Darby (6 page)

A playfulness came into Beth’s face. Smiling, she said, “You know what? I’m sure Chester’s gonna let you ride. He likes you, is why. My brother’s got a crush and thinks you’re pretty.”

Stopping to stare into her eyes, I hissed, “He does not!” Suddenly I was frightened and excited about seeing Chester.

“He does. He says you got a sweet face and you’re good about helping him feed Mercury.”

“I like Mercury, is all.”

Beth’s house sits alongside the biggest, nicest homes in all of Bennettsville. That’s because it’s one of them. It’s got a wide porch and three tall floors of rooms, and windows that always sparkle they’re so clean. Sometimes I think President Coolidge ought to live there because it even has a little balcony off the second floor he could wave from. It’s big, too. It can make Ellan look miniature to me. My daddy says Beth’s daddy, Mr. Robert Fairchild, is Marlboro County’s best lawyer, and a real good person to boot, and he says that their home has to be that good. I reckon he’s right.

When we got to Beth’s house, her brother was out with Mercury, and I was glad. Seeing him would’ve turned me as pink as a flower. Thankful, I set my books alongside Beth’s on the back steps and fetched a piece of bread from the cook. After we were done eating, we went out into the yard to make our penny peeks. Careful, we dug perfect, round holes in the ground. Then we collected flowers and rocks from Mrs. Fairchild’s giant garden. Away from each other, me and Beth arranged things in our holes, both of us fixing to make a more beautiful display than the other. After a good while, we got them just the way we wanted, with every flower turned to its best side. We went into the shed and carried over sheets of glass, and, careful not to mess up our work, we laid them on top of our penny peeks so that they looked like store windows.

We stepped back.

After about a minute, Beth asked, “Which is prettier?”

Walking over to her penny peek, I looked at the leaves and the mums and camellias and slightly shriveled petunia buds. They were so nice I smiled.

She was hunched over mine. “Yours is the best.”

“They’re both nice.”

She said, “Let’s not play that somebody has to win, Darby.”

“All right,” I agreed.

At my daddy’s store, me and Beth sat on the downstairs counter, watching folks come in. We knew everyone, and nearly all of them had read “Seems Toads Aren’t So Awful.” Stepping through the doors, they called hello to us before telling me how impressed they were. Some said they had no idea toads were so safe, and others congratulated me by squeezing my knee or messing up my hair, which is something I don’t like.

Outside, Bennettsville was full up with people buying or selling or talking about things that farmers and townsfolk discuss. The stores up yonder and down the street were busy and nice with their columns and swirly-whirly parts and windows. Workhorses stomped past pulling wagons, and a few cars clitter-clanked along with engines that sounded like metal animals. Across the street, our courthouse seemed as if it had been kidnapped clean out of Washington, D.C. Its big, important-seeming tower stood out against the baby blue sky, which is one of my favorite colors on account of its name:
baby blue.

Alongside us, my daddy’s gold cash register was ringing, but it didn’t seem like people were handing over money. Instead, they signed their names to receipts and walked straight out with their ropes and harnesses and barbed wire spools or whatever. Most of them said, “Bye, Little Darby and Beth Fairchild.”

“Bye, Mr. Turley” or “Mr. MacNight” or “Mr. Jones,” we said back, grinning and drumming our heels against the wood counter. Sitting there, I wished so bad we could go to the Candy Kitchen for a brown cow or a chocolate. Finally, I turned and asked my daddy for a nickel.

My daddy stopped punching numbers into the register and looked at me without any kind of mood on his face. After what seemed like a hundred minutes, Mr. Walter Henry, who was standing at the register, said, “Here now, let me give ya a dime, what with how much I owes Carmichael Dry Goods.”

“Don’t, Walter,” my daddy said to him.

“Come on, Mr. Carmichael.”

“Naw, you keep your money till you can pay on your bill.”

Hesitating, Mr. Walter Henry looked at the dimes and nickels in his dirty palm. Breaking into a smile, he lifted his shoulders at me and Beth, and said to my daddy, “If that’s the way you want it, Sherm.” Grabbing hold of a potato sack and a new shovel handle, he carried them out the door.

Next in line was Mr. Turpin Dunn, who is one of the biggest and meanest men in the whole world. He must be ten feet tall, with a chin that’s as sharp and straight as a plow blade and eyes sitting on his face like two blazing drips of cooking lard. His farm touches one side of ours, and in the winter when the trees are naked, we can see his flickery oil lamps burning away in his windows. McCall and me always walk through other people’s property without a care, but we don’t get close to his land. Reason is, he’s got a bad reputation. Tenant kids say he threw a black boy, a little boy, against a smokehouse wall for eyeing his mean old wife. The thing is, it’s hard not to give her a good peek. It isn’t that she’s ugly or has something nasty on her, it’s the way she pinches her face so hard. It’s funny-seeming. Anyways, after that boy got thrown, he turned stupid and never got normal. That’s what the tenant kids say.

When I see Mr. Dunn, something I always notice is how he’s missing the tip of one of his pinkies. What I heard is he got it thrashed in a cotton gin when he was little. I figure that could make him act angry. As for Mrs. Dunn, I heard Mama say she looks that way on account of life with him.

My daddy said to Mr. Dunn, “Things going okay, Turpin?”

Crinkling up that sharp chin, Mr. Dunn said, “All right, I guess. It never is easy or simple, though, is it?”

“Only on Sundays,” my daddy declared, laughing. But I knew they didn’t much like each other. Mr. Dunn believes that our dog, King, walks all of a round-trip mile to poop in his front yard.

Mr. Dunn said, “Sundays might be simple for you, but they don’t seem so simple to me, Sherman. They ain’t what they used to be, that’s for sure. Matter of fact, just two nights ago, that would be a Sunday, I caught me a black boy stealing chickens outa my hen house. I say to him, ‘You gotta tell me you’re sorry for doing this.’ But he don’t. Boy didn’t apologize and wouldn’t give me his name or nothing. I didn’t recognize him, and I’m sure he ain’t one a mine ’cause they wouldn’t be that stupid.” He looked at my daddy hard.

My daddy looked at him back.

“Anyways,” Mr. Dunn started up again, “I don’t gotta tell you that even on a Sunday, it made me furious. I liked to feel crazy with the lack of respect he shown me and all I give to blacks in the fields. They already got too much and they stealing mine.”

“That’s a shame,” Daddy offered.

Mr. Dunn scratched a patch of beard stubble. Then he said, “Sherm, they act like we owes ’em, and I don’t cotton to that kinda behavior, not for ten seconds. You know me. I’m a fair, honest man, but I don’t like it. You take a look at that Ossian Sweet character up in Detroit last year. Had the nerve to move into a white neighborhood. Then he acts surprised people wanna drive him out. Don’t that beat all?” Mr. Dunn bent down so that he could point right at my daddy. “Now, that boy I caught, he won’t be doing nothing like stealing chickens for a good while. You don’t gotta worry about him coming around your place.”

Daddy said, “I see.”

Mr. Dunn signed a receipt and straightened and glanced at me with those burning-lard eyes of his. “Eh, now, Darby, thanks to you, I ain’t gonna worry ’bout toads no more.”

“I’m real glad, Mr. Dunn,” I said softly.

“Bye-bye, Beth Fairchild,” he said, stepping away, tools in his hand.

“Bye, Mr. Dunn,” she answered.

When he was gone, I had the willies so bad that I didn’t want to sit anymore. “Beth,” I said, “you . . . you wanna go ride the elevator or something?”

“Yeah!” she answered, and we leaped off that old counter.

“Hey, now, you girls are gonna wear Russell out,” my daddy called to me.

“We won’t,” I promised. “Besides, he likes pulling the ropes,” I said. But I could tell that Russell really didn’t. After a whole day of hauling heavy things between the first and second floor, he must feel like somebody’s nearly yanked his arms off.

On the way home, my daddy was quiet. “Darby?” he finally said.

“Yeah, Daddy?”

“You embarrassed me today, asking for money in front of all those men.”

Surprised, I sat quiet for a few minutes. “Sorry, Daddy” was what I said back. And I really was sorry. I felt like a bad person for embarrassing him.

“You didn’t know,” he told me, “but these days, after everyone’s paid off their bills from the tobacco and cotton harvest, they start working on the next bill, and we don’t take in much cash. So, to put it real simple, we don’t really have money to waste.”

“Okay,” I answered.

We rumbled through town, past big and small homes. There was a patch of forest before we passed by Annie Jane’s neighborhood. Another patch of forest came after that. Then we were on the open highway, the cotton rows swaying like tiny ballerinas. When we got closer to Ellan, my daddy said, “Can you believe that Turpin Dunn? He actually came in and accused one of my tenant farmers’ boys of trying to steal his chickens. That man doesn’t know when to quit.”

Shocked, I said, “He was doing that?”

“Yeah, and it wasn’t real subtle, either.”

“Daddy, what’s
subtle
mean?”

“It means, he didn’t do it in a smart way. It means he just threw it out there like he didn’t care if it made me mad.”

In late October, if it doesn’t rain, the afternoons are so bright you’ve got to squint. After school gets out, it’s the worst. Sunbeams get as long and sharp as pins. Also, daylight goes away so fast you’ve got to go inside early, even if you’re having fun.

What’s happy about late October is that my birthday is on Halloween. My mama and daddy always plan something fun for the weekend closest to my birthday, and they invite all my friends from school. They’ve got one rule, though: They don’t want me discussing my party or presents ahead of time. So even if it’s a week away, it can seem a lot further.

Overnight, the weather had turned cold, so, going downstairs for breakfast, I bunched myself in a thick sweater. Scooting past the fake wood paneling in our hallway, I touched it to make sure it hadn’t turned real. Going into the kitchen, I saw Mama and Great-Uncle Harvey at the table, already eating bacon and biscuits with eggs. I was about to slip onto a chair when my eyes noticed something out the back window. Our wash house was billowing steam like the Bennettsville & Cheraw Railroad. Warm clouds flew out of the open door, and I could imagine all my dirty dresses bubbling clean in that big iron cauldron of boiling water that was full up with soap.

“Good morning, Darby,” Great-Uncle Harvey called.

I sat down and said, “Good morning.”

Mama asked, “Did you sleep well?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I answered. Then, staring at Great-Uncle Harvey, I asked him, “How’d you know it was me?”

“It’s the way you walk, dear.”

As keen as his ears work, they aren’t any bigger than normal. That always surprises me a little. “It’s like you’re part magic.”

“Sorta,” he agreed.

I told him, “I wish you weren’t gonna leave today.”

Mama said, “We’re all sorry he’s going.”

Smiling, Great-Uncle Harvey said, “Course, it’s been a fine trip. I won’t deny that, but now I need to return to my routine. If I don’t, I might get spoiled and not ever leave.”

“I’m gonna send you my article.”

“That’s what I expect.”

McCall thumped down the steps. Banging into the kitchen, he dumped himself into a chair, and said, “Sorry.”

“You’re excused,” Mama told him.

On the third day after my article was out, everyone forgot about it. At school, I was treated like the same regular girl as before. Even at lunch my teachers didn’t praise me. Arriving home, I grabbed what I’d written about Great-Uncle Harvey and carried my newspaper notebook out back. On the fence beside the dairy barn, I sat snuggling in my coat and watching for Evette. Behind me, I could hear cows scraping against wood pens.

When I finally saw Evette and her two brothers kicking up a dust cloud, I ran through the field and yelled for her. Not ten minutes later, me and her chased off and sat in the woods beneath a tall tree with limbs stretching wide and as round as a ball. It was there that I showed her my story on Great-Uncle Harvey.

“It needs some changing.” Steam flittered about her mouth before disappearing.

“Why?” I asked, worried that she was still jealous and trying to make me scared about newspaper work.

“’Cause, Darby, see here how it ain’t so smooth?” Evette flipped to a page of my story and read me some.

“So what?” I said, rubbing my hands together to keep them warm.

“My aunt says you gotta finish one idea ’fore you jump into the next. See, the way your uncle can read bumps don’t got one thing to do with the way he listens to birds. Understand?”