Nathan Coulter (9 page)

I never had heard of that, but I didn't want to hurt her feelings. I got out my pocketbook and handed it to her.

“Now,” she said. “You must put your hand on my heart.”

She took my hand and put it down inside her dress. She didn't have on any underwear at all. The feeling of her went all through me. I couldn't look at her. She spoke some sort of conjure over my pocketbook and handed it back to me.

After I got away from the tent I looked to see what she'd done to my money when she blessed it. It was gone. Two dollars. She'd stolen it all. And there wasn't a thing to do about it.

I started looking for Brother, edging through the carnival and watching in front of the tents. The crowd was thick. The afternoon was hot and close, and the carnival had begun to have the smell of sweat and cotton candy. Everybody had been there long enough to be tired and bad-tempered. It was miserable. I wished I was at home, a long way from that crowd and the gypsies and the two-headed babies and the Sheik of Araby's wife.

I found Brother playing some sort of game with a mean-looking little man in a checkered shirt. There was a circle of nails driven into the counter of the man's booth, and in the center a wooden arm set on an axle. You bought a red washer for a quarter and put it on one of the nails. The man spun the arm, and if it stopped on your nail you won a dollar. If you bought two washers you stood to win two dollars. When I came up Brother had just laid down a quarter.

“Have you got any money?” I asked him.

“I will have just as soon as he spins this thing again,” Brother said. He had eight washers stuck around on the nails.

The man spun the arm and it stopped on a nail that Brother didn't have a washer on.

“That was my last quarter,” Brother said.

I had two quarters left and I gave him those. He bought two more washers and tried it again. If he'd won he'd have had eighteen dollars. But he lost. He had a nickel left, but that wasn't enough to buy any more chances, and I was glad of it. We never did get to the Ferris wheel, and I didn't mind that either. I guessed that if we'd paid the dime or quarter or whatever it cost to get on, somebody would have made us pay a dollar to get off.

“Come on,” I said. “Let's see how Uncle Burley's doing.”

We went back through the crowd to where Uncle Burley had his tank of ducks. People were still waiting to try their luck with the embroidery hoops. Uncle Burley winked at us. His pockets were crammed with the dimes he'd taken in.

We went off to the side and sat under a tree to watch the people try to ring a duck and wait for Uncle Burley to be ready to go home.

It wasn't long until the ducks began to get tired. They'd had a hard day of it, and one after another they quit ducking when the hoops came at them. They just sat there, looking fretful and disgusted and let the people win Uncle Burley's profit. He'd made the throwing line only a few feet from the tank, and everybody began ringing ducks. The people who'd lost in the morning heard what was going on and came back. Uncle Burley's pockets were flattening out fast. He looked more fretful and disgusted than the ducks.

Finally he called Brother and me. He was down to six or seven dollars, and he gave us all but one of them. “Take care of things until I get back,” he said. “I won't be a minute.”

After Uncle Burley left, Brother stood by the tank to pick the hoops up, and I handled the money. Our first customer was the man in the brown suit who'd lost the bet to Uncle Burley that morning. I could see that he'd come back to get even, and I was afraid he'd make trouble, but he won five dollars on his second throw; that seemed to satisfy him, and he left. But then I was really in a mess; Uncle Burley hadn't come back and I only had eighty cents.

I was wondering what in the world I'd do if somebody else won and found out that I didn't have money enough to pay him, when I saw the head fly off one of the ducks. It couldn't have been done any neater with a butcher knife, but nobody was even close to the tank. I looked over at the shooting gallery, and there was Uncle Burley popping away at the target and ringing the bell every time. Then I saw him lead off toward the ducks as if he were making a wing shot; and another duck flopped in the tank.

When he'd killed all the ducks Uncle Burley walked off toward the other end of the carnival without looking back. He was carrying a big red plaster frog that he'd won at the shooting gallery. Everybody stood around, looking at us and looking at the ducks and looking at Uncle Burley going off through the crowd, with their mouths open. Then they all laughed a little and began to straggle back into the carnival.

I put Uncle Burley's eighty cents in my pocket, and Brother and I started after him.

We caught up with him in front of Bubbles' tent. He and Big Ellis were listening to the man in the derby hat make his speech. We stood with them, listening a while, then Uncle Burley said, “Let's go.”

We elbowed our way out of the crowd and Big Ellis went with us.

“I'd like to have a little something to drink,” he said to Uncle Burley.

Uncle Burley just carried his red frog and didn't say anything.

Big Ellis said, “I got a little something.” He looked at Brother and me and then at Uncle Burley. “It's all right, ain't it?”

“I imagine,” Uncle Burley said.

He let Big Ellis take the lead, and we followed him across the grounds to where he'd parked his car. When we got there Big Ellis opened the door and rammed his hand into a hole in the driver's seat and pulled out a pint of whiskey. He said that was the first Fourth of July he'd ever been able to hide it where Annie May couldn't find it.

“She can smell it before it's even uncorked,” he said.

He opened the bottle and passed it to Uncle Burley. Uncle Burley set the frog on the seat of the car and drank.

“She couldn't track it inside that seat,” Big Ellis said. He giggled and drank out of the bottle when Uncle Burley passed it back to him.

They sat down and leaned against the side of the car, handing the bottle back and forth. Every time Big Ellis took a drink he'd giggle and say something about Annie May's nose not being as good as it used to be.

And the happier Big Ellis got the sadder Uncle Burley got. Those ducks had hurt his feelings and he couldn't get over it.

“God Almighty, women are awful,” Big Ellis said, and giggled and wiped the whiskey off his chin.

He hadn't any more than said it before Annie May came around the car, mad as a sow and screeching like a catamount. She told Big Ellis to get himself in that car and take her home. They left with Uncle Burley's red frog sitting bug-eyed on the seat between them.

Uncle Burley stood there with the bottle in his hand and watched them go. Then he drank the rest of the whiskey and threw the bottle down. He swayed back and forth, looking down at it.

“Well,” he said, “around and around she goes.”

It was dark by the time we got the tank emptied and loaded on the wagon and started home. Brother drove, and Uncle Burley sat on the back of the wagon leaning against the tank. He was quiet all the way.

The moon was up when we turned into Grandpa's gate, shining nearly as bright as day. The river bottom was white and quiet below us, and away off somewhere we could hear a dog barking. It seemed a long time since the Fourth of July.

The next morning Annie May Ellis came over to bring the red frog home, and told Grandma about Uncle Burley's day at the picnic. Grandma told Grandpa and Daddy, and from then on Uncle Burley had no peace. Grandma lit into him about his sinful behavior every chance she got. Grandpa ignored him, but he ignored him in a way that kept all of us from being comfortable when the two of them were together. Even Daddy was aggravated, and that was unusual because he and Uncle Burley had always allowed each other to be the way they were and had got along.

Nobody knew what to do with the red frog. Uncle Burley was too proud to claim it, and Grandpa was too proud to throw it away. Annie May had set it on the mantelpiece in the living room when she came in
that morning, and it stayed there. Grandma said she'd just leave it as a reminder to Uncle Burley. But it was a better reminder to her and Grandpa and Daddy than it was to Uncle Burley. He never looked at it.

He was used to that sort of trouble and he stood it well enough. He stayed in a quiet good humor that kept him always a little beyond their reach. But it was intentional good humor; there were times when it was too quiet and too pleasant, and although it spared him a lot of his trouble it could be as insulting as the red frog. He wouldn't say he was sorry and he wouldn't let them make him mad. That kept them after him.

During the week he worked hard. He stood the work the same way he stood everything else, laughing when he could, saying no more than he had to. The work sheltered him; he didn't give them a chance to find fault with him in that. When it was over on Saturday night he ate his supper and left. He'd go to the camp house at the river and stay until Monday morning, avoiding Sunday when Grandma had sin on her mind and Grandpa and Daddy had time enough to be quarrelsome.

While this was going on Brother and I quit being as good friends as we'd always been. I didn't know when it started, but things gradually began to change between us. He started running around with boys who were older than I was, and he went to town every Saturday night. Sometimes I noticed that I called him Tom instead of Brother. I was sorry, but he never gave me a chance to talk about it, and it just kept happening. I spent more time with Uncle Burley; and once in a while I'd walk to the Easterlys' and talk to Calvin. I didn't like Calvin much, but he was about my age, and he was better than nobody.

One Saturday at the end of July, while we were at work in the hay, Big Ellis and Gander Loyd began riding Brother about having a girl in town. I didn't pay much attention to it then. But that evening, after we'd done the chores and Brother had gone upstairs to get ready for town, Grandma said, “Tom's got a girl, hasn't he?”

“I don't know,” I said.

“Well, I don't know either. But he's getting old enough. And if I know the signs he's got a girl.” She shook her head. “Lord, it seems just yesterday when he was a baby.”

She finished straining the milk and went into the kitchen to start supper, and I went to the front porch and sat in the swing. I could hear Uncle
Burley calling his hounds. He whistled and called each one by its name. In the field by the house Grandpa's mules were grazing along the side of the hill. I could see the sweaty marks of the harness on their backs and shoulders. They looked naked and strange without the harness. The day had come apart. After the week of hard work Sunday would feel awkward and too quiet, and even though we were glad of the rest we'd be a little relieved when it was Monday again. I heard the hounds come up to be fed, barking around Uncle Burley until he pitched the food to them, then quiet. A few swifts circled up into the sky and down again over the tops of the chimneys. The mules grazed side by side on the hill, walking together as if they were still at work.

In a little while Brother came around the corner of the house. He'd already eaten his supper and was dressed up, ready to go. His hair was shiny and black from the oil he'd put on it, and I could smell shaving lotion.

“You going to town?” I asked him.

“You got any objections?”

“What're you going to town for?”

He grinned at me, feeling the part in his hair with the ends of his fingers. “You don't know, do you?”

I watched him walk down the driveway and turn toward town. Uncle Burley came up and leaned against the post at the corner of the porch. He'd hunted me up to stay with me until supper was ready; he wouldn't risk being alone with Grandpa even that long. I scooted over and made room for him.

But he stood there, watching Brother walk out the lane. “Where's he going?”

“To town.”

“He's courting a little, I expect.”

“I don't know,” I said.

Uncle Burley sat down. He leaned his head back and yawned and then closed his eyes. “There's one good thing about work,” he said.

“What?”

“Stopping.”

Grandma called us to supper. We went inside and washed our hands and sat down at the table. It was hot and stuffy in the kitchen, and with
Brother gone the meal was quieter than usual. As long as Uncle Burley was there Grandma and Grandpa wouldn't allow themselves to say anything pleasant, and they seemed too tired to be in a bad humor.

When Grandpa had cleaned his plate he turned his chair to the window and looked out at the sky. “We'll get a rain,” he said. “It's been too hot.”