The Madman of Piney Woods

by Christopher Paul Curtis

  “Does that mean I’m going to get an allowance like Spencer does?”

  Mother said, “No! Whoever heard of paying a child to do what they’re supposed to do? That’s nonsense. What it means is we think you’re old enough to start working outside of the home.”

  “Really?”

  This was great news!

  Patience and Stubby had been working as apprentices for Mr. Craig the carpenter for almost a year now, and while it’s true that everyone said they were geniuses with wood and the sooner they got started the better, I’m older and Mother and Father still wouldn’t let me do anything but chores and schoolwork.

  “Really.” Mother reached across the table to hold my hand and said, “But that’s not the good part of the news.”

  “Oh, Mother, what could be better news than that?”

  “It’s where you’re going to be working!”

  She looked at Father and said, “Do you want to tell him or should I?”

  Father cleared his throat and said, “Benjamin, what is it you’re always going on and on about wanting to be one day?”

  “A hermit?”

  “The other job.”

  “A newspaperman?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “You know who Mary Ann Shadd was?”

  “Yes, sir, she was the editor of the Provincial Freeman a long time ago.”

  Mother said, “Correct. And you know the Creator has a master plan, so it’s no coincidence that Miss Shadd and your Gramma Alston knew each other back in Wilmington, Delaware, in the States. Well, when I heard that her daughter, Sarah Cary, had moved back to Chatham and is starting up a paper of her own, I knew it was time I paid her a visit.”

  Mother squeezed my hand. “Benjamin, she’s agreed to take you on as an apprentice! Twice a week after school, you’ll go to Chatham and work with her and learn about publishing and writing a newspaper!”

  I was too overjoyed to speak.

  “You know of course that you won’t be writing any articles at first. In between cleaning and etching, you’ll learn about typesetting and inking and such.”

  Father said, “Be truthful with him, TooToo. You’re gonna be a errand boy at the start.”

  “I don’t care! Any job working on a paper will be great!”

  Mother said, “We have to tell you the same thing we told Patience and Timothy when they started working with Mr. Craig. We are sending you out into the world as a representative of the Alstons now. Every action you take, every word you say, every way you come in contact with neighbours and friends will be a reflection on this family. Don’t say or do anything that you wouldn’t say or do in front of me and your father.”

  Father said, “You been raised proper; you know what’s expected of you.”

  He began counting a list on his fingers. “You must work hard, you must never be late, you must be courteous, you must stay busy, you must keep your eyes open for work that ain’t expected of you and dash to do it. Your goal gotta be to make Miss Cary feel by hiring you she’s the luckiest person in the world. If you always keep that in mind, you’ll make us proud.”

  “Oh, Mother, Father, you have no idea how happy I am! I’ll make you very proud!”

  Mother said, “We know you’ll do a good job, son. Now, Miss Cary’s a substantial woman, Benji; she wouldn’t just take you on because her mother and your grandmother were friends, no, sir. We’ve been working on this for weeks. She even had me bring some of your school writings over, and it wasn’t until after she read them that she agreed to take you on.

  “Her exact words were, ‘Real talent and potential!’ ”

  Father said, “This ain’t something you getting handed, son. You got your foot in the door and now it’s up to you.”

  Mother said, “That’s right, Benjamin, and we’re expecting you to kick that door down! And to help you out …”

  She pulled a large cardboard box from under the table and slid it toward me.

  Written across the box were the words CLARK STEEL-TOED REINFORCED BOOTS.

  When I pulled the top off the box, that sweet strong smell of freshly tanned leather filled the room! The boots were black with high tops and laces. I picked one up. It weighed a ton!

  “Oh, Mother, Father, thank you so much!”

  I laced them on. A perfect fit.

  Mother was just as excited as I was. She said, “Timothy, your turn!”

  Father reached under his side of the table and pulled out a brand-new pair of heavy leather gloves. I put them on.

  Mother handed me a square pencil and said, “Everyone in Miss Cary’s office has one of these behind their ear. Let’s see how it looks on you.”

  I didn’t have a mirror, but by Mother and Father’s grins, I knew it looked great.

  “Timothy? Stop slowing this down!”

  There was more!

  Father handed me what looked like a strange-shaped boat made out of folded newspapers.

  Mother said, “Everyone there wore one of these to keep ink and dust out of their hair!”

  Another perfect fit.

  Next she handed me a gift-wrapped package.

  I pulled the ribbon and paper away to see a beautiful folded apron made out of blue jean material. Best of all, Mother had embroidered BENJAMIN in bright gold letters across the top middle pocket.

  “Oh, Mother!” was all I could say.

  She said, “Now, Benji, when I ordered this, they told me it was the John Deere of printing aprons, but there’s one thing I’m embarrassed to have to tell you. But it can be fixed.”

  Father laughed. “One minor detail.”

  I unfolded the apron. It had more pockets than I could count and so many snaps and flaps, it would take days to figure out what they were used for.

  I slipped the top strap over my head and tied the two strings behind me. When I looked down, I saw the minor detail Father was laughing at.

  Mother said, “Now, I did that late last night. That’s no excuse, but I was dead tired and should have waited, but I was too excited to give this to you! Don’t worry, I can fix it later.”

  When Mother had embroidered my name on, she’d done it upside down.

  “Oh, Mother, it’s perfect like it is. I’ll be the only person in the world with one like this. May I run over and tell Spencer?”

  I fought the tears that for some reason were trying to pop out of my eyes, hugged my parents, and headed over to Spence’s home to share the news.

  Patience and Stubby were coming in the door just as I was going out.

  I grabbed Stubby and twirled him around. I gave Pay a big kiss on her forehead. As I closed the door to run to Spence’s, Stubby looked worried and Patience looked disgusted.

  This was the start of something big for me, and Spencer was the first person I wanted to share it with.

  Everyone in Buxton thought and hoped this would be Spencer’s year to win the public speaking contest, and I had always been sort of jealous. Even though we were best friends, it seemed like he was doing so much better than me, like he was getting noticed and appreciated and I wasn’t. I know it’s silly, but it’s what I couldn’t help feeling.

  But now that was going to change! Now we’d be moving up together! It wouldn’t be long before he was Canada’s greatest lawyer and I was Canada’s greatest newspaperman!

  And the strange thing was we both were doing it because we loved what words could do.

  We both wanted to be like those people who can magically make words do all sorts of things. In the right hands, words can move more bricks than the strongest team of mules. And what I don’t get is that while most of us can talk and a whole bunch of us can write, there are only the teeny-weenyest number of people who know how to make words do magic.

  I mean, words are made up of letters, nothing more. And there are only twenty-six of them and they’re there for all of us to use. There’s no one saying, “No, you can’t use these letters; they’re saved only for that certain group.” It’s the same tw
enty-six letters, taught to most of us, but only a few can make those letters fall into words and do tricks and lift bricks and move mountains.

  There’s no denying that some people can make words do miracles.

  Take making someone laugh.

  How is it possible that one person can use only words to make another person laugh? Without tickling them, without making a silly face, without doing something foolish, they just make those twenty-six letters fall in a certain order, and for no good reason, I can see your eyes narrow, your cheeks get pulled up, your lips separate, your teeth show, and before you know what’s hit you, those twenty-six letters have you doubled over laughing.

  Now that’s magic.

  Now that’s power.

  If I could get the letters to behave properly for me, I was going to use them to explain to my best friend why writing words is better than speaking them.

  I knew it would be hard to do. Maybe I should write it to him instead of telling him.

  When I ran up on Spencer’s porch, today’s headline didn’t need any thought:

  SHOCKING DISCOVERY! NEWSPAPERMAN STUNNED TO LEARN PARENTS HAVE CHANGED INTO SUCH WONDERFUL PEOPLE!

  “Grandmother O’Toole, do you actually remember Ireland?”

  “Faith and begorra! What type of question is that? How old are you now? Thirty-two, thirty-three?”

  “Grandmother, I’m thirteen.”

  “Then do you actually remember Canada?”

  “Of course I do. We live here.”

  “Oh, I see! Ye’ve pulled the bloody caul from me eyes, Your Majesty. Oh, thank ye! Thank ye so much! Ye’re so much smarter at thirteen than I was! Here ye are blessed with a perfect, clear recollection of everything whilst poor, unschooled, dirty little street urchin that I am remembers naught. How fortunate I am to be in your presence, m’lord! How noble of you it is to lower yourself to be in the company of a poor beggar girl such as I. Which of your boots should I lick first, m’grace?”

  “Grandmother, I didn’t mean it in that manner.”

  Her eyes narrowed and I prepared to leave the room rather than be greatly abused. She stopped, though.

  “Of course I remember Ireland.”

  She paused.

  “Parts of it anyway.”

  If I wanted this conversation to go on, I knew this was not the time to speak.

  “But those ships,” she continued, “I’ll never forget those ships. As long as I live, I’ll remember the ships that these vile Canadians kept us on for all that time.”

  This was quite the surprise. Even without Father’s prompting, I’d always wanted to know more about her time coming to Canada, but other than an odd hate-filled mention or two, she’d never spoken with me about it. She’d never spoken with me on any subject other than what a grand and glorious fool I was and how the only way she could explain my being in her family was that I was a changeling, that a spite-filled troll had switched me with her real grandson at birth.

  She believed this so sincerely that she even claimed to know the name of her real, switched grandson. He was living under the name of little Jimmy McElroy. And, due to the switch, my life was one of meat for supper every evening and feathered pillows for my head every night, while poor little Jimmy McElroy’s life was one of suffering, pain, and constant hunger.

  “Why do you remember the boat, Grandmother O’Toole? What was wrong with it?”

  “Oh, laddie, ’twas nary a thing wrong with the ship. At first. She was called the Shenandoah and a fine ship she was. No, ’twas the sickness that was aboard that turned her into a place fit for neither man nor beast.”

  “People became seasick?”

  “Seasick? Pshh! A queasy stomach would have been nothing. No, boy, someone got onboard with the jail fever whilst we were escaping the claws of an Gorta Mór.”

  “Grandmother, you know I don’t speak Gaelic. What were you escaping?”

  “An Gorta Mór. The Great Hunger. Starvation. The potatoes in the ground had rotted overnight. We went to sleep with healthy green fields and woke up the next day with all of them as withered and black and useless as those runaway slaves over in Buxton.”

  I grimaced.

  She snapped her twisted fingers.

  “Just like that, all the crops were dead.”

  She breathed deeply, closed her eyes, and whispered, “And the smell!”

  Grandmother O’Toole moaned.

  “ ’Twas as though a mighty curse had fallen on the land. Everywhere in Connemara and, we found out, everywhere in Erin, the reeking smell of death clung to the earth. ’Twas as though the very bowels of the earth had been ripped open and spilled across the fields. I would’ve sworn to the heavens that there couldn’t have been a smell anywhere to match the stench of those rotting potatoes.”

  The wrinkles that crowd the corners of her mouth pulled themselves up in a weak smile.

  “Little did I know how soon our heavenly Father would show me otherwise.”

  She crossed herself and stared out the picture window.

  I didn’t want her to stop. I took a chance and said, “Since the potatoes were gone, couldn’t you eat something else? Weren’t there chickens or cows or pigs or corn, something?”

  After the longest time, she said, “Ye’d not understand, laddie. ’Tis not your fault, but ye’ve been to the manor born here in Canada, ye’ve been blessed and don’t even know it. ’Twas very different for us back then.”

  Grandmother O’Toole stood and walked toward the window. I thought I’d ruined my chance to hear her story, but instead of going into the other room, she stopped at the window and stared out.

  “Your poor mother died before she was able to give ye brothers and sisters, so ye have no way of understanding. I know ye and your father believe for sure that ye’re the cleverest lad to ever have walked the earth, but even with all of your brains and books and studying, ye c’not understand what I’m talking about.”

  I waited.

  “Ye c’not imagine what it’s like to watch an Gorta Mór snatch away half of your siblings within a fortnight. No one could.

  “All your books and lectures and studying won’t let you come within a country mile of knowing what ’tis like to watch three of your loving brothers and two of your dearest sisters become living skeletons who weaken to the point of not being able to raise their heads.”

  She brought her hand to her mouth.

  “How the oldest insisted that any scrap of food tha’ ’twas to be given to them went to the youngest of us. How we didn’t understand till years later, much too late, the sacrifice they were making to keep us alive.”

  Her hands began trembling.

  “Aye. Ye soon learn the true meaning of guilt.”

  She collapsed onto the divan.

  “Even me oldest brother, who’d been a big strapping lad weighing nearly thirteen stone afore he starved to death, was light enough at the end that ’twas I who dragged him to the door, then to the curb where he’d be collected for burial in the pits. That’ll ne’er be in one of your books. That ye’ll ne’er understand. That no studying in the world will open your eyes to.

  “Aye, to truly know that, ye must have twirled the cat.”

  It had to be another Irish saying, but I had no idea what it meant.

  “Twirled the cat?”

  “Aye. If ye twirl a cat by its tail, once it’s done clawing and shredding and peeling the very skin off your face and arms, you’ll have learned things you c’not learn any other way.”

  The sadness in her voice and on her face made me not want to hear more of this. It appeared as though she began to shrink, as though each word took something from her that made her smaller and smaller. I wished I hadn’t brought up Ireland.

  Her voice changed in a most unusual manner. While she was normally very expressive in everything she had to say and prone to exaggerations and bluster and a great waving of her arms and fluttering of her hands, she now became very still and began speaking in the most eerie and cu
tting monotone.

  She stared at her hands, which rested withered and tired in her lap.

  “ ’Twasn’t long after the potatoes died, people started dying too. In droves, I tell ye. First ’twas the poorest, then the city folk, then even the farmers. So many died, the priests closed all the cemeteries. Said there was no room for even one more soul. People were thrown in pits and buried like diseased cattle. That’s when the landlords decided to kick us all off the land.”

  Grandmother O’Toole began worrying the wedding band on her finger.

  “Father and the landlord had already once come to blows. Perkins wanted us off the land, the same land that six generations of our family had farmed and called home, and now the cur had false papers showing ’twas his all along.

  “The last thing Father had said to the landlord after he’d knocked the bugger down with a proper good left cross was the only way Perkins could get us to leave our home was to kill him dead as a stone. I think that’s what Father wanted.

  “And that’s exactly what we expected to happen later when the landlord pounded on the back door with Jim Hawkins and Frank Cooper, both huge as bulls and just as stupid, standing at his side. Father looked through the rag of curtain at the back door, kissed each of us, said he was sorry for what had happened and what was going to happen, that he was only one man and had done all he could.

  “As the pounding on the door got louder, Father asked my mother to pray for his soul, then took the carving knife from the drawer and slipped it into his pocket. When he went out the door … when it closed … we knew that would be the last we’d see him alive. I knew the next body I’d be dragging to the curb for the pits would be that of me beloved father.

  “Those of us who still had strength to do so stood huddled at the door, waiting for the gunshot or a quick scuffle and scream or the sounds of cudgels battering Father’s head and spilling his blood into the dead soil.

  “But there was nothing. Only voices.

  “After forever, the door opened again and Father staggered in with papers in his clenched fists and tears pouring from his eyes. Me mother told me later she’d known the man for fifty-two years and had never seen him cry. Said in a long life full of sad sights that his tears were the worst thing she’d seen by far.