Sporty Creek

by James Still

  Father came into the yard with the key, and now the house was shut against our turning back. I looked at the empty hull of our dwelling. I looked at the lost town, and I hungered for it. Pap held up the key. “If somebody would drop this off at the commissary, I’d be obliged.”

  Tood Magoffin lumbered in Pap’s direction, shirttail flagging. His shirt had been snatched free of his breeches. “I’ll bring it,” Tood cried, both hands reaching. “I will, I will.”

  “I’m not wanting it brought,” Pap said. He wouldn’t trust a lackbrain. “You’ve got it twisted, Tood. I’m wanting it taken.”

  Although he wasn’t offering to accept the key, Hebron Dunford stepped forward. “Stay, or you’ll wish to your Maker you had.”

  Pap replied testily, “I’d rather perish hunting for work than to dry up in a ghost town.” He relished the secret that we owned a house seat and were heading for it.

  Cephus Dehart nodded toward Sula Basham and said, “I’ll deliver the key if you’ll take this beanpole widow woman along and locate her a husband. She’s worn the black bonnet* long enough. “

  Laughter rattled about us. Sula whirled, her face lit with anger. “Was I of a mind to marry again,” she spat, “I’d choose nobody the nature of you.”

  Calming Sula, Mother said, “The devil reward them.” She was admiring the locket. Mother was peering at the locket, not covetously, but in wonder, and as if she had not seen it before.

  “I’ll take the key,” Sula told Pap. “Nobody else appears anxious to neighbor you. And when you get gone from Houndshell, you’ll find it blessed riddance. You’ll praise the day.”

  Mother climbed into the wagon seat. Sula and Mother were now at eye level. “You were a help in my husband’s sickness,” Sula said. “You were a comfort when he lay in his box. I hain’t forgetting. Wish I had a keepsake to give you, showing I’ll alius remember.”

  “I’ll keep you in my head,” Mother assured.

  “Proud to know it.”

  “Wherever you set down, let me hear. I’ll come visit.” Sula was keeping our secret. We were ready to go. “Climb on, son,” Pap bade. I swung up from the hind gate to the top of the load. Over the heads of the men I could see the whole of the camp, the gray houses, the smoke cloaking the gob heap. The stripped skeleton of the tipple lifted above us. The pain of leaving welled in me.

  Pap clucked his tongue, and the mare started off. She walked clear of her hitchings. Loose trace chains swung free, and the ends of the wagon shafts bounded to the ground.

  “Whoa ho!” Pap shouted, jumping down. A burst of merriment sounded behind us. Fonzo Asher had pulled a rusty.* He’d done the unfastening. Pap smiled while adjusting the harness. He didn’t mind a foxy trick. He sprang back onto the wagon.

  We drove away, the wheels taking the groove of the ruts, the load swaying. Then it was I saw the gold locket about Mother’s neck, beating her bosom like a heart.

  I looked back, seeing the first rocks thrown, hearing our windows shatter. I looked back upon the camp as upon the face of the dead. Only Tood Magoffin was watching us go. He stood holding up his breeches, for someone had cut his belt with a knife. He thrust an arm into the air, crying, “Hello, hello!”

  *budget: bag of personal belongings

  *under the crowbar: slated for dismantlement

  †watchdog: company agent

  **Silver War: American Civil War, 1861-65

  †hillsider: plow adapted for steep ground

  **penhooker: cattle buyer

  ‡naked cow: without a calf

  *plunder: household goods

  *black bonnet: in mourning

  *rusty: prank

  5

  the force put*

  “Fetch the lamp,” Pap said. “I can’t see by the light of this blinky lantern.”

  Saul Hignight’s calf had a cob in its throat, and he had brought it to our place on Sporty in the bed of a wagon. He lifted it in his arms, letting it down onto a poke spread upon the ground. It was a heifer, three weeks old, with teat buds barely showing.

  I went after the lamp, but Mother feared to let me hold it. She put the baby in the empty wood box and gave him a spool to play with. She lit the lamp and took it outside, standing over the heifer so that the light fell squarely where Pap wanted it.

  The heifer breathed heavily. Her mouth gathered a fleece of slobber. She looked at us out of stricken eyes.

  “I’d have brought her before dark,” Saul Hignight said, “but I never knowed myself till after milking time. I kept hearing something gagging and gaping under the crib. Figured at first it was a pig snuffing.”

  “Had you got to the calf sooner, the cob wouldn’t have worked down so far,” Pap said. He rolled his right sleeve above the elbow. Saul wrenched the calf’s mouth open, and Pap stuck his hand inside, up to the wrist. He wriggled his arm, reaching thumb and forefinger into the calf’s gullet.

  Saul said, “I fished for that cob till my fingers cramped.”

  We crowded around, looking over Pap’s shoulder. Slobber bubbled on Pap’s arm. He caught the calf’s throat with the left hand and tried to work the cob into the grasp of his right.

  “The cob is slick as owl grease,” Pap said. “An eel couldn’t be slicker or harder to get hold of.”

  The calf bellowed, a thin stifled bellow through her nose. Her legs threshed, her split hooves spreading. She breathed in agony. Her fearful eyes walled and set.

  Saul Hignight glanced suddenly at me. “Here, boy,” he called, “help hold the critter.” I moved slowly, fumbling. “Help hold!” Dan sprang forward and caught the calf’s hind legs, not flinching a mite. Saul glanced back sourly. I turned aside, though not being able go turn my eyes away.

  Pap pulled his hand from the calf’s throat. “I can’t reach the cob, for a fact,” he said. “My fist is three times too big. Three times. Maybe a young’un’s hand—”

  “Here, boy.” Saul cranked his head toward me. “Stick your hand down to that cob, and snatch it out.”

  I shook my head. Saul grunted and spat upon the ground. “The critter’ll die while you’re diddling,” he said, his voice edged with anger. “Try it. I don’t want to lose this one. A bully-calf, I wouldn’t mind. But a heifer—”

  “Me, now,” Dan said. He squatted on his knees. He worked his hand into the calf’s mouth and into its throat, nearly to the elbow. He grasped the cob and pulled with all his might. It wouldn’t budge. The calf fell back upon the poke, gaping for breath. Her belly quaked.

  Saul Hignight stood up. “Hain’t a grain of use to try anymore,” he said. “She’s bound to die. Born during the wrong signs of the moon, I figure.” He clapped the dirt from his hands and rubbed them on his breeches. “She would of made a fine little cow. Her mother was a three-galloner. Three full gallons a day, not a gill less. She’s of good stock.”

  There seemed nothing more to do. Saul whistled to his mules and turned the wagon around, ready to start. “I can load the critter and drop her off somewhere down the road,” he said. “She’s as good as dead. The buzzards will be looking for her tomorrow.”

  “Let her be,” Pap said. “I might be able to dislodge that cob yet.”

  Saul climbed into his wagon. He clucked and jerked the lines. The mules set off into the dark. “She’s yours” he called, “skin and hide and tallow.”

  “Oh, could we save her,” Mother anguished, “there would be milk for us when the cow goes dry. Milk for the baby.” The lamp trembled in her hand.

  “There’s one sure way to get to the cob,” Pap said. He weighed the chance in his mind. “One way sure as weather, but the calf might bleed to death.” Mother and Pap glanced at each other. Their eyes burned. “Bleed or choke,” Pap said finally, “what’s the difference?”

  “Let me try first,” Mother said. She handed the lamp to Pap, warning him to hold it steady. She poked a hand into the calf’s mouth, pushing the tongue aside, forcing the locked jaws apart. She worked feverishly. But she couldn’t dislodge th
e cob. She had Holly try. Then she nodded to me. I knelt before the calf, looking into the cavern of its mouth, dreading to put my hand in.

  “Hit’s no use,” Pap said. “Fetch the hone rock, a needle, and thread. And wax the thread.”

  Mother ran for them, knowing just where the hone was stored and where the needle and thread were kept. She came back in a moment, took the lamp, and handed the hone to Pap. She sent Holly into the house to stay with the baby. “He’s fretted with being alone,” Mother said. “Find something to amuse him.”

  Holly returned almost as quickly as Mother had. “I gave him a hen-fooler* to play with,” she explained, “and tore a page from the wishbook† for him to rattle. I left him crowing.”

  Pap drew a barlow knife from his pocket and snapped it open. He spat upon the hone and began to sharpen the blade with a circular motion, swiftly and with precision. The calf was weakening, being hardly able now to suck breath enough for life. Her eyes were glazed. She picked at the air listlessly with her feet.

  The calf was turned to its right side, the head lifted back. Mother reached the lamp to me, telling me how to hold it—close and yet away from knocking elbows. “Both hands under the bowl,” she said.

  She caught the calf’s head between her hands while Pap dug fingers into the calf’s throat, feeling for the proper spot. He hunted a place free of large veins. “This is a force put,” he said.

  The blade flashed in the lamplight. It slid under the hide, making a three-inch cut. Mother looked away when the blood gushed. It splattered on her hands, reddening them to the wrists. Holly began to cry, softly and then angrily, begging Pap to stop. “Stand back, and hush,” Pap said. “You make a fellow nervous.”

  The blade worked deeper, deeper. The horror of it ran through my limbs. The lamp teetered in my hands. Water ran from my eyes and dripped from my chin. I couldn’t wipe it away for holding the lamp bowl.

  Pap opened a space between the muscles of the calf’s neck, steering clear of bone and artery. The calf made no sound. Only its hind legs jerked and its hide quivered. Dan held to the legs, watching all that was being done and not turning a hair.

  At last Pap laid the knife aside. He eased thumb and forefinger into the opening and jerked. The cob came out, red and drenched. It spun into the dark. The calf fell back weakly, though beginning to breathe again—a long, strangling breathing.

  “Needle and thread!” Pap demanded quickly. Mother reached it to him. Pap folded the inner flesh and sewed it together and then stitched the outer cut. And having done all, he looked at Dan and grinned. “Here’s a fellow who would make a good doctor,” he praised. “A cool helper. Not one to panic. I’m saying he can call the calf his own.”

  I handed the lamp to Mother so I could wipe away the shameful tears. I didn’t want the calf. I’d been promised a colt.

  *force put: a necessity

  *hen-fooler: small gourd used as a nest egg

  †wish book: mail-order catalog

  6

  locust summer

  Mother’s puny spell came at the time the seventeen-year locusts* cried Pharaoh upon the hills. Branches of oak and hickory and beech perished where eggs of the locusts were laid. Behind our house a mulberry tree was loaded with fruit. But Dan and I feared to swallow a grub and dared not eat them.

  “Berries are poisonous during a locust season,” Mother had warned us. She understood our hunger. Pap was doing the cooking and we fared rough. The food got better the week Sula Basham came to attend Mother, grew worse when Mother began to mend and Sula returned to Houndshell.

  “It’s an all-round plague year,” Pap told Mother. “Locusts in the trees and polecats in the barn. The polecats I can’t sight, but I have a nose. Still, neither are bothering me as much as these young’uns. Look at their elbows and ankles. They forget to wash their faces, to button buttons. Dirty-eared and more. And look at Holly’s hair. Ay, hit’ll be a pleasant day when you’re able to take them back under your thumb. They’re wearing me out.”

  “I expect to strengthen when the locusts leave,” Mother said. “A few more days of roaring, and they’ll hush.” She studied Holly, being most concerned about her. “I can’t make a child take pride if they’re not willing for it. Holly’s hair is a brush heap.”

  “Silly,” Holly scoffed. This was the new byword she had picked up in Houndshell. With Mother ill she did what she tom pleased.

  “Don’t you know any other words except ‘humph’ and ‘silly’?” Pap asked. “The baby is going to get ahead of you. He can say ‘cat.’ “

  Holly tossed her head.

  Dan and I looked sourly at the baby nestled in Mother’s arms. For it lately we had nothing but frowns. We blamed it for our having to eat Pap’s cooking. Often Dan would crawl under the bed to sniffle, and Mother had to coax him out. He had turned green-jealous of the infant because Mother was doing everything for it and nothing for him. Of my striped shirt Mother had made a garment for the baby.

  Holly never complained. She fetched milk and crusts to her hidden play place, eating little at the table. So it was Dan and I who stubbed at meals. The bread Pap baked was a jander* of soda. Vegetables cooked were half raw or burned. We quarreled and said spiteful things of the infant.

  Above our voices rose the scream of the locusts, Phar-rrr-a-oh! Pha-rrr-a-oh! The air was sick with their crying.

  Pap would blink at Mother as we grumbled. He would clench his jaws, trying not to smile. Keeping a calm face, he would say, “No sense raising a chub* nobody wants. Wish I could swap it for a set of varmint traps. I’d give the polecats a hard time. Or, could I find a gypsy, I’d give it away. They’d snatch it, and gladly.”

  “What I want is a colt,” I said, hinting that I was hearing nothing of the promised animal. “I alius did want me a colt.”

  “A while back,” Pap would remind, “you craved fancy shirts and fighting roosters.”

  I wasn’t envious of the baby like Dan. It was just that Pap had made me a promise which hadn’t been kept. He had claimed there would be a foal.

  That summer we saw little of Uncle Jolly. He was sparking on Bee Branch, and when Uncle Jolly went at anything, he went full blast. “Courting to marry,” he would declare. The occasions he did visit us he plucked our chins and pranked with the baby. He would count the baby’s fingers, toes, and ears and declare it a miracle they came out to the right number, Pap being its pap. He claimed to like its cowlick better than the two crowns. “The cowlick means he’ll have git-up-and-git. Like me.”

  Uncle Jolly would inquire, “Have you named the little gent yet?” and when told no, he would urge, “If you don’t hurry, I’ll hang a name on him myself.” It was clear he favored the babe above us all.

  Pap once asked, “What are you fishing for—for me to name him after you?”

  “You could do a whole heap worse.”

  “Not unless I named him Beelzebub.”

  The morning the herb doctor and his wife came down Sporty Creek I had gone into the bottom to hunt for Holly’s play place. She had bragged about it, nettling me with her talk. “It’s a really hid spot. Something is there that would peel a body’s eyes.”

  I was searching the thicket beyond the barn when the dingle of harness sounded. A wagon rattled the stony creek bed road drawn by the smallest pony I’d ever beheld, and a man and a woman rode the jolt seat. They traveled with mattress and trunk and stove in the wagon bed. The wagon passed the mill and climbed the rise to our house. I ran after. I hoped Holly had not heard it.

  But Holly was there before me. Mother came onto the porch, taking her first steps in weeks. She held the baby, squinting in the light. Her face was as pale as candlewax, and she was letting the baby dangle the locket Sula Basham had given her.

  The herb doctor jumped to the ground, his hat crimped in a hand. He was oldy and round-jawed, and not a hair grew on the top of his head. He bowed to Mother, brushing the hat against the grass. He spoke above the locusts, “Lady, is there a chance we could bide a c
ouple of nights in your millhouse? My pony needs rest.” From the jolt seat his wife gave Mother a chin hello.* Her hair hung in two plaits about her shoulders. She appeared younger than her husband. She gazed at the baby in its bundle of clothes.

  Mother sat down on the water bench. She couldn’t stay on her feet any longer. “You’re welcome to use it,” she replied. “A pity it’s full of webs and dust. My husband is off plowing; else he would clean out the trash for you.”

  I couldn’t hold my eyes off the pony. It had a tossy mane that was curried and combed. Not a cocklebur in its tail. It looked almost as fair as a colt.

  Holly edged closer. She was glowering. “The mill hain’t a good place to live,” she said.

  “We can pay.”

  “Not a cent we’ll take,” Mother assured.

  Holly became angry. She scowled at the visitors. She doubled fists behind her back. “A big lot of spiders in the mill,” she dissuaded. “Spiders with stingers.”

  The doctor paid Holly no mind. “Lady,” he said, “I’ve seen a lot of sickness in my day.” He spread his hands like wings. “When a person needs a tonic to strengthen their nerves, I can tell on sight. Now—”

  The herb doctor’s wife stopped him. “Doc! Ask about the berries.”

  “Ah, yes,” the doctor said, dropping his hands. “My wife’s a fool for mulberry cobbler. Raspberry pie. Berry pies of all descriptions.”

  “Ask may we gather berries from the mulberry tree,” the woman insisted. Her words cracked like broken sticks.

  The herb doctor waited.

  Mother stirred uneasily. “Wild berries are poison when locusts are swarming,” she said. “Always I’ve heard that—heard it from my childhood. But if you want to risk it, you’re welcome.”

  The herb doctor swept his hat onto his head and climbed up on the wagon. The woman smiled. She was smiling at the baby.

  “The mill is a pure varmints’ den,” Holly declared balefully.