A Far Piece to Canaan

by Sam Halpern

  They stood there for a while, Mr. Berman looking at the barn and Dad looking at him. Then Mr. Berman turned. He was the shorter, but, somehow, he kind of looked down at Dad.

  “That’s the deal, Morris. You won’t find a better one.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Dad, giving a little short laugh.

  “Well, that’s the deal. It’s getting late for renting. I got to know tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ll talk it over with Liz and let you know,” Dad grumbled.

  Mr. Berman walked back to his car taking care not to get his fancy shoes and suit dirty, and sat listening to the radio about how the Allies were capturing some town. Mom and Dad talked in whispers in the yard and I was close enough to hear them.

  The wind blew strands of Mom’s red-gray hair across her face and she pulled the top of her blue coat tighter around her neck. “Well, what did he say?”

  I could see Dad’s jaw muscles work. “Says he’ll give me what he would any goy.”

  “Morris, we have to have a place, but I’m worried about the people around here.”

  Dad kind of snorted. “I’m less worried about the neighbors than the rotten deal Berman is offering. The tobacco base is big though, and with a little luck, we can make some money.”

  “Morris, I don’t like this place. We’ve never lived among hill people.”

  “M’dom, twenty-five years ago when we first started farming, you’d never been out of New York City. You were worried about everyone around us, remember? Over the years, they became our best friends.”

  “I know, but they were nice country people, not a bunch of superstitious hillbillies.”

  “That’s not what you thought then.”

  Mom looked up into Dad’s face. “You’re not worried then?”

  “About the Bible stuff?” Dad said with a laugh. “M’dom, they’re just like the greenhorns from the old country. They’re ignorant and superstitious, but they’re not bad.”

  Mom looked away, then back into Dad’s face. “Morris, I don’t like religious fanatics around the children. They’re always looking for evil. And I don’t know what they think about Jews. Samuel is just at an age where they can scare him into thinking all sorts of things.”

  Dad shook his head. “I don’t think we should turn it down for that kind of reason.”

  Mom stood quiet for a minute, then sighed. “I guess you’re right. The house has electricity and a telephone, and it can be made nice. Maybe we should try it for a year.”

  Dad nodded and gazed around. “There’s so much work here. There’s fourteen acres of burley, and every boy old enough to work’s been drafted. We’ll have to swap work where we can. It’s gonna be tough, M’dom. It would be tough for people of thirty, much less fifty.”

  Mom squeezed Dad’s arm and smiled up at him. “When did work ever scare you?”

  I looked around at everything then, because when I heard Mom say that, I knew this was going to be home.

  3

  It was several days before we got the house cleaned up. I got out to the stock barn once, working my way through its muddy barnyard. To the right of the barn was a big gate which opened into a hog lot. The cobs from the corn they were fed had kept the lot dry.

  The barn was creosote black and had two tall red doors that met in the middle. They were supposed to slide, but were part off the track and I had to wriggle through. It was a pretty nice barn. It had a big hayloft and a feed room that was also used for horse gear. I passed half a dozen pens until I got to the back doors. They were off their slides too, but I shoved one out until I could squeeze through and get a look.

  What I saw was a long, narrow field with a little pond at the bottom. The ground run up from the pond onto the big hill that looked like a volcano. I was about to push on through when I heard a noise and looked that way. A boy was sitting on top of one of the two wooden gates that opened into other fields. We just kind of stared at each other.

  “Hidey,” he said.

  “’Lo,” I answered.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Samuel Zelinsky.”

  I waited for him to say his name but he didn’t, so I stayed put, moving the buttons of my mackinaw back and forth against the barn door. He was skinny like me and about my size, but looked a year or two older, with a long face, a regular nose, and straight black hair. It was cold but he wudn’t wearing a coat, making do with three or four raggedy shirts. A Bull Durham sack with a yellow purse string stuck out of one shirt pocket. Socks and toes peeked through where his soles come loose from the tops of his shoes and wudn’t any heels at all. He reared up on the gate, hitched his Levi’s, then pulled out the Durham sack.

  “Smoke?”

  “Okay,” I answered. I had never smoked but I was afraid saying no might hurt his feelings.

  “This is just th’ makin’s,” he said, swinging the sack back and forth by its yellow string. “Got some brown paper sack at your place?”

  “We just moved in,” I answered. “Ain’t any yet.”

  Figuring it was time to come out of the barn, I did, and climbed up on the gate with him. “Can I see your makin’s?”

  “Shore.” And he opened the drawstring pouch. “Picked hit m’self.”

  Inside the sack was a wad of white cotton junk looked like it come from a belly button. “That ain’t tobacco!” I said pretty loud.

  “Life Everlastin’,” he said, closing the bag by pulling one of the strings with his teeth. “Some folks calls hit rabbit tobacco but hit’s really Life Everlastin’.”

  “Uh . . . that grow in a tobacco patch?”

  “Huh-uh, you can get lots out in that field yonder,” and he nodded toward the big pasture behind him. “You never smoked Life Everlastin’?”

  “Naw, just tobacco,” I lied.

  “Well, hun’ney, Life Everlastin’s good for you. Keep your bronical tubes open, Pa says.”

  “You ever smoked a tailor-made?” I asked, moving a little to keep the gate slats from cutting into my tailbone.

  “Had a butt off’n a Raleigh once. You smoke tailor-mades?”

  “Roll my own.”

  “Your pa know you smoke?”

  “Lordy, no. He’d skin me alive. What’s your name?”

  “Fred Cody Mulligan.”

  I remembered then that Mr. Berman had called the hired hand Mulligan. He also called him white trash. I wondered if Fred was kin to him. Fred didn’t look like trash. “Where’s your house?”

  “West side of Cummings Hill.”

  Just then I heard Mom’s voice. “Samuueel!”

  Fred grinned. “That your ma?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Mine yells like that too.”

  “Reckon she wants me for supper.”

  “Yeah, hit’s gettin’ late.”

  “Samuueel.”

  “Got t’ go,” I said, and jumped down. “Will we be goin’ to th’ same school?”

  Fred looked out in the pasture, which was bleak and dead, and scuffed his no-heel on one of the slats. “Yeah, I s’pose.”

  Then we just stayed for a few seconds. “Well, see you at school.”

  “Yeah. Here’s a purty for you,” and he pulled the prettiest buckeye you ever saw from his pocket and handed it to me, then jumped down on the other side of the gate.

  “Thanks, Fred,” I said, walking away. “I’ll give you somethin’ sometime too.”

  “Samuueel . . .” come from the direction of the house.

  “Yeah, Mom, I’m comin’!” I yelled, squeezing through the barn doors. I raced to the hole in the fence that was just four, five foot to the side of the garden gate that separated the barn lot from the kitchen yard.

  Mom eyed my buckeye when I came puffing up. “Where have you been? You haven’t gotten the coal, and supper’s ready. What have you got there?”

  “A buckeye.”

  “Where’d you get a buckeye?”

  “Out behind th’ barn.”

  “Wh
at were you doing out there?”

  “Foolin’.”

  Mom took a deep breath and sighed. Her eyes looked tired and she seemed shorter and fatter than usual in her sweaters and old brown coat. She and Dad had been working day and night, trying to get the house fixed up before spring work. “Get the coal and wash your hands.”

  The first day of school, Naomi and me didn’t know what time the bus came, so we left the house at seven o’clock and walked to the end of our lane. About halfway there I could see someone waiting and took off to meet them. I climbed the gate and when I got to the top, I saw this girl and almost fell off. She was the most beautiful girl in the world, with kind of blondish hair and blue eyes. When she smiled and said hi, I tried to speak but couldn’t. Pretty soon Naomi got there and she and the girl got to talking. Her name was Rosemary Shackelford, and she lived just up the road. She and Naomi were both sophomores.

  “Is he your brother?” Rosemary asked Naomi, glancing toward me.

  “Yes,” Naomi said. “Didn’t he say hello?”

  “No,” she giggled. “He hasn’t said a word.”

  “Well, Samuel?” said Naomi, frowning at me. “Don’t you say hi to neighbors?”

  I tried, but I still couldn’t talk. Most I could do was nod.

  About that time, tires squalled, and this rickety old yellow bus come roaring down the hill and passed us, then picked us up on its way back about ten minutes later. We went near a mile, then turned down a blacktop lane called the Dry Branch Road. It stopped at the west side of a big hill which I figured was Cummings Hill because Fred and his two sisters got on. From there, we belted on around the bottom rim of Cummings Hill, over the wet spot in the road where the culvert was too small to carry the load of the Dry Branch Creek that was flooding from melted snow and rains, then screeched through more curves to where the blacktop run out. A gravel lane went on from there, but we turned around. A bunch of kids got on. One boy nodded to Fred, who said, “Hi, LD.” Then the boy sat down next to another boy called Lonnie who had got on wherever the bus had gone when it passed our gate.

  About this time I began to get over meeting Rosemary and moved next to Fred. Nobody said much to me, which I understood being new, but nobody said anything to Fred either. He just looked out the window and chewed his thumbnail, every now and then spitting out a chunk. I didn’t know where it come from because his nails was already eat back to the meat.

  At one stop, four redheaded kids got on. One of them spotted Fred and grinned. “Hey, feed sack!” he yelled.

  Fred’s eyes blazed, and he whirled. “Who you callin’ a feed sack, John Flickum?”

  “You, that’s who. Mulligan’s a feed sack, Mulligan’s a feed sack, Mulligan’s a . . .” Then all the Flickums took it up.

  It wudn’t true. The clothes the Mulligan girls had on were made of Purina feed sacks with big yellow flowers, but Fred had on denim pants and a blue denim shirt.

  “Mulligan’s a feed sack, Mulligan’s a feed sack . . .”

  “You leave him alone,” screamed Fred’s big sister, Annie Lee. “He ain’t no feed sack. You all sonamabitches, alla you,” and she swung a book at one and grabbed the hair of another, fighting like a she-devil alongside Fred. I figured I was going to have to fight today anyways, so I picked out the skinniest Flickum and socked him in the mouth.

  “Hey, you kids, set down back there!” the driver yelled, but the fight kept going. “I said set down back there! Now set down!”

  We all set down. Fred was so mad, he was crying and yelled toward the driver, “He called me a feed sack. I ain’t no feed sack! I’m a-wearin’ as good a stuff as—”

  “And shut up!” yelled the driver.

  Fred quit crying and looked out the window, then his whole body got tight and squeezed like a shriveled lemon. “Ain’t comin’ back here n’more,” he said, under his breath. “Told ’em I wouldn’t . . . hate th’ sonamabitches . . . alla them!” and tears poured down his face. LD and Lonnie had kept out of it, but you could tell they didn’t like what had happened. I took time to study the bunch that was riding Fred. It was some of these I’d have to fight. I hated fighting, but wudn’t nothing else to do when kids rode me about Jew.

  School was pretty much the same as the one I came from except it only went to the sixth grade. Naomi had to go on to Middletown High, which left me by myself for the first time. I was lonesome and a little scared. Fred and me wudn’t in the same class. I was in the third and he was in the second so we didn’t see much of each other at school.

  Outside was still cold and wudn’t nothing to do at recess but run around the big open-field schoolyard. I kept waiting for the skinniest Flickum to show. I must’ve got in a good lick because he didn’t. Nobody else bothered me so I didn’t have to fight that day, but I did the next.

  It happened with Lonnie. At the start, I thought I might win because Lonnie was no bigger than me and just as skinny. Neither of us wanted to fight, but some of the older boys egged us on until there wudn’t nothing else we could do. It didn’t take long to find out why they wanted to see us fight. Lonnie’s fists went so fast you couldn’t see them. I fought back and got in a couple punches but it didn’t make any difference.

  Lonnie’s last name was Miller, and he lived on the Little Bend bottoms. We didn’t say nothing to each other for a few days, even though we rode the same bus. One afternoon the teacher picked us to dust erasers. I kept wondering how he’d act alone, and was hoping we could make friends because he seemed quiet and nice. When we came to the rock fence that surrounded the schoolyard, I nodded for him to dust first.

  “Naw, you go ahead,” he said, shaking his head so hard his shaggy black hair moved about. “I dusted first last time I was out.”

  “You sure can fight,” I said, beating the eraser against the rocks until the chalk dust went up in a cloud. “Bet you don’t lose many.”

  “Ain’t never lost,” he said. “Not even with them big ones. I don’t like fightin’. Wish we hadn’t of fought . . . wudn’t no reason.”

  It was real honest the way he said it. “I don’t like fightin’ neither,” I said.

  Lonnie kind of raised his chin. “We won’t do hit n’more. You fight purty good, Samuel. We’ll just tell them old boys from now on they want some fightin’ they can try us together!” Then his blue eyes lit up. “You like fishin’?”

  “Yeah!” I answered, which somehow I knew even though I’d never done it.

  “Let’s go fishin’ this summer at your place. You can catch newlights a foot long out of your pond down by Fred’s.”

  “Well, sure, come on down. That’s a far distance from th’ Little Bend, ain’t it?”

  “By the road, yeah, but I cut across and hit’s only about three mile. One day I caught thirty-nine brim and five big newlights at your place. Hit made a good mess for th’ seven of us.”

  “Well, we’ll sure go this summer,” I said, and I knew I had another friend.

  I saw Fred maybe three times a week on the school bus, which was about all any of the Mulligans went except for Annie Lee, who was the oldest. We got together on Saturdays and Sundays when he’d wander over with his dad, Alfred. It was real nice living on Berman’s. The folks in the hills were the first people I’d ever been around that didn’t ride me about Jew. One boy did, and I won that fight. It turned out to be a good one to win because nobody liked him since his folks wudn’t croppers. Nobody held losing to Lonnie against me either. Everybody lost to Lonnie.

  4

  March and early April crept by in their wet, cool, blustery, miserable way, and real spring come on with its bee-buzzing sounds and warm-wind feeling. The brown hills turned dark green and the apple trees busted out in pink-white. The creek in the hollow below the tobacco barn settled back inside its banks and it was a great feeling to belly down beside it and listen to its sounds and let the sun beat down on my back and smell the grass and warm, black, soft, moist ground.

  Fred come over almost every evening to help me w
ith chores so our dads could work late in the fields. There was a lot to do and he showed me how a lot of the tools worked. I’d never used a corn sheller before and he could really make ours fly. It made getting corn for both families’ chickens quick and easy. One day when we finished feeding the chickens and collecting the eggs, he said why didn’t we go down by the creek and make some plans. I could see our cows heading toward the barn and wanted to get one milked before Dad come in, but I figured we had a few minutes to spend making plans.

  “It’s gonna be a great summer, idn’t it, Fred?” I said as we sat on the bank.

  “Aw, yeah, hun’ney. First thing we got to do is get a real good old inner tube.”

  I kind of looked at him, not knowing what he was driving at. “Why?”

  “Can’t make slingshots without one. What’d you think we was gonna use?”

  “I didn’t even know we were gonna make slingshots.”

  “Aw, yeah. Hit ain’t summer without a new slingshot. Broke my old one t’other day. Makin’ one’s about as much fun’s shootin’ one. Problem is, with th’ war on all th’ inner tubes is bein’ sent t’ th’ army.”

  I thought about it, then said, “Bet I can get one. Dad’s got a friend who runs a junkyard. He’s got lots of inner tubes. I’ll ask Dad t’ get one from him.”

  “Hot dog!” Fred yelled. “When you gonna ask?”

  “Tonight,” I said. “What else we gonna do?”

  “Gonna fish our eyes loose and maybe tempt that old ghost down’t th’ Blue Hole.”

  Everything sounded good except the ghost part. “What’s th’ Blue Hole?”

  “Hit’s a water hole by th’ river down’t th’ Little Bend bottoms,” Fred said, and then he leaned toward me and his voice got low. “Hit’s about seventy, eighty foot across and fed by this underground river, see, and no matter how little hit rains, hit’s always full and blue. Nobody’s ever found th’ bottom, and them what swims in hit dies somethin’ awful.”

  “How so?”

  “Ghost gets ’em. This big old skeleton hand comes up and gets your leg and pulls you down and you don’t never come up.”