A Painted House (14 page)

“Yes sir,” I said.

“Sit down,” he said. “Let’s talk.”

I sat at the very edge of the quilt, as far from them as possible. They didn’t appear to be angry; in fact, my mother’s face was pleasant.

But my father’s voice was stern enough to worry me. “Why didn’t you tell us about the fight?” he asked.

The fight that wouldn’t go away.

I wasn’t really surprised to hear the question. “I was scared, I guess.”

“Scared of what?”

“Scared of gettin’ caught behind the Co-op watchin’ a fight.”

“Because I told you not to, right?” asked my mother.

“Yes ma’am. And I’m sorry.”

Watching a fight was not a major act of disobedience, and all three of us knew it. What were boys supposed to do on Saturday afternoon when the town was packed and excitement was high? She smiled because I said I was sorry. I was trying to look as pitiful as possible.

“I’m not too worried about you watchin’ a fight,” my father said. “But secrets can get you in trouble. You shoulda told me what you saw.”

“I saw a fight. I didn’t know Jerry Sisco was gonna die.”

My logic stopped him for a moment. Then he said, “Did you tell Stick Powers the truth?”

“Yes sir.”

“Did one of the Siscos pick up the piece of wood first? Or was it Hank Spruill?”

If I told the truth, then I would be admitting that I had lied in my earlier version. Tell the truth or tell a lie, that was the question that always remained. I decided to try to blur things a bit. “Well, to be honest, Dad, things happened so fast. There were bodies fallin’ and flyin’ everywhere. Hank was just throwin’ those boys around like little toys. And the crowd was movin’ and hollerin’. Then I saw a stick of wood.”

Surprisingly, this satisfied him. After all, I was only seven years old, and had been caught up in a mob of spectators, all watching a horrible brawl unfold behind the Co-op. Who could blame me if I wasn’t sure about what happened?

“Don’t talk to anyone about this, all right? Not a soul.”

“Yes sir.”

“Little boys who keep secrets from their parents get into big trouble,” my mother said. “You can always tell us.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Now go fish some more,” my father said, and I ran back to my spot.

Chapter 11

The week began in the semidarkness of Monday morning. We met at the trailer for the ride into the fields, a ride that grew shorter each day as the picking slowly moved away from the river back toward the house.

Not a word was spoken. Before us were five endless days of overwhelming labor and heat, followed by Saturday, which on Monday seemed as far away as Christmas.

I looked down from my perch on the tractor and prayed for the day when the Spruills would leave our farm. They were grouped together, as dazed and sleepy as I was. Trot was not with them, nor would he be joining us in the fields. Late Sunday, Mr. Spruill had asked Pappy if it would be all right if Trot hung around the front yard all day. “The boy can’t take the heat,” Mr. Spruill said. Pappy didn’t care what happened to Trot. He wasn’t worth a nickel in the fields.

When the tractor stopped, we took our sacks and disappeared into the rows of cotton. Not a word from anyone. An hour later, the sun was baking us. I thought of Trot, wasting the day under the shade tree, napping when he felt like it, no doubt happy about the work he was missing. He might have been a little off in the
head, but right then he was the smartest of all the Spruills.

Time stopped when we were picking cotton. The days dragged on, each yielding ever so slowly to the next.

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Over supper on Thursday, Pappy announced, “We won’t be goin’ to town Saturday.”

I felt like crying. It was harsh enough to labor in the fields all week, but to do so without the reward of popcorn and a movie was downright cruel. What about my weekly Coca-Cola?

A long silence followed. My mother watched me carefully. She did not seem surprised, and I got the impression that the adults had already had this discussion. Now they were just going through the motions for my benefit.

I thought, What is there to lose? So I gritted my teeth and said, “Why not?”

“Because I said so,” Pappy fired back at me, and I knew I was in dangerous territory.

I looked at my mother. There was a curious grin on her face.

“You’re not scared of the Siscos, are you?” I asked, and I half-expected one of the men to make a grab for me.

There was a moment of deathly silence. My father cleared his throat and said, “It’s best if the Spruills stay out of town for a while. We’ve discussed it with Mr. Spruill, and we’ve agreed that we’ll all stay put Saturday. Even the Mexicans.”

“I ain’t afraid of nobody, son,” Pappy growled down the table. I refused to look at him. “And don’t sass me,” he threw in for good measure.

My mother’s grin was still firmly in place, and her eyes were twinkling. She was proud of me.

“I’ll need a couple of things from the store,” Gran said. “Some flour and sugar.”

“I’ll run in,” Pappy said. “I’m sure the Mexicans’ll need some things, too.”

Later, they moved to the front porch for our ritual of sitting, but I was too wounded to join them. I lay on the floor of Ricky’s room, in the darkness, listening to the Cardinals through the open window and trying to ignore the soft, slow talk of the adults. I tried to think of new ways to hate the Spruills, but I was soon overwhelmed by the sheer volume of their misdeeds. At some point in the early evening, I grew too still, and fell asleep on the floor.

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Lunch on Saturday was usually a happy time. The work week was over. We were going to town. If I could survive the Saturday scrubbing on the back porch, then life was indeed wonderful, if only for a few hours.

But on this Saturday there was no excitement. “We’ll work till four,” Pappy said, as if he was doing us a real favor. Big deal. We’d knock off an hour early. I wanted to ask him if we were going to work on Sunday, too, but I’d said enough on Thursday night. He was ignoring me and I was ignoring him. This type of pouting could go on for days.

So we went back to the fields instead of going to Black Oak. Even the Mexicans seemed irritated by this. When the trailer stopped, we took our sacks and slowly disappeared into the cotton. I picked a little and stalled a lot, and when things were safe, I found a spot and went down for a nap. They could banish me from town, they could force me into the fields, but they couldn’t make me work hard. I think there were a lot of naps that Saturday afternoon.

My mother found me, and we walked to the house, just the two of us. She was not feeling well, and she also knew the injustice that was being inflicted upon me. We gathered some vegetables from the garden, but only a few things. I suffered through and survived the dreaded bath. And when I was clean, I ventured into the front yard, where Trot was spending his days guarding Camp Spruill. We had no idea what he did all day; no one really cared. We were too busy and too tired to worry about Trot. I found him sitting behind the wheel of their truck, pretending he was driving, making a strange sound with his lips. He glanced at me and returned to his driving and sputtering.

When I heard the tractor coming, I went into the house, where I found my mother lying on her bed, something she never did during the day. There were voices around, tired voices in the front, where the Spruills were unwinding, and in the rear, where the Mexicans were dragging themselves to the barn. I hid in Ricky’s room for a while, a baseball in one hand, a glove on the other, and I thought of Dewayne and the Montgomery twins and the rest of my friends all sitting in the Dixie watching the Saturday feature and eating popcorn.

The door opened and Pappy appeared. “I’m goin’ to Pop and Pearl’s for a few things. You wanna go?”

I shook my head no, without looking at him.

“I’ll buy you a Coca-Cola,” he said.

“No thanks,” I said, still staring at the floor.

Eli Chandler wouldn’t beg for mercy in front of a firing squad, and he wasn’t about to plead with a seven-year-old. The door closed, and seconds later the truck engine started.

Wary of the front yard, I headed for the back. Near the silo, where the Spruills were supposed to be camping, there was a grassy area where baseball could be played. It wasn’t as long and wide as my field in the front, but it was open enough and ran to the edge of the cotton. I tossed pop flies as high as I could, and I stopped only after I’d caught ten in a row.

Miguel appeared from nowhere. He watched me for a minute, and under the pressure of an audience, I dropped three in a row. I tossed him the ball, gently, because he had no glove. He caught it effortlessly and snapped it back to me. I bobbled it, dropped it, kicked it, then grabbed it and threw it back to him, this time a little harder.

I had learned the previous year that a lot of Mexicans played baseball, and it was obvious that Miguel knew the game. His hands were quick and soft, his throws sharper than mine. We tossed the ball for a few minutes, then Rico and Pepe and Luis joined us.

“You have a bat?” Miguel asked.

“Sure,” I said, and ran to the house to get it.

When I returned, Roberto and Pablo had joined the others, and the group was flinging my baseball in all directions. “You bat,” Miguel said, and he took
charge. He put a piece of an old plank on the ground, ten feet in front of the silo, and said, “Home plate.” The others scattered throughout the infield. Pablo, in shallow center, was at the edge of the cotton. Rico squatted behind me, and I took my position on the right side of the plate. Miguel performed a fierce windup, scared me for a second, then tossed a soft one that I swung at mightily but missed.

I also missed the next three, then ripped a couple. The Mexicans cheered and laughed when I made contact, but said nothing when I didn’t. After a few minutes of batting practice, I gave the bat to Miguel and we swapped places. I started him with fastballs, and he didn’t appear to be intimidated. He hit line drives and hot grounders, some of which were fielded cleanly by the Mexicans, while others were simply retrieved. Most of them had played before, but a couple had never even thrown a baseball.

The other four at the barn heard the commotion and they wandered over. Cowboy was shirtless, and his pants were rolled up to his knees. He seemed to be a foot taller than the rest.

Luis hit next. He wasn’t as experienced as Miguel, and I had no trouble fooling him with my change-up. Much to my delight, I noticed Tally and Trot sitting under an elm, watching the fun.

Then my father strolled over.

The longer we played, the more animated the Mexicans became. They hollered and laughed at one another’s miscues. God only knew what they were saying about my pitching.

“Let’s play a game,” my father said. Bo and Dale had
arrived, also shirtless and shoeless. Miguel was consulted, and after a few minutes of plotting, it was decided that the Mexicans would play the Arkansans. Rico would catch for both teams, and again I was sent to the house, this time to fetch my father’s old catcher’s mitt and my other ball.

When I returned the second time, Hank had appeared and was ready to play. I was not happy about being on the same team with him, but I certainly couldn’t say anything. Nor was I certain where Trot would fit in. And Tally was a girl. What a disgrace: a girl for a teammate. Still, the Mexicans had us outnumbered.

Another round of plotting, and it was somehow determined that we would bat first. “You have little guys,” Miguel said with a smile. More planks were laid around as bases. My father and Miguel established the ground rules, which were quite creative for such a misshapen field. The Mexicans scattered around the bases, and we were ready to play.

To my surprise, Cowboy walked out to the mound and began warming up. He was lean but strong, and when he threw the ball, the muscles in his chest and shoulders bulged and creased. The sweat made his dark skin shine. “He’s good,” my father said softly. His windup was smooth, his delivery seamless, his release almost nonchalant, but the baseball shot from his fingers and popped into Rico’s mitt. He threw harder and harder. “He’s very good,” my father said, shaking his head. “That boy’s played a lot of baseball.”

“Girls first,” somebody said. Tally picked up the bat and walked to the plate. She was shoeless, and
wearing tight pants rolled up to her knees and a loose shirt with its tail tied in a knot. You could see her stomach. At first, she didn’t look at Cowboy, but he was certainly staring at her. He moved a few feet toward the plate and tossed the first pitch underhanded. She swung and missed, but it was an impressive swing, at least for a girl.

Then their eyes met briefly. Cowboy was rubbing the baseball, Tally was swinging the bat, nine Mexicans were chattering like locusts.

The second pitch was even slower, and Tally made contact. The ball rolled by Pepe at third, and we had our first base runner. “Bat, Luke,” my father said. I strolled to the plate with all the confidence of Stan Musial, hoping that Cowboy wouldn’t throw the hard stuff at me. He let Tally hit one, surely he’d do the same for me. I stood in the box, listening as thousands of rabid Cardinal fans chanted my name. A packed house, Harry Caray yelling into the microphone—then I looked at Cowboy thirty feet away, and my heart stopped. He wasn’t smiling, nothing close. He held the baseball with both hands and looked at me as if he could saw my head off with a fastball.

What would Musial do? Swing the damned bat!

The first pitch was also underhanded, so I started breathing again. It was high, and I didn’t swing, and the Mexican chorus had a lot to say about that. The second pitch was down the middle, and I swung for the fence, for the left-field wall, 350 feet away. I closed my eyes and swung for the thirty thousand lucky souls in Sportsman’s Park. I also swung for Tally.

“Strike one!” my father yelled, a little too loud, I thought. “You’re tryin’ to kill it, Luke,” he said.

Of course I was. I tried to kill the third pitch, too, and when Rico threw it back, I was faced with the horror of being down two strikes. A strikeout was unthinkable. Tally had just hit the ball nicely. She was on first base, anxious for me to put the ball in play so she could advance. We were playing on my field, with my ball and bat. All of those people were watching.