Tulsa Burning (2 page)

Then I felt myself being lifted, higher than I ever had been lifted before. The arms were strong, and I knowed, even without
opening my eyes, that it was my pa who lifted me. "He'll hurt me now," I thought. My pa always hit me if I cried, and forgetting
the stickers in my back, I drew myself as much as possible into a ball and waited for the blow.

"Don't cry, little man," a voice said. I thought the voice was my pa's voice, but I couldn't never remember Pa ever talking
soft like to me before. "Let's get those burrs out of you, and you'll quit the hurting."

The man's face was close to mine. This could not be my pa; there wasn't no smell like the one that came from Pa's bottles
and stayed on his breath. Afraid, I opened just one eye to peek. It
was
my pa! He carried me into the house and put me on the kitchen bench. Pa took out every sticker. With his own hands, he done
that. Next he wet a cloth with water warm from the tea kettle and washed my face, back, and feet. Then, without a word, he
kissed the top of my head and went out the back door.

Now, remembering, I touched the top of my own head. Oh, Pa, I thought, why couldn't you ever be that way again? I remembered
trying once, a few weeks later, to re-create the scene by going on purpose into the stickers when my pa was nearby.

I yelled out in pain, but my pa, cursing, just left me there and disappeared into the barn. I stayed in that sticker patch,
crying, for a long time. Ain't no use of bawling, I finally told myself. You might as well give it up. I bit my lip and crawled
out of them stickers. One place on my hand had blood on it, but I didn't do no more crying. I couldn't remember much crying
at all after that day, but now, standing beside my pa's grave, I felt one tear slip from my eye and roll down my cheek.

Chapter 2

WHEN THE PREACHER STOPPED TALKING, I realized it was time to cover the box. Preacher Jackson took a shovel, stuck it into
the earth, and tossed the dirt onto the box. Lucky it's springtime when we get lots of rain, I thought. The preacher didn't
look strong enough to dig in Oklahoma earth when it was dry. He filled the shovel again and handed it to Ma.

When Ma had tossed her dirt on the box, the preacher took the shovel back. He started to put it in the ground again, but I
stepped over and took it from him. I could fill my own shovel with dirt to throw on Pa's grave.

When it was over, I stood looking at the mound of dirt and thinking that Pa was really gone. Used to be that he controlled
our lives even when he was gone from home. This time would be different. There wouldn't be no homecoming when he'd cuss or
throw the coffeepot full of hot coffee. I expected to get some feeling of lightness knowing it was over with him, but there
wasn't no relief in the knowledge, only a strange aching emptiness. I looked at the grave and wished I could buy him some
kind of headstone.

Ma and me were the first to move. We left the neighbor men with their hats in their hands and the women with sad eyes. Cinda
Phillips took after us and pulled at my arm. "Heard you'all are moving to town," she said softly.

"Reckon that's so," I managed to say, but I couldn't look at Cinda. Lately, I'd started to be uncomfortable around her on
account of the impure thoughts. See, me and Cinda have been friends since we was six years old, but just a few months ago
I noticed that Cinda didn't look the same. Her chest wasn't flat no more. I reckon that's normal and all.

It's me that ain't normal or decent. I spend a lot of time fighting them impure thoughts, but it ain't easy. I try just to
think about how we got to be friends. She had just moved into the house down the road from our place, and I walked by there
on my way to school. She was standing beside her swing under the mulberry tree in the front yard.

"We could walk to school together," she yelled, and she smiled her big smile that showed both front teeth were missing.

I felt real bashful, just looked down at my bare feet and didn't say nothing. I'd seen Cinda out in front of her place when
we drove by in the wagon, and once she come with her mother to sit on the front porch with Ma. "Her name's Cinda," Ma told
me, but I just ducked behind my ma's skirt.

"What's wrong with you, little boy?" Cinda asked me on that first school morning. "Has the cat got your tongue?"

"I'm not a little boy," I told her. "I'm big as you. Maybe bigger." I moved over to stand beside Cinda, measuring with my
eyes how her red pigtailed head measured against my blond one.

We didn't say nothing to each other, just started walking the half mile to the school. Just outside the one-room schoolhouse,
I stopped, suddenly just too scared to go inside. I stepped back away from the door. "I can't go to school," I said. "I don't
know nothing about reading or numbers."

Cinda reached out to grab my hand. "Come on, silly," she said. "You ain't supposed to know nothing when you first go to school.
We're going to have us a teacher and books."

For eight years we walked to school together. Last year we finished at the little school down the road. Pa didn't see no sense
in me going to town for high school, but Cinda's pa drove us into Wekiwa, us hunkered down in the back of his old truck. Up
front was one seat just big enough for the driver. The rest of the cab was filled with glass jugs of milk that Mr. Phillips
would deliver to customers in town. Sometimes Mr. Phillips picked us up after school. Sometimes we walked the three miles
home. If Pa was out on a drunk, Ma might drive the wagon into town to get us.

It made me mad at myself for having them impure thoughts that made me so uncomfortable with Cinda. When she caught up with
me and Ma at the cemetery, I just looked down at my shoes while she talked. "It'll be sort of lonesome for me on the ride
to school next year," she said.

I opened up my mouth to say something to her, but no words come to my mind. I just stood there, too dadgum dumb to talk. Ma
saved me. "We'll be living over at Sheriff and Mrs. Leonard's place," she said, and she put her hand on Cinda's shoulder.
"You come by there and say hey, to us, you hear?"

Ma moved off a little, and Cinda turned back to me. "I want you to take this," she said, and she took something out of her
dress pocket. She reached over, took my hand, and dropped a cold, hard object into it. I opened my fingers and looked down
at her lucky silver dollar.

"No." I shook my head. "I can't take this. You use it to win races and stuff."

She laughed. "Haven't you noticed we don't run races at high school? You need luck right now more than I do, living with the
sheriff and all."

"You use it for other stuff too, like the test."

Just last year me and Cinda went over to the county seat to the courthouse and took the county exam that eighth-graders take
if they want to go on to high school. Cinda took out her lucky silver dollar, and she laid it between our desks, real careful
to make it exactly between us. "This way it will bring us both luck," she said.

After a while, my eyes went to feeling tired and started watering. I was rubbing at them when Cinda looked over at me. She
looked worried, like my eyes might keep me from passing the test. Then she stuck out her leg and used her foot to scoot the
silver dollar as close to my desk as she could get it. I reckon it worked. I made a real high score on that test. Cinda did
all right too. The way I figure it is that Cinda is the kind that will do all right, always.

Now she was wanting to give me her most valuable possession. "I wouldn't feel right," I said, and I held it out to her.

She put her hands behind her back. "Please. You can give it back to me later, but I want you to have it now."

"Well, okay," I said. "I suspect I will be needing luck."

Just then her pa called out for her to come along, and she hurried off. I headed to the wagon. I knew folks were passing by
me, but I didn't feel none like talking. I leaned my head down against the wood side of the wagon. Out of the corner of my
eye I saw Widow Carter and her brother stop a few feet away. "We're real sorry, boy," she said. I nodded. The widow's brother,
Oily, was sometimes too addled to know what went on around him. But sometimes he had real clear spells, like today. Oily left
his sister's side to come and touch my shoulder.

It pleased me to have Oily wanting to comfort me on account of him being an expert on hurting. I raised my head and looked
into his eyes, brown and knowing.

Widow Carter come over to lead her brother away, and I realized Mrs. Mitchell and Isaac was standing on my other side.

Isaac didn't say nothing, just reached out and punched me on the shoulder. It was our way, what we did when we first seen
each other after Isaac come home from college or how we'd say good-bye when he was fixing to go back. Isaac was done with
college now, and he worked over in Tulsa. I knowed he was missing a day's work to come to see my pa get buried just so he
could punch me on the shoulder.

"I'll miss our talks," Mrs. Mitchell said.

"Mr. Phillips is going to bring you good milk, though," I said. Then my misery come busting out. "I don't want to live in
that man's house," I said.

"But you will. Your mother needs you."

I couldn't say nothing about my ma. I was too ashamed knowing she was planning to be real handy when the sheriff took to looking
for a second wife.

Mrs. Mitchell looked over her shoulder to make sure no one was around before she talked more. Then she said, "Be careful.
Sheriff Leonard has bad things inside him, and they sometimes come spewing out. Just remember your name. You may need more
than ever to be truly Noble." Then she walked away, her dark head held high.

Ma was moving toward me by then, and Sheriff Leonard walked close behind her. "Let me help you, Vivian," he said when Ma started
to climb up to the wagon seat.

"I'll help her," I said quick, and I took her arm.

Sheriff Leonard put his big straw hat back on his head, spit his tobacco to the side, and gave me a long look. "Might as well
take that chip off your shoulder, son," he drawled. "We're likely to be seeing lots of one another in days to come. Don't
it seem like we ought to get to be friends?"

"Never had me many friends," I said.

"Suit yourself, then, son." He looked up at Ma. "I'll follow you, Vivian. The missus is real anxious to get you settled in."

He moved on to the big black car marked "Sheriff."

I got Ma settled, climbed onto the driver's seat, and told the horses, "Get up." I waited for Ma to scold me on account of
me acting like I did toward the sheriff, but she stayed totally silent, staring straight ahead. The cemetery is just at the
edge of Wekiwa, so we had to drive three miles to home. When we turned up the driveway to our place, we seen the sheriff's
car parked in front of the house.

Sheriff Leonard was in the front porch rocker. He got up and stretched as me and Ma walked toward him. "Take the horses to
the barn, boy," he said. "Charlie Carson aims to send someone from the bank to get them and the cow and I reckon anything
else on the place that can be sold. You'uns gather up your clothes and whatnot. I'll just set here and rest a spell."

I did what he said, unhitched the horses from the wagon, and put them in the stall. "Well, old boys," I said, "I guess I won't
be seeing you after this." I threw in some extra hay. Next I moved to the cow and patted her rump. What would I do in town
with no farm chores to tend to? Once I would have loved the idea of leaving all that work behind. Now I hated it.

I went through the back door into the dark kitchen. My mother moved around the house, dropping things into a big basket. I
watched her take the family Bible from a table in the parlor. Then I couldn't watch anymore, and I went into my room.

It didn't take long to get my clothes, two pair of overalls, two shirts, an extra pair of summer underwear, and my winter
longhandles. No use to take my beat-up winter coat. I should have thrown it in the fire last winter. It was too little and
too worn out then to do me any real good. I wouldn't even be able to squeeze into it by the time cold weather came again.
There wasn't much else to gather up. I got my knife, the jar of marbles I'd won after Isaac taught me to play real good, and
the lucky horseshoe my grandpa had made for me with my name, Noble, forged right into it. The last thing I did was to take
the keys from the very back of my shelf where I hid them.

I held the keys in my hand and stared down at their thin black shape. I'd made one of them keys myself after a bunch of studying.
The thing is, I've always been interested in metal work, made me a knife using a file on a strip of steel when I wasn't more
than eight or nine.

Hanging around the blacksmith shop in town was just about my favorite thing to do. Old Elmer Keller got so he'd let me use
his hammers and tools anytime he wasn't working on a big job. Horseshoes were Elmer's main work, and since so many folks had
got themselves automobiles, Elmer didn't have as much work as he used to have.

Well, last winter, I used Elmer's shop to make one of these black keys, and I had used the keys to keep me and Ma from starving
to death. Now I was looking down at them, wondering if I'd ever have the nerve to use them black keys while I was sleeping
at the sheriff's house. I shook my head. No, likely I wouldn't, but I might use them to get away from the sheriff's house.
I dropped the keys down in the pocket of my good black pants. If I had to use them, it wouldn't be the first time I had to
steal from the telephone company.

The first time it happened was last winter. It was late one night when I walked down the main street of Wekiwa looking for
Pa because he'd been gone five days. He hadn't been drunk when he left, said he thought he could pick up a day or so of work
in town, cleaning up for some storekeeper. He hadn't come home.

Finally, I set off to look for him. I pulled at the collar of that worn-out coat, trying to get it up around my freezing ears.
The sleeves was too short, and my arms turned red with cold. Supper hadn't been nothing but thin hard biscuits, made without
no baking powder or soda, the same biscuits we'd been living on for almost a week.

Usually we had stuff Ma had put away from the garden, but last summer's drought pretty much done the garden in. Ma's canned
goods had only lasted through December.

Now it was February, and I was sure hungry. I stopped in front of the town's only eating place, Daisy's Café. Pa wouldn't
be inside there, but I decided to step in, just long enough to breathe some warm air. The smell of beef stew filled the place,
and I could see a big bowl in front of a man at the first table. My knees went to feeling weak, and I sort of leaned against
the door.

The owner, Daisy Harrison, come toward me. "Do you want to order something?" she asked.