Pap always walked to Mr. Pyle's farm on a specific route. It led him to enter the farm from the Northwest corner that bordered a thicket of trees. It was under one of these trees that Colby decided he'd wait for Pap the next morning. He was later than usual, no doubt nursing a hangover and possibly worried over the prospect of whether or not there'd be trouble waiting for him, but he was still on his way. He knew that since Annie wasn't there that morning she must have taken the kids over to her sister's house. He remembered beating her up, but through the fog of intoxication couldn't remember how bad. He wondered if his old friend was going to be waiting for him, ready to tell him how wrong he was for doing it, but he didn't have to wonder long.
Colby stood up to greet him when Pap came popping out of some trees. When Pap saw Colby he froze. For a split second he thought about running. Colby was a big man, after all. He had known him for years and couldn't imagine that he was going to have any real trouble with him, but the sight of him standing there with that serious look on his face gave Pap pause. Surely he wasn't here to start a fight, Pap thought.
"Annie and the kids walked over last night," Uncle Colby said.
He had some chew in his mouth and spit out a bit, "Figured. How bad was she?"
"About as bad as I've seen. Why'd you go and to that that to her for?"
Pap was a little scared of where this was going so he chose he words carefully. "She’s been giving me lot of trouble for some time now."
"What kind of trouble that she deserved that?" asked Colby.
Pap stared down at his feet with his hands in his pocket. "She ain’t been doing her wifely duties, for one. She been actin’ high and mighty, like she’s too good for me.” Colby didn’t look satisfied, “Hell, Colby, you know I ain't never want to marry that girl. Only reason I did 'cause she got pregnant. But I stayed, didn’t I? Not like I had much choice. You remember?"
"You got her pregnant," Colby said. "You can't be hatin' her for that."
The talking had allowed Pap to regain some of his nerve, "I can hate her for that and then some if I want. She’s my wife. And what business is it of yours if we get to arguing?"
"She’s my wife’s sister," he told Pap. "And that means I gotta look after her since her daddy’s dead and brother ain’t here no more." With that he started towards Pap with his fists up.
Pap didn't have much time to be surprised. By the time he realized that, indeed, Colby had come to start a fight, he was already in it. Colby’s arms were like tree branches and the first hit nearly knocked Pap out, but he wasn’t drunk now and was able to counter with some of his own. It was never really a fair contest, though. The years of hard work had made Colby fit as a prizefighter and strong as a bull. He could’ve ripped Pap limb from limb if he’d really had a mind to, but as it was, he didn't have it in him to put the kind of beating on Pap that he had given Mama. In fact, he took a few good licks himself because of his restraint. He told me once he pitied Pap in a way, and just wished Pap would find a way to get right with himself. He still left Pap with something to think about, though. When his last punch flattened Pap out on the ground with a busted lip and a terrible black eye, Colby decided Pap had had enough.
As Pap lay there trying to catch his breath, Colby sat down to do the same. Pap told him, "I never did think we'd end up like this. I thought we’d have ourselves lots of land and be rich.”
Colby opened his mouth, but finding nothing worthwhile to pass through his lips, closed it again.
So Pap kept talking, "I should have left. I still could. I should just up and leave 'em all."
Colby was tired of listening to Pap constantly complain about the sour hand he'd been dealt in life. His hadn't been much better but he’d made the most of it. "You should quit yer belly achin', is what you should do. And don't be beatin' on Annie no more. I mean it. I don’t never want to see her looking the way she does right now again. It ain’t right. Now come on and let's get to work." And with that he got up and walked off into the fields nearby. Pap lay in the thicket a bit longer. Eventually he hauled himself up, though, and since there was nothing else to be done about things, he went to work, too.
Right about the time Pap and Colby were having their man to man, Mama and Aunt Emma were in the kitchen fixing us kids something to eat. Normally, Aunt Emma would make her own kids get up at dawn with her and Uncle Colby to eat and start the day's chores, but today she decided it'd be easier to have them sleep a little later and make a separate breakfast. She didn't want them staring at Mama over their eggs, either, so she made a mental note that she would pull them aside and tell them as much before they sat down to eat.
We stayed at Aunt Emma's for nearly a week that winter back in 1900. Aunt Emma stayed in contact with Uncle Marcus via letters and Mama was tempted to write one herself and ask if he couldn't help her by moving us all like he had done with their own mother and Candace, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. She and Marcus hardly ever corresponded themselves. Besides, Marcus was apparently in the middle of relocating down to Galveston to help rebuild the rail lines from the great storm. He had distanced himself from Annie and even though she realized her mistakes now, she didn't think Marcus would excuse them. He’d been so hurt when she married Pap.
I don’t know what it was in Pap that made him decide he missed and needed Mama after all, but after a few days he came over and begged her for her forgiveness. It seemed sincere enough as they sat outside for privacy and he poured his heart out to her about how horrible it had been for him as a child and how he had stayed in Varner Creek trying to become a better man by taking care of her and the baby they had, and about how he needed his family to keep himself sane. Mama never really forgave him, but she knew she couldn't stay in Uncle Colby and Aunt Emma's house forever, and Pap made promises.
“You’re going to go back to him?” asked Emma that night when Mama told her what she’d decided.
“There ain’t much else I can do, is there?” said Mama.
Aunt Emma told Mama she could stay with them, but Mama had already made up her mind. Aunt Emma told me years later she’d always wished she’d handled those days differently. “I should have seen then just how bad he was,” she had told me. “You’re Mama had tried to tell me back when she first met your daddy about some of his ways, but I didn’t listen. I just didn’t see him doin’ the things he did.”
I told Aunt Emma that she couldn’t have seen what was to come. I know it always bothered her, though, wondering if she didn’t have some blame for not doing more.
So a few days after Mama told Aunt Emma her decision, we went back home.
Things were much better for the next few months. Pap drank less and kept his voice down. I was still scared of him from what’d I’d seen that night and tried to stay out of his way as best I could, but it’s tough when you’re in a small house and there’s not much to do in the country. Mainly I just tagged around after Mama helping her with her daily chores or going to pick pecans and blackberries. Sarah normally came, too, but she was limited by her condition a bit. And on those occasions when it was just Mama and me, I must confess I enjoyed that stolen time.
Things seemed like they had finally settled down for us all and might work out okay, but after a while they took to arguing again. Pap didn't beat her like that one night but he did slap her on occasion. When Aunt Emma found out she was furious. She had Colby talk to Pap again, not the fist-fighting kind of talk, but one where Colby would warn him repeatedly about slapping Mama around and let him know that if she showed up on his doorstep again looking that way she did that one night, he‘d do the same to Pap and then some. After a while, though, Mama stopped telling Aunt Emma when Pap hit her. It wasn't doing any good except to cause a rift within her and Colby's marriage, Emma always getting on to Colby to get on to Pap, so Mama left it alone. When Aunt Emma saw Mama with bruises or red marks about her, though, she knew where they were coming from, but Mama wouldn’t let her get Colby involved. “It ain’t gonna do no good, Emma, an
d he ain’t bad like he used to be.”
“But Annie, he ain’t got no right! I can’t stand by why my blood’s gettin’ beat on.”
“Just let it be, Emma. He ain’t beatin’ me no more. He just loses his temper now and then and pushes me around, but it ain’t nothing to be worryin’ about. He’s just like that, and he ain’t never gonna change.” Aunt Emma was still skeptical and didn’t like things a bit, but Mama said again, “Just let it be. Things is fine.” It was Mama’s indifference again, and while I don’t think it really didn’t weigh on her, pretending like it didn’t is how she got by. Aunt Emma was always watching, though, and now that she understood what Mama had told her all those years ago, she wasn’t about to let Pap pull the wool over her eyes again.
Things went on like that for the next few years until it seemed like one day Pap just stopped striking out at Mama completely. It must have been about 1905 or so. Nothing special happened, at least that we could figure. He didn't find religion and he didn’t suddenly give up the drink, he just completely stopped slapping and pushing Mama around. None of us knew why, particularly Mama, but when they argued and he got mad like usual he'd think twice when his arm went up, and never let it fall on her again. I didn't fare as well, but at least it was something Mama wasn't getting hit on anymore.
Chapter 8
That was years before the morning Mama and Sarah disappeared, though. Now here it was, 1909, and I was twelve years old standing on Aunt Emma and Uncle Colby’s doorstep as a refugee again, except this time I was all by myself. Mama and Sarah were gone and had left me behind to live with Pap. I was glad Aunt Emma had come to the house to take me home with her. I couldn’t imagine staying under that roof just Pap and me. I was scared of him, always. He might not hit Mama anymore but he was still quick to lay one on me when he felt the inclination, and I never could forget what he’d done that night. The only one he seemed to have any affection for was Sarah.
Aunt Emma's house was a bustle of activity. It was just what I needed in order to get through the difficulty of thinking Mama had taken Sarah and left me. George and I had to share a bed but it wasn't too bad. I kept my mind off things for the first week or so playing pranks with him on Amber and Francine as often as possible. We put frogs in their shoes during and lizards in their beds. George showed me how to fill Amber's hand with Uncle Colby's shaving lather while she slept and tickle her nose with a feather from the pillow to make her smack her own face with a handful of cream. We tried dipping Francine’s hand into a glass of water to get her to pee, but for some reason she was immune. We ended up improvising and it worked better than we’d hoped. Both Amber and Francine were thick as thieves and constantly whispering to one another and giggling at George's expense, which also became my burden as well when I went to stay with them. All day long they'd go around whispering and laughing at us in their secret taunts. But George found a way to divide and conquer, even if it was just temporary. Francine and Amber shared a bed, and since the old hand in water wasn’t working, George decided to just pour some water in the middle of the bed while they were sleeping. When the moisture woke them up, each blamed the other for peeing in the bed. Neither of them would admit it, though, since both were innocent, of course, but since each knew she hadn't done it that could only mean the other one had, and so both accused one another of peeing the bed and then trying to blame it on the other. To give George credit, it certainly ended up being the best of pranks. The next few days were bliss. Amber and Francine were so busy being upset at each other that they lost all interest in their private jokes at our expense. Unfortunately, Francine suddenly realized the possibility that we had scammed them. And when she told Amber about her theory, they immediately agreed and fell over each other in apologies. Well, they had it in for us after that. George and I were the butt of jokes worse than ever, but it was worth it. I congratulated George on the grand success he had achieved, however short-lived, and promised to aspire to his level of perfection when it came to pulling off pranks. To show my appreciation, when we went looking for an armadillo down its hole to haul out by the tail, I told George I’d let him have it all by himself. I coached as we walked, "Always make sure you get them by the tail," I told him, “‘cause they have sharp claws that'll get yah, and they'll bite, too. But as long as you get ‘em by the tail they can‘t get at yah." I was enjoying the teacher's role.
“You ever been bit?” asked George as we trudged along looking in holes for one.
"Sure have," I boasted with the pride of a wounded war veteran, even if had only been a nip once.
"What'd you do?" he asked.
I let him go and screamed like a little girl is what I did, but I wasn‘t going to tell George that. "I pulled him out and bit him back, right on his tail!" I said.
"Tsk!" he scoffed, "You’re foolin'. You can't bite one of them things."
He caught me. "Can if you shuck 'em first. Armadillo's are good eatin, ya know," I informed. That much was true.
"You’ve eaten an armadillo?!" he asked with disgust.
"Well, shoot yeah. Ain't you never had two-bean armadillo?"
"Nu-uh," he said, "Mama ain’t never cooked one of them."
"Well trust me, it's good. My Pap makes it with hot peppers and it's right fine." Maybe saying it was right fine was a bit of a stretch, as Mama, Sarah, and me only had it the one time and figured that was enough, but Pap sure seemed to like it.
George and I tromped off in the woods on a regular basis. We'd climb trees after squirrels or try to cram ourselves down holes to see what was inside. We were the masters of the woods and all creatures feared us. Or so we told ourselves. A few days into our regular adventures proved things otherwise, though. We were kicking through the brush one early morning when we heard clucking. Around the house that was perfectly normal, but clucking out in the woods was a novelty. And when we followed the noise into a small clearing there were a good dozen hens pecking at the ground all around. We were surprised to find them out there by themselves. I had never really heard of wild chickens before, but since I was there looking at them it made sense to me that there must have been wild chickens in the world if there were farm chickens. That had to come from somewhere. There were parts of the country that had wild horses, after all, so why not wild chickens? It was certainly the first time I’d ever seen any, though, and apparently George, too. I suggested to him that it would be great fun to give them a chase and take a few home. I could just see the surprise on Aunt Emma's face when we arrived back home each carrying a couple of chickens. She'd gush over what fine hunters we were, catching them with our own hands and all, and probably be pleased as punch to fix them up for dinner. I could see it all in my mind and I painted such a pretty picture of it for George that he immediately agreed. We both proceeded to pick out the chickens that each of us thought we could most easily catch. My first choice was a fat hen that seemed like she'd be slow. George was eyeing another of his own, and once we had it clear who was going for what, we took off after our prey with the speed of mountain lions. I got within five feet of that hen, though, and she started squawking and flapping up a storm and flew a few feet away before thumping back to the ground. I was just about on her again when out from the right of me shot the biggest rooster a man ever saw, let alone a twelve year old. He was two feet high if he was an inch and had talons like an eagle. And he wasn't hopping his way over to me, or even the ugly type of flying a chicken can do over short distances. No sir, that rooster was flying at me at head's height and with the speed of a darting blue jay when you invade its nesting area, and he was coming right for me. I went to throw my hands up in defense and that thing clamped down on my arms like a razor-wire lasso pulled tight. Its heavy wings batted me about the head, its beak tearing at me like a wood pecker gone mad, and it held tight to me with one leg while slashing about with the other. It was the devil's chicken. The Satan of poultry, the Lucifer of Leghorns, and that damned bird was ripping at me with its hell spawned claws that burned like the whips
of fire that I imagined only the devil had. He was just evil, big, bad, feathery evil. I turned and ran blindly screaming back into the thickets hoping my retreat would satiate the bird's bloodlust and finally, after an eternity of seconds, the bird did let go and headed off back into the clearing. I was just about to thank God in heaven for my life being spared from that wicked creature when I heard George let out a blood curdling scream. A few seconds later I spotted him darting off into the woods not far from me. That Leghorn rooster was atop his head like a hat come to life, pecking, scratching, and pounding poor George with its wings like they were fists. A few moments later I heard the beating of wings and the chicken came flying out from the woods back towards the clearing.
I yelled out for George in the general direction I had seen him running, "Hey, George! You all right?"
I could hear a moaning noise and marched towards it. George was sitting on the ground with one leg stretched out and the other tucked in under him. He was crying and trying to wipe his eyes with his sleeves when he heard my footsteps in the brush. It was then I realized that I kind of felt like crying, too. My arms and face were stinging. Blood was soaking through my own sleeves and something very smelly was slowly oozing down my cheek. I wiped it with my hand and held it up to see what it was. It was chicken shit. George wasn't much better off. He had scratches all over and blood was trickling down from his temples where that demon bird had clamped itself. I sat down by George and we both licked our wounds. All the while we listened intently to make sure that rooster didn't come back to finish us off.
After a bit George said, "You won’t tell nobody I cried, will yah?"
"Hell, naw," I said. "I had some tears myself just cause it stung so bad. I ain't never seen a rooster that mean," I told him.
"Me, neither." He dropped his head and stared at the ground. "I didn't never think I'd get whooped by a chicken."
I couldn't help it, then. I laughed. I looked at George and remembered how funny he looked with the chicken on him, "That thing was stuck on you like a rooster hat," I told him. I held up my hands in the air like he had done and gave him an impression of himself running into the woods. "You was running and screaming, ‘Ah-h-h-h!’ All the while that thing stuck on your head flapping at yah."
The Ghosts of Varner Creek Page 11