Hardscrabble Road Page 12

  Mama was answering Darlene, ending with, “…will come around—things always do. Why the questions?”

  “No reason.”

  “You worried about sitting up with boys?”

  “No’m.”

  “You need some more rags? I don’t want you spotting that new dress of yours.”

  “Maybe twice what you gave me before.” She sniffed a few times. “A townie said I smelled like the butcher and some other boys laughed—I hate ’em!”

  “They’re not all bad, honey. You got nuthin to be skeered of; just pick out boys that’ll make you feel good.”

  Darlene cleared her throat and said, “How do you know which one?”

  “Why only one?”

  “I thought—”

  Mama lowered her voice, as if someone might overhear. I had to turn my ear to the wall, still murmuring nonsense, as she said, “No, sweetheart, it ain’t that way.”

  “You had to choose sometime, right? You had to pick Papa.”

  “Eventually, once I saw that he’d make something of himself with the bootleg business. It wasn’t until after we jumped the broom that he started hoarding his money.” When Darlene began to speak again, Mama cut her off. “A girl’s gotta look after her own self. If your papa got hit by a train tonight, then where’d I be? No husband, no money coming in. Hell, he won’t tell me where he keeps the money he’s got. Where would that leave me?”

  “And me. And Jay and—”

  “Right, right. So you gotta keep your eyes open. You find somebody that’ll make you feel like a princess and has good prospects, but always know where the next one is. Just in case.” The bed frame creaked again as Mama stood up. She said, “Don’t you worry ’bout courting. It’s as easy as falling out of a boat.”

  “Into the water?” Darlene sounded mortified.

  “As easy as that. You get used to it real fast and, if you pick like I told you, you’ll like it so much you won’t wanna stop. Me, I never minded getting wet.”

  *

  “Quit it,” Chet said, and nudged me with his toe every time my stomach rumbled. After Mama returned to her room, I’d practiced a little more but couldn’t focus on the words, so I joined my brothers on the porch. I wanted to tell them about what I’d overheard, but had to wait until we would be far from the house. We slouched in silence as the bone-white moon rose higher.

  Sport and Dixie came alert at the same moment. They stood and hurried to the porch steps, peering out into the night with their ears up. Instead of growling, they displayed the same keen interest as when the Woman had appeared on the lane that bordered our yard.

  In a few minutes, Ry came up the dirt road, whistling in the dark. I knew it had to be Ry because even the tune he chose, a complex melody with dozens of notes, was far different from anything I’d ever heard. Jay and Chet did their whippoorwill impressions and I cooed like a mourning dove. Ry whistled his tune louder and we responded until Mama screamed, “Aye God, I’ll fry the next bird I hear.”

  Even Ry stopped his music-making. He climbed the hog-wire fence, walked across the sand that I’d raked earlier, and greeted us all by name in a squeaky whisper. Just like Nat, he wore his hat at night, the brim down low over his black hair. Crouching so the dogs could smell him all over and lick his face, he asked, “Where’s the still?”

  Jay said, “I’ve got some parts buried in the woods.”

  “Y’all look at that,” Chet said, “and I’m gonna catch some supper. I’m starved.”

  I said, “Ry, do you fish?”

  “Yes, I do. My daddy—”

  “Yeah, I f-figured he did.”

  Jay and Chet retrieved our gear from the barn. Along with two buckets for collecting our catches, Jay had slung a couple of gill nets across his shoulders; rusty railroad spikes dangled and clanked from the bottom of the linen mesh, nearly scraping the tops of his feet. Chet brought a pitted hatchet and a burlap Croker sack that bulged at the bottom; its contents clicked like wooden beads.

  I took the tin buckets and gestured at Chet’s hatchet, joking, “We can bring Sport and go p-possum hunting too.”

  Ry asked what I meant. Jay explained that you hunt possum by treeing one with a dog, chopping down the tree, and capturing the critter in a sack. “Then you gotta pen the fella in a chicken coop and spend a week feeding it corn to clean out its insides. They’ll gobble up the nastiest stuff in the woods; you don’t wanna eat one straight outta the tree.”

  Chet added, “Sport’s a great possum dog. Papa fed ’im gunpowder when Sport was a pup, so he ain’t a-feared of nuthin.”

  Sometimes I wished that Papa had given me the same gunpowder-laced biscuits.

  Along the way to a slough near Spring Creek, Ry tried guessing what Chet had in his sack: wooden buttons, chinaberries, pecans. Jay and I walked behind them. I sidled close to Jay along the narrow path bordered by trees and huge shrubs. Racket from crickets and cicadas seemed to press down, completing the sensation that we walked within a low-ceilinged tunnel. The only light seemed to come from a swirl of fireflies. I stuttered to Jay, “What would we do if Papa got killed?”

  “Chet says he’s too mean to die.” The swaying railroad spikes clinked together as he walked, with the steadiness of a blacksmith hammering horseshoes.

  “But what if a train h-h-hit him tonight or something?”

  Jay said, “Why’re you saying this stuff?”

  “I just wondered.” A leafy branch that Chet pushed away snapped back and swiped across my face. My hands were full with the bucket handles, so I was defenseless. In the darkness, the surprise of being hit shocked me more than the actual slap.

  Jay made “hmm” sounds for a minute. “I reckon we’d all go live at the old home place with Grandma.”

  “And then Mama would marry again? And we’d l-live with her and Uncle Roscoe?”

  “Uncle Roscoe? He’s married to Aunt Lizzie. She couldn’t marry him too.”

  I thought that she still might try, but I said, “With somebody else then.”

  “Probly, if she gets lonesome.”

  When Ry asked who we were talking about, Chet said, “Nobody. Now you got one more guess coming to you about what’s in this-here sack.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then you’ll shut up. You’re bringing my head to a point and I’m gonna have to slug you.”

  Ry eased a few steps away from him, walking sideways in the tight space with his back against a row of shrubs and trees as constant as a picket fence. He asked Jay, “Why do all of you want to hit me?”

  “I don’t wanna hit you,” Jay said.

  Ry slowed his steps until he walked alongside my oldest brother, which forced me to the back of the line. I said, “I don’t w-wanna hit you no more,” but he wouldn’t walk with me. For the rest of the journey, I brought up the rear.

  The dirt underfoot turned to bog, too watery to be called land and too dirty to cup a fistful of pure water. Overalls rolled to my knees, I squished my toes in the gritty bottom of the swamp, more like wet cinders than mud. The slough where Chet led us felt cool and calm when I dipped my hand in. It was almost as still as the big galvanized tub of well-water in which each of us bathed on Sunday mornings in the kitchen. The slough was certainly cleaner than the bathwater left to me after the five others washed themselves.

  Chet and Jay stripped naked and waded in, each with a gill net, traipsing through chest-deep water about fifty feet apart. They secured their nets to cypress knees and tree stumps along both banks and pushed the railroad spikes into the sandy bottom to hold the net firm. The topmost thread of linen flashed white in the moonlight as it ran level across the water surface.

  Jay called, “Bud, mash up them walnuts.”

  On a sandbar, I took the blunt end of the hatchet and began walloping the closed burlap poke. The un-ripened nuts softened in their cracked shells and then turned to pulp with successive blows. Ry crouched beside me and said, “Walnuts?”

  “You was close, g-guessing pecan
s.” I thudded the bag a few more times as Jay and Chet laughed and slapped water at each other. “These-here are green walnuts.”

  “How do they help you catch fish?”

  I stammered, “There’s something about mashing ’em up. You slosh the sack around in the water between them nets and every fish gets poisoned. They come up for air and you scoop ’em out. Some try to escape and get caught in the nets.”

  “That’s not nice.”

  “Why not?”

  “Are you going to eat ‘every fish’? The minnows too? What about the fish downstream?”

  I whacked the bag a couple more times and carried it to the embankment, saying, “That’s why we d-do this in still water.” Ry tossed some pine straw into the slough; I could barely make out the coppery stems as they slowly floated toward Jay’s net. I said, “They was splashing. No t-telling how that’s stirred up the slough.”

  My brothers had stopped playing and now stared at us, the water level a few inches higher across Chet’s bare chest than Jay’s. Ry tossed in more pine straw and we all watched it spin and float toward Jay’s net. Ry said, “Where does this water go?”

  Jay said, “Spring Creek.”

  “The big one?” When Chet said, “Yeah, so?” Ry continued, “So-o-o…how many fish did you plan to eat?” The straw hat shadowed his face, but I could see his small chin thrust out.

  Chet stamped through the water, splashing the surface with both arms. “Now lookee here, kid. I plan to eat every durn fish that y’all don’t. Gimme that.” He mounted the sandbar, ripped the Croker sack from my grip, and jumped back into the slough.

  Ry ran along the shore, past where Jay had secured his net, and hopped in the water fully clothed. He waded out until only his head and hat were visible. “If you dunk that bag of poison,” he called, “I’m going to drink and drink. What’ll happen to me?” He opened his mouth wide, like a gator, as if he planned to take a bite out of the slough, and sunk until his chin rested on the surface.

  Chet shouted, “You’ll get a goozle full of water, that’s all. There’s no current, doggone it.”

  When Chet began to lower the bag, I quickly stripped and joined Ry downstream, shivering in the cold water. Like him, I opened wide. I didn’t know if I’d really drink, since that seemed close to drowning, but I thought he was right; he needed somebody on his side. It was the first time I’d ever gone against my brothers. I hoped it would be the last.

  Jay waded over and put his hands on Chet’s shoulders, murmuring. Their foreheads almost touched.

  “Fine!” Chet said. He stepped back from Jay and hurled the poke onto the shore.

  Jay splashed his hands on the surface while he approached his gill net, trying to herd fish that way. Chet made a bigger ruckus marching to the net he’d strung up. He submerged and then surfaced a minute later with a large bream, twice the size of his hand. While small fish could maneuver through the linen mesh, large fish would get their heads caught and, when they tried to back out, they would ensnare their gills in the fine threads.

  I hurried to shore and met Chet with a bucket. “Some buddy you got yourself,” he said and dropped the flopping fish into the tin pail. When it tried to jump out, Chet punched the bream and it lay still in the bottom. He looked at his fist and then at me.

  Before Chet could clobber me, I ran to Jay’s side with the other bucket. He emerged with a three-pound bass. After depositing it, Jay waved at Ry. “Come on out, fish-lover. We caught a little supper after all.”

  Ry came ashore. Water drained from his clothes as he walked stiff-legged in his sopping overalls to where Jay and I got dressed. Ry looked into the bucket and said to my brother, “I hope you’re not mad at me.”

  “‘Course not.” Jay pushed some water from his body and climbed into his clothes. “You’re right—we shoulda picked a slough that wasn’t running a bit. I’m glad Bud stuck up for you.”

  After Chet dressed, he tramped toward us. “Well I hope you’re happy, Mr. Japan. We got only two fish to divide.”

  Ry put up his hands and stepped away. “I ate supper already. That’s more for you.”

  Chet slammed down his bucket. It turned over and the fish slid out but was either stunned or dead. “You’re durn right that’s all ours. We could’ve ate real good if you hadn’t butted in.”

  “Why didn’t you poison the water, Chet?”

  “Shut up!” He ran at the boy, his fist drawn back.

  Ry dropped to one knee. The punch sailed over his shoulder and he seized my brother’s overall bib and fly and flipped Chet onto his back. It looked so predictable when I watched it happening to someone else.

  Chet lay as still as his bream and stared just as wide-eyed. “Bud,” he said, “this what happened to you?” When I said yes, he worked his jaw back and forth and stared at the bright moon. Finally, he said, “Ry Shepherd, if you show me how to do that, I swear I’ll never try to hit you again.”

  *

  Chet ate his bream and Jay split his bass with me. Ry sat by the fire, his clothes steaming, and told us about San Antonio: crisscrossing railroad lines and broad highways, old tile-roofed stucco buildings and what he called the first “skyscraper” in Texas, which towered hundreds of feet above everything else. He told us about the university where his father taught, but he might as well have been describing a city on the moon. Even Jay was distracted, staring off into the swamp.

  Chet finally said, “Don’t y’all have woods and criks and haints and stuff?”

  “Away from the city. There’s no such thing as ghosts though. They’re not scientific.”

  Jay said, “What’s science got to do with a haint? Haints don’t give a flip about science. There’re regular folks around here that would stymie science to bafflement.”

  I almost offered up Papa and Mama as examples. Instead, I said, “Like this wi-witch we got, Wanda Washburn. That Wanda has magic powers. She can heal wounds and ca-cast a double-whammy. All the Negroes are scared of her.” Ry sighed loudly as I continued to stammer quietly in the firelight: “There’s this colored man called Robert Bryson. He has a fine Packard car—”

  “It’s a Pierce-Arrow,” Jay said. “I’ve seen it.”

  “A Pierce-Arrow then. He’s right proud of it. Won’t let hardly nobody ride in it. ’bout ten years ago, he’s zipping along on a f-f-fiery hot day, and he ups and passes Wanda Washburn, leaving her in the dust. Well, she sends word that Robert wouldn’t be able to swallow another drink, not water, not nuthin.” I shivered to add drama. “Soon enough, he’s on the lift—”

  Ry said, “What’s that?”

  “That means he takes to his b-bed. He’s wasting away. Every time he tries to sip something, it won’t go down—”

  “Just lays in his mouth,” Chet said, “like blood.”

  I flashed some anger at being interrupted again. “Anyway—with his life near over, he sends word to Miz Wanda that he’s sorry for passing her b-by, that he’ll never do it again.”

  “I’ll bet she lifted the spell.” Ry sounded bored.

  “Well, yeah, right…anyway, she sends our friend Nat’s boy to tell Robert that he could swallow again. Now he stops by her p-place every day in case she wants a ride.”

  “Golly, that’s really scary,” Ry said, suddenly sucking in his cheeks like he was shriveling up.

  Jay had continued to stare into the dark. Now he pointed his stick at the swamp. “OK, how ’bout a haint? There’s one for you. Tell about what’s so and what’s not to the Dutchman.”

  I shivered for real as I peered deep into the gloom. A faint yellow glow the size of an orange drifted in our direction, weaving among the twisted oaks and giant cedars. Jay whispered, “They say that back fifty years ago, this old Dutch fella named Jan Kleinsomething-or-other got hisself killed nearby and was dumped into a well. His spirit haunts these-here woods—he glows like a big ball of light.”

  Ry murmured, “Is this a joke?” He edged closer to the swamp, standing beneath thick arms of Spanish mos
s.

  “No joke,” Jay said. “If he touches you, you’ll die.”

  The ball of light emerged in a distant clearing, now looking more teardrop-shaped. It faintly illuminated the face of an old Negro woman. Chet said, “Speak of the devil; it’s Wanda.” He looked at Jay with a silent plea, his bare feet twitching like an impatient horse’s hooves.

  Jay grinned. “Private MacLeod, if you catch ol Wanda unawares, give ’er a mighty good scare.” He returned a salute, and Chet dashed into the swamp with barely a splash. He was soon out of sight. Jay said, “Ry, let’s see if we can give Chet another tumble. Maybe get Wanda in the bargain.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of sneaking up on a witch?”

  “She’d never put a spell on white folks. That wouldn’t do.” He led us into the marshland. As Jay took us in a wide circle around Wanda—and probably Chet—the swamp water ebbed and soon we walked on solid ground. Spanish moss reached down from every limb. He whispered, “Sneaking up on anybody, even a old colored lady, is kinda fun, right?”

  “I guess,” Ry said. “I wish it was the Dutchman, though.”

  I’d done well to creep quietly until, like a fish in our gill net, my face pressed against a huge spider web. Silken strands raked my cheeks and forehead, and darting legs scrambled down my neck. I spit and did a little jig as I brushed my face and knocked the spider off my back.

  Far to our left, Wanda yelled, “What’s that, a three-legged mule on a tin floor? Don’t even think ’bout scaring me. Just step out and account for yourself.”

  Jay said in my ear, “She must’ve heard Chet. Maybe we can get somebody yet.” Jay led us closer to the glow from Wanda’s torch, which she called her “flambeau.” She appeared to be standing in place; the light didn’t move anymore.

  As we approached the clearing, my steps got shorter and lighter. I didn’t breathe. We crept behind a six-foot-thick cedar trunk. I peered out, ready to duck back as soon as I saw her, but she wasn’t there. Her flambeau, made from a long shaft of heart-pine, was wedged in an oak knothole. The noiseless flame curled and flickered in the air. I didn’t see Wanda or Chet. When I looked at the woods around me, I couldn’t see any details—the torch had ruined my night-vision.