A Piece of My Heart

by Richard Ford

  “Goddamn it,” the old man bellowed, lifting his head and wiping his nose with his sleeve and pushing his face back down to the hole for another test. He seemed to want to get part of his head inside the hole, but the hole was apparently too stingy. He sat back on his haunches abruptly, wiped his face again, and shook his head piteously.

  “What do it smell like?” the colored man said. He was standing over the old man now with the entire pipe-and-wrench conjunction dangling in one hand like a watch fob and delving the other hand into his thick hair.

  “Shit,” the old man said. “There’s shit in my well water, by God. Mrs. Lamb knows what she’s talking about.”

  The colored man shook his head ruefully and stood over the hole, staring at it as if it were a grave.

  “I bragged on it,” the old man said, still levered back on his haunches.

  “Yes suh,” the colored man said.

  “Don’t ever brag on nothin you own, son.”

  “Yes suh,” the colored man agreed.

  “It queers everything. I told Gaspareau a month ago what a goddamn good well I had, been good since 1922, and the first thing I know the privy goes and infects it. That was a jinx, and I’m to cause.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” the colored man admitted.

  “Well, I know, by God,” he said. “It’s like feeling piss down your pants leg. You know you done acted hasty.”

  The colored man turned and glanced at the house and saw him standing there and gave him an anguished look that suggested that if he looked again he didn’t want to see anybody still there. He flicked his eyes at Mr. Lamb, then back at the house, then fixed him with a purely baleful look.

  “We got somebody,” the colored man said.

  “What?” the old man snapped.

  “Somebody done come on. . . .”

  “Mr. Lamb,” he shouted, propelling himself away from the house, regretting to have to speak at all.

  “Who is it?” the old man grunted, twisting his face around so he could see.

  “This here him,” the colored man said, pointing down at the old man, who was still on his knees in the grass, looking up with his entire forehead enraveled behind his glasses.

  “I’m him,” the old man said loudly, batting his eyes and struggling to get on his feet. “That’s me right here.”

  “I’m Sam Newel.” His voice stopped inexplicably.

  “Who is it?” the old man said, staring at the colored man with the same bewilderment he’d centered on the pump.

  “Newel,” he said with greater difficulty. “Beebe Henley called you, I believe.”

  “The sound’s out of this ear,” the old man said, batting his right ear as though he were swatting a mosquito. “What did he say, T.V.A.?”

  “He say he a friend of Miss Beebe’s,” the colored man shouted directly into the old man’s good ear.

  “He is?” the old man said irascibly. “Newel?”

  “Yes sir?”

  “You sure are a big pile of shit,” he said, finally hoisting himself with the colored man’s help, and taking a great handful of his trousers and staring at him with a hot intensity, as though he were only going along with a joke that was about to come quickly to an end, at which point he intended to claim the last laugh. “We thought you was coming a month ago.” His eyes flicked up and down. “You’re the lawyer, aren’t you?”

  “Yes sir,” he said, trying to clear up the trouble with his voice.

  “Well, everybody needs a goddamn lawyer sometime. My will’s made, though.” The old man peeped up under the house, and saw Robard sitting smoking placidly in the jeep. “Who in the hell’d you bring with you?”

  “That’s a Mr. Hewes,” he said, trying to aim his answer directly into the old man’s working ear.

  “It is, aye? Well, who the hell is he? Not another goddamned lawyer, I hope.” The old man took a faster grip on his duck trousers and jerked them up until the cuffs were several inches above the lasts of his bedroom slippers.

  “No,” he said uneasily, trying to look under the house again and finding he couldn’t see underneath as easily as the old man could. “He’s here about some job, I think.”

  “Let’s see the bastard, then,” the old man said, lurching off hoisting his trousers with both hands.

  He stood looking hopefully at the colored man for some sign of affiliation, but the colored man avoided his eyes and went trailing behind Mr. Lamb.

  When they started to the jeep, Robard jostled out, mashed his cigarette in the grass, and started muttering something inaudible.

  “Look here,” the old man said, batting his eyes in several directions for emphasis, as if he’d already given Robard fair warning. “If you expect to talk to me today, you’re going to have to talk at that ear, or you might as well not talk.”

  “Gaspareau sent me,” Robard shouted, staring at him behind the old man as if he suspected he’d been betrayed on the other side of the house.

  “What the hell about?” Mr. Lamb said.

  “About the guard job you had in the paper,” Robard yelled.

  The old man looked at him accusingly. “You ain’t no murderer, are you?”

  Robard grimaced. “No, I ain’t.”

  “Gaspareau sent a murderer over here last week, and I run the son-of-a-bitch off. He killed some poor con-vict over there last year without the bastard even looking around.”

  Mr. Lamb suddenly took all his teeth out of his mouth and worked them together, as if he were trying to iron out an irritating defect. “I don’t want no goddamn murderers shooting up my island,” Mr. Lamb gummed, giving his teeth close inspection. “That boy won’t live to be twenty-one, I’ll guarantee that, the little shitass.”

  Robard said nothing and stared back at him painfully over the old man’s bony shoulder.

  The colored man went sneaking off toward the house, set the pipe and the wrench against one of the pilings, then leaned against it himself, lit a cigarette, and took up watching the proceedings from a more comfortable distance. He scowled at the Negro and waited for the old man to finish examining his teeth.

  “These things,” he said ruefully, referring to the pink and porcelain teeth. “I wouldn’t give a nickel for a hundred of ’em. Used to, when I had my teeth, I could get WRBC on my second molar after 10 P.M. at night.” Mr. Lamb’s eyes flashed by Robard and quickly found the colored man, who turned his face and cackled.

  Robard smiled weakly.

  “What’s your name?” the old man said.

  Robard pronounced his name as if he hated to hear it.

  “Well, I’ll tell you, Hewes,” the old man said, finally reinstating his teeth in his mouth and smacking them up and down fiercely. “The job I got pays twelve dollars a day just for one week of turkey season starting tomorrow and going till Thursday, plus your food and your place to stay. It ain’t but a week’s work, and I want you on the job six to six unless you and me arrange different.” The old man gave Robard an odd look as if he were trying to talk him out of it. “I’ll give you a cap gun I got in there, but I don’t want you even to take it out. I want you to have it cause some of those farmers over there like to get funny with you sometimes if they think they can get away with it. Gaspareau lets ’em come in here. There ain’t nothing I can do about it.” He stopped suddenly and stared at Robard. “You ain’t no kin to Gaspareau, are you?”

  “I hadn’t ever seen him before a hour ago,” Robard said, and looked away.

  “You sure about that?” Mr. Lamb said, his eyes moving rapidly back and forth across Robard’s face, examining every feature thoroughly.

  “That’s what I said,” Robard snapped.

  “All right, then,” Mr. Lamb said.

  “One thing, though. I got to get to Helena some nights.”

  “What the hell for?” the old man shouted, cocking his usable ear so as to hear the excuse free from interference.

  Robard looked out at the woods, which were almost dark. “Some business,” he said qui
etly.

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Well, Hewes. I’m going to call you Hewes. That’s what I call my employees. You tend to your business. But when the sun ups, you tend to mine.”

  “All right.”

  “Use the boat, but don’t let it get empty of gasoline. People are going to come in here to hunt turkeys, and I don’t want you poopin out the gas with your business trips.”

  “All right,” Robard said, and started to walk away.

  The puppy came twisting up behind the old man from where he’d been lounging in the grass, and sat down at his foot and stared at Robard.

  “This here’s my huntin dog,” the old man said, admiring the dog and giving its ear a friendly jerk. “She’s my long-casted pointer. I need me a long-casted dog since I can’t walk anymore from the bed to the pisspot.”

  The colored man began chuckling again and disappeared around the house with the pipe and wrench in his hand.

  “You see my huntin dog, Newel?”

  “Yes sir,” he said, moving forward a little, thinking about the hound flattened out in Gaspareau’s road.

  “Say, ‘My name’s Elinor,’” the old man instructed the dog, bending down and picking up a fat patch of flesh behind its head and grinning. The veins in his face fattened up dangerously as he bent, monkeying with the dog’s skull. “You got any gear?” the old man said to Robard, glancing at the back of the jeep.

  “What’s in my sack,” Robard said.

  “What about you, Newel?”

  “No sir,” he said, thinking dismally about his suitcase strewn open like debris in a train wreck. It made him feel like he needed a bath.

  “You’re just a couple of goddamned derelicts,” the old man shouted, standing straight up and hoisting his pants a little higher. “Beebe Henley didn’t say you were a goddamned derelict.”

  “Somebody stole my bag in Chicago,” he muttered.

  “The hell they did?” the old man said. “You oughtn’t never live in a place like that. The bastards’ll steal everything you got.”

  “A policeman took it,” he said.

  The old man looked at him, temporarily astounded.

  “Well, put yourselfs in the Gin Den there. That’s where the men sleep, except me. Me and the ladies all sleep in the house, so there won’t be any unauthorized screwin go on.” The old man’s eyes brightened considerably. “Hewes, you’ll start tomorrow.”

  “Yes sir,” Robard said, turning toward the jeep again.

  “We’ll eat supper in a little while and I’ll tell you what I want you to do. Newel, what the hell are you going to do?” The old man frowned at him through the tops of his spectacles. “You haven’t come to hunt turkeys, have you? You don’t look like much of a hunter to me.”

  “No,” he said, trying to think up something believable.

  “I didn’t think so,” the old man said crisply. “I’ll tell you, though, Newel.” And he paused. “I don’t care what you do. Beebe says to let you do what you want, and I will so long as you don’t get me shot. Is that agreeable to you?”

  “Yes sir,” he said, happy not to have to say anything else,

  “Good,” the old man said. “I don’t like people around here who aren’t satisfied, except me, and I can be any goddamned thing I please. The bathroom’s over there.” He pointed down under the house to where he alone could see the bottom few boards of the outhouse. “You’ll just have to walk a little if you have to piss, or else use God’s privy.” The old man leaned forward and peered up under the house. “Did you ever hear the story about the two farmers sittin on the two-holer?” the old man said, pleased with the thought of another joke.

  Robard shook his head somberly and stopped what he was doing in the jeep.

  The old man looked at them both cautiously. “Well,” he said, “there’s these two old farmers sittin side by side in the privy, and one old farmer stands up and starts to grab his braces and all his change falls out down the hole. And right quick he reaches down in his pocket, pulls out his wallet, and throws a twenty-dollar bill right in there after it. And the other old farmer says, ‘Why, Walter, what in the world did you do that for?’ And the first old farmer says, ‘Wilbur, if you think I’m going down in that hole for thirty-five cents, you’re crazy as hell.’ Haw haw haw haw.” The old man bellied over so hard the puppy backed off several feet.

  He did the best he could to ignite a smile, but Robard seemed to think the joke was funny and laughed.

  The old man took off his glasses, wiped his eyes with his sleeve, and looked up at him thoughtfully, holding his pants loose around his waist. “You know,” the old man said, “you don’t look so good. Could be you need a purgative. Mrs. Lamb’s got some Black-Draught. You look like you could use a good reamin.”

  “I couldn’t say,” he said, feeling embarrassed to be there.

  “Well, I could!” the old man shouted. “Just be careful you don’t wake Hewes up trotting across the yard. That man’s got to work tomorrow.”

  He wondered if there wasn’t right then some convenient way to get back over the lake before another bus ran. He looked back across the field. The olive light had completely died, and hanging up over the horizon were leaded clouds, and through the woods gloom was massing up. He tried to imagine the air at Meigs Field at that very moment. Far out on the lake, beyond the reflection, you could see the tiny pinchpoint running lights of the ore boats farther up into the darkness than you were, at some moment when the air was a sweet liquid enveloping you and making you feel like walking on the polished lakefront before coming in out of the dark. He felt raw now. And he had never thought until this very moment that he could long for it, want whatever erroneous comfort it had, making him invisible. And for a moment, in the natural order of things, he felt large and frail and brought down out of place into a painful light that made him want to hulk away back in the dark.

  The old man stared at him with an odd solicitude.

  “I believe we done exercised Newel,” Mr. Lamb said to Robard. “Don’t get peeved, Newel. We don’t take ourselves serious down here like you do up there, do we, Hewes?”

  “I guess,” Robard said, looking at him a moment, then turning toward the metal shed the old man had designated.

  “I’ve got to cap off that goddamned well before it gets pitch dark or Mrs. Lamb will step in it and break her leg. Did you hear that, Hewes? The privy queered my well. I got to sink a new one.”

  “I heard it,” Robard said, starting to the tin house.

  “T. V. A. Landrieu’ll ring dinner in a little bit, and we’ll all eat and try to cheer up old sourpuss here. Or we’ll throw his fat ass in the river.”

  The old man straggled up toward the house, clutching a fistful of his pants and hollering for the colored man to come after him.

  From the door of the metal house, Robard watched him come down from the jeep. “You heard it,” Robard said, letting the screen wag back between his fingers.

  “The old turd,” he said. “I’ll go out in his asshole woods in the morning and yank a few trees up by the roots and drive every rational animal right in the lake. Let them take their chances with the gars or whatever that was out there.”

  Robard looked amused and stood in the doorway watching the killed light, while he sank back on the bed. “If I see you I’ll run the other way.”

  “Tell me something.” He hung his feet over the cot latch.

  “It ain’t some more what I make my memories out of, or whatever that was you said, is it?”

  “No,” he said, arranging his arms in back of his head.

  Robard lit a cigarette and let the smoke feather through his nose and get drawn through the screen. He lifted his cheeks toward his eye sockets as if someone were shining a light in his face. “Don’t you ever get tired and want to think just whatever comes in your head?”

  “I’ve got to ask somebody besides me,” he said. “You’ve probably got better answers anyway.” He watched
Robard, trying to calculate the sense he was making out of it.

  “I don’t know shit from a shoeshine,” Robard mumbled, looking away again.

  “Just tell me about your family,” he said.

  Robard picked a fleck of tobacco off his tongue and looked around in the gloom as if he were considering walking outside. “My daddy’s dead,” he said abruptly. “He got drowned, and my mother married an Indian in Sallisaw, Oklahoma. They live down at Anadarko. What else?” He sucked his tooth.

  “Why’d she marry an Indian?”

  “She’s a half,” Robard said. “Her daddy was one of them oil-well Osages. Bought him a big Maxwell automobile, and they had to drive it in the woods one day clear to Arkansas to get it away from the Oklahoma creditors.”

  Katydids were zuzzing out in the yard. He tried to think of something to say but couldn’t.

  “I got an old picture of them,” Robard said, “set up in a wagon with a mule, after they had sold the car. She stayed up in north Arkansas after that, up till the time my own father died, till I hired out on the railroad, as a matter of fact. She worked in a brassiere plant in Fort Smith. And quick as I left she married this Indian that had a dry-cleaning business in Anadarko.” Robard looked at his toes as though he could see what he was saying in the darkness separating him from the ground.

  “Your father wasn’t Indian, was he?”

  “He was a German,” Robard said, letting his heels grind the cigarette butt. “In fact, they wanted to stick him in prison up in Cane Hill during the war, put him with a bunch of Japs they had at Fort Chaffee.”

  “And don’t you keep in touch with your mother at all?”

  “I’ll tell you,” Robard said, looking at his heels awhile. He had become a silhouette in the open screen. “She had her little piece of business to attend to, and I had my little bit. She’s sweet.” He smacked his lips. “I think it would make her nervous if I showed up, cause I couldn’t fit in nothin. It might make me unhappy, and I don’t need that. I like to keep my business manageable.” Robard turned around and walked back into the shed. “How come I get to answer the questions?”

  “So we can start off even,” he said. “I’m the only person who’ll take me seriously.