A Painted House (26 page)

When the house was out of sight, someone other than the driver would say, “What was the hurry?”

And someone standing in the front yard, still waving, would say, “Wonder why they had to rush off?”

When we made it to the car, Stacy whispered something to Jimmy Dale. He then turned to my mother and said softly, “She needs to go to the bathroom.”

My mother looked worried. We didn’t have bathrooms. You relieved yourself in the outhouse, a small wooden closet sitting on a deep hole, hidden out behind the toolshed, halfway between the back porch and the barn.

“Come with me,” my mother said to her, and they left. Jimmy Dale suddenly remembered another story,
one about a local boy who went to Flint and got arrested for public drunkenness outside a bar. I eased away and walked through the house. Then I sneaked off the back porch and ran between two chicken coops to a point where I could see my mother leading Stacy to the outhouse. She stopped and looked at it and seemed very reluctant to enter. But she had no choice.

My mother left her and retreated to the front yard.

I struck quickly. As soon as my mother was out of range, I knocked on the door of the outhouse. I heard a faint shriek, then a desperate, “Who is it?”

“Miss Stacy, it’s me, Luke.”

“I’m in here!” she said, her usually clear words now hurried and muffled in the stifling humidity of the outhouse. It was dark in there, the only light coming from the tiny cracks between the planks.

“Don’t come out right now!” I said with as much panic as I could fake.

“What?”

“There’s a big black snake out here!”

“Oh my God!” she gasped. She would’ve fainted again, but she was already sitting down.

“Be quiet!” I said. “Otherwise, he’ll know you’re in there.”

“Holy Jesus!” she said, her voice breaking. “Do something!”

“I can’t. He’s big, and he bites.”

“What does he want?” she begged, as if she were on the verge of tears.

“I don’t know. He’s a shitsnake, he hangs around here all the time.”

“Get Jimmy Dale!”

“Okay, but don’t come out. He’s right by the door. I think he knows you’re in there.”

“Oh my God,” she said again, and started crying. I ducked back between the chicken coops, then looped around the garden on the east side of the house. I moved slowly and quietly along the hedges that were our property line until I came to a point in a thicket where I could hide and watch the front yard. Jimmy Dale was leaning on his car, telling a story, waiting for his young bride to finish her business.

Time dragged on. My parents and Pappy and Gran listened and chuckled as one story led to another. Occasionally one of them would glance toward the backyard.

My mother finally became concerned and left the group to check on Stacy. A minute later there were voices, and Jimmy Dale bolted toward the outhouse. I buried myself deeper in the thicket.

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It was almost dark when I entered the house. I’d been watching from a distance, from beyond the silo, and I knew my mother and Gran were preparing supper. I was in enough trouble—being late for a meal would have only compounded the situation.

They were seated, and Pappy was about to bless the food when I walked through the door from the back porch and quietly took my seat. They looked at me, but I chose instead to stare at my plate. Pappy said a quick prayer, and the food was passed around. After a silence sufficiently long enough to build tension, my father said, “Where you been, Luke?”

“Down by the creek,” I said.

“Doin’ what?”

“Nothin’. Just lookin’ around.”

This sounded suspicious enough, but they let it pass. When all was quiet, Pappy, with perfect timing and with the devil in his voice, said, “You see any shitsnakes at the creek?”

He barely got the words out before he cracked up.

I looked around the table. Gran’s jaws were clenched as if she were determined not to smile. My mother covered her mouth with her napkin, but her eyes betrayed her; she wanted to laugh, too. My father had a large bite of something in his mouth, and he managed to chew it while keeping a straight face.

But Pappy was determined to howl. He roared at the end of the table while the rest of them fought to maintain their composure. “That was a good one, Luke!” he managed to say while catching his breath. “Served her right.”

I finally laughed, too, but not at my own actions. The sight of Pappy laughing so hard while the other three so gamely tried not to struck me as funny.

“That’s enough, Eli,” Gran said, finally moving her jaws.

I took a large bite of peas and stared at my plate. Things grew quiet again, and we ate for a while with nothing said.

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After dinner, my father took me for a walk to the toolshed. On its door he kept a wooden hickory stick, one that he’d cut himself and polished to a shine. It was reserved for me.

I’d been taught to take my punishment like a man.
Crying was forbidden, at least openly. In these awful moments, Ricky always inspired me. I’d heard horror stories of the beatings Pappy had given him, and never, according to his parents and mine, had he been brought to tears. When Ricky was a kid, a whipping was a challenge.

“That was a mean thing you did to Stacy,” my father began. “She was a guest on our farm, and she’s married to your cousin.”

“Yes sir.”

“Why’d you do it?”

“ ’Cause she said we were stupid and backward.” A little embellishment here wouldn’t hurt.

“She did?”

“Yes sir. I didn’t like her, neither did you or anybody else.”

“That may be true, but you still have to respect your elders. How many licks you think that’s worth?” The crime and the punishment were always discussed beforehand. When I bent over, I knew exactly how many licks I’d receive.

“One,” I said. That was my usual assessment.

“I think two,” he said. “Now what about the bad language?”

“I don’t think it was that bad,” I said.

“You used a word that was unacceptable.”

“Yes sir.”

“How many licks for that?”

“One.”

“Can we agree on three, total?” he asked. He never whipped me when he was angry, so there was usually a little room for negotiation. Three sounded fair, but I
always pushed a little. After all, I was on the receiving end. Why not haggle?

“Two’s more fair,” I said.

“It’s three. Now bend over.”

I swallowed hard, gritted my teeth, turned around, bent over, and grabbed my ankles. He smacked my rear three times with the hickory stick. It stung like hell, but his heart wasn’t in it. I’d received far worse.

“Go to bed, right now,” he said, and I ran to the house.

Chapter 20

Now that Hank had $250 of Samson’s money in his pocket, he was even less enthusiastic about picking cotton. “Where’s Hank?” Pappy asked Mr. Spruill as we took the sacks and began our work on Monday morning. “Sleepin’, I reckon” was the abrupt response, and nothing else was said at that moment.

He arrived in the fields sometime in the middle of the morning. I didn’t know exactly when because I was at the far end of a row of cotton, but soon I heard voices and knew that the Spruills were once again at war.

An hour or so before lunch, the sky began to darken, and a slight breeze came from the west. When the sun disappeared, I stopped picking and studied the clouds. A hundred yards away I saw Pappy do the same thing—hands on hips, straw hat cocked to one side, face frowning upward. The wind grew stronger and the sky darker, and before long the heat was gone. All of our storms came from Jonesboro, which was known as Tornado Alley.

Hail hit first, hard tiny specks the size of pea gravel, and I headed for the tractor. The sky to the southwest was dark blue, almost black, and the low clouds were bearing down on us. The Spruills were moving quickly
down their rows, all heading for the trailer. The Mexicans were running toward the barn.

I began to run, too. The hail stung the back of my neck and prompted me to run even faster. The wind was howling through the trees along the river and pushing the cotton stalks to their sides. Lightning cracked somewhere behind me, and I heard one of the Spruills, Bo, probably, give a yell.

“We don’t need to get near the cotton trailer,” Pappy was saying as I arrived. “Not with that lightnin’.”

“Better get to the house,” my father said.

We loaded onto the flatbed trailer, all of us scrambling in a great hurry, and just as Pappy turned the tractor around, the rain hit with a fury. It was cold and sharp and falling sideways in the fierce wind. We were instantly soaked; I wouldn’t have been wetter if I’d jumped in the creek.

The Spruills huddled together with Tally in the center. Just a few feet away, my father clutched me to his chest, as if the wind might take me away. My mother and Gran had left the fields not long before the storm hit.

The rain beat us in waves. It was so thick I could barely see the rows of cotton just a few feet in front of me. “Hurry up, Pappy!” I kept saying. The storm was so loud I couldn’t hear the familiar knock of the tractor engine. Lightning cracked again, this time much closer, so close that my ears hurt. I thought we were going to die.

It took forever to get to the house, but when we did, the rain suddenly stopped. The sky was even darker, black in every direction. “It’s a funnel!” Mr.
Spruill said loudly as we were just getting off the trailer. To the west, far beyond the river and high above the tree line, a slim funnel cloud dipped downward. It was light gray, almost white against the black sky, and it grew larger and louder as it made its way very slowly toward the ground. It was several miles away, and because of the distance it didn’t seem too dangerous.

Tornadoes were common in our part of Arkansas, and I’d heard stories about them all of my life. Decades earlier Gran’s father had supposedly survived a horrible twister, one that had run in circles and struck the same small farm more than once. It was a tall tale, one that Gran told without much conviction. Twisters were a way of life, but I’d not seen one until now.

“Kathleen!” my father yelled toward the house. He didn’t want my mother to miss such a spectacle. I glanced at the barn, where the Mexicans were as still and as amazed as we were. A couple of them were pointing.

We watched the funnel in muted fascination, without fear or terror, because it was nowhere near our farm and going away, to the north and east. It moved slowly, as if it were searching for the perfect place to touch down. Its tail was clearly visible above the horizon, way above the land, and it skipped along in midair, dancing at times while it decided where and when to strike. The bulk of the funnel spun tightly, a perfect upside-down cone whirling in a fierce spiral.

The screen door slammed behind us. My mother and Gran were on the steps, both of them wiping their hands with dish towels.

“It’s headed for town,” Pappy said with great
authority, as if he could predict where tornadoes would hit.

“I think so,” my father added, suddenly another expert weatherman.

The twister’s tail sank lower and stopped skipping. It appeared as if it had indeed touched down somewhere far away, because we could no longer see the end of it.

The church, the gin, the movie theater, Pop and Pearl’s grocery—I was tallying the damage when suddenly the twister lifted itself up and seemed to disappear completely.

There was another roar behind us. Across the road, deep into the Jeter property, another tornado had arrived. It had crept up on us while we were watching the first one. It was a mile or two away and seemed headed straight for our house. We watched in horror, unable to move for a second or two.

“Let’s get in the barn!” Pappy shouted. Some of the Spruills were already running toward their camp, as if they’d be safe inside a tent.

“Over here!” Mr. Spruill shouted and pointed to the barn. Suddenly everyone was yelling and pointing and scurrying about. My father grabbed my hand, and we began running. The ground was shaking and the wind was screaming. The Mexicans were scattering in all directions; some thought it best to hide in the fields, others were headed toward our house until they saw us running to the barn. Hank flew past me with Trot on his back. Tally outran us, too.

Before we made it to the barn, the twister left the ground and rose quickly into the sky. Pappy stopped and watched, and then so did everybody else. The funnel
went slightly to the east of our farm, and instead of a frontal assault, it left behind only a sprinkling of thick brown rainwater and specks of mud. We watched it jump along in midair, looking for another site to drop down in, just like the first one.

For a few minutes we were too stunned and too frightened to say much.

I studied the clouds in all directions, determined not to be blindsided again. I wasn’t the only one cutting my eyes around.

Then it started raining once more, and we went to the house.

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The storm raged for two hours and threw almost everything in nature’s arsenal at us: gale-force winds and blinding rains, twisters, hail, and lightning so quick and so close that we hid under our beds at times. The Spruills took refuge in our living room, while we cowered throughout the rest of the house. My mother kept me close. She was deathly afraid of storms and that made the entire ordeal even worse.

I wasn’t exactly sure how we would die—blown away by the wind or seared by a lightning bolt or swept away by the water—but it was obvious to me that the end had come. My father slept through most of it, though, and his indifference was a great comfort. He’d lived in foxholes and been shot at by the Germans, so nothing frightened him. The three of us lay on the floor of their bedroom—my father snoring, my mother praying, and me in the middle listening to the sounds of the storm. I thought of Noah and his forty
days of rain, and I waited for our little house to simply lift up and begin floating.

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When the rain and wind finally passed, we went outside to survey the destruction. Other than wet cotton, there was surprisingly little damage—several scattered tree branches, the usual washed-out gullies, and some ripped-up tomato plants in the garden. The cotton would be dry by the next morning, and we’d be back in business.