A Painted House (39 page)

“You goin’ up North?” I asked.

“Thinkin’ about it. I’m too young to get stuck on a farm for the rest of my life.”

“Yeah, me too.”

He sipped his coffee, and for a few moments we silently contemplated the foolishness of farming.

“I hear that big hillbilly took off,” Jackie finally said.

Fortunately I had a mouthful of ice cream, so I just nodded.

“I hope they catch him,” he said. “I’d like to see him go to trial, get what’s comin’ to him. I already told Stick Powers that I’d be a witness. I saw the whole thing. Other folks are comin’ out now, tellin’ Stick what really happened. The hillbilly didn’t have to kill that Sisco boy.”

I shoveled in another scoop and kept nodding. I had learned to shut up and look stupid when the subject of Hank Spruill came up.

Cindy was back, shuffling behind the counter, wiping this and that and humming all the while. Jackie forgot about Hank. “You ’bout finished?” he said,
looking at my ice cream. I guess he and Cindy had something to discuss.

“Just about,” I said.

She hummed, and he stared until I finished. When I’d eaten the last bit, I said good-bye and went to Pop and Pearl’s, where I hoped to learn more about the telephone call. Pearl was alone by the register, her reading glasses on the tip of her nose, her gaze meeting mine the second I walked in. It was said that she knew the sound of each truck that passed along Main Street and that she could not only identify the farmer driving it but also could tell how long it had been since he’d been to town. She missed nothing.

“Where’s Eli?” she asked after we’d exchanged pleasantries.

“He stayed at home,” I said, looking at the bin of Tootsie Rolls. She pointed and said, “Have one.”

“Thanks. Where’s Pop?”

“In the back. Just you and your parents, huh?”

“Yes ma’am. You seen ’em?”

“No, not yet. They buyin’ groceries?”

“Yes ma’am. And I think my dad needs to borrow a phone.” This stopped her cold as she thought of all the reasons why he needed to call someone. I unwrapped the Tootsie Roll.

“Who’s he callin’?” she asked.

“Don’t know.” Pity the poor soul who borrowed Pearl’s phone and wanted to keep the details private. She’d know more than the person on the other end.

“Y’all wet out there?”

“Yes ma’am. Pretty wet.”

“That’s such bad land anyway. Seems like y’all and
the Latchers and the Jeters always get flooded first.” Her voice trailed off as she contemplated our misfortune. She glanced out the window, slowly shaking her head at the prospect of another bleak harvest.

I’d yet to see a flood—at least not one that I could remember—so I had nothing to say. The weather had dampened everyone’s spirits, including Pearl’s. With heavy clouds hanging over our part of the world, it was hard to be optimistic. Another gloomy winter was coming.

“I hear some people are goin’ up North,” I said. I knew Pearl would have the details if the rumors were indeed true.

“I hear that, too,” she said. “They’re tryin’ to line up jobs just in case the rains stay.”

“Who’s goin’?”

“Hadn’t heard,” she said, but I could tell from the tone of her voice that she had the latest gossip. The farmers had probably used her phone.

I thanked her for the Tootsie Roll and left the store. The sidewalks were empty. It was nice to have the town to myself. On Saturdays you could hardly walk for all the people. I caught a glimpse of my parents in the hardware store buying something, so I went to investigate.

They were buying paint, lots of it. Lined up perfectly on the counter, along with two brushes still in their plastic wrappers, were five one-gallon buckets of white Pittsburgh Paint. The clerk was totaling the charges when I walked up. My father was fumbling for something in his pocket. My mother stood close to his side, straight and proud. It was obvious to me that she
had pushed the buying of the paint. She smiled down at me with great satisfaction.

“That’s fourteen dollars and eighty cents,” the clerk said.

My father withdrew his cash and began counting bills.

“I can just put it on your account,” the clerk said.

“No, this doesn’t go there,” my mother said. Pappy would have a heart attack if he got a monthly statement showing that much spent for paint.

We hauled it to the truck.

Chapter 31

The buckets of paint were lined along the back porch, like soldiers poised for an ambush. Under my mother’s supervision, the scaffolding was moved by my father and rigged at the northeast corner of the house, enabling me to paint from the bottom almost to the roofline. I had turned the first corner. Trot would’ve been proud.

Another gallon was opened. I removed the wrapper from one of the new brushes and worked the bristles back and forth. It was five inches wide and much heavier than the one Trot had given me.

“We’re gonna work in the garden,” my mother said. “We’ll be back directly.” And with that she left with my father in tow, carrying three of the largest baskets on the farm. Gran was in the kitchen making strawberry preserves. Pappy was off worrying somewhere. I was left alone.

The investment by my parents in this project added weight to my mission. The house would now be painted in its entirety, whether Pappy liked it or not. And the bulk of the labor would be supplied by me. There was, however, no hurry. If the floods came, I would paint when it wasn’t raining. If we finished the crop, I’d have all winter to complete my masterpiece.
The house had never been painted in its fifty years. Where was the urgency?

After thirty minutes I was tired. I could hear my parents talking in the garden. There were two more brushes—another new one and the one Trot had given me—just lying there on the porch beside the buckets of paint. Why couldn’t my parents pick up the brushes and get to work? Surely they planned to help.

The paintbrush was really heavy. I kept my strokes short and slow and very neat. My mother had cautioned me against trying to apply too much at once. “Don’t let it drip.” “Don’t let it run.”

After an hour I needed a break. Lost in my own world, facing such a mammoth project, I began to think ill of Trot for dumping it on me. He’d painted about a third of one side of the house then fled. I was beginning to think that perhaps Pappy was right after all. The house didn’t need painting.

Hank was the reason. Hank had laughed at me and insulted my family because our house was unpainted. Trot had risen to my defense. He and Tally had conspired to start this project, not knowing that the bulk of it would fall on my shoulders.

I heard voices close behind me. Miguel, Luis, and Rico had walked up and were eyeing me with curiosity. I smiled and we exchanged
buenas tardes
. They moved in closer, obviously puzzled as to why the smallest Chandler had been given such a large task. For a few minutes, I concentrated on my work and inched my way along. Miguel was at the porch inspecting the unopened gallons and the other brushes. “Can we play?” he asked.

What an absolutely wonderful idea!

Two more gallons were opened. I gave Miguel my brush, and within seconds, Luis and Rico were sitting on the scaffold, their bare feet hanging down, painting as if they’d been doing it all their lives. Miguel started on the back porch. Before long the other six Mexicans were sitting on the grass in the shade watching us.

Gran heard the noise, and she stepped outside, wiping her hands with a dish towel. She looked at me and laughed, then went back to her strawberry preserves.

The Mexicans were delighted to have something to do. The rains had forced them to kill long hours in and around the barn. They had no truck to take them to town, no radio to listen to, no books to read. (We weren’t even sure if they knew how to read.) They rolled dice occasionally, but they would stop the moment one of us drew near.

They attacked the unpainted house with a vengeance. The six non-painters offered endless advice and opinions to those with the brushes. Evidently some of their suggestions were hilarious because at times the painters laughed so hard they couldn’t work. The Spanish grew faster and louder, all nine laughing and talking. The challenge was to convince one with a brush to relinquish it for a spell and allow the next one to improve on the work. Roberto emerged as the expert. With a dramatic flair, he instructed the novices, Pablo and Pepe especially, on proper technique. He walked behind the others as they worked, quick with advice or a joke or a rebuke. The brushes changed hands, and through the ridicule and abuse, a system of teamwork emerged.

I sat under the tree with the other Mexicans, watching the transformation of the back porch. Pappy returned on the tractor. He parked it by the toolshed and, from a distance, he watched for a moment. Then he circled wide to the front of the house. I couldn’t tell if he approved or not, and I’m not sure that it mattered anymore. There was no spring in his step, no purpose to his movement. Pappy was just another beaten farmer in the midst of losing yet another cotton crop.

My parents returned from the garden with the baskets laden with produce. “Well, if it isn’t Tom Sawyer,” my mother said to me.

“Who’s he?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you the story tonight.”

They placed the baskets on the porch, careful to avoid the painting area, and went inside. All the adults were gathered in the kitchen, and I wondered if they were talking about me and the Mexicans. Gran appeared with a pitcher of iced tea and a tray of glasses. That was a good sign. The Mexicans took a break and enjoyed their tea. They thanked Gran, then immediately started bickering over who got the brushes.

The sun battled the clouds as the afternoon passed. There were moments when its light was clear and unbroken and the air was warm, almost summerlike. Inevitably, we would look up at the sky in hopes that the clouds were finally leaving Arkansas, never to return, or at least not until the spring. Then the earth turned dark again, and cooler.

The clouds were winning, and we all knew it. The Mexicans would soon be leaving our farm, just as the Spruills had. We couldn’t expect people to sit around
for days, watching the sky, trying to stay dry, and not getting paid.

The paint was gone by late afternoon. The rear of our house, including the porch, was finished, and the difference was astounding. The brilliant, shiny boards contrasted sharply with the unpainted ones at the corner. Tomorrow we would attack the west side, assuming I could somehow negotiate more paint.

I thanked the Mexicans. They laughed all the way back to the barn. They would fix and eat their tortillas, go to bed early, and hope they could pick cotton tomorrow.

I sat in the cool grass, admiring their work, not wanting to go inside because the adults were not in good spirits. They would force a smile at me and try to say something amusing, but they were worried sick.

I wished I had a brother—younger or older, I didn’t care. My parents wanted more children, but there were problems of some sort. I needed a friend, another kid to talk with, play with, conspire with. I was tired of being the only little person on the farm.

And I missed Tally. I tried valiantly to hate her, but it simply wasn’t working.

Pappy walked around the corner of the house and inspected the new coat of paint. I couldn’t tell if he was upset or not.

“Let’s ride down to the creek,” he said, and without another word we walked to the tractor. He started it, and we followed the ruts in the field road. Water was standing where the tractor and cotton trailer had gone
many times. The front tires splashed mud as we chugged along. The rear tires chewed up the ground and made the ruts deeper. We were slogging through a field that was fast becoming a marsh.

The cotton itself looked pitiful. The bolls sagged from the weight of the rainfall. The stalks were bent from the wind. A week of blazing sunshine might dry the ground and the cotton and allow us to finish picking, but such weather was long gone.

We turned north and crept along an even soggier trail, the same one Tally and I had walked a few times. The creek was just ahead.

I stood slightly behind Pappy, clutching the umbrella stand and the brace above the left rear tire, and I watched the side of his face. His jaws were clenched, his eyes were narrowed. Other than the occasional flare of temper, he was not one to show emotion. I’d never seen him cry or even come close. He worried because he was a farmer, but he did not complain. If the rains washed away our crops, then there was a reason for it. God would protect us and provide for us through good years and bad. As Baptists we believed God was in control of everything.

I was certain there was a reason the Cardinals lost the pennant, but I couldn’t understand why God was behind it. Why would God allow two teams from New York to play in the World Series? It completely baffled me.

The water was suddenly deeper in front of us, six inches up the front tires. The trail was flooded, and for a moment I was puzzled by this. We were near the creek. Pappy stopped the tractor and pointed. “It’s over
the banks,” he said matter-of-factly, but there was defeat in his voice. The water was coming through a thicket that once sat high above the creek bed. Somewhere down there Tally had bathed in a cool, clear stream that had disappeared.

“It’s flooding,” he said. He turned off the tractor, and we listened to the sounds of the current as it came over the sides of Siler’s Creek and ran onto the bottomland that was our lower forty acres. It got lost between the rows of cotton as it crept down the slight valley. It would stop somewhere in the middle of the field, about halfway to our house, at a point where the land began a gentle slope upward. There it would gather and gain depth before spreading east and west and covering most of our acreage.

I was finally seeing a flood. There had been others but I’d been too young to remember them. All of my young life I’d heard tall tales of rivers out of control and crops submerged, and now I was witnessing it for myself, as if for the first time. It was frightening because once it started no one knew when it would end. Nothing held the water; it ran wherever it wanted. Would it reach our house? Would the St. Francis spill over and wipe out everyone? Would it rain for forty days and forty nights and cause us to perish like the ones who’d laughed at Noah?