believe I heard that on the radio once. Sorry old jitterbug music, if you ask me. What about that other there? She don’t have hair.”
The other chicken’s comb went straight back like a little saw blade. “That’s a flat top Granny. Like Johnny Unitas. Johnny Unitas is a quarterback. He throws the football.”
“Only ball I ever seen a chicken throw was itself, and that from the top of a fence post to the ground,” Granny said. “They’re your chickens. I reckon you can call them anything you want to. I never heard of no boy chickens in a beauty contest though.”
———————
Sometimes I’d pretend Elvis and Johnny were captured by Apache Indians. The Apaches would be all the other chickens plus their big chief, Geronimo The Rooster. I’d play like I was Davy Crockett or Daniel Boone, coming to save Elvis and Johnny from the Indians.
I’d have to get me up some corncobs from the chicken yard first, which that wasn’t too easy because of flies and bees and wasps zooming around, trying to get on me. I had to watch not to step in any chicken poop too or pick up any chicken-poop corncobs. I’d get an armful of corncobs and take one and hold it up from the bottom so it pointed up in the air like a sword and start marching it toward the chicken house door. I’d wait for the hot part of the day when I knew all the chickens would be in there sleeping in the dark. I’d march up on them but real quiet like, waving that one corncob in the air, trying not to make too much noise because I wanted it to be like a surprise and I’d be whispering a little battle hymn I made up along the way.
Battle Creek Michigan! Battle Creek Michigan! Battle Creek Michigan!
And when I got to the door I’d look in and there would be all the chickens in there sleeping and I’d point the corncob and draw back and yell as loud as I could. BATTLE CREEK MICHIGAN! Then I’d let fly with the corncob and all the chickens would wake up and look about and I’d already be throwing more corncobs, shooting my six shooters, my rifles–Bang! Bang! Bang! — from the doorway. A bomb would go off as the chickens would all bust loose at the same time, squawking and screaming and banging their wings, stirring up dust and shit and old spider webs and pieces of straw. Some would push through the holes where planks had busted out. Some would run along the floor and hit against the walls.
One time Geronimo flew at me with a bunch of other chickens, rushing in a wind of flapping wings, filling the doorway, their beaks flashing like orange scissors, squawking and carrying on I had to turn and run out the door where something caught me up by the arm and wouldn’t let go until I was looking it direct in the eye. It was Granny. “What you up to, youngun?”
“Playing,” I said.
“Playing?” Granny said. “Looks to me like you fixing to kill Nealy’s chickens! Scare’em so bad they won’t never want to lay! What about Elvis and Johnny. You supposed to be taking care of them.”
“I am Granny. I’m freeing them from the Injuns.”
“Injuns?”
“Uh huh. All them other chickens. Geronimo’s the chief.”
“Can’t you find anything else better to do?”
“No,” I said.
Geronimo and the chickens had scattered out across the yard. One chicken stood at the door of the chicken house, looking in. Elvis and Johnny were right near by, their heads going side to side, looking up at us as if waiting for the answer to a question nobody had asked.
“They’re my friends, Granny. I’ve been feeding them like you said. They follow me around.”
Granny seemed to relax a bit. She looked at me. “It ain’t been easy down here, has it hon, what with me and Strode so busy and all — and you with nobody to play with? Things will get better though.”
“You always saying that,” I said.
“I know, but they will. Wait and see if they don’t.” She walked off toward the house. When she got to the chicken yard gate, she turned and looked back. “I catch you pestering Nealy’s chickens again, I’ll cut me a switch!”
9
Moses Mashbone
I lay with my chest flat against the ledge of the well, my elbows sticking up on both sides. I had the thought I might be like a cricket with big elbow legs and a head with big antennas that could feel things in the dark. I looked over the ledge like that — like a cricket.
You be careful about that well. Storm blowed that roof cockeyed and I think some of them stones is loose.
The well was a tunnel hole of dirt and rock and tree roots reaching out like claws. It went way down in the black part. I could hear water dripping, and my cricket-antennas were feeling down there, feeling the cool air — trying to see inside the black part.
I wanted to go in there. Cool in there, cool water and rocks and slippery things in the dark, out of the sun, the sun that was so hot and bright it made you feel like you couldn’t hide anywhere, people’s eyes, even the animals’, the cows’ and the chickens’ and the pigs’, all of them on you, baking you, making you hot. If I could get down in the black part wouldn’t nobody look at me, wouldn’t nobody know where I was all the time either and it would be cool and wet and it would smell like plant roots and dirt and it would be like leaves.
Why we’d be worried to death. Not knowing where you’d gone off to!
I pushed myself down from the ledge, walked around to the other side and gave the post there a kick. It staggered back, loose at the bottom. The flowered roof moaned and wobbled to where it was almost flat again. Then it went back like before, like a church lady’s hat in the wind.
Daddy’s dump truck sat next to the well. Granpaw’s cross was there too, the burnt snake crawling along its arms. I dragged the truck to the road, filled the bed with gravels and dragged it back to the well — got the cross and stuck it in the gravels.
Spooky like a grave. Daddy’s grave.
I liked it like that. I lifted the truck and everything onto the well ledge and climbed up after it. I backed the truck so the dumper part was hanging out over the well hole, and I sat next to it on the ledge, my back to the hole, mostly out of the sun except for my legs. I let my eyes move up Bounty Road, up the hill in the direction Momma and Victor had gone — to the place where the road made a way through the cornfields. Momma and Victor had so far been gone only a few days. I thought about St. Petersburg and The Pink Flamingo Hotel, what it might look like rising up out of the white sand. I thought about sailboats and the blue ocean waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
A rumbling sound came from the other side of the hill, low and far away at first, barely a grumble, then louder and louder, until it was thundering at the top. A black something-or-other — some kind of motor vehicle — shot out, smoking and rattling between the cornfields. “A car!” I thought. “Momma’s Ford!” Dust exploded, boiled up behind and out the sides, spreading out wider than the road.
It could be. Yes it could be Momma’s car! Maybe her and Victor changed their minds! Maybe they were coming back to get me after all!
It could be them!
And then I was sure it was. And I waved my hands and shouted, “Momma! Momma! Momma!” I thought my heart would jump out my mouth. The rumble became a roar so loud I couldn’t hear anything else — not even my own shouting — and I thought for sure it was them and I waved and I waved and I shouted “Momma!” and I’d have jumped off the well and gone to meet the car, except I saw it didn’t have all its side windows. All Ford cars had side windows in the back except of course if they were trucks and Momma didn’t drive no trucks.
Who it was, was somebody else, I’d have to wait to see, and I did, and it was a truck, an old pick-up truck, and it zoom-rattled by without even slowing down. A man with a wide cracked face — a colored man’s face — a straight line for a mouth, straight blue-black hair down along his shoulders, sat up behind the wheel. A dusty black cowboy hat crouched like a duck a top his head, hind end tail feathers up in the air. He wasn’t even looking at me, but he waved anyway, like he didn’t have to look to know I was there, to know it was me. And he drove that truck fast, roaring on up the road with all the dust exploding, blowing out the rear end. By the time the dust cleared, he had gone all the way over the next hill.
My truck, the red dump truck — still with the dent over the driver’s side window — sat on the ledge of the well piled up with gravels from the road, the cross leaning backward now like a man looking up in the sky with his arms spread wide. What had been a roar had gone back to a rumble — low and far away — and even that was almost gone. Suddenly I wanted to dump everything, throw all of it in the well, all the gravels with the cross and the creepy snake.
I hit the lever on the dump truck hard, but it wouldn’t go. I hit it again harder. Still nothing. It seemed to be waiting for something or someone, maybe for some little man to come and drive it away. Then that whole part of the ledge dropped an inch and busted apart. Exploded. The cab of the dump truck, Daddy’s gift, flipped back and over and into the well. If I hadn’t caught hold of one of the posts I’d have gone in too. The truck bashed against a rock on the other side, fell, silver headlights, bumper, mud flaps and all, spinning over and under with the cross and the rocks and the gravels, banging against the dark wall of roots and rock all the way down — splashing inside the black part — where I couldn’t see it anymore.
Then Like the Blind Man: Orbie's Story Page 9
