The Rock Hole

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  “I might drop by to see the calf scramble. Those kids chasing that calf always tickles me.”

  “I like to watch that little monkey riding the dog while it herds sheep across the arena. The poor little feller looks like he’s scared to death and he just hangs on for dear life.” They chuckled at the thought of the monkey holding grimly onto the dog’s shoulder harness. Ned ran his hat brim through his fingers. “Well anyway, I’ll be there.”

  “You sure you don’t want to kill a few flies before you leave?” O.C. smacked another.

  “Nope. I got plenty to kill at home, if I’m of a mind.”

  Chapter Five

  On that Saturday morning when I was ten years old, Grandpa Ned dropped me off at the show about thirty minutes after the picture started, but I was used to it. I was grown before I ever saw a movie from the beginning. Even when I went with my girl cousin Pepper, the adults didn’t pay any attention to the picture’s start time. Uncle James bought our tickets and we all walked right in and watched the movie through the end. After the reel change, the cartoon and coming attractions, we watched to the part where we came in, and then left.

  By the time I looked up and saw Grandpa Ned standing in the darkness, still wearing his hat and motioning for me to leave, I’d already seen Elvis and Ann Margaret in the same dance scene twice. I picked up my popcorn box and followed him outside.

  It hadn’t cooled off much, though it was close to dark. My grandmother Miss Becky, Aunt Ida Belle, and my cousin Pepper were waiting for us under the flashing marquee. Miss Becky was five-foot-four and a hundred pounds soaking wet. Five pounds was long hair in a bun on the back of her head.

  I usually didn’t have much to say to Aunt Ida Belle, even though she did all right by me. She was a stout woman who crinkled her eyes when she grinned. She gave me a little pat on the shoulder. Uncle James wasn’t with them and sent word from his hardware store that he’d meet us at the rodeo grounds.

  Pepper was my age, but she had a mouth on her like a sailor. Grandpa Ned called her a pistol. Blue eyes like Grandpa’s and her long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, she looked much older than our ten years.

  I hadn’t seen my tomboy cousin in a while, so I punched her shoulder and she hammered me back so hard my arm ached. She took my leftover popcorn like I’d offered it and stuffed a big handful into her mouth. I didn’t care. I was about full up, anyway.

  The adults finally finished talking and Pepper went with me and Grandpa in his ’41 Chevy coupe while Miss Becky rode with Aunt Ida Belle so they could talk about woman stuff. Fifteen minutes later Grandpa parked in the grass lot beside the rodeo grounds and we climbed out. The sun dropped completely below the trees beyond the fairgrounds, and the carnival’s gaudy flashing lights lit the sky.

  The Tilt-&-Whirl made whooshing noises as it went round and round. Screams mixed with other carnival sounds of people having fun. I stopped for a moment in the dark lot to soak up the smell of fried foods and cotton candy mixed with the aroma of horses and manure.

  Cowgirls with long hair and sparkling shirts walked their horses through the rows of cars and trucks parked on the grass, visiting with boys from the local farms and ranches while they unloaded their own mounts to ride in the Grand Entry. Miss Becky and Aunt Ida Belle arrived and joined several town ladies for a visit beside the cinderblock building where they sold tickets.

  Grandpa stopped us beside the entrance gate. “There’s Deputy Washington. Y’all hold up a few minutes while I talk to him about something.”

  I was excited to see Mister John. I hadn’t been around the big deputy very much, but he made a fuss every time he saw me.

  “Hidy, Mister Ned.” John strolled up in his loose-jointed way, grinning down at us kids. He grabbed me under the arms and set me on his wide shoulder. My stomach flip-flopped. I could feel his huge muscles bunch under his pressed uniform shirt. No carnival ride on the midway was as exciting as sitting on John’s massive shoulder high above the ground. I tried to see the lights in Hugo, Oklahoma, far to the north.

  Pepper looked up at me, annoyed. She would have given anything to be lifted up, also. But there were limits to such things. Grandpa Ned wouldn’t have cared if Big John hoisted her up to his shoulder, but you can bet someone would have seen it and started rumors about the black deputy picking up little white girls.

  Instead, John ruffled Pepper’s hair with his fingertips. “Evenin’, Miss Pepper.” She smiled and took his big hand in hers.

  Grandpa watched both white and colored people funneling into the little midway. “Anything going on this evening?”

  “Naw. I’m here making sure none of my people were over here acting the fool tonight.”

  “Well, it’s good to see you. I wanted to talk to you anyway. Let’s go over and listen to the Motorola for a spell. I need to ask you something.”

  He was talking about the police radio under the dash in his Chevy. Grandpa spent hours parked beside the house after dark, listening to radio traffic and watching the lights on the highway as cars hissed over the Sanders Creek Bridge a mile away. He always said a crook could outrun his Chevy, but no one could outrun his Motorola.

  John swung me back to the ground. “Y’all look like you could use a snow cone.” He raised his eyebrows at Grandpa, who nodded again. John reached into the pocket of his khakis and held out a handful of change. “Go get you a couple of strawberries.”

  Pepper squealed and jumped. I took two dimes from the scattering of coins in his palm, thanked him and we left for the concession stand. Pepper almost ran ahead, but I held back, watching Grandpa and John disappear into the dark parking lot.

  “Come on.” I tucked the Liberty Heads in my jeans and pulled her toward the parked trucks and cars.

  “What are you doing?” She jerked her arm away. “Dammit! You’re gonna get us in trouble. Let’s go get a snow cone.”

  “I want to hear what they’re talking about. When was the last time Grandpa just turned us loose like this and went off to talk with Mr. John?”

  She hesitated. “Never. Now give me my damn dime.”

  “Nope. Come on. Something’s got to be up. I’ll give it to you when we get back.”

  “You fixin’ to sneak up and eavesdrop?”

  “It’ll be fun.”

  She thought for a moment and grinned. “Grandpa will give us an ass-whoopin’ if he catches us.”

  “He won’t.” I led the way from the concession stand’s lights. We took a route to keep several rows of cars between Grandpa and us.

  When we drew close, I dropped to my knees and motioned for Pepper to do the same. We crawled through the dead grass and finally stopped not far away, with a pickup between us.

  The dusty grass tightened my lungs. For years I was the only kid in our part of Texas to carry what we called my puffer, an awkward contraption designed to shoot vaporized medicine deep into my chest. I didn’t go anywhere without it. I pulled out the plug in the nozzle, put it in my mouth and gave the bulb a squeeze. My lungs tickled and in seconds I could draw a deep breath.

  Pepper watched me and started to get mad. “Dammit, you’re getting clogged up and I’m getting my jeans all dirty. I’m gonna kill you.”

  “You won’t have to if Grandpa hears us—he’ll do it. Shut up.”

  In the shadows far away from the rodeo arena, I saw John’s head above the car roofs. Enough light reached them so I could make out their features. “Nossir, Mr. Ned. I haven’t heard about anyone killin’ animals. You say they’ve been tortured?”

  “Something like this happened off and on a while back, but then it stopped for a couple of years. Now he’s back and what was done to that poor dog was pitiful. Somebody jobbed a screwdriver in him a dozen times at least, and that wasn’t the worst part.”

  “Lordy. You think it was coloreds or white folks?”

  “He could be green for all I know. I’m going to check across the river in Hugo, but I don’t reckon they’ll be much help there, either.”

&n
bsp; “Might be an Indian.” John considered the possibility.

  I turned to Pepper. “Did you hear what he said? Indians could be getting ready to torture people.” I had visions of feathers and tomahawks.

  Grandpa took off his hat and wiped his head. “It might be anyone. Look around next time you’re at Sugar Bear’s joint.”

  “How many folks in Center Springs know?”

  “Half a dozen. But Isaac Reader knows. I figured he’d let it slip at the domino hall, but he surprised me so far. I imagine it’ll be on the party line pretty quick, though.”

  “I hope it ain’t field hands. It could be some poor folks living down in the bottoms, though, but whoever they are, my people don’t need that kind of attention.”

  “I’m more worried about where it’s going.” Grandpa told him about finding scraps of paper and advertisements.

  The hair on the back of my neck stood up. This was a real police case Grandpa was working on, not some family argument in the middle of the night, or a drunk weaving down the highway. For the first time in my life, I realized Grandpa Ned was actually the Law, like Broderick Crawford on Highway Patrol. All those late-night phone calls were real police work.

  I grinned wide when I realized I’d been on an actual case in Isaac Reader’s cornfield.

  Pepper tugged my arm. “Let’s go! I keep smelling horse shit.”

  “That’s ’cause there’s a pile right next to your hand.” When I turned back I could only catch part of the conversation because someone drove by with the car radio blaring.

  “…be getting worse. I’ll check around for you Mr. Ned. What you want me to do if I find out who it is?”

  “Well. Tell me if he’s white and I’ll have O.C. write up a warrant. Y’all take care of it if he’s colored. But think about this, I’m afraid he might start looking for a young ’un pretty soon and I can’t take it if he hurts a kid. We need to stop him.”

  Pepper was shocked and we were both suddenly very scared. “Shitfire. Kids? There’s somebody after kids?”

  “Shhhh.”

  Without another word, Grandpa and Mister John started walking back toward the rodeo grounds. I waited for another minute and slowly peeked over the truck bed. They stopped by the main gate to visit with a family on the way into the arena.

  “They’re gone.” I knelt back down to dig the puffer out of my jean pocket and took another deep breath. Still on her knees, Pepper waited until I was finished, then doubled up her fist and hit me so hard on the side of the head the impact thumped my noggin into the truck beside us.

  “Don’t you ever get me into something like that again, dammit! Shitfire! This ain’t anything like fun. Look at my jeans.”

  “Mine look that way all the time.” I rubbed both sides of my Boy’s Regular haircut. My head throbbed.

  “Not in town.”

  “Didn’t you hear? They’re looking for a dog murderer. It may be a wild Indian and he may be fixin’ to kill a person next.”

  “I don’t care.” She stood and stalked toward the lights. I followed at a distance in case she decided to whop me again. We were almost to the entrance when a voice stopped us.

  “Howdy, Top.”

  We turned, thinking Grandpa doubled back on us. I was in for a surprise.

  “Uncle Cody!”

  In his mid-twenties, my favorite black sheep relative was something of a Choctaw outlaw, but because he ran a beer joint called Sonny’s on the Oklahoma bank of the Red River. He called the little cluster of joints Juarez, after the Mexican dives south of the Rio Grande.

  He leaned back on the fender of his shiny, brand-spanking new 1964 red-and-white El Camino, one pointy cowboy boot propped on the front bumper. Those half-breed trucks were new on the market, and I’d only seen them advertised on television. That low sporty truck made me feel different when I looked at it.

  “Hey, gal.”

  “Hidy, Cody.” Pepper gave him a wide grin. Most kids called him by his first name.

  Uncle Cody tipped his straw hat back and stuck out his hand at me to shake like a man. Dark hair curled over his forehead and hung over his collar. The excitement of seeing him made me jittery all over. I wished I’d worn my own hat.

  “Squeeze like I taught you, I don’t shake hands with no sissies.” I showered down with all my strength and he squeezed back. “That’s the way.”

  My ears moved toward the back of my head as I grinned even wider. I loved Uncle Cody. He’d been gone for a while, to a country called Viet Nam where a bunch of people were fighting. A rocket shot down his helicopter while he was over there. It crashed in the jungle and only three Green Berets survived. No one knew where they were, and there hadn’t been time to radio, so he and his buddies were on their own.

  Led by my half-Choctaw uncle, with nothing more than pistols and what they had in their pockets, they struck off through the jungle. For the next twelve days, they dodged the bad guys, drank muddy river water and traveled at night by compass until they found a Vietnamese family who agreed to smuggle them downriver in the bottom of one of them flat boats they called a sampan. Lying under the boat’s floorboards in the mud and filth, they hid from the Viet Cong soldiers who stopped them not five miles from the American lines, but the Vietnamese father convinced them that they hadn’t seen any Americans.

  After his tour, Cody brought back stories about little men in black pajamas and the phrase “it’s heating up over there.” I still hadn’t figured out what he meant. Two months after turning in his uniform, he bought Sonny’s honky-tonk, much to Miss Becky’s horror.

  “You kids having a big time?” He squinted through the smoke from a cigarette dangling in the corner of his mouth.

  “We ain’t hardly been here but a few minutes.” I started to look at the El Camino more closely when something moved on the other side of Cody and I saw somebody was with him. I stopped and immediately knew Miss Becky wouldn’t approve of her. The woman’s red hair was thick, long and wavy. She wore red lipstick to match. I’d never seen a woman packed into such tight jeans, and the shirt she wore strained at the top buttons.

  Cody cupped his cigarette. “You gonna hug me, Pepper?” She wrapped her arms around his neck and he raised her off her feet with his left arm. He wooled her around some and got Pepper to giggling, and that’s when I recognized the lady as Calvin Williams’ wife, Norma.

  I gave a start. Somehow even back then I knew Calvin didn’t know she was there. “Hello, Top.” Her voice was soft as velvet. “I hear you moved in to stay.”

  Forgetting how to speak, I made a stuttering noise and stared at the dirt at my feet.

  Pepper on the other hand bristled when Cody put her back down. It must have been some sort of woman thing. “You already get the supper dishes done, Norma?”

  Cody laughed, and I smelled whiskey and saw the crows feet in the corners of his eyes. In the last few months I’d spent lots of time staring in the mirror, trying to make my eyes crinkle like his. I hoped some day they would. Then I’d look as cool as Cody in a Stetson, tilted back on my head.

  Norma smiled at Pepper’s attack. “No, honey, Cody took me to Reeves’ café to eat, so I didn’t have to wash dishes tonight.”

  “Calvin meeting y’all here?”

  “You gonna ride a bull tonight, Top?” Cody winked at me, trying to head off another snipe.

  “Naw. I’m just watching. I want to see you ride.”

  Pepper continued to glare up at Norma like she owed her money. I had a feeling Norma wasn’t a stranger to that same look on women much older, and with much more to lose. She took it in stride and didn’t react.

  “We better go,” Pepper finally said. “Grandpa’s probably waiting.”

  Cody nodded. “That’s a good idea. They’re forming up for the Grand Entry right now. I’ll drop by Uncle Ned’s and see you in day or two, kids. We’ll catch a few crappie or go dove hunting when season opens.” The paper entry number pinned to the back of his shirt flapped in the breeze.

&nb
sp; “Bye, Top.” Norma tilted her head toward Pepper. “I’ll see y’all later, hon.”

  A horse and rider trotted past. Cody dropped his cigarette butt on the ground, crushed it out, and blew smoke out of his nose. Norma took his arm and they bumped hips as they walked toward the rodeo grounds.

  Norma threw her head back and laughed at something Cody whispered in her ear. It gave me a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  Pepper was still mad. “She’s a married woman. If Calvin knew she was here with Cody, there’d be a killing.” I half listened as we wove through the horses and cowboys on our way to the concession stand.

  I thought about Cody. He was tough enough to fight little men in pajamas and run a beer joint in Juarez and ride in rodeos, so I knew he wouldn’t worry too much about getting killed in Chisum. Calvin Williams was tough, but he wasn’t any match for my Uncle Cody.

  “So? It ain’t none of my business, or yours, neither.”

  “You men are all alike.”

  I didn’t pay any attention because my head was full of horses, dog killers, Cody, and redheads with smoky voices. I took another pull off my puffer, and we headed for the grandstands.

  Chapter Six

  Big John watched Ned and the kids walk through the gate into the rodeo grounds and turned to see a young gaggle of his own people pass on their way to the carnival. He walked toward the bright, flickering midway lights in his easy way.

  A young black man waved a greeting. “Mister John.”

  John slapped the youngster on the back with a big hand and joined the moving crowd. “C.J., y’all all right this evenin’?”

  “Yessir,” said a willowy girl. “You here for the carnival? I know you ain’t interested in the rodeo.”

  They laughed at the joke.

  “You right, Miss Ruby Jean. I’m here to keep an eye on y’all.”

  “We’ll behave,” she answered.

  “I know you will.” John waved goodbye and peeled off as the group moved toward the Milk Bottle Throw. He knew what it took to be a good lawman, because for years he’d watched his dad, One-Arm George, act as the unofficial Colored Law south of the tracks in Chisum.