A Painted House (18 page)

Once there, he called on Woolbright to come out and settle things. Woolbright was just finishing dinner, and he may or may not have had a houseful of kids. Anyway, Woolbright walked to the screen door, looked out into his front yard, and decided things were safer inside.

Pappy yelled at him repeatedly to come on out. “Here’s your burlap sack, Woolbright!” he yelled. “Now come on out and finish the job.”

Woolbright retreated deeper into his house, and when it was evident he wasn’t coming out, Pappy
threw the wet burlap sack through the screen door. Then he walked three or five or ten miles back home and went to bed, without dinner.

I’d heard the story enough to believe it was true. Even my mother believed it. Eli Chandler had been a hot-tempered brawler in his younger days, and at the age of sixty he still had a short fuse.

But he wouldn’t kill anybody, unless it was in self-defense. And he preferred to use his fists or less menacing weapons like burlap sacks. The gun was traveling with us just in case. The Siscos were crazy people.

The gin was roaring when we arrived. A long line of trailers waited ahead of us, and I knew we’d be there for hours. It was dark when Pappy turned off the engine and tapped his fingers on the wheel. The Cardinals were playing, and I was anxious to get home.

Before getting out of the truck, Pappy surveyed the trailers and the trucks and tractors, and he watched the farmhands and gin workers go about their business. He was looking for trouble, and seeing none, he finally said, “I’ll go check in. You wait here.”

I watched him shuffle across the gravel and stop at a group of men outside the office. He stayed there awhile, talking and listening. Another group was congregated near a trailer in the line ahead of us, young men smoking and talking and waiting. Though the gin was the center of activity, things moved slowly.

I caught a glimpse of a figure as it appeared from somewhere behind our truck. “Howdy, Luke,” the voice said, giving me a start. When I jerked around, I saw the friendly face of Jackie Moon, an older boy from north of town.

“Hi, Jackie,” I said, very relieved. For a split second I thought one of the Siscos had started the ambush. He leaned on the front fender with his back to the gin, and produced a cigarette, one that he’d already rolled. “Y’all heard from Ricky?” he asked.

I watched the cigarette. “Not lately,” I said. “We got a letter a couple of weeks ago.”

“How’s he doin’?”

“Fine, I guess.”

He scraped a match on the side of our truck and lit the cigarette. He was tall and skinny and had been a basketball star at Monette High School for as long as I could remember. He and Ricky had played together, until Ricky got caught smoking behind the school. The coach, a veteran who’d lost a leg in the war, bounced Ricky from the team. Pappy had stomped around the Chandler farm for a week threatening to kill his younger son. Ricky told me privately that he was tired of basketball anyway. He wanted to play football, but Monette couldn’t have a team because of cotton picking.

“I might be goin’ over there,” Jackie said.

“To Korea?”

“Yep.”

I wanted to ask why he thought he was needed in Korea. As much as I hated picking cotton, I would much rather do it than get shot at. “What about basketball?” I asked. There was a rumor that Arkansas State was recruiting Jackie.

“I’m quittin’ school,” he said, and blew a cloud into the air.

“Why?”

“I’m tired of it. Been goin’ for twelve years already,
on and off. That’s more ’an anybody else in my family. I figure I’ve learned enough.”

Kids quit school all the time in our county. Ricky tried several times, and Pappy had become indifferent. Gran, on the other hand, laid down the law, and he finally graduated.

“Lot of boys gettin’ shot over there,” he said, staring into the distance.

That was not something I wanted to hear, so I said nothing. He finished his cigarette and thrust his hands deep into his pockets. “They’re tellin’ that you saw that Sisco fight,” he said, again without looking at me.

I figured that somehow the fight would get discussed during this trip to town. I remembered my father’s stern warning not to discuss the incident with anyone.

But I could trust Jackie. He and Ricky had grown up together.

“Lots of folks saw it,” I said.

“Yeah, but ain’t nobody talkin’. Hillbillies ain’t sayin’ a word ’cause it’s one of their own. Locals ain’t talkin’ ’cause Eli’s told everybody to shut up. That’s what they’re tellin’, anyway.”

I believed him. I didn’t doubt for a second that Eli Chandler had used the Baptist brethren to circle the wagons, at least until the cotton was in.

“What about the Siscos?” I asked.

“Ain’t nobody seen ’em. They’re layin’ low. Had the funeral last Friday. Siscos dug the grave themselves; buried him out behind the Bethel church. Stick’s watchin’ ’em real close.”

There was another long gap in the conversation as
the gin howled behind us. He rolled another cigarette, lit it, and finally said, “I saw you there, at the fight.”

I felt like I’d been caught committing a crime. All I could think to say was, “So.”

“I saw you with the little Pinter boy. And when that hillbilly picked up that piece of wood, I looked at the two of you and thought to myself, ‘Those boys don’t need to see this.’ And I was right.”

“I wish I hadn’t seen it.”

“I wish I hadn’t, either,” he said, and discharged a neat circle of smoke.

I looked toward the gin to make sure Pappy wasn’t close. He was still inside somewhere, in the small office where the gin owner kept the paperwork. Other trailers had arrived and were parked behind us. “Have you talked to Stick?” I asked.

“Nope. Don’t plan to. You?”

“Yeah, he came out to the house.”

“Did he talk to the hillbilly?”

“Yeah.”

“So Stick knows his name?”

“I guess.”

“Why didn’t he arrest him?”

“I’m not sure. I told him it was three against one.”

He grunted and spat into the weeds. “It was three against one all right, but nobody had to get killed. I don’t like the Siscos, nobody does, but he didn’t have to beat ’em like that.”

I didn’t say anything. He drew on the cigarette and began talking, the smoke pouring out of his mouth and nose.

“His face was blood-red and his eyes were glowin’,
and all ’a sudden he stopped and just looked down at ’em, as if a ghost grabbed him and made him quit. Then he backed away and straightened up, and looked at ’em again as if somebody else had done it. Then he walked away, back onto Main Street, and all the other Siscos and their people ran up and got the boys. They borrowed Roe Duncan’s pickup and hauled ’em home. Jerry never woke up. Roe hisself drove Jerry to the hospital in the middle of the night, but Roe said he was already dead. Fractured skull. Lucky the other two didn’t die. He beat ’em just as bad as he beat Jerry. Ain’t never seen nothin’ like it.”

“Me neither.”

“I’d skip the fights for a while if I was you. You’re too young.”

“Don’t worry.” I looked at the gin and saw Pappy. “Here comes Pappy,” I said.

He dropped the cigarette and stepped on it. “Don’t tell anybody what I said, all right?”

“Sure.”

“I don’t want to get involved with that hillbilly.”

“I won’t say a word.”

“Tell Ricky I said hello. Tell him to hold ’em off till I get there.”

“I will, Jackie.” He disappeared as quietly as he had come.

More secrets to keep.

Pappy unhitched the trailer and got behind the wheel. “We ain’t waitin’ three hours,” he mumbled, and started the engine. He drove away from the gin and left town. At some point late in the night, a gin worker would hitch a small tractor to our trailer and pull it
forward. The cotton would be sucked into the gin, and an hour later two perfect bales would emerge. They would be weighed, and then samples would be cut from each and set aside for the cotton buyer to evaluate. After breakfast, Pappy would return to the gin to get our trailer. He would examine the bales and the samples, and he would find something else to worry about.

⋅   ⋅   ⋅

The next day a letter arrived from Ricky. Gran had it lying on the kitchen table when we came through the back door, our feet dragging and our backs aching. I’d picked seventy-eight pounds of cotton that day, an all-time record for a seven-year-old, though records were impossible to monitor because so much lying went on. Especially among kids. Both Pappy and my father were now picking five hundred pounds every day.

Gran was humming and smiling, so we knew the letter had good news. She snatched it up and read it aloud to us. By then she had it memorized.

Dear Mom and Dad and Jesse and Kathleen and Luke:

I hope all is well at home. I never thought I’d miss the cotton picking, but I sure wish I was home right now. I miss everything—the farm, the fried chicken, the Cardinals. Can you believe the Dodgers will take the pennant? Makes me sick
.

Anyway, I’m doing fine over here. Things are quiet. We’re not on the front anymore. My unit is about five miles back, and we’re catching up on some sleep. We’re warm and rested and eating good, and right now nobody is shooting at us and we’re not shooting at anybody
.

I really think I’ll be home soon. It seems like things are slowing down a little. We hear some rumors about peace talks and such, so we’ve got our fingers crossed
.

I got your last batch of letters, and they mean a lot to me. So keep writing. Luke, your letter was a tad short, so write me a longer one
.

Gotta run. Love to all,
Ricky

We passed it around and read it again and again, then Gran placed it in a cigar box next to the radio. All of Ricky’s letters were there, and it was not uncommon to walk through the kitchen at night and catch Pappy or Gran rereading them.

The new letter made us forget about our stiff muscles and burned skin, and we all ate in a hurry so we could sit around the table and write to Ricky.

Using my Big Chief writing tablet and a pencil, I told him all about Jerry Sisco and Hank Spruill, and I spared no detail. Blood, splintered wood, Stick Powers, everything. I didn’t know how to spell a lot of the words, so I simply guessed. If anyone would forgive me for misspelling, it was Ricky. Since I didn’t want them to know that I was spreading gossip all the way to Korea, I covered my tablet as best I could.

Five letters were written at the same time, and I’m sure five versions of the same events were described to Ricky. The adults told funny stories as we wrote. It was a happy moment in the midst of the harvest. Pappy
turned on the radio, and we got the Cardinals as our letters grew longer and longer.

Sitting around the kitchen table, laughing and writing and listening to the game, there was not a single doubt that Ricky would soon be home.

He said he would be.

Chapter 15

Thursday afternoon, my mother found me in the fields and said that I was needed in the garden. I happily unstrapped my picking sack and left the other laborers lost in the cotton. We walked to the house, both of us relieved that the workday was over.

“We need to visit the Latchers,” she said along the way. “I worry about them so. They might be hungry, you know.”

The Latchers had a garden, though not much of one. I doubted if anyone was going hungry. They certainly didn’t have a crumb to spare, but starvation was unheard of in Craighead County. Even the poorest of the sharecroppers managed to grow tomatoes and cucumbers. Every farm family had a few chickens laying eggs.

But my mother was determined to see Libby so that the rumors could be confirmed or denied.

As we entered our garden, I realized what my mother was doing. If we hurried, and made it to the Latchers’ before quitting time, then the parents and all those kids would be in the fields. Libby, if she was in fact pregnant, would be hanging around the house, most likely alone. She would have no choice but to come out and accept our vegetables. We could
blindside her, nail her with Christian goodness while her protectors were away. It was a brilliant plan.

Under the strict supervision of my mother, I began picking tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, butter beans, corn—almost everything in the garden. “Get that small red tomato there, Luke, to your right,” she said. “No, no, those peas can wait.” And, “No, that cucumber isn’t quite ready.”

Though she often gathered the produce herself, she preferred to oversee matters. A balance to the garden could be maintained if she could keep her distance, survey the entire plot, and with the eye of an artist, direct my efforts, or my father’s, in removing the food from the vines.

I hated the garden, but at that moment I hated the fields even more. Anything was better than picking cotton.

As I reached for an ear of corn, I saw something between the stalks that stopped me cold. Beyond the garden was a small, shaded strip of grass, too narrow to play catch on, and thus good for nothing. Next to it was the east wall of our house, the side away from any traffic. On the west side was the kitchen door, the parking place for our truck, the footpaths that led to the barn, the outbuildings, and the fields. Everything happened on the west side; nothing on the east.

At the corner, facing the garden and out of view of everyone, someone had painted a portion of the bottom board. Painted it white. The rest of the house was the same pale brown it had always been, the same drab color of old, sturdy oak planks.

“What is it, Luke?” my mother asked. She was never
in a hurry in the garden, because it was her sanctuary, but today she was planning an ambush, and time was crucial.

“I don’t know,” I said, still frozen.

She stepped beside me and peered through the cornstalks that bordered and secluded her garden, and when her eyes settled upon the painted board, she, too, stood still.

The paint was thick at the corner, but thinned as the board ran toward the rear of the house. It was obviously a work in progress. Someone was painting our house.