A Painted House (27 page)

During a late lunch Pappy said, “I reckon I better go check on the gin.” We were anxious to get to town. What if it had been leveled by the twister?

“I’d like to see the church,” Gran said.

“Me, too,” I said.

“Why do you wanna see the church?” my father asked.

“To see if the twister got it.”

“Let’s go,” Pappy said, and we jumped from our chairs. The dishes were piled into the sink and left unwashed, something I’d never seen before.

Our road was nothing but mud, and in places large sections had been washed away. We slipped and slid for a quarter of a mile until we came to a crater. Pappy rammed it in low and tried to plow through the ditch on the left side, next to the Jeters’ cotton. The truck stopped and settled, and we were hopelessly stuck. My father hiked back to the house to get the John Deere while we waited. As usual, I was in the back of the truck, and so I had plenty of room to move around. My mother was packed in the front with Pappy and
Gran. I think it was Gran who said something to the effect that perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to go to town after all. Pappy just stewed.

When my father returned, he hooked a twenty-foot log chain to the front bumper and slowly pulled us out of the ditch. The men had decided it was best for the tractor to drag us all the way to the bridge. When we got there, Pappy unhitched the chain, and my father rode over on the tractor. Then we crossed in the truck. The road on the other side was even worse, according to the men, so they rehitched the chain, and the tractor pulled the truck for two miles until we came to a gravel road. We left the John Deere there and headed for town, if, in fact, it was still there. God only knew what carnage awaited us. I could barely conceal my excitement.

We finally made it to the highway, and when we turned toward Black Oak, we left a long trail of mud on the asphalt. Why couldn’t all roads be paved? I asked myself.

Things appeared normal as we drove along. No flattened trees or crops, no debris slung for miles, no gaping holes through the landscape. All the houses seemed to be in order. The fields were empty because the cotton was wet, but other than that, life had not been disturbed.

Standing in the back of the truck, looking over the cab with my father, I strained my eyes for the first glimpse of town. It arrived soon enough. The gin was roaring as usual. God had protected the church. The stores along Main Street were intact. “Thank God,” my father said. I was not unhappy to see the buildings untouched, but things could’ve been more interesting.

We weren’t the only curious ones. Traffic was heavy on Main Street, and people crowded the sidewalks. This was unheard of for a Monday. We parked at the church, and once we determined that it had not been hit, I scampered down to Pop and Pearl’s, where the foot traffic appeared to be particularly thick. Mr. Red Fletcher had a group going, and I got there just in time.

According to Mr. Red, who lived west of town, he had known a twister was about to appear because his old beagle was hiding under the kitchen table, a most ominous sign. Taking his cue from his dog, Mr. Red began studying the sky, and before long was not surprised to see it turn black. He heard the twister before he saw it. It dipped down from nowhere, came straight for his farm, and stayed on the ground long enough to flatten two chicken coops and peel the roof off his house. A piece of glass struck his wife and drew blood, so we had a bona-fide casualty. Behind me I heard folks whisper excitedly about driving out to the Fletcher place to inspect the destruction.

“What’d it look like?” somebody asked.

“Black as coal,” Mr. Red said. “Sounded like a freight train.”

This was even more exciting because our twisters had been a light gray in color, almost white. His had been black. Apparently, all manner of tornadoes had ravaged our county.

Mrs. Fletcher appeared at his side, her arm heavily bandaged and in a sling, and we couldn’t help but stare. She looked as though she might just pass out on the sidewalk. She displayed her wound and received plenty of attention until Mr. Red realized he’d lost the
audience, so he stepped forward and resumed his narrative. He said his tornado left the ground and began hopping about. He jumped in his truck and tried to follow it. He gave it a good chase through a driving hailstorm and almost caught up with it as it circled back.

Mr. Red’s truck was older than Pappy’s. Some of those in the crowd began looking around in disbelief. I wanted one of the adults to ask, “What were you gonna do if you caught it, Red?” Anyway, he said he soon gave up the chase and returned home to see about Mrs. Fletcher. When he had seen it last, his tornado was headed straight for town.

Pappy told me later that Mr. Red Fletcher would tell a lie when the truth sounded better.

There was a lot of lying that afternoon in Black Oak, or perhaps just a lot of exaggerating. Twister stories were told and retold from one end of Main Street to the other. In front of the Co-op, Pappy described what we’d seen, and for the most part he stuck to the facts. The double-twister story carried the moment and had everyone’s attention until Mr. Dutch Lamb stepped forward and claimed to have seen three! His wife verified it, and Pappy went to the truck.

By the time we left town, it was a miracle that hundreds hadn’t been killed.

The last of the clouds were gone by dark, but the heat did not return. We sat on the porch after supper and waited for the Cardinals. The air was clear and light—the first hint of autumn.

Six games were left, three against the Reds and three against the Cubs, all to be played at home at Sportsman’s Park, but with the Dodgers seven games
in first place, the season was over. Stan the Man Musial was leading the league in batting and slugging, and he also had more hits and doubles than anybody else. The Cardinals would not win the pennant, but we still had the greatest player in the game. At home after a road trip to Chicago, the boys were happy to be back in St. Louis, according to Harry Caray, who often passed along greetings and gossip as if all the players lived in his house.

Musial hit a single and a triple, and the score was tied at three after nine innings. It was late, but we weren’t tired. The storm had chased us from the fields, and the cool weather was something to be savored. The Spruills were sitting around a fire, talking softly and enjoying a moment without Hank. He often disappeared after supper.

In the bottom of the tenth, Red Schoendienst singled, and when Stan Musial came to the plate, the fans went wild, according to Harry Caray, who, as Pappy said, often watched one game and described another. The attendance was fewer than ten thousand; we could tell the crowd was slim. But Harry was making enough noise for the other twenty thousand. After 148 games, he was just as excited as he’d been on opening day. Musial ripped a double, his third hit of the game, scoring Schoendienst and winning it four to three.

A month earlier we would have celebrated, along with Harry, on the front porch. I would have sprinted around the bases in the yard, sliding into second, just like Stan the Man. Such a dramatic victory would have sent us all to bed happy, though Pappy would still want to fire the manager.

But things were different now. The win meant little;

the season was ending with the Cardinals in third place. The front yard had been overwhelmed by the Spruills. Summer was gone.

Pappy turned off the radio with Harry winding down. “There’s no way Baumholtz can catch him,” Pappy said. Frankie Baumholtz of the Cubs was six points behind Musial in the race for the hitting title.

My father grunted his agreement. The men had been quieter than usual during the game. The storms and cool weather had struck them like an illness. The seasons were changing, yet nearly one third of the cotton was still out there. We’d had near perfect weather for seven months; surely it was time for a change.

Chapter 21

Autumn lasted less than twenty-four hours. By noon the next day the heat was back, the cotton was dry, the ground was hard, and all those pleasant thoughts about cool days and blowing leaves were forgotten. We had returned to the edge of the river for the second picking. A third one might materialize later in the fall, a “Christmas picking,” as it was known, in which the last remnants of cotton were gathered. By then the hill people and the Mexicans would be long gone.

I stayed close to Tally for most of the day and worked hard to keep up with her. She had become aloof for some reason, and I was desperate to learn why. The Spruills were a tense bunch, no more singing or laughing in the fields, very few words spoken among them. Hank came to work mid-morning and began picking at a leisurely pace. The rest of the Spruills seemed to avoid him.

Late in the afternoon I dragged myself back to the trailer—for the final time, I hoped. It was an hour before quitting time, and I was looking for my mother. Instead I saw Hank with Bo and Dale at the opposite end of the trailer, waiting in the shade for either Pappy or my father to weigh their cotton. I ducked low in the stalks so they wouldn’t see me and waited for friendlier voices.

Hank was talking loudly, as usual. “I’m tired of pickin’ cotton,” he said. “Damned tired of it! So I been thinkin’ about a new job, and I done figured a new way to make money. Lots of it. I’m gonna follow that carnival around, go from town to town, sorta hide in the shadows while ol’ Samson and his woman rake in the cash. I’ll wait till the money piles up; I’ll watch him fling them little sodbusters outta the ring, and then late at night, when he’s good and tired, I’ll jump up outta nowhere, lay down fifty bucks, whip his ass again, and walk away with all his money. If I do it once a week, that’s two thousand dollars a month, twenty-four thousand bucks a year. All cash. Hell, I’ll get rich.”

There was mischief in his voice, and Bo and Dale were laughing by the time he finished. Even I had to admit it was funny.

“What if Samson gets tired of it?” Bo asked.

“Are you kiddin’? He’s the world’s greatest wrestler, straight from Egypt. Samson fears no man. Hell, I might take his woman, too. She looked pretty good, didn’t she?”

“You’ll have to let him win every now and then,” Bo said. “Otherwise he won’t fight you.”

“I like the part about takin’ his woman,” Dale said. “I really liked her legs.”

“Rest of her wasn’t bad,” Hank said. “Wait—I got it! I’ll run ’im off and become the new Samson! I’ll grow my hair down to my ass, dye it black, get me some little leopard-skin shorts, talk real funny, and these ignorant rednecks ’round here’ll think I’m from Egypt, too. Delilah won’t be able to keep her hands off me.”

They laughed hard and long, and their amusement was contagious. I chuckled to myself at the notion of
Hank strutting around the ring in tight shorts, trying to convince people he was from Egypt. But he was too stupid to be a showman. He would hurt people and scare away his challengers.

Pappy arrived at the trailer and started weighing the cotton. My mother drifted in, too, and whispered to me that she was ready to go to the house. So was I. We made the long walk together, in silence, both happy that the day was almost over.

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The house painting had resumed. We noticed it from the garden, and upon closer inspection saw where our painter—Trot, we still presumed—had worked his way up to the fifth board from the bottom and had applied the first coat to an area about the size of a small window. My mother touched it gently; the paint stuck to her finger.

“It’s fresh,” she said, glancing toward the front yard, where, as usual, there was no sign of Trot.

“You still think it’s him?” I asked.

“Yes, I do.”

“Where does he get the paint?”

“Tally buys it for him, out of her pickin’ money.”

“Who told you?”

“I asked Mrs. Foley at the hardware store. She said a crippled boy from the hills and his sister bought two quarts of white enamel house paint and a small brush. She thought it was strange—hill people buyin’ house paint.”

“How much will two quarts paint?”

“Not very much.”

“You gonna tell Pappy?”

“I am.”

We made a quick pass through the garden, gathering just the essentials—tomatoes, cucumbers, and two red peppers that caught her eye. The rest of the picking crew would be in from the fields in a short while, and I was anxious for the fireworks to start once Pappy learned that his house was getting painted.

In a few minutes, there were whispers and brief conversations outside. I was forced to slice cucumbers in the kitchen, a tactic to keep me away from the controversy. Gran listened to the news on the radio while my mother cooked. At some point, my father and Pappy walked to the east side of the house and inspected Trot’s work in progress.

Then they came to the kitchen, where we sat and blessed the food and began eating without a word about anything but the weather. If Pappy was angry about the house painting, he certainly didn’t show it. Maybe he was just too tired.

The next day my mother kept me behind and puttered around the house for as long as she could. She did the breakfast dishes and some laundry, and together we watched the front yard. Gran left and headed for the cotton, but my mother and I stayed back, doing chores and keeping busy.

Trot was not to be seen. He’d vanished from the front yard. Hank stumbled from a tent around eight and knocked over cans and jugs until he found the leftover biscuits. He ate until there was nothing left, then he belched and looked at our house as if he might raid it for food. Eventually he lumbered past the silo on his way to the cotton trailer.

We waited, peeking through the front windows. Still no sign of Trot. We finally gave up and walked to the fields. When my mother returned three hours later to prepare lunch, there was a small area of fresh paint on some boards under the window of my room. Trot was painting slowly toward the rear of the house, his work limited by his reach and by his desire for privacy. At the current rate of progress, he’d finish about half the east side before it was time for the Spruills to pack up and head for the hills.

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