“Around,” Rodney said. “Nowhere special. It was just a bunch of us.”
I thought about it some and I guessed if he said he had a gang he must have had a gang, but to be honest it didn’t sound like much to me at all. “I suppose it was dangerous at that,” I said.
Rodney looked at me then like he thought I was kidding him or something. I had not meant it that way. “Terrible,” he said. “I doubt if you could have stood it.” Then he looked back down into the creek and spit and said, “Nuts.”
That was all he said, and as he had said it sort of quiet and to himself, I did not take it up.
Then Ellen come down and stood between us and asked us were we catching anything, though she could see we wasn’t, and while she was there Rodney straightened up some and stopped looking down in the water all the time. Then Ellen said, “Well, Jack, I had almost forgot what I come for, but it is time for supper,” and then she spoke to Rodney. “I guess you have got used to Jack by now, Rodney, and I hope that soon you will like us all and feel right at home here.”
It was a nice thing to say probably, though I did not care for the part about me, but it flustered Rodney up a little. He drew up straight and bobbed his head somewhat and sort of acted like he would have liked to take his hat off about that time only he did not have one on, and it seemed that he could not think of what to say. Then he said, “I have enjoyed it all very much, thank you,” which was not true and I knowed it, and then he said, “and of course I liked you a lot right away,” which was quick thinking, I thought, and I could tell Ellen thought so, too.
“That is a mighty nice thing of you to say,” Ellen said.
“It is the truth,” Rodney said, and smiled the first real time I had seen him yet.
“Well, thank you,” Ellen said.
So then we all just stood there and finally I said, “I am so hungry I could eat a mule,” and then me and Sis went on toward the house.
Going up the road Sis said to me, “He has got a nice way of talking, don’t he. To be so young.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” I said. “I can hardly get him to answer a question, leave alone talk nice.”
“Oh, Jack,” Sister said, “you wouldn’t even know.”
We walked on, not talking. I do not like being run down in comparison. Finally I said, “He is not so young at that, either.”
“Who said he was,” Sister said.
She had said so herself, but I seen no point in arguing it. He is no younger than me, was what I meant, but I did not suppose Ellen would understand that much either, even if I made it clear.
You can see the bridge from our porch, and I looked back when I got there. Rodney was curved back out over the railing again, fishing by himself. I had almost forgot we had left him there. I hoped he would remember to bring me back my line he was using.
5
One thing about Rodney, he tried. I stayed with him off and on most of the time for the next week or so, and he stuck close to the Hill and his uncle’s place all the time, going around studying it all out like what he had in mind was to get used to what it was as against what he had expected and maybe end up liking it after all. He worked in Mr. Blankhard’s vegetable garden, which sure needed it, and he gathered up loose boards in the lot like maybe he figured to fix the barn, but he never did, and he even took over milking Mr. Blankhard’s two Guernseys for him. Mr. Blankhard had been paying Tom, my pa’s hand, to do it, but Rodney was willing to do it for nothing so he got the job. Maybe he done it still trying to be a cowboy. Got him near to cows, anyhow.
He tried, but there just weren’t anything there for him to get a hold of, though if there had have been I doubt if he could have done it. It was a losing battle either way and I told him so. You can not fight your own special breeding and God’s will, too, not when they both is also your uncle’s and when on top of that you are as well Rodney to begin with. Not the way I seen it. A real farmer might have took him in hand at this time and done something with him; I don’t know. But Mr. Blankhard was all but against him. He let him try where he could, but Rodney never had a chance. I would have encouraged him myself, but why?
Still, I went along with him where I could. There wasn’t much else to do anyhow. We had dug potatoes, and done well, before Rodney had got here, and though we had a lot of corn up and some cotton, there was nothing it needed that needed me much, nor would. These has come to be mostly machine crops. It is not always so busy on a farm all summer as people seem to think.
Then one day Rodney got a notice that some kinfolks up North had sent him a package. It was at the Railway Express office. Rodney said he hardly knew them, the ones that sent it, but he hoped that hearing he was in the country maybe they had sent him a firearm of some kind. He could use a gun, he said, though I could not see what for myself.
I guess between us though we more or less decided that a gun was what it was. And the next day his uncle hitched up his white horse to their fancy buggy that my pa says he must have bought from in front of an antique shop somewheres, and they went after it, Rodney all dressed up with a tie and a long-sleeved shirt, and Sister going too, also dressed up, to do some kind of shopping, she said, though I expect it was more for the ride.
Jimmy and Andy Bay was there when they all got back, and I seen right away that whatever it was it was no gun he had got on account of the size of the box. It would have had to be a small cannon. I figured whoever they was, his kinfolks must be rich, and then me and Jimmy and Andy went over to watch them unload it and see what was it in the box. Sister come, too.
I helped Rodney carry it into his yard, and then I got it open for him and he pulled out this big rubber-tired red wagon. He just stood there looking at it. It was big and fancy with “Flyer” written on it; made me feel like there was chrome on it, even though there wasn’t. Biggest kid’s wagon I ever seen. Sitting there in the grass with the sun shining on it, all new and everything, it was something to see. The trouble was that Rodney weren’t no six- or eight-year-old kid. He was fourteen. It was something about as far from a gun as you can get.
For a while we all stood there and looked at it. Finally I looked around and Sister was gone and somebody had to say something so I said, “Rodney, it’s sure a nice red color.”
Then Jimmy walked around it once and stopped up next to Rodney. “What you going to do with it?” he said. Like Rodney knew, maybe.
I was surprised he had not asked what was it.
Rodney didn’t even look up. “I never asked for no wagon,” he said, “never.”
Andy tugged my hand about then. “Can I sit in it?” he said.
“Rodney,” I said, “Andy wants to know can he sit in it.”
“Go ahead,” Rodney said, “sit in it.”
So Andy climbed in and sat there, grinning up at everybody. He liked it fine. It was so big a wagon you could have put two more just like him in behind. Rodney looked at him. “For all I care,” he said, “you can have it.”
I believed him, though Andy didn’t, hardly, but he would have took it home anyhow, I suppose, except that first he had to try it out. I helped him haul it up the road to the top of the hill, which is a pretty steep hill, and then I set him in it and got him headed straight and give him a push to get started. I seen it was going fine, but about halfway down the hill he got scared and turned it loose; anyhow he let go of the steering thing and grabbed the sides and it went off into sand and rolled over on him finally, once all the way, with him hanging on tight. We all run up and after we had got Andy quieted down and the sand shook out of him he just didn’t want no part of it any more. Said it wouldn’t steer.
So Rodney still had his wagon. It looked like the only thing he could do was either put it back in the box it come in or find something else to use it for. But for then, Rodney just left it where it lay, in the ditch. Later that night, after it was dark, I heard him go out and pull it home.
The next morning it looked like Rodney had it settled, though. I was out on the porch an
d Rodney come out and pulled the wagon out from under his uncle’s house and put a shovel in it and started up the hill. So I watched until he went on out of sight where the road levels off, and then I got a shovel and went up after him.
I run and caught up with him, and then we went on to the railroad tracks and stopped. I didn’t know what we was after, so I waited. This railroad track is a spur that only runs a train on Saturdays except in shipping season, when it is apt to run one any time. Rodney went down the tracks a little ways and started shoveling gravel from between the ties into his wagon. It made quite a racket. I went and shoveled, too. Finally it was full, and we stopped.
“Where do we take it?” I said.
“To the barn,” Rodney said. “I am going to put it down in that filthy cow shed.”
I had to admire him for the idea. I never would have thought of it. That cow shed of his uncle’s, like all the other outbuildings on his place, is a mess. It is fastened onto the barn and leaks even worse than the barn itself does, and is on the down side of the lot, too, so when it rains, and for a long time after, the floor is mud. I never seen it all the way dry except during drought.
“I’ll help you,” I said.
He wanted to pull the wagon and it was his, so I didn’t argue. It was a long pull, though, even with some of it downhill. All I did was help him spread it around when we got to the shed. It was going to take a lot.
Coming back with the next load, the day had got hot. It was one of those hard burning-down quiet days, with no wind or any kind of cloud or nothing. And then Rodney took off his shirt. I had never seen him do this before, due to modesty I suppose and the fact he is so skinny. He had no muscles at all. And bowed over, pulling that wagon, with that long bony back of his bent around tight, it looked like if you only pushed down once on his head he would have popped in two, like a dried stick. Seeing the sun hitting down on all that white stretched skin made me hurt for him, and I don’t hurt for people easy.
“Rodney,” I said, “you are apt to burn.”
“It will tan,” he said.
I didn’t warn him no more, but you can not start with skin that white and get a full tan all in one day. Not even with people who are not that white to begin with. What you get is burned. If you will look straight up at the sun without blinking and hold it for a minute you will see that it is not just bright, it is burning. I have done it. There is no point in doing it I guess, but it gives you a different feeling about the sun ever after. At least it done that with me. You don’t just wonder about it any more. You know.
I could see Rodney didn’t know, though. We took that load and then another and then I lost count. All morning we went up to the tracks and back and down the road between his uncle’s house and ours, and in that sun all the time. And nobody stopped us.
By noon we had it done. And Rodney’s back was done, too. Bright red. He seemed not to notice it.
We stood in the door of the shed and looked at the gravel. I thought it looked nice. “I’m glad it’s done,” Rodney said, and he put on his shirt.
We left the wagon there by the barn. The new had wore off it considerable.
In the afternoon I done my best to keep Rodney in the shade, or at least with his shirt on, fixing up some slingshots and taking him up in our barn to hunt rats a while, so that what we done mostly was sit on some beams up over the hay and watch, like we was birds or something, for anything that looked like a rat to move down below us in the barn. We seen a couple, too, and fired away, but missed. We must have spent hours at it. If nothing else, rat hunting like that learns a person patience. Myself, I practically went asleep at one point and fell off the beam.
Later we went back and sat in his uncle’s cow shed, admiring the gravel and resting some. The gravel worked fine in our slingshots and just for the amusement we shot a few handfuls up behind us into the old barn roof. It were surprising how many of them stones went right on through it. Them shingles was all the way rotten. Looking up at it, Rodney said it looked like the sky on a starry night; all them little winking holes.
Then it come time to milk and Rodney had still said not a word about his sunburn, though I knowed it must have been hurting by then, so I hung around anyhow to help. But we was in for trouble. One after another them two Guernseys went right up to the door of the shed and then stopped. All that gravel must have spooked them. It is a kind of white-looking gravel; made the place look different. Or maybe they just missed the mud and didn’t know where they was. Cows is like that.
So first I tried pushing and pulling some, and then Rodney tried to lead them in with some feed in a bucket, but nothing would do it. We must have raised quite a fuss finally, because the next thing we knowed Mr. Blankhard himself had come down to see what was wrong.
I seen him coming down the path, his clean white work gloves on his hands standing out clear in the darkening light, the way he will put them on and go look at something now and then around the place but almost never get them dirtied, and me and Rodney stood back and left the rest of it up to him. He walked between us and went up to the shed, and when he seen the gravel he jerked away from the door just like them cows had done.
Then he turned and took off his gloves, thinking things over. “May I ask where this come from?” he said to Rodney.
“It’s to cover up the mud,” Rodney said.
“I can see that,” Mr. Blankhard said, speaking careful. “My question to you was where it come from.”
I think he already knowed.
“From the tracks,” Rodney said. “I brung it in the wagon.”
I could tell from the way that Mr. Blankhard looked at Rodney then that Rodney was giving his breeding theory trouble. I mean Rodney is a Blankhard, too, and breeding is supposed to tell.
“No doubt you was meaning only the best,” Mr. Blankhard said, “but that gravel is the property of the L. & N. Railroad.”
“I just took enough for the shed,” Rodney said.
They stood there looking at each other and I was pleased to see that it was Mr. Blankhard which looked away first. He looked up and away and sort of shook his head. “What you have done,” he said, “is stole it.”
This was so. I had knowed it all along. I figured Rodney knowed it, too, but I guess he didn’t. Anyhow, what Mr. Blankhard had said was the simple truth and there weren’t no more for him to say, I guess, because he left. So I helped Rodney and we milked the cows outside and it was after dark by the time we was through. I felt sorry for Rodney, though. First the cows acting up and then his uncle had pretty much took the pleasure from him, and it had been more work than fun as it was. And on top of that, of course, he had this sunburn whether he would say so himself or not.
I did not get to see how bad it was the next morning, though, because I went in town with Pa, where we got some new tractor parts and hung around the stores while Pa talked to people until it was time for dinner, which we bought in Lily’s place, and then went out to the Briggses’ place, where Pa talked some more, and then to the Holmeses’, where I stayed in the truck.
I seen Jenny several times, coming out on the porch and sitting for a while and then going back in the house and coming out again later, but I guess she did not happen to know I was sitting in the truck as she never once looked at me. And we was there a long time.
It was no fun sitting there in that hot truck. There were no good reason why I should not have got out and gone up on the porch and said a few words to Jenny, but I guess there was still a reason, all right, or I would have done it. She had her hair doubled back up on her head against the heat and she had taken her blouse ends out from the shorts she was wearing and tied them in front, also against the heat; and sitting there like that on the porch rail for some breeze and tipping back her head and drinking from a big glass of water she looked as cool and nice as anything I could think of. I would have liked to sat there with her some. I would have liked at least to have had some of that water, too.
But finally Pa come and we went home
. It was just about dark. I helped Pa take the tractor parts down to the shed and then I went and got some water and then went and looked for Rodney.
I found him down in the cow shed, in the mud, milking. He hardly looked up at me when I come in. I looked around. Down in the mud there was still some pieces of gravel, but the rest was gone.
“Where has all our gravel went?” I said. But I knew.
“I took it back,” Rodney said. He went right on milking.
“In that wagon?” I said.
“Naturally,” he said.
He did not want to talk about it much. If he had not told me nothing at all, though, I could have figured it for myself. By his sunburn. It was the worst I have ever seen. It was so bad that he could not put his shirt on, and when his arms moved a little when he milked you could see the skin in places crinkling around like shoebox paper, like it had gone all thin and dry on him. It must have hurt so much that morning that he had not put his shirt on to start with. Probably figured it couldn’t get no worse. But it could, of course.
“I have not milked a cow in quite a while,” I said. “Let me finish these up for you.”
Rodney looked at me and then got up and let me do it. “You could tell Mrs. Blankhard that plain unsalted butter, if she’s got some and can spare it, can help a sunburn some,” I said. He didn’t say nothing, and I went on milking, and when I finished he had left and I took the milk up and give it to Mr. Blankhard myself.
“I am sure sorry about Rodney’s sunburn,” I said.
He seemed surprised. “I can’t see where it was your fault none, Jack,” he said.
“No,” I said. “I warned him once in the beginning.”
“I will tell Rodney you asked about him,” Mr. Blankhard said, and then he took the milk and went on into the house with it. I believe that was the longest talk that me and Mr. Blankhard ever had.
I told the folks about it that night when we was all sitting on the porch and in the end everybody was quiet, and finally Ma said, “That poor boy,” and I felt somewhat about it like that myself but I didn’t say nothing, but went in and went to bed.
The Rain and the Fire and the Will of God Page 4
