by Jessie Haas
The dog sighed and nudged at my hands. I put an arm around her, brushing the rough cloth of Truman’s coat with my elbow.
“What’s her name?”
“Name? Seems to me I named her Nell. Call her Tippy nowadays.” The dog flattened her ears at both names. “What you call that horse of yours?”
“He doesn’t have a name yet. I call him Kid.” I listened to the quietness of the hillside. It was the same hill Aunt Sarah lived on, but here I felt as if I belonged.
“What happened to your arm?” I asked.
The lines around his eyes deepened. “You asked me that the last time I talked to you.”
“I don’t remember.”
“You wa’n’t but four or five.” Truman glanced down at where his left elbow should have been. “I took a bullet, and they cut it off.”
“In the war?”
“Well, it ain’t the wax anymore. The War Between the States.”
I’d seen the old veterans march in the Decoration Day parade; not very many of them anymore. I’d never seen Truman there. “Did it—did it hurt terribly?” It seemed like a stupid question, but I had to ask.
His eyes twinkled. “I can’t remember,” he said. “Three days later I couldn’t remember. Seemed to hurt the other fellers, though, so I suppose it hurt me, too. God arranges so you forget some things, which I guess is a mercy.”
I stared. I couldn’t begin to imagine having your arm cut off. The worst thing that had ever happened to me was a skinned knee. No. The worst thing that ever happened to me was Mother.
“When did you stop missing it?”
“Miss it yet,” he said. “First thing in the mornin’, when I reach for my boots. After that—oh, I’m old now anyway. Wouldn’t be able to do much even if I had two hands.”
“But—” That wasn’t really the answer to my question.
After a moment he seemed to understand. “When a thing like that happens, you don’t feel it so sharp at first. You’re kind of stunned. Then later, oh, Mother of God, it hurt! And you begin to sense how nothing’s going to be the same. In a while, though, by the fall after it happened, I decided I was glad to be alive. And then little by little you get better.”
I felt Tippy warm against my side, and Truman warm against the arm I had around her. Something inside me relaxed. Just to be understood, to have someone answer an unspoken question …
“I wish I could stay here.”
Truman nodded slowly. “Come back,” he said after a minute. “I’m just about always here.”
“I thought someone would come visit me.” I heard the hurt in my voice and would rather have hidden it, but the words tumbled out suddenly. “I wrote to Dr. Vesper, and I wrote to the Academy. There’ll be exams soon. I thought Luke might—” A big hot air bubble rose in my throat and stifled me.
“Barrett Academy,” Truman mused. “Still teach Latin, do they?”
“Yes.”
“‘Amo, amas, amat,’” he quoted. “‘love, you love’”—and with a glance at Tippy—” ‘she loves.’ That’s about all I remember—no, wait! ‘Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres—’”
“‘—quarum unam incolunt Belgae!’”
“Yup, the good old Belgae. That’s somethin’, isn’t it? After all that time there’s still a place called Belgium on the map.”
“I have to take my exams,” I said. “I have to be ready for next year.”
“You figure on goin’ then?”
I didn’t see the hills anymore. I saw Dr. Vesper at the table, and Aunt Sarah standing up like a Roman column, and that long, steep road. “I don’t know how,” I said. “It’s so far, and … I don’t know how I’ll afford it.”
Truman’s eyes scanned the landscape, with the look of calm delight that was particularly his. “You got time,” he suggested.
“No!” I stood up abruptly, and Tippy stood up, too, waving her tail. “Nobody has time, not to be sure of. Look at Mother!”
He nodded slowly, conceding the point.
“And anyway, time—I’ve been there weeks already and—oh, why did she send me there?” Tears poured down my face. “She hates us! Aunt Sarah hates us! She says horrible things, and—why?” I collapsed on the stone again with my face on my knees.
Tippy whined and pawed me. Then she was pushed away, and Truman’s arm wrapped around my shoulders.
He let me cry. When I got quiet, he said, “You want to ask yourself, Harry: where else could she send you? Her folks are gone, and Sarah’s all that’s left of Walter’s folks. She had a right to ask Sarah, and she knew Sarah’d do her duty.”
“Aunt Sarah hates us,” I said in a thready voice, and sniffled massively.
Truman’s arm came away. “Walk out back of the house, Harry, and get a handkerchief off the clothesline.”
I obeyed. I was startled to see that it was nearly dusk. The bushes were dense shadows, and the last hen walked hastily into the coop.
I found the clothesline. Hanging on it were a pair of overalls, some long underwear, and three blue bandannas, worn so thin I could see my hand right through them. I unpinned one, mopped my itching face, and blew my nose.
“Harry, come give me a hand with this rooster,” Truman called from the back door of the shed. I heard him chuckle. “Give me a hand! Think that’s funny?”
“Uh—”
“Your ma and Walter always laughed. Sarah just gets mad.” His hand curved over the rim of the bushel. When the basket lifted, I closed my hands around the warm, drowsy rooster. I put him in the coop, and Truman closed the door, held it shut with one knee, and turned the peg.
“There! Now, Harry, I know you want Sarah to suffer, but I got to send you back.”
I didn’t answer. The peepers began their shrill piping somewhere near. It was night.
“I’d go with you,” Truman said, “but I can’t ask Jerry to make another trip. Tell you what—you take Tippy and keep her overnight. Then, why, I’ll have to come fetch her, won’t I? Tell Sarah she’ll have company to Sunday dinner.”
He got a rope from the dark shed and fastened it to Tippy’s collar. “Go along now,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I started down the grassy lane. After a minute I heard a shout behind me. I turned, and Truman called, “S’pose we’ll have chicken?”
eleven
Beyond the stone walls the world was dark. Tippy and I got ourselves between the ruts, and the road rolled us downhill. I would have passed the farm lane, but Tippy hesitated there and whined.
“Thank you, Tippy.” Suddenly I was so tired I could hardly keep walking.
After a few minutes I heard hoofbeats and buggy wheels behind me. Tippy and I stepped to one side and waited. A pale blur, a heavy, sloppy trot—that was Whitey, Uncle Clayton’s buggy horse, passing. Ahead a window glowed yellow. I walked toward it as Whitey stopped, the kitchen door opened, and a tall black column filled the rectangle of light.
“Did you find her?”
“She didn’t go there. Nobody saw her.”
I trudged past the buggy, past the horse. I wanted to walk straight inside and sit, but Aunt Sarah blocked the way. She wore a peculiar expression. I could barely see it, let alone interpret.
“Why, here she is, Sairy!”
“Yes, Clayton, I can see that.” Aunt Sarah turned, and I followed her inside. I smelled potatoes and salt pork gravy, and instantly I was famished. I sat at the table. Aunt Sarah brought the pan from the stove. My eyes wouldn’t open normally. I squinted up at her.
“Did you leave my rooster up to Truman’s?” she asked. How did she know that? I wondered, and then saw Tippy exploring near the stove for crumbs.
“Yes. He said, expect company for dinner tomorrow.”
Silence answered me. I managed to widen my eyes and see her, but I couldn’t tell anything of what she might be thinking.
Tippy slept on my legs, and for the first time here I slept all night long. I woke to the sound of the dog’s toenails on the stairs,
feeling … not good, not happy, but expecting something, ready to start the day.
After chores Aunt Sarah started cooking dinner, and I went out to catch the colt. He came for his apple, sighed when I caught him, but allowed himself to be led through the gate. I put the bars back up and turned him toward the barn.
In my mind I already had him tied and was putting on the saddle. In his mind the colt was right here, and a strange little two-legged animal was coming toward him. His eyes bulged. He sank back on quivering haunches.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake! It’s a hen!”
But hens didn’t roam free in West Barrett, and the colt had never seen one. His forefeet plunged right, left, and he started to back. I hung on, shouting, “Whoa! Whoa!” Two more hens arrived and scratched vigorously at the fresh black hoofmarks. The colt backed against the bars.
“Come on!” I pulled on the rope, but he only pressed backward. The gate began to creak. He’d break it! “Come on!” I yelled. “Come on! Come on!”
“Easy,” someone said behind me. Uncle Clayton was there, gently shooing the hens away. The colt eased off the gate, and his head came down a little.
“Never seen a hen before?”
“I—I guess not.” And he had panicked, the way Belle panicked when John Gale’s Model T Ford came down West Barrett hill.
The hens began to return, flowing around Uncle Clayton’s legs like brook water. The colt’s head came down another inch. “He’s a smart feller,” Uncle Clayton said. “Once he sees what they are, he’ll be all right.”
He turned back toward the house, leaving me alone with colt and hens and a quivering feeling that spread from my stomach out through my arms and legs. I knew what that feeling was. I was afraid.
I’d seen the broken buggy and Belle beside it, but I hadn’t thought much about the moment when the automobile was coming and Mother decided to make Belle face it. The plunging hooves, Belle’s sunlit back, the moment when it was too late, when the buggy was tipping and Belle wouldn’t stop.
The colt sighed and dropped his head into my shoulder. His bones pressed against mine. I cupped one hand behind his ear, feeling his heat and the quick, leaping pulse. How many other terrifying sights lay between here and the Academy steps?
Just then I heard a squeak and a rattle, and Truman’s old buggy appeared at the bend in the lane. Tippy trotted toward it, waving her tail.
The colt’s chin drew into a tight, quivering cone. His ears swiveled, showing the swing of his reactions. At last he tried to bolt. I stood firm, and he trotted in a circle around me.
Truman stopped the buggy. “Harry!” he called. “Tell him, ‘Trot!’”
“Trot!” I gasped, expecting somehow that this would stop the colt.
Nothing changed, but Truman said, “Now tell him, ‘Good boy!’”
“Why?”
“He done what you told him, didn’t he?”
“Good boy!” I said, and started laughing. “Trot, darn you! Trot! Good boy!”
Another circle and the colt stopped, staring at Jerry. At a nod from Truman I said, “Whoa! Good boy!,” feeling like a fool. The colt continued to stare at Jerry while I maneuvered him through the gate. Released, he came to press against the rails and gaze as I turned back to Truman.
“Is that how you train horses? Tell them to do what they’re already doing?”
“I don’t train horses, but that’s part of it. If you can’t make ’em do what you want, make ’em think you want what they’re doin’.”
“I trained him to lead,” I said, “and to pick up his feet. But I’ve never trained a horse to ride.”
“No? And you more’n a dozen years old! Get up, Jerry.” We headed slowly toward the barn, the colt following along the fence line as long as he could. “How old is that critter?”
“Two.”
“That’s young. He’ll get over a lot of foolishness on his own if you give him a year.” Truman climbed down at the barn door and tousled Tippy’s ears.
“I don’t have a year. I need to ride him by the end of summer.”
Truman looked up. In the shadow of the barn his eyes were green and glassy, like the net floats Luke brought from the seashore. “Doesn’t pay to hurry a horse.”
I set my lips firmly and didn’t answer.
When we’d unhitched Jerry and put him in a stall, we went to the house together. Truman stopped just inside the kitchen door, closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply. “Salt pork gravy! By jing, that smells good!”
Uncle Clayton stood in the sitting-room doorway. He made a small, startled jerk and looked quickly at Aunt Sarah. She was stirring something on the stove, surrounded by billows of steam. I couldn’t see that she even glanced up.
Truman sat down at the table and began playing with a fork. Once again I noticed that there was only one hand; it was a moment when a man would naturally have used two. “I never saw a rooster as tame as that,” he remarked, raising his voice slightly. “Just a little leery when I opened the door this mornin’, but I had him takin’ grain out of my hand in ten minutes. Lot of roosters’d just as soon scratch your eyes out—”
Aunt Sarah put a plate of biscuits on the table with a good deal of emphasis. She looked at him for a moment, pressing her lips together. “Truman, if you’re looking for an apology, just ask for one!”
Uncle Clayton and I glanced at each other uncomfortably.
“You don’t owe me an apology,” Truman said. “And the bird’s still alive, so if he and Harry are satisfied—”
Her face was alarmingly still. Was this his idea of civilizing her? It seemed more like a challenge. She stared at him without speaking for long seconds. Then she said, “Truman Hall, what have you done to that shirt?”
Truman glanced down at himself. Just below the edge of his beard was a neat three-cornered tear. “By golly—”
“Go take it off and put on one of Clayton’s! I’ll mend that just as soon as I get a minute.”
Truman nodded meekly. “Thank you, Sarah. Don’t know how I come to do that.” The two men disappeared into the back bedroom.
Aunt Sarah turned back to the stove. “I don’t need that old fool to tell me when I’ve done wrong,” she said after a minute, stiffly.
I didn’t know how to respond. I felt my face get red.
“We do need to eat these critters,” she said. “You won’t go making pets out of all of them?”
“Oh, no,” I said. “No.”
She turned from the stove with the platter of salt pork. I took it from her and placed it on the table. Both of us were warm and red faced and glad to have Truman and Uncle Clayton return. Truman draped his torn shirt over the back of a chair. I touched it as I passed. The fabric was worn nearly as transparent as the blue bandanna I’d borrowed last night.
“I’ll mend this,” I said. It seemed only right; I had a feeling the shirt had been torn on my account.
Uncle Clayton bowed his head in a brief, silent grace, and I looked at his hair, lank and gray streaked with brown. Then we ate, and after the first awkward moments there was real conversation. True, it was all about farm work, just as the weekday exchanges had been. But Truman hadn’t visited in a while, and the way the grass was coming along, the thin place where the beans weren’t growing, the new pigpen gate, all had to be explained in expansive enough terms that I could understand them, too. Everything was work here. Everything was food and firewood and racing the summer to get both put away in time. It was a life Mother had turned her back on, by moving down the hill to West Barrett, by staking my future on an Academy education. But it was new to me, and the distraction, any distraction, was welcome.
After dinner we washed up, and I mended Truman’s shirt in a neat, nearly invisible darn, as Mother had taught me. While he was changing again, Uncle Clayton harnessed Jerry and brought him to the front door. Aunt Sarah came out of the house with a covered pie carrier.
Truman climbed into the buggy and snapped his fingers to Tippy. She leaped up, looking stu
rdy and balanced after his awkwardness. Aunt Sarah put the carrier on the floor. “Now don’t let that dog eat this!”
Tippy had indeed sniffed the plate, but all at once she stiffened and looked past us, down the lane. After a moment a buggy appeared. “As good as livin’ on Main Street,” Truman said, settling back against the cushion with a pleased, expectant look.
I recognized the horse now, and after a moment I could see Dr. Vesper’s face.
“Well, they’re all out waitin’ for a man!” he cried, and pulled up close to Jerry. “Trume, you’re looking almost human! Sarah, Clayton. Hey there, Harry!”
In this yard, among them all, he seemed young and boisterous, like a classmate of mine rather than my doctor and guardian. He didn’t look exactly as I’d remembered him. It hasn’t been that long! I thought.
“I’m here to take you down to Barrett, Harry.”
“Really?”
For a second he looked surprised. “Why, yes. You’re to stay with the Mitchells while you take your exams.”
I had hoped he was taking me away for real and always. It took me a moment to gather my thoughts. “I’ll get my things.”
Only then did I notice Aunt Sarah’s silence. She stood very still beside Truman’s buggy, her face rigidly composed.
Was I supposed to ask if I could go? My cheeks burned. To heck with that! I thought, forming the words deliberately in my mind, and I went upstairs to pack a carpetbag.
When I got into the buggy, I was at eye level with Aunt Sarah. She wore her marble look.
“I’ll have her back sometime midweek,” Dr. Vesper said.
“All right,” said Aunt Sarah, as if it made little difference to her.
I looked over at Truman and Tippy. He had his arm around the dog. No, on that side Truman didn’t have an arm.
“You go first, Andy,” he said. “We don’t care if we never get there.”
twelve
The Mitchells lived on Barrett Main Street in a big brick house that once was white. As the paint wore away, the brick color showed through, a soft terra-cotta.