A Painted House (44 page)

When the meal was well under way, we drifted to the living room, where Gran had built a fire in the fireplace. The five of us sat close to it, and for a long time we listened to the Latchers in the kitchen. Their voices were muted, but their knives and forks rattled away. They were warm and safe and no longer hungry. How could people be so poor?

I found it impossible to dislike the Latchers anymore. They were folks just like us who’d had the misfortune of being born sharecroppers. It was wrong of me to be scornful. Besides, I was quite taken with Libby.

I was already hoping that perhaps she liked me.

As we were basking in the satisfaction of our goodness, the baby erupted from somewhere in the house. Gran jumped to her feet and was gone in a flash. “I’ll see about him,” I heard her say in the kitchen. “You finish lunch.”

I didn’t hear a single Latcher move from the table.
That baby had been crying since the night he was born, and they were used to it.

We Chandlers, however, were not. It cried all the way through what was left of lunch. Gran walked the floor with it for an hour as my parents and Pappy moved the Latchers into their new accommodations in the loft. Libby returned with them to check on the baby, who was still bawling. The rain had stopped, so my mother took it for a walk around the house, but the outdoors did nothing to satisfy it. I had never heard anything cry so violently without end.

By mid-afternoon we were rattled. Gran had tried several of her home remedies, mild little concoctions that only made matters worse. Libby rocked the baby in the swing, with no success. Gran sang to it as she waltzed around the house; more bawling, even louder, I thought. My mother walked the floor with it. Pappy and my father were long gone. I wanted to run and hide in the silo.

“Worst case of colic I’ve ever seen,” I heard Gran say.

Later, while Libby was again rocking the baby on the front porch, I heard another conversation. Seems that when I was a baby I’d had a rough bout with colic. My mother’s mother, my grandmother, who was now dead and who’d lived in town in a painted house, had given me a few bites of vanilla ice cream. I had immediately stopped crying, and within a few days the colic was gone.

At some point later in my babyhood I’d had another bout. Gran did not normally keep store-bought ice cream in her freezer. My parents had loaded me up in
the truck and headed for town. Along the way I’d stopped crying and fallen asleep. They figured the motion of the moving vehicle had done the trick.

My mother sent me to find my father. She took the baby from Libby, who was quite anxious to get rid of it, and before long we were heading for the truck.

“Are we goin’ to town?” I asked.

“Yes,” my mother said.

“What about him?” my father asked, pointing to the baby. “He’s supposed to be a secret.”

My mother had forgotten about that. If we were spotted in town with a mysterious baby, the gossip would be so thick it would stop traffic.

“We’ll worry about that when we get there,” she said, then slammed the door. “Let’s go.”

My father cranked the engine and shifted into reverse. I was in the middle, the baby just inches from my shoulder. After a brief pause, the baby erupted again. By the time we got to the river I was ready to pitch the damned thing out the window.

Once over the bridge, though, a curious thing happened. The baby slowly grew quiet and still. It closed its mouth and eyes and fell sound asleep. My mother smiled at my father as if to say, “See, I told you so.”

As we made our way to town, my parents whispered back and forth. They decided that my mother would get out of the truck down by our church, then hurry to Pop and Pearl’s to buy the ice cream. They worried that Pearl would be suspicious as to why she was buying ice cream, and only ice cream, since we didn’t need anything else at the moment, and why exactly my mother was in town on a Wednesday afternoon. They
agreed that Pearl’s curiosity could not be satisfied under any circumstances and that it would be somewhat amusing to let her suffer from her own nosiness. As clever as she was, Pearl would never guess that the ice cream was for an illegitimate baby we were hiding in our truck.

We stopped at our church. No one was watching so my mother handed the baby to me with strict instructions on how to properly cradle such a creature. By the time she closed the door, its mouth was wide open, its eyes glowing, its lungs filled with anger. It wailed twice and nearly scared me to death before my father popped the clutch and we were off again, loose on the streets of Black Oak. The baby looked at me and stopped crying.

“Just don’t stop,” I said to my father.

We drove by the gin, a depressing sight with its lack of activity. We circled behind the Methodist church and the school, then turned south onto Main Street. My mother came out of Pop and Pearl’s with a small paper bag, and, not surprisingly, Pearl was right behind her, talking away. They were chatting as we drove past. My father waved as if nothing were out of the ordinary.

I just knew we were about to get caught with the Latcher baby. One loud shriek from its mouth and the whole town would learn our secret.

We looped around the gin again, and when we headed toward the church we saw my mother waiting for us. As we rolled to a stop to get her, the baby’s eyes came open. His lower lip trembled. He was ready to scream when I thrust him at her and said, “Here, take him.”

I scrambled out of the truck before she could get in. My quickness surprised them. “Where you goin’, Luke?” my father demanded.

“Y’all ride around for a minute. I need to buy some paint.”

“Get in the truck!” he said.

The baby cried out, and my mother quickly jumped in. I ducked behind the truck and ran as fast as I could toward the street.

Behind me I heard another cry, one not nearly as loud, then the truck started moving.

I ran to the hardware store, back to the paint counter, where I asked the clerk for three gallons of white Pittsburgh Paint.

“Only got two,” he said.

I was too surprised to say anything. How could a hardware store run out of paint? “I should have some in by next Monday,” he said.

“Gimme two,” I said.

I was sure two gallons wouldn’t finish the front of the house, but I gave him six one-dollar bills, and he handed me the change. “Let me get these for you,” he said.

“No, I can do it,” I said, reaching for the two buckets. I strained to lift them, then waddled down the aisle, almost tipping over. I lugged them out of the store and to the sidewalk. I looked both ways for traffic, and I listened for the wail of a sick baby. Thankfully the town was quiet.

Pearl reappeared on the sidewalk in front of her store, eyes darting in all directions. I hid behind a parked car. Then I saw our truck coming south, barely moving, looking very suspicious. My father saw me
and rolled to a stop in the middle of the street. I yanked the two buckets up with all the might I could muster and ran to the truck. He jumped out to help me. I leapt into the back of the truck, and he handed me the paint. I preferred to ride back there, away from the littlest Latcher. Just when my father got behind the wheel again, the baby let out a yelp.

The truck lurched forward, and the baby was quiet. I yelled, “Howdy, Pearl!” as we sped past.

Libby was sitting on the front steps with Gran, waiting for us. When the truck stopped, the baby began bawling. The women rushed it to the kitchen, where they began stuffing it with ice cream.

“Ain’t enough gasoline in Craighead County to keep that thing quiet,” my father said.

Fortunately, the ice cream soothed it. Little Latcher fell asleep in his mother’s arms.

Because vanilla ice cream had worked when I’d had colic, this cure was taken as further evidence that the baby was part Chandler. I was not exactly comforted by this.

Chapter 35

Having a barn full of Latchers was an event that we certainly had not planned on. And while we were at first comforted by our own Christian charity and neighborliness, we were soon interested in how long they might be with us. I broached the subject first over supper when, after a long discussion about the day’s events, I said, “Reckon how long they’ll stay?”

Pappy had the opinion that they would be gone as soon as the floodwaters receded. Living in another farmer’s barn was tolerable under the most urgent of circumstances, but no one with an ounce of self-respect would stay a day longer than necessary.

“What are they gonna eat when they go back?” Gran asked. “There’s not a crumb of food left in that house.” She went on to predict that they’d be with us until springtime.

My father speculated that their dilapidated house couldn’t withstand the flood, and that there’d be no place for them to return to. Plus, they had no truck, no means of transportation. They’d been starving on their land for the last ten years. Where else would they go? Pappy seemed a little depressed by this view.

My mother mainly listened, but at one point she did say that the Latchers were not the type of people
who’d be embarrassed by living in someone else’s barn. And she worried about the children, not only the obvious problems of health and nutrition, but also their education and spiritual growth.

Pappy’s prediction of a swift departure was batted around the table and eventually voted down. Three against one. Four, if you counted my vote.

“We’ll survive,” Gran said. “We have enough food to feed us and them all winter. They’re here, they have no place else to go, and we’ll take care of them.” No one was about to argue with her.

“God gave us a bountiful garden for a reason,” she added, nodding at my mother. “In Luke, Jesus said, ‘Invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed.’”

“We’ll kill two hogs instead of one,” Pappy said. “We’ll have plenty of meat for the winter.”

The hog-killing would come in early December, when the air was cold and the bacteria dead. Every year a hog was shot in the head, dipped in boiling water, and hung from a tree next to the toolshed, then gutted and butchered into a thousand pieces. From it we got bacon, ham, loin, sausage, and ribs. Everything was used—tongue, brains, feet. “Everything but the squeal” was a line I’d heard all my life. Mr. Jeter from across the road was a fair butcher. He would supervise the gutting, then perform the delicate removals. For his time he took a fourth of the best cuts.

My first memory of a hog-killing was that I ran behind the house and puked. With time, though, I’d come to look forward to it. If you wanted ham and bacon, you had to kill a hog. But it would take more than
two hogs to feed the Latchers until spring. There were eleven of them, including the baby, who at the moment was living off vanilla ice cream.

As we talked about them, I began to dream of heading North.

The trip now seemed more appealing. I had sympathy for the Latchers, and I was proud that we’d rescued them. I knew that as Christians we were expected to help the poor. I understood all that, but I could not imagine living through the winter with all those little kids running around our farm. I’d start back to school very soon. Would the Latchers go with me? Since they would be new students, would I be expected to show them around? What would my friends think? I saw nothing but humiliation.

And now that they lived with us, it was just a matter of time before the big secret got out. Ricky would be fingered as the father. Pearl would figure out where all the vanilla ice cream was going. Something would leak somehow, and we’d be ruined.

“Luke, are you finished?” my father asked, jolting me from my thoughts.

My plate was clean. Everyone looked at it. They had adult matters to discuss. It was my cue to go find something to do.

“Supper was good. May I be excused?” I said, reciting my standard lines.

Gran nodded and I went to the back porch and pushed the screen door so that it would slam. Then I slid back into the darkness to a bench by the kitchen door. From there I could hear everything. They were worried about money. The crop loan would be “rolled
over” until next spring, and they would deal with it then. The other farming bills could be delayed, too, though Pappy hated the thought of riding his creditors.

Surviving the winter was much more urgent. Food was not a concern. We had to have money for such necessities as electricity, gas and oil for the truck, and staples like coffee, flour, and sugar. What if someone got sick and needed a doctor or medicine? What if the truck broke down and needed parts?

“We haven’t given anything to the church this year,” Gran said.

Pappy estimated that as much as thirty percent of the crop was still out there, standing in water. If the weather broke and things got dry, we might be able to salvage a small portion of it. That would provide some income, but the gin would keep most of it. Neither he nor my father was optimistic about picking any more cotton in 1952.

The problem was cash. They were almost out of it, and there was no hope of any coming in. They barely had enough to pay for electricity and gasoline until Christmas.

“Jimmy Dale’s holdin’ a job for me at the Buick plant,” my father said. “But he can’t wait long. The jobs are tight right now. We need to get on up there.”

According to Jimmy Dale, the current wage was three dollars an hour, for forty hours a week, but overtime was available, too. “He says I can earn close to two hundred dollars a week,” my father said.

“We’ll send home as much as we can,” my mother added.

Pappy and Gran went through the motions of protesting, but everyone knew the decision had been made. I heard a noise in the distance, a vaguely familiar sound. As it drew closer, I cringed and wished I’d hidden on the front porch.

The baby was back, upset again and no doubt craving vanilla ice cream. I sneaked off the porch and walked a few steps toward the barn. In the shadows I saw Libby and Mrs. Latcher approaching the house. I ducked beside the chicken coop and listened as they went by. The constant wailing echoed around our farm.

Gran and my mother met them at the back porch. A light was switched on, and I watched as they huddled around the little monster then carried him inside. Through the window I could see my father and Pappy scramble for the front porch.