Hardscrabble Road Read online

  My head snapped back from his fist and rebounded off the doorframe. As I whimpered, covering my bloody lips with cupped hands, he said, “It’ll be a whole lot worse if you tell. I’ll teach you a powerful lesson, boy.” He faced the road and rolled his shoulders. From the way he kneaded the steering wheel, I knew he wanted to hit me again.

  I tried to cry myself to sleep, but my body stayed tense, awaiting another blow. Hunched against the door, I gripped the handle and thought about opening it up. I wondered how much I’d feel as I bounced and skidded on the concrete. How quick would I die? Face-first, I told myself, that’d be the way. Right on the birthmark.

  In the country, lots of men killed themselves and some boys did too. I’d once heard that suicide was a sin, but didn’t know for sure. We never went to church, except when the Primitive Baptists had the free dinner-on-the-ground every June, so I never read the Bible. Would I go straight to hell? Before I summoned the courage and anger to push the door open, Papa slowed the truck and turned onto the dirt of Hardscrabble Road.

  I wiggled two baby teeth with my tongue. They’d started to loosen over the past weeks, but now I could swing both of my upper front teeth like a dog-door Jay once hung in the barn. Thin, salty blood trickled from my gums and the deep gashes inside my swollen lips.

  Papa turned the truck onto the narrow road leading home. Passing Nat’s place, I wondered if he and his wife would let me hide there for a while. There was Lonnie’s tiny shack too; he’d be out all night at the juke joints. I wouldn’t feel safe at home until Papa’s anger gusted in another direction.

  He sped up as we neared Uncle Stan’s, zipping along so fast I couldn’t spot the hole in the porch. When I faced forward again, I screamed. He hollered too and we plunged through a woman suddenly standing in the road, pointing at us.

  The truck fishtailed as Papa braked hard and wrestled the steering wheel. The front end hadn’t smashed against her body; somehow we’d missed the woman. The Woman. I looked out the back window and saw a dim shape all in white facing us again in a cloud of dust, arm still raised, and then I couldn’t see her anymore as the truck slid on the hard-packed dirt.

  Papa jerked the wheel to keep us out of the ditch where I’d hid with Rienzi. The truck stalled and we rolled to a stop. “Was that Arzula?” he shouted. “Goddamn, what happened to her?” His hand shook as he wiped sweat from his lip.

  “It was the W-W-Woman, Papa.”

  “Horseshit. You trying to scare me?” He shoved me back against my door. “Huh? We’re just seeing things is all, a bird or something flashed in the lights.”

  The Woman was gone when I glanced out the back window. I whispered, “She p-pointed.”

  “Goddamn you, quit that. Stuttering, sonofabitch bastard! Red-faced—” He leaned over and began slapping me quick and hard. I tried to cover up like I’d done with Buck Bradley, arms protecting my face and chest, but Papa knocked them aside with ease. I screamed until my face grew numb from repeated blows.

  I turned away, giving him my spine and ribs to pound. The metal door felt as hard as a shovel when I wedged my head against it. I wished I’d jumped before. The shock of his blows stole my breath until I didn’t make a sound. Not even a grunt as Papa walloped me.

  “Mance.” It was the tone Uncle Stan used to command his mule. Click—he thumbed back a hammer on his shotgun.

  Papa panted and gulped. “Careful there, Stan. You might hurt the boy.”

  “You got a head-start.” Though firm, his voice sounded a little thick and nasally.

  I stayed down as Papa eased away from me. “Naw, Stan, I’m just—”

  “You say my name the way you say ‘shit.’”

  Papa oomphed as if the shotgun barrels had shoved against a tender spot. He spoke fast. “It’s a good name. I just like to say it is all.”

  “You like to say Roger’s name?”

  “Sure. Sure I do.”

  “Say it.” Stan’s voice softened. “Tell him you love him.”

  Papa didn’t hesitate. “I love you, Roger.”

  Uncle Stan said, “Roger, do you believe him? It’s OK, you can sit up. Do you believe him?”

  When I eased upright, sharp pains stabbed my back, I wanted to cry out but I couldn’t make a sound. My mouth opened and closed like a fish.

  Stan repeated his question. My left eye had swollen shut, so I had to face them full-on to see. I couldn’t make out much of my uncle’s face as he peered through the driver window. The shotgun rested on the doorframe, twin barrels angled up against Papa’s neck.

  Papa looked at me steadily, confident that I’d answer in his favor. He said, “Go on, boy. Tell him.”

  I wanted to lie rather than see him murdered. But no voice came out when I moved my bruised, bloody lips.

  Stan said, “Guess that’s a no, huh, Mance?” Click went the other hammer on his shotgun.

  “Goddammit, Roger! Come on, tell the man.”

  “Maybe he didn’t hear you earlier. Say it again. Say how much.”

  Words exploded from Papa’s mouth. “Roger, I love you. A little whipping don’t mean nuthin; you shouldn’t have egged me on is all. Uh, I love you more than, well hell, more’n anybody else in the family. You know that, right?”

  I’d never heard him sound weak and pitiful before. His naked pleading broke my heart. I nodded but kept my movements small so I wouldn’t hurt my stiffening neck.

  Stan said, “That look like a nod, Mance, or a head-shake?”

  “He’s nodding yes! Yessir, he’s nodding away. That’s a good boy.”

  “Roger, do me a favor and take his gun. Everybody’ll sleep better that way.”

  I eyed the walnut grip poking from Papa’s waistband. Uncle Stan encouraged me until I closed my fingers around it. Papa narrowed his eyes like he was about to hit me again. Instead, he sucked in his hard-muscled stomach so I could lift the heavy Colt away. I cupped the revolver on my lap; the weight of it kept my hands from shaking.

  Uncle Stan took a step from the driver door. “You done good, Roger. Now climb on out. You’re staying here tonight.”

  It took all my strength to force my aching body to move. I could barely stand on the dirt road and had to wedge the Colt into my pocket so I wouldn’t drop it. When I pushed the truck door closed, it swung slowly and didn’t latch.

  Uncle Stan said, “Go home, Mance. Never stop at my place again—got it?”

  “Yeah, I got it.” After a couple of tries and some muttered cussing, Papa started the engine and drove toward home. Until then I’d forgotten about the buckeye I dropped in his truck; Rienzi’s gift had brought me good luck after all.

  “Looks like you’re about to topple over.” Uncle Stan lowered the triggers on the shotgun and used the same gentleness to ease his arm around my shoulders. “Jesus, I got a helluva headache. How ’bout you? Oh, still not talking?”

  I shrugged, sending an explosion up through my neck and down my spine and legs. Moaning silently, I leaned into my uncle and let him drag-step me onto his gunshot porch.

  “Watch that hole now. The first step’s a killer.” He led me inside the dark parlor and sat me in a chair. After some clattering, he struck a long wooden match. Leaning forward, his hand glowing orange, he lit a kerosene lamp atop the weather-beaten table I slumped beside.

  I flinched at the sight of him. His blood-caked nose looked wavy along the bridge, likely reset by his own hands without using a mirror. Bruises under his eyes looked almost black in the lamplight, as did a goose-egg on his forehead and a knot on his chin.

  “Yeah, well you should see yourself.” He sat across from me and smiled, revealing chipped teeth. “You and me, we’re quite a pair. You gonna say anything?” He narrowed his gaze at me and his old scowl crept over his wounded features. “A little thanks maybe for saving your life?”

  I mouthed, “Thank you,” but couldn’t make a sound.

  “He sure busted you up good, but probably I was a little hard on him. Not like he was trying to kill you.
Not like he did this to me neither—Arzula said I fell after I killed our porch. Guess I had a bit too much to drink.” He touched his nose with his fingertips and winced.

  After a time, he said, “I gotta take you back there, you know. Your brothers and sister’ll miss you. Your mama too. Even Mance.” My uncle brought his fist down hard on the table. “Jesus, Reva sure picks the winners, don’t she?”

  CHAPTER 13

  I fell asleep in the chair as Uncle Stan murmured to himself. He must’ve carried me to a pallet in the corner of the room because that’s where I awoke before dawn. Besides the throbbing in my face and across my back and neck, a tender patch had formed on my thigh from sleeping atop the Colt in my pocket. The sky had lightened to a bruised grayish-purple.

  My lips moved as I tried to whisper my brothers’ names, but no sound came out. I lay there trying not to remember Papa whaling on me. I focused on working my front teeth forward and back with my tongue. They’d loosened even more and seemed to be held to my gums with skinny threads. I sat up and pulled my scabbed upper lip into a sneer. The pain of reopening those wounds would hopefully mask the hurt when I yanked out my teeth.

  With thumb and forefinger I grasped the slick teeth and pulled down. The roots holding them in place seemed to run alongside my nose to my eyes. Tears and snot coursed down my face and salty blood seeped from my gums long after the threads snapped. In the dim light, I made out two little red-tinged rectangles. They were so light and thin I couldn’t believe they could cut through paper let alone corncobs and raw sugarcane.

  Once when I’d lost a baby tooth, I showed it to Jay and asked, “What’s it made of?”

  “Bone, just like your head.” He explained how my skin and all hung on my bones like clothes. “If you dig up a old body, you’ll see them bones, nuthin more.” Mama took away the teeth I’d lost before, but she hadn’t known about this one. Under the house, I made a little hole beside the grave I’d dug for a broken stick-man, and I buried that tooth. Since then, I always buried my teeth under our house, little pieces of me in my very own cemetery.

  Now I had two more castoffs from my body to put in the ground. I couldn’t just bury them anywhere, though I considered sticking them in the dirt beside Eliza Jean’s grave. Maybe like a peace offering from my family to hers. When I pushed to my feet, I left bloody fingerprints on the thirsty wood.

  I hobbled home in the pre-dawn, fighting dizziness, my thumb and forefinger pinched tight around the two slim bones. My tongue wouldn’t stay out of the barn-door-sized hole in my mouth. Both of my exposed gums had scooped-out places and if I shoved hard with the tip of my tongue, I could feel the tops of new teeth cutting through the tender pink craters.

  Sport and Dixie yawned on the porch and wagged their tails but didn’t get up when I came through the fence gate. That Goddamn Rooster hadn’t crowed yet; with my left eye still swollen, I saw a blurry image of him fluffing out his wings and preening the way Papa had rolled his shoulders after punching me.

  Under the house, I leaned over my graveyard. Half-buried pine bark was the tombstone for Jack the Stick-man, snapped in half during rough play with Chet before my brother outgrew stick-men wars. Beside the tombstone were a half-dozen flint chips, broken arrowheads the Indians had thrown away, that marked the pieces of me I’d buried. I plunged a finger into the sand, planted one tooth, and then made a second grave. Sand shifted to cover my bones as soon as I’d buried them. I traced two little circles to mark their resting place so I could return with more flint grave markers.

  I backed out from under the house as the rooster crowed. As sore as I was, there was no point in trying to race back to Uncle Stan’s; anyway, I didn’t want my brothers to have to do my chores. The rooster so enjoyed his singing to the dawn, head thrown back, red-feathered neck stretched out, that he didn’t bother me while I crept around to the back porch.

  In Mama’s garden, the scarred rabbit gnawed a radish between its paws. Its long eyes cut from the wailing rooster to me as its prominent buckteeth shaved the bitter white flesh of the vegetable. I hated radishes, so I didn’t mind if the rabbit ate every one of them, but it seemed to taunt me with its huge, strong front teeth.

  The Colt sat heavily in my pocket. I tongued the twin gaps in my mouth and recalled the last time I’d tried to shoot the rabbit: Papa had walloped me with the rifle butt. I didn’t need another lump on my head. With my left eye only half-open, I was no judge of distance anyway, and since I still didn’t have my voice, I couldn’t call for our dogs either.

  “Hamestrang crackin, collar cryin…” Papa opened the bedroom door and strode toward the parlor to wake my brothers for Sunday chores before we went to Grandma’s. The rabbit dropped the half-eaten radish, scurried under the fence, and bounded across the field. Its back looked as pink as a fresh gash.

  Papa marched through the kitchen and stepped onto the porch, stopping short when he saw me. His usual starched white shirt gleamed except for a dark patch on the right side above his waistband: gun oil.

  My hand covered the pocket where his Colt pressed against my thigh. He worked his jaw and said, “You got permission from Stan to be here? Huh?” I moved my lips and tapped them with my fingers and gave a little shrug. He said, “I meant what I said about our secret. Don’t you say a word.”

  I shook my head and almost reeled from the pain in my neck. Thinking a peace offering would calm him, I tugged the Colt from my pocket and handed it over.

  The smooth walnut grip burned my palm when he wrenched the gun away. “Goddammit, you don’t point a gun when you’re giving it up. Don’t you know a thing? You handle the barrel. Otherwise—” he pointed his forefinger at me and dropped his thumb like a hammer “—the other fella might think you’re gonna shoot ’im.” With a flick of his wrist, he snapped open the action to examine the six loaded chambers. He slammed it closed again and slid the Colt into his waistband, covering the stain on his shirt.

  Patting the faint bulge near his hip, he said, “Felt like I was naked as a skint rabbit.” Over the sounds of my brothers coming into the kitchen, he murmured, “I told ’em you stayed with that odd little buddy of yours last night. We all got secrets; you ever get to talking again, mind you remember that.”

  I nodded a little as Jay poked his head through the doorway. “That bed was so comfy without…Hey, what happened to your face?”

  Papa said, “Got into a brawl with that kid. Lost his voice too.”

  “No kidding. Man, I didn’t know Ry would do that. He tossed ol Chet around, but—”

  “Get to your breakfast. Chores are waiting.”

  Papa turned from me and began his strength exercises, lowering on his right leg with the left kicked out ahead of him. I wandered inside.

  “Oh my stars,” Mama said, slopping grits onto my plate. “Ain’t you gonna be a sight at the old home place. Chet, I told you not to knock Bud around before our Sunday visits.”

  Chet held up his hands. “I didn’t touch ’im. Go on, tell Mama.”

  I flapped my lips and shook my head a little.

  Mama banged the pot on Chet’s head. “I swannee, you kicked out his voice and two teeth to boot.”

  “Honest, I didn’t.” Chet rubbed the top of his head.

  Jay dug his spoon into the puddle of grits before him. “Papa said that Ry whupped up on Bud. That’s the boy that you met yesterday, Mama.”

  “Them Japanese got some nerve.” She returned to the sink, muttering, “Now I’m gonna have to explain to Ma and everybody.”

  Lonnie dragged himself onto the back porch, saying to Papa, “Morning, boss.” Deep in the throes of a hangover, he gripped both sides of the door jamb to pull himself through.

  Mama said, “Got a brace of woodpeckers noodlin your noggin?”

  “Yes’m.” He eased onto his stool at the cook’s table where his breakfast steamed. When he noticed me, he set down his spoon. “Hey now, Chet, what’d you do to Bud?”

  *

  My voice didn’t return that da
y. At Grandma’s, Uncles Jake and Davy tried tickling me, but stopped when all I did was cry in pain and frustration. Some of my cousins said that leaning me into the path of the Seaboard locomotive would help, but my brothers talked them out of it. Still, Jay and Chet agreed, a really good scare might bring my voice back. When we sat down to Sunday night supper, they talked to Papa about letting us play the tombstone-shaped Philco radio after we ate; he liked to hoard the power in the heavy batteries for his favorite hillbilly show Lum and Abner.

  Jay said, “You know how scaredy Bud gets during Lights Out; a good scream’ll get him talking again. Besides, tomorrow’s his birthday. He needs to have his voice for that.”

  “That right?” Papa said, stiff-arming my shoulder. “You gonna be eight?”

  I nodded. My neck had loosened and my eye opened late in the afternoon. I’d given up on ever trying to talk again, though. Even the buckeye I’d retrieved from Papa’s truck hadn’t helped. Maybe being mute was better than being a “stuttering sonofabitch bastard.”

  Papa said, “Reva, we got his present yet?”

  From the other end of the table, Mama said, “Unh-uh. We planned to fetch it tomorrow.”

  “Instead, why don’t I take Bud and do the town after school?” Papa forced some cheer into his voice. ”What do you say, Bud? You and me!”

  I couldn’t say anything so I just nodded. The radio program only gave me worse nightmares, and I went to school sleepy and voiceless. On the bus, my brothers played up the fight me and Ry supposedly had. One of the older boys said, “Man, I shoulda thought of that. No reciting in class, no answering when you’re called on….Playing dumb, Bud—” he tapped the side of his head “—smart idea.”

  Chet balled his fists and said, “He ain’t playing at it. He really is dumb.”