He motioned at me standing by Daddy’s side, and asked, “This your daughter?”
Daddy had draped his arm across my shoulder. “Yes, this here’s Sonny. She’s a dowser too.”
“That so?”
“Good as me.”
“Hm.”
The way he said it was like he didn’t much believe him.
He said, “How old is she?”
His eyebrows drew together, making a solid line across his forehead. I cleared my throat and tried a little smile.
“Nine, sir.”
“Manners. Nice. I like that.”
He immediately walked away, the move assuming we’d follow. Daddy looked at me, gave me one of his funny looks to put me at ease. Mr. Fowler led us through the house, each room bigger than two of ours put together. The walls were covered with thick wallpaper, and were of terrible hunting scenes with dogs, their teeth bared going after a bloody deer, and on another wall, a fox. Both deer and fox had terror in their eyes. I hated that wallpaper. The windows were framed with heavy drapes, and all around sat finely crafted wood tables, leather chairs, and plump couches with fancy tapestry pillows. We went into a wood-paneled room filled with a couple of deer heads mounted on wood plaques, stuffed pheasants, and quail, along with more pictures, all hunting scenes. He pointed to a leather chair for Daddy to sit in.
Daddy said, “No, I’m a might dirty. I’ll stand.”
I’d stopped just outside the room to look at a painting in the hallway.
Mr. Fowler, in a voice that sounded prideful, called out to me and said, “Don’t touch it. That’s a reproduction of Monet.”
My hands were behind my back, so I had no intentions of touching it, but I remained quiet. I’d learned about Monet, and that’s why I was staring at it to begin with. My third grade teacher believed in elevating our knowledge of The Arts, as she called it, and she’d shown us pictures of paintings like this, rolling through them one by one, showing us slides of places we’d never go. She said they were French Impressionistic.
Before I could tell him what I knew, he said, “Maybe folks like you wouldn’t know about artists like that.”
His comment made me look at Daddy, at his calloused, rough-knuckled hands, coveralls stained with machine oil, and his T-shirt a little grimy since he’d been lying under the tractor earlier. Me, I’d come in my own work attire consisting of an almost too small threadbare blouse, dungarees with patches on the knees, scuffed penny loafers instead of my usual boots. I cataloged the comment in my mind, and began to form an opinion of him. Thing was, Daddy was well read, well educated in fact, in spite of what Mr. Fowler thought. His and Mama’s room held books he called classics, like The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice, Moby-Dick, and Of Mice and Men. He had a degree in agriculture from North Carolina State College. Our farm had been one of the early test farms through Daddy’s contacts at the college for chlordane, a pesticide used to eliminate the boll weevil everybody was having problems with.
Daddy, ever amiable and laid-back, ignored the insult.
All he said was, “Well, sure. That’s right. Can’t imagine many of us from the sticks smart enough to ’preciate a fine picture like that.”
He winked at me, then smiled slightly at Mr. Fowler. Moments later they shook hands over an arrangement.
We dowsed his land that spring and Daddy charged him twice what he’d have charged anyone else.
Daddy never had a bad word for anybody, but I’d overheard him tell Mama, “He’s a real piece of work.”
Mr. Fowler never saw me dowse ’cause I worked the back side of his property, marking where a pump should be set with a stick planted upright. When the job was done, Daddy used the money to fix the tractor. He built a new chicken coop for our laying hens, and put a down payment on a new cotton stripper. He bought Mama a new dress, got Ross a new pair of cleats for playing football like he’d been wanting to do. Trent got some new work boots and I got new school shoes, the usual black Mary Janes I loved. There was no drought that year. We had plenty of rain, and Mr. Fowler didn’t need the irrigation at all. Maybe he’d get his money’s worth out of it next year. We didn’t see him again though, not until three years later after everything changed.
Chapter 3
1955
We’d buried Daddy on the land he’d tended with such steadfast devotion, on a small rise beneath a cluster of pines. I got to where I’d visit him most every day. I wanted to talk to him, yet finding words to say eluded me. There was no stone yet, so I stood next to the mound of dirt and stared at it, the divining branch loose in my hands. I suppose it looked like I was waiting for something, and in a way, I was. I kept hoping what Preacher Moore said was true, something about the ones who leave stay with us in some capacity. I waited for Daddy to show up the way we found water, an awareness that would come like the pulling on my arms and legs. I wanted the assurance of it.
I considered maybe I could find him in the places we’d walked, so I started wandering the fields, holding on to hope. Just before sunrise one morning, days after we laid him to rest, I walked into a field, trying not to set my expectations too high. I began where I left off the day before, going up and down, row by row, over and over, the Y end set inside my palms. The spot I kept coming back to was where it happened, where he’d fallen. I passed over it again and again, waiting for the slightest hint of a vibration. What I felt was disappointment, and eventually stupid while my feeling of loss grew. This powerful association I’d had with the willow branch was fading, becoming no different than picking a twig up off the ground. I considered putting it away and never using it again. Making my way back to the house, the early morning sun colored a low cloud bank with bright pink but the beauty of it angered me ’cause my world was ugly without him in it.
Back in my room I turned on my record player, picked up the needle and placed it at the beginning of my one and only favorite record, the one I had to have after I’d learned of Elvis. That’s Alright Mama played, and with the volume low, I went to my dresser. I picked up the small article from the local paper and unfolded it. I could have recited it word for word, Daddy’s entire life captured in a paragraph on page three. I’d read it many times, especially the part about the water. I lowered myself to the edge of my bed to read it again.
Jones County, North Carolina
Local Man Dies from Rattlesnake Bite
Lloyd Simpson Creech, age 41, was working his cotton field on April 19th when he encountered an Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake and was bitten. Doctor William Meade, in the process of delivering a baby, directed the family to quickly bring Mr. Creech to him at the Newmans’ residence approximately twenty miles away. There Mr. Creech was administered antivenin, but passed hours later, at home. Doctor Meade stated there were never any guarantees, and circumstances are all different. That, along with the ingestion of water by Mr. Creech prior to treatment, he concludes, led to Mr. Creech’s unfortunate death. Mr. Creech, an upstanding individual with a talent for many things, from farming to crop management, to his unique insight locating water, was a lifelong native of Jones County. He leaves behind a wife of eighteen years, Mrs. Olivia Walters Creech, two sons, Ross Lloyd, 16, Trent Walters, 14, and a daughter, Martha Simpson (Sonny), age 12. Funeral services will be held April 23rd at Calvary Baptist Church, Highway 58 at 11:00 a.m.
Mama went to rip it in half when she saw it, but I’d said, “No!” and grabbed it from her.
There was a black-and-white photo of him below the words. He was standing in the middle of the cotton field, eerily close to the same spot where the snake had been. He wore a straw hat pushed back on his head and a big silly grin on his face. It captured a time before us kids were born, and was like looking into the past. The corners of the article were already smudged from me handling it so much. I folded it up and put it back on my dresser.
Aside from that, and the willow branch, there were other things of his we’d kept around. His work boots sat inside the back door like always, his coat for wint
er was still on the hook too. I took it down the other day, sniffed at it good and hard, catching a faint whiff of his hair tonic and cigarette smoke. Trent found me with my face buried in it.
In that tone he gets sometimes when he’s spoiling for a fight, he’d said, “Quit being weird.”
“I ain’t. I’m only holding it for a second.”
“Put it back.”
He stood close, like he’d pinch me if I didn’t do what he wanted, so I’d put it back like he said. He’d gone out, slamming the screen door so hard the spring that connected it to the frame made a funny wawawa sound. His shotgun rode his hunched shoulders, and he kept his head down, like he wished he didn’t have to look at this world without our daddy in it. I started to yell at him I’d tell Mama if he got to shooting at the squirrels again. I hadn’t ’cause I didn’t want him coming back, not in the mood he was in. Trent not only had a wild streak, he had a bit of a mean streak too, rarely seen when Daddy had been around. Daddy used to say he was a might hot headed, and that hot headedness had been showing itself a lot lately.
I got up off the bed, smoothed my bedspread, and stopped my record player. I opened my door and heard the phone from the other part of the house, ringing the special ring, two long, and one short, which meant a call for us. Even though the sun was barely up, people wanting to pay their respects were already starting to call and I went to get it. I spent the rest of the day opening the door to accept offerings of fried chicken, soups, casseroles, pies, and cakes. It was a fact no one would ever go hungry if somebody died in these parts. Friends came to console us, to share their memories of what they remembered about Daddy, and it did help. I figured some also came out of curiosity, as if they could relive the horror of the moment by looking out across our land to the spot where he fell. Everyone tried to maintain a polite inquisitiveness that wouldn’t offend, but sooner or later they’d get around to asking the details.
As the day wore on, Mama took to her bed and shut the door in such a way, I believed she might not ever open it again. Me, Ross, and Trent kept greeting visitors when they came knocking. Soon as they heard she was resting, most would hand over what they’d brought, offer condolences, and leave, while some came in, like the Hudsons and the Pritchetts, and sat down in the living room, piling food onto plates from what was put out on the kitchen table and counters, laughing and talking like it was a supper party. Some of the women came from the church and stood at our kitchen sink to wash and dry dishes like they were in their own kitchens. We weren’t offended. It was the way of things, how it had always been done, except it had always happened to other people. Not us.
Aunt Ruth called right before suppertime, and Mama left her room long enough to talk to her. Her manner of speaking was clipped since she was still so distraught, but she assured Aunt Ruth she didn’t need her to drop what she was doing to come all the way from Rocky Mount.
“No. I’m fine. I’m fine. There’s no need, really. You’ve got your teaching job. Maybe this summer. That would be nice.”
She hung up the phone without looking at us and shuffled back down the hall and into their bedroom. Click went the door.
The one visit I assumed I would be glad for was when Daniel came with his mama, who he called Brenda, not Mama, and his sister, Sarah. They pulled up in their ancient Pontiac, and it was backfiring loud enough to scare the birds from the trees. The front bumper hung at an angle, about to fall off. Daniel had always said Brenda couldn’t drive worth a lick, and judging by the looks of their vehicle, he was right. They came in and he barely glanced at me. For the first time ever in our years of friendship, the naturalness had disappeared. I figured it was due to his mama being there. His brown hair fell almost into his eyes in front, and over his ears on the sides. It was even longer in back. Daniel was always searching for a way to differentiate himself, like letting his hair grow when all the boys at school had crew cuts. This difference was him to a tee. He said useless words, and I said some back, all of it nonsense like we’d only just met. That’s the way it felt, like we didn’t know each other.
Him: “Hey.”
Me: “Hey.”
“How’re you?”
“Okay, I guess.”
“Well. That’s good.”
Normal would’ve gone more like this.
Him: “Your daddy should a killed that sumbitch ’fore it got him.”
Me: “Ain’t that the doggone truth!”
Him: “I’m gonna hunt that sumbitch down and kill it myself!”
“Not if I get to that sumbitch first!”
“Well, come on then, let’s go!”
We would’ve then gone on a snake hunt or at least acted out one, seeking some sort of vengeance on Daddy’s behalf. The normal Daniel would’ve made this terrible situation a little better. He would’ve showed up dressed to play some part after searching every closet in his house to come up with a perfect costume. But he didn’t say anything like that, not with his mama talking ninety miles an hour, controlling the conversation and his sister making it known she was more interested in trying to get Ross’s attention than conveying sorrow for the death in our family. It was the first time in my memory I was glad when he left. Having that feeling didn’t seem natural, not when we’d been best friends clear back to first grade, and I think we would have been even before then except Daniel had skipped kindergarten altogether. Everyone rumored he’d missed it ’cause his mama didn’t register him, and the county had no idea he was supposed to even be in school. It made no difference since Daniel was smarter than most, and that was easily recognized his first day.
Our first grade teacher, Miss Rutherford, said, “Children, a few of you at a time are going to come to the reading circle at the back of the room, and we’re going to start in our Dick and Jane primers and learn to read, won’t that be fun?”
Daniel, who had avoided looking directly at anyone since he walked in the door, sat two rows over from me, and when I glanced over at him, our eyes locked on one another. Neither one of us smiled, but in that split second, there was a recognition, like seeing someone we know, even though we’d never met. Miss Rutherford took one student from each row, and Daniel ended up in my reading circle, sitting beside me. Boy, was she in for a big surprise. She went through explaining how we’d sound out words using our knowledge of the alphabet that we’d learned in kindergarten. She called on Daniel to try first. He stared at her, down at the page, and then closed the book.
She said, “Daniel? Won’t you read?”
He said, “It’s too easy.”
Miss Rutherford said, “What, what do you mean too easy? Do you already know how to read?”
He nodded.
Surprised, Miss Rutherford handed him a book off her desk, one she was reading herself. “Can you read this?”
She opened it to a page and handed it to him. He began, and she simply let him read a whole paragraph. I think she was so stunned, she didn’t think to stop him.
Finally, she said, “My word. Very good, Daniel.”
She took the book from him, then said, “What else do you know?”
He froze up, and even then, I was already able to see he was uncomfortable, didn’t like the close scrutiny.
She said, “Come up here.”
Daniel followed her slowly to the front of the room. The other kids who were supposed to be busy copying the work from the blackboard while we were in the reading circle stopped what they were doing to watch.
Miss Rutherford picked up a piece of chalk and put, 1 + 2 = . . .
She handed the chalk to Daniel and he wrote, 3.
She wrote, 5 – 1 = . . .
Without hesitation, he wrote, 4.
I could see she was confounded. What was she supposed to do with Daniel? How had he learned all this? On his own?
She asked him, “How did you learn all this?”
He said, “I don’t know.”
Junior Odom let out a loud fart, his obnoxious reputation having already been established th
e year before.
Miss Rutherford, now distracted by the class, which had exploded in laughter at Junior’s disruption, allowed Daniel to inch his way back to the reading circle.
He sat back down beside me, and I said, “You’re real smart.”
“No, I ain’t.”
“You are too.Will you teach me?”
“Teach you what?”
“To read, like you do?”
He stared at his shoes, the toes of them scuffed pale brown.
He said, “Okay.”
I opened my book, and he pointed at the first word, and specifically, the first letter.
He said, “What’s that letter?”
“G.”
“What’s this letter?”
“O.”
“How does the ‘g’ sound?”
I made a hard g sound. He nodded.
“And this one?”
I said, “O.”
“Add it together.”
The meaning clicked, and I said, “Oh!”
He shook his head and looked so disappointed. “Not oh.”
I grabbed his arm and said, “No, I mean go!”
Daniel smiled at me like I’d just figured out something huge. I grinned back at him.
From that point on we were near about inseparable. Luckily, we always ended up in the same classrooms too. As we grew older, I became Daniel’s protector when his smarts made him a target. For me, he was the most interesting person I knew, his mind always percolating with new ideas to keep us amused, usually by acting out his movies, or sometimes his scientific interests were the highlight. Like the time he asked if we had any ammonia and bleach. He made the both us pure tee sick when he “experimented,” and mixed the ingredients together in a small container we found. Bent over it, we inhaled the noxious fumes, got dizzy and then lolled about on the porch swing, both of us feeling queasy. Mama asked why we didn’t eat our bologna sandwiches at lunch, and we claimed we’d eaten too much breakfast.
The Forgiving Kind Page 3