Hardscrabble Road

by George Weinstein

  “Eliza Jean!” my aunt screamed. “No!” His sharp backhand knocked her to the bedroom floor. He stomped after her.

  I ran out the front door. Though my aim was to hide in the barn, the wind pushed me along the road. I couldn’t feel my legs or my arms or the swelling from his kick. Only the squeeze of steel around my throat, closing now, tighter, tighter. Ready to pop my head off. I let the wind blow me all the way home.

  Once inside the house, I slammed the front door and looped our own wire in place over a bent nail. I raced across sand-strewn floors from one window to the next, shuttering them. Scraping our old bed across the floor, I blocked the front entry. The kitchen table required more effort, but I soon barricaded the back door. If Uncle Stan got through, I’d jump out a shuttered window and run to Nat’s place. Maybe I should’ve gone there to begin with.

  Standing in the dark kitchen, back home but all alone, I realized that I’d peed on myself while he was strangling me. I stripped off the sopping nightshirt, trying to keep the vinegary-smelling cloth from touching my face. With everything closed to the outside and as secure as I could make it, I sat shivering in the hallway, my naked back to the wall, and cried.

  I’d left Aunt Arzula behind. She saved me and I didn’t give a thought to helping her. My uncle kept his shotgun against the bedroom wall—if I could’ve gotten to it before him…then what? Would I have really killed him? Could I have avoided shooting my aunt as well?

  Aunt Arzula had yelled. “You’re killing the baby again!” Again. Poor Eliza Jean. No wonder he wasn’t allowed at the old home place.

  What would I find there in the morning? There was a part of me demanding that I go back. I needed to see what happened to her because of my cowardice. There was nowhere else I was wanted.

  CHAPTER 20

  Aunt Arzula called to me from the kitchen, “Keep outta Stan’s way. He’s peeved that you didn’t do your chores.”

  I’d seen my uncle out in the garden in his ill-fitting work clothes, shaking off sand that had buried the plants, re-staking poles knocked over by the wind. The air sparkled in the sunlight, as if the wind had left a million crystal flecks suspended, waiting to be pushed to a distant land. The haze made me squint just like I had when the gale was howling.

  Uncle Stan had seen me come down the road. All he said was, “You get homesick?” His soft question had none of the slurring rage of the night before. He sounded cross but seemed to expect me to disappoint him. He turned his back and resumed toiling.

  My aunt had a black eye and a swollen spot beneath her jaw. If she hid a thousand bruises under her outfits, she didn’t let on that she hurt.

  I walked through the swept and straightened house. The twin-barreled shotgun leaned against the wall where I remembered. What if I’d used it?

  In the kitchen, I said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize to me. Stan’s the one slaving away in the garden.”

  “About last night I mean. I could’ve helped you but I ran away.”

  She stared past me until I wondered if she had any more recollection of it than my uncle. “I used to love to run,” she said. “I ran everywhere. But now I keep them brogans on my feet so I won’t step on Eliza Jean. You remind me so much of her: that sweet dreaminess.” She shrugged within the three dresses, snapping a few stitches. “I can’t say for sure why, but it hurts to look at you, like something getting in my eye. Almost makes me mad.”

  Her gaze swept over me and returned to a spot in the corner. “Ain’t that strange?”

  *

  For some reason I counted on being able to go to our old house—to flee there or just wander from room to room and absorb the familiar smells—whenever I took a notion. Nat caught me on Monday as I came from the Turners’. He stepped off his porch and said, “A new family moved into your place.”

  “They bought it?” I tottered back a few steps.

  “Renting, like y’all done. I told Mr. John Greer ’bout working there afore. He said I can keep sharecropping and my boy Ennis and his family can live in Lonnie’s old home come spring. Seem like nice folk.”

  “At least you’ll still be around. Seems like everything else is changed.”

  He gently pushed my collar aside and peered at my neck. “How you getting along with your uncle?” I told him about a plan I made to flee with Aunt Arzula on Saturday nights, and he said, “Bring her down here. Me and Leona would love y’all’s company.”

  “OK, but you can’t let on that you’re taking pity on us; we’re just visiting is all.”

  “I know the rules, Bud, Lord knows I do.” The stern tone left his voice and he smiled at me. “Only fuss we’ll make is keeping your water glass full.”

  The next Saturday evening, when Uncle Stan set off in his clean shirt and trousers and shined shoes, I told Aunt Arzula, “We oughta look in on Nat and Leona Blanchard down the road. They’re not what you’d call neighbors,” I said, “but I feel bad about not seeing ’em more. Before Mama got shot, we visited with ’em lots. You know, to make sure they was hanging on.”

  She nodded and said, “Colored folks gotta hard row to hoe. Maybe I oughta bring them some canned green beans, you reckon?”

  We took green beans, pickles, and a round of cornbread. I tried to hurry my aunt along in her too-big brogans, but she kept fretting about not bringing enough charity. Twice I had to talk her out of going back for more.

  As we approached, Leona was sitting on her porch with a shawl around her massive shoulders to ward off the chill. She stared toward the woods across the road and hummed “Old Ark’s A-Moverin”, a gospel tune that Nat liked to sing in the fields: “Old ark she reel. The old ark she rock. Old ark she landed on the mountaintop.” She stood when she saw us and shouted, “Great day, I was praying for some comp’ny. It gets so lonely out here. Good evening, Miz Arzula. How you, Bud?”

  She and Nat sat us in their tiny parlor, fell all over themselves giving thanks for the food, and acted like royalty had come to visit. They laid it on pretty thick, but Aunt Arzula seemed to enjoy being the center of attention. She only tossed one ball of dough under her chair.

  We’d kept the front door closed—“It’s getting right nippy don’t you think, Miz Arzula?”—but I thought I’d heard Uncle Stan muttering as he headed home. I imagined him staggering along the dirt road, dirtying his shoes, and then bursting into the house to find no one. Would he bust a chair or fire his shotgun through the roof, something to satisfy his rage? Or would he collapse on the bed and cuss himself to sleep?

  To draw out our stay, Leona put the kerosene lamp in the bedroom and stretched a white sheet across the doorway, securing it on a pair of nails. Backlit, with her silhouette on the screen, she performed a shadow play while Nat strummed a six-string guitar that he appeared to have cobbled together from three or more instruments. “My Lord, what a mornin,” Leona sang. “My Lord, what a mornin. My Lord, what a mornin, when stars begin to fall.” Ten fingers wiggled as her arms descended. “This is a love story,” she intoned, “about a boy and a girl who meet on that great day when the heavens came down to earth…”

  Later, Aunt Arzula shuffled home beside me, humming and swaying in the moonlight. Over and over, she pantomimed stars wavering downward. “I swannee, Bud, that sure beat a night at home. Too bad Stan couldn’t have saw it.”

  I said, “Maybe we should do it again next week. Nat and Leona could use the company.”

  *

  Uncle Stan had done nothing to wreck the house the previous night, though my pallet seemed to have been kicked once. I’d made sure he was sleeping hard before I lay down.

  The nights had become much colder, but even the days failed to warm up; the sun had gone behind a quilt of gray clouds. On Sunday, Uncle Stan loaned me a thin wool jacket of red and black checks and took me hunting with him. He toted his shotgun and walked along with hardly a sound. I had to trot to keep up, probably scaring away most game.

  Some bushes rustled up ahead and I expected my uncle to
take aim, but he stood still. A gray, bristly razorback—one of his, judging by the leanness of the hog—emerged with a long stick in its mouth. It snorted at us, proceeded up the path, and then took a quick left turn.

  As its sinewy flank disappeared, Uncle Stan said in his soft voice, “He’s not long for this world. Hogs carry around sticks when a frost is coming.” First-frost meant hog-killing time.

  We trailed the razorback deeper into the woods. My uncle pointed out its tracks to me in the brittle leaves and told me to stay quiet. He led me to a clearing almost entirely covered by a gigantic pile of sticks and hay and pine straw. The stack loomed six feet high and a dozen feet across and had the sweet stink of a hog pen.

  What most impressed me was the warmth. It reminded me of standing close to the radiator in my classroom. Instead of a pinging sound, though, I heard a hundred whispered breaths and a low rumble, like snoring or thunder. Uncle Stan murmured, “Watch this,” and fired one barrel at the sky.

  The giant haystack exploded with hogs. Razorbacks poured out as if vomited from the earth. All of them shrieked and squealed as they surged away from the pile. I leaped onto the closest tree and shimmied up, just in time as a tusk slashed at my foot. Straw and sticks rained down on my yellow-pine perch while hogs swarmed beneath me.

  Then laughter rose above their cries and grunts. The boyish, gleeful hooting came from a nearby cedar. Six feet above the ground, Uncle Stan wrapped his arms around the tree, one hand clutching his shotgun like a bouquet. He held the trunk tight, the way I’d always wanted to be hugged. His cheek pressed against the bark as he cackled.

  It took several minutes of coaxing before he got me out of my tree. “God, that was something, wasn’t it?” he said, wiping his eyes. “Like every hog in creation came out of there.” Sticks, straw, and hay hung in the tree limbs and blanketed the forest floor.

  I picked up a large stick and imagined smacking him with it. Instead, I tossed it into the middle of the clearing and laughed.

  The frost came on Thursday, which turned my mood around about the approaching weekend. Though I didn’t like the slaughtering, I’d have all the meat I could eat for days. The thought of boiled chitlins and hog feet and fried brains with scrambled eggs turned my thoughts from the necessary bloodletting, another Saturday night escape from Uncle Stan, and Miss Wingate’s wedding day.

  *

  I didn’t get a chance to offer final best-wishes to my teacher before the weekend; my aunt and uncle kept me out of school on Friday to help prepare for the hog-killing. Aunt Arzula went to the old home place to clean out washtubs, scour the sausage mill, and sharpen the knives. Because Uncle Stan was banned from there, he always threw in with the Turners and their neighbors along Hardscrabble Road. On Friday morning, Uncle Stan enlisted me to help drive his three least-skinny hogs toward Mr. Turner’s holding pen. We used the pointed ends of broken broom handles to keep the razorbacks trotting along the road. Normally I’d look at an animal’s face to see its expression and make up a personality for it. Now all I saw was breakfast, dinner, and supper for the last two weeks of the year and most of 1939.

  I waved to Mr. Clemmons as he passed in his mostly empty school bus. He called, “Save me a pork chop, Bud.” I wondered if he made a request for a different part of the hog from every child he saw that morning. Town dudes would own the school for a day; come the weekend, though, the country kids would tuck-in to a trough of plenty.

  Once the hogs were settled in the pen, Uncle Stan volunteered to prepare the scalding-drum. Mr. Turner said to dig in a spot ten yards from the gate of the holding pen and gave us the shovels he cradled with his bad left arm. The stump below his elbow was shiny and dark red, like the color of the meat we’d hang up for smoking come Saturday.

  My uncle dug into the sand and started a pile on his right. I stood opposite him and began my own mound. Our purpose was to dig a pit big enough to hold a 55-gallon drum. The barrel would lean at a forty-five degree slant. We’d fill it from the well and, in the morning, build a big fire at its base. Each freshly killed hog would get dunked in the boiling water, scalding its skin so the hairs could be scraped off.

  Despite the cold weather, we soon broke a sweat. My uncle always seemed to relax once he’d dampened his skin. His upper-body rose and fell like a piston, and he began to speak. “How you liking it, Roger?”

  “It’s easy work, sir.” Ankle-deep, I tossed aside another load of sand.

  “I mean staying with me and your aunt.”

  I gave him a shy smile and said, “It’s easy work, sir.”

  “Well, you don’t complain, I’ll give you that. You don’t say much of anything, matter of fact. You’re always watching though.”

  Uncle Jake had said the same thing, and both men were right. Knowing that I didn’t understand half of what I saw didn’t stop me from taking it all in. I was more afraid not to look. To head off a scolding, though, I said, “I ain’t trying to spy, sir.”

  “Nuthin wrong with taking a good look around.” He shoveled the deeper end and had to heave the sand up high, like a gravedigger. “Let me tell you what you see.” Holding my gaze, he said. “You’re seeing a unlucky man.”

  “Sir?”

  He paused, forearms leaning on his shovel. “Most folks get a bunch of chances in life. I got one, and I backed out. Never got another.” He wiped a sleeve across his face and said, “Me and my best friend went down to the Army recruiter soon as we got outta high school. Seventeen years old, strong as oxes, ready to take on the world.” With a sigh, he resumed digging. “The Great War was over and no fighting in sight. Pulling a hitch in the Army woulda been easy as pie. We passed their tests, and my pal signed the enlistment form and handed the fountain pen to me. Guess what happened.”

  “Was it out of ink?”

  He snorted and returned to his work. “No, I was. I lost my nerve; the sap just plum ran out of me. I told him ‘So long’ and hightailed it out of there.” His shovel bit into the bottomless floor of sand. “I been sharecropping ever since.”

  I began scooping out the incline that led down to him. “You didn’t go back?”

  “No, I signed a marriage certificate instead. The justice of the peace was me and Arzula Elrod’s ‘recruitment officer.’ It’s been boot camp ever since, with no furlough.” He smoothed the sand at his feet with swipes of his work shoes. “‘Course, if I’d joined the service, I wouldn’t be standing in this fine hole and you wouldn’t be here either. See if you can roll that barrel into place.”

  *

  On our walk home, as the sun slunk behind the treetops, Uncle Stan said, “Did you see that?” He pointed at the trench that bordered our dirt lane. A straw hat bobbed through the tall ditch-weeds and then ducked.

  I crept closer and saw Rienzi Shepherd offer a carrot sliver to the rabbit I’d hunted. Her free hand drifted up very slowly, showing me her palm. I peered down at the rabbit’s scarred, pink flesh, where its tawny hair wouldn’t grow. Rienzi whispered, “Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid,” until the rabbit leaned forward and took the offering. It nibbled all the way to her fingertips.

  Working its fuzzy mouth, the rabbit looked up at me and then past my shoulder. It flattened its ears.

  Uncle Stan said, “Hey, what’s this?”

  When I looked into the ditch again, the little troublemaker had fled.

  Rienzi said, “You should’ve written that you’d moved.” She wore her usual tomboy outfit, her long braid coiled beneath her hat. I introduced her as “Ry Shepherd” to Uncle Stan. She glanced over my uncle; I knew she was recalling the night she stood up to Papa and his gun a short distance away.

  He said, “That’s a neat trick. I bet you catch a lot of supper that way.”

  “No, sir. It trusted me not to.”

  “Wait ’til you’re hungry, Ry.” He rubbed his hand across his mouth. “You won’t believe what folks’ll do when they’re hungry.” I could tell that his Saturday thirst had started a day early; I wondered if talking about
himself had triggered it.

  I said, “Ry, I got lots to tell you.”

  “Y’all talk,” my uncle said. “Remember, Arzula’s at her ma’s tonight, so there’s not much supper. I’m gonna go out for a while. See you later.” He said goodbye to Rienzi and walked fast toward home.

  I whispered after him, “No you won’t either.” To Rienzi, I said, “I hunted that rabbit for a long time. It kept chewing up Mama’s garden.”

  “It has to eat too, Bud. What your uncle said about hungry people is true for everything.”

  Soon, Uncle Stan set off for his favorite whiskey-joint, his black suspenders making the usual big X across the back of his white shirt. I murmured, “You recall how drunk he was, shooting the floor and falling on his face?”

  “Of course.” Rienzi sat beside me with her legs dangling in the ditch. “That’s what happened to his nose, right?”

  “Yep. He gets that drunk every Saturday. For some reason he’s starting early this week.”

  “What happened to your stutter?”

  I told her about everything that had gone on since she went back to Texas. By the time I finished my stories, I was close to tears as we sat in the cold, blue twilight.

  Rienzi said, “It’s amazing you’re still here.”

  “I keep your buckeye close.” Within my pocket, I rubbed the depression on the underside of the nut. As usual, it soothed me; the shell was turning black from so much handling.

  “What I meant was, why haven’t you run away?”

  I said, “Where would I go? Everybody I know is here.”

  “Everybody except your friend in Texas—why didn’t you write to me?”

  “I wrote a letter, I did. But my teacher said I oughta talk to you instead about… something.”

  Her mouth began to form a question, but no sound came out. She narrowed her eyes into harsh slashes and said, “You told about me.”