Sporty Creek

by James Still

  Uncle Jolly sat up. His bread-jerker* went up and down. He pinched his scarred nose together, and his face wrinkled with joy. “I can’t laugh,” he chortled. “Upon my honor, I can’t.”

  *witty: half-wit

  †cornbread consumption: a joke disease

  **rook: steal

  *scholar: pupil

  †scimption: fraction

  **allus: always

  ‡pick: pet

  §smidgen: the least bit

  *spark: court

  †legi’main: (legerdemain) sleight of hand

  *panic: economic depression

  †general fall: collapse of a large area of mine roof

  **tipple: coal-screening plant

  ‡commissary: general store operated by mineowners

  *Red Horse: Red Cross

  †peg: government control of coal production

  **limber-jim: switch used in punishment

  *heat-boogers: visible heat waves

  †barebones: bareback

  *de’il: devil

  ‡pack: carry

  †bow-and-spike: bow and arrow

  *law: sheriff or sheriff’s deputy

  *poke: sack or paper bag

  *flying jenny: merry-go-round—log spiked to a stump

  *roundyboo: squabble

  †crawdabber: crayfish

  †granny-hatchet: lizard

  *bread-jerker: Adam’s apple

  3

  low glory

  We moved to Houndshell after school closed in February. We were startled by the altered camp. Three rows of houses were unoccupied with windows shattered and doors unhinged. Seven chimneys stood stark where dwellings had burned. The mineowners were paying scant attention to buildings and tenants. Sim Brannon produced a key to an empty house, and we moved in. Nobody said “scat.”

  Hardly anybody we knew was left, none of my playfellows. Pulleys and cables at the Low Glory tipple groaned two days a week. The shelves at the commissary were only a third stacked. The gob pile* still smoked, and the cockfights in the Hack continued.

  Had there been an opening, Sim Brannon would have taken Pap on, but those with jobs held to them like leeches. Sim often sat on our porch in the evening, legs over the banisters, bemoaning the mess in the world. “If the government would take the peg off coal, the mines could see daylight,” he would say. Sim and Pap talked on big subjects: there was never a joke. How we missed Uncle Jolly! Hebron Dunford, “the loudest mouth in the hollow,” sometimes expounded on our doorsteps, and there wasn’t a knot he couldn’t unravel. “Your head ought to be in Frankfort,”* Pap would tell him, a grain sourly.

  Pap hunted employment. He ginned† a week at a stave mill on Wolfpen. He put in a month mending county roads, breaking rock with a sledgehammer. With his pay he fetched home fifty pounds of soupbeans and a hundred of Irishmen.** Then he got on at Cass Logan’s sawmill for five months.

  Plank Town, Cass Logan’s camp, was nine miles from Houndshell, and Pap was at home only Saturdays and Sundays. He was away when the baby was bom. It was a boy, with a cowlick and two crowns‡ in its hair. Sula Basham, the tallest woman earthly, attended Mother. Mother had helped her in March when her husband died of miner’s asthma.§

  Footing through the woods to Plank Town and back, Pap looked sharp for herbs. He gathered ginsengo enough to buy a wheel of cheese. Ginseng sold for thirty-five dollars the pound at Thacker. Setting the great cheese on the table, he said, “Beans and ’taters and this should feed us until things start humming.” Pap needed new shoes, but he patched his old ones.

  By August Pap was back on his honkers† in Hounds-hell. The mill which furnished rough-cut lumber for the local market had run out of orders. Although sawmill labor wasn’t plumb to Pap’s notion, he reckoned it a whit above farming. “Nobody ever paid me a cent on Sporty,” he would say.

  Unlike Sporty, where school began in July after crops were laid by, Houndshell school opened in September. Dan wept the first day. Holly’s eyes were everywhere, learning everything taught. At a Friday spelling bee she turned me down for the first time, and everyone else, and received the headmark.* Mittie Hyden wasn’t there to spur me.

  Our teacher was so grumpy she bore the nickname Mama Bear. She kept our noses in textbooks, and few dared whisper, much less laugh. She had no picks, and there was not a storybook in the room, and none spoken of. And if Duncil Hargis didn’t know what made a pig’s tail curl, my opinion she didn’t know what made a hen’s comb red. We could twist Duncil around our thumbs, but not Mama Bear. My schoolmates noticed my shirts with collars as round as Holly’s and my scuffed clodhoppers.‡ Our clothes were made at home, our footgear bought off pack peddlers. I pinned my collars at the corners, to square them. Nothing could be done about my shoes.

  I got acquainted with Tavis Mott. And Sim Brannon’s son, Commodore. Commodore Brannon attended Pine Mountain Settlement School in Harlan County, and when he stayed home a week in June, he told me about books he’d read there. “There’s a good one named Treasure Island that will knock your eyes out. And Robinson Crusoe, I tell you, your feet won’t touch earth for a week after you read it. There’s another one about a young fellow, Tom Sawyer, having a master time with caves and robbers and gold. Best one ever wrote.” I stored the titles in my head against the day I could get up with them.

  September and October passed, and then it happened as Pap had prophesied.

  We were eating supper on a November evening when Sim Brannon came to tell Pap of the boom. “They’ve taken the peg off of coal,” he said. “The government has pulled the price tag. Coal will be selling hand over fist.”

  The baby stuck a finger into the beans on Pap’s plate. Pap didn’t scold. Instead he said to the infant, “Baby tad, you’ve come along in a good year.” The baby had no name yet. Mother had given the naming of it to Pap, and he had said, “I’ll stir up some John-Henrys in my head and see what jumps out. His cowlick tells me one thing, but the two crowns another.”

  Mother lifted the coffeepot, shaking the spout clear of grounds. Her mind was on the boom. “Let’s hope the prosperity endures,” she said.

  Holly and Dan and I looked at Pap, wondering what a coal peg was. The baby’s face was bright and wise, as if he knew.

  Pap thumped the table, marking his words. “I say there’s no telling what a ton of coal will sell for. There’s a shortage of fuel afar north at the big lakes and in countries across the waters. I figure the price will double or triple.” He lifted a hand over the baby’s head. “The heavens might be the limit.”

  Mother set the coffeepot down, for it began to tremble in her hand. She thrust a stick of wood into the stove, though supper was done and the room warm. “Will there be a plenty in the camps?” she asked, uncertain.

  Pap laughed, spoon in air. “The Red Horse can ride off somewhere else, where needed. Ay, the best time ever to hit this country is ahead. Why, I’m liable to draw twice the pay I get now.” He paused, staring at us. We sat as if under a charm, listening. “We’re going to feed these young’uns until they’re fat as mud,” he went on. “Going to put good clothes on their backs and buy them a few pretties. We’ll live like folks were born to live.”

  The baby made a cluck with its tongue, trying to talk. It squeezed a handful of beans until they popped between its fingers.

  “For one thing,” Pap said, “I’m going to buy a pair of solid work shoes. These brogans* have worn a half acre of bark off my heels.”

  The cracked lid of the stove began to wink. Heat grew in the room.

  “I want me a store-bought dress,” Holly spoke.

  “I need a shirt,” I said. “A bought shirt with a right collar. And I want a game rooster. One that’ll stand on my shoulder and crow. And some shoes.”

  Pap glanced at me, suddenly irritated.

  “Me,” Dan began. “I want—” But he could not think what he wanted.

  “A game rooster!” Pap exclaimed. “There are too many gamble chickens in this camp already.
Why, I’d as soon buy you a pair of dice and a deck of poker cards.”

  “A pet rooster,” I said, the words small and stubborn in my throat. And I thought of one-eyed Tavis Mott, who sometimes played mumbly-peg† with me and who went to the rooster matches at the Hack. Tavis would tell of the fights, his eye patch shaking, and I would wonder what there was behind the patch.

  “No harm, as I see, in a pet chicken,” Mother said.

  “I want me a banty hen,” Dan said.

  Pap grinned, his anger melting. He winked at Mother. “We’re not going into the fowl business,” he declared. “That’s sure. I always thought boys wanted a colt to prank with, or a bully calf to hitch to a sled. That’s what I craved as a growing youngster.” He gave the baby a spoonful of beans.

  I did want a colt, but that was beyond wish or hope.

  Pap went on, “A while ago I smelled fish on Sim Brannon—fried salt fish he’d eaten for supper. I’m of a mind to buy a whole wooden kit of mackerel. We’ll be able.”

  Mother raised the window an inch, yet it seemed no less hot. She sat down at the foot of the table. The baby strained on Pap’s knee, reaching arms toward her. Its lips rounded, quivering to speak. A bird sound came out of its mouth.

  “I bet he wants a pretty-piece bought for him,” Holly said.

  “By thunder,” Pap said, “if there was a trinket would teach him to talk, I’d buy it.” He balanced the baby in the palm of a hand and held him straight out, showing his strength. Then he keened his eyes at Mother. “You haven’t said what you want. All’s had their say except you.”

  Mother stared into her plate. She studied the blossoms printed there. She did not lift her eyes.

  “Speak it,” said Pap. “My ears are pricked.”

  “The thing I want has been my longing for quite a while,” Mother said at last. Her voice seemed to come from a distance. “When it can be done, I want to move back home, and to stay. We can live under our own roof, on land we hold deed to, beholden to none. Now, did we save half your wages, soon we’d have sufficient for another start—a plow, wagon, and horse. And enough to tide us until a crop can be raised.”

  To pay the haul bill to the mines, Pap had sold our farm equipment and plow animal.

  Dan blabbed, “I want to live where Uncle Jolly is.” He frowned at the baby, for he coveted the seat on Pap’s knee.

  My head was in a boil. I didn’t know my own mind. I didn’t choose to leave the camp, yet yearned for Sporty Creek. I thought of the aged water mill below our house at the Old Place and of the berries which ripened in our bottom or in our yard: strawberries, hackberries, blackberries, huckleberries, mulberries.

  Paying Dan no attention, Pap said, “Half? Why, we’re going to start living like town folks. Clothes that fit, food a body can relish.” He shucked his coat, for he sat nearest the stove. He wiped sweat beads off his forehead. To Pap, returning to the Old Place was all right at some distant future. Not any year soon.

  “I need me a shirt,” I said again. “A shirt with a proper collar and some shoes.”

  “No use being paupers in the midst of plenty,” Pap told Mother. “Saving half is too much.”

  Mother rose from the table and leaned over the stove. She looked inside to see if anything had been left to burn. She tilted the coffeepot, making sure it hadn’t boiled dry. Her lips trembled. She picked up the poker, lifted a stove cap, and shook the embers. Drops of water began to fry on the stove. She was crying.

  “Be-dogs!” Pap said. “Stop poking that fire! This room is already as hot as a ginger mill.”

  On a Saturday afternoon Pap brought his two-week pay packet home, the first since the boom. He strode into the kitchen, holding it aloft, unopened. Mother was cooking a skillet of meal mush, and the air was heavy with the good smell. I was in haste to eat and go, having promised Tavis Mott to meet him at the schoolhouse gate.

  As Pap rattled the pocket, he said, “Corn in the hopper and meal in the sack.”

  He let Holly and Dan push fingers against it, feeling the greenbacks inside. He gave it to the baby to play with upon the floor, watching out of the tail of his eye. Mother was uneasy with Pap’s carelessness.

  “Money, money,” Holly spoke, teaching the baby.

  He twisted his lips, his tongue stretching. But he could not manage it.

  “I’d give every red cent to hear him say a single word,” Pap said.

  The pay packet was opened: the greenbacks were spread upon the table. We had never seen such bounty. Pap began to figure slowly with fingers and lips. Holly counted swiftly. She could count nearly as fast as Mama Bear.

  Pap paused, watching Holly. “This young lady can outcount a checkweighman,”* he declared.

  “Sixty-two dollars and thirty cents,” Holly announced, and it was correct, for Mother had counted too. And straightaway, Holly said, “I want me a store-bought dress, and I want me a gold locket like Sula Basham’s.”

  Mother blinked. She had never owned a piece of jewelry.

  I said, “I’m aiming for a dressy shirt.” I had seen an occasional man in the camp wear a shirt with stripes or dots.

  Pap’s forehead wrinkled. “These children do need clothes. Clothes they’re not ashamed to wear. No use going about like raggle-taggle gypsies with money in hand.”

  “Socks and stockings I’ve already knitted,” Mother said, “and shirts and dresses I’ve sewed to do for the winter. They’re not made by store patterns, but they’ll keep a body covered and warm. I’m determined to do without and live hard to get back to Sporty.”

  “Oh, I’m willing,” Pap resigned, “but a man likes to get his grunt and groan in.” He gathered the greenbacks, handing them to Mother. He stacked the three dimes. “When I can’t see money, I can save without pain. Once it’s in my pocket, I burn to spend.”

  Mother rolled the bills. She thrust them into an empty draw sack and stowed it in her bosom. “If you agreed,” she told Pap, “you could bring the pay packets home unopened. We’d save all we could bear, only open one when needed. I say the boom won’t last eternally.”

  Pap pulled his eyebrows, deciding. “Ay, I’m of a mind to,” Pap said finally, “but the children ought to have a few coins to pleasure themselves with. A nickel a week, say.”

  “I want mine broke into pennies,” Dan said.

  Holly counted swiftly, speaking in dismay, “It would take a jillion years to save enough for a store dress.”

  “We’ll not lack comfort or pleasure,” Mother promised. “Nor will we waste. The children can have the nickel. You can buy a pair of work shoes, not costly boots. And we’ll have a kit of salt fish.”

  “The boots I was set on cost eighteen dollars the pair,” said Pap. “I’ll make these clodbusters do awhile longer.”

  Mother stirred butter into the meal mush, and it was done. Holly hurried dishes and spoons to the table.

  A buttery steam rose from our plates. We dipped up spoonfuls of mush. We scraped our dishes, pushing them back for more. Then I slid from the table bench and pulled my cap off its peg.

  “Where are you running off to?” Pap asked.

  “Going to play with Tavis Mott. He’s yonder in the schoolyard.”

  “I know Tavis,” Dan spoke, gulping mush. “He’s a boy just got one eyeball.”

  I sped the Houndshell road. A banjo twanged among the houses. Smokes stirred in chimney pots, rising, threading the chilly air. I reached the schoolhouse, breathing hard, and Tavis Mott was swinging on the gate.

  “I’d near given you out,” Tavis said, jumping down. His lone blue eye was wide. A patch covered his empty socket.

  Tavis was a full head taller than I, and a year older. He drew a wedge of tobacco from a hind pocket, bit a squirrely bite, and offered the cut to me.

  I shook my head.

  He puckered his lips, speaking around the wad in his jaw. “I’d figured we’d go to the rooster fights. Now you’ve come too late.”

  “Was I to go,” said I, “my pap would tear up s
takes.”

  Two children raced by, playing tag. A man came walking the road. Tavis spat into a rut. The black patch trembled on his face.

  “Before long, fellows will be coming down from the Hack,” Tavis said. “We’ll hear which roosters whipped.”

  I studied the eye patch. It was the size of a silver dollar, hanging by a string looped around his head. What lay behind it? Was there a hole square into the skull? Could a body see brains? I was almost ashamed to ask, almost afraid. I drew a circle on the ground with a shoe tie, measuring the words: “I’ll go to the rooster fight with you sometime, if you’ll let me see your eye pocket.”

  Tavis blew the tobacco cud across the road. “You’ll spy, then won’t go.”

  “‘Fad die.”*

  We saw a man walking the path off the ridge, coming toward us from the Hack. He came fast, though he was still too distant to be recognized. We watched him wend the crooked path and be lost among the houses.

  “When we go to the cockpit,” Tavis said, “I’ll let you see under the rag.”

  “I choose now.”

  Tavis was firm. “At that time, I will.” He hushed a moment, listening for the approaching man. “Before long I’ll not be wearing this patch,” he said. “I’ve heard there are glass eyeballs. Five round dollars they cost, and could I grab hold of that much, I’d get Mama Bear to mail me out an order.”

  “I’m going to save money, come every week,” I said. “I’ve got something in my head to buy.”

  “Hit reads in a magazine where a fellow can sell garden seed and make a profit. A hundred packages of squash and radish and turnip sold, I’d have me enough,” said Tavis.

  We saw the man gain the road. He was heading our way, walking a hippety-hop on short legs. Tavis hailed him as he reached the schoolhouse gate, and he stopped. He shed his coat, being warm from the exercise, and he wore a green-dotted shirt.

  “Who whipped?” Tavis asked.

  The man’s face grew sorrowful. He swung his arms emptily, glancing at the sky’s promise of weather. There was a hint of snow. “Cleve Harben’s Red Pyle rimwrecked my Duckwing,” he grumbled. “Cleve brought that bird from West Virginia and he scratched in all the money. I say it hain’t fair pitting a foreign cock.” His voice hoarsened. “I cherished that rooster.” He walked on, and I looked after him, thinking a green-speckled shirt was the choicest garment ever a body could wear.