“My mama opened your letter.”
“I didn’t spell anything out.”
I said, “You wrote about me keeping your secret!”
“You couldn’t make up something?”
“She said your name sounded like a girl’s. She guessed it and my brothers heard. Darlene too.”
“They all know?” She shook her head and asked what Jay had said.
“Nuthin much. Chet wouldn’t believe it.”
“Because no girl could beat him, right? I don’t understand why you told everyone.”
“I didn’t! Mama…Forget it. Never mind.” I pushed to my feet and brushed the sand off my overalls. “You staying long?”
She walked along the edge of the ditch, saying, “A few days only. I’m celebrating Christmas early with my grandparents.”
I noticed that the anger had left her voice. “You still mad at me?”
“Disappointed. I guess it’s not really your fault. Your family’s not around to tease me, so maybe it’s all right.”
“I don’t wanna be here when my uncle gets back. You hungry?”
“Not enough to eat that poor rabbit.”
“Maybe we can get a squirrel.” I ducked inside long enough to grab a couple of biscuits, my slingshot, and some rocks I’d collected along the railroad track. It was too hard to find ammunition in the woods at night.
She examined my slingshot and said, “Couldn’t we go fishing?”
“They’re not biting—it’s too cold.”
We entered the woods, following a narrow path. With the moon not yet risen, I couldn’t see well. I had to rely on the sounds of scrabbling claws and the sudden shaking of tree limbs to find a target. Amazingly, Rienzi could stay quiet for long periods of time.
The stretch of forest we were in didn’t pan out, so I veered toward the route Lonnie had used. As the temperature dropped more, I began to shiver. I imagined that Uncle Stan had staggered home by that time. Now I needed to stay out an hour or so more, until he’d fallen into a drunken, deathlike sleep. He’d barely breathe until daybreak; I sometimes wondered if he tried to will himself to stop altogether.
Rienzi spotted the wagon trail I was looking for. I said, “We can take this to Wanda’s place.”
“You think she’ll have something to eat?”
“I hope so. That biscuit didn’t do me.” I led her south. The dirt and leaves chilled my feet as I walked along a rut made by Robert Bryson’s tires. Rienzi chose the other track; when we stretched out our arms, like crossing a tightrope, they weren’t quite long enough for our fingertips to touch.
I watched the path in front of me; my night vision improved to an amazing degree with each passing moment. The crickets had ceased their chirping, so my hearing got better too, even detecting a low-pitched hum. Rienzi halted, but I walked on a few steps, noticing more and more details of tree trunks and the forest floor. The humming got louder. Then I saw my shadow in front of me.
“What is that, Bud?”
The fear in her voice made me turn.
A ball of light at least six feet in diameter hovered behind her. Thrumming vibrations jabbed deep inside my ears, and the light pulsed from the soft yellow of churned butter to an angry blaze. I shouted, “It’s the Dutchman. Run to Wanda’s!”
I snatched her hand as she stood mesmerized, pulling her until she ran alongside me. The Dutchman surged forward, our path brightening as it gained on us. The thrum became a roar that seemed to ripple my skin. Soon Rienzi had pulled away. She yelled for me to hurry.
Wanda’s gardens and porch appeared up ahead as if in the light of midday. The Dutchman drew near and my shadow shrank away, becoming shorter and squatter until I appeared to outrun my silhouette. Hairs on the back of my head stood on end—the haint was reaching out to touch me.
I dodged to the left and sprang onto a young tree. Shouting for Rienzi to climb, I scrambled up the slender pine. Brittle bark fell away as I shimmied toward the top. The haint hadn’t followed me upward; he was chasing Rienzi.
She ran toward Wanda’s porch, but the Dutchman was overtaking her. I climbed until I could bend the top of the pine under my meager weight. As the tree creaked, dipping me lower, I shouted, “Hey, you haint. Come and get me!”
The Dutchman paused and reversed course as I dropped in an arc toward the ball of light. It waited for me at the spot where I’d land, as if to swallow me up.
Rienzi yelled, “Over here,” and straddled a cypress so thick that her feet couldn’t touch on the other side. Still, she managed to climb while I sank closer to the pulsing globe that deafened me with its growl. When I saw that she was safe, I tried to climb back down the pine trunk as it cracked and limbs fell away. Too late.
The tree snapped about ten feet from the top. The huge log of wood crashed right through the haint, which didn’t even flicker as it repositioned itself—as if to grab me when the rest of the pine gave way. With a tremendous bang, the trunk broke near its base and then I fell fast, grasping the tree.
The top end of the shattered trunk caught in hefty oak limbs while the base dug into the forest floor, and I stopped. The impact almost shook me from my hold; coarse pine bark scraped my hands and cheek. My tree balanced at the same slant as the scalding-barrel we’d positioned at the Turners. The Dutchman waited a dozen feet below me, ready to gobble me like a piglet.
The haint circled the nearly fallen pine as Rienzi yelled over to make sure I was all right. Every part of my front felt like it had been kicked by hobnail boots, from my face to my crotch. My voice sounded as squeaky as hers as I called back, “Hunky dory.”
After another few revolutions, the Dutchman circled Rienzi’s sturdy, upright tree and looped between ours for a while, making a figure-eight. Then it surged into the woods. Its glow gradually disappeared.
When the crickets resumed their chatter, Rienzi said, “You think it’s safe?”
“I think I’ll stay here ’til morning.”
“What was that, Bud?”
“A haint. Like we told you before.”
“But ghosts aren’t real.”
I shouted, “So why are you up in a tree?”
“Calm down. I don’t pretend to know everything.”
“Yes, you do. Uh-oh.” A low rumble jarred the night. Two lights, side-by-side, swept toward us. “Stay there—he brought a friend!”
“It’s a car, you goof.”
Robert Bryson’s black Pierce-Arrow bumped along the path toward Wanda’s. He had to stop because of the treetop lying across his path. As Mr. Bryson dragged the timber out of the way, Wanda looped beneath me and Rienzi, just as the Dutchman had done. She shouted at us, “What do you think you’re up to?”
I said, “About a dozen feet, ma’am.”
CHAPTER 21
Mr. Bryson drove us back home, dropping me off first, warm and well-fed. Wanda had reheated a pot of leftover stew and sent us away with a warning not to “snoop around places you don’t belong.” She’d called the haint a “spirit light” when Rienzi asked. During the drive, Rienzi talked to herself about what the Dutchman really was. It would’ve been funny to listen to except that her obvious fear added to my own.
I had to walk into Uncle Stan’s bedroom before I could hear his shallow breaths. The dying glow in his fireplace painted him in shadowy orange. Pungent whiskey seeped from his pores. I knew I should’ve been as scared of him as the Dutchman. At that moment, though, he seemed—and smelled—more like a rotting corpse than a monster. I was still so frightened that I dragged my pallet into his warmer bedroom and curled up beside the hearth. Light from embers looked a lot like the haint’s, and sleep didn’t come for a long time.
As hard as he slept, Uncle Stan woke up before dawn to get to work. He nudged my shoulder, jolting me upright. “Not much to eat now,” he said, pressing one of my aunt’s stale biscuits into my trembling hand, “but there’ll be plenty more later on.” His breath smelled foul, and his dusty overalls and a sweat-stained work shirt didn’t mas
k the sour odor that still oozed from his skin.
Running for my life the night before had left me exhausted and jumpy. I followed my uncle outside, scuffing along as I rubbed sleep from my eyes. My toes curved upward to avoid the cold flooring.
When we got to the Turner farm, Cecilia’s father had started a fire beneath the big scalding-drum filled with water. Some other kids and I stood over the pit to warm ourselves while the adults got the knives and axe in place and made sure a .22 rifle was loaded. The water began to steam. Big clouds of vapor rose from the pit and expanded overhead until a cold breeze shredded them.
I went over to the pen to help Uncle Stan feed the hogs. Buckets of slops and corn poured into the trough lured the razorbacks from their huddle in one corner. They stretched and shook themselves like dogs and made their way to us.
A husky farmer named TJ Rawlins hefted his axe. He climbed into the pen with his wife Mazy, who was armed with a long knife and dressed in a smock covered in rust-brown stains. Uncle Stan and a farmer named Smalls followed them. As the hogs ate, I told the boy leaning against the pen beside me, “Hey, Martin, bet’cha Mr. Rawlins’ll go for the biggest one.” At the old home place, Uncle Davy did the choosing; he always picked the fattest one first since it would be the heaviest work.
“Unh-uh,” Martin said. “He always picks the one with the most fight in ’im.”
Sure enough, TJ turned a muscular, tough-looking razorback from the trough. The hog snorted and thrust its small, curved tusks at him. TJ chopped the axe down one-handed, striking the razorback between its red-rimmed eyes.
The hog’s legs splayed like an overloaded table and it collapsed. The blow only stunned the thick-skulled creature, so Mazy plunged her knife into its throat. Blood sprayed across her smock and hand and steamed in the cold air. The hog died with a long sigh. As it bled out, the other hogs glanced around, but continued to eat. Others that hadn’t fed shouldered their way to the trough.
Uncle Stan grabbed one hind leg, Mr. Smalls took the other, and they dragged the dead hog out of the pen. Blood trailed them like glue pouring out of a bucket. Martin slammed the gate shut and looped a wire over the adjacent fencepost. “See,” he said to me, “told ya. Let’s race.”
He beat me to the scalding-drum, where the men dunked the hog headfirst into the boiling water. They counted the seconds aloud and pulled the hog out when they all called, “Ten!” Pungent steam rose from its loosened skin and now the boiling water looked pink in the dawn light. By afternoon, even with more water added, the scalding-drum would appear to be full of bubbling blood.
Uncle Stan and Mr. Smalls turned the hog around, cussing as they singed their hands. They each gripped a foreleg and shoved its backend into the water for a ten-count. When they pulled it out again, they dragged it to a mat of burlap sacks. “Let ’er go, boys,” Uncle Stan said. Martin and I took up pieces of burlap with some other boys. We rubbed from the stinking beast’s rump to its head, going against the grain. Wet, stiff hair eventually clung to our fingers and arms and even our faces. I had to keep spitting bristles out of my mouth.
Uncle Stan strung wires through the hog’s tendons where its rear legs joined the hooves. He and some other men dragged the hog to the scaffolding. On a count of three, the men lifted the hog. They staggered under its dead weight as the tallest farmer tied the wires to the crosspiece. The men let go, all giving the same long sigh that the razorback had. Its forelegs reaching for earth, the hog hung upside down. Wives, sisters, and daughters moved in for the gutting while the men returned to the pen for another kill.
The women had set up a butcher station beside the scaffolding: a broad table with knives, cleavers, and the sausage grinder clamped to one end. Washtubs lay nearby, some empty and some brimming with well-water, and a huge kettle boiled. When we boys weren’t scraping hog-hair, we had to keep the various fires going.
Rienzi had accepted my invitation, arriving as I carried a flaming stick of heart-pine to the Turners’ two-story smokehouse. “Come on,” I called to her, “this is the fun part.” I almost said her name; despite the tomboy outfit, I couldn’t help seeing her as a girl.
She managed to fool the others though. Cecilia had dashed over from the butcher table, her hands pink and wet from washing them in cold water. “Hey, Bud,” she said, “who’s that boy?”
I told Cecilia about “Ry” Shepherd, who had stopped a dozen yards away and opened a lumpy burlap sack as she studied something on the ground.
“What’s he doing stooped over there?”
“Probably looking at a bug. He likes to do what he calls ‘examining’ on bugs and leaves.” I yawned so wide I almost drew in the fire from the end of my stick.
“You boys are strange.”
“You’re the one showing off your daddy’s smushed hand.”
She put her cold, damp fingers on my mouth. “That’s our secret, remember?” As Rienzi approached, Cecilia said, “Hey, Ry Shepherd,” and introduced herself. She studied my Texas friend’s features the way Rienzi looked at nature.
I said, “I have to make a fire in the smokehouse.”
“I haven’t missed the hog innards, have I?” Rienzi said. She withdrew a large balance and a notebook from her sack. “I wanted to weigh everything on this butcher scale Granny bought for me.”
Cecilia wrinkled her nose. “We’ll be killing hogs all day.” The .22 rifle fired in the hog pen. After TJ had clobbered the first few with his axe, the razorbacks wouldn’t let him get close enough to strike again. Fortunately, the small-caliber bullet couldn’t pierce a hog’s skull and ruin its brains.
I herded them to the smokehouse and shut the door behind us. There were no windows. My heart-pine torch provided the only light.
Above our heads, a lattice of rafters spanned the building, with meat hooks every few feet. The dirt floor was covered with long Spanish-bayonet leaves I’d cut the previous afternoon with Martin and some other boys. I kicked some aside and pointed out greasy orange pools in the dirt. “This here’s from past years’ smoking, Ry. The blood and all drips down and carries off some of the salt while the meat’s curing. Grandma says that during the War Between the States, she and her folks got salt by putting greasy dirt from their smokehouse into boiling water.”
Rienzi nodded but Cecilia said, “Ugh. Did they cook it to eat?”
I said, “The dirt fell to the bottom, but the salt mixed with the water.”
“It was diluted,” Ry said. “Like sugar in tea.”
“I reckon. So they saved that water and boiled it all away. Somehow, the salt was left.” Before Rienzi could speak again, I blurted, “Anyway, that’s how they got salt during the war.”
Cecilia said, “From hog-bloodied dirt? Eeeeww, I won’t ever salt my watermelon again.”
The girls helped me clear a firebreak all around a pile of long green leaves. Flames raced across the heart-pine stick when I laid it down. Soon, a smoky fire began perfuming the air.
As we went back outside, I explained to Rienzi that insects wouldn’t fly into a dark, smoke-filled place, so we wouldn’t lose any meat to wasps and blowflies and such while we were hanging it. I’d light other leaf piles as the day went on until the smoke sweetened every breath and cured the meat that dangled above. I pictured the salted hams, sides, shoulders, and chops, and six-foot lengths of sausage. Dripping flour sacks would be filled with boiled, seasoned remnants from the hogs’ heads and even their tails; souse was so rich-tasting that I had never eaten more than a small slice in one sitting. After choking down Old Lady Boggs’ fritters every week, though, I planned to take a big bite.
*
After Rienzi dug through washtubs of kidneys, livers, and lungs, weighing and recording in her notebook, she helped me, Cecilia, and other kids clean the intestines. We stripped out the obvious waste, turned the yards of slick, pinkish gray coils inside out, and washed them in cold water. Rienzi drew stares, and Martin whispered, “What is he anyway?”
“Ry? His father’s from Miller C
ounty. His mother’s from Japan.”
“Is that somewheres up north?”
“East or west, one. A long ways.” I set aside a wide, clean intestine to be filled with ground sausage, and put a thinner specimen in the chitlin pile. Cecilia’s gorgeous sister Geneva and two other girls were plaiting lengths of slender intestines together like braiding their friends’ hair, twining three at a time to give the boiled chitlins more bulk and make them look less like pig guts. I reached for another bloody rope just pulled from a fresh kill, no longer bothered by the overheated-skillet stink of blood and organs or the greasy steam from the nearby tub where Mrs. Turner rendered lard from fatty trimmings. As dinner approached, all I saw was plenty to eat for the first time since last year’s slaughter.
Mrs. Turner served up plates of boiled chitlins, scrambled eggs with brains, boiled hogs’ feet, and cracklins leftover from rendering the lard. I sat on the sandy yard between Cecilia and Rienzi and ate my cracklins first. Still warm, they tasted like fatty pieces of bacon rescued before the cook could burn them crisp.
Geneva sat nearby. Soon, Martin and every other boy crowded near the Turner girls, balancing their own plates of hog meat. I gulped down eggs that were scrambled with tender brains so slick with lard that much of it slipped down my throat before I could taste it. I took my hog’s foot and looked around for a quieter place to eat it.
Rienzi said, “Let’s go back to the smokehouse. I’ll scoop up some dirt and show you how to get out the salt.” As we walked that way across a grassy field, she said, “You really like her.”
“Who?”
She sighed. “Cecilia. Her sister’s pretty too.”
I took a large bite of the boiled foot so I wouldn’t have to answer her. When I finished chewing, she hadn’t said anything more, so I shrugged. “They’re all right.”
“You keep looking at her. The whole time you were telling about your grandmother, you stared at her.”
I said, “I look at you too.”
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