Finally, Gran asked, “Has Will told you about his trip to town, Lacy?”
“A little,” she replied. “I don’t guess there’s much to tell.”
“I understand he had a lot of business to conduct at the drugstore. Or was it upstairs over the drugstore, Will?”
Mother’s chair scraped the floor. “I’d better start washing these,” she said. “Ricky, Gate, Belinda, get out of here. You’ve dawdled with your food long enough.”
Everybody except Daddy got up, and Mother started talking to Gran about a dress she was making. She rattled the dishes into the sink. I asked her to punch some holes in the lid of a fruit jar for me, and Belinda, Rick and I went out by the windmill to catch lightning bugs. Daddy was still sitting at the table, smoking a cigarette, saying nothing.
The breeze was up, and we could hear the windmill whirring slowly in the gloom above us. We stood still and watched. Soon Belinda said, “Look! There’s one!” I handed her the jar and told her to take the lid off. I sneaked up on the little light that was blinking under the windmill. It flitted lazily here and there, and I followed it, my hands cupped, ready. Then I reached, clapped my hands together, and felt the tickle inside.
“I got it! Bring the jar!”
Belinda was there, and quickly clapped the lid on when I dropped the bug in. “Look, Rick,” she said, holding it out for him to see. The bug was crawling around the bottom, blinking his tail on and off.
“Ooooh! Pretty!” Rick exclaimed. He laughed and jumped up and down.
I caught more, and Belinda added them to our collection, Rick laughing and squealing after each new capture. After a while, I got tired of running after the things, and we sat down under the windmill to watch the ones we’d got and wonder what made them blink like that. Belinda and Rick seemed small and warm, and I reached out and put a hand on each head and messed up their soft hair. We all giggled. Then we heard the sink water splattering on the ground under the house, and knew that Mother and Gran had finished the dishes. Mother came to the door.
“Rick, Belinda, come in now. Time for bed.”
“Aw, Mother,” Belinda whined.
“You’ve been sick and need your rest. Come on, now.”
They wandered slowly up the steps. I sat a while longer, watching the bugs in the jar and the still-uncaptured ones blinking here and there around the windmill. I wondered if my prisoners were signaling to their comrades, urging rescue. Then I heard Mother tell Rick to potty, and I knew he was ready for bed. I picked up the jar and went in too, and sat on the edge of his bed. We watched the bugs blink off and on, off and on. Mother and Gran were in the living room. Gran spoke in low tones about the drugstore and “Laverne Thomas, that hussy.” Mother spoke sometimes, too, but so quietly I couldn’t make out her words. Finally, I got up and handed the jar to Rick. He shoved it under the sheet and pulled the sheet over his head. I could see the little lights blinking through the cloth. I smiled and walked into the kitchen.
Daddy startled me. I didn’t expect to see him there, still sitting at the table, still smoking a cigarette. He watched me cross the room.
Mother knelt on the living room floor, pinning a pattern to a piece of cloth. Gran was sitting, rocking, watching her. They stopped talking when I came in. I stood and watched Mother for a while, not knowing what else to do. Mother’s red hair shone in the light of the lamp she had placed on the floor beside her. She was pretty, bending there. A snip of her scissors now and then and the creak of Gran’s rocker in the half-darkness were the only sounds in the house.
“Gran?” I spoke softly and didn’t even know why.
“Huh?”
“Will you read me a story?”
“Okay. Get your book.”
“No stories.” Daddy’s voice drifted in from the kitchen.
“What?” Gran asked.
“No stories, I said.”
“Why not, Will?”
“Because I said so. This is my house. If I say no stories under this roof tonight, there won’t be any.”
Mother had stopped pinning. Her eyes were closed. Gran raised her eyebrows and rocked faster. I heard Daddy get up and walk across the sleeping porch and slam the screen. I sat down on the floor and leaned against the wall. Mother started pinning again, and Gran rocked faster. It was so quiet I could hear the faucet dripping in the kitchen. After a while, Gran got up and said, “Come on, Gate.”
She grabbed a couple of matches from the kitchen matchbox and stalked to the sleeping porch. Rick was asleep. She reached under his sheet and got the lightning-bug jar and put it on the floor. It was still blinking. Then she slid the cardboard box that I kept my books in out from under my bed, grabbed the top book, and slid the box back. She grabbed the lantern off the hook by the door, motioned for me to come, and marched out the door, down the steps, around the house, through the front gate, out to the tractor shed. She struck a match, lit the lantern, hung it on a nail, and handed me the book.
“Pick a story,” she said.
I flipped through the book until I got to “The Wolf and the Fox” and handed it back. I climbed into the tractor seat. She sat down on a big can that Daddy kept old baling wire in and started reading.
“A wolf and a fox once lived together. The fox, who was the weaker of the two, had to do all the hard work, which made him anxious to leave his companion.” She read fast and loud, like she was bawling out one of her pupils. “One day, passing through a wood, the wolf said, ‘Red-fox, get me something to eat, or I shall eat you.’” She read on and on, never stopping to look at me, never making faces like the fox and the wolf or trying to talk like they would talk, as she usually did. I sat there on the tractor, moving the steering wheel back and forth, not liking the story very much, and wishing I was somewhere else.
Finally, she looked up at me, and I saw tears in her eyes behind her glasses. She wiped her eyes and kind of laughed. “I’m not reading this very well, am I?” she said.
“Not like you usually do. Why are you crying?”
“Nothing you should worry about, little one. Don’t try to understand why grownups act the way they do. It’ll just make you sad.” She raised the book again.
“You don’t have to finish it if you don’t want to.”
She smiled. “You know how it ends, don’t you?”
“Yeah. The farmer beats the wolf to death.”
She nodded. “And the fox?”
“He gets away.”
“And lives happily ever after?”
We heard the gravel crunch and looked up, and Daddy stepped into the light. He stood there, looking at us, and we looked at him. Gran sighed and lifted her glasses and wiped her eyes again. Daddy walked over and took the book out of her lap and looked at it.
“I thought I said no stories.”
“We’re not in the house. Will.”
He slammed her in the face with the book. The can rocked back, and Gran fell onto the gravel. Her glasses dropped off her nose, and she just lay there on the ground, sobbing. I started crying, too. I felt like something had busted inside of me, and the tears kept coming, and I thought I’d never be able to stop them. Finally, Gran got up and put her glasses on. One lens was cracked. She limped out of the shed into the darkness. I sat there on the tractor, bawling, and Daddy just stood there, holding the book. Then I heard Gran’s car engine start, and I jumped down and ran past Daddy. The car was turning around, and the lights were on. She was leaving. I ran to catch her. She rolled the window down.
“Go back, Gate,” she said. “You can’t come.”
“Stop! Please stop, Gran!”
“I’ve got to go. Gate! Go to your mother!” The car moved slowly down the lane. I ran along beside it, crying, and Gran kept telling me to go back.
“I won’t go back, Gran! I won’t go!” The car picked up speed, little by little. I fell behind. Gran still talked to me through the window, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. Then she rolled up the window and drove away. I ran as fast as I could,
but the red tail-lights got smaller and smaller until they turned into the road and disappeared. I ran clear to the mailbox at the end of the lane, but I didn’t see them again. I flopped down by the mailbox and leaned against the post and puked between my knees. I thought I was going to die. I wanted to die. I didn’t hear Daddy come, and I didn’t see the lantern, but suddenly he was there, and I couldn’t move. He stooped and wiped the vomit off of my face and clothes with his handkerchief. He set the lantern on the ground and picked me up and settled me against his chest like a little baby and picked up the lantern again.
“Time to go home, Gate,” he said. He trudged slowly back up the lane. The circle of light from the lantern swung back and forth over the ground ahead of us. I still couldn’t stop crying, and I kept swallowing, trying to get the vomit taste out of my mouth.
“Don’t ever believe in happy endings, son,” Daddy said. “There just ain’t no such thing.”
One day toward the end of that summer I walked into the kitchen and found Mother sitting at the table with her head in her hands. She was kind of sniffing. I stood a minute and watched her. She didn’t look at me and didn’t say anything.
“Mother?”
“Hmmm?”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why are you crying?” I came closer and laid my hand on her shoulder.
“I’m not crying!” She moved her hands away, and her eyes were full of tears, and her face was red and wet. Then she laid her head on the table and cried real hard. I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there, kind of patting her, wanting to get away but feeling I shouldn’t.
“Mother, please tell me what’s wrong.”
Her shoulder jerked under my hand, and she sniffed and made little groaning noises like I’d never heard her make before. Then she stopped and sighed and sat there still with her head on the table. She finally said something real low, and I didn’t understand her.
“What?”
“Your daddy’s going to the Army, that’s what,” she said, looking up at me. “A farmer, with three kids and another one coming… You didn’t know that, did you? But it’s a fact. And they’re taking him.” She pointed at the door. “The Allisons sit over there with four grown men to work their farm. Not a single one of them has gone. Why? Because they’re too dumb!” She was mad, and she was getting loud. She pointed at the kitchen stove. “And Sam and Louis Bowie sit over there on their place! Both young! Both bachelors! Are they going? No, they’re not! Why? Because they’re rich, that’s why! But Will Turnbolt isn’t dumb! Will Turnbolt isn’t rich! Will Turnbolt has a wife and three kids and another one coming! Will Turnbolt is going to the Army!”
“Does he have to?”
“Yes, he has to.” She was quieter now.
“Who says?”
“The government says. Now, go outside. I’ve got a lot of thinking to do.”
Belinda and Rick were making mud pies under the windmill. I started to go over and play with them, but changed my mind and walked around the house and out the front gate. The lane looked all white and trembly in the hot sun. I started walking. The dry dust oozed between my toes, almost like mud, and my feet left footprints so plain that I could look back and see everywhere I’d been.
I was glad Daddy was going to the Army. I pictured him in a soldier suit with lots of medals and ribbons on it. I pictured him sitting in the drugstore, talking to all us boys, telling us what he did to the Germans and Japs. I pictured him with a steel helmet on his head, like the soldier on the war bond picture at school. I pictured him wearing a flat cap with a bill and an eagle on it, like the soldier who came to school one day and told us what to do if we found a Jap balloon in our pasture. I pictured him sending me a German flag like the one Mr. Stoner had hung up behind the fountain at the drugstore and a Jap sword like Jaime Smith’s daddy had sent him and also a Jap knife, small enough to take to school. I pictured our window with a banner with one star in it, and people looking at the banner when they drove by our house. I wondered where we could put the banner so that they could see it. I wondered why Mother didn’t want Daddy to be a soldier and why we were about to get a baby and what it would be like. I wondered if Daddy would talk to me. I turned and walked back to where Belinda and Rick were playing.
“You know what?” I asked them.
They looked at me, four brown eyes in two brown faces streaked with sweat and mud.
“What?” Belinda asked.
“Daddy’s going to the Army.”
“Who says?”
“Mother.”
Rick was patting a mud ball into a pie. Belinda picked up a fruit jar and poured some more water into her bucket.
“You know what else?” I asked.
“What?”
“We’re going to get a baby.”
“Who says?”
“Mother.”
“Rick’s our baby!”
“Not any more. He’s getting big, dummy! Where’s Daddy?”
“Down at the barn, I guess.”
I found him under the tree in Old Blue’s pen behind the barn. His saddle was slung across the top rail of the fence, and he was wiping it with a greasy rag. A can of saddle soap was in his hand. He looked around at me as I came in the gate and sat down on the ground under the tree, but he didn’t say anything. He went on wiping the saddle slowly, carefully, now and then bending to take a good look at a scratch or scuffed place. The dark brown leather glistened, and the flower-and-leaf design looked like carved wood. The silver buckles and conchos and the big metal horn shone like diamonds. It was an expensive saddle, and I remember that Mother was mad when Daddy bought it, a long time ago. Daddy rubbed awhile, then stepped back to look at his work, then rubbed again. Old Blue was drinking at his trough over in the other corner. He sucked the water noisily between his teeth. His blue hide twitched whenever a fly lit on him, and now and then he slapped himself across the haunches with his tail. Daddy whistled one of his fiddle tunes real low, kind of to himself, and Old Blue craned his neck over in our direction and pricked up his ears. When he found out what the noise was, he didn’t pay any more attention to us. He just ambled over to the fence and stuck his head over the rail and looked off toward the bluff, like he was expecting company from that direction.
“Daddy?”
“Hmm?”
“You’re really going to the Army, aren’t you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“When you going?”
“Soon.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“I don’t know. A long time, I guess.” He looked out toward the bluff, too.
“You want me to soap your saddle for you while you’re gone?”
“No. Harley’s going to take it.”
“Aw, Daddy! I’d take real good care of it!”
“Yeah, I reckon you would. But you’re going to be busy, going to school and all. It’s a big saddle for a little boy. Harley’ll take care of it.”
“Well, I’ll feed Old Blue for you, anyway.”
“Harley’ll have him, too.”
“What about Nero? Will Harley have her, too?”
“Yeah, her, too.”
I shut up. I was starting to feel real funny inside I hadn’t expected all this. I looked at Daddy standing there in his blue overalls and his straw hat, rubbing that soap into his saddle, and somehow I just couldn’t picture him in a soldier suit any more.
“Who says you’ve got to go?”
“Uncle Sam.”
“Who’s he?”
“The government.”
“Does everybody have to do what the government says?”
“Yes.”
“What happens if you don’t?”
“You go to jail.”
Nero slid under the fence and trotted over and sniffed my leg. She plopped down beside me, and I rubbed behind her ears for her. She shut her eyes and moaned.
“Let me keep Nero, Daddy.”
He went on
rubbing until he finished up the saddle, put the lid on the can, and lifted the saddle off the fence. Then he turned and faced me, holding the saddle by the horn with one hand and the soap can in the other. The shadow of his hat brim hid his eyes. His jaw was brown, and his white teeth were grinning.
“You’re about to learn a few things, young man,” he said. “Maybe things ain’t been too good on this place with your old man around, but you’re about to learn that they can be a damn sight worse without him. And another thing. You’re about to learn that a man can even get along without his dog, if he has to.”
My father wasn’t a cruel man, although the rest of us, in my memory, cried a lot. I remember each of these occasions very clearly. Yet I don’t remember hating my father, or even fearing him. I remember him, during the time we lived on the farm, as my hero, my god. I remember following him across the newly plowed black fields, stretching my legs, trying to step from one of his footprints to another, and feeling proud somehow that I couldn’t do it. I envied him his shotgun and begged him often to let me shoot it. He never did. But one day, when several families had gathered at Harley May’s house and the women were inside quilting and the men, lately returned from the hunt, were lounging on the front porch, drinking coffee, I found his gun among several lying on the grass and decided to pick it up. As I tried to lift it, the breech slammed shut on my thumb. I squealed and dropped the gun, and it fired. My father whipped me before he sent me into the house to have my mashed thumb fixed, but while Mother was wrapping it in a rag I heard him on the porch, laughing and bragging about my wanting so much to shoot the gun, and I wasn’t sorry I’d tried. And then there was that Christmas party in the schoolhouse at that tiny community—was it really called Addlepate?—not far from our farm. A lot of the kids got big dolls and trucks and drums and I got only a little glass lantern filled with tiny pieces of candy. But my father took it off the tree and gave it to me from his own hand, and I was happy. These scenes flash through my mind quickly and softly, like far-off shooting stars. They don’t lie there and burn in vivid detail.
Some Sweet Day Page 2