Georgia Boy

by Erskine Caldwell

  Handsome slipped off the cart and backed toward the woodshed. He was just opening the woodshed door when my old man turned around and saw him.

  “Come back here, Handsome Brown,” Pa said.

  Handsome stopped backing away.

  “I sure owe you an apology, Mrs. Fuller,” Pa said. “All that was the purest kind of accident. I happened to be walking through the alley this morning and I saw some old rusty iron laying on the ground. I thought you was trying to get shed of it, and so I just kicked it along out of the way. I thought I was doing you a favor. I remembered that the boys was cleaning up around our house and in the alley, and that’s why your things got mixed up with ours.”

  “You’d better think about doing yourself a favor,” Mrs. Fuller said, “if you don’t want to go to jail.”

  While my old man was calling Handsome, Mrs. Fuller turned around and walked out through the alley gate.

  “Handsome,” Pa said, “bring me them rubber boots.”

  Handsome went to the porch and brought the boots.

  “Now, let this be a lesson to you,” Pa said. “You ought to know better than to pick up just anything you find laying around. It may belong to somebody.”

  “Me?” Handsome said, shaking all over. “Is you talking to me, Mr. Morris?”

  Pa handed him back the rubber boots. Handsome took them, but he let them fall to the ground.

  “Take them boots down to Mr. Frank Dunn’s store and tell him they didn’t fit you,” Pa said. “Then ask him to give you your money back.”

  “Me?” Handsome said, backing off. “You mean me, Mr. Morris?”

  Pa nodded.

  “Then when you get your money back for the boots,” my old man said, “take the money and go over where the man is buying the scrap iron and tell him you’ve changed your mind and want the pieces back. Hand him the four dollars and then start digging in the pile and pick out all the pieces you sold him. When you get everything picked out, especially the pump handle, load them in the cart and bring them straight home. As soon as you get back you can take Mrs. Fuller the things she wants.”

  “You don’t mean me, do you, Mr. Morris?” Handsome said. “Ain’t you kind of mixed up a little? Them rubber boots ain’t mine, and I—”

  Pa picked up the boots and put them in Handsome’s arms.

  “You made me feel so ashamed of myself for buying rubber boots when it wouldn’t be muddy enough to need them that I gave them to you.”

  “You did?” Handsome said. “When did you do all that, Mr. Morris?”

  “Just a little while ago,” Pa said.

  “I declare, Mr. Morris,” Handsome said, “I ain’t never wanted rubber boots in all my life! That’s one thing I never thought about!”

  Handsome tried to give them to Pa, but my old man shoved them back at Handsome. Handsome stood trembling and trying to say something.

  “Stop arguing and do like I tell you,” Pa said. “I’d hate to see you go to jail on a fine day like this.”

  He handed Handsome the reins and pushed him up into the cart. Then he picked up the boots and threw them inside.

  After that he slapped Ida on the back with his hand, and she trotted out of the yard and turned down the street. Handsome went on out of sight and holding to the seat with both hands and moaning so loud we could hear him until he got all the way downtown.

  My old man walked over to where the can of worms was and looked at it for a while. Then he picked up the can and told me to get the spade. We went around behind the shed where Handsome had dug them that morning and emptied the can on the ground.

  The worms started crawling off in every direction, but my old man got a stick and pushed them down into the hole that Handsome had dug.

  “Cover them up good, son,” he said. “Help them make themselves feel at home. It’s too late to go fishing today, but the next time your Ma goes off to visit your Aunt Bessie, we’ll do our best to make the most of it.”

  I covered up the hole while my old man patted the earth down tight so it would stay damp down where the worms lived until the next time we had a chance to use them.

  VI. Handsome Brown and the Shirt-tail Woodpeckers

  THE SHIRT-TAIL WOODPECKERS had been bothering us for a long time. There were not so many of them to begin with, but they raised several nests in the spring, and by the time the young ones were old enough to peck on wood they made such a racket early in the morning that nobody could sleep. The ’peckers lived in the old dead sycamore tree in our yard, and Ma said the sensible thing to do was to chop it down. My old man said he would rather see the Republicans win every election in the country for the rest of time than to lose the sycamore. He had been nursing it along ever since I could remember, pruning back the dead limbs and daubing paint around the ’pecker holes. After it had been dead for several years, there was not a single limb left on it, and the trunk jutted straight into the air like a telephone pole.

  Up near the top of the sycamore was where the shirt-tail woodpeckers lived. They had pecked at it until they had made more holes than I could count. Handsome Brown said once he had counted them, and he thought there were between forty and fifty. At that time of the year, in early summer, after the young ones had come out of the holes and started pecking, there were always a dozen or more of them around the tree. But early in the morning was the worst time. The ’peckers always got up together at the crack of dawn and started pecking on the dead wood, and my old man said he thought there were about twenty or thirty of them always working from then until six or seven o’clock.

  “Mr. Morris,” Handsome told Pa, “I could get me a .22 and get shed of them in no time.”

  “If you shoot one of them woodpeckers,” Pa said, “it would be just like you shooting the sheriff of the county. I’d haul off and put you on the chain gang for the rest of your life!”

  “Please don’t do that to me, Mr. Morris,” Handsome said. “That’s one thing I won’t stand for.”

  The rat-tat-tat in the sycamore got worse and worse all the time. The days were growing longer, and that meant that the ’peckers generally started pecking earlier every morning. My old man said they were coming out and starting to peck at three-thirty.

  “If them was my peckerwoods,” Handsome said, “I’d chase them off and chop down the tree. Then they couldn’t do no more pecking.”

  “You’d better mind how you talk, Handsome Brown,” Pa told him. “If anything ever happens to the littlest one of them woodpeckers, or to my sycamore, you’ll wish you’d never seen a shirt-tail woodpecker.”

  During the day nobody minded the ’peckers much, because they were always busy flying off somewhere to get something to eat, or just resting, and if one of them did peck a little on the sycamore, the rest of them did not join in like they all did early every morning for two hours. My old man said he liked to listen to a lone woodpecker pecking, because it was like having company around all the time. Ma didn’t say much, except that she was going to have the sycamore chopped down if my old man didn’t do something about the rat-tat-tat that woke us up every morning before dawn.

  Then one morning a whole hour before daybreak we heard the worst clatter in the sycamore we’d ever heard before. It sounded as if forty or fifty people were banging on the side of the house with claw-hammers. Ma struck a match and looked at the clock on the mantel, and it was three o’clock. My old man got up and put on his shoes and pants and lit the lantern on the back porch. After that he went across the yard and called Handsome. Handsome always slept in the loft over the woodshed. Pa told him to get dressed and come out in the yard right away.

  “Them ’peckers won’t let me get a wink of sleep,” Pa told Handsome. “You come on around to the sycamore with me and help me quiet them down.”

  I got up and looked out the window. The sycamore was only about ten feet from the window, and in the lantern light I could see everything that was going on. Handsome came dragging his feet over the ground and yawning.”

  “Hand
some,” Pa said, “we’ve just got to figure out some way to make them ’peckers quiet down.”

  “How you figure on going about it, Mr. Morris?” Handsome asked, leaning against the tree and yawning some more.

  “Hitch yourself up there and maybe that’ll stop it,” Pa told him.

  “What you mean, Mr. Morris? Go up that sycamore?”

  “Of course,” Pa said. “Shin yourself up there right away. I want to get a lot more sleep before the night’s over.”

  Handsome stood back and peered in the darkness towards the top of the tree. The lantern light shone only halfway up, and nobody could see all the way to where the ’peckers were. We could hear the ’peckers up there rapping on the dead wood, and once in a while some big chips and splinters showered down.

  “I don’t know as how I can,” Handsome said protestingly. “I ain’t never learned how to climb a tree that didn’t have no limbs at all on it. I’d slip backward a heap faster than I could go forward. There wouldn’t be no limbs to clutch to.”

  “Never mind that,” Pa said. “When you get halfway up you can get a toe-hold in the woodpecker holes, and it’ll be easier than eating pie.”

  My old man gave Handsome a shove towards the sycamore. Handsome put his arms around the trunk and measured the bigness of it. He hugged it for a minute, and then he groaned.

  “I ain’t never tried to do nothing like this before, Mr. Morris,” he said, stepping back. “I’m scared.”

  Handsome looked up at the tree in the darkness. We could hear the woodpeckers pecking away for all they were worth. They pecked so hard it shook the tree all the way down to the ground, and pretty soon the panes in the window began to rattle.

  My old man gave Handsome a hard shove and made him start up the tree. As soon as he got started, he went up out of sight like a squirrel. I couldn’t see a thing after that, because as soon as he was out of sight, Pa blew the light out of the lantern. He said he could see better in the dark without a light.

  In another minute there wasn’t a sound to be heard anywhere. The woodpeckers were as still as dead mice.

  “How are you making out up there, Handsome?” Pa shouted up at him.

  There was no answer at all. Pa and I listened, and all we could hear was a sound like a dog panting.

  “What’s going on up there, Handsome?” Pa shouted.

  A big shower of dead bark thundered down from above, pelting Pa on the head.

  “Mr. Morris,” Handsome said, “you’ve got to do something to save me quick!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “These peckerwoods has all started pecking on me, just like they do on the tree,” he said. “Can’t you hear them pecking on me, Mr. Morris?”

  “I don’t hear a thing in the world,” Pa said. “Don’t let them get you rattled. Just don’t pay them no mind. Hang on and try to quiet them down. They ain’t making nowhere near as much noise as they were before you went up there.”

  “That’s because they’re pecking on me, instead of on the tree, Mr. Morris,” he said. “I can’t fight them off, because if I did, I’d lose my grip around this here tree.

  “Act like you don’t notice them,” Pa said, “and they’ll quit after a while.”

  “But they just keep on pecking at the back of my head. It’s already so sore it feels like it’s going to split wide open.”

  “That’s a lot of foolishness,” Pa said. “I’ve lived a long time, and ain’t never heard of a woodpecker pecking on a human being.”

  Pa started around the corner of the house towards the back porch.

  “You’ve quieted them down real good, Handsome,” he said. “Now just stay there and see that they don’t start up that pecking on the tree again.”

  “Mr. Morris!” Handsome yelled. “Where you going, Mr. Morris! Don’t go away and leave me up this tree all by myself with all these peckerwoods!”

  Pa came on inside, and I could hear him take off his shoes and drop them beside the bed. Handsome started moaning up in the top of the tree, but after a while he stopped making any sound at all. Pa got into the bed and pulled the covers over his head.

  As soon as the sun came up, I got out of bed and went to the window. Handsome was still up at the top of the sycamore, but from the way he was hanging on, it looked as if he might slip and fall any minute. Just then I heard Pa get out of bed and start dressing. I put on my clothes as fast as I could and followed him to the backyard.

  When we got there, we could see Handsome hugging the tree with both arms and both legs. He had the big toe of one foot in a woodpecker hole, and he was hanging on like a scarecrow.

  The funny part of it was that there were woodpeckers all over him. Some of them were roosting on his head and shoulders, and a lot of them were hanging to his arms and legs. It looked as if there were twenty or thirty ’peckers on Handsome.

  Just then one of the woodpeckers woke up and made a loud screech. The screech woke up all the other ’peckers, and they all started pecking on Handsome. It looked as if they had worn themselves out and had gone to sleep and had waked up and remembered that they had Handsome to peck on. Handsome woke up with a jump.

  “Mr. Morris! Mr. Morris!” he yelled. “Where is you, Mr. Morris?” Pa and I walked around to the trunk of the sycamore and looked up at the top. The ’peckers would flutter around Handsome and find a better place on him to peck. He flung one arm around his head, trying to shoo them off. But as soon as they flew off for a minute, they came back again and started in just as hard as ever.

  “Come on down to the ground, Handsome,” Pa said. “I’m up and awake now.”

  We could see Handsome looking down at us on the ground. After that he flung an arm at the ’peckers and took his big toe out of the hole. He slid down slowly, trying to beat off the birds at the same time.

  When his feet touched the ground, he crumpled up like a half-empty potato sack. Pa caught him and pulled him back to his feet.

  “You look all tuckered out, Handsome,” Pa said.

  Handsome looked at Pa and me for a minute, but he didn’t say anything. He looked too tired to talk.

  Just then Ma came around the corner of the house. The woodpeckers were fluttering around over our heads, acting as if they were trying to get at Handsome some more. Suddenly one of the older woodpeckers, a big cock with a long white shirt-tail, got up enough nerve to come down where we were, and he lit on top of Handsome’s head. He started pecking on Handsome for all he was worth. Handsome yelled so hard people all over town must have heard him.

  “My sakes alive!” Ma cried out. “Just look at poor Handsome’s head!”

  We had been so busy watching him slide down the tree that we had paid no attention to the way he looked. His clothes were all pecked to pieces, and his overalls and jumper hung around him in rags. But his head looked the strangest of all.

  There were four or five big round spots, like woodpeckers’ holes in the sycamore, where every bit of Handsome’s hair had been pecked away.

  Pa walked around Handsome in a circle, looking at him all over. Then he went up and felt two or three of the bald spots on Handsome’s head.

  “Why didn’t you stay awake and keep those ’peckers off you, Handsome?” Pa said. “It was your own fault for climbing up there and going to sleep like that. It wouldn’t have happened if you had attended to your business up the tree like I told you. I didn’t send you up there to go to sleep.”

  “You didn’t mention to me that you wanted me to stay awake, too,” Handsome said, shaking his head. “All you said was to go up there and keep them peckerwoods from making noise, Mr. Morris.”

  My old man turned around and looked at Ma. They didn’t say anything to each other, and in a little while she went around the corner of the house towards the kitchen. We followed, but Ma didn’t say anything. She just put our plates down in front of us and helped me to grits and sausage.

  VII. My Old Man and the Gypsy Queen

  A THUNDERSTORM THAT HAD been threatenin
g all morning came up while we were eating dinner, but it only sprinkled a little after all. As soon as the shower passed over, my old man got his hat and went down the street to the stores. The sun had come out now again, and in a little while it felt as if there had never been a drop of rain.

  While I was sitting there waiting, I heard horses and wagons not far off. It sounded as if there were a lot of them, and the thud of their hooves and the creaking of harness leather came closer every minute. I got up and went out to the middle of the street where I could see better. About halfway to the next corner I saw my old man walking up the middle of the street, waving his arms almost every step, and right behind him were five or six two-horse teams pulling wagons with canvas-covered tops. My old man was waving his arms and trotting a little, and looking back over his shoulder every few steps.

  When they got in front of our house, Pa stopped and waved his arms at the drivers, and they pulled the teams over to the side and hitched to the fence posts. During all the time they were tying up the horses, Pa was waving his arms and urging them to hurry. Then the drivers came running behind Pa while he led them around the corner of the house to the backyard. There were a lot of women and kids inside the covered wagons, and they began piling out, too. Soon it looked as if there were about twenty or thirty people coming towards the house. The women were dressed in long bright-colored skirts that touched the ground, and every one of them wore a red, or yellow, or bright green scarf over her head. The men were dressed like anybody else, except that they wore unbuttoned vests without coats. The kids didn’t have on much of anything at all. The grown people and the kids were as dark as Indians, and all of them had long black hair.

  The men followed Pa around to the backyard, and the women scattered in all directions, some going up on the porch and some hurrying around to the backyard. All the kids, though, dived under the house right away. Our house, like everybody else’s in Sycamore, was built high off the ground so the air could circulate under the rooms and cool them off in hot weather.