A Painted House (28 page)

After three days of peace and hard work, it was time for more conflict. Miguel met Pappy at the tractor after breakfast, and they walked in the direction of the barn, where some of the other Mexicans were waiting. In the semidarkness of the dawn I tagged along, just close enough to hear but not get noticed. Luis was sitting on a stump, his head low as if he were sick. Pappy examined him closely. He had suffered some type of injury.

The story, as Miguel explained it in rapid, broken English, was that during the night someone had thrown clods of dirt at the barn. The first one landed against the side of the hayloft just after the Mexicans had bedded down. It sounded like a gunshot—planks rattled, and the whole barn seemed to shake. A few minutes passed, and then another one landed. Then another. About ten minutes went by, and they thought perhaps it was over, but yet another one hit, this one on the tin roof just above their heads. They were angry and scared, and sleep became impossible. Through the
cracks in the wall, they watched the cotton field behind the barn. Their tormentor was out there somewhere, deep in the cotton, invisible in the blackness of the night, hiding like a coward.

Luis had slowly opened the loft door for a better look, and when he did a missile landed squarely in his face. It was a rock from the road in front of our house. Whoever threw it had saved it for such an occasion, a direct shot at one of the Mexicans. Dirt clods were fine for making noise, but the rock was used to maim.

Luis’s nose was cut, broken, and swollen to twice its normal size. Pappy yelled for my father to fetch Gran.

Miguel continued the story. Once they tended to Luis and got him somewhat comfortable, the shelling resumed. Every ten minutes or so, just as they were settling down again, another volley would crash in from the darkness. They watched carefully through the cracks but saw no movements in the field. It was just too dark to see anything. Finally their assailant grew tired of his fun and games and stopped the assault. For most of them, sleep had been fitful.

Gran arrived and took over. Pappy stomped away, cursing under his breath. I was torn between the two dramas: Did I want to watch Gran doctor on Luis, or did I want to listen as Pappy blew off steam?

I followed Pappy back to the tractor, where he growled at my father in words I could not understand. Then he charged the flatbed trailer where the Spruills were waiting, still half-asleep.

“Where’s Hank?” he snarled at Mr. Spruill.

“Sleepin’, I reckon.”

“Is he gonna work today?” Pappy’s words were sharp.

“Go ask him,” Mr. Spruill said, getting to his feet to address Pappy face-to-face.

Pappy took a step closer. “The Mexicans couldn’t sleep last night ’cause somebody’s throwin’ dirt clods against the barn. Any idea who it was?”

My father, with a much cooler head, stepped between the two.

“Nope. You accusin’ somebody?” Mr. Spruill asked.

“I don’t know,” Pappy said. “Ever’body else’s workin’ hard, sleepin’ hard, dead tired at night. Ever’body but Hank. Seems to me, he’s the only one with plenty of time on his hands. And it’s the sorta stupid thing Hank would do.”

I didn’t like this open conflict with the Spruills. They were as tired of Hank as we were, but they were still his family. And they were hill people, too—make them mad and they’d simply leave. Pappy was on the verge of saying too much.

“I’ll speak to him,” Mr. Spruill said, somewhat softer, as if he knew Hank was the likely culprit. His chin dropped an inch or two, and he looked at Mrs. Spruill. The family was in turmoil because of Hank, and they were not ready to defend him.

“Let’s get to work,” my father said. They were anxious for the confrontation to end. I glanced at Tally, but she was looking away, lost in her thoughts, ignoring me and everybody else. Pappy climbed onto the tractor, and we left to pick cotton.

Luis lay on the back porch all morning with an ice pack on his face. Gran buzzed around and tried repeatedly
to force her remedies upon him, but Luis held firm. By noon he’d had enough of this American style of doctoring and was anxious to return to the fields, broken nose or not.

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Hank’s cotton production had fallen from about four hundred pounds a day to less than two hundred. Pappy was livid about this. As the days dragged on, the situation festered, and there were more whispers among the adults. Pappy had never owned $250 free and clear.

“How much did he pick today?” he asked my father over supper. We had just finished the blessing and were passing around the food.

“Hundred and ninety pounds.”

My mother closed her eyes in frustration. Supper was supposed to be a pleasant time for families to visit and reflect. She hated controversy during our meals. Idle gossip—chitchat about the goings-on of people we knew or perhaps didn’t know—was okay, but she didn’t like conflict. Food was not properly digested unless your body was relaxed.

“I’ve a good mind to drive to town tomorrow, find Stick Powers, and tell him I’m finished with the boy,” Pappy said, waving a fork at the air.

There was no way he would do this, and we knew it. He knew it, too. If Stick somehow managed to get Hank Spruill handcuffed and shoved into the back of his patrol car, which was a showdown I would’ve loved to witness, the rest of the Spruills would be packed and
gone in a matter of minutes. Pappy wasn’t about to risk a crop over an idiot like Hank. We’d grit our teeth and just try to survive his presence on our farm. We’d hope and pray he wouldn’t kill anyone else and that no one killed him, and in a few short weeks the harvest would be completed, and he’d be gone.

“You’re not sure it’s him,” Gran said. “No one saw him throwin’ at the barn.”

“Some things you ain’t gotta see,” Pappy fired back. “We ain’t seen Trot with a paintbrush, but we’re perfectly happy to believe he’s doin’ the paintin’. Right?”

My mother, with perfect timing, said, “Luke, who are the Cardinals playin’?” It was her standard line, a not-too-subtle way of letting the others know that she wanted to eat in peace.

“The Cubs,” I said.

“How many more games?” she asked.

“Just three.”

“How far ahead is Musial?”

“Six points. He’s at three-thirty-six. Baumholtz is at three-thirty. He can’t catch him.”

At this point my father was always expected to come to the aid of his wife and keep the conversation away from heavier matters. He cleared his throat and said, “I bumped into Lou Jeffcoat last Saturday—I forgot to tell you. He said the Methodists have a new pitcher for Sunday’s game.”

Pappy had cooled off enough to say, “He’s lyin’. That’s what they say every year.”

“Why would they need a new pitcher?” Gran asked with a faint smile, and I thought my mother was going to laugh.

Sunday was the Fall Picnic, a glorious event that engulfed Black Oak. After worship, usually a very long worship, at least for us Baptists, we would meet at the school, where the Methodists would be gathering. Under the shade trees the ladies would set up enough food to feed the entire state, and after a long lunch the men would play a baseball game.

It was no ordinary game, because bragging rights were at stake. The winners ribbed the losers for an entire year. In the dead of winter I had heard men at the Tea Shoppe ride each other about The Game.

The Methodists had won it for the last four years, yet they always started rumors about having a new pitcher.

“Who’s pitchin’ for us?” my father asked. Pappy coached the Baptist team every year, though after four straight losses, folks were beginning to grumble.

“Ridley, I guess,” Pappy said without hesitation. He’d been thinking about the game for a year.

“I can hit Ridley!” I said.

“You got a better idea?” Pappy shot at me.

“Yes sir.”

“Well, I can’t wait to hear it.”

“Pitch Cowboy,” I said, and everybody smiled. What a wonderful idea.

But the Mexicans couldn’t play in The Game, nor could the hill people. Each roster was made up of certified church members only—no farm laborers, no relatives from Jonesboro, no ringers of any variety. There were so many rules that if they’d been put down in writing, the rule book would’ve been thicker than the Bible. The umpires were brought in from Monette and were paid five dollars a game plus all the lunch they
could eat. Supposedly, no one knew the umpires, but after last year’s loss there were rumors, at least around our church, that they were either Methodists or married to Methodists.

“That would be nice, wouldn’t it?” my father said, dreaming of Cowboy mowing down our rivals. One strikeout after another. Curveballs dropping in from all directions.

With the conversation back in pleasant territory, the women took over. Baseball was pushed aside as they talked about the picnic, the food, what the Methodist women would be wearing, and so on. Supper came to the usual quiet close, and we headed for the porch.

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I had decided that I would write Ricky a letter and tell him about Libby Latcher. I was certain that none of the adults would do so; they were too busy burying the secret. But Ricky needed to know what Libby had accused him of. He needed to respond in some way. If he knew what was happening, then maybe he could get himself sent home to deal with the situation. And the sooner the better. The Latchers were staying to themselves, telling no one, as far as we knew, but secrets were hard to keep around Black Oak.

Before Ricky left for Korea, he’d told us the story of a friend of his, a guy from Texas he’d met in boot camp. This guy was only eighteen, but he was already married, and his wife was pregnant. The army sent him to California to shuffle papers for a few months so he wouldn’t get shot. It was a hardship case of some
variety, and the guy would be back in Texas before his wife gave birth.

Ricky now had a hardship; he just didn’t know it. I would be the one to tell him. I excused myself from the porch under the pretense of fatigue and went to Ricky’s room, where I kept my Big Chief writing tablet. I took it to the kitchen table—the light was better there—and began writing slowly in large printed letters.

I dwelt briefly on baseball, the pennant race, then the carnival and Samson, and I wrote a couple of sentences about the twisters earlier in the week. I had neither the time nor the stomach to talk about Hank, so I got to the meat of the story. I told him that Libby Latcher had had a baby, though I did not confess that I had actually been nearby when the thing arrived.

My mother wandered in from the porch and asked what I was doing. “Writin’ Ricky,” I said.

“How nice,” she said. “You need to go to bed.”

“Yes ma’am.” I had written a full page and was quite proud of myself. Tomorrow I would write another page. Then maybe another. I was determined that it would be the longest letter Ricky had so far received.

Chapter 22

I was nearing the end of a long row of cotton, close to the thicket that bordered Siler’s Creek, when I heard voices. The stalks were especially tall, and I was lost amid the dense foliage. My sack was half-full, and I was dreaming of the afternoon in town, of a movie at the Dixie with a Coca-Cola and popcorn. The sun was almost overhead; it had to be approaching noon. I planned to make the turn and then head back to the trailer, working hard and finishing the day with a flourish.

When I heard people talking, I dropped to one knee, and then I slowly sat on the ground without making another sound. For a long time I heard nothing at all, and I was beginning to think that maybe I had been wrong, when the voice of a girl barely made it through the stalks to where I was hiding. She was somewhere to my right; I couldn’t tell how far away.

I slowly stood and peeked through the cotton but saw nothing. Then I crouched again and began creeping down the row toward the end, my cotton sack abandoned for the moment. Silently, I crawled and stopped, crawled and stopped, until I heard her again. She was several rows over, hiding, I thought, in the cotton. I froze for a few minutes until I heard her
laugh, a soft laugh that was muffled by the cotton, and I knew it was Tally.

For a long time I rocked gently on all fours and tried to imagine what she was doing hiding in the fields, as far away from the cotton trailer as possible. Then I heard another voice, that of a man. I decided to move in closer.

I found the widest gap between two stalks and cut through the first row without a sound. There was no wind to rustle the leaves and bolls, so I had to be perfectly still. And patient. Then I made it through the second row and waited for the voices.

They were quiet for a long time, and I began to worry that maybe they’d heard me. Then there was giggling, both voices working at once, and low, hushed conversation that I could barely hear. I stretched out flat on my stomach and surveyed the situation from the ground, down where the stalks were thickest and there were no bolls and leaves. I could almost see something several rows away, maybe the darkness of Tally’s hair, maybe not. I decided I was close enough.

There was no one nearby. The others—the Spruills and the Chandlers—were working their way back to the trailer. The Mexicans were far away, nothing visible but their straw hats.

Though shaded, I was sweating profusely. My heart was racing, my mouth dry. Tally was hiding deep in the cotton with a man, doing something bad, or if not, then why was she hiding? I wanted to do something to stop them, but I had no right. I was just a little kid, a spy who was trespassing on their business. I thought about retreating, but the voices held me.

The snake was a water moccasin, a cottonmouth, one of many in our part of Arkansas. They lived around
the creeks and rivers and occasionally ventured inland to sun or to feed. Each spring when we planted, it was common to see them ground up behind our disks and plows. They were short, black, thick, aggressive, and filled with venom. Their bites were rarely fatal, but I’d heard many tall tales of horrible deaths.

If you saw one, you simply killed it with a stick or a hoe or anything you could grab. They weren’t as quick as rattlers, nor did they have the striking range, but they were mean and nasty.