Hardscrabble Road Read online

“Naw, we ain’t that lucky.”

  Jay knelt beside Chet and said, “Shoulda gotten the gloves, big man.”

  “No time, general. Had to save Bud-here.”

  Mr. Gladney nudged Chet’s ankle with his shoe. “In my office.” He pulled Buck away from the wall by the bib of his overalls and yanked him toward the door, leaving a trail of red spots from Buck’s bleeding face. Chet slapped away the hand Fleming offered and pushed himself to his feet. He staggered a few steps, squared his shoulders, and followed Buck and the principal.

  *

  On the bus ride home, Chet shifted from one haunch to the other. He’d told me and Jay that the paddle didn’t hurt any worse than one of Papa’s stripings with a gallberry branch. Half of his face looked like a run-over eggplant. Four stitches strained atop the purple and green swelling above his right eye, and blood stained his shirt collar and overall bib. Buck had looked worse when I saw him waiting for his bus, held up by two of his brothers.

  If anything, the air had grown heavier since noontime. Even Cecilia, Darlene, and her friends had gone from looking dewy to damp. When I closed my eyes I could imagine that Mr. Clemmons had driven us into Spring Creek and now we breathed water.

  Tempers rose with the humidity, and fights broke out. A boy named Billy, sitting across the aisle from Chet, jumped up and shouted, “I can take you, Mac, don’t think I can’t!” Chet jackknifed off the bench and punched Billy in the throat. He drew back his bruised fist again but saw that the fight had already left his challenger. After a longer brawl commenced between other boys, Mr. Clemmons stopped the bus and put those two out on the side of the road, far from home. He drove off, leaving them in a swirl of dust. They shoved each other once and pointed fingers, but then trudged down the dirt lane together.

  Jay tapped Chet’s leg and said, “Good thing Billy didn’t punch back.”

  “Yeah,” Chet said, and Jay joined him with: “Good thing for Billy.” They laughed a little and even Billy joined in, though he was still coughing.

  We dragged home and stumbled through our afternoon chores. Chet and I collided on several occasions as we tried to get our work done. After I clipped his knee with a pail, Chet hit me with a blow identical to the one he’d delivered on the bus. I fell on my seat just like Billy, except that I got up. The humidity crumpled my head into a tighter and tighter ball. I sprang at Chet and he clobbered me again. We repeated this dance all over the yard. Finally, Jay yelled, “Knock it off! Let’s get through with the chores, fellas.”

  When I bent over to catch my breath and take stock of the tender patches where Chet had punched me—just about everywhere from the waist up—That Goddamn Rooster spurred the back of my knee. I shouted, “He’s a goner,” as I hobbled toward the house to get Papa’s .22 rifle. “I’ll blow ’im to bits.”

  Papa stood in the kitchen fussing at Mama. “Goddammit, I got a right to do whatever I want.”

  “You ain’t here for a night and a day and make like nuthin’s the matter.” She pulled the tablecloth edges away from the leftover food in the center and slapped down dishes and forks, saying “You can just go to hell.”

  “I’m already there! God know why I came back.”

  “’Cause you got bored with—” She eyed me as I mounted the steps still yelling for the rifle. “Bud,” she shouted, “you shoot that bird and I’ll cook both of you together in my fryer. Now you settle down and call your brothers inside.”

  She lit the kerosene lamp to brighten the gloomy kitchen while I limped to my spot. Papa took his place beside me, muttering and pulling up his waistband. Each time he yanked the top of his trousers, the butt of his Colt nodded at me.

  Darlene sat on his other side, holding her elbows outward as if to cool her armpits. Lamplight turned her blond hair as yellow as a candle flame. Jay brought in a bucket of fresh well-water and filled the glasses, while Chet took his seat and kept his bruised face turned from Papa much the same way that I hid my birthmark.

  My father heaped his plate with food, and I passed the bowls around until everyone had helped themselves but me. Papa gulped some water and said, “It’s not cold enough, Reva. Go get me some ice.”

  Mama was staring at Chet’s wounded face. She muttered, “Ice man comes tomorrow, in case you stick around.”

  “Goddammit, get me what’s left.”

  “There ain’t no more!” Mama pushed out of her chair and stomped onto the back porch. She returned with the burlap bag in which she wrapped a fresh ice block every week. Water drizzled across the floor as she stalked over to him. “Aye God, you need some cooling off too.” She threw the sopping Croker sack onto his lap.

  Papa leaped up and side-armed the bag at her. The wad of wet burlap hit Mama full in the face. Droplets spattered over all of us at the table. She wrenched it away and ran for the rifle on the wall.

  A flash illuminated everything in the room as bright as midday; a peal of thunder shook the house and made my eardrums pop. Sharp, bitter ozone raced through the kitchen as rain and hail poured down like millions of marbles dropping onto the tin roof.

  Mama was deathly afraid of storms—she left the rifle suspended on its nails and hurried down the hall. The next thunderclap drowned out the slamming of the bedroom door. She gasped and wailed, “Oh, Jesus, oh, God, protect me. Sweet Jesus…” The only time I heard her pray was during thunderstorms. I imagined her edging her heels in a small circle so she could look at each wall and the ceiling and wonder which one would fail her first.

  When Papa slapped the table, the forks and plates jumped. Cussing, he charged down the hall and kicked open the door.

  Mama screamed, “Don’t you—” and his Colt fired once, sounding like thunder. Papa reappeared in the doorway, slinging on his yellow slicker and Stetson. In a minute, his truck skidded over the wet sand of our drive, and he was gone.

  I ran to their bedroom, afraid to look but needing to see what Papa had done. His story about his own mother getting shot in half played in my head. Meeting me at the doorway was the stink of gunpowder.

  Mama turned in her small circle and looked up as the storm continued to boom. Overhead, the exposed tin rattled like an angry knocking from God. The air seemed to be filled with snow, but then I saw the torn feather pillow that Papa’s bullet had blown off her side of the bed. A clean hole gaped in the wall: wide enough, I imagined, to stick my finger through and feel the rain.

  Thunder blasted the air overhead. Mama put her fingers over her mouth and glanced at me.

  I could hardly look into her eyes during a cloudburst. I’d seen the same fright in animals just before a slaughter. Keeping my voice low, unsure of whether she could hear me, I said, “He didn’t hur-hur-hurt you, Mama, did he?”

  Her voice escaped through the slits between her fingers: “He can’t.” She returned to her slow spin, and I eased her door closed.

  The thunderstorm settled into a steady rain that my brothers and I watched from the front porch after cleaning the dishes. I scratched Dixie’s side until she started to paw at my hand with a bicycling rear leg. She turned onto her back and showed her belly for rubbing. I plucked a tick off her and flicked it into the yard where the sand drank up the rain without any puddles forming. I stuttered, “You reckon that he aimed to kill her?”

  Jay shook his head. “If he was going to, she’d be deader’n a hammer.” He was smoothing the hair on Sport’s face and head. Every time he stopped, Sport opened his yellow hound dog eyes and stared at Jay until he began again.

  “B-but why shoot her pillow?”

  Chet hopped up and paced the length of the porch. “Why’s he do anything? Let’s get our cane poles.”

  Jay said, “Nuthin’s gonna bite tonight on the creek. You got ants in your pants.”

  “Runs in the family. Both sides.” Chet dropped onto the porch swing. The rusty chains creaked like old tree limbs in a high wind.

  I sat beside him. “What’s that mean?”

  “You’re too little.”

  Sport an
d Dixie leaped to their feet, ears up, faces pointed toward the dirt road that our driveway joined. They didn’t growl, but their noses took in a lot of air and they stared hard into the rainy night.

  “Papa’s back?” I asked.

  Jay leaned forward at the front edge of the porch until the tip of his nose got wet. “I think it’s the Woman.”

  “Where?” I left the protection of the overhanging roof and stood on the top porch step. Warm rain thudded against my scalp and shoulders and ran inside my shirt. With the edge of my hand, I shielded my eyes. Dixie whined behind me. I focused hard and made out the streaks of rain coming straight down. Then I spotted a pale shape on the dirt road, walking away from us.

  The Woman always dressed the same way, in a white flour-sack dress that blended with her porcelain arms and face. Regardless of the weather or time of day, she wore a lily-white bonnet and walked with her empty hands at her sides. She had on white high-button shoes that never got dirty or left a mark in the sand. The Woman was a haint.

  No one could say for sure who she’d been in life, how she’d died, or why she wandered the countryside. I stared into the darkness for a long time until I’d lost sight of her. I’d stopped being aware of the rain soaking me. I couldn’t get any wetter.

  Jay looped a finger over the back of my overalls, giving me a start. He tugged, and I stepped under the porch roof. “A-a-anyone ever hear her talk?”

  “Naw, she just walks,” Jay said. “A kid at school said he saw her point once, but when I asked him to show me, he stuck out a finger and put it up my nose.”

  Chet said from the swing, “That’s all this sitting around is good for, picking your nose.”

  I sat beside him and peered at his profile of swellings and stitches. “Thanks for jumping in against B-B-Buck. He would’ve stomped me flat.”

  “I hit him all wrong. ’Stead of punching him straight on, I shoulda uppercut more.”

  “Anyway, you sure showed ’im.” I jabbed the air a few times and practiced an uppercut.

  “You tell me if he picks on you anymore. He owes me now.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “The principal asked right off how you was ‘involved.’ I said it was my fight: I picked it and I won it.” He shrugged. “Buck went along with my story, so he only got popped once.”

  Jay said, “How many times did Mr. Gladney pop you?”

  Chet shrugged again. “More’n once.” He pushed off the swing, setting me rocking. “I’m gonna get my pole.”

  I said, “What about s-school?”

  “I’m suspended for a day. Woulda been three, but I thanked Ol Man Gladney for letting me go fishing the rest of the week, and he told me to get back to school on Thursday.”

  I pointed to the dirt road and stuttered, “But what about the Woman?”

  “Everybody knows she only goes after folks who’re gonna do bad things. She won’t go after me for fishing.” He walked into the rain. I leaned over the railing as he strolled along the side of the house. I watched Chet until the night swallowed him up.

  CHAPTER 6

  Papa’s truck was parked beside the house when Jay, Darlene, and I returned from school, and his laugh, as rare as a blue moon, echoed down the hallway from the kitchen. Mama’s voice drifted out to us as well, saying, “I declare, Mance. Ain’t you the one.”

  I said to Jay, “Today’s a good’un.”

  “Too bad ol Chet’s missing it.”

  Chet popped up from the truck bed, his slingshot drawn back. He nailed my hip with a dirt clod that exploded across my overalls. I felt surprise rather than pain, but Darlene waggled her finger at him and said, “Your face is gonna look even worse if you shoot me.”

  “I’d never shoot a silly ol girl,” he said and clambered to the ground. His face held more colors than a crazy quilt. “Anybody miss me today?”

  “Buck stayed home too,” Jay said. “His brothers told me his eyes wouldn’t open this morning.”

  “Probly he just wanted his beauty sleep.” Chet guided a punch in slow motion at my nose and said, “But don’t you go starting more fights than we can finish.”

  After we did our afternoon chores and washed up on the back porch, Papa called from the kitchen, “Hey, boys, lookee here at what I got y’all.” On the table sat a machine of black-iron that Papa had bought to separate corn from the cob. When we did that by hand every week, rubbing a dry, spiny cob against the hard kernels, bloody blisters always plagued our fingers.

  Mama demonstrated the machine to us, feeding husked corn into the top. A hand-crank spun the cob and cut off the kernels, which fell from a chute at one end. Silk and the bare cob slid out the other side. “Yessir,” Papa said, “science is gone as far as it’ll go.” He handed a shaved cob to me. “It’ll be smoother going yonder in the outhouse too.” Mama giggled at his joke, as if she’d forgiven him already for the gunshot. Maybe she really believed he couldn’t hurt her.

  All of us but Papa took a number of turns with the machine. In my outstretched arms, I carried a couple of dozen sleek cobs to our two-holer beside the dying cotton field and dumped them in a burlap sack with older, rougher cobs. We’d used more than three-quarters of the Sears and Roebuck catalog lying beside the sack. I squinted in the twilight at drawings of women’s clothes and shoes while I breathed through my mouth. On account of the flies, I barely parted my lips. The air in the outhouse had a bitter tang, but the stink was worth avoiding.

  Coarse paper turned under my fingers as I sat over one of the holes and looked for examples of all twenty-six letters; I didn’t know how to sound out the words they made. Pretty soon though, I figured that Miss Wingate would teach me enough so that I could read any remaining pages. Maybe someday I’d know enough words to figure out my parents.

  Fairly soon, the light dimmed so much I couldn’t see the catalog any longer. I confirmed that the new cobs were indeed smoother, then pulled up my overalls and stepped outside. The moon hadn’t shown itself yet; only a few stars glimmered in the blue-black sky. The weevil-infested cotton stirred in the breeze: hundreds of crouching, twisted shapes appeared to edge a bit closer to me. Beyond them the harvested corn stalks rattled. I imagined them as dry, eyeless creatures, rooted, trapped: dreading the knife-like blades of the cutter we’d roll out in late September to chop them near to the ground. At the north end of the field, Lonnie’s shack was dark. He often went out at night to the Negro diner in Colquitt or the juke-joints on the highway. I couldn’t imagine walking all that way after dark, with the Woman out there and who-knew-what other haints and boogers.

  I’d given myself a good scare with these thoughts and dashed for our house with its pale kerosene light in the kitchen window. I focused on that dim glow, ignoring the rustling all around me. Suddenly the lamp disappeared. The house was another dark shape with the woods looming behind it. Trees seemed to block out half the sky.

  As I tried to run faster, weeds snatched at my toes. The mules snuffled and brayed restlessly in their pen, as if they knew something was out there with me. The closer I got to the house, the less I could recognize. Everything was hidden from me.

  A girl screamed—no, it was Darlene’s crazy, high-pitched cackle. She laughed again: “Eeeeeeee-heeeeee-heeeee!” Hands clapped, and someone produced the kerosene lamp on the front porch. I pumped my arms as I cut to the right and ran toward the joyful sounds and the shadows cast across the dirt driveway.

  Papa leaned against the railing with his back to me. My brothers sat cross-legged on the floor with our dogs, and Darlene was on the top step. They all watched Mama, who perched on the porch swing with her hands covering her mouth. She commenced to play “Barbara Allen” on the harmonica she carried in her apron pocket. Jay and Chet whistled along with her. Darlene hummed, since we all knew that whistling women and crowing hens always came to bad ends. Papa even made a few musical sounds in his throat.

  It was worth braving the nighttime to see everyone getting along. I only recalled a handful of other times when
Papa and Mama had agreed to such a truce. My siblings craned their necks every so often and looked out at the front yard, but no one asked about me. A tire on Papa’s truck provided me with a backrest as I sat in the dark, watching my family act the way I always imagined that other families behaved. I was afraid to join them and risk breaking the happy spell.

  *

  Darlene kept the peace at home a while longer by bringing two of her girlfriends to supper on Thursday afternoon. Though Mama would refuse to fire up the stove in her broiling kitchen to cook a fresh evening meal for family, she’d never serve leftovers to company. “It’s good to see y’all again, girls,” she said, wiping swollen hands on her apron. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like.” She told me and my brothers to build a fire in a sand pit out back. While we filled a huge pot with water for boiling, she strode across the barn lot to kill our supper.

  One squawk from the henhouse started the other birds screaming. Mama soon emerged with her hand clamped under the head of a plump, ash-colored Dominecker. The hen flapped a few times and then gave up, dangling limp just before Mama whipped her arm around like she was throwing a windmilling uppercut and wrung its neck.

  The bird’s dirty yellow legs jerked and the wings fluttered again as the body twitched in Mama’s grasp. Above her fist, its head was still, its scaly beak parted and fiery red wattles and crest fading faster than a cut flower. She handed the still-warm hen to me and said, “Scald it good before you start plucking.” I felt the fleshy parts I hoped to eat. Having company always meant fried chicken.

  Our guests stayed until Saturday morning, which meant that my parents remained on their best behavior. At mealtimes, they were quiet except to ask a few polite questions about school. The girls, one a redhead and the other a brunette, sat on either side of Darlene at supper. Jay interrupted their chatter with little comments that made them giggle, while Chet tried to hide his battered face from them. For my part, I mooned at our guests openly from across the table until I recalled my pledge to be faithful to my two true loves, Cecilia and Miss Wingate. The redheaded girl reminded me of Cecilia—I looked long enough to make sure of that.