Darby (4 page)

Passing beneath the high pecan trees my granddaddy had planted when he first built Ellan, I began wondering if I was a good writer. I even worried that McCall might be right and my article was getting in the paper for being funny instead of good. I stomped a foot. Thinking that made me as mad at him as I’d been at Evette. For a little while, it even took the fun out of getting an article run in the paper.

Nobody’s supposed to work on Sundays, even during the cotton harvest. So whatever time of year it is, following Sunday dinner, which commences at exactly twelve o’clock in the afternoon, we either go for a long walk around the farm or we get into the car and drive off to inspect faraway property and fields my daddy owns. Taking the car is what I like, because Daddy props open the trunk with a stick, and me and McCall sit inside it and watch the long straight roads of Marlboro County fall off behind us. Sometimes Daddy drives on and on, and me or McCall falls asleep back there. Other times we go rattling and flopping over potholey dirt roads so that we gotta hang on for fear we might get thrown clean out. Once, when I was little, the stick that holds up the trunk shook loose and the whole heavy flap came crashing down, barely missing one of McCall’s legs. Scared, I screamed as hard as I could till Mama and Daddy let us free. But I still like sitting back there. It’s exciting with the trunk always threatening to mash down.

On the Sunday that me and Evette yelled at each other, my daddy decided that we should drive instead of walk, because Great-Uncle Harvey isn’t sturdy on his feet. So after me and Mama and Aunt Greer did the dishes, the grownups, who were still dressed in their Sunday best, took their places inside Daddy’s Buick while me and McCall got in the trunk. Daddy put the trunk-stick in place, and we flew off through the countryside toward a town called Blenheim, where a man named Dr. C. R. May invented Blenheim Ginger Ale, which is supposed to cure all nature of sicknesses but only makes my stomach churn.

Where we were seated, the wind sort of wrapped around McCall and me, tugging at our clothes so that my dress and his shirt flapped like knotted-up flags. It was nice and cool back there, the only bad thing being that I was alongside McCall, who I was mad at.

“You ain’t talking to me?” he asked as a dried and squished snake disappeared behind a lump in the road.

I looked daggers at him. “It’s ’cause I’m thinking about how you said Mr. Salter is putting my story in the paper on account of it being funny.”

Shrugging, he threw a piece of hay into the wind so that it flew up before swooping down and bouncing along the asphalt road top. “It’s Sunday,” he said over the loud, blowing air, “so I ain’t gonna say anything that’ll make you mad.”

“That’s ’cause it isn’t so.” I slanted my eyes to show how annoyed he’d gotten me.

Hanging his feet over the trunk, like we weren’t supposed to do, McCall didn’t say anything back.

“If you keep doing that, you might get your legs cut off,” I told him.

“I can snatch ’em back.”

“No you couldn’t.”

“Sure I could.”

Irritated, I studied his face and a fiery, red scratch on his cheek that made me think of an electric bolt. “Why’re you so mean, McCall?”

“Why’s putting my feet out mean?”

I had to think. “’Cause . . . if your legs get clipped off, Mama and Daddy’ll have to treat you extra-nice.”

Laughing, he told me, “That ain’t a good reason.”

“I don’t care,” I told him. “And you know what? It isn’t true about my newspaper story.”

Looking real sorry, he nodded. “I think it is.” He stared at me. “It’s Sunday, and I ain’t trying to make you mad. You know how Daddy always says getting good jobs is who you know. Well, Mr. Salter knows you, and he was probably thinking it might make people laugh a little. What’s wrong with that? Making people laugh is a real good reason to do almost anything.”

I sat motionless alongside McCall and could hardly speak without choking. Finally, I said, “I wish he’d taken it for how good it is.”

“If it makes people laugh, that’s okay. That’s all right.”

Sucking on the smoothness of a tooth, I dropped my head and thought about the way I’d been snobby to Evette. I wished I could run to her house and make up. I looked at my brother instead.

“McCall,” I said, “why don’t you have any best friends?”

Hanging a piece of straw between his lips, he answered, “I don’t know. I like people well enough. I suppose I just like being with me most of all.”

“Even when you’re by yourself?”

“Yup.”

I stared at the straight asphalt road that my daddy said hadn’t been there when he was a boy. Back then, all the roads had been made of dirt. Out of nowhere, a gang of black birds dashed slantways past the trunk in a great twirling flash. Altogether, they raced away and across the wide, wide cotton fields.

“Wish I could catch me one a them,” McCall declared, gawking at those birds.

Whenever we’re driving near Blenheim, we’ve always got to visit my daddy’s family gravesite. After the cotton and tobacco fields come to an end, and patches of woods start up, there’s this tiny cemetery without a fence, and that’s where all of my daddy’s kin get buried. I don’t mind going there on account of my daddy telling stories about his granddaddy and how he went off to fight in the Civil War in Richmond and Antietam with General Stonewall Jackson. Daddy usually talks about how after the war his granddaddy came home and saved money for three years before starting Carmichael Dry Goods. Also, if Great-Uncle Harvey’s with us, he’s always got things to add. His favorites are how our family came from Scotland and how they got off the boat with nothing but determination.

“Great-Uncle Harvey,” I said, leading him through the graveyard, “why do you wanna come here if you can’t see anything?”

For a second, he moved his hand from my shoulder and straightened a sleeve of his fancy suit. “Sure enough, I can’t see nothing. That’s true. But I can feel my kin wrastling in my bones. I can feel us walking on top of ’em.”

“Is that why you didn’t bring your rolling chair, so you could walk?”

“Naw, child, it didn’t fit into your daddy’s car is why I left it with Jacob.”

I nodded.

We walked about some more, and Great-Uncle Harvey said, “Little Darby, when you gonna interview me about being blind?”

“Maybe tonight, if it’s okay?”

The truth was, since recognizing that my story on toads was in the paper for being funny, I didn’t wanna ask him anything. I kept imagining all of Marlboro County laughing at my article, and it was embarrassing, especially standing atop all my successful and determined kin.

I stopped so that Great-Uncle Harvey would. “Here’s your mama,” I told him.

“Touch my hand to the gravestone,” he said.

So I did, and while he smiled, I looked across the little clearing to where my daddy and Mama and Aunt Greer were crouched near another marker. Behind them, I saw McCall riding a pine tree by climbing to the top and letting it bend to the ground real slow.

Cold, I tucked my favorite nightgown, which Mama had sewn from our best window curtain, underneath my legs. Great-Uncle Harvey and me sat out on the screened porch, and there was a cool wind blowing, clacking the pecan trees and rustling the dried-up cotton plants in the field, which gave off a soft
shoosh
like my daddy’s new radio when nothing comes in.

“Great-Uncle Harvey,” I started, turning my newspaper notebook to a blank page, “what’s it like to be blind?”

Great-Uncle Harvey smiled and looked near me. “What’s it like to be blind? I’d say it’s real dark.”

Trying to act professional, I nodded my head and wrote that down. “But . . . you can hear real good, can’t you, sir?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe, ma’am,” he kidded me. “I can smell good, too.”

For a minute, I stalled on knowing what else to ask. Thinking hard, I finally said, “Is it nice to hear real well?”

Great-Uncle Harvey shrugged his wide shoulders. “It’s okay. I enjoy the fact that a lot of other people don’t hear as good. Matter of fact, I take great pride in pointing out things I hear to people who can see, ’cause they’re always surprised. I can tell you if a bird’s in a tree and, if it sings, what kind it is. I can tell you if there’s a cat or a squirrel scampering in the woods . . . I can hear things like the walls and floors creaking in a house and tell you if a place is old or new —”

“Great-Uncle Harvey?”

“Yes, child?”

“I can’t write that fast.”

“Sorry,” he said, grinning.

“My hand gets all cramped, is why.”

“Can’t say I ever had a hand cramp.”

So there we were, and he talked slower and told me about how he could read things that were written in Braille, which is this way of spelling words with bumps. He said he could do it with his fingertips and that some books were written up that way just for blind people. He said that he liked to eat because he tasted food real well. Then he said he liked dressing nice like he did to show that blind people care about their appearance. He also decided that his favorite thing to do is to listen or tell stories, and another thing he liked was to get pushed around Charleston in his rolling chair. He said that when Jacob took him around the city that way, he heard birds and water and all sorts of people talking.

Finally, Great-Uncle Harvey paused, and asked, “So, Darby, when is this here article on me gonna be completed? You got any idea?”

“So that Mr. Salter can see it before the weekend, I’m gonna try and get it done by Friday.”

“You gonna mail me a copy?”

“You think somebody’ll turn it into bumps for you?”

“Naw, a nurse’ll just read it to me, probably. It’ll give me a chance to brag on you some.”

I smiled, clamping my jaw shut so that my teeth wouldn’t tap from being cold. My body had been so trembly, though, that it looked like I’d been writing while I was bouncing in my daddy’s car. “I’m gonna write about you real good,” I said.

“You do that,” he said. “Now I’m all talked out, so you run on to bed ’fore you catch your death out here.”

Staring at his face, I asked, “Great-Uncle Harvey, how’d you know I was cold?”

He answered, “On account of the way your voice sounds.”

At night, sometimes, I can’t sleep even with my aunt Greer nearby. It’s an awful feeling. I wake up with the worst fright and listen to the owls and the crickets and a few last bullfrogs. And even though I recognize everything, their noises scare me all the way to my heart. Looking around my room, first at my aunt Greer to be sure she’s the one breathing heavy, I study the walls and the windows and the shadows flittering, and the whole bunch looks ghoulish. Whenever I wake up that way, I think about that mansion in Bennettsville that was owned by Mr. Grissel, who during the Civil War was in charge of fetching boys who didn’t want to fight. He fixed it so they either did fight or were shot. Of all of the haunted houses in Marlboro County, his is the most famous. He choked on a possum bone way before I was born, but nobody ever bought his property. Everyone knows that all the ghosts of the boys he caused to get shot are walking around that house looking to get even with Mr. Grissel. I suppose, for some reason, they don’t even know he’s dead yet. For nothing, I wouldn’t step in that mansion during the day or night. The problem is, sometimes I wonder if Ellan isn’t haunted the same way, because in the dark it can scare me so that I nearly have to holler for help.

Just a few hours after I talked with Great-Uncle Harvey, my mind stirred with all sorts of frightening things. Sitting up, I imagined ghosts whooshing between the tree limbs outside, floating past my daddy’s camellia bushes, with shoulders that were almost see-through.

Searching about the room, I wished our dog, King, was nearby. King wouldn’t be scared of a ghost, plus his teeth are sharp enough to cut through just about anything. If I’m walking alone near McPherson’s Pond, I usually take King in case I run into a mean person or something rabid or an alligator. Being a German shepherd dog, King’s nearly as smart as a college teacher, too. When I talk to him, his big, triangular fur ears do all sorts of shifting and adjusting, like he’s listening as hard as he can. Sometimes I even practice the finger trick for him. It’s the only thing he doesn’t understand real well, and I’m glad. He never recognizes when I mess up and my finger doesn’t look cut off.

The other good thing about King is that he walks Annie Jane home at night. After arranging and setting out our dinner, Annie Jane takes off her apron and starts out the back door, where he waits for her. Then, side by side, the two march toward town and Annie Jane’s little home with its skinny rooms that go straight back so that you can run from the front door to the back without ever turning, not once. Daddy calls it a “shotgun house.”

Awake in the night like I was, I wished my mama allowed King to come upstairs, but she doesn’t. She says letting a dog in the house would be like letting a muskrat make himself cozy. From time to time, I feel like saying that a muskrat can’t protect a person against ghosts, not like a dog with extra-pointy teeth and lots of brains.

I slid under my sheets and squeezed into a tight ball so that all a ghost might see was a bundle of blankets and bed sheets. Sucking air real slow, my heart thumped in my body, and I started to get as hot as a wagon in the sun. Lying that way, so still and warm, I didn’t have anything to do but wonder why I was nervous. I thought and thought. Then, as slow as a snail, I realized that it had to do with Evette, and understanding that made things less scary. On account of being nasty to her, I was feeling crummy. It wasn’t that I was frightened. Guilt had woken me up. It was like the time I’d fetched a farm hand’s thrown-away cigarette and took a puff. I knew I’d been a bad person, and I wondered what God thought.