A Painted House (41 page)

Gran always said that some of the hill people had nicer homes than we did. I could never understand why they packed up and came down from the Ozarks to pick cotton.

I saw my father go into the hardware store, so I followed him. He was in the back, near the paint, talking with the clerk. Four gallons of white Pittsburgh Paint were on the counter. I thought about the Pittsburgh Pirates. They had finished last again in the National League. Their only great player was Ralph Kiner, who’d hit thirty-seven home runs.

Someday I would play in Pittsburgh. I would proudly wear my Cardinal red and crush the lowly Pirates.

It had taken all the paint we had left to finish the rear of the house the day before. The Mexicans were about to leave. To me it made sense to buy more paint and take advantage of the free labor present on our farm. Otherwise they’d be gone, and I’d once again get stuck with the entire project.

“That’s not enough paint,” I whispered to my father as the clerk added the bill.

“It’ll do for now,” he said with a frown. The issue was money.

“Ten dollars plus tax of thirty-six cents,” the clerk said. My father reached into his pocket and pulled out a thin roll of bills. He slowly counted them out, as if he didn’t want to let go.

He stopped at ten—ten one-dollar bills. When it was painfully clear he didn’t have enough, he faked a laugh and said, “Looks like I just brought ten bucks. I’ll pay you the tax next time I’m in.”

“Sure, Mr. Chandler,” the clerk said.

They carried two gallons each and loaded the paint into the back of our truck. Mr. Riggs was back at the Co-op, so my father went to have their talk about our Mexicans. I returned to the hardware store and went straight to the clerk.

“How much is two gallons?” I asked.

“Two-fifty a gallon, total of five dollars.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my money. “Here’s five,” I said as I handed him the bills. At first he didn’t want to take it.

“Did you pick cotton for that money?” he asked.

“Yes sir.”

“Does your daddy know you’re buyin’ paint?”

“Not yet.”

“What’re y’all paintin’ out there?”

“Our house.”

“Why you doin’ that?”

“’Cause it ain’t never been painted.”

He reluctantly took my money. “Plus eighteen cents for tax,” he said. I handed him a dollar bill and said, “How much does my daddy owe for the tax?”

“Thirty-six cents.”

“Take it out of this.”

“Okay.” He gave me the change, then loaded two more gallons into our truck. I stood on the sidewalk watching our paint as if someone might try to steal it.

Next to Pop and Pearl’s I saw Mr. Lynch Thornton, the postmaster, unlock the door to the post office and step inside. I walked toward him, keeping a watchful eye on the truck. Mr. Thornton was usually a cranky sort, and many believed that this was because he was married to a woman who had a problem with whiskey. All forms of alcohol were frowned upon by almost everyone in Black Oak. The county was dry. The nearest liquor store was in Blytheville, though there were some bootleggers in the area who did quite well. I knew this because Ricky’d told me. He’d said he didn’t like whiskey, but he had a beer every now and then. I’d heard so many sermons on the evils of alcohol that I was worried about Ricky’s soul. And while it was sinful enough for men to sneak around and drink, for women to do so was scandalous.

I wanted to ask Mr. Thornton how I could go about mailing my letter to Ricky, and do so in a way that no one would know it. The letter was three pages long, and I was quite proud of my effort. But it had all the Latcher baby details, and I still wasn’t sure I should send it to Korea.

“Howdy,” I said to Mr. Thornton, who was behind the counter adjusting his visor and settling in for the morning.

“You that Chandler boy?” he said, barely looking up.

“Yes sir.”

“Got somethin’ for you.” He disappeared for a second, then handed me two letters. One was from Ricky.

“That all?” he said.

“Yes sir. Thank you.”

“How’s he doin’?”

“He’s fine, I guess.”

I ran from the post office back to our truck, clutching the letters. The other was from the John Deere place in Jonesboro. I studied the one from Ricky. It was addressed to all of us: Eli Chandler and Family, Route 4, Black Oak, Arkansas. In the upper left corner was the return address, a confusing collection of letters and numbers with San Diego, California, on the last line.

Ricky was alive and writing letters; nothing else really mattered. My father was walking toward me. I ran to meet him with the letter, and we sat in the doorway of the dry goods store and read every word. Ricky was again in a hurry, and his letter was only one page. He wrote us that his unit had seen little action, and though he seemed frustrated by this, it was music to our ears. He also said that rumors of a ceasefire were everywhere, and that there was even talk of being home by Christmas.

The last paragraph was sad and frightening. One of his buddies, a kid from Texas, had been killed by a land mine. They were the same age and had gone through boot camp together. When Ricky got home, he planned to go to Fort Worth to see his friend’s mother.

My father folded the letter and stuck it in his overalls. We got in the truck and left town.

Home by Christmas. I couldn’t think of a finer gift.

We parked under the pin oak, and my father went to the back of the truck to collect the paint. He stopped, counted, then looked at me.

“How’d we end up with six gallons?”

“I bought two,” I said. “And I paid the tax.”

He didn’t seem sure what to say. “You use your pickin’ money?” he finally asked.

“Yes sir.”

“I wish you hadn’t done that.”

“I want to help.”

He scratched his forehead and studied the issue for a minute or so, then said, “I reckon that’s fair enough.”

We hauled the paint to the back porch, and then he decided he would go to the back forty to check on Pappy and the Mexicans. If the cotton could be picked, then he’d stay there. I was given permission to start painting the west side of the house. I wanted to work alone. I wanted to seem outmatched and undermanned by the enormity of the job before me so that when the Mexicans returned, they’d feel sorry for me.

They arrived at noon, muddy and tired and with little to show for their morning. “Cotton’s too wet,” I heard Pappy say to Gran. We ate fried okra and biscuits, then I went back to my work.

I kept one eye on the barn, but for an eternity I labored with no relief in sight. What were they doing back there? Lunch was over, the tortillas long since put away. Surely their siestas were also complete. They knew the house was half-painted. Why wouldn’t they come help?

The sky darkened in the west, but I didn’t notice it until Pappy and Gran stepped onto the back
porch. “Might rain, Luke,” Pappy said. “Better stop paintin’.”

I cleaned my brush and put the paint under a bench on the back porch as if the storm might damage it. I sat above it, with Pappy on one side and Gran on the other, and we once again listened to the low rumblings in the southwest. We waited for more rain.

Chapter 33

Our new ritual was repeated the next day after a late breakfast. We walked across the rain-soaked grass between our house and our barn, and we stood at the edge of the cotton field and saw water, not rainfall that had collected during the night, but the same thick floodwater from the creek. It stood three inches deep, and seemed ready to swell beyond the field and begin its slow march toward the barn, the toolshed, the chicken coops, and, eventually, the house.

The stalks were slanted to the east, permanently bent by the wind that had laid siege to our farm last night. The bolls were sagging under the weight of the water.

“Will it flood our house, Pappy?” I asked.

He shook his head and put his arm around my shoulders. “No, Luke, it’s never got to the house. Come close a time or two, but the house is a good three feet above where we’re standin’ right now. Don’t you worry about the house.”

“It got in the barn once,” my father said. “The year after Luke was born, wasn’t it?”

“Forty-six,” Gran said. She never missed a date. “But it was in May,’’ she added. “Two weeks after we’d planted.”

The morning was cool and windy with high, thin clouds and little chance of rain. A perfect day for painting, assuming, of course, that I could find some help. The Mexicans drifted close, but not close enough to speak.

They would be leaving soon, perhaps within hours. We’d haul them to the Co-op and wait for them to be picked up by a farmer with drier land. I heard the adults discussing this over coffee before sunrise, and I almost panicked. Nine Mexicans could paint the west side of our house in less than a day. It would take me a month. There was no time to be timid.

As we retreated, I headed for the Mexicans.
“Buenos días,”
I said to the group.
“¿Cómo está?”

All nine answered in some fashion. They were going back to the barn after another wasted day. I walked along with them until I was far enough away that my parents couldn’t hear. “Y’all want to paint some?” I asked.

Miguel rattled the translation, and the entire group seemed to smile.

Ten minutes later three of the six paint buckets were open and there were Mexicans hanging all over the west side of our house. They fought over the three brushes. Another crew was rigging a scaffold. I was pointing here and there, giving instructions that no one seemed to hear. Miguel and Roberto were spitting forth their own commands and opinions in Spanish. Both languages were being ignored in equal measure.

My mother and Gran peeked at us through the kitchen window as they washed the breakfast dishes. Pappy went to the toolshed to fiddle with the tractor.
My father was off on a long walk, probably surveying the crop damage and wondering what to do next.

There was an urgency to the painting. The Mexicans joked and laughed and badgered one another, but they worked twice as fast as two days earlier. Not a second was wasted. The brushes changed hands every half hour or so. The reinforcements were kept fresh. By mid-morning they were halfway to the front porch. It was not a large house.

I was happy to retreat and stay out of the way. The Mexicans worked so fast it seemed downright inefficient for me to take up a brush and stall the momentum. Besides, the free labor was temporary. The hour was soon approaching when I’d be left alone to finish the job.

My mother brought iced tea and cookies, but the painting did not stop. Those under the shade tree with me ate first, then three of them changed places with the painters.

“Do you have enough paint?” my mother whispered to me.

“No ma’am.”

She returned to the kitchen.

Before lunch, the west side was finished, a thick, shiny coat sparkling in the intermittent sun. There was a gallon left. I took Miguel to the east side, where Trot had begun a month earlier, and pointed up to an unpainted strip that I’d been unable to reach. He barked some orders, and the crew moved to the opposite side of the house.

A new method was employed. Instead of makeshift scaffolding, Pepe and Luis, two of the smaller ones, balanced
themselves on the shoulders of Pablo and Roberto, the two heaviest ones, and began painting just below the roofline. This, of course, drew an endless stream of comments and jokes from the others.

When the paint was gone, it was time to eat. I shook hands with all of them and thanked them profusely. They laughed and chattered all the way back to the barn. It was midday, the sun was out, and the temperature was rising. As I watched them walk away, I looked at the field beside the barn. The floodwaters were in sight. It seemed odd that the flood could advance when the sun was shining.

I turned and inspected the work. The back and both sides of our house looked almost new. Only the front remained unpainted, and since by now I was a veteran, I knew that I could complete the job without the Mexicans.

My mother stepped outside and said, “Lunchtime, Luke.” I hesitated for a second, still admiring the accomplishment, so she walked to where I was standing, and together we looked at the house. “It’s a very good job, Luke,” she said.

“Thanks.”

“How much paint is left?”

“None. It’s all gone.”

“How much do you need to paint the front?”

The front was not as long as the east or west side, but it had the added challenge of a porch, as did the rear. “I reckon four or five gallons,” I said, as if I’d been house painting for decades.

“I don’t want you to spend your money on paint,” she said.

“It’s my money. Y’all said I could spend it on whatever I wanted.”

“True, but you shouldn’t have to spend it on somethin’ like this.”

“I don’t mind. I want to help.”

“What about your jacket?”

I’d lost sleep worrying about my Cardinals jacket, but now it seemed unimportant. Plus, I’d been thinking about another way to get one. “Maybe Santa Claus’ll bring one.”

She smiled and said, “Maybe so. Let’s have lunch.”

Just after Pappy thanked the Lord for the food, saying nothing about the weather or the crops, my father grimly announced that the backwaters had begun trickling across the main field road into the back forty acres. This development was absorbed with little comment. We were numb to bad news.

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The Mexicans gathered around the truck and waited for Pappy. They each had a small sack with their belongings, the same items they’d arrived with six weeks earlier. I shook hands with each one and said good-bye. As always, I was anxious for another ride to town, even though this little trip was not a pleasant one.

“Luke, go help your mother in the garden,” my father said as the Mexicans were loading up. Pappy was starting the engine.

“I thought I was goin’ to town,” I said.

“Don’t make me repeat myself,” he said sternly.

I watched them drive away, all nine of the Mexicans waving sadly as they looked at our house and farm for
the last time. According to my father, they were headed to a large farm north of Blytheville, two hours away, where they would work for three or four weeks, weather permitting, and then go back to Mexico. My mother had inquired as to how they would be shipped home, by cattle truck or bus, but she did not press the issue. We had no control over those details, and they seemed much less important with floodwaters creeping through our fields.